Going for light armor for my next RP character on master, I want more realistic armor, playing the game in heavy armor and being combat efficient isn't really realistic. Difficult to swing a heavy sword wearing full steel plate armor, considering how tired you would be from running.

So I'm going for the Savior's Hide, scaled bracers, scaled boots and a light helmet. Not a huge fan of the scaled helmet, can anyone think of any helmets that would look decent with the above setup?

I don't care much for any of the helmets in the game.

That's the problem, they all look ridiculous. The steel plate helmet isn't to bad, when worn with the full set, but in terms of light armor I can't find any decent looking helmets.

Tempted to use the diadem of the savant, as it counts as light armor. So the perks still work and you still get the +100 hidden armor bonus.

Nice, using it on my new dunmer char. Currently rolling with the fur armor and a novice hood, the hoods (apprentice and novice) look pretty sweet on heavy armor as well imo. But the novice on fur looks like hes a true wood dwelling cave crushin badass

The only Light Armors I like are the standard Leather, but Love the Nightengale Armor, Thieves Guild Armor, and Dark Brotherhood Armor.... hoods and all.

Thing is my character will be an Orc, wearing a circlet doesn't really fit for me to be honest. Maybe the fur helmet, they are so rare though.

Could go with the forsworn helmet (or the armor of the old gods equivilent), but I don't really want to look like forsworn.

Personally, I think the Thieves, Fur and Nightingale sets look the most believable as Light Armour. Glass and Elven look like full pate and don't seem like they'd suit stealthy or swift characters.

If you're going for a tribal look, the Forsworn gear can work. Similarly, the Stormcloak Officer helmet looks suitably wild without edging into ritualistic al la Forsworn.

Linwe's Armor is one of my favorite light armor sets in the game.

Speaking of Forsworn.. I think scaled armor and Forsworn Headdress looks great.. Atleast it does on my Female Reguard dual wielding savage xD

Perfect, that'll do great, thanks!

Glass for Light looks the best.

For the helm i'd say go for Krosis with your hide

This is a battle-hardy orc paladin though, hoods and stealthy armor won't do ha. I want hide/fur looking armor that compliments the Savior's Hide.

Really? I think the glass (malachite) armor looks terrible, you look like a chandelier. If I go with the dragon preist mask you can't see their face though, hmm.

Fur helmet? I've seen one in the same cave for all three of my char's.

So Savior's Hide, scaled boots, scaled bracers and stormcloak officer helmet for my Orc, will look pretty dam badass dual wielding.

Every knight in Rennaisance-era Europe disagrees with you here.

For a Warrior, Glass and Elven look best as light armor. Possibly Scaled, but I'm not sure.


Wait... your an Orc? What kind of [censored] orc wears light armor? According to the "realism" in the game world, an http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Hallgerd%27s_Taleis just as mobile in heavy armor as he is stark naked.

I like the Nightingale armor but one thing I role play is to take off my helmet outside of battle and probable medium plus action. I kill vermin on the trail with my head bare.

After several hundred hours of this I am remembering to put it back on.

I use dark brotherhood with krosis, it works just fine. just don't get hit off a mountain and you'll run through everything like a breeze. I can't remember the last time I died.

edit: I remember. the wind pushed me off of the throat of the world, right after talking with paarthanux

You won't get the armor bonus for a matching set, but I guess you don't care. Me, I use a full hide set (with the armor modded to look like studded). I quite like the helmet. Full scaled is also nice.

bah use the invisible helmet mod

Glass and Ellen look absolutely terrible IMO, scaled armor looks okay, the bracers and boots I will use. Are you honestly saying that you would be combat efficient in heavy armor?! Think of the strain of movement, running or swinging a blade, you would tire so quickly. The sheer distance you run in this game makes full heavy armor a stupid choice for realism.

That for me isn't realism, did I say I wanted to make a perfect lore Orc? No I said I wanted a realistic approach to the game, no matter what you say wearing full heavy armor isn't practical for battle. Look at the battles that were fought, foot soldiers would have worn lighter armor to practicality. On horseback you can use heavy plate armor for protection as you aren't moving, that's not how I will play though. I think you miss my point about realism.

I've also seem plenty of orcs in game using light armor, fur for example.

I don't bother with the matching set perk, I like to mix and match. I will have 4 pieces of light armor, so that specific perk will affect me (+25%) and I will get the hidden +100 armor rating that you get for having 4 armor pieces on.

Mix and match till you get something you like. Grab your Most played character grab every helmet and start comparing.

Correct. People have a great misperception about plate armor. Even full plate was not excessively heavy. I think I looked it up and found that it was something like 40-60 pounds, and spread over your whole body, that isn't a significant amount of weight. Would it get tiring if you had to sprint with that kind of extra weight? Yes, if you tried to push it, but really it would only get tiring over long distances. I've known stocky guys that couldn't run even two miles worth a damn, but playing a game of football they could sprint off the line like an antelope.

Anyway, plate armor is not some heavy, clanking suit of Iron Man armor that's a quarter inch thick and made of cast iron, it's a suit of plates of forged steel. Some of them can take a fairly heavy blow, some are only going to stop things like axe and sword blades. The briastplate would have been pretty much the thickest part of the suit, along with the helmet, to protect the thoracic cavity from penetration by piercing weapons like swords and spears and arrows. Other plates would have protected areas less likely to face such piercing blows, and would have been lighter and designed more to stop slashing blows from weapons like axes and swords. Warhammers and the like were specifically designed to penetrate plate, but I imagine even those might have faced some trouble against the briastplate.

Anyway, the whole mess was reasonably light, and the weight was distributed around the body, in contrast to armor like mail shirts, which tended to place all their weight on the wearer's shoulders and waist, and which would only have provided a lot of protection against slashing blows, less against piercing weapons, and very little against crushing blows from maces and the like.

So for "realistic", all of the plate armors are fairly realistic except of course Daedric, which still looks good if you're playing Sauron Jr. or something. Elven and glass are fairly flashy, but that isn't unprecedented on the battlefield. They might well be unsuitable for stealthy characters, but then armor in general is not particularly suited for stealth characters, even leather. Light armor was used commonly by soldiers on the battlefield like missile troops and skirmishers, as well as by light cavalry. Elven looks like some sort of plate armor, admittedly, but just think of it as a fairly lightweight plate armor, providing decent protection for very little weight. Glass looks like Elven armor with some rigid malachite reinforcements, so think of it as Elven armor commissioned by powerful Elven nobles and generals and the like.

If I'm right about what the Nightingale armor looks like, there's nothing realistic about it in the context of the TES setting. It looked like something Batman would wear.

I'm testing it out on my character at the moment, I don't wear armor (pure cloth vamp mage), but I have collected a few pieces for companions etc.

Just waiting for 1.4 to start a new character.

Nope. As I said, this business of "plate armor is unwieldy and unpleasantly heavy" is a complete and utter myth, with basically no basis in fact. The only suits of plate armor that were perhaps impractical for battle were some suits specifically made for jousting, not the battlefield, and some experimental attempts to produce completely bulletproof armor, which were abandoned. Even full plate was among the least cumbersome and best-balanced armor you could wear. Knights in heavy cavalry units were able to mount horses with no problem while wearing plate.

Wearing a mail shirt would wear you out more quickly than would full plate, because of the horrible distribution of the weight.


The sheer distance you run in this game is unrealistic, period. Heavy armor has nothing to do with it.



Again, this is simply factually incorrect. I recommend you read up on it. Lighter armor was worn by many foot soldiers, yes, in medieval Europe, but this was because the majority of foot soldiers were commoners, and the nobles that equipped them tried to economize by equipping them with less expensive armors like mail shirts. Some knights operated as heavy infantry, however, and wore basically suits of full plate, or perhaps almost full plate; I think sometimes they would forgo the heavier shin-guards if they were mostly infantry.

The Swiss had heavy infantry wielding pole-arms that were most definitely wearing heavy armor.

In ancient times, the Greeks were wearing heavy Bronze armor, consisting of a bronze helmet, greaves (I think) and bronze shin-guards, and most definitely a heavy bronze briastplate, along with a large shield, heavy thrusting spear and a sword. The Romans wore a form of heavy plate armor suited for infantry, with overlapping plates I think called "brigandine", although I need to look that up. They didn't wear the super-heavy solid briastplate for the most part, although such things existed, but I believe normally the briastplate was formed of segmented, overlapping plates of armor. While lighter for sure than the preceding Greek-style armor of the hoplites, and lighter than subsequent medieval European mail shirts and full plate, it was heavy armor meant for melee soldiers in the thick of battle.

Light armor as you're thinking of it was not used by melee troops, not in the heavy infantry and cavalry warfare of ancient and medieval Europe.


That's because the ones you're thinking of are usually either (1) bandits who obviously don't have access to full suits of plate armor, or (2) living in one of those orc forts that are relatively primitive.

Leather Helmet