Hi.

I posted about something else recently and happened to mention my stalhrim light armour stats. Rick asked how I got them so high and I replied explaining my techniques and thought nothing more of it. Recently, though, I made a set of dragonplate armour using the same gear and techniques and noticed that the armour rating was lower than that of my stalhrim light. Rick's confusion started to make even more sense.

I can't get my head around it. I am 100 with all perks on both light and heavy armour, so I have the same fortify armour effects that come into play when a full set is worn. I have checked that I am not wearing any items with fortify light armour that may confuse matters when I look at the ratings. I've checked my active effects to see that I'm not blessed with anything to favour light armour over heavy armour. There's nothing to suggest an explanation. To check that I hadn't been using something special when I made the initial stalhrim light armour, I made a new set with the same results. I made new stalhrim heavy armour and it turned out weaker than the light gear. The same applies to dragon armour: dragonscale is stronger than dragonplate, once improved.

The technique is always identical. I wear four items enchanted with fortify smithing at 32% each and take a potion of fortify smithing at 148%, then immediately craft. The figures below are for the armour only but the same pattern applies to all the other items. There's something weird about it all

Dragonscale: Base 160, improved 638, no data for full set worn 'cos I haven't yet crafted a new complete set

Dragonplate: Base 163, Improved 598, worn (full set) 934

Stalhrim Light: Base 151, improved 630, worn (full set) 945

Stalhrim heavy: Base 163, improved 598, worn (full set) 934

Adding fortify armour enchantments simply continues the upward trend but light armour is still stronger than heavy armour (stahlrim light jumps to 1023 with one fortify light armour applied). I don't understand. Also, my base armour figures (armour straight out of the forge prior to improvement) seem to be way higher than the figures I've seen quoted. Smithing perks (skill 100, perk tree is also full) is not supposed to affect that.

Does anyone understand?

I wish I could just set up my own Skyrim blacksmith business making virtual light armour and e-mailing it to interested players!

is your light armor skill higher than heavy?

Hi, funnybunny,

No. Both light and heavy armour skills are 100 with all perks. I checked the trees and both have the same format: 5 basic skills giving the same improvement and two others giving an additional 25% bonus when wearing a full set.

I even made my character strip down to her underwear in Windstad manor basemant and put all her gear in a chest to see if it made any difference to the armour rating shown when I inspected the items.

I should maybe have said in the first post that I'm playing vanilla (I now know what that means...at first I thought it was something special) and I do not have any mods installed, nor have I ever had any in the past.

The only active effect that mentions smithing is 'ancient knowledge' but that refers to Dwarven armour and rate of learning smithing skills. I have no stone blessings that favour light armour and I'm an elf, so I should not have had any advantage with regards to smithing.

For the time being, I'll just use my new set of Stalhrim Light and apply the enchantments that I want to it.

The whole reason for doing this was that my previous (glorious, as it turns out) stahlrim armour was geared to upping my magika skills. Now I'm focusing on archery, since I've almost given up on getting conjuration to 100.

Your light stahlrim set wasn't the was it?

Ancient Knowledge is bugged in vanilla Skyrim and doesn't do as the description suggests. It actually gives a 25% bonus to all armour except Dwarven (as well as the smithing experience effect).

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Ancient_Knowledge#Bugs

However this doesn't explain why your light Stalhrim is better than your heavy Stalhrim. Are you sure there's no discrepancy in the smithing potions you're using? Other than that I don't know what's going on.

Kane,

No, it was just a bog standard set I'd made myself. I wondered about that too, which was partly why I made a second set with the same outcome.

Cjay, I made an entire batch of potions at the same time. Each one was 148% fortify smithing. Any light armour is coming out better than heavy for a given material.

Unless I've done a quest in the past that gave me some advantage that I don't remember but you'd think that would show up in the active effects.

I wonder if something has gone wrong with my light or heavy armour perk trees? You know, perhaps one is bugged and either abnormally boosting or weakening the armour bonus? E.g I'm supposed to have matching set for 25% but it's not actually working? Would there be any way on the console to check that? It would certainly explain something that is obviously wrong, in the absence of any other explanation.

It's no great hardship to me. I just wondered what the hell was going on!

It's telling that the "before smithing" stats are lower for light than heavy, which rules out any effect from the light/heavy skills.

The worn/unworn stats will obviously be affected by the matching set type of perk, as you have to wear an item to get the benefit. Are the numbers in your opening post worn or unworn? Unworn values would be easiest to compare, as the perk multipliers in the two trees are left out of the picture.

Regardless, it does appear that smithing is adding more to light armour than it does to heavy, and since Stahlrim and Dragon materials each make both, it's not easy to see how it's happening. The same perk improvements should apply, as it's just dependent on material, not armour type.

Is it possible that the skill levels aren't really 100 (the displayed value) but something higher is being used in the calculations? Try using Player.GetAV in the console to see if it reports a higher value.

Ghastley,

I even tried stripping my character to under wear to look at each component.

I had a brainwave yesterday and went to a place where I could remove all the perks from a tree and then put them back again to see if that reset something (you probably know where that is but I want to avoid spoilers). It didn't work. I give some figures for worn and unworn. When the items are worn, they are bare of any enchantments like fortify 1-handed, so should directly compare.

I'm not great with the console as I don't use it except to try and fix things like glitched quests. I didn't know about player.GetAv, so I will give it a try. If that is the case, I presume that I could alter an erroneous parameter to put it right? I'll get cracking now and see what I find. Thanks for the tip.

Try this:

player.getavinfo lightarmor

player.getavinfo damageresist

It will tell you all about your skill and armor rating, if you have any modifiers and so on. There may also be some odd interaction going on specifically with Stalhrim armor, it has a special ability built in that alters certain enchantments (Frost and Chaos) power levels when specifically applied to that armor type, it's possible it may be affecting your Fortify Smithing potions in some way when you craft that armor with such an effect active via the smithing potions.

Well, there's no joy yet.

It's got me beaten.

Using two sets of unenchanted armour, player.Getavinfo LightArmor and player.Getavinfo HeavyArmor both show the correct value of 100.00, yet the light armour is stronger.

I tried player.Getavinfo ArmorPerks but that didn't seem to work at all, showing 0.00 whatever set was worn, even if it was enchanted with fortify armour.

I then tried player.Getavinfo DamageResist

This gave more stats for the armour being worn, both showed the armour rating that I'm seeing on screen.

Dragonplate armour, four pieces worn:

current value 2514.84

computed base 2464.84

reference base value 0.00 (auto calculated)

derived value 2464.84

Modifiers

temp 0.00

perm 50.00

damage 0.00

level up value 2514.84

Dragonscale armour, 4 pieces worn

current value 2636.72

computed base 2586.72

reference base value 0.00 (auto calculated)

derived value 2586.72

modifiers

temp 0.00

perm 50.00

damage 0.00

level up value 2636.72

Everything still seems to be saying that light is best but I don't know what some of those figures mean. I tried a set with fortify armour enhancements on but the modifiers stayed the same.

For now, I'm just going to work away with my light armour.

Thanks for the advice though. I've learned a few more console commands that could be useful once I'd looked into the getavinfo command.

Sounds like there's only one real explanation.

Sheogorath

Sheogorath explains most of the stuff that happens in my game.

Hi,

I can add closure to this thread now.

I finally bit the bullet and got myself into mods.

I installed the Skyrim legendary patch.

Hey presto! Light armour now weaker than heavy armour, although there's not much in it after improvements.

The downside is that the fault in my smithing was to over-rate light armour, so my incredibly marvellous light armour has now lost several hundred points...ah, well, that's Murphy's law in action I suppose. At least I'm playing the game fairly again.

I'm posting about the differences the mods have made, if you're interested. The post will be called 'No longer a mod virgin'

Thanks for all the help.

Yeah, mine too - though I tend to ascribe it to "gremlins" instead of Sheo by name....

Wonderful!! If you haven't already, check out The Cutting Room Floor, also by Arthmoor. It restores so much that was missing, but in Beth's files, that never made it into the game for who knows what reasons. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/47327/?

I wouldn't call this a mod so much as a PC only critical patch. Any time I install a PC game, I always check for unofficial patches before playing, just in case there's something that wasn't fixed by the devs.

Weapons and Armor Fixes Remade by kryptopyr

This mod fixes bugs and incorrect settings for Skyrim's weapons and armors, as well as changing values, keywords, and other properties to achieve greater consistency between the different weapons and armors.

• Corrects many of the bugs found in the vanilla weapon and armor records


• Improves consistency and balance between different items


• Weapons and armor will scale in a predictable and consistent manner


• Perks that didn't apply consistently to all items in the game have been fixed


• Certain items have been renamed for easier sorting or to better fit the in-game appearance of that item


• Changes the crafting categories to help organize and declutter the crafting menus


• Includes options for faster arrows and bolts and material-based corrections for dragon priest masks

Cumbrianlad


What the.....?


I'm on Xbox.....so vanilla. I cycle top enchanting and fortify alchemy items until the alchemy value maxes out at 29% each How are you getting 32% per item?


Similarly.....the max smithing potion I can craft is 133% in fair vanilla play. How are you getting 148% smithing potions ? I presume you are NOT using fortify Restoration potions to boost or exploit the alchemy apparels prior to potion making. If you are that would explain it......

Rick,

It's just got worse in terms of alchemy.

I installed the skyrim legendary patch and discovered that I'd lost the weird light armour/heavy armour bit, but the enchanting improved. I did another couple of rounds of use enchanted gear to make fortify enchanting potions, craft gear with fortify enchanting and it got a bit more silly.

I now have four items with fortify alchemy/fortify smithing, each at 36%. My fortify enchanting potions are 40%. Fortify smithing potions are now 161%. You wear all four items to create potions. That way your potions are +36% x 4 = +144%. Hey presto a 20% potion comes out more like 60%.

The trick is to make four fortify enchanting potions and use them to craft four items (ring, head-gear (circlet or hat etc), gloves and necklace) with fortify alchemy. Put this gear on and make stronger fortify enchanting potions. Do it again until gear and potions are not getting any stronger. It helps a bit if you have Azhidal's armour because that gives a 10% enchanting boost if four pieces are worn when enchanting. That aside, as I said earlier, I have 100 skill on both enchanting and alchemy. I have all the perks for these trees too.

You can make some cool gear but I still can't quite match some of the Daedric artefacts for potency.

I read about fortify restoration potions but couldn't make any sense of it, so I plodded away with the method above until it worked. I'm a stubborn little engineer, so if I think a system can work better, I beat it over the head with a hammer until it relents.

Sorry to sound frustrated at stating the obvious my friend......but of course I already do all of that.....I even wear each improved piece before making the next enchanting potion to get maximum benefit.


My confusion is how you are getting such increases above the maximums that I can push it to reach. I can only assume therefore it is something different in either the Skyrim download for pc......or something is altered by a patch.....or it's an effect from a mod. But it sure ain't vanilla !

Ah.......hang on.......except for Azhidals armour.......which I have never had. My best enchanting potions are 33% tops......so does that armour push it upto 43% max?


Damn......now I have to go and research that armour.......let me guess......bleep Solstiem again!

The quest line to get the pieces of Ahzidal's armor is really fun, Rick....

Rick, what is it you don't like about Solstheim? I love it.... it's sad that the ash is all over the southern part, but I remember it from Morrowind which is better. And the north part is just lovely, wonderful! I still remembered Fort Frostmoth - how sad to see it buried in ash and with the General an undead monstrosity....

the only potions of enchanting & smithing that this one uses are the ones game gives her.......Enchanting potions .....10% , 15% , 20% or 25% ..........the same apply to blacksmith 20% , 30% . 40% & 50%

if you use the 25% enchanting potion to make a amulet of smithing..........you will end up with 33% bonus, this is what Rick is talking about in his above post

as a rule this one will not use potions in enchanting to increase smithing ability ....will use the base equasion; 1 Grand Soul gem with enchanting at 100 will give you a max of 25% .....

so 4 items x 25% = 100% increase in smithing + a potion of smithing 50% = 150% increase MAX, this takes armors into the 1000 - 1500 mark depending on armor type and if smithing is at max 100 and all armors have been upgraded to legendary

there is one question that come into Play...............The Armor Cap

In skyrim there is a maximum armor cap of 567 when wearing 4 pieces of armor with each piece of armor adding a hidden 25 armor points which would make the actual armor cap without wearing any armor is 667. 567 equals 80% damage reduction and with enough perks in Smithing/Alchemy/enchanting and the corresponding armor perk can make even Hide Armour hit the armor cap

so is there a point in having a 1500pts armor using the above method, when the armor cap is only 567 ...... any one? .....is that what the armor cap means in the first place or has this one got it all wrong?

there are so many questions ..............is the armor cap real?.............is all the above a waist of time?.......why make enchanted items to increase skills when you cant go above a cretin point?....why put all this enchanting armors stuff into the game let us make super armors & then go and cap it off?........the question is why have all this armor capping theory in the first place & why can it be so easy to exploit this by making potion combinations that give you GOD like powers if it dose not work?

if you like your enchantments to show rounded figures use the below

to get a +50% on weapons skills use the 25% enchantress potion

to get a +75 health/stamina/magic use the 20% potion

to get a + 50 on fire/frost/shock use 15% potion

NO potion will give you 25% smithing/alchemy............a 40% on one & two handed, archery, lockpicking, pickpocket, sneak & blocking

Sah....honey bunny.....You know the armour so is not real.


Have you forgotten my experiment......clearly yes!


ALL........


It's the wiki pages that keep on about "armour cap"


But it's so easy to disprove it.


Make the super armour.....say 1500

Find a powerful npc.......archer is best for controlled single shot hits.

Take armour OFF unto you get to around the so called cap value and with full health take a single arrow hit.

Check you health to see how much was taken.

Now heal up fully again......add more armour......take another hit......check health lost

Do it again with wearing full armour if 1500


You will find this....the armour protection gets less and less rises as the AR increases. But it IS definitely providing some extra protection.


Approximately......if you started with 600 health and at AR 500 the bad archer dropped you to 100 health with one shot

Then with AR 1500 he might only drop you to 200 health.


So is the extra armour and all its hard smithing up worth it to save just 100 extra health points.........HELL YES if you are a Dead is Dead player like me or Sah and staying alive means everything.


If your a reloader type......well then.......shrug......death means little......just reload huh!


IF BY SOME CHANCE THE ARMOUR CAP HAS BEEN MADE A GENUINE SOLID CAP BY PC PATCHES........WELL I WOULDNT KNOW COS I'M ON XBOX in that case it could be a real cap......but for vanilla console users the cap is a pure myth.....and its busted