We've all played Skyrim, or most of us have anyway. What are some pieces of gear that you didn't think was worth the trouble and effort you put into finding them? I'll start with Ahzidals Armor. You go through so much trouble to locate all of it, and it just looks like another ancient nord armor with questionable stats. Some are alright like the ring that adds new spells to your mage arsenal. But overall, there are better pieces of gear to bother with, even for mages.

Ahzidal's gear is great. The boots are the only apparel piece with the waterwalking enchant, the cuirass is great for heavy armor warriors, but I do think the gauntlets and helmet aren't as great. Ahzidal's mask and the black book you get aswell at the end of the quest are great too. The full set is useful for enchanting. The rings are great for conjuration or destruction users.

Honestly? Most stuff related to alchemy. I played the game a lot when I was on the console but I could never find the willpower to put any real time into making many potions. It usually became a case of simply spamming invisibility potions with chaurus (however you spell that) eggs and whatnot.

I don't know; maybe at some point I'll get into it on PC. I've had my eye on a mod that makes the potion textures really damn pretty for a while anyway. Haha.

If you're mainly referring to armour and weapons, I'd have to go with the Imperial and Stormcloak armours... what a mess. It's nice to wear outfits pertaining to the factions you're in and such but when you're just handed low-level crap and told to wear it it's rather disheartening. The case could be made however that it's because you're a new recruit and not worth the best materials yet, so my idea would be a system through which your standard uniform could be upgraded as you progressed the ranks of its respective army, with optional heavy variants being added at higher ranks. It would have really added something to the game IMO.

You get the officer's uniform which isn't that incredible either if I recall.

I can see how you think it's useful. But for me, It doesn't have the look of a dragon priest's armor. Atleast Deathbrand makes up for it by having the highest armor rating in the game and having abilities that most might find useful. But Ahzidal, well the effort you have to put into gathering so much gold coin and to find each piece. The ring is the only thing that interests me, the one for destruction. But finding it worries me the most. I'm visually impaired, so I can see not seeing it as a possibility.

I love the look of the Nightingale armour. Too bad the enchants on it are crap compared to what you can make yourself. For that reason it's not quite worth the hassle to get on vanilla Skyrim. As a result I've modded myself an enchantable set.

I can see why you'd say that. The blackguard's armor is pretty decent atleast. A shame we don't have the nocturnal cowl to go along with it.

Well... precisely.

If you don't (ab)use smithing and enchanting with every character you get to appreciate found equipment a lot more.

Yeah, I keep forgetting about that armour being available. Shame too that I've never been able to get Astrid's DB cowl to cover the face, never figured it out unless it just doesn't work for the player.

I myself rather like the nightingale armor and the blade goes along perfectly with the dawnbreaker too. The problem is, it is leveled armor, so you have to be in the 40's to get it at it's best. Deathbrand is not that at all though.

Well over half the quest-related weapons of armour, seeing as I can create items of the same stats that often look way better, anyways...

Most of the faction armors honestly. They usually look really nice but since most of them have (generally crappy) enchantments on them, that brings them down quite a bit. At least there's mods to fix that sort of thing.

I don't really like how the best unique armors can't be improved like crafted armors can.

This. I have a "barbarian" character who wears the Savior's Hide and the Krosis mask, and fights with Volendrung and Zephyr. I have another character, more of a knight, who carries Spellbreaker and Dawnbreaker. Played at "Adept," these characters need no custom crafting.

I forget if it was the Nightingale blade or bow when I got it for the first time, I was disappointed that I couldn't smith it up any.

Some of them you can, they just use different materials. Like the Nightingale uses void salts, an ingredient, to smith up the gear. Same with those ethereal weapons you get in Labyrinthian. They use ectoplasm in order to improve them at the forge. Other unique items use higher grade materials to improve like Ysgramor's Shield, Dawnbreaker, and Wuuthrad requiring ebony ingots to improve at the forge.

What I mean is that they don't double the AR from improvement like crafted armors can.

My idea would also involve things more ideally catered towards different types of characters. Options for mages at least - nothing fancy... I know there were time constraints and all that. Maybe just some retextured robes and hoods would have been nice.

I'd like to see hooded armors fully functional, personally speaking. Like the Vampire Royal Armor. It looks like it has a hood built into it. That hood is the reason I don't like using it.

Oh. Yeah, some armours don't benefit from smithing perks.

Curved swords. Curved... Swords.

They're hard to get, once the primary source has been dealt with, and you can't make your own. Not a great base damage to build on, either.

However, the pair in the Dragonborn expansion aren't bad. (Bloodscythe/Soulrender)

I dunno, I've always thought about pairing two one-handers together because I didn't like those swords very much. They kind've svck. They are definitely not worth the effort to get them either.

One could take the position that there's almost nothing in the game that's "worth the effort to get," since one can smith/enchant stuff that's better than most "reward items." But that would take a lot of the fun out of the game. I tend to take the position that "the effort" is what it's all about.

So I tend to build characters around certain artifacts or quests, without regard to how "powerful" the item is. Thus, I might have an anti-Thalmor "Blade" who wields Bolar's Oathblade, or a Kyne worshiper who uses Froki's Bow, even though it's a really terrible weapon.

The game gives us these "worthless" artifacts, which we can choose to see as useless, or as ways of playing out our characters' stories.

I know this sounds like an odd question, but can someone here get me a pic of the royal vampire armor's rear view? I want to see if it has a hood built in. And I want to see if that hood activates if you wear like... a mages hood for example.

Such images are easily found on Google, not to condescend. No it doesn't look like it (EDIT: Ah yes, sorry, I see it now; I must have been looking at a modded version; the following is still relevant). I don't think pieces of armour even do that in Skyrim, do they? Maybe my memory's bad. There are some annoying clipping issues with certain armour pieces when combined with mage hoods however.

The only thing I can think of that even does anything of the sort is Serana's Hood, but that's not actually part of her vampire armour - rather it's scripted to be taken off while indoors and so forth.