1. It's anti-RPG, because the exploration for better stuff is one of the core elements in RPGs.
I don't know Suikoden and I haven't played Diablo, but as far as I know in Diablo it's all about finding great loot.
I can tell the difference between an elven sword and a cheap iron dagger.

2. Ok, maybe I exaggerated a bit. Some loot in Skyrim is pretty good.
But other is really just stupid. Why do I loot stuff like gold or jewels from some animals?
And why do bandits in dungeons not take any of the loot for themselfs? They even leave gold laying around loose or in corpses.
Also I don't expect to find epic loot in a random small hideout. But if I'm going through an ancient dwarven ruin, it's a bit dissapointing to not find anything special in the end.

Don't know about you, but I've found plenty of nifty random items in dungeons. At level 39, I'm still using found items - they're better than the stuff I can make for those slots.

Yeah, there's alot of things that aren't amazing.... but that matches the "random loot farming" RPGs like Diablo or WoW, too - 98% of the stuff that you find is either junk or not better than what you're using. :shrug:



And, honestly, I like that. It's one of the things that sets the game apart from other series. (Personally, I've thought there's less of it in Skyrim - so many of the "decorative" items that are sitting on tables and shelves can't be interacted with. It's a shame.)

"Distracting"? Really?

(Also, "ridiculous from a design perspective"? It's better design, from a world-building and "RPG" standpoint", than the games where you walk into a house and either there's nothing there, or there's a million points of detail - that's just painted on... stuff that you can't move, or touch, or take, or anything.)

Thats true, this isnt diablo. Thievery in this game is built to make money for your character. Im not excited only when i see a rare item, im happy to find stuff that has any worth to it so i can make a profit. I dont want to have an inventory full of ultra valuable loot, cause then id get too rich too quick. I think the system is quite good, and if you use your imagination you can think of ways to really rip people off.

By about level 15-20 in Morrowind, most of the "crap" loot were expensive scrolls and potions, tons of Greater and Grand Soul gems and mildly decent Enchanted Gear (Iron/Steel/Dwarven) that sold for a decent price.
So Raiding Bandit dens usually paid off significantly.

well the loot is lacking but there are some hand placed weapons in random places. If you go north west from whiterun you gonna find a giant camp with a few pounds next to it and in one of them is a skeleton holding an ebony sword above the wather.

ive stumbled across some high end loot at low levels including a daedric armor and sword. the problem is that i have 150 hours into the game and ive only seen this fewer than 10 times across several games. to be fair i havent visited every dungeon on every playthough and i dont check every chest since right now im just messing around with different builds to see which one im going to settle on for my marathon slow leveling/do everthing/ mainquest character (still havent done it yet). there might be more loot around but it just seems sparse.

im a bit split on this. on the one hand i dont want a repeat of oblivion where you got access to the really good stuff early on like daedric because if that happened there would literally be no reason to pick up any of the smithing skill. as it is if your a light armor wearer you can find plenty of glass armor on "thieves" for some reason. im not sure if that was some kind of inside joke by bethesda or an oversight. on the other side in 99% of the dungeon crawls it still seems like im getting "oblivion" loot.

they had a good start with the random enchantments on items but i think it would be a bit better if some of the items had dual enchantments to mix it up a bit more. the only weapons i really use are absorb health and paralysis, but if i found a sword that did frost damage along with paralysis i would be inclined to use it even though i never use frost weapons.

It's hard to separate the overpowered/too-easy crafting in this game from the loot problem noticed by the OP.

I really think they made smithing too easy (make an iron dagger over and over and you suddenly are 100 in smithing and can make deadric? Really???? Shame on you Bethesda).

Because crafting is too easy and allows the character to make enchanted god weapons better than artifacts, the loot found in the game is hard to judge in this view.

I choose to ignore everything but basic potion making because of all the overpowered enchanting/smithing out there.

For what it's worth, at level 9 I went into a wrong dungeon and a Deathlord was able to nearly one shot me until I finally killed him 8 re-saves later and got his Ebony bow. I like stuff like that. I wish there was more.

Can't wait for mods to fix the problem. Skyrim DID do better than Oblivion on this out of the box though. IMHO. Also, it is very dissapointing to hear that some unique loot is scaling to level and remaining fixed at that level. That is the opposite of non-linear game play and really svcks, as it encourages finding unique items at higher level and is immersion breaking to say the least.

So I just spent a few hours crawling through a dungeon, killed the big guy at the end, looted his ebony sword and key to his treasury, open the treasury chest with baited breath and find...


Hide Bracers
20 Gold

Random loot svcks! At least fill certain chests with appropriate items levelled the same as the creature that owns the chest.

Good lord someone must have peed in your Corn Flakes this morning. PEED in YOUR Corn FLAKES.

I go into dungeons for adventure, gold and loot - I don't care if it's good loot, as long as it's worth something in gold.

I absolutely love the loot I find in Skyrim. I hate finding OP gear everywhere and make me a millionare.

Also, if you really want super loot, take lock-pick perk that gives higher chance for treasure.

also level based mate beth did find a way to make placed loot level with you too. which level where you when finding this would clearly tell if level based or not

I dont think its a leveled item, its a plain ebony sword, not unique, not quest related, no enchants.

Elder scrolls lore is boring?

Obviously haven't read the books at all, shame on you.

If you really think the lore is the quests in the game, extra shame.

There are also two Elder Scrolls novels, for even more lore.

No you can't. Unless you don't consider the dwemer ruins for the Mage College a dwemer ruin. There's literally 1-2 pieces of gear, one of which is usually a shield.

It's really odd, i've actually found a lot of useful loot...but none of it good for my character! On my heavy armor character, i find gilded elven with 60% lightning resist; on my light armor character I find Orcish or Ebony with 40-50% fire resist, or whatever! And on my combat character i find helms of destruction, and on my mage character i find gauntlets of wielding! Never what i actually want! :tongue:

I seem to have amassed quite a collection of unique loot. You can't just walk around clearing bandit camps and get Umbra, if you get my drift. You have to do the harder quests for the better stuff.

I can craft 95% of the loot I find. Besides gold and lock picks

That's the problem with today's gaming generation. All they want is instant gratification.

Sorry, your arguments were good, but that sentence alone made your whole argument invalid. It has NOTHING to do with what you play it on. It has to do with dedication. Hell, there's even a PS2-ONLY game called Shadow of the Colossus that has more depth than most games I've ever played. You can finish it in 2 days, BUT, even to this day, people are still finding new stuff in the game. If you do it all you have a game worth well over 2 months of gameplay, for someone eho plays around 2 hours everyday.

oh and BTW, just search for that [censored] loot, it's not so hard. You can find unique items almost everywhere in the game. just [censored] look for it. You will RARELY find it on enemies or in chests, which earn you random, leveled loot instead, mostly with no uniques. I think the only unique you can TRUELY find in a chest would be the Shield of Ysgramor, which somehow seems to also appear out of the place where it's supposed to be

oh and DieBySword, that sword (if you're talking about the arthurian easter egg), it's chosen according to your level. I usually get it early enough to find a steel sword there

And about the Gauldur amulet, Do the [censored] quest, you'll get a unique one. You can't disenchant it and you CANNOT reproduce the effect with regular enchanting

Thats kinda funny as I am already lvl 79 and must have run past it a dozen of times so it should be a steal sword and not an ebony sword if I run past it at low levels

Almost everything you come across in Skyrim is vendor trash you sell to get gold to spend on nothing. There is a bit of gear progression but you hit the roof very quickly.

Another problem is that even the "generic" loot is too boring. All enchantments come in grades, everything is put into little boxes. No chance of finding an enchantment with an odd number. Plus, because you can't put every enchantment on every item, the loot is even more limited. No chance of finding waterbreathing shoes or the like. Why can't we even find robes with fire/shock/frost resist?
And almost everything seems to be scaled to your level. Not to mention master lock chests are a joke ...

The issue I have with item scaling, well there are a couple actually but one that's relevant here, is the fact that Legendary artifacts are -also- scaled to your level. This is perhaps an even more egregious insult to my intelligence than what Oblivion was throwing at me back in 2006. It's one thing if Bethesda insists on scaling the other items in game, but you're going to tell me that a Daedric artifact given to me by a God is (or should be) scaled to my level? How can this be? It defies all sense of logic or realism. For instance, I recently finished a quest which netted me a very unique sword, a sword that's weaker than the crafted Orcish weapons I already have on hand. So, as I understand this, a mere mortal is able to build (on his own) weapons that hit harder and are more valuable than something handed down from a Divine being. Yep, makes sense to me!

I already had issues with scaled merchant loot (which has never, and will never make any sense) but I have to say this takes the cake. I would really love for a developer to come in and give an explanation for why the system is the way it is, in this case. And I don't mean that sarcastically, I really want to hear what the reasoning/thought process was, because I can't figure out myself. The way they have things set up in-game now, there are truly no unique items to be had, everything is scaled, everything is leveled and you can't get around it, even as a reward from some of the most powerful beings in the Elder Scrolls universe. I of course wont hold my breath on being illuminated on this subject by Bethesda, but I want to reiterate that I really would sincerely appreciate it. Surely there must have been something that necessitated this mechanic in favor of a realistic alternative.