I can see there are many posts on armor ideas but I couldn't see an overall topic to discuss the amounts of variations and the armor ratings etc etc so I apologizes if I am going over covered ground.


From what I can understand with the armors complying with TES history:

The Nords who came before the Imperials had steel armor and the elven races had elven armor. The elven armor is made through ancient elven armor making skills and at the time was superior to the imperial armors. Imperials have a few specialized armors such as Imperial dragon armor / blade armor which were as good as elven armors but this is to more of an exception to common imperial armor of iron & steel.

(The armor from Knights of the Nine was an old armor but was made to the very highest Nordic / Imperial ability of that time and still remains one of the best.)

In the TES time period that we play, I see it like this:

Imperials became triumphant over the elven races started ruling the entire world, their technology grew and they found glass and ebony (& adamantium?) to be a tough raw material and though expensive, both glass and ebony armors came into Imperial manufacture for those that can afford it, Hence even the Imperial armor made for your character at the completion of the Oblivion main quest looking as though it was made from ebony and not steel.

Nords of Skyrim are a warrior people by nature and through their years of fighting they have specialized their armors making and have their own armors styles which are to a high standard (as in Morrowind - Bloodmoon).

Elven armor is still made to the style of their ancient arts and orcish armor is copied from elven armor.

The problem I find
As our characters play through the game we all end up going for the best armor of our chosen skill and we all end up looking the same as we aren't offered a great amount of choice. That or we down grade just to make our character look more authentic or original.

When I make a character I like to imagine the background & identity of my character as fitting with TES race & lore etc.
i.e.Dunmer or Bosmer character I do tend to stick to him wearing elven armor even though I know glass is better or if I make an orc I tend to stick to orcish armor & when making an Imperial do tend to stick with him wearing ebony, if I make an Argonian I stick to black leather etc etc.

What I'd like to see
More more choice of racial specific armors that are comparable on armor ratings.
More highs and lows within more armors that provide more choices to choose from. i.e. one armor might be good in a specific area but lacks in another.
We know already that armor restricts magic users hence them wearing robes. heavy armor restricts stealth and acrobatics hence assassins, thieves & wood elves using lighter armors. heavy armor is tougher but weights more making the character slower. More than one of each would be better.

That or if we all want to make our characters the best they all end up wearing either daedric or glass.


Anyone else feel the same?

I figured elven armor in Oblivion was ayleid (heartland high elves) mithril, relics of a lost civilization, similar to dwemer armor. Thus it would fit better for a dunmer to wear glass or ebony as those materials are commonly produced only in Morrowind. Orcish would also not be a copy of elven but rather an corruption of it, similar to how the orcs are corrupted elves, in addition it looks nothing like elven. Iron, steel, leather and fur would probably be produced by local armorers and would thus follow local styles.

I'd finally want to see a difference between shape and material. Instead of mail -> iron -> steel -> ebony, what about "iron plate", "steel plate", "ebony plate" and "iron mail", "steel mail", and "ebony mail"? That way the armor gets better (although also possibly heavier etc), but remains an unique type of armor. Another example would be fur -> leather -> padded cloth -> padded leather or sth for light armor.

So if my Nord doesn't want to wear anachronistic-looking plate armor, he'll just go with the best mail variant to be found.

The Dunmer character I made in Oblivion wore it as it was the closest thing to Bonemold. It just said Elven armor so I imagined it as Bonemold as it looks the closest. Altmer are culturally more pure magic users so I imagine the majority of them in enchanted magicians robes as armor restrict spell casting.


Sure it is mined in Morrowind but when you visited the mines in Morrowind it was the Imperials that were mining the raw material and had total control over them. I'm reckoning they were shipped off throughout the Empire still as a raw material. Much of it going to the Imperial city as that is the heart of where the wealth and business is.

Dunmer had variations of Bonemold armors which was specific to them.

How about seeing a return of the Bonemold armor to TES. Made to the highest quality so that those playing with Dunmer hero can choose this armor as they progress?

That and similar armors for the other races to work to? I mean we get orcish armor. why not Dunmer or Argonian? Another thing is the armor type could be more specific to the race which would add the whole background of TES. i.e. an Argonian or an elf would normally wear a lighter armor so it would be unnatural to make an Argonian or Elven heavy armor.

.. unless the elves were orcs that is :biggrin:

Just going to add this in here - The Orcs are some of the finest armorers in Tamriel. They produce unique armor that is certainly not copied from elves. They have their own culture, and along with it ther own weapons and armor. Their smithing skills grant them respect and envy from the other races. Straight out of the lore, not my liking of Orcs, btw.

The Orcish armor in SK seems to really emphasize a samurai-esque style with heavy, knight-like qualities. It has some elements that look like ebony armor, but I can't say for sure what it's made of aside from the classical steel variation. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4lrm97dBqNo/TUFlfgtiZ1I/AAAAAAAAAYE/g2GtrsgTo60/s1600/artofskyrim_003_orc.jpg

Morrowind had 16+ armour types, and they all looked very unique.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Item_Materials_and_Styles#Armor

Theyre not just a boring suit of armour, they actualy got some art style to them. And then they also have improved versions of those armours as well which are of a better quality and again look slightly different.

The problem with MW was that a lot of the armors, for all their unique styles, were completely useless. Take light armor for example: a brand new character could get a full chitin set from Sedya Neen and Balmora, rendering all the nordic fur and netch leather sets useless, because their stats were a lot worse. But after chitin there was a LOOONG gap until you could afford glass armor and there was nothing in between the two. So for most of the game my light armor chars would run around in chitin, all looking the same and with no sense of progression.

Sure, in Oblivion most high level characters would wear either daedric or glass, but at least you'd have gotten newer and better armor types every once in a while.

Completely teh opposite for me.

Im new to morrowind so for a while the best I could find was Netch Leater armour. And then I got attacked by the dike Brotherhood while I was sleeping so I took his armour, and I've been using it ever since.

In Oblivion I know where to get the best armours in teh game straight away, making all the 5 other armour types useless.

This.

I want to see more versability on every armor. Best armors should be rare, VERY rare (I guess they won't, of course), but at least there should be some sense on wearing a Steel armor or Artic Fur armor at high levels; something like "minor armors" giving some sneak o magic bonuses, giving each armor specific resistances (steel being better vs slash or ice while leather being better vs blunt or shock, etc...) That way, we could have a list of armors having increasing values while being slighty worse in other values, so could be lorewise to wear your favourite armor even if it's not the "obvious" glass/daedric armors.

Chitin armor in Morrowind looked way better than Glass, but it was a lot worse; complete set of iron and steel looked good too.

Being a thief in glass or chainmail (wich looked very nice to me) armor made no sense, while keeping Leather armor all the way could be a lot lorewise and senseful.

Oh, and as we are here... anyone thinking (like me) that traders should be something more than trash-buyers? I'd like to see a TES where traders sell useful things and ONLY buy very unique items; theres should be fences, of course, and some kind of flea market to sell stuff at low prices (no more 50.000 g items like in Morrowind), but "regular" traders shouldn't buy all our sh*t. I don't remember to buy not a single armor, weapon, potion or gem neither in Morrowind, nor in Oblivion.

In morrowind general traders buy most all stuff for low price, armorers only buy armor/weapons, book sellers only buy books, clothiers only buy clothes, etc. So if you have alot of loot, you do have to shop around.

Okay, id like to see
Full face helmets. ( Was quite upset with the lack of full face helmets in oblivion)
Ninja suits. I dont know if they would fit in with the lore, but i think it would be great. Maybe add the morag tong or something with them. I like playing stealthy, a ninja suit would just top that off.
Magicka infused armor that glows, like the tattoo's do in fable (no, i am not comparing TES to fable)
Clothes. Good looking clothes, the ones in oblivion svcked balls.
Hooded capes. (with the choice to have hood up or down)
Gillie suit. it's a silly idea but i think they look cool. Could be used for stealth hunting or something
FULL FACED HELMETS
Customizable Armour. Paint it. You can forge things in this if i remember correctly, so maybe you could add some gold in there to give it a nice trim
Troll suit. (couldnt think of anything else to contribute )

I sold items for 20k+ more gold in Morrowind. The point here is a little of common sense; is really plausible to sell ten piezes of armor and fifteen weapons to any armorer every two days? I can't think of any smith or weapon/armor traders buying thousands kilo of armor every week; I'd see more sense on having traders who sell you armor, weapons, etc... a few fences who buy "everything" (stolen), and some kind of flea market to buy/sell everything, probably lower quality things and, of course, lower prices. Seems senseful to me.

Depending on the new crime system, could be plausible or not to sell stolen items only to fences.

Wholly agree with you, in terms of more uniqueness to each armour set atleast. I was going to make a topic myself on this a while back, but for some reason didn't.
I just want, within the different armour classes of Light and Heavy armour, for there to be different characteristics to different armour. You could then choose what you think suits your character best, rather than going for the one with the highest protection rating, and this would add ever more individuality to your character.
Some armours within the Heavy Armour category, for example, should be more encumbering but more durable than a lighter set. Others could have different effects on your Fatigue, Speed, etc.

I hate that every late-game oblivion character of mine looked the SAME. I was always wearing full Daedric... because that's the best armor.

One thing I miss about Morrowind is where you could chose to wear different robes on top and where there were plenty of strong armors to chose from... finding Daedric really was a rarity... and there were items with such good spell effects competing with the Daedric, that you hesitated to wear the Daedric armor anyhow.

So much more RP potential... so much customization...

I loved being able to wear a monk robe over my 1 billion gold armor... so I "blended in"... I like to blend in when I RP, so prancing around in Daedric in Oblivion really kinda killed it for me.

Vsions said that females will be well represented, so it seems armor will be more diverse.

Like pretty much everyone here I do agree that armor should be more unique and more practical than it has been in the past TES games. In Morrowind, the first few tiers of armor (depending on which type) could usually be completely useless because you could find something like the third tier almost right away. Some gave the example of being able to buy full chitin in Seyda Neen; making fur and leather useless, which is exactly what I'm talking about here. However, Morrowind had a great selection of armor with different looks and properties. Oblivion, however, did it the other way around. You generally made use of each tier of armor for a decent portion of the game, but there was very little uniqueness or variance among the armors. As with most things, I think finding the balance between Oblivion and Morrowind will be the best; I think the dev's are aware of this and will most likely try to do so.

Side comments: OP's suggestion that Orcish armor is a copy of elven is just plain wrong. Orcs are some of the best smiths in Tamriel, and their armor is very unique to their culture, and of very high quality. As for the materials they use, I believe it is generally some type of steel. Second, Elven armor is not simply Elven armor, as it was sort of suggested in Oblivion. The elven armor in Oblivion was ayleid-style armor, just like dwemer armor in Morrowind. There are many different types of Elves in Tamriel, and each have their own unique styles, and use different materials based on the materials available to them. Third; The Blade's armor is not a type of imperial armor. It is an Akaviri armor left behind from the various Akaviri invasions, as well as travelers. Just like Cloud Ruler Temple was an akaviri building left behind. The Blade's are largely influenced by akaviri culture; hence why they use such things. The akaviri have not been seen in tamriel for quite some time now, for reasons unknown (perhaps a civil war) so the Blade's armor is limited, since the imperials don't actually know how to make it.

Think I got everything I wanted to out of the way...O.o

Quote from the UESP


"Orcish armor is an ornate, light steel plate design which is worn over cloth padding resulting in a light and comfortable fit when compared to other steel plate designs. The armor is based on High Elven designs and is somewhat expensive to purchase."

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Orcish

Yh like others have said. The top armors basically do away with the others.

What we need is a bit more variety at the top. Racial related armors would be good. We have orcish armor. We have elven armor (but we don't know which elven race) We've seen Nordic armor in passed games, Why not permanently include a Nordic, Argonian, Bosmer, Khajiit & Dunmer armors that designed exclusively to suit that particular race?

i.e. heavy armor for Nord. Light armor for Khajiit etc etc.

BASED on elven design, not a copy of it. There's a bit of a difference there. And Orc's are still some of the best smiths in Tamriel, regardless of their cultural or design influences. Ever wonder why orcs got a passive blacksmithing racial bonus since their inception, and not High Elves? The Altmer aren't great smiths, The Orcish armor is only aesthetically similar to Altmerish armor; it only looks similar, it's not made the same.

RACIST!!
what if my nord isnt into big steel armor? becouse he isnt...He's stealthy...Well, as stealthy as a drunk nord can be.

Lots of things, sort of scattershot -

Oblivion actually went a ways toward addressing one problem, sort of, by setting a cap on AR and setting up the armor skills so that you could fairly easily exceed that cap with top of the line armor. That means that a high level character with a good heavy armor skill, for instance, gets no more protection out of Daedric than out of Ebony - both, with maxed heavy armor skill and all other things being equivalent, will grant 85AR. I believe, though I'm not sure and I'd have to check it out in-game, that with 100 heavy armor skill and at least 75 armorer (for the 125% repair perk), you can even get 85AR out of Dwarven. If not, then close to it. I see that as at least a way of dealing with the issue - of making it so that alternative armors aren't quite so crippled and it's not absolutely necessary to go to the highest grade available.

Beyond that, I'd really like to see some way of doing variations on the basic types - like a low-grade, medium-grade and high-grade version of each type of armor, so, for instance, at the beginning, your light armor thief is in low-grade fur. Later he can upgrade to, for instance, mithril or to a medium-grade fur that's roughly equivalent. That's something that was sort of done in Bloodmoon, with their fur armors specifically, and is hopefully something that will be transferred to Skyrim.

There could also be variations on type sort of like the Nordic armors in Morrowind - Nordic fur for light, Nordic ring mail for medium and Nordic troll bone (and, with Bloodmoon, Nordic mail) for heavy. That'd be a good way to help define characters - an Elven version of light and a separate Elven version of heavy, for instance. Similar styles, but obviously different and obviously either light or heavy.

Somehow though, through all of that, durability has to be addressed. I can, and do, set up characters in Oblivion who wear low-grade armors at high levels, especially leather and iron, just because I like the way they look. The problem though is that the armor constantly breaks at high levels. One swipe from a brown bear and my leather boots are history. Granted, they aren't instantly unequipped like they were in Morrowind, so I still get the advantages of whatever enchantments are attached to them, but still, it'd be better if there were some way to make them at least a bit more durable.

There's a mod I've used off and on that lets you combine armor pieces and end up with a nicer piece. The basic concept is that, for instance, you go through two iron cuirasses and pull off the nicest parts of each of them and reassemble them into a new cuirass that's better quality than either of the two originals. I like the idea, but if it's not capped somehow or made fairly difficult (based on skill level), it's relatively easy to abuse. Granted, anyone's free to abuse their game if that's what they like, but I'd still rather see fewer opportunities for it.

I don't like the idea, mentioned earlier, of designing race specific armors, and particularly of limiting them to light or heavy or such. Yes, certainly most people who play a particular race play it a particular way - Orc heavy armor warrior or Bosmer light armor archer, for instance - but I don't think the game should limit you to that. Maybe provide something that gives those archetypes a bit of an advantage, but if I want to play a Bosmer tank or an Orc sneak thief, I don't see why the game should try to stop me.

I agree that there should be more variety in the higher level tiers of armor, but I'm not sure about them being racially based. For one thing, many of the races aren't known for their armor-making skills. Imperial armor is typically what the iron and steel armors you find in the games are. Khajiit don't usually wear armor in their homeland, let alone make it. Same with argonians, they just aren't known for their armor. Bosmer only use fur armors, which probably wouldn't be of better quality than something like glass or even the elven armor used in oblivion. I'm not sure about them being racially based, but I do agree that there should be more variety at the highest tier, rather than just one set that's better than all the rest (aside from special pieces like relics and artifacts, but those wouldn't/shouldn't make a full set, just a couple of pieces at most).

Considering all of this, what's the reasoning behind Daedric being one of the absolute best armor types?

Well the Ayleids and Altmer can wear strong armor and still cast at full effectiveness. It's the way they make their armor that allows for this as heavy magic users (Altmer and even more so, Ayleids) they know of ways to make strong armor that doesn't hinder the flow of magic. That is where Elven armor comes from, the great knowledge of the elves to make armor that is in harmony with magic.