people who don't understand the benefits of armor either:
A) play in a situation where they don't care if they die
or
:cool.gif: do not have a firm grasp of efficiency in this game. likely the same types of people who think iron picks are better than diamond picks because diamonds are "rare." derp.
using armor, you actually end up saving time in the long run, as armor doesn't take long to make, and reduces the amount of damage you take, thus requiring you to use less food. simple logic, really. it also allows you to carry less food around on your person, which again allows you to carry more useful items, and get more things done, faster.
it's a matter of efficiency. not using armor is not efficient (unless you don't care if you die)
iron armor is AMAZING. end of story. the better players use iron armor AT THE LEAST.
diamond armor is the most useful, and it's what i use since i mine more diamonds than i can use, anyway. and iron has other uses. leather armor is garbage. full set of diamond armor lasts a long time. longer than it takes me to mine the SPARE diamonds to make more!
Ordinary day-to-day maintenance: no armour. This includes working with cacti, going outside for woodcutting/wool gathering, checking mob trap (which sometimes has spider survivors in it), any other surface activities.
Why? Because I am never far from food on the surface. Wheat, cooked pork, mushrooms, even "cold cuts" (raw pork on-the-hoof). I have a predictable and visible amount of damage I can take, and I can always move to safety. Even at night I have several more degrees of freedom to get away from mobs on the surface.
Using armour on the surface (unless you work at great heights, at night, or with TNT) is not only not going to help you but it will drain your resources and prove a surprising waste of time. Even leather armour is a waste of time once you get established because you spend more time slaughtering 12-24 cattle than you do planting, growing, and picking 12 wheat.
Spelunking: iron armour.
Why? Because food is severely limited in a cavern system far underground. If you do not have the ability to set a warp to get out of the cave, you must count on being underground for up to several weeks. Having armour increases the lifespan of your food supply.
Being in a cave system limits your movement options to get away from mobs. A wrong turn can result in lava or a fatal fall, or merely being cornered. Also, it's dark by default, so favours multiple mob spawns in smaller, tighter areas. Running away is not always an option - sometimes you are going to get ganged up on. Even just one additional mob can kill you dead before you are finished killing the first one. Armour slows down the additional damage so you have a chance to deal with multiple mobs and survive to retreat and heal up.
Additionally, caverns are 3-D entities. You need to watch out for not only the creeper in front of you and the skeleton below you, but the spiders behind and directly above you.
Lastly, you can always find more iron underground, to replace worn armour. Barring a miraculous discovery of wheat or bread in a dungeon, or having string and sticks and a pool on hand to fish from, once your personal food stores run out, that is pretty much the end of your expedition.
Armor's for players that don't want to die. That's not me.
I could probably go a long time without dying if properly prepared. I'd have to make armor and stock up on food. That'd limit my inventory. When I'm exploring, I drop torches like there's no tomorrow. If I've explored a cave, nothing spawns in it so I don't need to care about armor. If I'm exploring, I carry torches and stone tools. Occasionally monsters get the best of me; it's cheap and by the time I get back I know what to expect and can usually tilt the odds in my favor (most common causes of death: creepers in caves and panic near lava pits.)
So it's just more fun for me to not bother with extending my lifetime. I've played some challenges like Adrift where survival is a focus; it's cool but it's not how I normally want to play in the sandbox. I'm building a ridiculous castle and I've still got 30k blocks to mine; I don't have time for anything that's not mining!
I might try some iron armor when exploring since I've got an abundance, but I have a feeling what's going to happen is I'll misstep into a lava pit and lose it. If only we had some form of lava defense!
Using armour on the surface (unless you work at great heights, at night, or with TNT) is not only not going to help you but it will drain your resources and prove a surprising waste of time.
This isn't true.
Using armor on the surface saves you both time and resources. This is because you use less food, and have to carry less food around.
Also, diamonds have no other use except to make tools and armor... So you might as well start wearing diamond armor 24/7 once you can, so you can operate more efficiently. No reason not to, unless you're very very early on in your world and haven't accrued a diamond surplus yet.
Using armor on the surface saves you both time and resources. This is because you use less food, and have to carry less food around.
Also, diamonds have no other use except to make tools and armor... So you might as well start wearing diamond armor 24/7 once you can, so you can operate more efficiently. No reason not to, unless you're very very early on in your world and haven't accrued a diamond surplus yet.
You assume that people are carrying/using food. Sure, I could devote 1/4 of my inventory to food and spend 24 ingots making some armor, and it could probably extend my life in a bad situation. But in the worst-case scenario I'm out 24 iron and the food, along with what I was carrying. Let's say I have no armor and carry no food. Now I'm out what I was carrying; that's less iron and food lost.
Besides, that food isn't going to help you much if surprise creeper hugs knock you into a surface lava pit. It's happened to me. I've also had creepers set off deserts of floating sand that dumped me into the middle of caverns full of skeletons. Occasionally the game puts you in a situation that you are unlikely to survive and I like to minimize my loss in those scenarios. Maybe I'll InvEdit myself some diamond armor and test it out; the wiki numbers make me believe a bad lava accident or fall is the only thing that could threaten me with a full set of diamond armor.
Still, I like to play the game in such a way that I minimize my risk. Getting owned by skeletons is my punishment for moving without caution in a dark area. The lesson is to not do that. Diamond armor would make me soft and flabby!
*edit*
Also I don't really get why it's such a contentious subject. I think it's probably smart to wear armor, but I like the "screw up and you're hosed" element that comes along with not wearing it. Maybe some people want the game to be more difficult? Either way it's not like they take away from your experience by dying more often.
Some rough estimates show me that a full suit of diamond armor saves you about 60 loaves of bread or 37 cooked pork chops (about 150 hearts)
So to compare, if you mine regularly on the diamond layer, you already have enough diamonds to make this armor.
By not wearing this armor, and assuming you survive by eating food, if you were to go the bread route you would have to additionally:
1. Farm up 180 additional wheat
2. Make it all bread
3. Put some of it in your inventory, wasting valuable inventory space
4. Run out of bread
5. Get more bread, and place it into your inventory, more time wasted
For pork, it's similar. Even if you have a mob grinder you would have to cook 38 pork chops which is just wasted time that you wouldn't have to bother with if you knew how to manage your health efficiently with armor.
Furthermore, wheat farms make armor pretty much unnecessary unless you get completely cluster****ed by mobs. Armor just plain won't save you from lava, and you can't trust it for cushioning falls (which makes no sense anyway).
I tend to fall a lot and well since Iron Armor protects so much, isn't that hard to make, and lasts for a long time, I always make sure I have a full set of Iron Armor on at all times.
I completely agree with the "No Armor" camp. I have become desensitized to death in this game. Example being my active use of creepers for leveling a hill in a vanilla game.
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Quote from Kwickgamer »
Ahhhh beta: a time for throwing unborn chickens against walls whilst hoping that they grow rapidly.
A) play in a situation where they don't care if they die
or
:cool.gif: do not have a firm grasp of efficiency in this game. likely the same types of people who think iron picks are better than diamond picks because diamonds are "rare." derp.
using armor, you actually end up saving time in the long run, as armor doesn't take long to make, and reduces the amount of damage you take, thus requiring you to use less food. simple logic, really. it also allows you to carry less food around on your person, which again allows you to carry more useful items, and get more things done, faster.
it's a matter of efficiency. not using armor is not efficient (unless you don't care if you die)
iron armor is AMAZING. end of story. the better players use iron armor AT THE LEAST.
diamond armor is the most useful, and it's what i use since i mine more diamonds than i can use, anyway. and iron has other uses. leather armor is garbage. full set of diamond armor lasts a long time. longer than it takes me to mine the SPARE diamonds to make more!
Why? Because I am never far from food on the surface. Wheat, cooked pork, mushrooms, even "cold cuts" (raw pork on-the-hoof). I have a predictable and visible amount of damage I can take, and I can always move to safety. Even at night I have several more degrees of freedom to get away from mobs on the surface.
Using armour on the surface (unless you work at great heights, at night, or with TNT) is not only not going to help you but it will drain your resources and prove a surprising waste of time. Even leather armour is a waste of time once you get established because you spend more time slaughtering 12-24 cattle than you do planting, growing, and picking 12 wheat.
Spelunking: iron armour.
Why? Because food is severely limited in a cavern system far underground. If you do not have the ability to set a warp to get out of the cave, you must count on being underground for up to several weeks. Having armour increases the lifespan of your food supply.
Being in a cave system limits your movement options to get away from mobs. A wrong turn can result in lava or a fatal fall, or merely being cornered. Also, it's dark by default, so favours multiple mob spawns in smaller, tighter areas. Running away is not always an option - sometimes you are going to get ganged up on. Even just one additional mob can kill you dead before you are finished killing the first one. Armour slows down the additional damage so you have a chance to deal with multiple mobs and survive to retreat and heal up.
Additionally, caverns are 3-D entities. You need to watch out for not only the creeper in front of you and the skeleton below you, but the spiders behind and directly above you.
Lastly, you can always find more iron underground, to replace worn armour. Barring a miraculous discovery of wheat or bread in a dungeon, or having string and sticks and a pool on hand to fish from, once your personal food stores run out, that is pretty much the end of your expedition.
I could probably go a long time without dying if properly prepared. I'd have to make armor and stock up on food. That'd limit my inventory. When I'm exploring, I drop torches like there's no tomorrow. If I've explored a cave, nothing spawns in it so I don't need to care about armor. If I'm exploring, I carry torches and stone tools. Occasionally monsters get the best of me; it's cheap and by the time I get back I know what to expect and can usually tilt the odds in my favor (most common causes of death: creepers in caves and panic near lava pits.)
So it's just more fun for me to not bother with extending my lifetime. I've played some challenges like Adrift where survival is a focus; it's cool but it's not how I normally want to play in the sandbox. I'm building a ridiculous castle and I've still got 30k blocks to mine; I don't have time for anything that's not mining!
I might try some iron armor when exploring since I've got an abundance, but I have a feeling what's going to happen is I'll misstep into a lava pit and lose it. If only we had some form of lava defense!
This isn't true.
Using armor on the surface saves you both time and resources. This is because you use less food, and have to carry less food around.
Also, diamonds have no other use except to make tools and armor... So you might as well start wearing diamond armor 24/7 once you can, so you can operate more efficiently. No reason not to, unless you're very very early on in your world and haven't accrued a diamond surplus yet.
You assume that people are carrying/using food. Sure, I could devote 1/4 of my inventory to food and spend 24 ingots making some armor, and it could probably extend my life in a bad situation. But in the worst-case scenario I'm out 24 iron and the food, along with what I was carrying. Let's say I have no armor and carry no food. Now I'm out what I was carrying; that's less iron and food lost.
Besides, that food isn't going to help you much if surprise creeper hugs knock you into a surface lava pit. It's happened to me. I've also had creepers set off deserts of floating sand that dumped me into the middle of caverns full of skeletons. Occasionally the game puts you in a situation that you are unlikely to survive and I like to minimize my loss in those scenarios. Maybe I'll InvEdit myself some diamond armor and test it out; the wiki numbers make me believe a bad lava accident or fall is the only thing that could threaten me with a full set of diamond armor.
Still, I like to play the game in such a way that I minimize my risk. Getting owned by skeletons is my punishment for moving without caution in a dark area. The lesson is to not do that. Diamond armor would make me soft and flabby!
*edit*
Also I don't really get why it's such a contentious subject. I think it's probably smart to wear armor, but I like the "screw up and you're hosed" element that comes along with not wearing it. Maybe some people want the game to be more difficult? Either way it's not like they take away from your experience by dying more often.
So to compare, if you mine regularly on the diamond layer, you already have enough diamonds to make this armor.
By not wearing this armor, and assuming you survive by eating food, if you were to go the bread route you would have to additionally:
1. Farm up 180 additional wheat
2. Make it all bread
3. Put some of it in your inventory, wasting valuable inventory space
4. Run out of bread
5. Get more bread, and place it into your inventory, more time wasted
For pork, it's similar. Even if you have a mob grinder you would have to cook 38 pork chops which is just wasted time that you wouldn't have to bother with if you knew how to manage your health efficiently with armor.
Furthermore, wheat farms make armor pretty much unnecessary unless you get completely cluster****ed by mobs. Armor just plain won't save you from lava, and you can't trust it for cushioning falls (which makes no sense anyway).
armor = use less wheat = save more time.
Armor has saved me from lava many times.
Yes you can.
eather way your not alone!
Actually, 90% I go with no armor. Food FTW. But, since I eventually collect all those Leather I may as well use it for its only use...