Just curious if I am alone in this or if it is a widely shared view. I have always thought iron and banded iron armor and weapons were the best looking in the game and even better looking than many mod added armors I have seen. They just look very simple and utilitarian, like what you might expect people to use in a harsh land like Skyrim.

I much prefer the crude look of iron to the more refined look of steel or any of the exotic armors and weapons.

Trouble is iron so vastly inferior stat wise (especially since iron is not affected by smithing perks) that any character who uses iron has to figure out a way to overcome the stat reduction. It dawned on me over the weekend that I could just create a new set of mid tier armor and weapons, complete with smithing perk, using the in game iron meshes.

The vanilla game has honed ancient nord weapons, so why not honed iron weapons and armor? So far I have made it only available through smithing and only if you take an advanced perk. I may keep it that way or I expand it at some point by distributing them to the world through the leveled lists. Either way, it was the PS4 discussion that started me thinking along these lines, wondering what I could do with my game with just an esp file.

Anyway, I was curious to find out what others thought about the lowly iron gear in the game?

I agree. The iron sword for me is the best looking aesthetically.

Well I don't know about "best", but I've had a couple characters who've preferred simple iron, over metals more exotic. I had a guy who refused to put on anything better than steel, for instance.

Me? I have no real preference. Elven armor though looks kind of ridiculous, like something a space alien would wear in a 1960s-era sci-fi movie.

Banded Iron armor is very cool, but the coolest one is Ancient Nord armor (of badassery).

I've tried to level up my lvl64 archmage with improved Banded iron armor, but it is really painful, in spite of being full specced in armor smithing and enchanting.

I agree with Sybelius that banded iron looks very neat. In my opinion the "best" looking subjectively is steel armor and steel weapons, however.

Thanks Renee, now I've got this image of Barbarella wearing Elven armor stuck in my head.

Yeah, I like the ancient nord armor too. I may need to add a variant of honed ancient nord armor to my game. The honed iron version I created for banded iron armor makes it much more viable as a mid late game armor. I have added both heavy and light versions of ancient nord armor (the female ancient nord armor looks more light than heavy) and I think I will add a honed version of that too since it does look really good.

In Morrowind and Oblivion I preferred the look of Iron weapons over all of the higher grades. In Skyrim I like Nordic weapons the best. There's something about the curved design that really appeals to me. But I'll take either Iron or Nordic weapons over all of the rest of the styles.

As far as armor goes, I tend to favor Light Armor over Heavy Armor. I haven't really been a big fan of Iron Armor in any of the Elder Scrolls games.

Only a handful of mod armors look as good or better than vanilla armors because of artistic consistency. Majority of armors are pieced together from various pieces, and it's really badly visible. As for vanilla armors, it depends. I love the iron armor, and use it for most characters, but there are a couple of others that I love for "richer" characters. Ebony comes to mind, it looks rich and very knightly, and when it fits my character I just love to sport it. Sadly, ebony weapons have a horrible design that imho doesn't fit the armor at all, but that's where Insanity's ebony sword replacer comes to save the day, one of my favourite swords in both Skyrim and Oblivion.

Steel armor plate armor looks real good, elven armor and ebony too, the rest look far to heavy but the three looks pretty realistic, yes elven and ebony is a bit too fancy but not outside of that has been used real life.

I don't see leather armor as real armor, forsworn matches well with my fur but is an bikini not armor

I like the look of Steel Plate and Nordic armor, personally. I wear Daedric, and I don't mind it despite how ridiculously impractical its design is. But I don't like it nearly as much as I used to, at least the cuirass part. I do like the color scheme of the red and black, though. However, now that I think about it more and more, I like the look of Steel Plate and Nordic the best.

EDIT: actually, I am kind of tired of the Daedric helm, too. Probably going to wear something different for my head next time I fire up Skyrim.

I like the "lower tier" armors. What my characters wear, however, depends on what kind character I'm playing. Many of my characters do wear hide, fur, studded, leather, iron, Forsworn, Imperial, or Stormcloak for the majority of the characters "life".

Banded Iron, Steel plate, Daedric.


Most times I wear Iron, and banded Iron till level 20 or so, then steel plate. I've only leveled smithing up high enough once for daedric, and that was for One dear to me, not me.


Edit.

@ Light armor

I like the look of the female fur with the sleeves, some hide is ok too, these become obsolete pretty fast. The leather is stupid. I refuse to wear a skirt . It is extra stupid that the male leather is skirted and not trousers..

Who would wear that.lol..So yeah, even my sneaky archer Bosmer girlie wears the heavy armor.


No offense to anyone who likes them.

I have always been a fan of the lower tier armors and most almost all of my characters stay at the low tiers. Banded Iron Armor, Steel Armor, Nordic, Leather, Fur and Imperial are the ones that I found myself using more. I really only had around two or three characters that go for the top tier ones, and that's mostly when I'm experimenting in game.

I have to go top tier vanilla for sheer protection.....but the look ain't that great.


The glass helm is just an awful green ice cube. So with glass we use the elven helm

For a more real look we go scaled....but that damn awful phallic helmet is an abomination...wear an enchanted circlet instead


If max protection is essential...we go dragonscale with its matching helm and activate matching set perk


Most vanilla armours don't have nice helmets for ladies

Partial to steel plate, ebony, and dragonscale myself. Banded iron seems the most organic for the gameworld, but as my character grows in strength, wealth and prestige the wardrobe changes.

Banded Iron looks good yes, but this is better.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/56826/?

That's my armor of choice ever since i found this mod.

Unless you play the game at max difficulty you don't need to min max and just wear whatever you like, looks wise.

For me the Best looking armors and weapons are the Dragon type, except of course some Abominations like the Female Dragonscale armor, the Dragon arrows, bows and daggers.

I role play as and Orc that came to perfect his Necromancy in the College of Winterhold, on Skyrim the land of the ancient Dragon cult, land fill with buried dead dragons. So without spoilers and a little of "duplication magic", I will have a full set of armor and weapons made out of the bones of dead dragons, WAY before I kill my first Dragon.

The only use I give to Iron weapons is to level up in Helgen and I will be Forever Grateful for it. But beyond that... Im the kind of person that likes to run around butt naked, until he gets to wear and use the things he likes. But if you like to use Iron, well Lucky you. You have the have the things you like from the very start, I can respect that, even envy xD.

i liked Steel Plate, and Ebony.. because they actually look like full and semi-realistic suits of armor.. Iron to me just looks like something a group of bandits scrounged together..




an armor I can't stand though is Stalhrim.. looks like quilted PJ's covered in bubbles

Artistic consistency -- that probably explains why I have not bothered to add mod added armors to my game and have kept with a single vanilla style texture replacer (aMidianborn). I have looked at Immersive Armors and while some look good, I don't think they would all look good together in one game. Plus, I think there is enough variety in vanilla armors to suit my tastes, perhaps with a little tweaking.

Thanks for mentioning the Insanity Sorrow ebony sword replacer. I looked at it and it looks nice. I really like straight texture/mesh replacers that don't require esp files since you can change them whenever you want as much as you want without having to worry about it messing up your savegame.

Steel plate and ebony look good, but they remind me of 15th Century armors and I tend to like earlier periods in history. The iron stuff reminds me of those earlier periods. Wikipedia has a photograph of ahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_armour#/media/File:Bronze_cuirass_BM_GR1873.8-20.223.jpg dating from 300 BC that looks very much like the in game iron cuirass.

My two favorites as well, though I can't stand the look of ebony weapons. But the ebony armor of Skyrim is perhaps the best it has ever looked. I unfortunately never wore it much due to an annoying bug with the male models. I love everything steel in Skyrim. Both normal steel and steel plate.

I can't say I've ever been fond of iron armor. Perhaps it's the color scheme with that orange it has under the armor in both Oblivion in Skyrim. Though at least in Skyrim it matched quite well with the novice hood. Wore that throughout much of the early game when I first played. But I'd take iron armor and any heavy armor in general over light armor. Throughout all of the Elder Scrolls games I've never liked any of the light armors whatsoever.

With Immersive Armors on the PC you can adjust which armors are active with MCM(SkyUI) So if you do not like one of them just note the name and then disable it. Maybe use a test character and create all the armors and then disable those on your main playing character or on a new character. it has been quite sometime since I played Skyrim, I was thinking about playing it again and then the announcement came up and decided to wait until it was released.

Orange matches the color of this one's fur. Just realized that's banded iron armor in the screenshot I've been using as my avatar for the past few years. That was an Xbox shot I took with my cell phone of the TV screen at night.

If you think iron looks good, check out this modder's work: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/78249/?

aMidianborn retextures are grand, iirc not a single pack deviates too far from vanilla feeling, only greatly improves... well, everything. Also check Insanity's other work, I love his recreations of Morrowind and Oblivion weaponry.

aMidianborn are my go-to armours for retextures and I like his glass armour that actually looks like glass ie. semi transparent with a green tint although I'm not particularly keen on any of them on my char I'm using custom armour there are some amazingly talented modellers out there.