Armor

Armor is the only gear in Breath of the Wild that never breaks, which already makes it worth more attention than the swords you are constantly replacing. Our page on the Gerudo sets makes a claim in its opening lines that is worth taking seriously: every set in this game is specialised towards something. It is true. What that line does not say is that only some of those somethings are places.

Read the sets we cover against that idea and they fall into a clear order. Two of them hand you a region of the map that would otherwise kill you. One of them hands you a specific storm. The rest are excellent and open nothing at all, because what they improve is the fight rather than the ground. That is how this guide is arranged.

What each set actually buys you

The desert costs 5,400 rupees before you own anything

The Gerudo Desert is the most expensive place in Hyrule to make habitable, and the bill starts before the shop does. Gerudo Town admits women only, so the first purchase is the outfit Vilia sells for 600 rupees from the roof of the Kara Kara Bazaar general store during daylight hours. Only then can you reach the stall that has the armor on it.

What is on that stall is two complete sets that happen to cost exactly the same. Desert Voe runs 650 for the trousers, 1,300 for the spaulder and 450 for the headband. Radiant is a flat 800 a piece across shirt, tights and mask. Both come to 2,400 rupees for three pieces, and both give 3 points of base protection per piece, so the difference is entirely in what they do rather than what they cost. Radiant then asks for 3 Luminous Stones on top of every piece, which is 9 in total, farmed from the deposits in the same region you are trying to survive.

Desert Voe is the practical one: heat resistance, upgraded to a much larger amount of it once all three pieces are on. Radiant is the strange one, and better than it sounds. Wear the full set and Stal enemies stop recognising you, which extends as far as being able to walk up to a Stal horse and ride it. It glows in the dark with a skeleton pattern, and once fully upgraded it adds Bone Weapon Attack Up. Our Desert Voe and Radiant guide also covers the Secret Club side quest that is wrapped around the purchase, including where to eavesdrop for the password.

One detail we enjoy: the heat resistance set is upgraded entirely with cold things. White Chuchu Jelly, Ice Keese wings, Icy Lizalfos tails and sapphires take Desert Voe up its four tiers, and by the top of that ladder it has quietly picked up shock resistance as a fully upgraded set bonus, which means the desert kit eventually does part of the Rubber set's job as well.

Rubber, three pieces scattered on purpose

The Rubber armor set is not sold anywhere, and its three pieces are deliberately spread across three different kinds of content, which makes it the most awkward set on this list to complete and the most valuable one to have finished before a specific fight.

• The shirt is inside Toh Yahsa Shrine, which does not exist on your map until you have finished the Trial of Thunder out on Thundra Plateau by matching four coloured orbs to four altars.
• The tights are far easier, sitting in a chest right in front of the monk in Qukah Nata Shrine near Calora Lake.
• The helm is not in a shrine at all. It comes from Cima at the stable west of Floria Bridge, who is being repeatedly struck by lightning and would like you to work out why. The answer is the Woodcutter's Axe on his roof.

Wearing all three gives a large shock resistance bonus. Fully upgraded, it stops being resistance and becomes immunity, negating shock damage outright, which is why it is the one wardrobe decision we would make before climbing into Vah Naboris. The bosses guide covers what Thunderblight Ganon does with the openings you give it.

The sets that change the fight instead of the map

The Champion's Tunic is the reward for restoring Link's memories, which means it arrives late and arrives alone, since there is no matching hat or trousers. Its effect is information rather than protection: enemy health appears as an actual number over their heads, which quietly changes how you approach every fight afterwards, because you stop guessing whether one more hit will do it.

It is also the most demanding thing in the game to upgrade. Every tier wants three silent princess flowers, which grow in the Korok Forest, around Kakariko and near the fairy fountains. The tiers above the first want two shards of a dragon's horn each, and there is exactly one dragon per tier: Farosh, then Naydra, then Dinraal. Since horn shards mean hitting the horn specifically, and each dragon keeps its own schedule and territory, finishing this one tunic is a three-dragon expedition. Our dragon locations guide covers where and when each of the three appears.

The Phantom set is the opposite kind of thing. It carries 8 base protection per piece, the highest raw figure here, and every piece adds attack power, but there is no completion bonus for wearing all three and, being DLC gear, no Great Fairy will touch it. That last point is worth holding on to when you are weighing up whether to wake the 10,000 rupee fairy: she cannot improve this set at all. The three pieces are buried in the ruins of Hyrule Field and want Magnesis to dig out, and the Coliseum Ruins piece has a Silver Lynel standing between you and the front gate if you approach it the obvious way.

The Ballad wardrobe

The Champions' Ballad outfits are a treasure hunt rather than a kit list. Rumour books at Riverside Stable and the Deya Village Ruins point you in a general direction and then leave you to it, and what is out there ranges from novelties like the Island Lobster Shirt and Zand's Helmet to the Royal Guard Uniform, whose three pieces are hidden inside Hyrule Castle itself, and the Phantom Ganon Armor, spread across Faron. If you are hunting these, you are doing it because you want them, not because a region demands them.

Where the upgrades come from

Every upgradeable set here goes through the same four people, and waking them is a separate errand covered in our locations guide. The materials each tier demands are gathered across the items section, and if you want a shortlist rather than a full ladder, our best armor rankings cut straight to what we would wear. The wiki hub puts armor in the order we would chase it.