Would it be a total waste to mix heavy armor and light armor?
I have heavy armor as a major and really low light armor in the minor's, i guess it would give me a real boost in speed the first few levels,
But thats just a plus for my character.
Otherwise tho, would it be a waste?

I have one character who uses light armor and heavy armor and wears a cloth hood, and mixing armor works pretty well if your into it. It will add a little to speed but more importantly until you have a high sneak level, boot weight affects your sneaking, so having light boots will let you sneak better. Do you use a shield? If you do then replacing your boots, helm, and gauntlets with light armor might help out. You will get lighter and sneakier while still having good protection and spell effectiveness. The character I do this on is an archer-type you uses a shield and longblade when enemies get too close. This works well for that character so if yours is like him you might have success

Hey thanks for the response.
My character is a nord knight who uses a longblade and a shield, as it looks now he has a full heavy armor set.
Altho he rarely sneaks, it would be kinda good for him to learn how to be agile.( nords huh)

So what would you armor types would you recommend for like gauntlets and such?

Most people here mix'n match too. No big loss but there are a couple of small benefits of wearing all one type of armor. That particular armor skill will obviously increase faster, the more pieces of that type you wear. You also get a slight bonus of Armor Rating (physical protection points) if you wear a full set of armor of one type (all light or all heavy armor). A full set includes helmet, gauntlets, shield, cuirass, greaves, and boots.

Since Oblivion has the leveling thing there aren't going to be any outstanding artifacts or other good armor to choose from at low levels. Knights of the Nine would be a really good option, but if heavy armor is higher than light armor for you then you will only get heavy armor. There might be a console command or mod or something to overcome this but I play on the 360 so I don't really know. You can do some shivering isles and get amber gauntlets/boots but it will take a decent amount of work. Otherwise its really fur or leather so its whatever you think looks better I guess because leather isn't that much better than fur. Also I just realized that if you murder a city guard (not legion) then you can probably loot chainmail from him which would be significantly better than fur/leather, not sure if they have boots or gauntlets though.

My characters have always dressed for fashion only. I have played several armor wearers in the past and they leveled both types for the flexibility to comfortably wear whatever pieces of whatever types they thought looked good. Sure it takes longer to bring up both armor types and is less efficient, but the game is easy enough that doing so doesn't hurt a thing. Sometimes, these characters would buy some training in whichever armor skill was lower at the time. Go for looks!

Oh, and I agree about hoods being better than helmets. Helmet hair - ugh! Oh, and if you're a wood elf, those stupid helmets really squash your ears. No headgear is best, but hoods aren't so bad - especially if you have long blond hair and are trying to stay out of sight in a dungeon.

I've taken to mixing armor with almost all of my armor-wearing characters, at least early in the game. I don't find that it slows skill increase enough to be a real problem, and it's handy either way-- the ones who are going to end up wearing light armor get some early endurance boosts from heavy experience plus the extra protection and durability of heavy and the ones who are going to end up wearing heavy armor get a better chance to sneak successfully until they can get sneak to journeyman. And it just provides more style options.

I also dress for fashion. I do have access to some serious armor, but right now, my archer is wearing leather armor, a red silk hood, dwarven greaves, leather boots. It just looks pretty. And a side note that I found this morning before football, who came up with the idea for the look of huntsman pants on a female character? And a huntsman's vest? Am I really going to go hunting in a bra?

Whyn't? My powerful Warhammer wielding Sumi "Animetricia" smites evil in her high heels and thong.

Let's see. Chasing down a wounded deer in a reasonably supportive bra . . . versus wearing the guy's version that is simply an open front flimsy vest with no bra at all. Think about it.

Acadian is so right here. Sprinting around after a deer with no support sounds preeetty damn uncomfortable. They're huntsman's clothes, not warrior's clothes, they need to be good to hunt in = good to run and move in.

Maybe your character is out to distract while going in for the killing blow?

A lot of the NPCs in the game mix and match armor, especially enemy Battlemages it seems are fond of wearing light Boots and bracers and heavy cuirasses.

But as far as practicality and game mechanics goes, there are perks to mastering one type of armor, and you only get those perks if every piece of armor you're wearing is either Light or Heavy, so it really pays to specialize unless you're extremely into roleplaying or fashion.

We are!!! :dance:

i mix mash a lot to if i wear armor at all.
leather cuiras and boots + legion greaves and gauntlets look pretty good. add in a black hood and you have a great look. my full mage where's that combination and with class advantages he gains no bad spellefficiency since he specialized in magick and one of the armor types.

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here, so let me be clear. If you are wearing any armor at all, the best spell effectiveness you can ever have is 95%, with a couple small caveats:

- If you have a shield and a two handed weapon equipped, the shield will be 'equipped but not in use' - that means you get no armor or blocking benefit, but you do get the enchantment - and no penalty to spell effectiveness from the shield.
- If you have a simple mod like 'Spells be effective' installed, you can eliminate armor penalties to spell casting.

Reference / more info: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Magic_Overview#Using_Armor

Hubba hubba come get it boys!! *whips out bow and owns stag* :drool:

Actually I've found Heinrich's Shirt to be very nice, as well as the Dark Shirt. Ernest's Shirt is also very nice.

I agree. Heinrich's shirt (zero weight shirt with suspenders) is nice. Buffy likes it because it blends nicely into the walls of caves.

Here she is, wearing it along with arena hand wraps, buckskin greaves and buckskin boots:

http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv43/Acadian6/ScreenShot694.jpg

By Oxossis and Ians? - it really does blend well with cavern and rocky environments.

I personally like to extend the 'variety' of clothes to three only: adventuring, social/classy and xxxtremely intimate . Use chameleon on the adventuring and pretend it just does that blending (sorry, my lady will not change clothes in and out of caves, etc.... i lack the patience).

i just wear whatever has the best magical effect. for me, this choice has made me completely invisible hehehe

The problem with the game mechanics is that the perks of wearing all one type are less than those of not wearing any at all. At Heavy armor Mastery, your armor "weighs nothing" but limits your spell effectiveness to 95% and gives you 85% "weapon resist" even with enchantments. The same for Light Armor, capped defense, limited spell effectiveness, so you can do better without it. Enchanted clothes give you the same 85%, but spell effectiveness is 100% and the weight is still minimal (and if you pick the right ones, can be zero).

I like the idea that magic is as effective as physical armor, but it shouldn't exceed it. It would have been better if spell effectiveness had been tied to defense directly, so that a mage has to choose between defense and offense. And it has never made sense to me how arrows work with armor, reflect damage etc. and why there is no magical way to deflect them.