Skyrim:Light Armor

This article is about the skill. For the physical equipment, see Armor.

Skill: Light Armor
Specialization: Stealth

Light Armor is the skill governing your ability to fight and move in light armor. Each skill point increases your armor rating from Light Armor by 0.4% (1.5% for NPCs). The Light Armor skill tree has a total of 6 perks, requiring a total of 10 perk points to fill. In-game Description: Those trained to use Light Armor make more effective use of Hide, Leather, Elven, Scale and Glass armors.

Additional types of light armor that are forgeable: Chitin Armor^DB, Dragonscale, and Stalhrim Light Armor^DB. There are also a few types of generic, unforgeable, light armor: Fur Armor, Blackguard's Armor^DB, Dawnguard Armor^DG, Forsworn Armor, Guard Armor, Imperial Light Armor, Morag Tong Armor^DB, Skaal Armor^DB, Stormcloak Armor, and Vampire Armor^DG.

Skill Perks

Agile Defender

Custom Fit

Matching Set

Unhindered

Wind Walker

Deft Movement

Light Armor Perk Tree

Perk	Rank	Description	ID	Skill Req.	Perk Req.
Agile Defender	1	Increase armor rating for Light armor by 20%.	000be123
	2	Increase armor rating for Light armor by 40%.	00079376	20 Light Armor
	3	Increase armor rating for Light armor by 60%.	00079389	40 Light Armor
	4	Increase armor rating for Light armor by 80%.	00079391	60 Light Armor
	5	Increase armor rating for Light armor by 100%.	00079392	0 80 Light Armor
Custom Fit		25% Armor bonus if wearing all Light Armor: head, chest, hands, feet.	00051b1b	30 Light Armor	Agile Defender
Matching Set		Additional 25% Armor bonus if wearing a matched set of Light Armor.	00051b17	70 Light Armor	Custom Fit
Unhindered		Light Armor weighs nothing and doesn't slow you down when worn.	00051b1c	50 Light Armor	Custom Fit
Wind Walker		Stamina regenerates 50% faster in all Light Armor: head, chest, hands, feet.	00105f22	60 Light Armor	Unhindered
Deft Movement		10% chance of avoiding all damage from a melee attack while wearing a matched set of Light Armor.	00107831	100 Light Armor	Wind Walker or Matching Set

Comparison to Heavy Armor

Advantages:

• Lighter and less movement penalties.
• Less noisy making sneaking easier.
• Unhindered perk (worn light armor is weightless) is available 20 levels earlier than Heavy Armor's Conditioning, and doesn't require taking two highly situational perks to unlock.
• Uses less stamina when sprinting.
• Stamina recovers faster with Wind Walker perk.
• Can be faster than the enemy (i.e. easier to run from a fight to recover from damage.)
• The lighter weight allows for the carrying of multiple suits of armor, each fine-tuned for specific enemies and situations, without drastically taking up encumbrance.
• Fully mastering the Light Armor tree requires two fewer perks over Heavy Armor (10 total points versus 12), allowing for more growth in other skill trees.
• Deft Movement has a small chance to negate combat damage, increasing overall defense.

Disadvantages:

• Much less protective in the early game. However, later on, with high support skills, both armors are able to reach the protection cap.
• Bare fist (unarmed) attacks are less powerful without Fists of Steel, though at present this perk only uses the base value of the armor, not the upgraded value, and this perk can be somewhat replaced with Fortify Unarmed. This may or may not be intentional.
• Reflect Blows can share melee damage with attackers, increasing overall offense.

Skill Increases

Character Creation

The following races have an initial skill bonus to Light Armor:

• +5 bonus: Argonian, Bosmer, Dunmer, Nord

Trainers

• Scouts-Many-Marshes in Windhelm (Common)
• Grelka in Riften (Expert)
• Nazir in Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, west of Falkreath or north of Dawnstar (Master)

Skill Books

• Ice and Chitin
• Jornibret's Last Dance
• Rislav The Righteous
• The Rear Guard
• The Refugees

Free Skill Boosts

• +1 Light Armor reward (as well as +1 Lockpicking) from Shahvee (Windhelm) for completing the quest Find Shahvee's Amulet of Zenithar inside <Dungeon>.
• +1 Light Armor reward from Annekke Crag-Jumper for completing the quest Kill the Bandit Leader inside <Dungeon>.
• +1 Light Armor reward (as well as +1 to all other stealth skills) from Inge Six Fingers (Bards College) for completing the quest Finn's Lute.
• +5 Light Armor reward (as well as +5 to all other stealth skills) by selecting "The Path of Shadow" from the Oghma Infinium after completing the quest Discerning the Transmundane.

Gaining Skill XP

• Armor skill increases are based on incoming damage, i.e. tougher enemies advance your armor skill faster.
• Regenerate Health potions and enchantments can help staying alive while training, potentially allowing to leave the game unattended. This can also be accomplished with natural health regeneration during brawling sessions with NPCs or fighting very weak enemies like skeevers, though skill gains will be very slow.
• Healing while getting bashed is a good way to train the Restoration skill in the process.
• Armor skills are best trained together with the Block skill.

Notes

• Some guards will say "Lightly armored means light on your feet. Smart." This actually refers to your skill level, not what you are currently wearing.
• Before patch 1.3.10, armor rating for werewolves was affected by the Light Armor skill and would have been increased by the Agile Defender perk.

Bugs

• The Unhindered perk is intended to reduce only the weight of Light Armor that is actually being worn (equipped). However, as of patch version 1.4, Unhindered also reduces the weight of any piece of armor in your inventory that is the same base item as any piece being worn. For example, if you have 10 Glass Armors in your inventory, equipping one of the Glass Armors will make all of them weightless. This remains true even if the worn armor is enhanced by smithing, enchanted, and renamed. ^?
• Even though Deft Movement claims to only work against melee attacks, it has the same chance to ignore damage from arrows, too. ^?
• Deft Movement's chance to activate is actually 11%. ^?