Minecraft: 12 Best Armor Trims for 1.20

Image: Mojang via HGG / Nathan Hart

Human Made

Penned by Nathan Hart

I'm a stand-up comic by night and write for HGG by day. Most of my gaming happens at an improvised desk at the Days Inn right outside whatever small town I'm in for the night.

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

In this article, we’ll talk a little bit about applying armor trim and then we’ll dive into the best armor trim in Minecraft. We’ve ranked all the armor trims by rareness/how cool they are and we’ll also break down exactly how to find each armor trim.

The newest content patch for the legendary crafting and adventure game Minecraft has brought with it a slew of new features. This includes new mobs, new features like archaeology, and a brand-new, highly sought-after set of cosmetic items called Smithing Templates and their subcategory of armor trims. These let you add specialized patterns to your gear, helping to differentiate between different sets of enchantments, or just letting you stand out among your friends when you take your cave-diving journeys to multiplayer.

Popular Destinations..

Minecraft Waystone | Navigation Page

30 Best Minecraft Seeds | Bedrock & Java (2024)

How to Apply Smithing Templates

Before you put in the effort to track down an armor trim pattern, you should first set up the station where you’ll be applying these trims. You’ll need to craft or find a smithing table. These can be made with two pieces of iron and four blocks of wood planks of any kind. Once you open the smithing table, you’ll be able to see the slots to add a smithing template, a piece of armor, and another third item that isn’t defined as easily.

This block will usually determine the color of armor trim, but it’s worth noting the smithing table can also be used to upgrade your tools. Once you’ve created a smithing table and gathered items of your favored colors, seek out a smithing template from the list below. Most are currently just cosmetic adjustments to your armor, with the exception of the Netherite Upgrade Template. Smithing templates can be duplicated at the smithing table by using seven diamonds and a special material block that is different for each pattern.

All Armor Trim Colors

Sprites	Block Type	Color Added	Where to Find?
	Iron Ingot	Metallic Silver	Forged from iron ore found in mines.
	Copper Ingot	Copper Brown	Forged from copper ore found near mine entrances.
	Gold Ingot	Bright Gold	Forged from gold ore found in mines, as chest loot, or crafted from gold nuggets found in the Nether.
	Lapis Lazuli	Marine Blue	Mined underground, looted from chests, or traded from apprentice-level cleric villagers.
	Emerald	Bright Green	Trade reward for all sorts of items with villagers, chest loot, or mined from very high mountains. Pillagers can also drop emeralds.
	Diamond	Teal	Very rare, most commonly found deep inside caves close to lava.
	Netherite Ingot	Black	Crafted from netherite scrap, a rare item that might be found buried in netherrack in the nether.
	Redstone Dust	Deep Red	Mined deep in caves, chest loot, or traded from a cleric villager.
	Nether Quartz	Marbled White	Mined in The Nether.
	Amethyst Shard	Glowing Purple	Chest loot from ancient cities, or harvested from fully-grown amethyst crystals.

Netherrite Upgrade Smithing Template

This is a special template that we’ll talk about before moving on to the larger subcategory of armor trims. This template is found in one of the most dangerous locations in The Nether, a Bastion Remnant. These blackstone fortresses will be guarded by powerful mobs, and can often take quite a bit of searching through that hell-like dimension until you find their trademark blackstone walls. You can find them in any Nether biome besides the basalt deltas. Chests inside this structure might contain a Netherrite Upgrade Template, but the “treasure room” variant of this structure will always contain one in a particular chest at the bottom of the treasure room.

After you get the template, you’ll need to spend an inordinate amount of time harvesting netherite scraps until you have enough of them to make an ingot of Netherrite. This ingot can be combined with the upgrade template to turn a single piece of diamond gear, whether its armor, weapons, or tools, into nigh-indestructible Netherrite. This powerful armor provides more protection than anything else in the game, while also providing some defense against knockback effects and fire damage, including falling in lava. Netherrite Swords are one of the best weapons in the game. If you’re willing to put in the work, this end-game armor will serve you well. The template itself can be duplicated with seven diamonds, a preexisting template, and a block of Netherrack.

Minecraft Armor Trim Ranked Worst to Best

Let’s dive in! These are ranked in terms of cool factor and how rare they are.

#12 Sentry Armor Trim

This armor trim adds some straight vertical lines to some pieces of your armor, while adding an emblem that resembles a plus symbol to your chestpiece. This trim pattern can be found at Pillager Outposts, large tower-like structures you’ll see in the distance when you wander the overworld. You’ll need to fight through a small horde of Pillagers as you climb their tower and pop open the chest up top. It’s one of the only trim templates that might spawn two at a time, at around a 25% chance.

In order to duplicate sentry armor trims, you’ll need a handful of diamonds, one armor pattern, and a block of common, easily obtainable cobblestone, making this one of the easiest trim patterns to recreate. Become a “Hero of the Village” in style!

#11 Vex Armor Trim

The “Vex” style armor trim resembles the robes of the Evoker mobs, appropriate since its found inside the Woodland Mansion structure where these dreaded Illager wizards reside. The Vex pattern is relatively common compared to other armor patterns, provided you can locate a Woodland Mansion to plunder. There will be a 50% chance of one pattern template appearing inside chests at the mansion.

To produce more Vex patterns, you’ll need to combine the usual 7 diamonds with a preexisting pattern as well as a block of cobblestone, just like the Sentry armor. Vex is perfect for any potion-brewing wizards among your Minecraft clan.

#10 Wild Armor Trim

The “Wild” trim appears like vines, or twisting horizontal lines across your body. Its fairly minimalistic compared to some of the other more complex armor trims, lending itself well to a drawn-down aesthetic. It adds some nice square lines around the shoulders as well. You can find these inside Jungle Temples, also known as Jungle Pyramids. These structures can be hard to find, hidden deep inside the dense jungles of Minecraft. Once inside, dodge the traps and solve the puzzle hidden behind the three levers in the bottom level to gain access to the chest inside the structure.

If you’ve acquired one already, in order to make more Wild armor templates you should gather up seven diamonds as well as a block of mossy cobblestone. If you forget to harvest a mossy cobblestone while you’re at the temple, you can craft one out of moss blocks and regular cobblestone.

#9 Coast Armor Trim

Coast armor looks like a few stylistic lines placed artfully across your armor, remiscent of the structure of the underwater ocean monuments that dot the landscape around them. The patterns for Coast Armor Trims are found inside shipwrecks, which can often be found either underwater or right along the coastline. Search these for various kinds of chests that can be hiding in the briny depths, and if you get lucky you’ll find a coast armor pattern.

If you’re doing a lot of searching and swimming around while looking for shipwrecks, it’ll help to have a boat, night vision potions, and water breathing potions ready to go. Night vision makes it much easier to see underwater, speeding up your search. After you’ve already got a coast armor trim pattern and seven diamonds, combine it with a regular piece of cobblestone to make more. Do this a few times and you can outfit your entire suit with it, as shown above.

#8 Dune Armor Trim

The “Dune” armor is found inside desert pyramids, large structures that become very visible if you search for the orange terracotta question-mark-esque symbol printed on the side of them. The Dune armor looks similar to any of the symbols you might see on the outside of the pyramids, with a vaguely circualar shape on the front. Desert pyramids, as you might expect, spawn in deserts, often making them very visible among the muted, pale-yellow sand that makes up the majority of the terrain in the driest biomes.

Once you locate the pyramid, you’ll need to carefully descend down to the bottom of the lowermost chamber, being careful not to set off the pressure plate at the center of the pyramid. If you touch that plate it will set off 9 blocks of dynamite all at once, likely killing you and definitely destroying all the loot you could’ve found, including the Dune armor trim kit. It can be found in these chests at around a 14% frequency, and occasionally you’ll be discovering two templates at once. The material to combine with diamonds to make more Dune patterns is Sandstone.

#7 Host, Wayfinder, Raiser, & Shaper Armor Trims

We’ve bundled these four patterns together because you find them all in the same location- the newfound Trail Ruins that can be found among the cold forests of the world. All four are fairly simplistic, minimal patterns compared to the other armor trims, owing to their relatively easy acquisition. Look for colored terracotta sticking out of the ground and start to dig downward, making sure not to disrupt any pieces of gravel without inspecting them for the telltale pixels of an archaeological artifacts.

Theres an equal chance you’ll find any of these pieces of armor, and all of them can be re-created with the usual seven diamonds and a piece of terracotta. If you can’t find a badlands biome to harvest terracotta from, pick some up from the trail ruin once you’ve finished excavating it.

#6 Snout Armor Trim

Finding the Snout trim will take a little more effort than a lot of the other entries on our list, requiring a journey into the Nether, and then a bit of a lucky break in finding a “Bastion Remnant” structure made of the distinct Blackstone blocks. Search through this structure for treasure chests that might contain one of these, along with some of the rarest, most powerful loot in the game, like enchanted diamond gear. Beware, you’ll also have to fight off “Piglin Brutes” even if you’re wearing gold armor, some of the toughest melee enemies you’ll encounter in Minecraft.

These are relatively rare inside the already-rare chests you’ll find in these structures, only appearing at an 8.3% rate. Harvest some of the Blackstone while you’re here in order to re-create the snout template at home, and definitely don’t neglect to thouroughly search the rest of the bastion remnant while you’re here.

#5 Rib Armor Trim

The Rib armor trim appears inside another Nether structure, the expansive and terrifying Nether Fortress. In order to complete the game, you’ll need to eventually find one of these structures, as its the only source of the Blaze mob, a source for the very necessary Blaze Rod items you’ll need to progress to The End. A new addition to the loot tables in chests at the Nether Fortress is this skeleton-like pattern.

Once you acquire one of these patterns, you can recreate them with seven diamonds and a chunk of common netherrack. Its smart to build a new Nether Portal right outside the Fortress to ensure you have an easy way home.

#4 Tide Armor Trim

The Tide smithing template is perfect for anyone building their own underwater kingdom. It is found at underwater monuments, and is the only armor trim template that isn’t found inside a structure chest. Instead, you’ll need to take down Elder Guardians until one of them drops the Tide template for you. Three Elder Guardians generate inside each ocean monument structure, and each one has a 20% chance to drop a Tide template when killed. They don’t need to be killed by a player to drop this, and the drop chance isn’t affected by the “looting” weapon enchantment. This gives you a little over a half chance to get one each time you loot a monument.

Follow similar advice to hunting for Shipwrecks, as written above in the “Coast Armor Trim” section, when you go looking for ocean monuments. The powerful Guardian mobs will make looting this building a challenge without lots of specialized enchantments and water-breathing potions. Harvest some of the aquamarine blocks from the monument to make sure you can re-create the Tide trim at home.

#3 Eye Armor Trim

The Eye smithing template will add a symbol to your armor that seems to swear allegiance to the Endermen, or perhaps your willingness to hunt these vicious ethereal beings down. You can get ahold of this pattern from the end-game Stronghold structures, of which only 3 spawn in any given seed, always a triangular equidistance away from each other. Only one of these will contain a portal room that can take you to “The End”. You can always find one in the library chest so long as a library spawns inside your Strongholds.

Unlike any of the other armor trim patterns, this is the only one that requires blocks that aren’t found inside the same structure you acquire the pattern from. Instead, you’ll need to light up the End Portal and successfully traverse to that final dimension, where you need to harvest some of the end stone blocks. Combine these with diamonds to make copies of this ethereal pattern.

#2 Spire Armor Trim

One of the absolute toughest items to get in the game is the Spire armor trim, only appearing inside chests at the End City structures inside The End. Reaching these structures requires defeating the Ender Dragon to open up an End Gateway, teleporting you across an abyss to one of the many outlying islands in The End. Search these islands for winding towers made of purple Purpur blocks. Chests inside these towers contain some of the most valuable items in the game, including the Spire armor trim!

To duplicate this pattern you’ll need to harvest some Purpur blocks from the End City structures where you find the pattern. Watch out for the difficult skulker mobs, and if you get truly lucky you might even get an Elytra in this same trip!

#1 Ward & Silence Armor Trims

Lastly, we have two more armor trims that are very difficult to acquire, but both otherwise spawn in an identical fashion. The “Ward” armor trim gives you a set of armor that resembles the deadly Warden mob that stalks you around the Ancient City structures where these smithing patterns can be found, while the “Silence” armor, being significantly more rare, instead fills in most of your armor with whatever color you’ve added and allows the original armor color to fill the negative space of its bone-like pattern.

You can create more of either of these smithing templates with the usual seven diamonds as well as a block of cobbled deepslate, an easy resource to find while you hunt in the deep darkness for an Ancient City. Now all you have to do is sneak out without the Warden finding you. Good luck!

Happy Gaming!

This set of instructions for discovering new armor patterns should help you stay busy in style while exploring the endless, vast world of Minecraft. With your shiny new armor showing off your elite status, you’re sure to take the high ground. Don’t forget to follow High Ground Gaming on all your favorite social media for more tips, as well as subscribe to the High Ground Gaming newsletter.