Defense

 Defense ( Defense) is one of the core player statistics. It determines how much Damage reduction the player has. The more  Defense a player has, the less damage is taken from attacks.

Defense does not reduce  True Damage; that is reduced by  True Defense.

Mechanics

Chart showing damage reduction.

The more  Defense the player has, the less bonus damage reduction the player will have.

The formula for damage reduction is

${\frac {Def}{Def+100}}$ damage reduction. For example, if Defense is 200, the formula is

${\frac {200}{200+100}}={\frac {200}{300}}$ or ~67% damage reduction, meaning with 200  Defense, the player takes 33% of the damage from monsters that would normally be taken with 0 defense.

This leads to a misconception that higher  Defense is useless because the damage reduction only goes up slightly. This is incorrect, for as the difference from 0% to 50% damage reduction may seem more substantial than the jump from 90% to 95%, both are equal in that they double EHP (Effective Health Points) (100-200 vs 1000–2000)

 calcpage  = Calculator:Damage Reduction
 template  = Template:Calculator/Damage_Reduction
 form      = dmgReductionCalcForm
 result    = inner

 param     = defense|Your Defense|100|int|0-999999

Loading Calculator...

If the calculator fails to load up, please report to a Code Editor.

Effective Health

Main article: Effective Health

 Effective Health (EHP) is the amount of damage enemies need to deal to the player to kill them when  Defense is factored in. If one has 100  Health and 200  Defense, they will be able to take 300 damage before dying, as shown below.

The formula for EHP is

$HP\times {\frac {Def+100}{100}}$ .

For example, if  Defense is 200 and  Health is 100, the formula is:

$100\times {\frac {200+100}{100}}$ or

$100\times {\frac {300}{100}}$ or

$100\times 3$ or

300 EHP, meaning with 100  Health and 200  Defense, the player can take as much damage without dying as someone who has 300  Health and 0  Defense could.

EHP is a useful metric for calculating which items are better than others in allowing the player to survive attacks.

EHP does not factor in  True Damage attacks, which are affected by  True Defense.

Increasing Base Defense

Players do not have any base  Defense by default. It can be increased by:

• Turning in Fairy Souls to Tia the Fairy
• Leveling  Mining
• The Forbidden Defense upgrade in Wither Essence shop.

Increasing Bonus Defense

There are several ways to gain additional bonus  Defense. They include, but are not limited to:

• Equipping most types of Armor
• Holding certain weapons (Golem Sword, Earth Shard, Wither Cloak Sword, Adaptive Blade (When Tank in dungeons), or Astraea)
• Using Accessories (ex: Gravity Talisman)
• Using Protection on Armor
• Reforging items to certain Reforges (ex: Titanic Reforge)
• Drinking the Resistance Potion
• Abilities such as Pigman Sword's Burning Souls