What is the Best Starter Armor in Hypixel Skyblock?

As an experienced Skyblock player, the question I get asked most often by newcomers to the game is: "What is the best starter armor?" And what many new players don‘t realize is that the "best" early game armor actually depends a lot on your playstyle and priorities early on!

In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll break down all the top contender armor sets for new Skyblock players and discuss the pros, cons, costs, stats and bonuses of each to help you decide what‘s best to start grinding for. I‘ll also provide some late game recommendations to give you an idea of what a good starter set can scale into. Let‘s get into it!

Overview of Ideal Starter Sets

First, what do we mean by starter armor? Generally this refers to the easier to acquire sets that provide solid stats and bonuses without huge investment for brand new Skyblock profiles in their first 10 hours or so. For reference, you should be aiming to have your starter set within your first Skyblock week.

There are three armor sets I normally recommend for starter consideration:

Ender Armor

• Balanced stats
• Set bonus: +30 ❤ Health, 3❈ Defense, +5✎ Intelligence
• Decent for early combat in the End

Hardened Diamond Armor

• High defense
• Set bonus: +100❈ Defense
• Good if you want very tanky armor for early slayer quests

Glacite Armor

• High mining speed
• Set bonus: +20% Mining Speed
• Excellent early game for resource/XP grinds

Now let‘s dive deeper into the pros and cons of each!

Ender Armor – Ideal for Early End Combat

Ender armor is a frequent front runner for best early game armor because it provides a solid stat profile at a reasonable cost. The full set can be crafted fairly easily from Endstone, Ender Pearls and Enchanted Iron.

Here are the key pros of Ender:

• Provides comparable or better stats to hardened diamond but much cheaper to obtain
• Universal damage and mitigation makes it good generalist armor
• Set bonus gives health, defense & intelligence boosts

The cons come down to its limitations:

• Fairly low defense compared to other sets
• Lacks specialized bonuses of some alternatives
• Doesn‘t scale as well into late game as some pricer options

So in summary – Ender Armor is an affordable, balanced set that performs respectably in early game while allowing you to amass more capital for late game sets. It‘s a great jumping off point for early combat like Slayers and exploring the End.

Hardened Diamond Armor – Specialized Defense

Hardened Diamond Armor distinguishes itself from the other starter sets by offering a tremendous boost to defense at the cost of offense. It also saves your coin for more late game upgrades. Here‘s a quick breakdown:

Pros

• Extremely high built-in defense as expected
• Cheap to craft from vanilla materials
• Excellent set bonus adding even more defense

Cons

• Very low damage values across the board
• Lack of other stats makes it less well-rounded
• Falls off hard in late game relevance

So if you want to make an early game tank or focus on not dying while you build capital, Hardened Diamond is the most min-maxed defensive option. But it limits your ability to dish out damage.

Glacite Armor – Resource & XP Grinding

If you hope to amass fortunes through mining, collecting and crafting, Glacite armor aims to supercharge those playstyles. Let‘s dig in (pun intended):

• Provides speed and intelligence for rapid resource harvesting
• Universal 20% mining speed set bonus to boost XP rates
• Cheaper than hardened diamond but much better scaling
• Lacks combat stats so mediocre for PvE and PvP

So Glacite gives unparalleled early game grinding ability but leaves you vulnerable. It lets you power level skills, collect huge mineral stockpiles and get an economic advantage.

Evaluating for Your Early Game Needs

As you can see, there are good arguments for each starter set depending on what you aim to accomplish early on. Keep these key questions in mind when deciding:

• Will you focus more on combat or economic grinding?
• Do you want to maximize survival or damage output?
• What playstyles align well with your longer term goals?

For example, Ender works very well if you hope to progress into dragon fighting while Hardened can make early Slayers much more forgiving.

There are also some armor options I didn‘t discuss like Golem and Magma which have niches in early game. But I believe the three highlighted sets represent the best well-rounded choices.

Now let‘s shift gears and talk about the future…

Scaling into Late Game Armor Sets

A common mistake I see is players sinking too many resources into their starter armor when they could be saving up for stronger late game equipment instead.

But some starter sets actually represent efficient investments because they scale into viable end game options. Let me quickly highlight two to keep on your radar:

Frozen Blaze Armor

• Direct upgrade from Blaze armor
• Out-damages Superior with high level Blaze pet
• Excellent late game DPS and longevity from HP

Perfect Tier 12 Armor

• Requires immense gemstone grinding
• Best non-mythic stats in game
• Viable even in Master Mode floors

Both of these require huge investments but represent achievable best-in-slot options to start building towards. Almost all other armor sets will get replaced in late to endgame.

Finally, while extremely expensive, mythic rarity Necron & Goldor armor stands at the current pinnacle of equipment as the only Legendary-tier armors able to slot Enrichments for even more stats. But that, my friends, is a discussion for another day!

I hope this breakdown helps provide some guidance as you embark on your Hypixel Skyblock journey. Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions!