Fallout 4 armor

Overview
In Fallout 4 the wardrobe system allows the Sole Survivor to piece together their outfit from a variety of clothing and armor choices. The system is broken up into 9 slots, and 2 layers:
 * Base layer
 * Body (Pants, shirts, Vault jumpsuits, etc.)
 * Hat (Baseball caps, combat armor helmet, Fedoras, etc.)
 * Eye (glasses and goggles.)
 * Mouth (bandanas.)
 * Armor - These are worn on top of the base layer.
 * Chest
 * Right arm
 * Left arm
 * Right leg
 * Left leg

Many wardrobe items take up multiple slots, including armor slots, limiting what other pieces they can be combined with. Each item on every layer can offer bonuses, such as different kinds of damage resistance. All of these items and their unique bonuses are detailed below. Furthermore, armor mods can be applied to select items, providing additional bonuses.

Characters can enter Power armor wearing any combination of clothing, adding an additional layer of armor. However, wearing power armor nullifies all bonuses provided by the lower layers.

Each piece of armor falls under one of these classifications: Normal, Legendary, or Unique. Normal armors have no special bonuses 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.

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, along with the metal armor below, can be seen as tier 2 armor types, serving as counterparts to each other. Leather provides superior energy resistance but inferior ballistic resistance when compared to metal armor. The standard and sturdy variants of leather armor have inferior ballistic and energy resistances compared to the tier 3 combat armor, but heavy leather, and sturdy legs, have slightly superior energy resistance at the expense of considerably worse ballistic resistance.

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Metal
Metal armor, along with the leather armor above, can be seen as tier 2 armor types, serving as counterparts to each other. Metal provides superior ballistic resistance but inferior energy resistance when compared to leather armor. The standard variant of metal armor has inferior ballistic and energy resistances compared to the tier 3 combat armor, but the sturdy and heavy variants of metal have slightly superior ballistic resistance at the expense of considerably worse energy resistance.

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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. The standard variant has superior energy and ballistic resistance to both leather and metal. Although heavy leather armor has slightly superior energy resistance and heavy metal armor has slightly superior ballistic resistance, combat armor has much better ballistic resistance than leather and much better energy resistance than metal, making it superior for all-purpose use.

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

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Synth
Synth armor can be seen as a tier 4 armor type. The standard and sturdy variants have somewhat to slightly worse ballistic resistances compared to the tier 3 combat armor, but the heavy variant has slightly better ballistic resistance, and all variants have superior energy resistance. The end result is a standard variant that's only slightly worse than combat armor for all-purpose use, a sturdy variant that's somewhat better for all-purpose use, and a heavy variant that's better all around.

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
This armor can be seen as a tier 1 to 3 armor type. Unlike other armors, it lacks standard, sturdy, and heavy variants. Compared to standard-variant armor, DC guard armor is on par with tier 2 to 3 armors, but compared to sturdy-variant armor, it's only tier 1 to 2, and almost any heavy-variant armor is better. Because of this, its value will be higher at low levels, while being almost useless at high levels.

DC guard armor is used almost exclusively by guards in Diamond City and can only be obtained from their corpse, making acquisition of this armor a little less practical. However, guard armor 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.

Vault-Tec security armor
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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 Mister Handy (Fallout 4) or Miss Nanny robots.

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.