This post is for the various gameplay mechanics I've uncovered whilst helping people here on the blog, a long with some common knowledge about the skills to further understanding. There may be some math involved, but don't fret, it should be relatively easy to understand.
I encourage everyone to look at my findings critically and question them if they don't feel right, or if you believe the numbers to be off. I'll happily provide more test numbers, but I'll initially be limiting them to keep the post from being too cluttered.
Test data can be found here.
Feel free to ask for other stuff to be tested, either here or by a message to me - I am more likely to check my messages/comments.
Feedback and suggestions on how to keep the post (multiple posts if need be) neat and easy for the reader is appreciated greatly (and probably needed)! Pictures are welcome as well.
With all that out of the way, let's begin.
Content
Note: I haven't started testing things from the Dragonborn DLC yet, but I will start if there are any requests.
In this post you can find information about the following:
Blocking
Blocking is the act of absorbing the impact of an attack with either a shield, weapon or torch.
In Skyrim, the block cap is 85%, which means with a successful block you can negate 85% of the incoming damage. Most shields and all weapons will be able to reach the cap with 100 block skill and all shield wall perks. Blocking stacks on top of damage reduction from armor, leading to a possible 97% damage reduction.
- Note: Shield Wall perks increase by 10% (10/20/30/40/50%) per perk instead of the listed 20/25/30/35/40%.
Blocking is calculated differently whether you're blocking with a shield or a weapon/torch. Shields vary in their block strength based on the base armor rating, while weapons (and torch) all block for the same amount of damage. Calculations and notes on the calculations:
Shield Block = (45 + 0.2 * Shield Base Armor * (1 + Block Skill * 0.015)) * (1 + Shield Wall Perk) * (1 + Block Enchantment)
Weapon Block = (30 + 0.2 * 60 * (1 + Block Skill * 0.015) * (1 + Shield Wall Perk) * (1 + Block Enchantment)
- Block Skill: Skill level of your block (0-100)
- Shield Wall Perk: How much extra block you get from shield wall. 10% = 0.1 and 50% = 0.5
- Block Enchantment: How much extra block you get from enchantments. 18% = 0.18 and 95% = 0.95
- 45 and 30 is the base value of blocking with a shield and weapon (respectively)
- 0.2 is the scaling factor of blocking.
- Weapons get the equivelant of 60 base armor (no idea why, but it fits)
Test data can be found here.
Return to Content section.
Bashing
Bashing is the act of smashing your shield or the broad side of a sword in the face of an enemy. Bashing damage is governed by the base armor or damage rating of the shield or weapon respectively, it is not affected by heavy- or lightarmor, one- or twohanded or archery.
Deadly bash and power bash stacks, meaning a power bash does 15 times more damage.
Weaponry will quickly end up doing more bash damage because of different scaling in bash damage, with some two handers ending up dealing more than 100 damage per power bash.
Bashing with enchanted weaponry gives a chance to proc the enchantment, no effect is found when using enchanted weaponry and shield bashing.
Calculations and notes on the calculations:
Shield Bash = Shield Base Armor * 0.05 * (1 + Block Skill * 0.015)
Weapon Bash = Base Damage * 0.05 * (1 + Block Skill / 20)
- The weapon bash formula is different because following the "normal" formula ends up multiplying by 6 instead of 5.
Test data can be found here.
Return to Content section.
Armor Rating
Armor Rating is your protection, whether it be in the form of a flesh spell, light armor or heavy armor. It is common knowledge that each point of armor rating reduces damage by 0.12%.
The armor cap is set at 80% which makes the armor rating cap 667 (technically 666.667 - we're rounding up).
Return to Content section.
Hidden Armor Rating
For armor there is hidden armor rating, and most people will refer for the armor rating cap to be 567, which is only a partial truth.
Each piece of armor has a hidden armor bonus, 25 armor rating per piece. This means you reach the armor cap with 100 less armor rating. Although this is common knowledge, it is less known that shields also have a hidden armor rating, thus lowering the shown armor rating cap. The shown armor rating cap varies by how many pieces of items you're wearing, as shown in the following list.
- 0 pieces of armor: 667 armor rating cap
- 1 piece of armor: 642 armor rating cap
- 2 pieces of armor: 617 armor rating cap
- 3 pieces of armor: 592 armor rating cap
- 4 pieces of armor: 567 armor rating cap
- 5 pieces of armor: 542 armor rating cap
Test data can be found here.
Return to Content section.
Calculating Armor Rating
While I was making my own build I was trying to deduce which set of armor was the best fit to meet the build idea. It frustrated me to no end that the calculations weren't precise enough. It is also interesting that shields are not affected by the armor perk.
The game data says that all armor rating is increased by 4% per their respective skill, but when looking at the in-game armor rating it was off by a small number. However, the game data does not lie.
What happens is the game data does not round to nearest whole (as it does most times), it instead rounds up.
Note: not all armor sets are affected by the matching set perk. The ones I know of are ebony armor and Dawnguard armor.
Calculations and notes on the calculations:
Armor Rating = (Base Armor Rating + Item Quality) * (1 + (Armor Skill Level + Skill Effect) * 0.004) * (1 + Armor Perk) * (1 + Fitted Perk + Matching Set)
Shield Armor Rating = (Base Armor Rating + Item Quality) * (1 + (Armor Skill Level + Skill Effect) * 0.004) * (1 + Fitted Perk + Matching Set)
- Item Quality: This is the increase done by smithing. Each state adds a static increase to an armor piece/weapon. A table on smithing improvements can be found here.
- Skill Effect: The increase in light/heavy armor skill added by an enchantment.
- Fitted Perk: Custom Fit (light)/Well Fitted (heavy).
Test data can be found here.
Return to Content section.
Fire Damage
A common misconception on fire damage is targets on fire take extra damage from weapon/spell damage, or the damage increase only applies to fire spells. Neither are true. Fire damage works like a bleed effect, which means targets on fire take damage from the act of being of fire, same holds true for torch bashes. The damage taken is based upon which spell used and the damage of said spell.
Following is a list of spells and their residual burn damage.
- Firebolt: 9.7% residual burn damage.
- Fireball: 19.7% residual burn damage.
- Incinerate: 9.7% residual burn damage.
- Fire enchantment: 6.55% residual burn damage.
Test data can be found here.
Return to Content section.
Silver Weapons
Zach came to me with an interesting question, how the additional damage to undead from Silver weapons worked when using sneak and power attacks (critical charge is essentially a power attack).
Following is the way both attack types are calculated, coupled with an explanation.
Power Attack Damage = Damage * 2 + Silver
Sneak Attack Damage = (Damage + Silver) * 3 (or 6, depends on the perks)
This means that essentially, sneak attacking an undead with a Silver weapon will add in an addition 20 or 40 damage (depending on perks) from the Silver weapon itself, while for power attacks it's a simple 20 damage regardless.
I believe this is due to the game calculating in base weapon damage, doubling it and then adding any effects for power attacks. For sneak attacks it'll simply multiply whatever damage is dealt.
This theory is untested on normal enchanted weaponry, but it could work the same way, making sneak attacks immensely more powerful than previously though.
Test data can be found here.
Return to Content section.
This post is for the various gameplay mechanics I've uncovered whilst helping people here on the blog, a long with some common knowledge about the skills to further understanding. There may be some math involved, but don't fret, it should be relatively easy to understand.
I encourage everyone to look at my findings critically and question them if they don't feel right, or if you believe the numbers to be off. I'll happily provide more test numbers, but I'll initially be limiting them to keep the post from being too cluttered.
Test data can be found here.
Feel free to ask for other stuff to be tested, either here or by a message to me - I am more likely to check my messages/comments.
Feedback and suggestions on how to keep the post (multiple posts if need be) neat and easy for the reader is appreciated greatly (and probably needed)! Pictures are welcome as well.
With all that out of the way, let's begin.
Content
Note: I haven't started testing things from the Dragonborn DLC yet, but I will start if there are any requests.
In this post you can find information about the following:
Blocking
Blocking is the act of absorbing the impact of an attack with either a shield, weapon or torch.
In Skyrim, the block cap is 85%, which means with a successful block you can negate 85% of the incoming damage. Most shields and all weapons will be able to reach the cap with 100 block skill and all shield wall perks. Blocking stacks on top of damage reduction from armor, leading to a possible 97% damage reduction.
- Note: Shield Wall perks increase by 10% (10/20/30/40/50%) per perk instead of the listed 20/25/30/35/40%.
Blocking is calculated differently whether you're blocking with a shield or a weapon/torch. Shields vary in their block strength based on the base armor rating, while weapons (and torch) all block for the same amount of damage. Calculations and notes on the calculations:
Shield Block = (45 + 0.2 * Shield Base Armor * (1 + Block Skill * 0.015)) * (1 + Shield Wall Perk) * (1 + Block Enchantment)
Weapon Block = (30 + 0.2 * 60 * (1 + Block Skill * 0.015) * (1 + Shield Wall Perk) * (1 + Block Enchantment)
- Block Skill: Skill level of your block (0-100)
- Shield Wall Perk: How much extra block you get from shield wall. 10% = 0.1 and 50% = 0.5
- Block Enchantment: How much extra block you get from enchantments. 18% = 0.18 and 95% = 0.95
- 45 and 30 is the base value of blocking with a shield and weapon (respectively)
- 0.2 is the scaling factor of blocking.
- Weapons get the equivelant of 60 base armor (no idea why, but it fits)
Test data can be found here.
Return to Content section.
Bashing
Bashing is the act of smashing your shield or the broad side of a sword in the face of an enemy. Bashing damage is governed by the base armor or damage rating of the shield or weapon respectively, it is not affected by heavy- or lightarmor, one- or twohanded or archery.
Deadly bash and power bash stacks, meaning a power bash does 15 times more damage.
Weaponry will quickly end up doing more bash damage because of different scaling in bash damage, with some two handers ending up dealing more than 100 damage per power bash.
Bashing with enchanted weaponry gives a chance to proc the enchantment, no effect is found when using enchanted weaponry and shield bashing.
Calculations and notes on the calculations:
Shield Bash = Shield Base Armor * 0.05 * (1 + Block Skill * 0.015)
Weapon Bash = Base Damage * 0.05 * (1 + Block Skill / 20)
- The weapon bash formula is different because following the "normal" formula ends up multiplying by 6 instead of 5.
Test data can be found here.
Return to Content section.
Armor Rating
Armor Rating is your protection, whether it be in the form of a flesh spell, light armor or heavy armor. It is common knowledge that each point of armor rating reduces damage by 0.12%.
The armor cap is set at 80% which makes the armor rating cap 667 (technically 666.667 - we're rounding up).
Return to Content section.
Hidden Armor Rating
For armor there is hidden armor rating, and most people will refer for the armor rating cap to be 567, which is only a partial truth.
Each piece of armor has a hidden armor bonus, 25 armor rating per piece. This means you reach the armor cap with 100 less armor rating. Although this is common knowledge, it is less known that shields also have a hidden armor rating, thus lowering the shown armor rating cap. The shown armor rating cap varies by how many pieces of items you're wearing, as shown in the following list.
- 0 pieces of armor: 667 armor rating cap
- 1 piece of armor: 642 armor rating cap
- 2 pieces of armor: 617 armor rating cap
- 3 pieces of armor: 592 armor rating cap
- 4 pieces of armor: 567 armor rating cap
- 5 pieces of armor: 542 armor rating cap
Test data can be found here.
Return to Content section.
Calculating Armor Rating
While I was making my own build I was trying to deduce which set of armor was the best fit to meet the build idea. It frustrated me to no end that the calculations weren't precise enough. It is also interesting that shields are not affected by the armor perk.
The game data says that all armor rating is increased by 4% per their respective skill, but when looking at the in-game armor rating it was off by a small number. However, the game data does not lie.
What happens is the game data does not round to nearest whole (as it does most times), it instead rounds up.
Note: not all armor sets are affected by the matching set perk. The ones I know of are ebony armor and Dawnguard armor.
Calculations and notes on the calculations:
Armor Rating = (Base Armor Rating + Item Quality) * (1 + (Armor Skill Level + Skill Effect) * 0.004) * (1 + Armor Perk) * (1 + Fitted Perk + Matching Set)
Shield Armor Rating = (Base Armor Rating + Item Quality) * (1 + (Armor Skill Level + Skill Effect) * 0.004) * (1 + Fitted Perk + Matching Set)
- Item Quality: This is the increase done by smithing. Each state adds a static increase to an armor piece/weapon. A table on smithing improvements can be found here.
- Skill Effect: The increase in light/heavy armor skill added by an enchantment.
- Fitted Perk: Custom Fit (light)/Well Fitted (heavy).
Test data can be found here.
Return to Content section.
Fire Damage
A common misconception on fire damage is targets on fire take extra damage from weapon/spell damage, or the damage increase only applies to fire spells. Neither are true. Fire damage works like a bleed effect, which means targets on fire take damage from the act of being of fire, same holds true for torch bashes. The damage taken is based upon which spell used and the damage of said spell.
Following is a list of spells and their residual burn damage.
- Firebolt: 9.7% residual burn damage.
- Fireball: 19.7% residual burn damage.
- Incinerate: 9.7% residual burn damage.
- Fire enchantment: 6.55% residual burn damage.
Test data can be found here.
Return to Content section.
Silver Weapons
Zach came to me with an interesting question, how the additional damage to undead from Silver weapons worked when using sneak and power attacks (critical charge is essentially a power attack).
Following is the way both attack types are calculated, coupled with an explanation.
Power Attack Damage = Damage * 2 + Silver
Sneak Attack Damage = (Damage + Silver) * 3 (or 6, depends on the perks)
This means that essentially, sneak attacking an undead with a Silver weapon will add in an addition 20 or 40 damage (depending on perks) from the Silver weapon itself, while for power attacks it's a simple 20 damage regardless.
I believe this is due to the game calculating in base weapon damage, doubling it and then adding any effects for power attacks. For sneak attacks it'll simply multiply whatever damage is dealt.
This theory is untested on normal enchanted weaponry, but it could work the same way, making sneak attacks immensely more powerful than previously though.
Test data can be found here.
Return to Content section.
