Hey all.

I typically use heavy armor but am at that point in the game where you light armor is one of the last things I need to level up, and I am not enjoying it =P. If I were to only equip one piece of light armor and the rest heavy armor, does my light armor still level up normally, or does it register that I have more heavy armor on than light and not level my light armor skill? Furthermore, could I just use a light armor shield with heavy armor to achieve this effect (level light armor while keeping heavy on)? I'm already using trainers for it to speed it up and all that, so just looking to see if there is a way to kind of cheat the system and keep most of my heavy gear on.

Lemme know!
-Stevo

Why you no like light armor???? No idea, but I'm kind of curious as well.

Armor skills CAN level up at the same time, that's what I'm sure of. Though I think it levels faster the more pieces you have equipped.

And quite frankly, I have no idea why shields are classed in armor categories. I have never ONCE had a skill-up of armor while blocking

Yeah the magnitude of leveling being effected by how many piece of that given armor type are being worn makes sense- can anyone verify that for sure?

You can play around with the difficulty settings and fight (don't kill) a giant, this way you won't die in one hit. You'll need to have a restoration spell on one hand. Also, If you want, you can enchant that light armor with Fortify Restoration.

Yeah I have some ideas for speeding up the leveling of the skill, I'm more curious how the armor leveling works when wearing different armors at the same time now.

this is what the percentages were for morrowind.

Cuirass - 30%
Shield - 10%
Helm - 10%
Greaves - 10%
Boots - 10%
RPauldron - 10%
LPauldron - 10%
RGauntlet/Bracer - 5%
LGauntlet/Bracer - 5%

since skyrim does not have individual pauldrons, gaunlets or greaves, I can only assume that the chestpiece will have the highest amount (of course) > helmet
> boots/gaunlets. If the Paludrons and Greaves are combined with the curaiss I can only assume that the chestpiece is 60% the Helmet might take the shield's portion making it 20% (since shield is taken over with the block skill)
leaving the boots and guanlets with 10% each.

Of course this is just what I assume and am not really sure of the actuall percentages for each piece of armor.

in short you can level up both armor types at the same time, just use the chestpiece for what you want to level up faster.
also leveling armor is calculated by how much damage you are absorbing each hit, so getting hit by giants, trolls, mammoths, bandit pillagers/ravager etc. will level it faster then getting hit by wolves, bandits, slaughterfish etc.

@silverneochris- Probably some fair assumptions if they did breakdown the armor in a similar manner to morrowind. Good [censored]- thanks a lot man!

Actually it's more likely they copied Oblivion. The game detects where you are hit and raises the appropriate skill depending on what you are wearing. The best solution is for you to wear Light Armor on your Torso and Hands, then Heavy on your Feet and Head (just Feet would be best if you could manage it with the resistance).