Guide:Armor progression
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Progression in Terraria is marked by the player gaining access to new weapons, accessories, and armor sets. While weapons are the main determinant of combat effectiveness, armor also plays an important role by mitigating damage taken and passively boosting damage output. Choosing the ideal armor sets to use at each stage of the game is sometimes straightforward, but not always. This guide will help you decide on which armor sets to use at various points in game progression.
Especially later in the game, bonuses to melee speed and movement speed are generally not considered as impactful as direct offensive bonuses, making them a lower priority.
- Melee speed generally only affects projectile velocity and the swing speed of close-ranged weapons. Neither of those are as impactful as direct bonuses to melee damage and critical chance, although melee speed investment is still viable when using powerful close-ranged weapons such as the Fetid Baghnakhs or Terra Blade.
- Direct movement speed bonuses are inferior to the Hermes Boots (and their upgrades), double-jumps, and dashes when it comes to dodging attacks. Your actual mobility mainly comes from wings.
Defense is a polarizing stat whose effectiveness largely depends on what enemies you plan to tank hits from, and becomes disproportionately more potent when your defense is already very high. While it is unlikely to make you invincible, boosting defense as high as possible is a legitimate strategy even on higher difficulties. Those who are unwilling to invest fully in defense are advised to focus more on damage or critical hit bonuses.
This guide is intended to recognize the different playstyles used in Terraria. Some people may enjoy melting bosses, while others prefer to tank hits, and still others prefer a generalist build. As such, each class is given the Offensive, Defensive, and Overall best armor categories. It is notable that this guide is intended for the average or standard Calamity player. Exceptional players such as no-hitters should favor damage and mobility much more than the average player. Armor sets in the same subcategory are roughly ordered by decreasing viability. However, these armor sets may still be better in some situations. For example, a ranged player may find that Necro armor's damage helps them more than Aerospec armor's fastfall.
Symbols
† — This armor is only optimal if you are familiar with the boss(es).
Ω — This armor is only optimal using a water arena.
* — This armor is is very tedious to obtain or requires extreme RNG.
Progression
Pre-Hardmode
This table will show a variety of suggested armor for Pre-Hardmode.
Hardmode
This table will show a variety of suggested armor for Hardmode.
Post-Moon Lord
This table will show a variety of suggested armor for Post-Moon Lord.
