Elven smithing is somehow yielding better stuff than Glass...

[rcavanah]

I started getting annoyed with the look of the glass armor while doing thieves guild stuff... Too garish, so I took the decrease in armor rating in order to wear much cooler looking thieves guild armor. I also decided to revert back to Elven weapons, since they fit the look a bit better.

 

Anyway, this got me started looking at my armor and damage ratings, and I realized something: My Elven armor and weapons are rated higher than my Glass stuff! For instance, a Glass dagger crafted and improved with the a specific crafting buff suit + potion yields a 61, and the Elven dagger under the same exact circumstances yields a 69 (up top, my brother). I have the perks for both, smithing skill at 100. Does anyone know why this is? Don't get me wrong, I prefer the look of Elven armor, so it's totally OK by me... But it's weird.

Edited December 14, 2011 by rcavanah

[agno]

yo, the way smithing works is, your smithing skill lvl effects the base you can

upgrade any item at all, leather to daedric, however wen you get a specific perk

for ex: elven smithing, you get that base upgrade celing doubled.

 

for ex: lets say you have elven perk and not glass perk (yet)

you can up elven 6 times, but glass only 3....

 

so get the glass perk!

 

heres one annoyance, it works for weapons too :(

 

so if you go for light armor you wont be able to heavily upgrade daedric

or ebony for a long ass time. (assuming you even bothered with the

perk, as you wont be using heavy armor)

[rcavanah]

so get the glass perk!

 

That's the weird thing though, I have it. Both are maxed out.

[OnlyOneWing]

just make a ton of leather bracers and iron daggers to max out your smithing lvl.... Then you won't have to worry about that. :facepalm: Edited December 14, 2011 by OnlyOneWing

[Handofbane]

There is no real consistency as far as one set of armor/weapons being absolutely better than another on the higher end perks, excepting maybe Ebony/Daedric. You can see it on the heavy armor side as well - Dwarven weapons are better than Orcish, despite being 20 points lower in skill to craft/upgrade while Orcish armor is slightly better than Dwarven (especially when you factor in weight). The scary part - Elven weapons also seem to be better than both Orcish and Dwarven weapons, and are not really superceded til you hit Ebony. I have no idea what the logic is for this, it just makes little sense considering the skill investment and additional perks effectively wasted if you go up to Glass, or go for a heavy armor build then need to blow an extra perk on Elven while you wait on Ebony to start appearing more often in the world on its own (yes I know where the mine is, no excuse to rush there).

[rcavanah]

just make a ton of leather bracers and iron daggers to max out your smithing lvl.... Then you won't have to worry about that. :facepalm:

 

As mentioned, my Smithing is already at 100 (as is my enchanting and alchemy, with applicable perks, so I am maxing stuff out equally).

 

 

There is no real consistency as far as one set of armor/weapons being absolutely better than another on the higher end perks, excepting maybe Ebony/Daedric. You can see it on the heavy armor side as well - Dwarven weapons are better than Orcish, despite being 20 points lower in skill to craft/upgrade while Orcish armor is slightly better than Dwarven (especially when you factor in weight). The scary part - Elven weapons also seem to be better than both Orcish and Dwarven weapons, and are not really superceded til you hit Ebony. I have no idea what the logic is for this, it just makes little sense considering the skill investment and additional perks effectively wasted if you go up to Glass, or go for a heavy armor build then need to blow an extra perk on Elven while you wait on Ebony to start appearing more often in the world on its own (yes I know where the mine is, no excuse to rush there).

 

Thanks for this rundown... I've never liked playing with heavy armor, so I didn't know about the discrepancies on that side. I actually find this kind of cool... In reality, it would makes sense that there's no uber-material that works best for everything; the best material for a weapon wouldn't necessarily be the same as the best material for a piece of armor. I like the Elven weapons, simple and sleek, and this play through (second time; playing through again now that I know how to avoid the bugs)I just wanna use the cool stuff instead of using the best possible stuff.