Armor

Valheim has 114 wearable items across 5 slots and 16 armor sets, and the number on the piece is not the thing to read. What matters is how armour turns damage into health lost, which is not a flat percentage; the slot it occupies, because only the chest and the legs charge you movement speed for it; and the set bonus, which is the difference between 42 armour that does nothing else and 42 armour that also hands you 15 levels of a skill.

How Armor Works

Armour reduces damage from physical, fire, frost and lightning. Poison and spirit go straight through it, which is why a Blob and a Charred Warrior are dangerous in full Flametal.

Your armour rating is the sum of the head, chest, leg and cape pieces you have on, and the game applies it differently above and below half the incoming damage:

• Armour below half the damage: it subtracts. A 100-damage hit against 30 armour costs 70 health.
• Armour at or above half the damage: it divides. Health lost is (damage x damage) / (4 x armour), so the same 100-damage hit against 96 armour costs 26.

The second case looks like diminishing returns and is not one. Counted in hits survived rather than health lost, every point of armour is worth as much as the one before it:

All Armor Categories

The Slots

Armor Sets

16 sets, 1 or 2 per biome, in 3 kinds: 8 Light sets that cost little or no movement speed and usually carry a bonus, 6 Heavy sets that carry the highest armour and -10% movement, and 2 Mage sets that trade armour for Eitr regeneration.

6 of them grant a set bonus for wearing all of their pieces at once, and a bonus is worth more than the armour gap it costs: the Vilebone Set gives up 31 armour against Padded Armor and hands back +40% stamina regeneration and +20% blunt and pierce damage.

Set	Image	Biome	Type	Pieces	Quality 1	Quality 2	Quality 3	Quality 4	Weight	Movement	Set Bonus
Rag Armor		Meadows	Light	2	2	4	-	-	4	0%	-
Leather Armor		Meadows	Light	4	7	14	21	28	15	0%	-
Troll Set		Black Forest	Light	4	19	26	33	40	15	0%	+15 Sneaking
Bear Set		Black Forest	Light	3	21	27	33	39	11	0%	Berserk: +30% health regen, +15% stamina regen, +10% slash and chop, and 25% more blunt, slash and pierce taken
Bronze Armor		Black Forest	Heavy	3	24	30	36	42	23	-10%	-
Root Set		Swamp	Light	3	24	30	36	42	23	-4%	+15 Bows
Iron Armor		Swamp	Heavy	3	42	48	54	60	33	-10%	-
Fenris Set		Mountain	Light	3	30	36	42	48	21	+9%	+15 Fists, and fire resistance on every piece
Wolf Armor		Mountain	Heavy	4	61	68	75	82	37	-10%	-
Vilebone Set		Plains	Light	3	48	54	60	66	11	0%	Vilebone Wrath: +20% health regen, +40% stamina regen, +20% blunt and pierce, and 25% more blunt, slash and pierce taken
Padded Armor		Plains	Heavy	4	79	86	93	100	27	-10%	-
Eitr-weave Set		Mistlands	Mage	4	49	56	63	70	15	-4%	-
Carapace Armor		Mistlands	Heavy	3	96	102	108	114	23	-10%	-
Embla Set		Ashlands	Mage	3	57	63	69	75	11	-4%	-
Ask Set		Ashlands	Light	3	84	90	96	102	11	0%	Ask's Endurance: -10% run and jump stamina, -20% attack stamina, +10% pierce
Flametal Armor		Ashlands	Heavy	3	114	120	126	132	23	-10%	-

Upgrades

Everything craftable starts at quality 1 and is upgraded 3 more times at the station that made it. Every figure quoted on this wiki is quality 1, so these are floors and not ceilings.

• +2 armour per level, on every craftable piece except Rag Armor. A set of 3 is 6 points better a level, 18 points better fully upgraded.
• +1 armour per level on a cape, except the Ashen Cape, which gains 2.
• Each level needs the station one step further up than the last, so the ladder is gated on building work as much as on metal.
• Upgrading an equipped piece unequips it. Check your armour before walking back out of the door.

Weight and movement penalty do not change with quality. Neither does a set bonus, which is why a light set is worth wearing unupgraded and a heavy one is not.