Defence

The defence statistic determines your resistance to being hit, and your ability to wear armor of higher metal. It is trained (increased) by fighting using the "defensive" mode, or on weapons which include this, the "controlled" mode which spreads experience equally to all stats instead of 3:1 between a single stat and hitpoints. It is also trained by using ranging (archery) in the "long range" mode.

Defence reduces the amount of good hits your oppenent makes on you, rather than reducing the maximum damage, so if you are weak, you can still suffer a fatal blow, no matter how good your defence and armor are.

At lower levels, you can also train on dummies which will not hit back, but you do not gain any hitpoints for this.