Balanced Armor

This mod improves vanilla armor meta so that each class of armor has a gameplay niche (instead of just iron and diamond/netherite). Leather, chain and gold armor are given special abilities to make them more appealing compared to iron and diamond, and all armor types are given a netherite variant that reflects each armor's unique niche.

Each armor is changed in the following ways:

Leather

Leather armor now protects the user from heat damage in addition to providing standard armor protection. With a full set of armor, 36% of heat and freeze damage is negated, and 60% of the remaining damage is absorbed by the armor, damaging it. As a result, even when unenchanted leather armor provides incredible protection against fire and lava, but will rapidly lose its durability.

When upgraded with a netherite ingot, leather armor turns into netherhide armor. A full set of netherhide armor provides 19 armor points and completely negates all heat damage. Since it is netherite based, it does not take any damage when protecting from fire damage and is not destroyed by fire or lava when in item form. If a full set of netherhide armor is worn, the armor also automatically extinguishes fire. Like leather armor, netherhide can be dyed. Netherhide provides the same protections against powdered snow as leather. Netherhide armor has 20% more durability than iron armor.

Chainmail

Chain armor becomes craftable with iron nuggets. In addition to this, chain armor can be repaired in an anvil without increasing the anvil work cost for a static cost of 1 level. It can also be repaired using iron nuggets in a crafting table, but doing so will remove non-curse enchantments. It takes 4 nuggets (5 extreme cases with an anvil) to fully repair a piece of chainmail.

When upgraded with a netherite ingot, chainmaile becomes netherchain. Netherchain provides the same amount of armor as netherite, but each piece provides only 1 point of armor toughness and no knockback resistance. Unique to netherite based armors, netherchain can be repaired using golden nuggets instead of netherite ingots. Like with chainmail, it does not increase the anvil work cost to repair netherchain,it always costs 1 level to do so, and netherchain can be repaired in the crafting table. Unlike chainmail, it takes 8 nuggets to fully repair a piece of netherchain, with each nugget repairing 1/8th the total durability. Netherchain has slightly less durability than diamond.

Gold

Gold armor gains the ability to bypass enchantment level caps by 1 level when combined in an anvil. This only applies to enchantments with multiple levels, so you can't get level 2 mending or aqua affinity. Gold armor can also use 1 more bookshelf at the enchantment table, setting the level cap to 32 for slightly better enchantments.

In order for this mechanic to work, the item in the second slot of the anvil must be a golden armor, and it must have never been used in an anvil before. In effect, this means gold armor can only bypass the level cap if the piece being added was found in a loot chest or freshly enchanted at the enchantment table.

For example, if two pieces of golden armor are enchanted with protection 4 at an enchanting table and then combined in an anvil, they will create a piece of armor with protection 5. However, if a protection 4 enchanted book is added to a protection 4 gold armor, the result will only have protection 4. If an unenchanted piece of gold armor is given protection 4 via an enchanted book or combination with another piece of gold armor, that piece cannot be used to upgrade another piece to level 5 protection.

When upgraded with a netherite ingot, gold armor becomes gilded nether armor. Gilded nether armor provides a full 20 points of armor but doesn't provide any toughness or knockback protection. Gilded nether armor carries over enchantments, even ones that are bypassing the level cap. Gilded nether has the same anvil mechanics as gold armor, has a higher enchantability bonus than gold, and can use up to 5 more bookshelves at the enchantment table, for a level cap of 40. Piglins are neutral towards players wearing gilded nether armor, just like with gold armor. Gilded nether armor has slightly more durability than netherhide, making it one of the more vulnerable nether armor variants.

Iron

Standard Iron armor is not changed at all.

When upgraded with a netherite ingot, iron armor becomes netherplate armor. Netherplate armor provides a full 20 points of armor and each piece provides 1.5 armor toughness. Each piece has over twice the durability of netherite, making it by far the most durable armor in the game.

This mod uses minecraft forge.