The best armor in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom isn’t just about upping your defence and letting you take more hits in combat. The world of Hyrule is full of environmental threats, and you can defuse them with the correct item of clothing.
Find yourself freezing to death on the slopes of the Hebra Mountains near Rito Village, consumed by the gloom under Hyrule, or splatting on the ground when leaping from one of the sky islands over Hyrule? You should consider seeking out the best armor in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
What you’ll find below are pointers towards the best armor in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Need fire resistance, cold resistance, or gloom resistance? You’ll find it below. You’ll also find some armor to let you swim up waterfalls, because who doesn’t want that?
Best armor in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
With so many armor sets to choose from, it can be hard to know which ones are the best to use in Tears of the Kingdom. Here's what you'll want to keep an eye out for while you explore Hyrule:
- Flamebreaker armor
- Archaic Warm Greaves and Snowqiull armor
- Glide armor
- Zora armor
- Midna's helmet
Flamebreaker armor
You may notice a strange phenomenon when you enter the land of the Goron. Spontaneous combustion. The telltale signs aren’t too hard to miss, draw an arrow, and the tip will immediately burst into flame, any wooden-handled weapons will burn, too, and your health bar will rapidly begin to deplete. Unsurprisingly, the land around Death Mountain isn’t somewhere you’ll find life thrives.
Happily, you don’t have to accept this fiery fate. If you wear Flamebreaker armor, Link can withstand the immense heat of the area. Your wooden weaponry will still burn, but Link himself will remain unsinged.
If you get the complete set, you become immune to fire damage, but you only need a single piece to allow Link to enter flaming hot areas. You can buy Flamebreaker armor from the Goron armor store in Goron City.
Archaic Warm Greaves and Snowquill armor
You’re going to be visiting a lot of chilly places in your adventures around Hyrule. While some of the best recipes in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will raise your cold resistance, getting a set of armor that gives you a constant buffer against icy winds will save you from seeking out and cooking spicy peppers all the time.
You’ve two routes to take in resisting the cold weather. The first is easy to come by and can be found on the starting island. The Archaic Warm Greaves will give you a small amount of cold resistance to help in many locations. You’ll find them in a chest at the top of a hollowed-out tree near the Shrine of Gutanbac.
If you want serious cold resistance, you must pay some top rupee. The Snowquill armor set can be bought from the armor shop in Rito Village. If you buy the whole set, you’ll become immune to ice attacks and get that sweet, sweet cold resistance.
Glide armor
After disturbing The Demon King's mummified remains under Hyrule Castle, the land is torn apart, opening up chasms to the caves beneath the kingdom, and many floating islands appear in the sky above.
You can reach many islands by launching skyward from a Skyview Tower. But if you're finding it challenging to control yourself in the air, particularly when diving, there's a suit of armor made just for you. The Glide set gives you finer control while in a dive. This armor set comes into its own in the aerial obstacle course challenges you find scattered around the skies of Hyrule.
The armor is given out as a reward for completing those same obstacle courses, so you'll need to complete one with your natural talent. I'd recommend the course you can reach from Lindor’s Brow Skyview Tower, which you can find in the Hyrule Ridge region due west of Hyrule Castle. That tower fires you up to Courage Island, and completing the dive challenge there will earn you the glide shirt. Complete the whole set, and you’ll no longer take fall damage.
Zora armor
I don't mind dying from fall damage; it feels like an occupational hazard of throwing yourself off floating islands. What is a little shaming is drowning three feet from the shoreline because I've misjudged Link's stamina wheel.
Happily, a suit of armor will help you on that front – the Zora armor. It lets you swim faster, which means you cover more distance in the water for the same amount of stamina.
It is still more helpful because it bestows the Zora's salmon-like ability to swim up waterfalls. Something handy when exploring their water-filled domain.
To get it, after meeting with Prince Sidon, have a chat with his fiancé, and she'll set you on the path.
Midna's helmet
One of the (let's face it, many) dangers of exploring the dark caverns below Hyrule is the toxic gloom. Spend too long standing in the purple slick, and you'll see your heart containers become corrupted. Once infected with Gloom, you can only reverse the damage by returning to the surface, reaching a Lightroot, or chowing down on a Sundelion-filled food – another of the best recipes in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
But, if you want to avoid all that hassle, then instead of looking for curatives, you can save yourself gloom-flavored heartache by preventing the infection in the first place. If you can get your hands on Midna’s Helmet, your adventures below Hyrule will go much more smoothly. The armor gives you a freebie heart container that can absorb gloom for you, giving you a short grace period to walk on the toxin without it harming you.
You can get the helmet by traveling into the Eventide Island Chasm and fighting in the colosseum you find there. Defeat all the waves of enemies, and you'll be awarded a gloom-resisting hat.
