Silver Chainmail

Silver is a middle rung on the starter ore ladder, above the first two metals and below gold and platinum. Nothing about it is exciting, but it is usually the first armor that makes a cave trip feel less like a coin flip. A world generates either silver or tungsten and never both, so which of the two you end up wearing was decided when the world was made, not by you. The only real cost is time spent underground.

The extra defense only applies with the helmet, chest piece and greaves worn together. A partial set is worth its raw armor and nothing more, and slotting in one piece from another tier quietly drops the bonus, which is easy to do by accident when a chest hands you something shinier. Silver holds up through the first surface bosses and early trips into the world evil, then falls behind around the point you start planning a run at molten gear.

The character on the game's Steam store art is wearing this set. Its plating is close enough to plain white that it doubles as the standard reference armor for showing what a dye actually does, since there is almost no color of its own to fight with whatever you put in the dye slot.