Right now I am wearing a mixture of heavy and light armor. I was just wondering how the game decides which armor levels up during battle? Say I'm wearing light armor boots and gauntlets but heavy helmet and main armor. When I get hit do I get a boost in light or heavy armor?

Even though the game has no locational damage, it's still silently keeping track of where your enemies hit you. Whatever armor you are wearing in whatever place they hit you (head, chest, hands, or feet), whatever armor type you were wearing there is what goes up.

It's the same way Oblivion did it.

You want on full heavy or light why would you mix the 2?

Because they want a mid-level between the mobility given by light armor and the protection of heavy. He also probably wants to only be carrying a certain amount of weight from armor, but completely not wearing armor in some places is a bad way to do that.

I also really recommend not mixing armor types. It will just level you for no gain.

I always play light armor but I loved the horned helmet which is Heavy Armor so I wore that until I found Morekai.

Both, I'm not 100% sure but I'm under the impression that the game registers what piece of armor takes the hit when it calculates skill progression. I gained 2 levels of heavy armor for every level of light armor due to the fact that I was wearing an iron helmet over 3/4 leather armor and the NPC's got a nack for inflicting head shots.

I know I always use light armor also but I been finding a lot of heavy armor for archer. Its been driving me nuts

In terms of perk placements it's not very favorable to mix the two types. For instance, my Glass (light) armor is currently on 240, due to perks, while my Daedra and Ebony are still stuck on 110. I would have to use another 7 or so perk points to even them out.

I am using the games Dovahkiin promotional character's armor. Is that light or heavy? Is that mixing?