My time with Ghost of Tsushima has drawn to a close, given that I have done everything in the game except find all the flowers because well, that sounds terrible. But I thought I would go through one last time and do a list of all the best armors in the game as you try and buildcraft for samurai domination.
Here are my top five sets I’ve been using all throughout the game. Some are unlocked through quests, some are unlocked through special missions. But all are very good in their own ways.
5. Kensei Armor
Found from: Legendary mission (guide here)
Bonuses:
- 30% increase to resolve gains
- Ghost weapons deal 30% more damage
- Striking an enemy with a Ghost Weapon causes that enemy to deal 50% less damage and receive 50% more damage.
I have only begun to mess around with this one, but the bonuses to Ghost Weapons here are really fantastic, and you can pair them with a number of incredibly useful charms that can essentially double the damage of all your Ghost Weapons and make pretty much all enemies around you take 50% more damage from normal attacks.
4. Tadayori’s Armor
Found from: Legendary mission (guide here)
Bonuses:
- Increase nocking and reload speed by 30%
- Increase total Concentration by 2 seconds
- Headshots restore 50% of the Concentration meter
My only problem with an archery focused build in Tsushima is that melee combat is so much fun, but there’s no denying how good this set is, especially when paired with some of the charms that return arrows on headshot or further increase arrow damage. With more or less unlimited slo-mo shooting, you can take down entire camps before they even reach you.
3. Sakai Clan Armor
Found from: Main story quest in Act 2
Bonuses:
- Major increase to melee damage
- Massive increase to health
- Increase the Standoff Streak by 2. Winning a Standoff has a 25% chance to terrify enemies.
I like this as a solid “all around” build because it gives you a big increase to both melee damage and health. The standoff streak, if you can manage the trickiness of Act 3 standoffs, is very good, and you can take down entire groups of enemies in a single standoff with enough skill, and terrify the rest. I used this for a solid chunk of the game.
2. Ghost Armor
Found from: Story quest, near end of Act 2
Bonuses:
- Reduces enemy detection speed by 40%
- Reduces the number of kills needed to enter the Ghost Stance by 2 (down from 7 to 5)
- Kills have a 30% chance to terrify a nearby enemy.
You can stack a few different mods so you essentially have a coinflip chance of terrifying (instakilling) an additional enemy with every single kill, plus you are almost always gearing up for Ghost Stance with only five kills needed to get there. A truly awesome set, not to mention it looks great, as the signature set of the game.
1. Gosaku’s Armor
Found from: Gosaku armor quest (guide here)
Bonuses:
- A massive increase to health
- A major increase to stagger damage
- 20% life on kill against staggered enemies
After all this time, nothing compares to my stagger Gosaku build, which breaks every enemy’s guard in 1-2 swings and gives you 20% life on kill (30%+ with a charm) on pretty much every enemy kill. This is far and away my favorite set in the game and I don’t think anything else comes close to it for open combat.
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