I have gone the light armor route so that I have improved stealth while exploring dungeons, but I am unsure whether the shield spot affects this at all.

Anyone know?

Is there any way to determine your stealthyness?

Also, I've seen a lot of talk about maxing armor stats here on the forums, and how light armor can approach the same armor cap as heavy armor, but I have no idea how you determine how close you are to the cap. Anyone have details on that?

I believe total armor weight is what affects stealthiness, and heavy shields will usually have higher weight than light shields. So you want to use a light one.

As for a concrete way to know how stealthy you are, I don't believe there is a way, sorry.

The protection cap happens at an armor rating of 567, assuming you aren't wearing any clothing.

Just for clarification, by saying 'not wearing any clothing' the above poster means wearing 4 pieces of armor - head, chest, arms, legs - and not just clothes. Each pieces gives you a hidden +25 armor rating. If you have 4 pieces, you get 4x25=100 extra armor rating.

Each point of armor rating gives you a 0.12% damage reduction. Since the cap is 80% damage reduction, an armor rating of 667 (80/0.12) would hit the cap. However, because of that hidden +100 armor, the effective cap becomes 567 armor rating. Anything above this isn't giving you any more protection.

Do you carry a shield around when you are a stealthy, light armor wearer anyway?? O . O

I don't think it will affect your sneaking too much, if at all. Once you get a few perks in Sneak than you are basically invisible.

Ok, a few things. You may know them, you may not. They may be helpful, they may not.

1. Your shield does not count towards the set for armor. In other words, you can equip a heavy shield with full light armor and you will still get the set bonus for light armor.

2. If you don't have it equipped, it doesn't matter anyway. When you're sneaking, you probably shouldn't have a shield equipped regardless. You want a bow or dagger for the best crit bonus. Either way you're going to have to go into your quick slots and equip your shield and sword to fight if you don't kill them with one shot. the quickest way if using a dagger is just use that in your shield hand and swap them out after you hit or get discovered.

3. That being said, if you haven't checked out Spellbreaker yet, you should. Its a heavy shield that negates a ton of magic damage. You get it as a reward for Periyite's deadric quest. It is leveled, so wait till level 40 to do the quest if you can. I didn't unequip if till I got max magic resist from enchantments.

Sometimes I sneak with a shield and I wear all heavy armor. With the Muffled Movement perk (.5) and a muffle enchanted piece of gear (.5) I have achieved 100% silent movement. If the OP is wearing light armor with a shield (heavy) and has the perk Muffled Movement, I believe he/she won't notice much of a difference in sneaking capability with a shield. Also, there is nothing wrong with wearing a shield and using a dagger during backstabs, the shield has no bearing on damage. Unless the daggers you're using are 2h?


I'm looking at the wiki and I don't see any mention of Spellbreaker being leveled. In fact, none of the Daedric Artifacts are. It negates 50 magic damage regardless of when you get it. On higher difficulties I would rather use a shield with magic resistance, mainly because if a powerful spell hits Spellbreaker, the shield's ward will break and you will become staggered. Not to mention the ward effect gives me a headache in 1st person.

That is useful info. I had not heard about the hidden 25. So , if I don't wear a helmet, does that mean I need to get the displayed value to 592 to be at the armor cap?

Also, do you know if you get the hidden 100 for a full suit of armor if you are wearing no armor but cast a spell like stoneflesh?

I don't believe Spell breaker is leveled. I actually don't see why sheilds are labeled heavy/light, either. All the best unique sheilds are heavy and I don't believe it affects your sneak. The light armor/sneak perks state head, body, hands, feet. I take hands to mean gauntlets, not gloves.

Apparently not, from a thread yesterday.

Shields can be usefull for sneaking if you have the perk to move rapidly with the shield raised, you can then rapidly stealth through dungeons with no real downside or be any more detectable than without.

As for Spellbreaker, no other shield beats it apart from stopping arrows and in the looks department. Smithed up and with perks in enchantment and block to boost it's ratings up the only thing you have to worry about are wall of fire/ice/electricity type attacks as they are the only ones that get through (or under as the case may be) and of course arrows as the shield itself is small compared to a lot of others.
I imagine in first person it can be a pain in the ass though with the ward effect.

Too bad, that makes those three mage armor perks even that much more useless.

Woulda been cool if they had sneak breaking armor sound effects.
clank
"What was that"?

That is correct.


You will only get the +25 for wearing actual armor pieces. Stoneflesh will only grant you 60 armor total, while someone in full armor with a displayed AR of 60 will actually have 160.

Since you don't get the hidden 100 with stoneflesh type spells, they should have upped the value of the mage armor perks from 2x, 2.5x and 3x to 2x, 3x and 4x. A 300 max (ebonyflesh) is really not worth three perk points, when the hidden armor cap is 667, since it is less than half the armor protection a warrior gets. In prior games, a mage could get the same level of protection as a warroir with either shield spells or bound armor spells. Seems like mages got shortchanged here.

Yes the perk Block Runner will allow faster movement with a shield raised even in sneak mode. However, you could also just use a dagger in your right hand and block with it to get the same effect if you have the perk. It's much easier to see this way, since the shield takes up a chunk of the screen.

Using Spellbreaker is a matter of preference. It is by no means the best. I prefer magic resist and or fortify health. Fortify health is always useful and magic resist works whether my shield is raised or not.

Matter of preference indeed, but with Spellbreaker you don't need fortify health as you don't take any damage with it raised. Magic resist, 80% is the max I think, so it still lets through more than Spellbreaker as well thanks to Spellbreakers straight 50 magic damage deflection then you can take off whatever is left with magic resist effect on other items of clothing etc. Just take a look on UESP wiki how few staffs or spells can actually get past the 50 alone, before factoring in magic resist afterwards. The stagger effect is hardly crippling and only on very high level opponents and the occaisional soul gem turret will you experience it.
Different style required for fighting though as you do have to be directional and take charge of the fight to keep all your opponents in front of you.
But at the end of the day, this is about sneaking and neither style should matter unless you find yourself surrounded after a [censored]ed stealth kill.

You still take damage with it raised. The block damage reduction is 85%, so you still take 15% damage. That damage can be a little, or it can be lot, depending on who you are facing.


I think you are looking at player spells, not enemy npc spells. Enemy spell damage can easily do over 400 damage on Master. Fight Malkoran at any level and difficulty and let his Ice Storm hit you, you'll see he does way over 40 damage (Player Ice Storm damage). Also, you must lower your sheild to do damage correct? Often I find myself facing more than one caster at once, that's where magic res kicks in. If you can kill high level mages by keeping them in front of you and never lowering your shield to do damage and never having spellbreaker's ward break on you...then good on you. I play on Master and that has yet to ever happen to me. I must drop my shield to attack and when I do I eat an enemy spell, mages also do over 150 damage every single time at lvl 35.


Indeed.

I have been thinking more about this and I am really glad you posted about the hidden 100. I have been debating whether my mage should take the mage armor perk and this really helped me to decide not to. Right now, I wear robes and hood but elven gauntlets and boots, which don't slow me down much and makes some roleplaying sense for an Altmer. I have about 42 armor from the gauntlets and boots, so with Ironflesh that gives me 122, but with the hidden 25 for each piece, that is an effective rating of 172, which is higher than I could get by taking off the elven armor and putting one perk into mage armor. Granted, I could get up to 240 if I put all three points into mage armor (300 eventually when I get ebonyflesh) but my armor rating with the elven gloves and boots will also increase as my light armor and smithing skills goes up. I had been on the fence about the mage armor perks and found this info about the hidden armor value to be really helpful. Thanks.

The hidden armor rating information in this thread is slightly incorrect. Chest gets +40, the others +20. (Clothing is +0)

And it's the Shield of Solitude that is leveled, not Spellbreaker.

well to be perfectelly honest you should use a ligth shield if you are using ligth armour you invested in the ligth armour perk tree and nothing on the heavy armour tree so the ligth shields are actually more efective thant the heavy shields