Is chainmail armor worth using in Minecraft?

Armor is one of the most important aspects of Minecraft. It is divided into four distinct sections, each of which contributes to the player’s overall defense stat, thereby determining how much damage they can take.

Armor pieces come in various different types and source materials, such as iron, gold, diamond, netherite, etc. One such source material is chainmail, a weak alternative to iron. The resource has a similar appearance to the former, but its properties are vastly different.

Note: This article is subjective and reflects the opinion of the writer.

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Chainmail armor in Minecraft: Is it as useless as its history claims?

At this point, it would be prudent to say that the chainmail armor set is among the least useful armors in the game. It is better than gold and leather armor, but worse than iron and its successors. While it does beat gold gear based on defense stats, the latter has a property that can provide a ton of help to players.

Gold items are favored by mobs that reside in the Nether dimension, especially Piglins. Without a golden armor piece, piglins can become aggressive towards a player, which may result in a tricky situation for them

Additionally, iron is a resource that is easily found when mining for a small amount of time. This results in a full iron armor set being a better option than a chainmail variant, as the latter can’t be crafted at all.

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Chainmail armor's history in Minecraft

Chainmail armor has always had a weird place in Minecraft. The value of protection or defense it offers is between those portrayed by the iron and golden armor sets in the game.

It has proven to not be very durable, and considering those stats, it's pretty hard to obtain. However, the biggest thing about the armor is that it cannot be crafted, which makes it more difficult for players to find it.

Chainmail armor was one of the two types of armor that was added to the game with Minecraft 0.24, or what was referred to as the “survival test” version. During that time, it was purely cosmetic and did not affect a player or mob’s defense stat.

Mobs like skeletons and zombies were seen with “plate” armor on, while chainmail armor pieces were nowhere to be found as they weren’t used at all. It wasn’t until the 0.31 version of the game was released that it was officially introduced as a defense stat booster.

Many players might not know this, but chainmail armor used to have a crafting recipe back in the day. However, players were unable to use it for Survival Mode as it needed them to use fire in a crafting table, something which could only be done using mods and other third-party methods.

As a result, chainmail armor was not accessible to players playing Survival Mode for almost two-and-a-half years after its addition to the game.

When Minecraft 1.3 was released, chainmail armor became a more accessible part of the game through villager trades. Players could offer emeralds in exchange for the armor pieces. Soon after, the Minecraft 1.4 patch gave zombies and skeletons a small chance to drop chainmail armor.

Today, chainmail armor can still be obtained through trading and mob drops, along with another source that was added to the game back in 2016: the Woodland Mansion. Players can obtain pieces it inside chests that generate in these large, and hard-to-find structures. They are often found within the dark forest biome, which itself is extremely difficult to find.