Unused Icons

This is a sub-page of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Armor and Weapons#

Arena Armor#

To do: Finish this section.

Apparently the arena armor was split into three parts originally.

Imperial Watch Armor#

This armor has its own unique icons for the inventory, but aside from the shield (due to the fact that characters drop their shields to the ground as an item when they die), the armor cannot be picked up by the player due to it being marked as non-playable in the Construction Set. Even if you did manage to pick it up or add it to your inventory via the console, it would not appear in your inventory, and will not appear in the inventories or barter menus of any shopkeepers or lootable corpses wearing/carrying it, leaving the icons unused. The icons are correctly assigned to the items themselves, though, meaning that if you set them to be "playable" in the Construction Set, the icons will appear as expected.

The Imperial palace cuirass also suffers from this.

Mythic Dawn Armor#

At some point, the Mythic Dawn Armor may have been meant to be usable by the player. Interestingly, the helmet icon is missing the mask (The armor lacked the mask in prerelease screenshots). This item can be obtained in one of the test levels. Normally, the game treats it as a bound item, but bound items have their own objects and IDs.

Quivers#

It seems at one point, quivers and arrows were separate from each other. It's not really known how they'd function but perhaps you had to equip quivers in order to carry arrows.

There's a quiver icon for every weapon material, minus Elven. There's also an alternate Dwarven quiver simply named Quiver.

Unidentified armor and swords#

There are a number of unused armor and weapon icons in the game that do not match any actual in-game items (or even the game's art style for that matter), however there is a small possibility these icons were taken/scanned from real life photographs.

There are two versions per icon, only the second versions are colored and have "_over" in their filenames, perhaps they're leftovers from a time where item icons show up differently when highlighted in the inventory. Either that or they're simply placeholder icons used during development.

Clothing#

Amulet Of Kings#

This is unused alternative icon for the Amulet Of Kings.

Blindfold#

It seems that the blindfold was intended to be an item at some point. In the final game, it's a "hairstyle" used only by the Blind Moth Priests (and many test NPCs). It's actually also the "default" hairstyle for NPCs in the Construction Set that will be used when their hairstyle is set to NONE.

Emperor's Clothing#

The Emperor's Robe and Emperor's Shoes have unique icons. Despite being marked as playable, you never get to see them because the game prevents you from looting Uriel's corpse.

Jail Shirt#

The generically-named Shirt (internally known as JailShirt) worn by prisoners (and you anytime you're imprisoned) is a duplicate of the Sack Cloth Shirt in the final game. This wasn't always meant to be the case as these two icons below were meant to be used for the "Jail Shirt". However, it gets even more confusing, as while both the Jail and Sack Cloth Shirts use the icons meant for the Sack Cloth Shirt, the shirts themselves actually use the textures for the Jail Shirt, meaning that the unique textures intended for the Sack Cloth Shirt go completely unused as well. Also of note is that the female variant of this icon uses a more tan color, but in-game the shirt is the same color for both genders.

Russet Felt Pants#

The Russet Felt Outfit, internally known as MiddleShirt05 covers the upper and lower body in the final game. But it was meant to only cover the upper body, since there are unused icons for a matching set of pants.

The shirt and pants were later made as one outfit. But it seems the female variant originally had a different color than the male counterpart, as one can tell from the icon below but for whatever reason the outfit was made in the same colors for both genders, except for the female shoes which still use the old color scheme.

Factions#

Arena Challenger Rank#

The Challenger is a cut Arena rank. Unlike the Dark Brotherhood Executioner Rank (see below), no NPCs are ranked Challenger. This is due to it not being defined in the Arena faction data.

The Challenger rank may've evolved into the Hero rank. The two ranks icons are almost identical, save for the horizontal red ribbon, which the Hero rank lacks.

Challenger (Unused)	Hero (Used)

Dark Brotherhood Executioner Rank#

The Dark Brotherhood has a fifth rank called Executioner that the player skips over - the questline promotes you straight from Assassin to Silencer. Nevertheless, it has a graphic for your Journal's factions page and is defined in the faction's ranks. Both Ocheeva and Vicente Valtieri are of this rank.

Faction Insignias#

Hidden within the game's stat folder, are these three faction icons. It seem the faction section of the statistics worked differently than it does in the final game although one can't exactly tell how. It's possible that, instead of faction ranks, the statistics page showed faction insignias instead.

The idea was probably dropped very early in development since there's an icon for the cut Nobility faction.

Items#

Brick#

There are two icons for bricks, this is the first of them and it's not used. The model shown here doesn't exist either.

Gemstones#

The flawed icons for Diamond, Emerald and Ruby as well as the flawless icon of Topaz are not used by the game. Also, many of the different icons that represent different levels of polishing are mixed up by the game and thus do not match their models.

Magic Balls#

Four colored icons of the generic Magic Ball item are unused in the games, colored blue, green, red and yellow.

Perhaps they were early versions of the elements you're required to gather in the quest Through A Nightmare, Darkly since they have the same colors. They don't have matching models.

Wolf Pelt#

Another alternative icon, this time for the Wolf Pelt. It's not found in the same folder as the actual Wolf Pelt icon used by the game.

Magic Icons#

Darkness#

The unused magic effect Darkness has an equally unused icon. Even if you create a spell with this effect and give it to yourself, you'll never see this since it's not assigned to it properly.

Schools of Magic#

The icon trims for the six school of magic are within the game files, the developers probably forgot to delete those after they had finished making the magic effects. These could, however benefit modders in a way despite the fact it is impossible to create new magic effects for the game.

Unknown Magic Effects#

There is also a number of unidentified magic icons within the files. Some of them might've been magic effects that were later cut from the game while the others are probably early or alternative icons for existing effects. There's no clear indication as to the purpose of these icons, since they are named only after their school of magic and nothing else.

The Alternation icon looks similar to the Shield magic effect, and it may've been an early version of it.

The Conjuration and Illusion icons are the most mysterious of the bunch, one can't really tell how they'd work.

The first Mysticism icon is likely an early version for Telekinesis, while the second could be for a cut effect or for one of the other Mysticism effects.

The first Restoration icon is probably an early icon of the Restore effects. The second icon is similar to Fortify Health and Fortify Fatigue except it's colored all blue, which is the color of Magicka. Perhaps the Fortify effects were originally meant to have unique colors that match the attribute they heal, if that's the case then the second icon is an early iteration of Fortify Magicka.

These two icons below are completely beyond explanation.

Paralysis#

This is an alternative icon for the Paralysis magic effect. It was probably changed because a scorpion does a better job at conveying Paralysis than whatever is depicted here.