Key Highlights:
- Armour is essential for survival against cannibals, mutants, and late-game demons.
- Craftable, lootable, and unique armour types each serve different stages of the game.
- Protection, durability, and practicality vary, making some sets more efficient than others.
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The island in Sons of the Forest punishes players who underestimate its dangers. With ambushes, swarming mutants, and deep-cave horrors, you won’t last long without decent armour. Some sets are quick to craft and useful in the opening hours, while others demand rare resources or risky encounters but reward you with near-unbreakable protection.
Here’s a breakdown of the best armour types in SOTF and how to get them.
Leaf Armour
Crafting: 10 Leaves + 1 Cloth
Leaf Armour is the most basic set in the game, offering almost no protection but providing camouflage. It’s worth making in the early hours as resources are plentiful, but it should be swapped out quickly.
Hide Armour
Crafting: 2 Hide + 1 Cloth
Hide Armour edges out Leaf Armour with better protection and increased stealth, but the hunting requirements make it inconvenient. Deer and moose provide hides, though they’re not always easy to track or kill without ranged weapons.
Bone Armour
Crafting: 4 Bones + 1 Rope + 1 Duct Tape
Bone Armour isn’t just the first genuinely effective set, it’s also the most accessible armour you can build right at the start. With just 5–6 cannibal kills, you’ll have enough bones for a full set, and rope and tape are easily looted from nearby camps.
In fact, some players use a smart trick: loot the camp, save, exit to the menu, and reload to respawn the supplies. This makes it possible to stock up on crafting essentials almost immediately. From my own experience, that loop makes Bone Armour not only viable but also the most time-efficient survival choice in the opening hours.
Creepy Armour
Prior to Patch 12 for most players, Creepy Armour ended up being the best overall set. Each mutant drops one piece when skinned, meaning ten kills gives you a full set. With the shotgun in hand, mutants can often be dropped in a single blast, making farming Creepy Armour far less daunting than it sounds.
While it doesn’t quite match Tech Armour’s numbers, it comes close enough to make the resource trade-off heavily in its favour. In longer runs, I’ve found Creepy Armour to be the most reliable blend of durability and efficiency. Each piece blocks around 40 hit points, making it a great replacement for Bone Armour in longer fights.
NOTE: To be clear, unlike most other armours, the Creepy variant is not crafted, it’s obtained by skinning enemies.
For me, as durable and efficient as it is, there’s one armour that trumps it, but more on that later.
Tech Armour
Crafting: 1 Tech Mesh + 1 Wire + 1 Duct Tape + 1 Circuit Board + 1 Batteries
Statistically the second strongest armour, Tech Armour is widely considered the second best set in the game for sheer protection, but calling it “endgame” doesn’t capture just how resource-heavy it really is.
Crafting a full set that covers your character’s entire body requires ten Tech Mesh, each costing 250ml of Printer Resin at the 3D printer, that’s a total of 2,500ml before you even add the other components. On top of that, you’ll need ten circuit boards, ten wires, ten rolls of duct tape, and ten batteries.
I’ve gone through the grind myself, and while the payoff is real, Tech Armour outlasts Creepy Armour and blocks more damage, the cost and fragility make it impractical unless you’re already sitting on a hoard of resources.
Golden Armour
Found in the Cultist Cave (mandatory story item) Golden Armour is unique. It doesn’t break but only reduces damage from demons, not cannibals or animals. While situational, it’s required to progress the story and useful in specific encounters where demons dominate.
Golden Armour is often misunderstood. Despite its unbreakable durability, it offers no actual protection against damage and functions more like a cosmetic clothing set. Its sole purpose is narrative: it acts as the key to a locked door at the end of the game.
In practice, it’s less of an armour set and more of a story token.
Solafite Armour
Introduced in Patch 12, Solafite Armour (also called Golden Bone Armour) is the strongest defensive set in Sons of the Forest, offering 135 defence points, noticeably higher than Tech Armour’s 100. To obtain it, players must first craft a full set of Bone Armour, then use the Armour Plater, a Solafite Upgrader located in the VIP Bunker once its blueprint is discovered.
The process requires 12 Solafite Ore per piece of Bone Armour. Once started, the upgrader triggers a Solafite Storm: the weather shifts to heavy rain and lightning, and waves of mutants are drawn to the location. Expect encounters with Fingers, Twins, Caterpillars, Puffies, and even rarer enemies like Legsy or Holey. These waves arrive in two phases, forcing players to fight under pressure while the armour upgrade timer (around 2 minutes 30 seconds) runs down.
From my own perspective, this design makes Solafite Armour a true high-risk, high-reward investment. The durability is unmatched, about 1.3 times tougher than Tech Armour, but the mutant waves mean you can’t simply grind upgrades safely. Preparation is essential: stockpile ammo, set traps, or even bring allies in co-op before activating the upgrader.
While Solafite crafting components are fairly easy to gather compared to the grind for Tech Mesh, the hostile events tied to the process balance out its power. Survive the onslaught, however, and you’ll be rewarded with the best armour in the game, capable of carrying you through the hardest late-game encounters.
What is the best armour in Sons of The Forest?
When it comes down to choosing the best armour in SOTF, Solafite Armour now sits at the very top. With 135 defence points and unmatched durability, it outclasses Tech Armour and should be considered the ultimate endgame set.
However, the difficulty of upgrading and the mutant waves it summons mean it’s not something you can casually farm. For players still progressing, Tech Armour remains a reliable second-best, while Bone and Creepy Armour are easier stopgaps in the mid-game.
The best all-round choices are Bone Armour for early survival, Creepy Armour for balance of power and accessibility, Tech Armour if you can afford the resources and Solafite Armour to be the one you’re aiming for as the ultimate goal.
Golden Armour is essential for progressing the narrative but has little use outside demon fights. No matter the path you take, keeping armour equipped at all times is non-negotiable, it’s the difference between surviving another ambush or restarting your run from scratch.