Fallout 4 armor

Overview
In Fallout 4, the wardrobe system changes from previous games, allowing the Sole Survivor to set up their outfit from different pieces divided into: left leg, right leg, chest, left arm, right arm, base layer (clothing) and head (divided into up to three parts: upper head, eyes, mouth) or take on suits as a whole.

With the new wardrobe system you now have 3 layers of armor:
 * Base and head clothing
 * Armor - Made up of up to 5 or 6 (helmet) parts
 * Power armor - Made up of 6 parts

Each layer can offer various bonuses and resistances, but wearing power armor nullifies all bonuses and effects provided by any other layer of armor, including Legendary armor effects. In addition, each layer has its own weight, which is not nullified by power armor (excluding power armor plate segments attached directly to a power armor frame), making it most effective to wear lightweight clothing or no clothing at all if operating power armor.

Each piece of armor falls under three classifications: Normal, Legendary, and Unique. Normal armors have no special statistics applied to them. Legendary armors come with random bonuses, and are only dropped by Legendary Enemies. Unique armors are pre-named, have a special legendary bonus, and are only available through certain merchants and quest rewards.

Many pieces of armor can have armor mods applied to them; normal and legendary armors will change their name when mods are applied, unique armors will not.

There are six main armor types, and 4 different tiers of armor in the wasteland: raider, DC guard, leather, metal, combat and synth. They have respective tiers of 1, 1, 2, 2, 3 and 4; tiered by their ability of resistance.

Each armor set is comprised of pieces of itself. Almost all of these armor types have three variants: regular, sturdy, heavy. In addition to changing the appearance, these variants also change an armor piece's resistance and weight. For the normal armor type class, these armor pieces have their variant in the armor title, e.g. "Sturdy leather chest piece".

Raider
Raider armor is usually the most common armor type, and can be seen as a tier 1 armor. Providing the least energy and ballistic resistance out of all armor types - in some cases, excluding the DC guard armor type - it's the only armor type to be exclusive to raiders.

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Leather
Leather armor can be seen as a tier 2 armor, a tier that consists of both leather and the metal armor type, serving as counterparts to each other. It provides superior energy resistance and inferior ballistic resistance when compared to metal armor, and ultimately inferior energy and ballistic resistances when compared to the tier 3 armor type, combat armor.

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Metal
Metal armor can be seen as a tier 2 armor, a tier that consists of both leather and the metal armor type, serving as counterparts to each other. It provides superior ballistic resistance and inferior energy resistance when compared to leather armor, and ultimately inferior energy and ballistic resistances when compared to the tier 3 armor type, combat armor.

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Combat armor
Combat armor can be seen as a tier 3 armor type, providing the best of both worlds from the tier 2 armor types leather and metal. It has a superior energy and ballistic resistance to both leather and metal, being only weaker to the final armor type, the tier 4 synth armor.

While all other armor has identical stats for the left and right variants of limbs, the combat armor strangely has different weights for left and right legs.

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Synth
Synth armor can be seen as the final tier armor type, tier 4. It provides the absolute best base energy and ballistic resistance out of all armor types. Unique armor for this armor type can be obtained from The Institute by the synth requisition officer and through tier 4 settlement armor stands.

Both the Synth helmet and the Synth field helmet occupy all three head slots.

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DC guard
DC guard armor can be seen as a tier 1 armor type. As it seldom offers the traditional 3-variant regular, sturdy and heavy armor type classes, it's potentially a better starting armor choice than Raider armor in some cases due to its unique one-variant armor type class.

They are exclusively used by guards in Diamond City and can only be obtained from their corpse, making the use of this armor a little less practical. DC Guard gear may rarely be obtained from named Gunner enemies in Tessa's area.

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 * Despite the names, "shoulder" and "forearm" armors take up the entire arm slot.
 * The DC guard helm takes up the eye slot as well as the hat slot.
 * The DC guard heavy helmet takes up all three head slots.

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 * The body armors take up all slots (chest, arms, legs)

Uniques
Uniques are legendaries that come pre-named and are not randomized, but are otherwise no different from regular legendaries.

They can be obtained from various merchants, sometimes (as with the Freefall Legs) at set locations, and possibly as quest rewards.

¹This Nanofiliment material is different from another Nanofiliment material that the player character can create, possibly a bug. It provides less energy and ballistic resistance than the normal one, showing two versions of the same thing. There is still an option to upgrade to the normal Nanofiliment material.

Outfits
''These count as both clothing and body armor. Most will take up all armor slots, but some will allow additional armor.''


 * Unique apparel are highlighted with a darker background.
 * Unplayable apparel are grayed out.

Full headwear
These count as hats, eyewear, and masks.


 * Unique apparel are highlighted with a darker background.

Hats

 * Unique apparel are highlighted with a darker background.
 * Bowler hat & Triggerman bowler are equip-able by Codsworth.

Eyewear

 * Welding goggles are equipable on Dogmeat.
 * Robotic Bits may not appear in inventory, nor are equipable with the "player.equipitem" command.

Masks

 * All bandanas are equipable on both NPCs and Dogs as a cosmetic item.

Power armor

 * Please note that all pieces of power armor must be attached to a power armor frame.