I'm a little disappointed that the dwarf armour is not quite as good as steel plate. In any fantasy book or RPG that you can think of Dwarfs are super great at making anything out of mettle. Like a lot of things in Skyrim its not a game breaker just a little bit annoying. If this a long time feature of elder scroll games then please forgive me as Skyrim is my first.

Yeah its ugly as balls

I don't know why it isn't as good as Steel Plate or Orcish, possibly because the Dwarves have been long extinct and technique and technology have improved since then? But even then, I don't see Orcs being able to build centurians and stuff...

This does tend to be a longitme feature of the Elder Scrolls, dating back to at least 2002 when Morrowind came out, at least for relative placement of Dwarven Armor.

Here's a handy list for ya!

Morrowind:
Iron
Steel
Imperial Steel Armor (?)
Dwarven
Ebony
Daedric

Oblivion:
Iron
Steel
Dwarven
Orcish
Ebony
Daedric

Skyrim
Iron
Steel
Dwarven
Orcish/Cordonium-infused Steel Plate
Ebony
Dragonbone
Daedric.

As for the above poster- remember Orcs are a warrior culture. The Dwarves were more technomancy. As the Dwarves dissapeared in the first Era, while the Orcs have had three Eras to improve their armor-making techniques... Armor just isn't material, but method of making as well. Nobody really makes new Dwarven Armor (crafting system aside, it was historically looted, never made) so no innovations into the treatment of the dwarven metal can be made. However, it should be mentioned that Dwarven Armor was probably bleeding-edge technology back in the first era... and even into the 4th Era, it's still better than most iron or steel armor. So it's still quality stuff

In fact, the only reason Steel Plate is better is probably because it has extra cordonium added to it, stregthening the metal.

Why are Dwarfs extinct? fighting an angry midget wielding an oversized axe would provide me with hours of fun plus we could have Dwarf tossing in taverns.

If you read alot of the books on the dwarven peoples (found in the game) it says their weapon and armor were made more for simplicity and ease of use, not necessarily for every piece to be an excellent piece of armor peerless in protection.

To me that gives the impression that their stuff was a kind of standard issue item, if you take my meaning. Army equipped with decent (but not the best) materials that were all simple and interchangable.

Also from other books (there are lots of books on this) it seems that they used their mechanical things and alot of magic in their battles, and that might have made advances in martial weaponry and defense less important.

In addition- they have been extinct (missing) for quite a while now, so no advances in their items have taken place, and we could assume other materials (like elven, orcish, imperial) crafting has been improving through the ages.

Retroedit: haha, me and Marss had the same thought, didnt read the thread till after I posted.

I think it's because it isn't actual Dwemer armor, just made out of metal scraps they left behind.
I also think the previous games featured actual Dwemer armor. I might be right or horribly wrong, it's just something I heard not so long ago.

They're actuall a subrace of Elves, but *may* have equalled a male Bosmer/Woodelf in height, if they were not the same size as the other races.. They attempted to use the heart of Lorkhan/Shor... and it ended with every single one of them on Tamriel dissapearing.

This is TES, not any other fantasy book or RPG.

There have never been dwarfs, There where Dwemer.

And Dwemer were not small.

Ahhh I love a bit of hardcoe fan indignation I did include an apology for any long time fans that may explode with rage at my lack of TES knowledge.

i think the size of their armor alone when you find one would give you a pretty clear picture they weren't midgets lol

As for the armor its as the others said, somewhat "outdated" technology wise and let me add to the "in any fantasy book" i would imagine a majority of them will show elves being more archery based and not "heavy armor" based. take Lotr for example and how the elves got owned in part 2 xD

That really wasn't indignation, just a correction.

If you're actually interested in learning about the Dwemer, play Morrowind, or just look them up on sites like UESP. But you're definitely confusing Nirn with Middle Earth.

That's the internet. But I apologise for my obvious lack of reading skills

Some dwemer build steam-powered spaceships, with huge gear boxes, and left. Others invented steam-powered time machines and jumped back in time, because they saw nothing good in the future.

Cool its just something I was wondering about and as someone has pointed out the size of the stuff you find is a giveaway that they were not midgets. My thinking was that maybe they made stuff to sell to other races. You have to admit though a few angry midgets to fight in Skyrim would be fun.

after I ahve finished on my autocast pwoer mod, I am contempalting looking at making a mod that gives each armour type a certain bonus so that there is never a "best armour". I too hate the fact that i have to repalce one type of armour because its not as good as another~!

So if its Dwemer why does Skyrim name the weapons Dwarven ?.

Because the Dwemer are also referred to as Dwarves, which doesn't mean that they're from Middle Earth. Like I said, read about them:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Dwemer

This isnt necessary in the first place since with some smith buffing gear and some pots anny armor can hit cap without any smithing perks. No need to ever change for "strength"

thats the imperial name they gave the dwemer, same as they call the bosmer wood elves, dunmer dark elves, altmer high elves, orsimer orcs, etc etc

different name for the same thing

Some reason the boots of the Skyrim armour remind me of space boots. They just look so unnecessarily big to me.

There are dwarfs in Skyrim?

Read up on your lore.

There's armor, weapons, constructs and ruins, but no actual Dwemer (Dwarves) They disappeared way back in the First Era, over 3000 years before Skyrim is set.

Well, the TES dwarves were never "midgets." They were small only in comparison to the giants they were fighting who called them dwarves and the name stuck. The Dwemer are completely different than the dwarven archetype developed in Tolkien and D&D of a four foot tall bearded battletank wielding a big axe.