Dragonplate Armor Crafting Guide

This crafting guide will cover the various Dragonplate Armor pieces that can be crafted using the Smithing skill in the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Within you will find a list of relevant information for each piece of equipment that can be crafted including weight, base damage, gold value, value per pound ratio for each item, cost to craft and the profit margin that results, keeping in mind your actual profit in crafting Dragon Armor will vary depending on your speech skill.

Dragonplate Armor is considered Heavy Armor as opposed to the Dragonscale Light Armor which is part of the same group. Unfortunately, even though Dragonplate is harder to craft with heavier ingredients and a more expensive overall cost, Daedra Armor is actually stronger, however can be harder to craft considering the limited availability of Daedra Hearts versus the relatively commonplace Dragons which drop the ingredients you need for this armor set. One counter to this is that Dragonplate Armor is a bout 20% lighter than Daedra. It can be a bit of a tossup however whether it is easier to take out Daedra versus Dragons, since it will depend on your skills and abilities, plus the methods you must learn to fight Dragons effectively.

Whichever path you choose, it is worth considering the benefits of each before spending a valuable perk point if you are only interested in the heavy Dragon armor, whereas the light version is the strongest craft-able light armor in the game. Finally all Dragon pieces require a single Dragon Scale to upgrade at a Workbench.

Protip: The profit margin for crafting Dragonplate versus selling the base ingredients by themselves is particularly weak. Most items will sell for a loss, the chest piece being the only one actually worthwhile for doing this with.