How to make and upgrade armor in Minecraft

Aakrit Sharma
Steve, a Villager, and Diamond Armor in Minecraft

Survival is one of the primary goals in Minecraft and having strong armor can certainly help with that. Here’s how you can make the strongest chest plates, helmets, leggings, and boots in Minecraft and roam around more freely.

The Minecraft Overworld is filled with a ton of lethal threats and things are even worse in the Nether. Accordingly, it is almost impossible for players to progress without taking proper safety measures.

While enchantments and potions are great for status effects, your armor is your first layer of protection against enemies. Its significance increases once you start exploring dangerous areas and taking on tough bosses like the Wither and the Ender Dragon.

Now that we know how important armor is in Minecraft, here’s a guide on how to make it.

Minecraft character in Diamond armor riding a horse

All types of armor in Minecraft

There are six types of armor in Minecraft based on their crafting material:

  • Leather armor (weakest) – Made with leather.
  • Gold armor – Made with gold ingot.
  • Chainmail armor – Rarely dropped by zombies and skeletons and found in some chests.
  • Iron armor – Made with iron ingots.
  • Diamond armor – Made with diamond.
  • Netherite armor (strongest) – Made by placing any diamond armor piece and Netherite Ingot on the smithing table.

How to craft armor in Minecraft

An armor in Minecraft comprises chest plates, helmets, leggings, and boots. We’ll learn how to make these items separately:

How to make chest plates in Minecraft

You need eight pieces of leather/gold ingots/iron ingots/diamonds to make a chest plate in Minecraft. Open the crafting table and fill the first and the third column with the desired material. Thereafter, put two pieces of your crafting material in the bottom two boxes of the middle column.

The same has been showcased in the image below:

Crafting recipe for iron chest plate in Minecraft

How to make helmets in Minecraft

You need five pieces of leather/gold ingots/iron ingots/diamonds to make a helmet in Minecraft. In a 3×3 crafting table, fill the top row with the desired crafting material and put two pieces on both edges of the middle row.

The crafting recipe to make a helmet is also showcased in this image:

Crafting recipe to make an iron helmet in Minecraft

How to make leggings in Minecraft

You need seven pieces of leather/gold ingots/iron ingots/diamonds to make leggings in Minecraft. Similar to chest plates, fill the first and third columns with the desired material and then put one piece in the middle of the top row.

The crafting recipe to make leggings has been depicted in this image:

Crafting recipe for iron leggings in Minecraft

How to make boots in Minecraft

You need four pieces of leather/gold ingots/iron ingots/diamonds to make Boots in Minecraft. Place two pieces of the desired crafting material vertically in the first and third columns of the crafting table.

This image showcases the crafting recipe to make boots in the game:

Crafting recipe for iron boots in Minecraft

How many pieces do you need to make a full armor in Minecraft?

You need 24 pieces of diamonds/iron ingots/ gold ingots/ leather to make a full armor in Minecraft. Here’s how to get these items from the Overworld:

  • Leather – Cows, mooshrooms, horses, donkeys, mules, and llamas drop leather when killed.
  • Iron Ingots – Search iron ore underground and use a furnace to turn it into iron ingots.
  • Gold ingots – Search for gold ore near Y = – 16. Then, use a furnace to turn raw gold into gold ingots.
  • Diamond – Diamond ore is found between Y=-50 and Y=-64. Smelt it to get Diamond.

While a pickaxe is necessary for mining the aforementioned ores, a furnace helps you make them usable in Minecraft. Here’s a guide on how to make a pickaxe in Minecraft and the crafting recipe for making a furnace is showcased in the image below:

Crafting recipe to make a furnace in Minecraft

How to upgrade armor in Minecraft with Netherite

You can upgrade Diamond armor in Minecraft by putting its pieces with Netherite Ingots on a smithing table. Put a diamond chest plate, helmet, leggings, or boots on the left and a Netherite Ingot after the plus sign to obtain Netherite armor pieces.

In the image below, you can see how putting Diamond leggings and a Netherite Ingot on a smithing table turns the former into Nethertire Leggings. Fortunately, the enchantments of the original equipment remain unaffected.

Smithing table GUI to upgrade Diamond armor to Netherite armor

If you want to upgrade your armor, make sure to check out this detailed guide on how to make a smithing table in Minecraft.

As for Netherite Ingot, you can get it by putting a Netherite block on a crafting table or through Netherite Scrap. Smelt Ancient Debris from the Nether to get four pieces of Netherite Scrap and then put it with four pieces of gold ingots to form Netherite Ingot.

Crafting recipe to make netherite ingots

Interestingly, you can place the gold ingots and the Netherite Scraps in any way as there isn’t a fixed crafting recipe for Netherite Ingots.


This was everything to know about making and upgrading armors in Minecraft. For similar content on the sandbox title, check out how to tame parrots, how to make a name tag, and how to make a boat.

Image Credits: Mojang

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About The Author

Aakrit is a games writer with over 2000 published articles for EssentiallySports, Sportskeeda, FortniteINTEL, and CharlieINTEL. Currently, he writes guides on Minecraft, Roblox, Pokemon games, Genshin Impact, and Brawlhalla. Aakrit loves playing shooter games and in his free time, you can find him queued up in Valorant, Fortnite, Apex Legends, or Halo Infinite. You can contact Aakrit at [email protected].