Forums: General Aethora Chat

I was looking at the nice stuff being sold in the market, and a question came up. How does the Defense rating on armor actually work? Is that how much damage will be blocked, total, or each time I’m hit, or something I’m not thinking of? And if it is each hit, couldn’t that make me invincible if my armor has a higher defense than what the enemies I’m fighting can hit for?

Excellent question: I was going to refer you to the wiki page on Stats, but I just noticed it was mis-leading. I just corrected it.

In a nutshell: there is a general ‘action’ formula that is composed of a couple different factors. The factor with the most weight has to do with skill levels. The second factor is basically a ratio that compares the attacker’s weapon’s damage rating against the defense rating of the defender’s armor. So it’s not necessarily a direct reduction of damage, because the outcome depends on the quality of the weapon being used as well.

To answer your question: a really lousy weapon will be pretty weak against really good armor, but even a lousy weapon can be deadly if the attacker has a much higher skill level.

Side note: A few actions bypass armor altogether (for example, some Mindwind-based attacks). All friendly actions bypass armor, of course.