Morrowind:Heavy Armor

Skill: Heavy Armor
Governing Attribute: Endurance
Specialization: Combat
Increase: Hit By Opponent: +1.0

The Heavy Armor skill is used to move and defend while wearing massive and rigid armors like iron, steel, silver, Dwemer, ebony, and Daedric armor. To use any style of armor effectively, the wearer must be trained, conditioned, and skilled in its use.

Character Creation

The following races receive bonuses to their Heavy Armor skill:

• +10 bonus: Orc, +5 bonus: Nord, Redguard

The following classes have Heavy Armor as a Major skill:

• Battlemage, Crusader, Knight, Warrior

The following classes have Heavy Armor as a Minor skill:

• Sorcerer

Factions

The following factions include Heavy Armor as one of their favored skills:

• Fighters Guild
• Hands of Almalexia^TR (not joinable)
• House Redoran
• Imperial Knights (not joinable)
• Imperial Legion
• Skaal^BM (not joinable)
• Talos Cult (not joinable)

Trainers

The Master Trainer of Heavy Armor is Seanwen at the Arena Fighters Training in Vivec. Other trainers of note are:

• Shardie at Buckmoth Legion Fort (up to 76)
• Ulms Drathen at the Armigers Stronghold in Molag Mar (up to 71)

See Heavy Armor Trainers for the complete list.

Books

The following books will increase your Heavy Armor skill:

• Hallgerd's Tale
• 2920, MidYear
• Chimarvamidium
• How Orsinium Passed to the Orcs
• 36 Lessons of Vivec, Sermon 12

Notes

• A full suit of Daedric can provide up to 266 Armor Rating, almost twice as much as the best Medium armor (145), and about 100 points more than the best Light armor (168). While it is one of the best non-magic protection, it suffers from several drawbacks.
  • A full set of Daedric armor weighs 354lbs; only stronger characters may carry one without enchantments. It limits carrying capacity for weapons and loot. This may also significantly slow one's movement rate.
  • Daedric armor is the rarest and hardest set to find. With both Tribunal and Bloodmoon installed, there is exactly one of each piece of the set to be found in the whole game, no more than two of them anywhere near each other. Without the expansions, the only way to get a full set is to do one of two things: either kill an essential character, which can ruin your Main Quest if not done properly (or destroy his armor and pickpocket it which is much harder and takes much longer); or cheat.

• The highest-rated heavy armor stats in the game can be achieved with the following armor combination:
  • Helm: Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw
  • Cuirass: Lord's Mail or Dragonbone cuirass
  • Pauldrons: Daedric Pauldrons
  • Gauntlets: Fists of Randagulf
  • Greaves: Daedric Greaves
  • Boots: Daedric Boots or Ten Pace Boots
  • Shield: Eleidon's Ward

Armor

Heavy Armor is defined by the following weight values. The links provide access to categories that list all of the available heavy armor items of each type.

Armor Type	Weight
Boots	>18.0
Cuirass	>27.0
Greaves, Shield	>13.5
Bracer, Gauntlet, Helmet	>4.5
Pauldron	>9.0

Excluding the expansions, there are six styles of Heavy Armor that provide complete armor sets; four other styles are incomplete.

Armor Style
Complete Sets
Iron Armor	10	117	3,150	266
Steel Armor	15	118	1,650	558
Imperial Steel Armor	16	114	1,760	618
Dwemer Armor	20	118	2,200	3,990
Ebony Armor	60	236	6,600	133,000
Nordic Mail BM	66	132	3,050	18,000
Her Hand's Armor TR	70*	317	7,220	178,500
Daedric Armor	80	354	8,650	257,000
Partial Sets
Nordic Iron Armor (Helmet, Cuirass)	16	43	640	180
Nordic Trollbone Armor (Helmet, Cuirass, Shield)	18	56	1,080	308
Imperial Templar Armor (No shield)	18	103	1,620	580
Imperial Silver Armor (Helmet, Cuirass)	18	35	710	400

* The helmet has 75 armor rating but the shield has only 55.