Final Fantasy II/Armor

The role of armor in Final Fantasy 2 has some controversial aspects.

Armor reduces the damage inflicted to a character, and this sounds good. On the other hand, a character who receives lots of damage improves his/her maximum HP, stamina, basic defense and basic evasion.

Therefore, it could be advisable not to buy armor. In the earliest parts of the game, the characters will not only suffer damage, thus increasing the aforementioned attributes, but also will have to use often the Cure spell, thus some of them will increase their maximum MP, magic and wisdom.

Later in the game, several good armor parts can be found for free in the dungeons, and some of them have special properties (elemental protection, status ailment prevention, attributes improvement).

Armor list
Armor parts can be grouped in equipment sets with similar properties, as in the table below. Armor parts in the same set can generally be found in the same part of the game.

Some body armors are not part of any equipment set.


 * Legend:
 * Gold: the cost of the armor part in a shop (equals twice its selling cost);
 * Def: defense bonus;
 * Ev%: evasion rate bonus (positive) or penalty (negative);
 * MDef: magic defense bonus;
 * Mag: penalty on magic attributes (Spirit and Intelligence);

Armor parts for magic users
These armor parts do not limit the magic skills of the wearer. Most of these armor parts give bonuses to the wearer's attributes.

Armor parts for physical fighters
These armor parts inflict a penalty on the magic skills of the wearer. Many of these armor parts grant elemental resistances.

Body armors, helms and gloves reduce evasion rate; shields, on the contrary, increase evasion rate, but they grant no bonus to basic defense.