Oblivion talk:Armor/Archive 2

This is an archive of past Oblivion talk:Armor discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Light Armor is bad for you, period

The page says that once Mastered, Glass and Daedric are "essentially" the same. This is true as far as it goes, but is horribly misleading since it implies that Light and Heavy armors are equally good overall, so which type you choose is a matter of preference, which isn't remotely true.

Two of the best items in the game, one of which is a "required" piece of endgame gear, are Heavy shields. The Light Mastery perk applies only when ALL your armor is Light. Choosing Light Armor thus puts you at a significant disadvantage. Realistically, you should NEVER wear Light Armor unless you have a piece that provides an Enchantment that you can't get any other way; or are less than a Journeyman in Sneak, in which case you should go barefoot anyway. Choosing Light Armor as "your" type for the course of the game is simply always a mistake, even without taking its "normal" Health inferiority into account. — Unsigned comment by 71.9.18.26 (talk) on 9 October 2008

That's... entirely personal opinion. My characters almost always prefer light armor (with the exception of the Escutcheon of Chorrol, which I assume is the "required" item you mean) and in fact as soon as I get powerful enough I tend to run around in weightless clothing like the Dark Shirt and Black Hood (usually with the Black Wide Pants for a coordinated look) and avoid armor altogether. Claiming that making light armor a choice is a "mistake" is vastly overstating its drawbacks. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 08:44, 9 October 2008 (EDT)

If you wear Light Armor, either you give up the UberShields or you give up the 150% bonus. Both are non-trivial losses that leave your character significantly weaker (from level 10 onwards, not just at endgame). I'm sure YOU can run around naked and still thrash the game on maximum difficulty by now, but just because you can cope with the handicap doesn't mean it isn't there, or that the "advice" on the page should gloss over it. Wearing Clothing at least has one advantage over either type of Armor, but deciding on Light Armor as a long-term plan, which was my main point, ONLY has drawbacks when compared to Heavy Armor. - Aliana71.9.18.26 09:50, 9 October 2008 (EDT)

This is still just your opinion! First, if you're maxxing out Light Armor at level 10 then you've already ruined your character in terms of maximum possible attribute values. Second, if you're getting the Escutcheon at level 10 you're getting a dramatically inferior version of the shield anyway. Realistically, you are not going to get the LA mastery perk until level 25-30 at a minimum, but which time it's not that big a deal anyway.

Now, that's all just my opinion, but the very fact that I disagree with you and can put up cogent arguments to support my point of view demonstrates that the situation is not as clear as you claim and that it shouldn't go on the article. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 12:40, 9 October 2008 (EDT)

I'm not suggesting it should: just that the article is misleading because it ignores the "side-effects" of your choice, and that this talk page is a good place to note those. From your replies, I think you're still missing my point quite a bit, so I'll try again (though obviously I'm having a hard time explaining myself clearly). The level 10 reference is for Spell Breaker, not The E of C or any skill/stat/whatever, and regardless of how valid your arguments may be in some specific context (though I'm at a loss to come up with one) and regardless of whether you use Obsessive Leveling or not, LA is ultimately equal *at best* to HA in some aspects, always inferior in others, and superior in none at all.

To look at it another way: say you have 100 in all stats and skills, and every item in the game. You can make a case for wearing Clothing (no spell penalty), and for wearing HA (the only way to have 100+% Damage Reflection without sacrificing "extra" slots or AC or other bonuses), but you can't make any case where LA isn't the worst of the three options in a "gameplay" case. Unless you think you can, in which case this would be the place for it, and I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Really. Because Glass IS so much prettier than Daedric. :) Aliana71.9.18.26 14:48, 9 October 2008 (EDT)

Well... the article talks about Glass being equivalent to Daedric, not about bits of glass armor combined with bits of heavy. There is not a single NPC that mixes armor like that. However, now you've mellowed your comments a bit I can agree with you, but you should try to make yourself clear from the outset rather than coming out with statements like "Realistically, you should NEVER wear Light Armor", which is clearly untrue. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 01:25, 10 October 2008 (EDT)

Actually, there are plenty of NPCs that mix Light and Heavy armor, especially once you factor Bound armor in as well. But they're not relevant to this discussion anyway, because aside from Umbra I doubt there are any that are Masters in either. --Aliana 06:23, 30 October 2008 (EDT)

Let's not forget that until a player reaches the higher levels of armor mastery, encumberance can be a largely determinative factor as to which type they'll use. Just as light armor doesn't reach full armor rating until mastery, heavy really weighs you down until you get the skill up. For some, the ability to move faster and carry more sellable loot is worth the loss in armor rating. There is a significant amount of valid player preference when it comes to armor. –Xmlninja 09:30, 9 October 2008 (EDT)

FYI, the "slowdown" issue is now covered in http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion_talk:Movement_Formulas . I'm not arguing against "Player Preference". If someone wants to wear Glass because it's prettier than Daedric, or not wear helmets at all, that's entirely their choice. But it doesn't change the fact that, ultimately, Light Armor is the worst of the 3 options by a large margin. - Aliana71.9.18.26 09:57, 9 October 2008 (EDT)

Combining Bound Helm/Boots/Gauntlets/Shield with a Glass or Amber Cuirass and Greaves results in a far superior armor rating to Daedric and Madness, respectively. In fact, from the start to the finish of both armor skills, the only advantage heavy has over light is the health, and some higher armor rating at the VERY start. That can mean enough to some people to make heavy armor a better choice for them over the lesser weight of light. However, at skill 100, Bound light armor provides far superior armor to Bound heavy armor, and as mentioned - glass is prettier than daedric (the two pieces you should be wearing in combat at least!)

You mean UNbound Heavy Armor, but otherwise that's a really good, really insightful comment. The only problem is, Oblivion is almost unplayably broken without UOP, and UOP fixes all the Permanent Bound Item exploits. :(

Ultimately, I got sick of Bethesda's petty-minded attitude on certain things that are there just to make it seem like you're getting more "hours of play time" than you really are so I learned how to use the toolset (badly, but enough) and now I have REALLY pretty armor from ?tesnexus? that never needs repairing. :) Aside from being absolutely gorgeous, it makes the game SO much more enjoyable not to have to constantly micro-manage that sort of garbage ALL the time, over and over and over again. --Aliana 05:58, 30 October 2008 (EDT)

Except, that the main point of my original comments still stands. Light Armor, Bound or otherwise, still means that using one of the game's two UberShields costs you the 150% bonus, thus making your armor hugely inferior to Heavy in terms of protection, regardless of how much more Health it has.

I wonder though (I haven't checked, because I never waste time on Light Armor) - if you're using a bow or a two-hander, do you still lose the bonus if you equip an UberShield? I'm guessing "not", since you don't take a Spell Effectiveness penalty if you do that, in which case your scheme probably works very nicely. --Aliana 06:16, 30 October 2008 (EDT)

I still haven't seen anything to counter the argument that Light Armor weighs less. You can carry more additional loot when wearing Light Armor. Especially at the earlier levels, when your Strength is still quite low, this can make a difference.

As for the NPCs that mix armor types, the only times I have seen it were slips from Bethesda with single NPCs, where they selected the wrong levelled list. --Timenn < talk > 06:32, 30 October 2008 (EDT)

The Maximum armor rating (85) can be achieved with sigil stones. Furthermore, probably by a developer's mistake, you can find 25% frost and shock shield sigil stones at level 9. Witch, IMHO, makes the AR somewhat irrelevant if you choose to improve your armor with shield enchantments.

I think you're also forgetting that heavy and light armour (yep, I'm British) contribute to different attributes on levelling. Light Armour raises Speed, Heavy Armour raises Endurance. If you don't plan on raising Endurance you're probably better off with light seeing as you won't be getting in that many fights anyway and could do with the extra speed for keeping your distance. 92.2.208.7 08:52, 13 June 2009 (EDT)

I just wanted to point out to whoever said that (in basics) that you need to have heavy armour for endgame equipment that I have an endgame set that is all light armour and reflects all melee damage and absorbs all spells.

Redirects

I think I mentioned this at some point to Rpeh or GK (it's been a while) but I had an idea once that there could be some simple redirects... Like "Oblivion:Daedric_Armor" would redirect to this page. I don't know anything about redirects (or about the wiki in general xD), else I would try it out. Also, this could be extended to Oblivion:*Type*_Weapons and Oblivion:Weapons. Atreus 03:01, 4 January 2009 (EST)

Umm... it's already been done, quite a while ago. For example, Daedric Armor, or in the case of weapons, Dagger. --Nephele^Talk 03:05, 4 January 2009 (EST)

Erruh. I must have missed /something/. Probably a stupid misspell. I got it. Aaaanyways. This is why I shouldn't be wandering around the web at 3 AM. And sorry for putting the inquiry at the top. Should've seen a chronological pattern of posts. Also, 3 AM. Eesh. You can delete this all if you want. Atreus 03:11, 4 January 2009 (EST)

I had an idea, didnt know who to ask

moved here from my talk page --GuildKnight^Talk2me 01:09, 9 January 2009 (EST)

i was playing recently, and i noticed the style of armour changes if you're male or female... but on this site, the images of the armour you display are for males only.. i was wondering if someone could collect the full sets for females, and put the images of them under the armour heading, like the males have been done

cheers — Unsigned comment by 90.200.63.185 (talk) on 30 December 2008

I was thinking the exact same thing! I would provide the pictures myself, but alas I don't play Oblivion on a PC to screencapture them. I also don't have a good enough camera to snap them off my screen. Perhaps I'll see what I can do if no one has done it by then. It'd be a worthy addition.

--Stephanie 22:56, 13 April 2009 (EDT)Stephanie

I've been enjoying this site as a resource for a while, finding it quite helpful as I play Oblivion. Thought I'd give something back... so, I've done a full set of screenshots with a female (Redguard) in all the stock armors. I don't have edit privilege on the Armor page, though. If someone that does would like to take the gallery from my user page and set it up... please do! You might want to copy and paste the full gallery section, as I removed the extraneous "Linkable Entry"s from the galleries of male armor as well. --Mirai22 01:28, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I just added them. –Elliot ^talk 01:41, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Weird Sheild Glitch

I'm a mage that carries a staff 100% of the time but one time i tried to equip a shield while carring a staff. It told me that it was equipped but my character was still holding my staff. I couldn't use or see the shield and it didn't affect my magic %. It didn't raise my armore rating but the sheild magical properities were still in effect. So now i can wear a sheild and a staff with no penalties for magic and still get it's magical atributes.Georgeguy 17:49, 29 April 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, it's true. Every shields acts like that. Your spell effectiveness won't decrease and you won't receive any armor rating, but you will get the enchantments on that particular shield. This happens every time when your character equips a shield while you actually can't use a shield at that moment, like when you are using a staff, while fighting hand to hand or using a two-handed weapon. A nice little exploit. Wolok gro-Barok 18:03, 29 April 2009 (EDT)

Thanks for the quick reply:)Georgeguy 18:50, 30 April 2009 (EDT)

Not an exploit or glitch, the description reads "constant effect", so it is meant to act that way.— Unsigned comment by 203.206.107.195 (talk) on 26 May 2009

You strap the shield to your back. thats why you dont see it but still get the effects, shame it isnt modeled on your chars back though \;9 — Unsigned comment by 92.1.88.63 (talk) on 22 June 2009

I don't believe that is really the case. It just a mishap on the dev's part. --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 13:54, 22 June 2009 (EDT)

I believe that if you get hit while wearing the shield it will still count to leveling up your armour skills.

Armor rating/Protection

Something i couldn't find out in the article is whether the protection you get depends on the rating of the armor covering the bodypart that gets hit, or the combined rating of all armor. Is it better to wear, lets say, a robe with the armor rating 10, or cuirass and greaves that have 6 each? — Unsigned comment by 78.69.109.203 (talk) on 13 July 2009

All armor equipment and shield magnitudes add up to a total AR (Armor Rating). This rating is used when calculating damage done. The individual body part that gets hit is only used to determine which armor piece is being damaged. So in your case the greaves and cuirass would have a total AR of 12, which is better than the robe's AR of 10. --Timenn-<talk> 10:55, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Chainmail Helmet

I was wondering if there was any chainmail helmets to be found at level 1, I know about the level charts and what-not, but it would be highly convienient for me, and so far I haven't found any.-[user Kaito]

There are several.

Savlian Matius' Tent outside Kvatch

Anvil Guard Barracks

Best Goods and Guarantees

Colovian Traders

Blacksmith Quarters, Anvil Castle

Kvatch Castle Rooms

Top floor, North Guard Tower, Imperial City.

Try those. –rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 21:38, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Blackwater cuirass

Yo.

I noticed there's no info on the leather cuirass used by the blackwater brigands. Either that or I'm being blind. But not only do their cuirasses look different in a number of ways, they give better protection and cost more than the regular leather cuirass. Is there a reason they're not included? Major Tom 13:09, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

No idea about that one, but we do have information on the Blackwood Cuirass ;) –rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 13:21, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

He is talking about the armor the bandits in the "An Unexpected Voyage" quest wear. There is some small mention of those cuirasses on both page you linked to (under leather cuirass) and on the quest page itself. -–Apophis2412

Ah yes. Forgot about that one. My bad. –rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 14:46, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Console command

Is there any console command to change a given item into light/heavy/no armor? There's a lot of mods that add new items as light armor and I'd rather they be non-armor items. Thanks :) — Unsigned comment by 68.5.59.21 (talk) on 18 August 2009

No, there is no console command for that. You will have the change the items from the mods in the Construction Set yourself. --Timenn-<talk> 18:03, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Is there any way to do it besides the construction set? I don't have it because I'm kind of short on HD space :P :) — Unsigned comment by 68.5.59.21 (talk) on 18 August 2009

No. The CS is only 7 MiB, surely one of your mods can make place for that? --Timenn-<talk> 21:09, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, really? I thought it was bigger than that, that's why I didnt get it... Thanks a bunch, then. I'll get to work and try to figure it out :)

Is the formula complete?

I tried using the armor formula to determine the base value of a set of mod armor, but I think there must be a step missing because the formula is returning values much higher than I am actually seeing. For my examples I am using a level 9 character with 61 Luck, 47 Light Armor and 15 Heavy Armor. The formula as given in this article with the addition of the base armor skill modified by Luck should look like this:

((.35 + .0065 * (skill + (.4 * (Luck - 50)))) * 100%) * Base Armor Value = Effective Armor Value

Assuming the armors are at full health (she does not have the Expert Armorer perk), this means that she should be getting an effective defensive value of 17 for Leather Armor, and 21 for Steel. But this is NOT what I am seeing in the game. Instead, she gets 8 for Leather and 11 for Steel, in both cases about half of the figure returned by the formula. Is there a divisor missing? Or is the armor value as shown in the inventory not the true value of the armor? Phelaran 00:07, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

No the value as shown in the inventory is not the Base Armor Value. It is actually the Effective Armor Value. The Base Armor Value can actually never be seen in-game (as only the modified values are shown), instead we used the Construction Set to get these values. If you are good at maths you can (approximately) calculate the Base Armor Value by reversing the formula, but that would be pushing it ;) --Timenn-<talk> 17:57, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Imperial Legion Armor (Heavy)

We can't forget that awesome armor the defending force of Imperial City wears: Imperial Legion Armor. Not only does it look cool, it has pretty decent defense, too. Also, there are more heavy armors that have been forgotten!
-Dragon Armor
-And all the other City Uniforms
What happened to these!?
-Hemophobe 18:59, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

They are covered at Oblivion:Guard Uniforms. The article is accessible from the Oblivion-Armor category. --Timenn-<talk> 11:16, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Mithril Armour Fixed Locations?

I have a level 35 Nord that I have been collecting every weapon and armour set with. As I finally rounded up what I believed to be all of the armour, I noticed that I didn't have any mithril armor! I have found boots, the cuirass, and the shield so far, but I still need a Mithril Helmet, Mithril Gauntlets, and Mithril Greaves. Does anyone know where any of those three items may be fixed in the world? If not fixed, then where can I farm Mithril armor at a higher level? Please and thank you everyone! Vashmanseven 15:56, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about fixed locations, but you missed the chance to get them off NPCs- they appear from levels 10-15. Volthawk 16:32, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I was lucky enough to find the Mithril armour I do have now in various shops. I suppose I will just need to keep looking. >.<; Vashmanseven 17:29, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

elven armor

i cant find any elven armor and im on lvl 17 can anyone help?— Unsigned comment by The bad argonian (talk • contribs) at 20:34 on 6 December 2009

Bandits wear elven armor between level 15 and level 20, so your best bet will be to look for Bandit Dungeons. ^Talk Wolok gro-Barok _{Contributions} 10:53, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Chainmail/Mithril Locations

I am looking for locations for a full set of chainmail , or if possible a full set of mithril.

Also, if anyone can tell me where I can find a Silver bow it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, (58.161.18.112 11:19, 7 December 2009 (UTC)) Anonymous

On this article, it says,

"

Most items are randomly spawned from lists based on the player's level. The following table describes the minimum level at which an armor type begins to show up for the player; lower level armor will also randomly appear. Enchanted versions of each armor type will begin to appear 2 levels later; see Generic Magic Apparel for more information. See Leveled Lists for details on how these lists are used to determine the probabilities of individual items appearing.

Level	Light Armor	Heavy Armor
1	Fur	Iron
3	Leather	Steel
6	Chainmail	Dwarven
10	Mithril	Orcish
15	Elven	Ebony
20	Glass	Daedric

This table applies to the vast majority of the armor you will encounter, both on enemies and in loot. One general exception is vendors in stores: they will not offer Chainmail/Dwarven armor until level 10 and Mithril/Orcish until level 15. Vendors will never offer the higher quality equipment.

"

And none of the Non Random Armor are chainmail or mithril. So, basically, look for it around levels 6-14. --GK^Talk2me 11:39, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

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