Complete Guide to armor in B42

• Defense for the lower half of your body is not important only crawlers can attack your legs and the penalties for leg armor are high.
  
• Military/Hunting camo jackets are identical defense wise, so are Military Pants/Long Denim shorts
  
• Shoe type is always personal preference, Sneakers make you run 10% faster while boots make you run 10% slower, however allow you to deal an additional 2.5x damage with stomp attacks
  
• Use whatever you have, below are only some optimized loadouts; if your missing a piece or only have a inferior piece of clothing it can still be better than nothing

Defense in your first few days usually shouldn't be a priority. Rather focus on grabbing any leather jackets, gloves or denim shirts off zombies and wardrobes that don't have holes in them. Holes completely eliminate any protection a piece of armor gives to whatever body part the hole effects. The affected body part can be seen by hitting the inspect option on the dropdown when clicking on an item.
An ideal armor loadout in the first few days of playthrough could look similar to this, hardhats are one of the lightest defense helmets, cannot be knocked off, have the lowest vision penalty and are extremely easy to find making them the ideal helmet at any stage of the game. This loadout comes at a 5% attack and movement speed penalty (Movement speed is offset by sneakers 10% movement speed buff) and is good until you can find military jackets, and bulletproof/catchers vests.

• Fireman's Jacket's are great early game protection but come at a hefty 13% movement speed and 10% combat speed reduction so use only as necessary
  
• In sports rooms and sports stores you can sometimes find Ice Hockey Neck Guards, these offer 100% neck protection and are an incredible early game find until you can make bone chokers, however they do come with a moderate discomfort penalty.
  
• Armor with holes should be replaced (Or repaired if you have tailoring 8+) whenever you have spares, however as a general rule of thumb; shoes and gloves aren't useful after 1 hole, pants aren't useful after 3+, shirts/jackets aren't useful after 4+ holes and vests aren't great with 1 hole, but can still be used until they have 2+ holes (Any armor is still good if you don't have spares tho).

After around a week in, there are two main routes you can go for armor; with or without tailoring.

Armor builds without tailoring tend to be similar to early game builds, adding in a catchers vest, magazine limb armor and replacing leather jackets with military jackets. Its important to note that limb armor worn on the right forearm gives twice the movement speed penalty of limb armor worn on the left forearm. This loadout gives a total of 22% decreased run speed and 15% decreased attack speed (20% if wearing limb armor on both arms) or a 12% and 5% decreased speeds if wearing a bulletproof vest.
This armor setup can be achieved with a tailoring skill of 4 and a carving skill of 3. The cotton long johns can be traded for normal long johns found in wardrobes and the crafted cotton shirt can be traded for a crafted denim/burlap shirt, (Burlap shirt gives a slight discomfort penalty however). By using leather patches on clothes each body part affected by the clothing gains a 1% bite protection bonus per level for a total of 4% per part per piece of clothing at level 4 tailoring. Bones can be found from butchering animals at farms, or by foraging while the small leather needed for the forearm armor can be gotten from tanning a rabbit or racoon hide. In total this loadout gives a 6% decreased combat and run seed penalty.

• Catchers vests offer 100% upper and lower torso protection at a 10% movement and attack speed penalty. Bulletproof vests have no penalties but only offer 30% bite protection and 50% scratch protection. If you have 70% or more bite protection or more on your upper and lower torso use bulletproof vests over catchers vests.
  
• Padded football and padded hockey pants have no penalties and higher defense than Military/Denim pants, but cannot be repaired. However they still out-preform military/denim pants until tailoring 10
  
• Riot helmets, crash helmets and metal helmets all provide 100% head protection and are a viable replacement for hardhats, but come with a major hearing and vision debuff as well as a 5% combat speed debuff
  
• Bone armor is a direct upgrade with lower penalties and higher durability than magazine armor, while metal armor is a direct upgrade from bone armor. Leather armor is easier to get than metal armor but has lower durability and tire/wood armor aren't worth going for. However all armor types give the same defense.

Most clothing in PZ does not give defense, however using tailoring you can increase the defense a piece of armor gives by adding patches. There are 3 types of patches; denim, rag and leather strips. Leather strips give the highest defense and are the only patches worth using. For every level in tailoring you have, the defense a leather strip gives an additional 1% bite defense and 2% scratch defense. For maximizing upper body defense you can wear a bandeau, crop top, longsleeve t-shirt, denim shirt, jacket, waistcoat, and vest. While for arms you can wear forearm armor, elbow pads and gloves. However wearing all this clothing will quickly overheat you, so being able to balance clothing with defensive armor is important.

Defensive armors, when they get holes will not regain their initial defense when patched, and will only gain the defensive of the patch. (Ex; a shirt with 10% defense will only give 2% defense when patched with level 2 tailoring). However at level 8 tailoring, you can fix holes in clothing completely using the material a clothes piece is made of, and after the hole is patched padding can be added for additional defense like any undamaged clothes.

After a month or so into a run, you should find enough tailoring books and raw resources to start maximizing your defense, the pictured loadouts are using leather patches with tailoring 10, however these loadouts can be upgraded as you get higher tailoring levels.
This is my personal favorite loadout to use in endgame Zomboid, it comes at a 6% movement speed penalty and 5% combat speed penalty. However the high insulation makes this loadout unviable during summer months, so switch a few of the shirts and ditch the long johns in exchange for a bulletproof vest and two pieces of leather forearm armor for an additional 2% combat speed debuff.


This loadout isnt an optimal loadout, however it comes with no movement, combat or vision penalties and only a negligible discomfort modifier.