I've been looking for an answer to this question for a while now and have yet to find anything conclusive. I'm wondering how armour compares to vitality point for point.

For example, at the moment Geralt is wearing trousers that provide 30 armour and +350 vitality. In my inventory I have a second pair that will provide 42 armour +0 vitality, but I'm not sure if that 12 armour is worth sacrificing the bonus vitality because I don't know how they compare.

The simple answer is that they do not compare, at least directly, in the way you appear to want them to. Armour is a measure of protection, and as with all protections, it depends on the foe and the strength of it's attacks on how effective the armour is. Vitality, on the other hand, is a simple measure of health (or HP). Even the weakest foe is going to affect vitality, whereas some armour will negate such weak foes entirely. They cannot be compared.

Different games can have different mechanics as to how armour functions, which is the reason why I am asking this. I know one game where total armour rating is subtracted from attackers damage, so in order cause any harm to a target your damage has to be above their rating. Like an attack of 8 against a rating of 9 will cause 0 damage. Then you have games where armour negates percentages of attacks. Others might treat it like a secondary health pool.

With so many varied mechanics for this one area I just want it a bit more specific.

Is there any official documentation anywhere that explains any of this?

I've seen no official documentation, but as I understand it, TW calculates armour as a damage modifier, meaning that your 30 armour will negate 30 points of damage per hit. That also means that 350 vitality could be viewed as 11 hits at 30 reduction (11 armour). If that's the case, your 30 & 350 vs 42 are pretty much on a par, though 42 armour protects by 1 more hit (30+11 == 41).

Here damage is reduced by the 'armour value' directly (except for elemental damage which ignores armour)... some weapons and attacks also bypass some (or all) armour ~ though this is something more in your toolkit than in most monsters/npcs.

Most monsters hit *a lot* harder than the base damage reduction though, so with a few exceptions, damage resistances are *far* more important.

For a typical 'low level' creature the base damage in Sword and Story will be 250+ per hit, In Death March this starts at 500+ and climbs rapidly with levels, especially when also higher than Geralt.

This makes the difference between 30 and 42 armour moot... while the value of the damage resistance of *say* -25% and -30% overall is much greater in significance (except for really weak opponents, when the total amount of damage per hit will be negligible anyway).

Monsters "Rend", "Bludgeon" and use "Elemental" attacks (plus some poison, fire and bleeding specials), so this should drive your choices for armour suitable against monsters or for general purpose use. Humans use a variety of slashing, piercing and bludgeoning attacks, but more armours offer adequate protections so your suitable choice is wider. You can carry a few pieces of spare armour to optimise a similar 'set' to offer superior protection against what you anticipate fighting more of...

Often the 'best' overall armours will be either the most suitable "specialised" Witcher set (not all have a complete suite of protection), or the generalist dlc armours... which are excellent overall, far better than *most* other armours for complex combinations of opponents with the same equipped armour.

I just said screw it and crafted the base Cat gear. That's light armour that provides a lot more protection than the heavy armour I was wearing.

Also, it matches, which is always nice.


That and the lore, backstory, to the quest to find all the diagrams was very interesting.