TFT items guide: components, recipes and slamming

Items are the most decisive thing you control and the one most players treat as an afterthought — collected passively, combined late, and placed on whoever happens to be the carry when the timer runs out. Getting them right is worth more than any comp choice.

The ten components

Every combined item in TFT is exactly two components. There are ten, so there are 55 combinations and no exceptions. Learn what each component means rather than memorising recipes, and the recipes follow.

B.F. Sword Attack damage. The core of every physical carry.

Chain Vest Armour. Physical defence for the frontline.

Frying Pan Also makes emblems. Treat it exactly like a second Spatula.

Giant's Belt Health. Scales with everything defensive; never a wasted stat.

Needlessly Large Rod Ability power. The core of every caster carry.

Negatron Cloak Magic resist. Situational, and the component you slam when nothing else fits.

Recurve Bow Attack speed. Multiplies everything an auto-attacker does.

Sparring Gloves Crit chance and dodge. Narrow on its own, essential in several defining items.

Spatula Makes emblems. Worth more than any stat it carries.

Tear Of The Goddess Mana. Turns a slow caster into a fast one — often the single biggest damage item on the unit.

The recipe grid

Ten components, 55 combinations, no exceptions: every craftable item in TFT is exactly two components. Read a cell as the row's component plus the column's; the diagonal is a component combined with itself. Worth keeping open on a second screen until the common ones are automatic.

Component

Tap a cell for that item's stats, its holders and how it places. The items page has the same grid with the numbers beside it.

A shortcut while you learn: the offensive component decides who holds it, the second decides what kind of damage it does. Bow plus Rod is attack speed and magic damage, so it wants a hybrid. Sword plus Tear is damage and casting, so it wants a caster who also auto-attacks. Two defensive components are always a tank item. This gets you to roughly the right holder without knowing the name.

Slamming: the decision that separates ranks

"Slamming" is combining two components into a finished item now, rather than holding them for a perfect best-in-slot later. It is the item decision you make most often and the one with the clearest correct default: slam more than you think you should.

The argument is about what holding costs. Two components on your bench contribute nothing. Meanwhile every round you lose takes health, and health is the currency that buys you the rounds and the gold to reach the perfect item in the first place. Players who hold for best-in-slot frequently arrive at stage 4 with beautiful items and 18 health, which is a losing position with a very tidy inventory.

Slam when

• It makes you win a round you'd otherwise lose. That's health and possibly a streak, immediately, guaranteed.
• The item is flexible. Items that are good on many units commit you to nothing. A generic damage item goes on whoever the carry turns out to be.
• You're below 70 health in stage 3. You no longer have the runway to be patient. Stabilise.
• You have five or more components. At that point you have enough that one imperfect item doesn't constrain the rest.

Hold when

• You're win-streaking above 90 health. You're already winning without it. Patience is affordable and best-in-slot is worth real damage later.
• It's a Spatula or Frying Pan. Always. See above.
• The slam would be actively bad on every unit you might play. Rare, but a purely defensive item on a board of ranged units is close to nothing.

Splitting your items

A unit holds three items maximum. A typical board finishes with five to seven full items, so you're allocating across two or three holders. The standard split, and why:

The mistake at both ends is worth naming. Stacking everything on one unit feels efficient and loses to any board that can reach it — the moment your six-item carry dies, you have nothing. Spreading one item across six units produces a board where nothing threatens anything. Three and three, with the third stack going on the tank, is the shape that survives contact.

One more: moving items between your own units is free. There's no penalty, no cooldown. If a better holder arrives at 4-3, move everything immediately. Players leave items on the wrong unit for entire stages simply because they placed them there once.

Emblems, radiants and artifacts

Three categories that don't follow the normal rules and are worth knowing as exceptions.

Emblems grant a trait. Made from Spatula or Frying Pan, they turn a 4-unit breakpoint into a 3-unit one, or let you hold a trait you have no units for. Their value is entirely situational and occasionally enormous. The traits page shows which breakpoints are actually worth reaching.

Radiant items are upgraded versions of normal items, handed out by specific augments and encounters rather than crafted. Strictly better than their base — if you're offered a choice of radiants, pick the one whose base item you'd have built anyway.

Artifacts are unique found items with effects that don't exist elsewhere. Several are build-defining on exactly the right unit and close to worthless on the wrong one. Because you can't craft them, the decision is only ever "which unit", and the answer is usually the one whose weakness the artifact patches rather than the one whose strength it doubles.

The expensive mistakes

1. Slamming a Spatula. Already said twice. It's that frequent.
2. Holding six components into stage 4. You have a pile of potential and a board that lost four rounds getting there.
3. Building around the item instead of the board. An item is worth what it adds to the units you actually have. The strongest item in the set is worth nothing on a unit that dies first.
4. Never itemising the frontline. The most common shape of a losing board: a perfect three-item carry standing behind four naked tanks who evaporate.
5. Leaving items on a sold unit's replacement path. When you upgrade a holder, move the items in the same click. It is startling how often a full item sits on the bench through an entire fight.

Items decide fights. The next chapter is about the thing that decides which items you get to use at all — reading the augment offer.