Skyrim: Here’s How To Get Glass Armor

One of the most important aspects of Skyrim is protecting yourself during combat. One important aspect of protection is armor and depending on your level, there are a lot of armor sets at your disposal. From simple leather and iron armor to extremely durable and powerful dragonbone sets, there’s plenty to go around. In today’s post, we’re going to focus on glass armor, the fourth most powerful light armor type that you can come across while exploring Skyrim and fighting your way through it. Glass armor sets are powerful yes, but they are also notoriously hard to come by, due to that, let’s see how to get glass Armor in Skyrim. 

Is glass armor the best light armor in Skyrim?

Glass armor is not the best light armor in Skyrim but it is the fourth best, surpassed only by dragonscale armor, stalhrim armor, and Deathbrand armor added by Dragonborn DLC. The glass armor set consists of glass armor, boots, gauntlets, a helmet, and a shield.

The full armor set with shield amounts to a total of 103 points of protection which can further be improved at the workbench. Glass armor is primarily made out of malachite, a semi-translucent green volcanic crystal, and moonstone am ivory colored metal.

How to get glass armor in Skyrim? 

There are various ways through which you can acquire glass armor in Skyrim such as looting, crafting, purchasing, or simply adding the armor through console commands. In the rest of this post, we’re going to cover all of them. 

1. You can loot glass armor as soon as your level is high enough 

The average level at which glass armor will start to appear throughout the world of Skyrim is 36-37, which sounds like a long time to wait. It’s actually not that unusual considering the fact that glass armor was the second-strongest armor in the base game before Dragonborn was released. You can however run into some random pieces of unenchanted glass armor as soon as you hit level 26. 

Your best bet at looting armor pieces is to visit locations where Thalmor resides. Thalmor are regularly equipped with a mix of glass and elven armor and they are a guaranteed supply of both armor types. 

Thalmor can be 100% of the time found at the following locations: Northwatch Keep near Solitude, and Thalmor Embassy, also near Solitude. This is due to Solitude being the most friendly toward the empire and Thalmor in general. 

Besides Thalmor, glass armor has the highest chance of appearing in boss chests. Those can be found in most types of ruins be it nordic, dwemer, or imperial forts or near dragon lairs. 

2. You can craft glass armor 

Before you attempt crafting glass armor there are a couple of prerequisites that need to be met. 

1. Your smithing skill needs to be at least 70 
2. Glass Smithing perk needs to be activated 

To craft a set of glass armor you will need x9 refined malachite, x5 refined moonstone x8 leather strips, and x3 leather. The materials are easy enough to gather as both malachite ore and moonstone ore veins can be found as you explore Skyrim. The hardest, definitely most time-consuming part will be raising your skill in Smithing.

Once you’ve met all prerequisites and gathered all the materials simply approach any forge and start smithing away your glass armor set. You can further improve your glass armor by enhancing it at the workbench with the use of refined malachite. 

3 . You can purchase glass armor 

 You can always hope to find glass armor in stores. Blacksmiths and general merchants are known to carry assorted pieces of glass armor from time to time given that you are at the appropriate level. Obtaining glass armor through merchants, however, is expensive and depends on luck too much. 

4. You can add glass armor through console commands 

If everything else fails and you are impatient, you can always cheat your way to glass armor by using console commands. Although not as fulfilling as actually obtaining the set through looting and fighting, it gets the job done. To add a glass armor set to your inventory through commands you’re going to need to use player.additem command followed by itemID of every piece in the set. The itemID’s for glass armor sets are as follows: 

1. Glass armor – 00013939 
2. Glass boots -00013938
3. Glass gauntlets – 0001393A
4. Glass helmet – 0001393B
5. Glass shield – 0001393C

You can always get the itemID in-game through the use of help command, simply type help “glass armor” 0, and the itemID of glass armor should appear, repeat the step for every piece in the set. 

Once you have an itemID we can use our command to add any piece from the set to our inventory. For example, if I want to add a glass shield I’m going to type player.additem 0001393c 1. 

And that’s it. 

As you can see glass armor is not that difficult to acquire once you’ve reached a high enough level. Remember your best bet is to either craft it (if you have the necessary skills and perks) or simply try your luck attacking one of the many Thalmor patrols through Skyrim or visiting Northwatch Keep and Thalmor Embassy.  Have something to add? Let us know in the comments below!