If gear you can craft could be (well, is) better than the best loot from quests, then what's the incentive to quest?

There already is a middle ground. Plenty of players use artifacts. If your crafting skill isn't high enough or you prefer the unique effect, you can use the artifact. Otherwise you use your crafted gear. Balance.



Leveling up. Selling the loot for money. You want some unique effect from the item you get. Just doing it because you want to do it. Etc.

If you knew most of the lore behind the Daedric Artifacts, you'd realize that many of them were NOT created by the Daedric Princes who claim them. Volendrung is a prime example.

I like Spellbreaker; it looks cool and can be useful.
I like Sanguine's Rose for someone not high in Conjuration and it looks cool. I especially loved it when I was a warrior and could use help closing the gap between myself and mages.
Also, Azura's Star/The Black Star. Come on, that's Daedric and you know it's good.

That's the only major problem with that item is the annoying text popup.

Crafting is so easy it should be the initial weapon you get then you upgrade later by doing a quest that requires more effort. That way they are both useful.

I like Dawnbreaker. It is a fine sword if you know how to use it. It looks cool too. I normally use other weapons when adventuring. It is the sword of choice when I know I have undead to take care of. If you are lucky, when you kill something undead, there is an explosion and all undead nearby are vaporized to dust or run away. Very nice touch, I think. If the damage level is not high enough for some that means you have to fight longer. Boo hoo.

It's powerful, just not particularly cool. It's way too "vanilla" for a Daedric Artifact.

Beyond god-like to be honest. If you have Black Star, you basically have infinite charge against enemies with black souls. Sort of a joke when you can kill 20+ enemies close to your level almost instantly... forever because your staff of chain lightning has infinite charge. The 100% destruction cost is better, but having infinite charge if you have the right staff nearly rivals it, and is duoable much much lower level with less grinding. And I doubt Black Star is going to get nerfed, whereas I have a feeling 100% destruction cost is going to get nerfed, at least to 90% (which is good for the game, but still).

Daedric Weapons are not for you mere mortals to impugn.

I love Wabbajack, just hilarious to use.

Yes. It. Is.

The one item to single-handedly keep me from lowering the difficulty from master, despite resists being broken.

Spellbreaker FTW! (Loved it in Oblivion too.)

They're perfectly fine for people who haven't created galaxy destroying weapons.

This playthrough I'm using Daedric weapons and armour exclusively, and am just using high smithing so that I can improve them to make them competitive. The main problem with them is that you need over 100 smithing to get some artifacts to legendary; meaning you need to either do the alchemy/enchanting cycle or use the console.

Or, you know ... settle for the fact that they're not legendary.

My gear isn't even that hi-grade (compared to others who use full exploits), I just wish you could get more out of the Daedric artifacts. The niche items are good at what they do, but the Ebony Blade, Mace of Molag Bal, Dawnbreaker, they just don't scale well as weapons. If you could improve them reasonably then i'd have no gripe, they don't need to be on par with what can be created (value for value) but they should scale somewhat.

Then again, as easy as the Daedric quests are, I guess I shouldn't complain.

You could do that.. but then again my way solves the problems people have with artifacts. I prefer my way.

Tbh, the command console allows you to solve almost all problems this game has. After 114 hours I was bored stiff of Skyrim; then I started using console commands to change/balance certain aspects and I'm having the best playthrough ever.

Well you can upgrade most artifacts with black smithing.

My legendary ebony mail is freaking amazing.

Honestly, that was the only artifact that saw consistent use in my inventory, untill I finished my Daedra set anyway.

They are questionable even when compared to vanilla daedric. I used no smithing enchants or alchemy. Molag mace 60 daedric mace 75. Both improved with level 80 smithing. I use Molag Bal mace mainly for the looks, and somewhat for the magica and stamina damage. Not even sure if that makes a difference against npc.

Exactly, glad i'm not the only one to think so. Thought mabye me expectations were too high or something.

Malacath isn't actually a Daedric Prince. None of the other Daedric Princes consider him as such.

I think that it's a little difficult to balance this "issue". If Unique Weapons were stronger than Smithed Weapons people would say that smiting weapons is unnecessary as you can have better weapons by simple doing a quest. If Smithed Weapons were stronger (What they are) people would say that the Unique Weapons are unnecessary.

This is one problem to me. Theres no point in doing any of the quests for the Daedra or dungeons because most of the stuff is useless. Compared to games like Baldurs gate and Diablo they now how to create the incentives to look in that chest. This game I know that when I unlock that door and then the chest the loot will just be a rubbish item some potions and a few gold.

Saying that you have no reason to craft, the whole point of crafting is I think to make unique stuff suited to your character, weird combinations, and named yourself, it should not, never be the most powerful.

They dont want to incentivise players standing around, clicking buttons, they want to give the most incentive to adventuring, exploring places.

The best items should always be looted. Like ancient magical artifacts created with lost knowledge and strange names. This is why tons of people play Diablo 2 like crack addicts.

I would like if there were a middle ground. Like some Daedric items to be gotten from quests, but other quests which you can do to have your already crafted gear "blessed" by a Daedra. So that, ultimately, for the most powerful items you would need to both craft at a high level and run a quest. At level 25, without putting an abnormal amount of time into smithing and enchanting I already have the only weapons I will need. This makes me sad. I would prefer if my 100 smithing and enchanting went toward making relatively good weapons, and then a daedric blessing made them the end-all game-lasting weapons and armor. This way you could enchant them for your character, but also receive a boost to armor/damage and a unique daedric blessing only effect. This would make me feel like I had really earned weapons of incredible power.