The best armor sets in Terraria

Dozens of armor sets exist in Terraria’s extensive library of items, and progression is always on the horizon. You must upgrade your armor when a new stage of the game is unlocked to you. But what does the end of progression look like? We’ve compiled a list of five of the best armor sets you can get your hands on—the end all be all of the armor sets.

Solar Flare Armor Set

The Solar Flare armor set is the attire you want if you’re planning to tank, dish out damage, and look pretty sweet doing it. Avoid taking damage as long as you can when wearing an entire set, and you’ll be able to perform a dash thanks to Solar Shield.

An entire set also provides Solar Blaze, a buff that reduces damage taken by 30 percent, but only if you’ve avoided damage long enough for a charge.

Solar Flare as a set grants excellent stats that prioritize melee builds, such as 17 percent melee critical chance, 22 percent melee damage, 15 percent melee speed, 15 percent movement speed. Each piece increases the chance that enemies will attack you.

Stardust Armor Set

The Stardust armor set, admittedly, isn’t jam-packed with stats like the other sets are. In total, you get 66 percent increase minion damage and an increase to your max minion capacity, which allows you to summon six altogether. The Stardust Guardian is only one of two reasons to use the Stardust armor, and the other is some fun to be had with maxing out a summons. With a few buffs, you can bump the max number of summons from six to 11.

Nebula Armor Set

For players wanting an armor set that focuses on magic, there’s the Nebula armor set. This purple-tinted set that makes you look like some dark sorcerer turns you into a magic slinging god. For starters, you get an extra 60 mana, plus a 15 percent reduction in mana usage. Critical strike chance is increased by 16 percent, and magic damage gets boosted by 26 percent. Additionally, your movement speed is 10 percent faster.

That’s all well and good, but the Nebula armor’s secret weapon is its set bonus. Whenever you hurt enemies, there’s a chance that a buff booster will drop, further increasing stats based on the buff that’s picked up—which there are three: damage booster, life booster, and mana booster. Each buff lasts eight seconds and can be stacked a total of three times.

Vortex Armor Set

When it comes to ranged combat, you can’t get better than the Vortex armor set. Ranged damage and ranged critical strike chance is increased by 36 percent and 27 percent, respectively, but it has an interesting quirk of not consuming ammunition. There’s only a 25 percent chance it will happen, but any ranged character would kill to have it.

The set bonus is what ranged users go for stealth mode. You can toggle stealth mode and still move about the map, unlike Shroomite armor. However, further, increase to ranged damage by 80 percent and ranged critical strike chance another 20 percent while in stealth is nothing to sneeze at.

Hallowed Armor Set

The Hallowed armor set makes it onto this list simply because it’s a versatile set invaluable in early hard mode. Its set bonus chances based on the Hallowed helmet variant you’re wearing, like increased melee damage if you wear the Hallowed Helmet, reduce mana usage with Hallowed Headgear, and movement speed with the Hallowed Mask. Even when you’re deep into endgame content, pieces of the Hallowed set find their way into endgame builds, specifically magic builds.

Don’t Stick To One Set

Often the best way to min-max is not by wearing a single set, but mixing and matching for the desired effect. For example, the Solar Flare armor set is impressive when used together for its set bonus. Still, for dealing as much melee damage as possible, you can go with the Chlorophyte Mask, Valhalla Knight’s Greaves, and just the Solar Flare Breastplate. Another example is the Vortex armor set. It’s better in a multiplayer setting where your buddies can grab the attention of the monsters, giving you ample room to dish out massive amounts of DPS. In the end, it comes down to playstyle.