Well to put it simply, the ONLY thing that disappointed me about this Elder Scrolls installment was the equipment. Don't get me wrong it all "looks good" but the thing is;
The best armor in the game YOU F'n MAKE YOURSELF through smithing and enchanting (so what's the point).

There's maybe four or five armor/apperal items that really stand out and they mix match classes and still don't compare to the base stats of those which you can make even after some potions/smithing gear.

The unique weapons aren't all that bad but again there's only a handful that do (in this case) actually contend with personally made gear.

The classic items of old (Masque of Clavicis Vile, Mehrune's Razor, etc.) again barely compare to what you can make. (excluding Ebony Mail and a couple of the classic weapons are still good and can contend with Daedric after some potions and what not)

And finally, (PSEUDO-SPOILER) some of the very small selection of awesome gear can't even be obtained until about 50% and 90% of the way through the MAIN main story line (anybody who is a fan of unique hunting you know what pieces I'm talking about) Why? I get that Bethesda wants people to actually finish the game but what good is it going to do at the end, do you want us to rush through the main story line and abruptly stop to do everything else just so we can get stuff?

Honestly I'm a big, big fan of The Elder Scrolls games. They are (and probably will be for a very, very long time) hands down my favorite Video Games (and I've been playing video games since I was maybe four or five Nintendo/Atari'n it up, so that's about 21 solid years of many, many, many , Many different different games).

I love the new skill style, and the fact that you don't get stuck with picking a pretty specified class like your going to play some D'n'D right off the bat. I love the new fighting/magic wielding stances. I love the quests and Main storyline (I even love the basic plot right from the beginning). I love the new looks, stylization, and especially customization. I love the fact that there's finally dragons done the right way in a mid evil style RPG for the first time, and even more amazingly they occur through the whole game in multiple different types of encounters/interactions. I love about 90% of this game way more than the first of the series to console that got me started (TES III obviously), unfortunately oddly enough the 10% I'm not happy with (UNIQUES!!!!!!!!) are about 70-80% of the reason I play (and re-play, and re-play) these games. This one would probably be my favorite if it weren't for that sad truth (in MY opinion), but for all purposes I'd have to say that all around it's still Morrowind (Oblivion was phenomenal in its own rank, yes, but these two are ground breaking there's a difference (it ain't easy being a console middle child lol)) . This one is pretty much a tie, but if there were to be some added motivation by way of delving for equipment Skyrim would definitely take the cake.

I'm really, really hoping that the DLC's will more than make up for this fact (which I have a lot of faith that they will) by having some amazing weapons, and especially armor, as well as some interesting baddies in some not so obvious spots to obtain said items from.

Any thoughts anybody?

I'm OK with the Masque of Clavicus Vile, but I only use it when buying/selling. I wish Mehrune's Razor was a bit 'stronger', but many people claim it's quite impressive as is.

Spellbreaker is pretty damn cool, but 50 points of damage isn't that great later in the game - it should probably be like 20% or something.

The Ebony Mail seems cool, but it seems questionable whether or not it works with Matching Set (Wikia claims it does on PS3). I'll never have it though because I won't do Boethiah's Calling.

I'm also not crazy about the "leveled" versions of some of the equipment.

Overall though I agree that it's a bit odd that we can smith stuff better than the stuff we are rewarded with from demi-gods. I smith on both of my characters so I do fine, but it makes the rewards more like trophies than usable gear.

First off, I have to laugh at the idea that the previous TES classes were specialized like D&D. You were just good at one thing, and capable at everything else.

More uniques would be nice, but I'd really rather have expanded higher-level gear. Low tiers have tons of choices - Leather, Studded, Imperial, Stormcloak, Hide, Fur, and so on for Light, and Iron, Banded Iron, Imperial, Steel, Wolf, Ancient Nord, etc for Heavy. After that, it's just kind of bland. You just have the regular ol' progression with no real variation from the previous games.

There are some uniques I'd have loved to have - where's the armor of Ysgramor to match your Wuuthrad?

In his casket I'd wager.

You'd think, but other events make me question that.

Disagreed. My first character (who was basically a God character I used to get a feel for the game) collected unique weapons and he has plenty in his Windhelm home - Mehrune's Razor, Wuuthrad, Firinel's End, Dragon Priest dagger (possibly not unique, but rare nonetheless), Nightingale bow/blade, Skull of Corruption, Wabbajack, Ebony blade just to name a few. He often used some of them at higher levels, and they served him well.

My current character, a mage, loves blasting things apart with the Wabbajack when he runs out of magicka and in terms of unique apparel, have you seen any of the Dragon Priest Masks yet?! Very awesome pieces of armor.

For unique gear I prefer look over stats. During my first play through I usually stockpile every resource that can give me the least advantage but afterwards I use only what I deem estetically pleasing or in line with my character (ie a scimitair for a redguard).

As you said, with smithing you can surely get better equipment but the uniqueness of certain enchantments found on rare artifacts makes them worthwhile of possessing, at least for display, if not for using them as combat gear.

I completely understand and I agree. My only problem with the character I have is that I didn't go all out with smithing perks. So, really all I've got going for me is the ability to improve items to higher outputs. That said, I did a lot for enchanting perks... so those items that I've improved can get very handy. I'm still in assassin mode at the moment, but once I'm done with the Civil War questline, I think I might try to tackle the Thieves Guild as a battlemage... I already have my gear picked out, improved, enchanted, and ready to go.


I, too, am hoping the DLC (which I am not in any big hurry for, by the way. Almost 6 months of gaming in Skyrim - around 300 hours - and I'm not even close to exploring everything or completing all the questlines.) will deliver with more unique items with new looks and greater power. I know they can't directly rip off Wizards Of The Coast (I'm so old I almost typed TSR... hahaha), but they should be poring through D&D books for some general ideas. New creatures and hidden unique areas would be great, too... especially if the new creatures would get spawned into the the world of Skyrim as we currently know it. Imagine running into a Gelatinous Cube (or, more generically, some sort of ooze monster) in some caves or dungeons... or coming across a lich (not too far a stretch from a Dragon Priest). The thought makes me giddy. I trust Bethesda will do right by us with DLC, as the game is already amazing and I'm sure they held some ideas back for later download.

See, this is pretty much my approach first play through too (though i refuse to break the game, just makes it stale). Usually I don only unique and use self made Daedric (or in this one Dragon Scale for light) to fill in the missing spots that there aren't any unique pieces to wear. But, in Skyrim there should be no excuse as to there not being uniques for all armor slots (as there's only four) but there aren't.

There's only two sets of unique boots not counting ones from sets i mean stand alone I ALWAYS MEAN STAND ALONE definition of unique (and both (Hovarth's and Predator's Grace) pretty much svck. There's only four gloves/gauntlets (technically five if you count Mystic Tuning but i don't cause they don't have enchantments and you only have em while doing a quest) and you only get to keep three of the four (Ironhand Gauntlets, Gloves of the Pugilist, Tumblerbane (which are probably the only worthwhile ones of the bunch and they're light of course), and Forgemaster's Fingers (the ones you don't get to keep)). None of them are very good ( sadly not even esthetically in my opinion). There's really only like three unique chest pieces two of em are awesome (Ebony Mail and Archmage's Robes) the third is stupid (Savior's Hide which I've always disliked as a unique since the days of Morrowind). And as for helmet's there's only like three apart from the priest masks and one of them (Masque of Clavicus Vile which has until this Elder Scrolls has always been one of my first to obtain and one of my favorites) you can't even upgrade (which is why it gets bumped down on the list automatically in Skyrim (base armor wise it would probably easily stomp Daedric if you could freaking upgrade it, wtf Bethesda?)).

All of the Dragon Priest masks are pretty amazing but the best two are some of the things I'm talking about when it comes to not being able to get them until they're irrelevant, because you can't get them until the last phase of the main storyline (that's just stupid!). And as far as esthetics go for them they all look cool, but they all look the same except for their face color (excluding Konahrik which is pretty much the cat's pajamas).. I mean what about a couple of em having a black hood or something?

Agreed. This makes trophy plaques worthwhile.

Maybe the Daedric gear is aimed at characters who don't go for crafting perks? After all, the Dovahkiin is supposed to be a hero for the ages--someone considerably more important than the Nerevarine to the overall Elder Scrolls plotline. If Dovahkiin's main profession is smithing/enchanting then one could say it is appropriate for Dovahkiin's personal armor and weapons to rival or outdo the known artifacts.

We're saving the world, gosh darnit. Our stuff is supposed to be good.

there are some artifacts that can be obtained at relatively low levels that are simply game breaking.

Leveled items also really kill it IMO. The items should keep scaling or something. I hate getting the Circlet of Awesomeness which increases my awesomeness by only 5% because I'm level 14 but at level 50, it increases it by 80% and that would be the only item in the game that has that ability and cant be disenchanted. I hate disenchantable stuff.

Lol good point Calcinator. And from what I've seen I don't even know whether you can find any Daedric armor anywhere (and I'm way closer to 81 than 50 in level on this play through) , so I guess you're just this beast of a smith who's got his secret knowledge of "HOLY CRAP, LOOK AT THAT ARMOR! WHERE'D YOU EVEN GET THAT?"(we all know that's what all the NPC's are thinking). lol

N yeah Commandant Oreo leveled items have been the DUMBEST THING EVER INTRODUCED TO THE ELDER SCROLLS!!!! (that was for the admins to get back to the programmers (if any of the admins ever even read this stuff lol) And we have Oblivion to thank for that, you'd have thought they learned their lesson after all the wining that caused. I mean If you know what you're getting yourself into and plan ahead on avoiding even entering certain areas, dialogues, and missions it really derails a HUGE chunk of the game play through. Really annoying and Idiotic in my opinion, but hey at least there's only a few in Skyrim compared to the butt-load of leveled items in Oblivion.

And another thing where's my dang Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw?..... That's always been my favorite piece of equipment period in the series! Anyone else?

Yep.
http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc398/buckomccane/Skyrim/daed_arti_01.jpg

It's around, but it's more rare than Dragonscale/plate.

Don't forget about Horse Armor.

Speaking of which: I'd like to be able to make barding, but only if we can match it to our armor and only if it's useful.

buckom

I've been meaning to ask How do you mount two weapons and a shield to the wall mounts?.... I can only ever get one to go on it and I have all the houses Except for the one in Windhelm.

Only the ones that have shields on them when you buy the upgrades can have three things attached to them. The shield mount will be a small bump in the middle, and the left and right weapon mounts are on their respective sides. It's a little tricky mounting three pieces to it, but place the shield first, and then go to the corners of the weapon racks to try and place the weapons on them.

I agree that a lot of the unique items svck but some are really good.

Wrong! It's magic. Yeah, this. ^

I got the Armor of the Gods after the Cidhna Mine quest, and quickly discovered it doesn't take either the well-fitted or the matching set perk (light armor). Nice going, Beth.

Oh, and it doesn't take the stamina-regen boost perk for wearing all light armor either.

Seriously, how does one screw up something like this? At least the well-fitted and stamina-regen boost should be like falling off a log. If the property of all 4 pieces is "light armor", let it fly. How does such simple programming logic get fubar'd, unless the underlying code has no semblance of structure, and is nothing but a collection of hacks?

I try to not be too critical of gaming studios because I can easily imagine how difficult it is to create something like TES V, but, yeah, with object-oriented programming you just call the object 'light_armor' and it's attributes should apply to anything to which you associate it.