Oblivion:Gripes/Armorer

The UESPWiki – Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995

This article provides Armorer gripes, as part of the Game Balance section of the Gripes article.

The issue of hammers breaking is removed (and with it, two out of the four perks of the Armorer skill) by simple quick saving and reloading. Likewise, a Fortify Armorer spell can do the same.

Then don't do that. It's a roleplayng game, try roleplaying a little

You can do the same (i.e., quicksave and reload on failure until you get it right) with lockpicking and lockpicks too. This is simply a matter of personal choice of whether you want to "cheat" or not - nobody forces you to do it. What surprises me about repair hammers and lockpicks in Oblivion is their relative abundance compared to Morrowind. While playing Oblivion I have not had to buy a single repair hammer or lockpick, or even had to pay for a repair (apart from enchanted items). Whether this is a good thing or not I am undecided, but it does mean that I don't visit armorers very often.

A valid point with the abundance of hammers/picks, but one might also remember that the hammers/picks had multiple uses to each one, though they did break more often lol.

In the tutorial alone I've always picked up enough lockpicks for the rest of the game (somewhere between 30 and 50!). Couple that with the incredible easiness of the lockpicking minigame, and buying lockpicks is a thing of the past. Add to it that the Skeleton Key isn't breakable and no longer has limited uses, and no lock in the game can hold you back. With the Skeleton Key it's theoretically possible to just press "Auto-Pick" until the lock is opened for every lock in the game, thus defeating the point of the mini-game. However, you can always choose not to pick up all those lockpicks and not to do the quest for the Skeleton Key.

No lock can hold you back, except the ones that aren't pickable.

How many lockpicks you need throughout the game depends on your skill and your chosen path. The first thing I ever did was make it to Gray Fox in the thieves guild (This is still my first time through Oblivion as well), and until I had my security skill up to about journeyman, it was still a little tough for me to do average and harder locks. I had to buy picks to do a bit of the thieves guild and dark brotherhood quests, and in total by now have used probably over 400 picks. Until the tumblers really got slow, I needed the extra picks. If you start out knowing how to pick locks (Or just having good reflexes) then thats your skill right there, you deserve it.

I find it frustrating when I fight with one goblin, look at my deadra claymore after it and realise it already lost five or ten points. The point is that weapons get damaged too quickly, but maybe it is because of the armorer skill. It is a bit unrealistic that u would use repair hammers over and over after u kill few creatures in some oblivion gate. Just imagine the scene...

If you feel that way dont use them until you get out of the oblivon gate, also you would expect a blade to go slightly blunt cuting through armor and bone.

Once you become a master of armorer, you don't have to worry about that.

Prev:  Game Balance - Persuasion and Speechcraft

Up: Game Balance

Next: Game Balance - Spells and Spell-Making