Today I've heard two statements here that have given me cause to pose a couple of general questions. The first statement is that with healing potions, there is no excuse for a character death, and the second was more or less about going up many levels based on alchemy, smithing, and enchanting.

This made me curious about how many healing potions most people carry, and if many people spend the first few levels focused on crafting and alchemy rather than adventuring.

For myself, I usually disenchant the first of every type of enchanted item I encounter (unless it's VERY special) so my enchanting goes up pretty quickly even without creating any enchanted items. I make a few healing potions, but rarely do much with smithing beyond getting the "steel" perk.

My biggest problem is weight. It's not unusual for me to dump perhaps 35 pounds of ingredients at a time into a barrel I store such things in, and I try to keep the weight of potions that I carry down as low as I can. that being said, I'd guess I usually end up with a hundred pounds of potions and poisons. Maybe 15 or so healing, and the rest resistance, or fortify of one sort or another.

So, my question is, "How do you handle these sorts of things?"

People who grind spend time leveling alchemy,smithing, and enchanting in order to level up. The rest of us roleplay and enjoy the game.

I try to just stick to a single crafting skill. If not, I moderate them and focus on a single one at a time and then shift to the other. I've never done all 3, though. That's overkill.

For potions I just carry what I need. Obviously that's hard at the beginning when I don't have somewhere to drop them off, but I usually carry no more than 5 or 6 of a single type of potion/poison. I sell anything that I can't or will never use. I also use a Potion replacer (which I can't link directly to since it's hosted on Lover's Lab) than not only https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM5avh2ygzc but the weight so that it matches the size more closely (I find it hard to believe that the small bottles weight as much as the larger ones, let alone take up the same amount of space). Ingredients are trickier. I generally try to use them ASAP unless they can be combined with specific ingredients to make a stronger/more expensive potion. Once I get a house to store them in, I just leave them all at home and do all alchemy there unless I have a few reagents on me that I picked up while out adventuring. I'm playing with Requiem right now, so I also have potions that heal over time instead of immediately which makes it easier to leave potions behind (especially for characters than generally avoid damage altogether since they're made of tissue paper).

For enchanting I tend to hoard jewelry and the like, but thankfully those tend to be lightweight. I find it easier to manage the weight than with Smithing or Alchemy, so I'll most likely lug around all of my Soul Gems with me. Anything that can be disenchanted will be when it's most convenient.

Smithing is a different beast altogether. This is the one crafting skill that I always go to trainers to raise when possible. It just never made much sense to me that you can churn out a whole set of armor in minutes, let alone lug around ALL of the materials for it. Crafting a weapon or piece of armor was an adventure by itself, since I always made it a point to gather the ingredients rather than buy them.

In general I try to go to trainers for crafting skills, but the best ones are locked behind factions and questlines the characters will never do. Who thought it would be a good idea to lock the Master Alchemist and Enchanter behind the Dark Brotherhood and a quest that involves theft (and absolutely no magic at all) without giving any information beforehand? You'd need to metagame to know that unless you happened to be playing particularly despicable/greedy characters. At least it's made clear that Eorlund is the best smith in Skyrim, so my smith made it a point to at least join the Companions for access to his knowledge and forge.

I approach crafting from a character perspective. Many of my characters do no crafting at all. With alchemy some buy their potions/poisons and some make them, but I don’t deliberately spend the first hours of my games leveling up a certain skill. I tried that and it was unbelievably boring. Plus all of that out-of-character grinding which was just work for me only resulted in pushing the difficulty slider up to compensate after a few levels. Play time wasted! Ugh.

As far as ‘with healing potions there is no excuse for character death,’ unless I’m mistaken that assumes freezing the game and going to menu or using a hotkey to take potions during combat. I don’t do that, and I know other players who also won’t interrupt combat to take potions. A character has to get enough distance away from the fight that they can unequip their weapon and reasonably use a potion or poison, such as while a dragon circles or after they go pelting down the corridor back the way they came far enough that the draugr forget about them. I find it much more interesting to play that way. I realize that some NPCs heal in the middle of fights without unequipping their weapon, but that doesn’t make me want to do it.

So to answer how many healing potions, I’d say not many and they’re mostty the kind that fortify and/or increase the regen of an attribute rather than instant Restore potions. I don’t have much use for those other than handing them out to NPCs.

I do have a merchant character waiting in the wings who will use up all of the material he finds to make and enchant things for sale. By ‘finds’ I mean finds through natural exploration, not fast travels and reloads to reset vendor inventories because again, boring. Because he crafts and trades for a living he will only perk crafting and speechcraft skills, so with a 2-3-2 attribute spread I’m curious how he will turn out. I think his game will stay fun at Adept, which after all of this time playing the game is kind of a goal of mine.

This thread brought up fond memories of Nov/Dec 2011 when I tried just about every game mechanic with the same character. I remember once writing about “The Fight Of One Hundred Carrots” when she ate an enormous amount of raw food while battling Forsworn. Needless to say that was not a big roleplay experience. But I suppose you could make a slogan about no excuse for death while you have ninety-seven pounds of raw meat in your inventory.

Oh, and with experimenting to discover recipes I’ve never had trouble with alchemy ingredients weighing too much. My new characters waste a lot trying out new combinations, and as they increase in level and know more effects they can carry more.

I try to never use potions mid-fight, I find it very jarring for my immersion. I'll either heal myself using magic, or fortify myself in some way before the fight. At early levels I take very potion I find, not matter what value. When I go to a shop I'll then get rid of any potions I'll never use, while keeping a decent stock of healing and magicka as backup. I never focus on alchemy when choosing perks - only once I'm satisfied with my character and feel like branching out.

Enchanting is easy to grind - I sometimes do this, even while RPing, as I want my character to start out 'powerful' - just enchant every weapon you find with turn undead (you find this enchant very early in-game). I carry around every piece of jewellery and soul gem I find, and then blast out a load of enchanting once I'm full on carry weight with weapons.

If there's a specific style of armour or weapon I want to use I'll grind smithing. I prefer cloth over armour generally, though. In my mind smithing isn't something you would just practice from time to time. I get the feeling if you went some time without doing it you would lose the knack, as it were. Therefore, to me, it only makes sense to get to the point I need to and then stop, or not use it at all.

Ha! "Fight of One Hundred Carrots"! I love it!

I don't like to stop combat to take a potion, but I will rather than die on the spot... unfortunately, most of the time I hit the tab to open the inventory, but it doesn't open and goes instead straight to death cam with me pounding futilely on the tab key.

My issue with smithing is that I get frustrated easily. Whatever I want or need for smithing is always available... when I'm too poor to buy it, and too low level to use it anyway. I might buy it in expectation of future need, but if I have no place store it I have problems, and I'm always broke anyway. I go through a lot of money on spells, enchanted items, houses, training and so forth.

I hear people say they've got too much money and don't know what to do with it, but that's never been my problem at all...

It's easy to make money, but if you're training 5 levels every level, especially on a skill higher than 50, then you're probably going to find yourself being short of money quite often. Once you hit mid->late game, unless you're playing with specific rules to prevent it, you should have a ton of gold.

"Mid->late game" Hmmm... I have to wonder what that is, exactly. I think the highest level character I've ever had was 38... or maybe 34 out of a couple of hundred characters. DiD dudits to me, eh?

I don't usually train all that much, outside of archery, and I don't think I've ever trained it after 50. I get a little one-hand or two hand training now and again if the character uses them, but I've never trained up in smithing, or enchanting (I didn't even know you COULD train enchanting), alteration, restoration, or sneak.

btw, i despise wannabe . perfect pagan.

poo see.

For me, mid-game starts around level 30, once your character has a well rounded set of perks. You must have RP rules that prevent / discourage you from massing money surely?

Wanna try English?

@ Cjay:

No I've no rules against it. Just spend it on whatever, 5000 for a house (lakeview first, usually) then a constant drain for everything to add to it, and all that other stuff.

Ok here's my take on the whole crafting grinding levelling up thing.

First......I play DiD......man! I can't afford to take chances with my chars life. While purist zero crafters, or technical one craft only players may find it satisfying to say they played it through with only alchemy or only enchanting cos thats their role play ethos, it's also gonna get them killed much more easily.

Sure I still have good role play reasons for all my crafting involvement, but I do need all three to make a long lived char....

So RP reason one, Alchemy....... I take Farengar's Frost salts to Arcadia. She TELLS me to have a good look around and
I notice the alchemy bench. Her dialogue options include...can I use the alchemy lab? She then instructs me and it's a new hobby.

RP reason two, Smithing.......I listen to Irileth readying the guard detail for Riverwood by the main gate , then notice Adrianne at work in her forge. I trade a little then ask if she needs any help.....pretty soon I discover the great usefulness of smithing and keep it up.

RP reason three,.Enchanting.........after beating Mirmulnir but just before meeting Lydia, I ask Farengar about shouts. This is the first time I've had non-rushed access to the court wizard. I ask him lots of stuff and he gets on to Enchanting. I buy his gems and make some simple low value item mildly enchanted. Enthused by the value increase and modest useful imbued ability, I make enchanting a hobby.

Grinding grind grind grind........well you don't have to devote several days to this solidly. You do a Bach of daggers for the smithing rise, then enchant them all and sell them for good coin.....what's not to like. A while later do a few more. Enchanting rises don't start slowing until about 60 points. Alchemy is no grind when you know what makes it rocket.......I use easy to obtain blue butterfly wings and blue mountain flower. The resulting potions are also very valuable if you allow yourself to sell them. In between smithing and other sessions you explore and adventure as normal.

Why do it at all? Well standard non-smithed up gear simply would not stand up to bandits from a thug upwards. Esp archers.

Alchemy makes paralyse poisons that make bear and bandit chief encounters survivable and health potions of over100.

Enchanting, well, it's too wonderful to miss out on.....you can tailor enchantment to fit a specific role play, or do the lot!
Personally I max out the skill, then double enchant everything......boots of carrying and resist fire.....bracers of carrying and archery.....a circlet of archery and waterbreathing.....a necklace of archery and carrying.......a ring of archery and resist shock and body armour of increased health and armour rating. Finally a special glass shield of block and fortify Heath.

DOESNT THAT LOT MAKE IT TOO EASY? Well it depends how you play, but on Legendary the answer is no, you need all the help you can get. ( though I do leave helmets off to add challenge).

I didn't mean any offense to anyone who plays that way, Rick. I'm just honestly curious about how people play this out. Obviously my way of playing characters doesn't make for long life, eh? But, even when I play DiD, i play to have fun, and being crazy either makes it better or worse, depending on your point of view. I mean, how many DiD competition players do you suppose rode a sprinting horse off a ledge for a flying attack at a dragon? Now THAT was fun! Even better since my character survived that bit of insanity...

Anyway, I'm curious about how many people "grind" (if that's the right word) the crafting skills before getting into heavy adventure, because you had me thinking of starting a character that does that but doesn't adventure until maybe level 25 or 30..

It's been a day for me, I guess. LOBDawgz started in on me in another thread with some "pansy" comment, then he dissed every player who ever had a character die, particularly in DiD, and especially in the DiD competition, and when I respond to that, MrBattleaxe gets on ME for being rude... Somehow, it's just not been my day, and the last thing I want to do is offend you.

Apologies (Sincere ones this time) if I did.

For some reason i never used Alchemy for other reason than making money. You find random items at wilderness and you make random potions. Thats it.