Hello- I really enjoy using the bow in fact I've spent like 6 straight hours doing nothing but hunting.

This was after I OP'd the bow and one hitting everything was so cool, ive since gotten over the novelty of mass murder and on my current character (3rd) id like to stay vanilla and use only gear and potions to max everything.

I noticed that on the sneak perk tree theres one that does I think 3 times damage in sneak mode,but without the sneak perk you get 2x damage with the bow.

So does getting that perk stack to 5x damage? Probably OP'ING the bow?

Lastly im thinking that not maxing the first archery perk would be good also yes?

Thanks for your time

No, it's just 3x with the sneak perk "Deadly aim" as far as I know.

For myself, I never find the bow to be OP because I play on master with mods that make everything tougher, and frankly the bow is not very powerful in my game. The point is, when you've decided you're to OP, you can change that...

Putting no more than a single point in Archery's Overdraw, should keep things in balance.

This, as long as you don't overdo it with the weapon's own enchants, like chaos damage which (under certain conditions) can end up pretty high.

Yeah I've changed the difficulty level to... well increase the difficulty but for me increasing the volume of combatants takes it into the way old school video gaming,stuff like space invaders.

I mean if I can 1 hit 2 combatants then I can 1 hit 3-4 it just takes a little longer.

Im on 360 so I can't do stuff pc user's can,also I play RP so clicking through inventory twice as much just to increase difficulty takes away from the fun,im already mainly potions for extracurricular stuff.

Y'know, I have to laugh when I read one of these threads. No offense, it's just that most of the time one wants a challenging game, but by going for a less effective character than increased difficulty, it seems to me like a war cry of... " I strive for mediocrity!"

Increased combatants? Ain't happening on a 360, eh... Increasing difficulty in vanilla skyrim only changes the amount of damage that is done to the PC and the amount of damage done BY the PC.

Adept is 1:1 meaning 100% creature damage to 100% PC damage. Master 2:0.5 meaning the critters do double damage to you while you do half damage to them. Legendary makes it 3:0.25

with the last character I went over 60-70 something I think and never acquired this 'chaos' enchant that folk talk of ...where it at?

6000 hours in skyrim, and I've never seen it either...

No offense taken and yes mediocrity is what im looking for,although I think of it as a happy medium.

It comes with Dragonborn DLC. You'll know it when you'll feel it, because the introduction involves something hitting you with it

Oh ok, well cool man then I have something to look forward to.

I bought Hearthfire for the 360 before I bought the vanilla DLC and deleted everything beforehand because of corruption,now I have to buy it again?

Dude man , what's up with that?

I don't think so.

On PS3 you go into "account management" on the opening screen when you first fire up the console,scroll down to "transaction management" and it gives you a list of all owned DLC and the ability to re-download them....once you purchase a DLC it is available always.I'm sure the X-Box has to have something similar.

How to not break archery:

1. Don't sneak

2. Don't smith or enchant

That's about it I think,

Thanks king ill check it out,and as for not sneaking? Come on thats part of the fun.

Agreed. I still use sneak but as long as you're not smithing or enchanting the bows you'll find you don't get OP.

I think of it as... "I strive for interesting roleplaying weaknesses."

Getting archery right is based on both your personal preferences and the result of trial and error. I no longer take all the Overdraw perks of the archery tree as they really do make the weapon OP. I do temper the bows up to legendary but don't enchant them. I don't always take the Sneak tree's Deadly Aim perk, depends on the build. I generally stay away from Potions of True Shot though enchanted archery gear which pops up in loot is fine. I'm currently on Legendary so one-shotting anything is unlikely and my PC's archery skill is currently around 30 (no Archery perks for this build).

You just have to mix and match the different factors to find the sweet spot. You'll get it, be patient.

Yes, exactly. My characters are intentionally weak in some areas, just as real people tend to be. And to further reinforce that, I use the Classic Classes mod, which gives a boost to my character's class skills, but, more importantly, reduces all of her non-class skills to 5, where they are virtually useless.

Characters are a lot more interesting when they're not perfect.

Thanks kami.

Heh, my characters always seem to have plenty of weaknesses without me going to any special lengths to create more.

I think level 38 or maybe early 40s is the highest I've gotten with a character since I started playing DiD a year or two ago. Prior to DiD I did have a character who had finished the dragonborn quest and the thieves guild quest, but those are the only questlines aside from the College of Winterhold that I've completed. I can't think of a single reason why I'd want to make them any more vulnerable than they are, unless I'd like a lot more characters ending by level 15 or so. I have the feeling I'm never going to finish this game as it is... but at least I'm not bored, eh?

Sure, but you've intentionally modded your game to make it tougher. I haven't done that (yet), so I add challenge by the way I "build" my characters. Turning up the difficulty of the vanilla game doesn't do it for me; I just find that boring and frustrating.

I'm okay with Master, but I really hate legendary. Like you, it bores me to tears.

I've played these games for years on just the default difficulty, where the damage is 1:1, and the fights aren't interminable. My practice with the earlier games was to create custom classes and play them "straight," avoiding skills that weren't part of the "class." That way, I can play a variety of different characters, in different ways. I don't like getting into a rut of "this is how I always..."

I find Skyrim's combat easier than the previous games, for most character types, so bumping it up one notch to Expert seems to put the game on a par with what I was used to in Morrowind and Oblivion. Master isn't awful, but I have a harder time keeping a character alive (yes, I know that's the point, but... )

To get back to topic, I'd say that one way to not OP the bow is to indeed turn up the difficulty setting. If a sneak attack is one-hit killing every enemy, the game is too easy. I like to see a sneak attack be 100% fatal on the lowest of whatever you're facing, but it shouldn't take down a boss's health to the point where he can't counterattack. And I don't like using Paralysis poisons on any except the most impossible bosses, because it's a cheesy "I win" button. I feel the same about stagger-locking enemies with dual-cast destruction; it's cheesy.

Expert is my favorite difficulty level when playing the vanilla game. For me it was the Goldilocks point of not too easy but not too tedious.

I prefer adjusting the difficulty with mods, but when playing vanilla, I find the higher levels too tedious because of the limited damage the PC can do, with only limited means of increasing it, which funnels your characters into just a few "builds" that can succeed at the higher difficulty settings.

They really should have had two sliders so you could adjust damage dealt and taken independently.

As for intentional gimping, I do it to create interesting characters and also in the vanilla game with no access to mods as a method of making the game harder without making it more tedious. But typically what I do, instead of reducing the damage weapons do, I reduce AR or magic resistance or both and play on a lower difficulty setting. This has the effect of increasing both PC and NPC damage, which is the best way to increase difficulty IMHO.

We're of course missing the obvious, which is not to allow the character to use one.

None of my female characters with weight slider above 50 are allowed to use a bow, because things would get in the way.