Skyrim:Heavy Armor

This article is about the skill. For the physical equipment, see Armor.

Skill: Heavy Armor
Specialization: Combat

Heavy Armor is the skill governing your ability to move and fight in heavy armor. Each skill point increases your armor rating from Heavy Armor by 0.4% (1.5% for NPCs). The Heavy Armor skill tree has a total of 8 perks, requiring a total of 12 perk points to fill.

In-game Description: Those trained to use Heavy Armor make more efficient use of Iron, Steel, Dwarven, Orcish, Ebony, and Daedric armors.

Additional types of heavy armor that are forgeable: Ancient Nord Armor, Bonemold Armor^DB, Chitin Heavy Armor^DB, Dragonplate, Imperial Armor, Nordic Carved Armor^DB, and Stalhrim Armor^DB. There are also a few types of generic, unforgeable, heavy armor: Dawnguard Heavy Armor^DG, Blades Armor, Falmer Armor, and Wolf Armor.

Skill Perks

Juggernaut

Fists of Steel

Cushioned

Conditioning

Well Fitted

Tower of Strength

Matching Set

Reflect Blows

Heavy Armor Perk Tree

Perk	Rank	Description	ID	Skill Req.	Perk Req.
Juggernaut	1	Increases armor rating for Heavy Armor by 20%.	000bcd2a	Initially Available
	2	Increases armor rating for Heavy Armor by 40%.	0007935e	20 Heavy Armor
	3	Increases armor rating for Heavy Armor by 60%.	00079361	40 Heavy Armor
	4	Increases armor rating for Heavy Armor by 80%.	00079362	60 Heavy Armor
	5	Increases armor rating for Heavy Armor by 100%.	00079374	0 80 Heavy Armor
Fists of Steel		Unarmed attacks with Heavy Armor gauntlets do their armor rating in extra damage.	00058f6e	30 Heavy Armor	Juggernaut
Cushioned		Half damage from falling if wearing all Heavy Armor: head, chest, hands, feet.	000bcd2b	50 Heavy Armor	Fists of Steel
Conditioning		Heavy Armor weighs nothing and doesn't slow you down when worn.	00058f6d	70 Heavy Armor	Cushioned
Well Fitted		25% Armor bonus if wearing all Heavy Armor: head, chest, hands, feet.	00058f6f	30 Heavy Armor	Juggernaut
Tower of Strength		50% less stagger when wearing only Heavy Armor.	00058f6c	50 Heavy Armor	Well Fitted
Matching Set		Additional 25% Armor bonus if wearing a matched set of Heavy Armor.	00107832	70 Heavy Armor	Tower of Strength
Reflect Blows		10% chance to reflect melee damage back to the enemy while wearing all Heavy Armor: head, chest, hands, feet.	00105f33	100 Heavy Armor	Matching Set

Comparison to Light Armor

Advantages:

• Heavy armor is more protective than light armor.
• You can deal more unarmed damage with the Fists of Steel perk. This can be combined with the Fortify Unarmed enchantment and an appropriate racial bonus to unarmed (if applicable) to provide a viable alternative to weapons and magic.
• More enemies may be engaged at once.
• Reflect Blows grants more offensive possibilities, allowing for more damage in the same amount of time.

Disadvantages:

• Heavy armor causes you to move more slowly than when wearing light armor (this may be negated by The Steed Stone or the Conditioning perk).
• Sprinting in heavy armor uses more stamina than sprinting in light armor or clothing (may also be nulled by The Steed Stone or the Conditioning perk).
• Heavy armor weighs more than light armor, which increases the chance of being detected while moving in stealth mode and leaves you unable to add as much to your inventory before your carry weight is exceeded (again, negated by The Steed Stone or the Conditioning perk).

Skill Increases

Character Creation

The following races have an initial skill bonus to Heavy Armor:

• +10 bonus: Orc
• +5 bonus: Imperial

Trainers

• Gharol in Dushnikh Yal (Expert)
• Farkas of the Companions in Whiterun (Master)
• Isran^DG in Fort Dawnguard (Master)
• Kuvar^DB in Thirsk Mead Hall (Master)

Note: Trainers that double as followers can train you for "free". They will still charge you, but you can get the gold you spent back by checking their inventory.

This exploit is no longer possible as of version 1.2.6 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.

Free Skill Boosts

• +1 Heavy Armor reward from Brunwulf Free-Winter in Windhelm for clearing a bandit hideout.
• +1 Heavy Armor reward (+1 every Combat skill) from Giraud Gemane (Bards College) for completing the quest Rjorn's Drum.
• +5 Heavy Armor (+5 every Combat skill) by selecting "The Path of Might" from the Oghma Infinium after completing the quest Discerning the Transmundane.

Skill Books

• 2920, MidYear, v6
• Chimarvamidium
• Hallgerd's Tale
• The Knights of the Nine
• Orsinium and the Orcs

Gaining Skill XP

• Armor skill increases are based on incoming damage, i.e. tougher enemies advance your armor skill faster.
• Regenerate Health potions and enchantments can help staying alive while training, potentially allowing to leave the game unattended. This can also be accomplished with natural health regeneration during brawling sessions with NPCs or fighting very weak enemies like skeevers, though skill gains will be very slow.
• Healing while getting bashed is a good way to train the Restoration skill in the process.
• Armor skills are best trained together with the Block skill.

Notes

• Once your Heavy Armor skill is level 30 or higher, guards will begin to say, "Best offense is a good defense, am I right?"
• Reflect Blows will not reduce damage taken. When it triggers, a melee attacker will take the full damage dealt to you, but you will still take that damage. You are only now sharing it.
• Heavy armor obviously protects better than light armor, but at the expense of being heavier in terms of carrying weight and giving a penalty to movement. The movement penalty lessens as the skill goes up, and the Conditioning perk eliminates both drawbacks. However, heavy armor is also noisier to move in than light armor, so it always adds a penalty to stealth. The Silence perk of the Sneak skill eliminates this drawback, as does the Muffle spell/enchantment. The weight and movement penalties can also be compensated with the Steed Standing Stone, so it's a possible alternative until the Conditioning perk is achieved, or replaced entirely if the player does not wish to spend a perk point.
• Heavy Armor is the only skill that can directly modify unarmed attacks by way of the Fists of Steel perk. The perk modifies the damage done by unarmed attacks by the worn gauntlets' base armor rating, unmodified by perks, enchantments, or skill levels. This means Daedric gauntlets only add 18 damage to your unarmed attacks no matter what. The Khajiit Claws racial ability should be on par with the Orcish gauntlets (15 base armor rating). The Claws ability stacks with this perk (so Claws + 100% base armor rating of gauntlets + base damage = damage). Making use of the Fortify Unarmed Damage enchantment will further raise the damage done with fists.
• Note that when leveling up heavy armor, you HAVE to take damage from an outside source (i.e Equilibrium (Alteration skill) does not level up your armor) and the amount of damage will dictate the amount of experience you gain (NOT the number of hits you take). One way of leveling up Heavy Armor is by fighting giants. From a starting level of 15, by training against a giant you can reach a level of over 50+ within 5 mins of getting bludgeoned, provided you don't die. A Restoration spell (Healing, Grand Healing, etc) would be most helpful while training. Note that at early levels, the giant's ground shatter attack with his club is often fatal, unless you have a lot of Health to spare.
  • A far slower way is to brawl with good enough armor (and/or health-regeneration enchantments) that you can survive indefinitely. It takes about 20 minutes to gain the final level (99 to 100), but lower levels will be faster.

Bugs

• With the Conditioning perk, when you carry more weight than you could without the perk, and you save a game, upon loading from inside the game, you will be over-encumbered (as if you didn't have the perk) until you open your inventory. This typically occurs only after an event, such as your death, removing all of your active effects. If you die and then quickload, you may become affected by this bug until you relaunch the game. The same behavior can be observed with the Steed Stone effect which is identical to Conditioning and the Light Armor perk Unhindered. ^?
• Ebony armor is affected by the Light Armor perk Unhindered instead of the Heavy Armor perk Matching Set.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.0 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
• When wearing an ebony helmet in third person, you may notice that your character's shadow does not have a head.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.2.2 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.