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Quality Gear Levels Guide - Elder Scrolls Online

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Armor Quality Levels

Welcome to the second part of the Quality Gear Levels Guide. In this part we are going to take a look at the armor quality upgrades that are available and what impact they have on the power of your character.

Heavy Armor can be crafted and upgraded with the Blacksmithing profession. Medium and Light Armor can be crafted and upgraded with the Clothing profession.

Weight Profession Fine (Green) Superior (Blue) Epic (Purple) Legendary (Gold)
Heavy Blacksmithing Honning Stone Dwarven Oil Grain Solvent Tempering Alloy
Medium & Light Clothing Hemming Embroidery Elegant Lining Dreugh Wax

Traits & Enchantments

Depending on what quality you currently have on your armor, the traits will slightly change in efficiency. For example the Training trait moves from 4% Epic to 4.5% Legendary quality. Enchantments on the other hand are not affected by the quality of your gear, they have their own system where you can choose to craft Glyphs.

Power Difference

To increase the power of your character you want to upgrade your armor. Upgrading to Epic quality is not that difficult because these materials are fairly common, but upgrading to Legendary quality is quite a stretch because these materials are very rare and expensive. Because these high end materials are so rare and expensive, you have to make a decision on what you want to upgrade or if you want to upgrade at all.

Lets take a look at an example to determine the power change from Epic to Legendary.

Example 1 - Perfect False God's Devotion

In this example we are going to take a look at a set called [False God's Devotion]. As you can see in the picture below, the most important bonus, the last one didn't change at all when we upgraded the set, it stays at 8%. The last bonus is usually the most important and unique one and is often the reason why sets are used in combat. The 2, 3 and 4 piece bonus barely moved at all.

In this case, it won't really matter whether the gear has Epic or Legendary quality, the power of the set is pretty much the same. Unless you are a maximalist and you want every bit of power you can get, then you better save the materials for other sets.

Epic vs Legendary Perfect False God's Devotion
Epic vs Legendary Perfect False God's Devotion

Example 2 - Burning Spellweave

The next example we are going to take a look at is called [Burning Spellweave]. Like before, the 2, 3 and 4 piece bonus only have a small stat increase. However, this time the 5 piece bonus got a decent extra boost on Legendary compared to Epic quality. Here it can be useful to upgrade the set, because the 5 piece bonus changes and gains quite a bit of power.

Epic vs Legendary Burning Spellweave
Epic vs Legendary Burning Spellweave

Example 3 - New Moon Acolyte

Now lets take a look at Heavy Armor. The same concept applies to Heavy Armor, if the 5 piece bonus changes, then it might be worth it to upgrade the set to Legendary. Now keep in mind that Heavy Armor has Weapons & Armor. So you might be in more need of Tempering Alloy than other materials, that is usually the case for most players, especially if you are focused on stamina setups. We will take a look at Weapons in the follow up Weapon Quality Levels Guide.

What I want you to understand here is that if possible, you should always try to get the chest piece in heavy. Because the chest piece has the highest armor value from all the armor parts. Therefore your resistances will go up the most if you have a heavy armor chest piece, even more so if you upgrade it to Legendary quality.

Epic vs Legendary New Moon Acolyte
Epic vs Legendary New Moon Acolyte

Conclusion

Upgrading armor up to Epic makes sense because the materials are fairly easy accessible and not that expensive. However, going from Epic to Legendary quality is a different story, because the materials are way more expensive and rare.

Upgrading to Legendary quality makes sense if the 5 piece bonus gets a fairly decent stat increase or if it is the heavy armor chest piece to increase your overall resistances by a lot. The 2, 3 and 4 piece bonus barely moves even when you upgrade to the maximum level.

Your main goal should always be to get your Armor & Jewelry to at least Epic quality and your Weapons to Legendary quality.

Authors

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