Eighteen trim patterns, fourteen places, and only one that drops from a mob
Trail Ruins gives four of the eighteen. Tide is the only pattern that is not loot. And duplicating a template is a crafting table, not a smithing one — with two exceptions.
There are 18 armour trim patterns and 11 trim materials, which is 198 combinations per armour piece and 792 across a full four-piece set. Collecting the patterns is the slow part, and the sources are not evenly spread: fourteen places supply eighteen patterns, and two of those places supply six of them between them.
Where each pattern comes from
| pattern | source |
|---|---|
| Wayfinder, Shaper, Raiser, Host | Trail Ruins — suspicious gravel |
| Silence, Ward | Ancient City chests |
| Bolt | Trial Chambers vaults |
| Flow | Trial Chambers — ominous vaults |
| Coast | Shipwreck treasure chests |
| Dune | Desert Temple chests |
| Wild | Jungle Temple chests |
| Sentry | Pillager Outposts |
| Vex | Woodland Mansion chests |
| Snout | Bastion Remnant chests |
| Rib | Nether Fortress chests |
| Eye | Stronghold altar chests |
| Spire | End City chests |
| Tide | Elder Guardian drops |
Trail Ruins is worth four patterns, and none of them are in a chest. Wayfinder, Shaper, Raiser and Host all come out of suspicious gravel, which means a brush and patience rather than a chest to open. That single structure is 22% of the entire pattern list — and it is the easiest one to walk past, because it has no loot chests to signpost it.
Tide is the only pattern that is not loot. Every other entry is a chest, a vault or brushable gravel. Tide comes off an Elder Guardian, so it is the one pattern you have to fight for rather than find.
Bolt and Flow share a structure but not a difficulty. Both are in Trial Chambers, but Flow only appears in ominous vaults, which need a Bad Omen effect to open. A peaceful sweep of a Trial Chamber yields Bolt and never Flow, no matter how many vaults you empty.
Duplication is a crafting table, not a smithing table
The smithing table applies a trim. Copying the template is an ordinary shaped crafting recipe, and it takes three things:
7 × diamond + 1 × the template + 1 × the structure's block → 2 templatesTwo out, one in, so each craft is a net +1. The block is the structure's own signature material, and it repeats exactly where you would expect:
| block | patterns |
|---|---|
| Terracotta | Host, Raiser, Shaper, Wayfinder — the four Trail Ruins ones |
| Cobblestone | Coast, Sentry, Vex |
| Cobbled Deepslate | Silence, Ward |
| Sandstone | Dune |
| Mossy Cobblestone | Wild |
| Netherrack | Rib |
| Blackstone | Snout |
| End Stone | Eye |
| Purpur Block | Spire |
| Prismarine | Tide |
| Copper Block or Waxed Copper Block | Bolt |
| Breeze Rod | Flow |
The two exceptions are the ones worth knowing
Bolt is the only pattern that accepts a choice. Every other recipe names exactly one block; Bolt takes either a Copper Block or a Waxed Copper Block. So an oxidation-proofed stack you already waxed for a build is not wasted on it — which is not true of anything else in the table.
Flow needs a Breeze Rod, and a Breeze Rod is a mob drop. Every other duplication is diamonds plus a block you can mine by the stack; Flow costs you a Breeze per copy. Combined with it being locked behind ominous vaults, Flow is the most expensive pattern in the game at both ends — hard to get, and hard to copy once you have it.
What that means for a collecting run
The eleven trim materials — Amethyst, Copper, Diamond, Emerald, Gold, Iron, Lapis, Netherite, Quartz, Redstone and Resin — are all ordinary craftable or minable items. None is structure-gated.
So the expedition is once per pattern, not once per piece of armour. One Ancient City visit unlocks Silence and Ward permanently; after that, every one of their 11 material variants across all four armour pieces is just diamonds and cobbled deepslate away.