I don't know if they're going to put this in TESV but I realised that in Oblivion - i'm not sure if there are rusty or fine weapons in Morrowind, Daggerfall e.t.c.- there are only rusty iron items. I never ever found a rusty steel item or rusty silver item, which I found strange. Anyway I hope some of the Bethesda staff read this so they could make some other rusty items in TESV if they haven't already, post your opinion if you want.

That would be because Steel(Shouldn't) and Silver DOESN'T rust. Silver tarnishes.
Iron oxidizes very easily leading to the rust.....the addition of carbon when forging a blade leads to a much strtonger, more rust-resistant compound. Steel.

It should also be noted that steel blades were wiped with an oiled rag (or some equivalent method) to provide a barrier from the rust causing humidity & air.

I always assumed that the steel in game was some sort of stainless steel, or an alloy of steel that prevented rusting. And silver doesn't actually rust in the sense that iron does, it tarnishes but that can be easily cleaned.

Oh yeah I guess so I forgot about that, but then you could have tarnished silver which you can just clean with like new tools in TESV. That would be cool.

Yea, I don't know why they did this. Maybe they originally intended to have a bunch of different conditions of the same weapons with different skins (like fine steel) but they decided not to (also, I'm pretty sure rusty iron has the same skin as normal iron).

I personally think it would be very cool if they could have many different types of the same weapons/armor. Armor would be especially cool because each person could have slightly different armor of the same type. Also, maybe they could have weapons look better the more repaired they are and make most weapons somewhat used (kind of how fallout 3 did this, but do it to a lesser extent because tes isnt a postapocolyptic world).

Morrowind, at least, did not have different conditions of the same weapon, though it did have alot more different kinds of weapons.

I'd imagine that's why. And I'm not sure about the properties of fantasy materials like ebony and such, but since ebony isn't even metal, I'd guess it doesn't rust. And whatever things like Dwemer or elven are made out of, they probably don't rust easily either.

Of course, one might ask why you wouldn't see tarnished silver items, then, but it's worth noting that, if I recall, in Oblivion, rusty items aren't actually something you find often, mostly I think they existed to provide you with weak items in the starting dungeon that you'd quickly replace once you got even normal iron.

Adding tarnished silver weapons wouldn't add anything to gameplay... Tarnished silver isn't that hard to clean, and it would be silly to force the player to perform that kind of maintenance on their weapons.

There are also iron and steel weapons that are classified as "fine." But I never actually run across these weapons very often, except for once in a while in shops.

I think the point is a tarnished object is still as good as an untarnished one, it is just a little black, whereas a rusty one is not as good as an unrusty one, the process of rusting actually damages and eventually destroys the object in question.

Its like saying a bloody sword is worse than a clean one .

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