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I found a Light Armor Vest that has Fortify Light Armor on it.

I am currently wearing a standard leather curiass with a Flame Shield enchant on it for 6pts.

The Vest gives me 9 less armor than the enchanted leather piece I made. So what exactly does the Fortify do?

Fortify increases a skill / atribute.

The reason behind less armor on the theoriticaly better armor may be : Item durability (broken items give less armor) or item type (Light Armor Vest may have differend basic armor values than Leather Curiass. The difference between these two may be high enough to surpass even the enchancement)

Stworca wrote:Fortify increases a skill / atribute.

The reason behind less armor on the theoriticaly better armor may be : Item durability (broken items give less armor) or item type (Light Armor Vest may have differend basic armor values than Leather Curiass. The difference between these two may be high enough to surpass even the enchancement)

Not fully understanding. So when I equip items, is it always better to have the higher armor rating (i.e. 41 over 35, etc)?

Also, as a melee assassin character is it more prudent to wear light armor gear with enchants added or just the basic clothing with the same enchant that never breaks? (I am noticing that my melee characters leather armor breaks down while my mages "gold trimmed boots" for example didn't have a "health rating" and so never took damage.

Armor rating reduces the damage that you suffer. But armor may have other enchants on it (examples : damage reflection, magic resistance, spells) so it's too difficult to answer your question about armor rating The best armor set i had was a self made set of glass armor with 100% damage reflection on it. You must find your own preferences.

I never looked on Armor Rating in Oblivion, because its easy to avoid hits all together.

I only encourage using as light boots as possible for an assassin (boot weight affects your sneaking skill) and that's it.

For more details you will have to wait for someone who played Oblivion a bit more than me.

The higher the Armour Rating the better, up to the max of 85, no matter how it's achieved. Armour rating reduces the amount of damage you take, so if it's ten and someone hits you for 100 damage, you only take 90; if its eighty five, you'd only take 15 damage.

The way armour is handled in this game is very bad, once you've reahed 85 then there is no point in improving your armour any more, and clothes enchanted to a total of 85 are better than any armour as they can't be damaged, stupid.

Fortify Light Armour as Stworca points out simply adds to your light armour skill, if it's poor armour then the likely result will be worse than the armour you're already wearing as in your case, just sell it if that is so.

One of the dumbest items I recall finding was a shirt that fortified light armour, fat lot of good that is!!!

Ragin Cajun wrote:I found a Light Armor Vest that has Fortify Light Armor on it.

I am currently wearing a standard leather curiass with a Flame Shield enchant on it for 6pts.
The Vest gives me 9 less armor than the enchanted leather piece I made. So what exactly does the Fortify do?

Fortify is usually not up to much - unless it is a Fortify Strength.
Your Flame Shield enchant is much better any fortify armour item, because, in addition to the 6% Flame Shielding and the natural Shield value of the armour, you have an ADDITIONAL 6 points of shielding with the Flame Shield enchantment. ANY elemental shield spell always gives an equal amount of armour shielding. I'm sure you know that yourself, Ragin Cajun; I'm only posting this for any newbie reading the thread.

Keep in mind for a caster character, wearing any type of armor will reduce your spell effectiveness. However, the better your skill in that armor type, the less that armor type decreases spell effectiveness. Not that this matters to your assassin.

Since it is not cost effective (meaning that you have to waste money, and also meaning you would waste an enchantment when you could use it for something else) enchanting your items with Shield for an assassin, I would just go with light armor.

Also, I would spend a bit of time (if you're the patient type) investing in Armorer. Even if it is not a major skill. Besides the fact repairing your own items is much cheaper, eventually you will be able to repair items beyond 100% (increasing your armor rating, and also the gold value of the item, I believe) and, once your Armorer skill is at 100, you only need to carry around one repair hammer. It will never break.

(A very easy way to farm the Armorer skill is to move the difficulty slider to easy (all the way to the left) and just let something attack you. A mud crab is ideal, as your HP will not go down nearly as fast. If you can heal yourself or just carry around a lot of healing items, an even better way is to attack a guard and resist arrest. All the guards in the area will attack you. If you yield to a guard, you can very quickly open your menu and repair your gear before the guard speaks to you. Then, just resist arrest again. Rinse, repeat. This is also a good way to farm your Restoration skill.)

I only encourage using as light boots as possible for an assassin (boot weight affects your sneaking skill) and that's it.

At a certain level of the Sneak skill, you get a perk stating the weight of your boots no longer affects your sneaking.

Moot wrote:
Also, I would spend a bit of time (if you're the patient type) investing in Armorer. Even if it is not a major skill. Besides the fact repairing your own items is much cheaper, eventually you will be able to repair items beyond 100% (increasing your armor rating, and also the gold value of the item, I believe) and, once your Armorer skill is at 100, you only need to carry around one repair hammer. It will never break.

Agree wholeheartedly with this. I even go to the expense of training armourer skill - it is not only a very valuable skill, it adds nicely to endurance points when you raise a level - and endurance is very valuable to any class!

Fljotsdale wrote:I even go to the expense of training armourer skill

Also, if you have the spare cash and don't really train skills, it's a great way to level them up. If you already have 10/10 major skills to level up, before you do, train! Not only do you get a whole new 5 skills to train the next level, but those training skills count towards the next level if they're major, and count towards a better +multiplier whether they're major or not. It's a good way to get +5 multipliers for your favored attributes.

Moot wrote:Also, if you have the spare cash and don't really train skills, it's a great way to level them up. If you already have 10/10 major skills to level up, before you do, train! Not only do you get a whole new 5 skills to train the next level, but those training skills count towards the next level if they're major, and count towards a better +multiplier whether they're major or not. It's a good way to get +5 multipliers for your favored attributes.

Yeah, I train minor skills as well - mostly those that improve STR: blunt, blade, hand-to-hand - especially if my char never uses more than 1 of those skills at most.
I prefer Marksman as my weapon skill, unless I play a mage type, in which case I go for blade, cos spells do the work of marksman.

Bow + Poison + Stealth = Win

Yup! :laugh: