Making Invisible Armor/Clothing Pieces Options

[SubRosa]

I recently hit upon an idea that I thought I would share. A lot of armor or clothing in the game comes in one or two pieces that covers the entire body. Rather than the usual separate Breastplate, Greaves, Gauntlets, and Boots. The downside is that a single piece that encompasses all 4 (or 3) means you have fewer items you can enchant.

I figured out a way to get around that. You can make invisible armor pieces to fit these slots. Just take any armor or clothing piece from the vanilla game whose menu icon looks about what you want (this is just to save yourself the time and trouble of making a new icon). Copy it and create a new version. Tweak the stats however you want. I usually just make it weightless and of zero value. Make sure it fits the proper body slot.

Then go to the box to select the World Model. Click on it to select a new model. Then click on cancel, and go back to the item's properties window. Now the World Model will be blank. That is what you want. Make sure you do this for both the Male and Female, if both have models listed.

Now go to your main armor or clothing that takes up multiple body slots. Edit it to remove the slots you want to use your invisible armor pieces for. So for example leave it with just Upper Body selected if you also want to use Invisible Boots, Gauntlets, and Greaves with it. Save it.

Finally store all your new items in a chest with your modded clothing somewhere you can get to it. Or add them to a merchant. However you want to add them to the world.

If you did things correctly, you can equip the multi-body part armor, plus all the invisible pieces, and it will look normal. The only weird thing you will see is if you take off the multi-part armor, but leave the invisible pieces on, your hands and feet and legs will disappear. But why would you do that?

[Lena Wolf]

You could also make equippable items that don't have any body slots filled in at all. You can equip as many of those at the same time as you like. They can also have any meshes you like, so these could be clothes or armour, but because the body slot is not selected, they won't show on the character.

The game will complain in the log file, but it will still work.