Special materials

Items in DDO are made from some material, such as leather, wood, or metal. Material affects hardness and durability of the item, but it is fairly unimportant in general. However, there are some cases where the choice of material is very important.


 * Druidic Oath - Druids are bound a spiritual oath and cannot wear metallic armor, orbs, or shields
 * Rust Monsters - these enemies destroy metal on touch. Use wooden/bone/crystal/stone weapons to defeat them (or weapons with Everbright enchantment).
 * Oozes - these enemies can destroy most materials on touch. Stone or Crystal should be safe.
 * Damage Reduction - some enemies receive reduced damage from most weapons, however, a special metal can often bypass the damage reduction
 * Arcane Spell Failure - Legacy Darkleaf armor and Mithral armor and shields have lower ASF than similar items made from other materials.
 * Legacy Adamantine armor grants minor Damage Reduction to the wearer. These items no longer drop.

Availability
Not all item vs material combinations are available in game.
 * Weapons made predominantly from Wood, such as Bows, Crossbows, Clubs, and Greatclubs usually don't come in metallic varieties. Densewood and Darkwood versions exist, however, these materials do not have any major benefits.
 * Quarterstaffs are also mostly wooden, however, metallic quarterstaffs can drop as end rewards of certain quest chains.
 * Note that unlike other weapons, the metal type of metallic quarterstaffs doesn't appear in the name. You have to mouseover each one individually to check the details window.
 * To verify: Can these drop unbound? I think metallic staffs only show up in BTA lootgen lists, like Sharn Syndicate.
 * Popular weapons from special material (and Red slot) make excellent crafting blanks for Cannith Crafting.
 * Some materials no longer drop. For example, Darkleaf, Mithral, and Adamantine armor and shields were removed from current loot tables. They do remain rarely available from obscure sources that still use old loot. For example, Mithral shields can drop in Waterworks end rewards.
 * Many cannith-craftable flametouched iron weapons can be purchased for plat in the Rusty Nail from inside the Chronoscope raid. Weapon types available include Bastard Sword, Battleaxe, Dagger, Greataxe, Greatsword, Heavy Mace, Long Sword, Rapier, Scimitar, Short Sword.

The restrictions apply mostly to randomly generated loot, but not named items. For example, you can find a.

List of special materials
Category:Item materials