Seems like a bug to me. I don't want to waste a perk on Daedric but that wiki claim means I must. Does this mean that the Nightingale items are Daedric? I shouldn't need the Daedric perk to improve DB or ebony armour to legendary. It's not logical.

At 91+ smithing, you should be able to upgrade any armor to legendary if you have the associated perk. Nightingale armor has no associated perk, thus you can only manage flawless quality at best. Armor/weapon skill has no bearing on smithing quality at all.

That's what I thought. So my game is bugged. Smithing 100 and none of my armours will improve beyond flawless. Neither will my weapons except the steel and elven ones. This is very annoying. I think I'll need a console command.

Ok, so what I did was enchant, with the help of a potion, four bits of apparel with fortify smithing. I managed to smith the nightingale set to legendary. Armor rating is still not as high as my legendary glass armor, but I sure do look better than before. The ultimate test will be against a bunch of bandits wacking me at the same time and mages throwing ice spikes at my face. Though I'm currently content with the Lord stone helping things.

It's really a sad thing that the armor in this game is so bad for looks (for the most part) that we all do whatever we can to make the decent looking sets (few though they are) work as well as "better but uglier" sets.

It's very rewarding.

The only way you'll get leather amor Legendary and past the cap is with gear an a potion.

With my Smithing at 100 (all heavy perks - for weapons mainly) I have to wear 4 * +25% Fortify Smithing gear and drink a +120% Fortify Smithing Potion to be able to improve Shrouded, Nightingale, Leather, Penitus Oculatus, and Forsworn Armor past the Armor Cap. Now that being said: I have all the Light Armor perks so I'm not sure which of those is past the Armor Cap at it's base value - I've never done the math to figure out their bases.

You might be able to get some of those to Legendary with a slightly less than +120% potion, but that just happens to be the one I can make.

I have all the Smithing Perks on the heavy side now, but I think I was only at Ebony (for the daggers) when I improved the Shrouded and Nightingale to Legendary and beyond the cap.

Fat chance, my hood just turned white. Screw Bethesda, I hope Molag Bal visits them in the night.

Why does NOTHING in this game work properly?

Just wanna add by two-pennies-worth: Yes! I got the Nightingale armour yesterday and it looks cool which was a surprise as most armour doesn't. I have a full set of smithed enchanted glass armour but it looks terrible, I'm too embarrassed to wear it around Skyrim. It looks so bad that I wouldn't blame bandits etc for attacking me. I'd attack me for looking such a schmuck.
I think I'll stick to nightingale or other 'sneaky' light armour.

Yeah well any praise I had for the armor went out the window because Bethesda are too incompetent to keep it the same colour for more than five minutes.

I was moaning about not being able to improve anything above flawless except steel and elven weapons. It's odd that my iron daggers won't improve above flawless but steel blades will go to legendary. That's got to be a bug. Anyway, my smithed dragonscale and ebony armours WILL temper to legendary. The problem with Dark Brotherhood, Nightingale, &c, is they are enchanted. I'm learning the hard way that enchanted items won't temper to Legendary even with Smithing 100 and all perks taken unless I have going for me a lot of fortify Smithing. That makes no sense to me. Smithing 100 plus the Arcane perk plus associated creation perks should be enough. Or is there some logic to the way it works currently? What's annoying is I've not found a single Fortify Smithing item of apparel that I can use to learn the enchantment from. So I'm stuck ATM. I can feel a console cheat coming on. (Level 42; Smithing 100; Enchanting 18; yikes!)

Since this thread is about Nightingale Armor it is the only one I calculated, but if my math is correct, Agile Defender 3 and Custom Fit will put you exactly at 567. You will need 4x +29% gear for this, however.

Thingme, I think you are legitimately glitched. I have never experienced anything you've described over the course of several characters.

My goal atm with my assassin is to get the nightengale armor. While not the best it looks better and is better than the theif armor I'm wearing and I got around the less than favorable enchantments with smitthing the theif armor with a potion and smithing gear. That will be done with the NG armor as well. Then create a set of rings for all other needs and necklaces to cover the loss. I made some great enchantment fortify potions with 100 alchemy and the perks and made some necklaces and rings to get my magic, health, and regenration up. Smith your weapons up and you don't even need the bonus from weapon enhancements.

Yeah, it does that every now and then.

I just checked this and I couldn't get Iron Daggers to Legendary without wearing my 4 * +25% Fortify Smithing Gear either. So if it's a bug I'm experiencing the same one. I'd call it more of an oversight by Bethesda since Steel is the first Perk there isn't one for Iron, but we should be able to smith iron to Legendary with Smithing at 100.

I think it's more about them being leather than being enchanted. I can't get 'normal' Leather armor to Legendary without gear and potions. I do think it's odd that there is no perk for Leather - they should lump it into "Advanced Armors" especially since Plate is Heavy, but it's perk is on the Light side.

Damn. I guess just do the vendor loop until you find someone selling it. Warmaiden's, Riverwood Traders, Radiant Raiment, and Riften Blacksmith have had good enchanted items in my and other's experiences.

I just got the DB armor set, and although the stats are way better than nightingale, it looks like something one would wear in an S&M gay club.

As far as I'm aware, there are actually no S&M gay clubs in Skyrim, so my character sticks out like an arrow in the, whatever.

Might as well wear it for the DB questline, then after that I'm done with this non-game. It's been 300 hours of maschism. A small solace is that I managed to get the nightingale hood black again. I was in my home in Whiterun, at 5am, dropped the hood, picked it back up and it was black again. Obviously. I mean, obviously Bethesda.

Yeah, I couldn't see wearing it on a dude. My assassin is a chick and has no problem wearing it. It's unsettling seeing that Dunmer guy with dual Daedric daggers in the loading screen. WTF are those d-rings for on the back of the outfit along the waistline?

As for the S&M club try saying this to the bartender at the New Gnisis Cornerclub: "I hear the Dunmer aren't called 'Dark Elves' because of their skin color." and he should let you into the basemant.

There's a difference between generic enchanted gear and unique items (e.g., DB and NA). Some unique items have smithing perks associated to them (some of which betray common sense, like Savior's Hide being perked by ebony), and the rest fall into the "not perked "category (like iron, banded iron, leather, fur and hide).

That's just the way it is. If you want to know why certain items are classed the way they are, you'll have to ask Bethesda. (I'm assuming the iron, leather, etc. are unperked so that even those non-smithy RP would have the ability to craft the basics ... but it's just my guess.)