Progressive Armor introduces two items and seven armor tiers, all using vanilla materials and mechanics.

Items:

-Bone needle: Crafted using bone and flint in a shapeless recipe. Used as a crafting ingredient in the leather patching kits and first two armor tiers.

-Leather patching kit: Crafted in a shapeless recipe using the bone needle above, leather and string. Can be held in the main hand and used to fully repair a piece of leather, wool padded or bone clad armor in the off hand.

Armor tiers:

-Wool-padded: Crafted with the corresponding piece of leather armor from Minecraft, the bone needle, a piece of string, and a number of wool blocks depending on the item (six for chest and leggings, four for helmet and boots). Slightly more durability than the base leather armor.

-Bone-clad: Crafted using the corresponding piece of wool padded armor from the previous tier, the bone needle, string, and a number of bones depending on the item. Can also be crafted in the smithing table using the wool padded armor and a bone block instead. Defensive stats on par with chain armor.

-Iron-plated: Crafted in the smithing table using the corresponding item from either the wool padded or bone clad tiers, and either a block or ingot of iron (blocks for chest and leggings, ingots for helmet and boots). Defensive stats on par with iron armor.

-Goldscale-trimmed: Crafted in the smithing table using the corresponding item from the iron-plated tier, and either a block or ingot of gold. Same defensive stats as iron plated, with higher enchantability.

-Diamond-hardened: Crafted in the smithing table using the corresponding item from the goldscale-trimmed tier, and either a diamond or a block of diamond. Defensive stats on par with diamond armor, but better enchantability.

-Netherite-reinforced: Crafted in the smithing table using the corresponding item from the diamond-hardened tier, and a netherite ingot. Defensive stats on par with netherite armor.

-Dragonbreath-infused: Crafted in the smithing table using the corresponding item from the netherite-reinforced tier, and dragon's breath. Same defensive stats as the netherite-reinforced tier, but with the same enchantability as the vanilla gold armor.

The intention behind the mod was to smooth out the armor transition in a progression modpack that I'm working on that will restrict access to iron for a decent chunk of the early game.

If it gets a lot of interest, I'll probably consider a 1.19 port.

It's also my first mod, so appreciate any feedback.

Big thanks to retropacifist(stinkypotato) for the artwork, pretty much makes the mod.