Max armor values dropped?

[Jharp07]

So while I was out plundering various caves and ruins, I amassed some Ebony armor that had better base armor values than the armor I was wearing at the time, which was a mishmash of various quest rewards and enchanted stuff. Figuring I'd get a few grand souls and enchant the newfound Ebony armor myself, I kept it. Fastforward to today. So I load my save up in the Imperial City, at this point, the unenchanted Ebony armor in my inventory is at the base values it was when I found it, for example the greaves were at 12, and the gauntlets at 7. Here is a chronological list of the events that followed:

 

Rode to Chorrol, sold some stuff

Rode to Battlehorn Castle, threw some stuff in a chest for safekeeping (different armor set, the Imperial Dragon set from the main quest)

Rode back to Chorrol and was given the Shadow Over Hackdirt quest

Rode south to Hackdirt to finish the quest, stopped to plunder a ruined fort full of vampires just outside the town

Went into Hackdirt and initiated the early stages of the questline, eventually getting into the caverns beneath the town

Freed the captive, escorted her back to Chorrol, completed the quest

Fasttraveled (my horse died while I was visiting the ruined fort) to the Market District, sold some more stuff

Fasttraveled to the Arcane University to turn in a quest

Fasttraveled to the Arena to take on three Minotaur Lords in order to fill three grand soul gems I was going to use on my new Ebony armor for enchants

Fasttraveled back to the University and went to the Chironisium to do the enchants

Three pieces of armor, two with endurance enchants, and one with a strength enchant

 

At this point, I donned my new armor, and I noticed something off- the base values of my armor had lowered significantly. I initially assumed it had to do with me enchanting the armor before having repaired (my repair skill is high enough to where I can repair stuff to 125%). So I reloaded a quicksave just before the enchanting process, noticed the armor levels were actually lower than they were before the enchanting, and after repairing them, maxed out at what they were after enchanting. My Ebony Greaves, for example, were at 12 armor when I looted them a few days ago, but were now at a meager 7. My gauntlets had dropped from 7 to 5.

 

What the bloody hell? I immediately did two things to check if I was crazy or not. Firstly, I loaded the save from back at the Market district where my line of events above started and checked my inventory. Sure enough, the armor values where were they were supposed to be (Greavse at 12, etc.) I then loaded the most recent save, and went back to the market district to check the armor value on some of the old stuff I'd sold, and instead of decreasing like the Ebony armor I had did, they had all remained the same.

 

I'm not sure if there's some in-game system here that I'm missing, if the items simply bugged, or if it's being caused by one of my mods, or perhaps something happened during the completion of the events detailed above that caused the decrease. The only two mods I have that should affect armor stats are Francesco's and Quest Award Leveling, neither of which I understand to change anything related to the basic armor styles in the game. Anyone have any idea what the deal is? This is quite alarming, seeing as I not only wasted quite a bit of time collecting these armor pieces, but also stressing over all of the crap I had to throw away in those dungeons in order to carry the heavy ass stuff with me. Treasure I could have sold and gotten even richer off of.

 

Help me out bros :(

Edited March 20, 2011 by Jharp07

[Vecna6667]

So while I was out plundering various caves and ruins, I amassed some Ebony armor that had better base armor values than the armor I was wearing at the time, which was a mishmash of various quest rewards and enchanted stuff. Figuring I'd get a few grand souls and enchant the newfound Ebony armor myself, I kept it. Fastforward to today. So I load my save up in the Imperial City, at this point, the unenchanted Ebony armor in my inventory is at the base values it was when I found it, for example the greaves were at 12, and the gauntlets at 7. Here is a chronological list of the events that followed:

 

Rode to Chorrol, sold some stuff

Rode to Battlehorn Castle, threw some stuff in a chest for safekeeping (different armor set, the Imperial Dragon set from the main quest)

Rode back to Chorrol and was given the Shadow Over Hackdirt quest

Rode south to Hackdirt to finish the quest, stopped to plunder a ruined fort full of vampires just outside the town

Went into Hackdirt and initiated the early stages of the questline, eventually getting into the caverns beneath the town

Freed the captive, escorted her back to Chorrol, completed the quest

Fasttraveled (my horse died while I was visiting the ruined fort) to the Market District, sold some more stuff

Fasttraveled to the Arcane University to turn in a quest

Fasttraveled to the Arena to take on three Minotaur Lords in order to fill three grand soul gems I was going to use on my new Ebony armor for enchants

Fasttraveled back to the University and went to the Chironisium to do the enchants

Three pieces of armor, two with endurance enchants, and one with a strength enchant

 

At this point, I donned my new armor, and I noticed something off- the base values of my armor had lowered significantly. I initially assumed it had to do with me enchanting the armor before having repaired (my repair skill is high enough to where I can repair stuff to 125%). So I reloaded a quicksave just before the enchanting process, noticed the armor levels were actually lower than they were before the enchanting, and after repairing them, maxed out at what they were after enchanting. My Ebony Greaves, for example, were at 12 armor when I looted them a few days ago, but were now at a meager 7. My gauntlets had dropped from 7 to 5.

 

What the bloody hell? I immediately did two things to check if I was crazy or not. Firstly, I loaded the save from back at the Market district where my line of events above started and checked my inventory. Sure enough, the armor values where were they were supposed to be (Greavse at 12, etc.) I then loaded the most recent save, and went back to the market district to check the armor value on some of the old stuff I'd sold, and instead of decreasing like the Ebony armor I had did, they had all remained the same.

 

I'm not sure if there's some in-game system here that I'm missing, if the items simply bugged, or if it's being caused by one of my mods, or perhaps something happened during the completion of the events detailed above that caused the decrease. The only two mods I have that should affect armor stats are Francesco's and Quest Award Leveling, neither of which I understand to change anything related to the basic armor styles in the game. Anyone have any idea what the deal is? This is quite alarming, seeing as I not only wasted quite a bit of time collecting these armor pieces, but also stressing over all of the crap I had to throw away in those dungeons in order to carry the heavy ass stuff with me. Treasure I could have sold and gotten even richer off of.

 

Help me out bros :(

 

Did you get the Ebony Armor from Umbra and, if you did, did you get it before level 15? If you answer yes to both, then even thought it says Ebony Armor, it is in fact Orcish Armor. Other than that, I'd check to see if your Luck attribute and Heavy Armor skill had been damaged. Your luck score is passively tied to all skills. Every 10 points above 50 in luck makes all skills function as if they were 4 skill levels higher without actually making any real changes to the skills themselves. The dropoff is that the closer you get any skill besides acrobatics to 100 after getting the skill to 80, the less impact luck has on the skill with luck becoming useless on a skill once the skill hits 100.

 

For an example on the effects of the luck attribute, lets say you have a blade skill of 50 with a luck score of 80, even though your blade skill remains at 50, the base damage that appears on a long sword should be the same as if your blade skill was at 62 and your luck was at 50.

 

If none of these are the case, I'm just as stumped as you.

[Jharp07]

Did you get the Ebony Armor from Umbra and, if you did, did you get it before level 15? If you answer yes to both, then even thought it says Ebony Armor, it is in fact Orcish Armor. Other than that, I'd check to see if your Luck attribute and Heavy Armor skill had been damaged. Your luck score is passively tied to all skills. Every 10 points above 50 in luck makes all skills function as if they were 4 skill levels higher without actually making any real changes to the skills themselves. The dropoff is that the closer you get any skill besides acrobatics to 100 after getting the skill to 80, the less impact luck has on the skill with luck becoming useless on a skill once the skill hits 100.

 

For an example on the effects of the luck attribute, lets say you have a blade skill of 50 with a luck score of 80, even though your blade skill remains at 50, the base damage that appears on a long sword should be the same as if your blade skill was at 62 and your luck was at 50.

 

If none of these are the case, I'm just as stumped as you.

 

Aha! I just jumped into the game and checked my luck stats for both the save file when the armor was displayed at 12 and the savefile for when it had been decreased, and indeed there was a shift in my luck stat. Quite a large one in fact- it went down from 51 to 11. Additionally, a few other stats were very low with the red highlight indicating so. Intelligence, Willpower, Personality, and Luck had all been decreased by varying amounts.

 

I've noticed this attribute stat decrease before but never payed it much mind because it was always on stats I didn't care all that much for, like personality and intelligence, and I assumed there was some logical cause for them, but now that it's actually affected me negatively, I'm forced to ask what I'm fearful is probably a very noobish question- what the hell is causing my stat decreases? I have no visible debuffs on, and when I take off all my armor, weapons, and accessories, it doesn't seem to change anything. I sincerely hope there's a way to rectify this issue.

 

Thanks for pinpointing the issue for me, though, that much is a ton helpful. Glad to know it wasn't a bug or mod issue.

[Jharp07]

After a quick search, it seems I've likely been affected by enemy enchantments or spells. I was always under the impression that the temporariness of these effects was exclusively limited to a time limit, not realizing that some were permanent unless action was taken to rectify them. It seems I can fix them by simply praying at a chapel, something I've done less times than fingers I have on one hand in seventy hours of in-game time.

 

So yeah, I'm a noob. Thanks for your help, though, it's nice to know I'm not insane, just stupid, and my game isn't all wonky.

Edited March 20, 2011 by Jharp07