Morrowind - Question about Armor and Clothing

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So, this is my first Elder Scrolls game and after years of Bioware and D&D rulesets, I'm totally lost. Which is actually pretty great!

Anyway, here's my question: I like the clothing for my character (after getting the BB mod) and look forward to other outfits, but I'm not so fond of the armor options (and the piece by piece equipping).

I know I can enchant clothes, but is there a way to increase the armor rating of clothing through enchantments?

I'm still confused about Morrowind's magic system so I'm not sure if that's do-able or not.

Thanks!

-D

 

There is an Unarmoured skill, that boosts yor defence to unarmoured areas, but I don't know how effective it really is.

Also, you can wear armour over a shirt and pants/skirt. You can also wear a robe over your armour. Unfortunately boots and shoes are mutially exclusive...

 

As Gnarf mentions, your unarmored skill will allow you some armor rating. However, even when your unarmored skill is at 100, this will only give you a 65 armor rating, which is only a little above the cheapest armor's AR (with the appropriate armor skill maxed too). The easiest way to increase this is by enchanting your clothing with the Shield spell. If you enchant a pair of pants with, let's say, Shield 15 pts, your AR will be increased with a simple 15 points bonus. I've never tried to enchant anything with this spell, though, so I've no idea how much you can boost your AR like this.

Another option would be to enchant your clothing with Chameleon, which also makes it harder for them to hit you.

A disadvantage of running around unarmored, though, is that you take more damage from a hit than if you were clad in, let's say, heavy armor. I usually see this as an additional challenge, rather than a disadvantage, as the game generally tends to become fairly easy after your 15-20th level. By that point, you can turn up the difficulty slider so enemies hit harder, or you can start wearing whatever garment you like, and take more damage that way.

/edit
You should also try to take a look around the Morrowind Summit. There's some choice mods adding new garments to be found over there.

 

Gnarf & Henkie,

Thanks for the info. After years of D&D related games, Morrowind is seriously breaking my brain. But in a good way...

Thanks!

-D

 

There is a bug with Unarmored (maybe it's been fixed?) which makes it so you get ZERO benefit from your unarmored skill UNLESS you're wearing at least one piece of actual armor. Get it? In other words: wear all clothing but wear some armor on your feet, hands or some other body part in order to get the full AC benefit from your Unarmored skill. Perhaps there's a mod that fixes this long-standing bug, I'm just not sure.

Henkie's right about the game getting too easy at higher levels. I like playing unarmored mages for the challenge.

 

I've never encountered that particular bug, Sir Fink. Or just never noticed it. Either way, I'm sure that my current installation doesn't have that bug, which has Tribunal and Bloodmoon, with the latest patch (1.6.280, me thinks).

 

You'll not be able to significantly boost the armor effect of clothing through enchantment for a while, because that requires the "Constant Effect" type of enchanment, which in turn requires use of soulgems containing certain, very high-"power" souls, and you won't find creatures of high enough level to soultrap for this until your character is into their teens.

If you really want to get the most out of clothing and the unarmored skill, have a look here:
Aragon's Morrowind Page...
... specifically the "Monk Strategy" and "Mage Strategy" sections. You then might want to examine some of the mods there.

And here's a guide to enchanting:
UESP's Enchantment Guide.