Clothing Encumbrance

Guide created using an unknown version of Cataclysm DDA.
The information present here might not apply to the current version of CDDA.

Clothing encumbrance is a measure of how much a character is impaired by worn clothing.

It is increased by wearing encumbering items, holding more volume than current storage allows or by certain mutations.

A fitting item causes 50% (rounding down) of the encumbrance of an unfitting one.

Effects

• Torso encumbrance affects melee, dodging, swimming and melee attack speed
• Eye encumbrance affects ranged accuracy and detecting traps
• Mouth encumbrance affects stamina regeneration
• Head encumbrance doesn't affect anything, but you can't put a helmet with >10 encumbrance while having >10 head encumbrance
• Arm encumbrance affects ranged accuracy and stamina cost of attacks
• Hand encumbrance affects melee attack speed, throwing accuracy and reloading
• Leg encumbrance affects running speed, dodging and swimming
• Foot encumbrance affects running speed

Layering

Wearing multiple similar items can cause layering penalty which is added to encumbrance. In this case "similar" means "items covering the same layer of the same body part". The layers are as follows:

Item layers

• Skintight
• Normal ("clothing layer")
• Outer ("worn over")
• Strapped
• Belt

Each item covers the same layer on all body parts it covers.

Formula

Layering penalty is calculated per layer. Formula for each layer is the same:

• Start with 0
• For each item that covers this layer of this body part:
  • Add the encumbrance of this item. If this would be 0 or 1, add 2. If this would be >10, only add 10.
• Subtract the penalty from the highest-penalty item

This is repeated for each layer and the results are summed up.

This operation is repeated for each body part separately.

Examples

A fitting trenchcoat and an unfitting trenchcoat:

• Fitting trenchcoat is 7 encumbrance
• Unfitting trenchcoat is 15
• Total layering penalty on the outside layer is 7, because 7+15-15=7
• Total encumbrance is 29: 7+15+7=29

A fitting hoodie, a fitting trenchcoat, a fitting t-shirt, a fitting long underwear top, and a fitting survivor belt:

• Only hoodie and t-shirt share a layer (clothing) and only on one body part (torso)
• Layering penalty on torso is 2, because t-shirt has 0 encumbrance

As above, but with an extra fitting long underwear top:

• Layering penalty on clothing layer on torso is still 2
• Skintight layer now also has layering penalty of 2, because fitting long underwear top has 1 encumbrance
• Total layering penalty is 4
• Torso encumbrance is 7 (coat) + 5 (hoodie) + 3 (survivor belt) + 1+1 (underwear tops) + 2 (clothing layer) + 2 (skintight layer) = 19