Defense

(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)
The defense icon in-game.

Defense is a statistic that determines the decrease in damage taken per hit. The player's defense can be increased by wearing armor and accessories, and temporarily boosted/decreased by various buffs/debuffs. Enemies also have a defense statistic.

Defense cannot be reduced to below 0. Furthermore, the damage dealt to an entity will always be at least 1, regardless of defense (with the exception of a player whose multiplayer ally is wearing a Paladin's Shield).

Some forms of damage are impossible to reduce through defense, e.g. damage from damage over time debuffs like Cursed Inferno or from drowning in water. Damage taken from lava, however, can be reduced through defense.

Some items have the ability of armor penetration, which, in most cases, allows them to ignore some or all of the target's defense when calculating damage.

Players

Defense gives a flat reduction in damage, i.e. damage is reduced by a fixed amount per hit (as opposed to a multiplicative damage reduction, which would reduce damage by a percentage and is applied after defense comes into effect). It is calculated after the general ±15% damage randomization.

The formula is as follows:

[math]\displaystyle{ \text{net damage} = \lfloor \text{attack damage} - \text{defense} * f \rfloor }[/math]

The factor [math]\displaystyle{ f }[/math] is 0.5 / 0.75 / 1. When calculating damage in PvP, it is always 0.5, regardless of world difficulty.

Examples

Atk. dmg	Def.	Net damage
		Classic	Expert	Master
40	20	30 ⌊40 − 20 × 0.5⌋ = 30	25 ⌊40 − 20 × 0.75⌋ = 25	20 ⌊40 − 20 × 1⌋ = 20
40	30	25 ⌊40 − 30 × 0.5⌋ = 25	17 ⌊40 − 30 × 0.75⌋ = 17	10 ⌊40 − 30 × 1⌋ = 10
75	20	65 ⌊75 − 20 × 0.5⌋ = 65	60 ⌊75 − 20 × 0.75⌋ = 60	55 ⌊75 − 20 × 1⌋ = 55
75	30	60 ⌊75 − 30 × 0.5⌋ = 60	52 ⌊75 − 30 × 0.75⌋ = 52	45 ⌊75 − 30 × 1⌋ = 45

Enemies

Enemies have a defense statistic just like players do, but they do not gain more protection from defense in Expert Mode or Master Mode. They will always reduce incoming damage by 50% of their defense:

[math]\displaystyle{ \text{net damage} = \lfloor \text{attack damage} - \text{defense} * 0.5 \rfloor }[/math]

Examples

Weapon	Net damage
	Green Slime0 defense	Chaos Elemental30 defense	Paladin50 defense	Sharkron100 defense
Gold Broadsword15 damage	15	1 (0)	1 (-10)	1 (-35)
Meowmere200 damage	200	185	175	150

Boosts

Armor and accessories

A player's defense score can be increased by equipping armor and accessories. Armor usually consists of three items, granting an additional bonus if all pieces match, the set bonus, which may increase the defense score further. Some accessories grant direct defense boosts (see the following table), but all accessories can also be reforged to have defense-increasing modifiers.

See armor for detailed defense information about every piece of armor.

Item	Accessory defense
Cobalt Shield	1
Obsidian Skull	1
Shackle	1
Obsidian Shield	2
Shield of Cthulhu(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	2
Ankh Shield	4
Frozen Shield(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	6
Paladin's Shield	6
Berserker's Glove(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	8
Flesh Knuckles(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	8
Hero Shield(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	10

Item	Accessory defense
Moon Charm	3 (only during the night)
Moon Shell	3 (only during the night)
Moon Stone	4 (only during the night)
Sun Stone	4 (only during the day)
Celestial Shell(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	4 (during the day) 7 (during the night)
Frozen Turtle Shell	(Old-gen console and 3DS versions) 30 (when below 25% health)

Modifier	Defense
Hard	1
Guarding	2
Armored	3
Warding	4

Buffs and debuffs

Buffs and debuffs can temporarily alter a player's or an enemy's defense. The defense of enemies cannot be increased, only decreased.

Buff/Debuff	Buff/debuff defense
Well Fed	2
Plenty Satisfied(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	3
Exquisitely Stuffed(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	4
The Bast Defense(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	5
Dryad's Blessing(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	8
Ironskin	8
Tipsy	−4
Weak	−4
Ichor	(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)−15 (only for players) / (Old-gen console and 3DS versions)−20
Broken Armor	−50%
Withered Armor(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	−50%

Other

These miscellaneous effects increase the player's defense.

Item	Defense
Aegis Fruit(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	4 (permanently)
Brand of the Inferno(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	20 (while guarding)
Sergeant United Shield(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	20 (while guarding)

Armor penetration

  

Desktop/Console/Mobile-Only Content: This section's information applies only to the Desktop, Console, and Mobile versions of Terraria.

Armor penetration is a hidden player statistic that determines the effective amount of the enemy's defense portion that is ignored when dealing damage to it. It works by increasing the damage dealt as follows:

• If the player's total armor penetration is greater than the enemy's defense, the damage is increased by half of the enemy's defense. This means that the entirety of the enemy's defense is effectively ignored (as the enemy's damage reduction by half its defense – see above – is canceled out).
• If the player's total armor penetration is lower than or equal to the enemy's defense, the damage is increased by half of the armor penetration value. This means that any amount between nearly none and all of the enemy's defense is effectively ignored, depending on the specific values.

See below for examples.

All following armor penetration values are stackable with each other, and all decimals are rounded down in damage calculations.

The following debuffs increases armor penetration when calculating damage towards affected entities:

Debuff		Armor penetration
	Ichor	15
	Betsy's Curse	40

The following items grant armor penetration:

Item		Armor penetration
	Shark Tooth Necklace	5
	Stinger Necklace	5
	Sharpening Station	12 (only while holding a melee weapon)
	Hive Pack	5 (for Wasp Gun only)

In addition, the projectiles of certain weapons and accessories have an own armor penetration stat, which is added to the player's armor penetration when inflicting damage upon an enemy with them:

Item		Armor penetration
	Blade Staff	25
	Dark Harvest("dark energy")	50
	Cool Whip(snowflake)	30
	Light's Bane(slash of darkness)	5
	Blade of Grass(projectile)	20
	Muramasa(slash)	5
	Bone Glove	25
	Crystal Vile Shard	10
	Nettle Burst	10
	Wasp Gun	10
	Star Cloakand its upgrades	25
	Arkhalis	20
	Weather Pain	10
	Flamethrower	15
	Elf Melter	15

Examples

Enemy	Player AP		Increased damage	Explanation
Green Slime0 defense	0	→	0	AP ≤ defense, so increase is AP/2
	10	→	0	AP > defense, so increase is defense/2
Chaos Elemental30 defense	0	→	0	AP ≤ defense, so increase is AP/2 (0% of defense ignored)
	10	→	5	AP ≤ defense, so increase is AP/2 (33.33% of defense ignored)
	40	→	15	AP > defense, so increase is defense/2 (100% of defense ignored)
Sharkron100 defense	5	→	2	AP ≤ defense, so increase is AP/2 (4% of defense ignored)
	10	→	5	AP ≤ defense, so increase is AP/2 (10% of defense ignored)
	40	→	20	AP ≤ defense, so increase is AP/2 (40% of defense ignored)
	100	→	50	AP ≤ defense, so increase is AP/2 (100% of defense ignored) (This is a theoretical example, as it is possible but impractical to maintain 100 AP.)

Maximum defense

The highest possible defense can be attained using the setups described in the following sections.

 Desktop version,  Console version, and  Mobile version

The maximum possible defense is 190 / 200 / 208:

Armor (82 defense)

• Solar Flare Helmet or Hallowed Mask
• Solar Flare Breastplate
• Valhalla Knight's Greaves

Accessories (59 / 69 / 77 defense)

• Hero Shield
• Flesh Knuckles
• Berserker's Glove
• Celestial Shell
• Frozen Shield
• Paladin's Shield(Expert/Master)
• Ankh Shield(Master)

• At night, when not submerged in water
• Warding modifiers on all accessories

Buffs (25 defense)

• Ironskin
• Exquisitely Stuffed
• Dryad's Blessing
• The Bast Defense

Other (24 defense)

Guarding with the Brand of the Inferno or Sergeant United Shield
Consuming an Aegis Fruit

 Old-gen console version and Nintendo 3DS version

The maximum possible defense is 128:

Armor (76 defense)

• Dragon Mask
• Beetle Shell
• Beetle Leggings

Accessories (42 defense)

• Paladin's Shield
• Ankh Shield
• Moon Stone or Sun Stone
• Frozen Turtle Shell
• Celestial Stone

• At night or day (depending on Moon/Sun Stone), at low health
• Warding modifiers on all accessories

Buffs (10 defense)

• Ironskin
• Well Fed

Trivia

• Although not possible in-game, if a piece of armor were to gain a modifier, it would apply the effects just like an accessory would. For example, a set of Warding modified armor would add 12 defense total; each piece adding 4 defense to the total.
• Damage dealt by enemies is doubled in Expert Mode(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions) and tripled in Master Mode(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions) compared to Classic Mode. This means that despite the higher factors of defense in those modes, players will still take more damage than they would in Classic Mode.
• If the player somehow has negative defense, they will take more damage according to the damage taken added with half / three quarters / full amount the defense.

See also

• Damage reduction