As You Know, Iron is stronger than Bronze which is stronger than Copper, so therefore all weapons and armor made of Iron must be better! Well, not necessarily. In Real Life, other factors come into it, including design (a well-made bronze tool is superior to a low-end iron tool), the maker's skill, available forging techniques (bronze is actually stronger than wrought iron, and pure iron is more or less useless), facilities, time, the quality of the raw material, and alloy composition. Some metals are likewise better suited to cutting, resisting damage, or being light enough to carry. They will frequently be used by the Ultimate Blacksmith.
Going by your typical Role-Playing Game, however, the most important feature of a weapon or item is not who made it or how, but what it is made of. The more expensive and rare the material, the better. You'll start running into different types of equipment in a certain order, ranging from newbie junk to epic loot:
- Cloth — "Armor" made of cloth is usually reserved for Squishy Wizard types and badass martial artists to whom Armor Is Useless. Otherwise, it will be the baseline worthless armor you start with. It also tends to be robes or clothing rather than actual protective gear.
- For those who use it, cloth has a hierarchy all its own, ranging from cotton to silk to explicitly magical material.
- Sometimes the creators, for a change, did do the research, so padded armor or a gambeson is present. Made of quilted cloth, but still better than nothing if you cannot afford something to make yourself feel less disposable.
- Technically, ballistic nylon and Kevlar count as cloth. However, the kinds of role playing games with ballistic armors (Mass Effect, The World of Darkness, Shadow Run, etc) tend to not have Elemental Crafting, which is usually a fantasy trope.
- Leather — Usually made from tanned leather or animal hides, this is typically one of the first forms of "real" armor you'll find.
- Here, the armor grades depend on the animal the hide came from. Expect things like real world animals to give way to magical and increasingly powerful critters like Wyvern, Hydra, Dragon (various kinds), or even Moogle. This is especially true when some classes can't wear anything lower down the list. Also tends to include chitin and dragon/reptilian scales in games where "leather" becomes a short hand for armor made from animal parts.
- How the leather is worked into armor never, or rarely, comes up. Soft leather, even thick hides, makes for relatively poor armor. It might be better than nothing, but is poor protection nonetheless. Real leather armor is cuir bouilli: boiled, hardened and formed, whether as scales or plates. At best you'll get "studded leather" as an upgraded variety, based on a Dungeons & Dragons misinterpretation of brigandine
(where the "studs" are rivets attached to underlying metal plates, and don't provide any meaningful protection themselves).
- Wood — Usually the weakest type of weapons material you'll find, and not very good armor, either. Of course, certain weapons like bows or staves have no problem with this. That being said, if someone can kick ass with 'just' a wooden sword, he's grade-A badass material. This is historically the most common material for shields.
- As with cloth and leather above, items made primarily from wood will often have a hierarchy where an item is more powerful depending on what type of wood it is made from (e.g. a yew bow will be better than an oak bow). Similarly, at higher levels, you get things like Treant wood or wood from the World Tree. In particular, wood from a sacred tree is a common low-level source of holy weapons and those which can harm intangible spirits - properties which in metal weapons would generally require an involved enchantment ritual or very high-tier materials.
- Stone — Plain ol' stone, like flint or obsidian, is usually only found as part of heavy weapons like axes or hammers. Historically popular in areas lacking easily accessible sources of metalcraft, such as many natives to the western hemisphere.
- Obsidian — There is a one-to-one relationship between this material and Mayincatec culture.
- Bone — Weapons made from animal bones usually fall somewhere between wood and stone, and can fall much lower (a sharpened animal bone being about as easy to make as a sharpened piece of tree.) As leather above, can have a hierarchy of its own, with the best usualy beeing dragon bone.
- Metals — The real meat and potatoes of equipment. The general hierarchy is as follows:
- Bronze — Usually the first metal weapons or armor you'll find and tougher than leather or wood. Sometimes preceded by weaker copper gear. However, bronze is always weaker than...
- Brass — ...Which sometimes shows up as an intermediary between bronze and iron. Alternatively, it might show up later in the precious metal category with the name Orichalcum.
- Iron — The most common material for metal weapons like swords. One of the strongest mundane metals around. Generally includes steel but sometimes precedes the alloy in the hierarchy.
- Cold Iron — A more advanced form of iron, with added power against magical creatures such as the Fair Folk. What distinction this has from regular iron depends upon the setting.
- Meteoric Iron — Iron crafted from a meteor is always stronger than normal iron, and may carry divine properties since it fell from the heavens.
- Basic 'iron' armors may also fall into a hierarchy. Mail is usually the weakest type, and may be reserved for light-weight warriors. This extends all the way up to scale, and eventually the sort of plate armor you think of when people mention the Knight in Shining Armor. Just as with all examples, the historical design or function is moot. It doesn't matter that a breastplate defended against arrows well or that the buckler was the most advanced shield type (during the Renaissance) — materials and type have a defined hierarchy that ignores this.
- Steel — An iron alloy that contains enough carbon to allow heat-treatment. Steel was (and still is) so widely used for weapons and armor that the word has become almost synonymous with weapons. It is often the best of the "normal" materials. If the work is trying to be realistic, steel will probably be the best material because even today it is difficult to argue that anything else would be better.note In more fantastical settings, steel might be merely the most common or even the weakest material because it is the standard to beat for everything below it on this list.
- Precious Metals — For some reason, precious metals like silver, gold, or even platinum are often treated as stronger than iron. Never mind that the durability, weight, and sharpness of these elements is in no way helped by the material being rare or expensive. Very slightly Truth in Television. It's fairly common for weapons and armor on display in museums to be gold-coated. That's because they're ornamental pieces, made for nobility and monarchs, essentially Gorgeous Period Dress for men. The more practical stuff tended not to be treated very delicately, so it was much less likely to last long enough to be exhibited.
- Silver — The main utility of silver weapons is in serving as an Achilles' Heel to supernatural creatures like werewolves or vampires. Still, because of this magical quality, silver is often treated as stronger than steel.
- Gold — Soft and malleable even when cold and pretty much worthless outside of having a good electrical conductivity and resistance to corrosion. This is why some works try to justify 'gold' weapons as being actually gold-plated, or otherwise extensively decorated with the metal in question (though it still happens to be stronger than the plain stuff).
- Interestingly, in Real Life, gold-titanium alloy is stronger than titanium by itself.
- Fantastic Metals — At a certain point on the scale, fantastic materials start getting thrown into the mix, which have properties which border on (or are) magical. Common examples include Mithril, Orichalcum, Adamantium, Hihi'irokane, Neutronium, Unobtainium, or any old Phlebotinum.
- Bronze — Usually the first metal weapons or armor you'll find and tougher than leather or wood. Sometimes preceded by weaker copper gear. However, bronze is always weaker than...
- Gemstones — Usually start to show up later on, with such materials as ruby, emerald, diamond, or even an undefined 'crystal'. Some might be incredibly rare gems like "the crystallized tears of Crystal Dragon Jesus." May be combined with Elemental Powers: Gems are placed on magical accessories where the gem in question has an influence on the effect; e.g. Rubies often give boosts related to fire. Diamond, at least, is partially justified since it is known as the hardest
metal known to mannatural material on earth (despite the fact that real diamond is too brittle to be practical as armor), but it gets kind of silly when your character starts wearing armor made out of glass.- A minor example appears in Real Life by the Mesoamerican warclubs with obsidian blades along their length (the best known being the Aztec version, the macuahuitl). Obsidian, like all glasses, can take a sharper edge than any metal, though it doesn't last, and a far-future army might, say, equip soldiers with single-use ultra-cutters lined with synthetic diamond blades.
- Glass and diamond blades can be sharpened to a cutting edge about a hundred atoms thick, they're used to prepare slides for electron microscopes. While they wear out after a couple dozen regular uses they can slice one's hand off if not careful.
- And a number of industrial and medical saws use diamonds in their teeth.
- There's a surprising amount of Truth in Television here: rubies and sapphires are made of corundum, a crystalline form of alumina; this same compound can be found in modern-day ceramic armor, which is about half as heavy as steel but routinely stops bullets.
- Magical/Elemental equipment — Late in the game, equipment starts to take on explicitly magical properties to keep up with the Sorting Algorithm of Evil in the world. This often includes elemental weapons such as the Flaming Sword or Laser Blade).
- Legendary equipment — You know you're approaching the ultimate equipment when it starts taking names from mythology. What else is cooler than Dual Wielding King Arthur's Excalibur, the Grecian Aegis, or Thor's Mjölnir? The Infinity +1 Sword is often to be found here.
Now, even if the work does plainly say these elements are outright better than everything else (what with being magic and all), there won't be any special technique to smelt the metal, forge the armor, or otherwise craft this amazingly rare find that any old armorer or PC can't pick up. Some games try to balance this by putting "Crafting" systems into play, that require a set level to even consider creating a Depleted Uranium Sword of Soviet-Slaying.
Compare Random Power Ranking. Can lead to Palette Swap.
Examples
open/close all folders
Literature
- The Bone Maker: Though the source of the bone is the most important factor, bone talismans inlaid with more precious metals appear to be more powerful. Kreya recognizes gold-inlaid talismans as being the best, and assumes that one inlaid with an unidentified matte-white metal is stronger still.
- In The Heroes of Olympus, the Romans are armed with weapons of "Imperial gold", a heavily enchanted form of regular gold which is apparently as light and strong as steel, besides being death to supernatural enemies. Similarly, the Greeks are armed with Celestial bronze, which seems to function more or less identically.
- A variant in Mistborn: The Original Trilogy where Mistborn favor glass knives because most metal can be telekinetically push or pulled by an Allomancer using Iron or Steel. Stone-tipped spears and arrows are used by common soldiers fighting Mistborn, and obsidian axes by Steel Inquisitors, for the same reason.
- What metal something is made of is also important as various metal types are used by different types of allomancers to power their abilities. The main character is Mistborn and can use any of the metals, and often comments on certain metals being more or less valuable based on what they can be used for.
- Zig-Zaged in the sequel series Wax and Wayne, where aluminum is highly valued because it and a few of its alloys are the only metals that steel and iron can't push or pull, and they can block emotional Allomancy. With the technology only at a roughly Wild West level, it is still very expensive to produce. It is also noted that guns and bullets made of pure aluminum are not actually very effective, and it takes a considerable amount of experimentation to create guns and ammo with that have enough aluminum to resist allomancers while still being functional weapons.
Tabletop Games
- Ars Magica: More precious materials have a progressively higher capacity for spells in Item Crafting, so a golden ring could hold twice as much spellwork as an iron one, and a single flawless diamond twice as much again. However, many spells get a power boost from a symbolically associated material, which is often more important.
- Dungeons & Dragons has much of this trope, where armor and weapons can be made of many different materials, with different effects depending on the material — adamantine objects are heavy but nearly invulnerable, mithril items are generally lighter and more durable than steel. Ironwood is a type of wood that can be crafted into bladed weapons. These Ironwood weapons are chiefly used by druids, who have particular class-based issues involving wearing metal armor. Likewise, much of the leather items in the later game come from specific creatures (dragons primarily) where the quality and properties of the leather armor (leather, although it may be a heavy full plate set) is determined by the size and type of dragon. Druids are able to wear dragonscale armor, even if it is counted as a heavy armor.
- One subversion of the above Power Equals Rarity equation: silver and alchemical silver weapons are useful in overcoming the damage reduction of certain supernatural beasts (notably lycanthropes and certain Lawful creatures), they make for worse weapons overall, and take penalties to hit and damage.
- Exalted features the five magical materials: Orichalcum, moonsilver, jade, starmetal, and soulsteel. Each one has a somewhat exotic origin in the setting (orichalcum must be forged by a Solar from pure gold in the heart of a volcano using mirrors to capture sunlight; moonsilver must be forged in the depths of the Wyld; jade comes in many varieties and is found in the very depths of the earth; starmetal comes from the remains of dead gods; and soulsteel is made from boiled-down ghosts), and provides extra bonuses to the specific type of Exalted it's associated with (orichalcum for Solars, moonsilver for Lunars, jade for Dragon-Blooded, starmetal for Sidereals, and soulsteel for Abyssals). The bonuses are based on material; orichalcum is exemplary of the weapon or armor's quality, moonsilver is mercurial and ever-shifting, starmetal plays on fate itself to aid its bearer, and soulsteel focuses on causing pain or unnerving its bearer's foes.
- However, if you're not Exalted or at the very least a powerful heroic mortal, they tend to be Awesome, but Impractical since to utilize the full potential you must be able to attune the item. With essence, of course.
Video Games
- Animal Crossing:
- You can get gold versions of just about any tool in the game. The Golden Axe is unbreakable, the Golden Shovel gives you a higher chance to dig up random bags of money, the Golden Fishing Rod makes it easier to catch fish, and the Golden Bug Net is bigger and makes it easier to catch bugs. However, you would have already caught every single bug and fish to get the last two, so they're mostly only good for catching stuff to sell for money.
- Most tools in later games can also be found in silver, which naturally are better than the basic ones but worse than the golden versions, and strike a similar middle ground in how hard they are to obtain.
- Avernum:
- The most common and weakest weapons in 1 and 2 are made out of stone. Anything made out of iron or steel is rarer (and hence better). Justified in-game as Avernum not having the proper resources to mine, smelt, and forge all the metal they need. Magic items are even rarer still. Any metal or enchanted weapon was either smuggled down from the surface or made by someone very skilled.
- In the Exile games, of which the Avernum games are an updated version, it went stone, bronze, iron, steel, magic.
- Billy vs. SNAKEMAN has this in its Robo Fighto minigame. The parts you can use are cardboard (rank G), tinfoil (rank F), (styro)foam (rank E), and Named Weapons which do not list their composition. There are currently no parts of ranks D through A (which would presumably be for "real" materials).
- Castlevania: Used generally, but played with in Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. The Blacksmith in it needs gold ore to make his best armour, but says this is because armour needs to be able to take hits and the gold allows for flexibility.
- Chrono Cross:
- This game has the best weapons available be crafted out of iridescent seashells. This is better explained in the prequel, Chrono Trigger, where the shell is from a legendary creature. Furthermore, the name of the frying pan weapon you can make using Rainbow Shell strongly implies that Rainbow Shell is in turn made of diamond, which is known for cutting well, but is so brittle that, as a weapon, it would shatter to pieces from the force of the first blow.
- It also swaps a few things in this list: it goes from bone items to bronze/copper, then iron/steel, then silver/mithril, then stone, and finally prism/rainbow/spectral.
- Clicking Bad has platinum boilers and diamond "glassware" that increase your smack's quality.
- Diablo has this in a slightly unusual form; they have a rather standard set of metals and gems, but mechanically they're treated like any other magical item power, so an "Iron Short Sword" or "Bronze Dagger" is considered a magic item by the game. In Diablo (1997), the useful metals are Bronze < Iron < Steel < Silver < Gold < Platinum < Mithril < Meteoric; the negative ones are Tin and Brass. Gems provide elemental resistances; Topaz < Amber < Jade < Obsidian < Emerald give across-the-board resistance to everything. The specific resistances are colors (Red and Crimson for fire, White for magic, Blue for lightning, etc.) at the lower levels, but become gems when more powerful; Pearl < Ivory < Crystal < Diamond for resistance to general 'magic', Garnet < Ruby for fire, Lapis < Cobalt (OK, it's a metal, not a gem) < Sapphire for lightning. Diablo II adds upon the original game, but also changes the meaning of some of them. The "blue" series (Lapis, Sapphire etc.) becomes cold resistance, as that element was added for Diablo II, while Lightning instead got the "yellow" series (Topaz, Amber, etc.), and "magic", which previously had yellow colours, was removed as its own element. Finally, Poison was added as an element, which got greens such as Jade and Emerald.
- Dragon Age uses this heavily, as well, with leather, metal and wood all coming in seven tiers (there are also different types within one tier, such as scale armor, chainmail, etc, which have identical properties but give different 'set bonuses' for wearing matching armor, boots and gloves).
- Dragon Quest IX:
- The alchemy system zigzags this one, as there aren't any real equivalencies between weapons made with different elements (i.e. almost every kind of weapon can be made from iron/steel/gigasteel, but there's only one weapon made of bronze). Equipment made with gold tends to be top-of-the-line, though in this case the gold bars used in alchemy can be synthesized from the ashes of a saint, magic-infused nectar, and a divine potion, so perhaps it's not the same as Earth gold.
- The grotto system plays it straighter, as the element in the grotto's name is a good indicator of the monsters and treasures it contains: Clay < Rock < Granite < Basalt < Graphite < Iron < Copper < Bronze < Steel < Silver < Gold < Platinum < Ruby < Emerald < Sapphire < Diamond.
- Dwarf Fortress: The general rule of thumb that "Adamantine > Steel > Iron > Bronze > Copper > Wood/Leather" still holds, but silver weapons are ranked alongside wooden ones, being next to useless for edged weapons. Material properties such as density are factored in, meaning that conversely, adamantine is near-useless for blunt weapons, while a silver hammer is actually relatively damaging due to its density (greater than iron). However, quality factors into weapons too, meaning that a "Masterful" or artifact iron sword is far preferable than a plain steel sword, although both are inferior to any admantine, which is ridiculously strong for edged weapons. Wood (and silver) weapons are useful as training weapons, much like how they would be used in real life, because of the fact that they suck and are thus much less likely to cause serious sparring accidents.
- While it is normally impossible to craft non-artifact items from more exotic materials, testing indicates that platinum may actually create deadlier blunt or edged weapons than steel. Certain extremely dense, exotic woods also make brutal blunt weapons.
- There are even cases where the best metal for a single weapon isn't strictly tiered: as this thread shows, against unobtainium armor, axe material makes extremely little difference, iron is the best sword material, and copper is the best spear material while against any other armor it follows the above mentioned order. Also, it seems unobtainium armor does little to protect against blunt trauma from projectile, even ones made of certain types of wood, because while it can keep them from cutting, how much the armor resistance bending it based on density—and said unobtainium is impossibly light.
- The Elder Scrolls: Played straight throughout the series with a few quirks. To note:
- For armor, it is based on the weight/defense ratio. For weapons, it is based on the weight/lethality ratio. That said, skill also plays a part for the user. A highly skilled character will be more effective with bottom tier Iron equipment than an unskilled character with high-end Daedric equipment.
- Similarly, weapon and armor skills tend to be broken down by type. A character skilled in Light Armor will be better protected by simple Leather armor than he would be in equivalent tier Heavy Armor (and even some higher tier Heavy Armor). Skyrim adds Perks which kicks this up several more notches.
- Elona has a sizable list of materials, covering the standard materials as well as a few others. The materials often have special properties such as improving stats or granting resistances which make most materials good for something, and some materials may be worse for weapons than they are for armor, or vice-versa. Each material falls into one of three tiers, however, explicitly referred to as inferior, normal, and superior.
- Evil Islands: The game has cloth, leather, hide and fur for armor, stone and bone for weapons, and metal and diamond for both. Wood is strangely absent.
- Final Fantasy: Any of the games prior to FF7. Steel equipment beats Iron equipment, but isn't as good as Gold equipment. Despite the fact that gold is a soft metal that's heavy like you wouldn't believe.
- Subverted in Final Fantasy III, where gold swords and armor sell for a lot of money, but are weak in battle.
- Final Fantasy XI makes steps to ensure that softer and weaker metals are either used as jewelry, or an alloy with a different material. Fantasy metals are in full force.
- Final Fantasy XIV goes the same route, with softer metals only being used for jewelry and in alloys. Mythril also makes a token appearance
- Final Fantasy Tactics Gold, Diamond, Whateverium armors are noted in their descriptions as actually being gilded with gold, or studded with diamonds. It was actually better-crafted Steel Armor underneath.
- Final Fantasy XII mentions that the "gold" used in weapons and armor is really a different magical metal, simply called "gold" because of its color.
- Fire Emblem: All games play this trope straight, with Silver Weapons being stronger, but more expensive, than Iron weapons.
- On the other hand, higher classes of weapon like steel and silver tend to be heavier (which affects accuracy, movement, and the ability to dodge attacks), more fragile (they break after fewer hits), and have a lower critical hit rate. The latter quality sometimes makes the supposedly "weaker" iron weapons ''preferable'' to steel or silver ones.
- Materials are never given for the most interesting weapons in the game, which either have properly fantastical names (Sol Katti), are taken directly from legend (Durandal), or have qualitative adjectives (Killer Axe, Brave Lance).
- Golden Sun: The Lost Age features crafting (well, forged) materials acquired through chests or battles. Each can be turned into one of half-a-dozen weapons or armor, leading to a lot of Save Scumming, and given that they're found in a very open-ended map, it is entirely possible to find one material long after it's become obsolete.
- Infinite Undiscovery: There are distinct tiers for each equipment type, all by material. Gets particularly ridiculous when you realize two characters use magic books for weapons, and the material used to make the paper and quill will determine what books you can write.
- Kingdom of Loathing parodies this with its craftable gear. The low tier materials are bubblewrap, cardboard, and styrofoam (all built upon the main raw material, meat). The higher tier is asbestos, linoleum, and chrome. Then again, using currency as something to make weapons and armour out of — especially if said currency isn't really a feasible weapon or armour material — does fit here, doesn't it?
- Finish the main quest and you may gain an item from one of the really powerful materials — stainless steel, plexiglass, or even brimstone.
- The Sea Floor has the deepest mine in the game, where a diligent diver can acquire some of the most powerful ores in the game — vinyl, velcro, and teflon.
- There's also the epic-level (and costing hundreds of thousands of Meat, unless you win a coupon in the lottery) Grimacite, which is made from moon rocks.
- The Last Remnant uses this, to some measure. While it's not obivious, there's a rigid scale between the metals needed to upgrade/create 90% of the weapons, which goes: Light Metal < Jhana Alloy < Iron < Steel < Vackel Iron < Royotian Steel < Crimson Ore < Necrotic Metal < Damascus Ore < Jewel Steel.
- The Last Story: Subverted. You can find copper, silver, gold, and even platinum swords... which are explicitly stated to be purely decorative items which, not shockingly, are terrible as actual equipment. They're intended to be used as Shop Fodder.
- Legend of Mana: The creation of weapons, armor, and instruments is subject to this (there are some subtleties to the weapons and armor, but it's entirely to do with what materials you add and in what order.)
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Link's best one-handed sword is made by infusing his Razor Sword with high-quality gold dust. The Nintendo Power Strategy Guide lampshades it by saying the smith must have some mysterious process to make gold stronger than steel.
- Might and Magic: In 3-5, items with no element have no modifiers, some materials (such as wood) impose a negative modifier but most give increased damage (weapons) or AC (armour). The games were noteworthy because gold was only a mid-road material, quickly surpassed by Platinum, Diamond and other precious stones. By far the most powerful material in the games was Obsidian.
- Minecraft: You can make tools out of Wood, Stone, Iron, Gold, or Diamond and armor out of Leather, Iron, Gold, or Diamond. However, Gold is soft and lasts less than Wood. It does have some benefits: gold tools are faster even than diamond, and all gold tools are more likely to get good enchantments in an enchanting table. They are still rarely used due to gold's other uses and the low durability.
- 1.16 adds Netherite, which is a direct upgrade of Diamond and made by combining Netherite Scraps with Gold Ingots to make Netherite Ingots. The resulting alloyed ingot mist then be fused with a Diamond tier item to smith a Netherite item.
- Game Mods tend to add materials either better or situationally even better than diamond, but they also often incorporate their own hierarchies. (Though some subvert this: Tinker's Construct allows for combinations of materials and modifiers resulting in potentially very overpowered tools). Thaumcraft has Thaumium < Void Metal, Botania has Manasteel < Elementium < Terrasteel (sometimes Terrasteel < Elementium, YMMV), and Thermal Expansion has Invar (Hardened) < Electrum (Reinforced) < Signalum < Lumium/Enderium (Resonant).
- Mojo Ave parodied this with the "Gold Shovel" weapon, an obvious upgrade from the standard shovel weapon. It was frighteningly expensive (I think only one player ever purchased one) and had no attack power to speak of, since gold isn't exactly the best material to make a striking weapon out of. (How would you even lift it?)
- NetHack:
- The weapon side of this isn't extremely prominent, as which race made it tends to be what distinguishes better and worse weapons, but silver weapons are explicitly better than iron ones because they never rust and do extra damage to demons and werecreatures. Wooden elven weapons also tend to be better than their iron equivalents because a lot more enemies and traps have passive rust attacks than passive rotting or burning attacks (also because elves made them). All mundane weapons pale in comparison to named artifacts (including many like Excalibur or Mjollnir, which you can in fact Dual Wield if you're playing the SLASH-EM mod and are likely to for much of the game if playing the right build), but among those the silver saber Grayswandir is generally considered the strongest in the game. One odd quirk is that the only sabers in the game (and thus the only ones to use the saber weapon skill) are silver sabers — plain iron ones don't exist.
- Armor follows this religiously, however — leather armor is light and allows spellcasting but doesn't do much and can burn; iron armor is heavy and ruins spellcasting and can rust but provides increasingly more protection as you move from ring mail up to plate mail; mithril armor is very light, mostly indestructable and blocks more damage than all but the best iron armor but still ruins spellcasting; and dragon scale mail blocks more damage than anything else, is nearly weightless, doesn't interfere with spellcasting, is as durable as mithril and provides a magical effect depending on the dragon (the most powerful being "wands and breath attacks bounce back at anyone who tries to use them on you" or "you are immune to or take half damage from virtually any nonelemental magic, including many traps, some inventory-wrecking spells and many instant death effects", depending on which you can find another source for), but generally has to be "crafted" yourself or wished for (and generally requires slaying an adult dragon, of course). There's also an extremely heavy suit of glass armor which allows spellcasting, won't burn or rust and is only fragile if you're not wearing it, and which provides better protection than anything except dragon scales and its iron equivalent, but for those with the maximum possible strength it takes up almost half of your carrying capacity just to lift it or the iron equivalent.
- Phantasy Star IV: Played with. Some weapons and armor are said to be made of Titanium, Carbon, or Graphite, and the "Silver" of certain items is actually a colloquialism for a low-grade version of Unobtanium. The item descriptions state graphite suit is "made of special graphite fiber." Per Wikipedia: The name "graphite fiber" is also sometimes used to refer to carbon fiber or carbon fiber-reinforced polymer.
- Rage of Mages follows the trope to a T: weapons and armor go Bronze < Iron < Steel < Mithril < Adamantine < Meteoric < Crystal.
- Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon: Stronger weapons and armour usually contain a high percentage of gold and/or silver, in addition to ordinary old bronze and iron.
- Runescape
- Played straight with craftable metal armor and leather (which comes in different colors of dragon hide), and even mage armor, which isn't exactly craftable. Gold and silver are usually reserved for enchantable jewellery, but five silver weapons exist: Wolfbane, the sickle, silver bolts, the rod of Ivandis, and the Ivandis Flail. All of them are weak, and only used because silver is the only thing that can hurt Vampyres. Wolfbane can also prevent werewolves from transforming. In Runescape, silver and gold are depicted as very soft and weak elements as in Real Life.
- This is taken to silly extents with woods; Oak bows aren't as good as maple bows which aren't as good as Yew bows, and so on. That's all well and fine. But the the game also has Woodchopping and Firemaking skills which follow the hierarchy of bowmaking, which means that Oak, well-known in real life to be rather dense and a pain in the ass to split, is much, much, much easier to chop down and make a fire out of than supple Yew trees.
- Subverted the regular use of stone by introducing a line of obsidian items with unpronounceable names. Obsidian cloak? It's explained as being made of thin obsidian plates. Still doesn't make that much sense.
- And in dungeoneering skill, players can make promethium armor to wear. Promethium in real life would instantly kill a human if there was visible amounts of it.
- Ryzom: The crafting system is surprisingly nuanced as far as this trope goes, even though it replaces "metal and gemstones" with "various assorted animal and tree parts". Depending on what materials you use (for example, eyes, plant buds, and amber), the quality of that material (between 1 and 250), and its grade (Basic, Fine, Choice, Excellent, or Superior) the stats of the item you craft will be affected in various ways, like how fast you can cast a spell or if your armor will be better-suited for protecting you against smashing damage rather than piercing.
- SaGa (RPG): Armor normally progresses as bronze < gold < silver (mithril) < dragon (elemental) < Arthur (historical legendary) < Parasuit. The strongest
swordweapon of the game is the Glass Sword which naturally breaks after one use (in a series where Breakable Weapons are the norm). - Stardew Valley's hierarchy for tools goes copper < iron < gold < iridium. Iridium is rare, found in meteorites, and (oddly) portrayed as purple in color. Weapons skip this system, but the most powerful sword in the game is forged from a single rare gemstone.
- Sword of Mana maintains a surprising variety of materials for equipment. There are eight classes of materials: cloth, wood, leather, bone, metal, scale, meteorite, and stone. Each has its own internal hierarchy; cotton < silk, bronze < iron, etc. There are then two broad gear categories: fighter-type heavy armor and mage-type light armor. Any given piece of equipment can be made from several different material classes, leading to the Hero wearing a bone breastplate and metal gauntlets while the Heroine wears a cloth robe and wooden sandals. A given material class isn't "better" than another but they give different properties to the equipment they make. A few highlights of the more unique materials include: hemp, felt, fossilized bone and wood, two regional kinds of iron, a nondescript "alloy" metal, lead, marble, pegasus hide, and a full class of Thunderbolt Iron.
- Tales of Maj'Eyal has a different hierarchy for metals, wood, cloth, and leather. The metals hierarchy is iron < steel < dwarven steel < stralite < voratun.
- Terraria: You start out with Wood, then move up through Copper/Tin, Iron/Lead, Silver/Tungsten, Gold/Platinum, Demonite/Crimtane, Meteoric Iron, Hellstone, Cobalt/Palladium, Mythril/Orichalcum, Adamantite/Titanium, Hallowed metal, Chlorophyte, Shroomite, Spectre metal and finally Luminite.
- Tibia: There are the gemstones ruby, sapphire, amethyst and emerald associated with elemental powers.
- Titan Quest plays this straight with normal equipment, sort in three different materials: metal (Melee Weapons, Armors, Spears, magical bracelets and headgear) is sorted in Copper<Bronze<Iron, wood (Bows, Staves and certain shields) has Pine<Ash<Oak, while cloth (Wizard armor) follows the Wool<Linen<Silk pattern. Of course, once you start playing on Legendary and Epic difficulty, upgraded materials pop up, for example the Spruce<Yew<Ironwood line for Wood and Copper Gravel<Orichalcum<Adamant for Metal items.
- Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos: The upgrades for the Alliance use iron, steel and mythril (what the swords are made of prior to iron is not addressed). The Horde uses steel, thorium and arcanite instead.
- World of Warcraft: The precious metals are used in crafting but in small quantities compared to the common material. For example, you make iron bombs that use gold wire for the detonator. There's still a linear path of better metals, leather, and cloth to make stuff out of. The game also use a skill system, meaning that to try to make metal smelted from ore containing the blood of an old god (saronite) one has to have a lot of experience.
- The full chain of metals found in World of Warcraft as of Mists of Pandaria: Copper < Bronze/Silver < Iron/Gold < Steel < Mithril/Truesilver < Thorium/Enchanted Thorium < Dark Iron/Arcanite < Fel Iron/Eternium < Adamantite < Felsteel/Hardened Adamantite < Khorium < Cobalt < Saronite < Titanium < Titansteel < (Folded) Obsidium < Elementium < Hardened Elementium < Pyrium < Ghost Iron < Trillium < Living Steel < Lightning Steel.
- Elementium has been used here and there since the original game; making a couple of incredibly powerful weapons in WoW Classic and then used for flavor later on so signify luxury status. There are expensive rings with no stats made of elementium, and the game's custom-crafted motorcycles have elementium-plated exhaust pipes.
- Its worth nothing that within the range of metals for each expansion, Alchemists can transmute the basic metals into more rare levels. For some, like Living Steel, this is the only method of obtaining them at all.
- The important nature of druids and spirits of the natural world within the game and lore does screw up the order on a few occasions. One of the most famous orcs, Broxigar, lost his axe and had one gifted by a demigod — a wooden axe — and managed to wound Sargeras the Destroyer, Lord of the Burning Legion.
- Lower level pieces of leather can be stitched together to make higher pieces. One can only imagine how heavy a wicked leather headband (made of 12 rugged leather or 1440 light leather) would be.
- The full chain of metals found in World of Warcraft as of Mists of Pandaria: Copper < Bronze/Silver < Iron/Gold < Steel < Mithril/Truesilver < Thorium/Enchanted Thorium < Dark Iron/Arcanite < Fel Iron/Eternium < Adamantite < Felsteel/Hardened Adamantite < Khorium < Cobalt < Saronite < Titanium < Titansteel < (Folded) Obsidium < Elementium < Hardened Elementium < Pyrium < Ghost Iron < Trillium < Living Steel < Lightning Steel.
- Wynncraft: The varying levels of crafted items can only be created with combinations of refined wood, ore, crops, or fish in the same level range:
- Lv. 1-9: Oak, Copper, Wheat, Gudgeon
- Lv. 10-19: Birch, Granite, Barley, Trout
- Lv. 20-29: Willow, Gold, Oats, Salmon
- Lv. 30-39: Acacia, Sandstone, Malt, Carp
- Lv. 40-49: Spruce, Iron, Hops, Icefish
- Lv. 50-59: Jungle, Silver, Rye, Piranha
- Lv. 60-69: Dark, Cobalt, Millet, Koi
- Lv. 70-79: Light, Kanderstone, Decay Roots, Gylia Fish
- Lv. 80-89: Pine, Diamond, Rice, Bass
- Lv. 90-99: Avo, Molten, Sorghum, Molten Eel
- Lv. 100-109: Sky, Voidstone, Hemp, Starfish
- Lv. 110+: Dernic Wood, Dernic Ore, Dernic Seed, Dernic Fishnote
Web Original
- Zero Punctuation: When Yahtzee plays Minecraft, he assumes that this trope is in effect and forges himself a suit of gold armor and weapons, only to discover that gold doesn't make very good armor or weapons.
Webcomics
- Axe Cop has the Golden Chainsaw and Axe Cop's secret Golden Axe.
- Lance daydreams about diamond armor from Gold Coin Comics.
- Happens with star metal in The Order of the Stick: adding a nugget of it to a sword makes it stronger, tougher, and sharper, plus glows in the presence of The Undead. The blacksmith specifically points out that a blade of pure starmetal would be too heavy to lift and would require every piece of starmetal ever discovered.
