» Sun May 01, 2011 4:53 pm
I'm torn between the Mask of Clavicus Vile, Fists of Randagulf, and Eleidon's Ward for the armor (all of which were utilized briefly by one character of mine), but I've never actually USED any of the mentioned artifact weapons; they mostly ended up occupying spaces on my display rack or in a museum. Umbra in MW, for example, was "redundant", since my character was already carrying a dedicated self-enchanted "soultrap" weapon, and already had a decent "main" weapon with an enchantment better suited to combat. Never having played a character who took Axe as a Major skill, for instance, I didn't see any reason to equip several of the other artifacts when the character got them.
Considering that my characters in MW and OB never used Glass or Daedric armor either (in spite of having pieces on display in quantity), and finished the MQ in MW with an Imperial Dragonscale cuirass and OB with mostly Dwemer gear, the "uber" equipment isn't really necessary, so my characters don't actively pursue it. Many of those items are difficult, or nearly impossible, to run into by accident, and the high incidence of familiarity with them indicates to me that a lot of players are just reading the wiki and going straight for the "goodies", rather than "experiencing" the various portions of Tamriel that are revealed to us in the games.