I don't understand why it's impossible to get glass/ebony/daedric items early in the game. Surely these things don't just pop into existence when your character hits higher levels? Surely the jarls and nobles have collected and treasured these rare items for centuries? I mean, ebony can be mined, and presumably has been for centuries...

Also, weapon damage scales with your skill level. If a level 1 got his hands on a daedric shortsword, he'd only be doing 3x the damage he would have done with the iron shortsword you get in the first 3 minutes. Let's imagine that a jarl has a heavily guarded treasure room. We're talking traps, static and patrolling guards, multiple master level locks...hell, throw in a dwemer machine too! In that room is stacks of gold and ebony ingots, chests filled with gems and glass, ebony, and daedric armor/weapons. Your character manages the nearly inconceivable feat of robbing this room at an early level...and is rewarded with only a 3x damage output.

That seems balanced to me. With the way the game is set up, damage grows exponentially, rather than linearly. You level by getting your skills up, and you get better weapons by getting your level up.

Here's what ends up happening to a lot of players:
1) They go dungeon crawling with their low level gear
2) They run into a rough patch because quests got harder or their perks aren't properly balanced or they're not taking advantage of their character's full potential
3) They can't find better gear anywhere, so they turn to smithing
4) 3 hours later they're in a full suit of dragon gear with daedric weapons
5) 5 hours later they reroll a mage (then rinse and repeat with enchanting instead of smithing)

I find very little motivation to do most of the quests in this game. The compensation is just crap. Some steel dagger with a 5 dmg cold enchant? WOW!!! 250 gold?! omg! When you do something spectacular, especially for someone rich, you should be compensated accordingly. Many quests are obviously worth doing just for the thrill of experiencing the quest, but I can't help feel like i'm getting screwed over afterward.

Oh the fun times of raiding the great house treasuries in Vivec.

This was done because of all the people whining on the forums about getting high level loot as a low level character in morrowind. Now your whining that you can't get it. Ironic isn't it

I sort of agree... but if the enemies we need to defeat level scale to near our current level then the loot at the end should represent the effort spent in doing the quest... So really this complaint only applies to some of the holds you're expected to explore later in the game anyway... I suppose it depends how slowly your playing... Take it slow and you shouldn't have an issue

I hate it. Whoever thinks scaling things like loot and shop inventories to the player's level is a good idea at Bethesda needs a hard slap round the face. :meh:

It makes the world feel so artificial and completely puts me off exploring dungeons.


Have tons of high level enemies guarding high level loot, as well as dangerous traps.

If a level 7 player is somehow able to get past dozens of death traps, several level 50 Draugr overlords, and a dragon priest, then they deserve the Awesome Sword of Awesomeness that's waiting for them at the end. Not 50 gold and a gold necklace...

I dislike the whole scaled leveling system in the first place. Final Fantasy: go to fight Omega or Osma or Emerald Weapon before you are ready and you will be slaughtered. Elder Scrolls: Go anywhere in the game and the enemies are all as weak/strong as you and you must overcome yourself more or less. Scaled leveling takes away from the realism, immersion, and replayability. It also heavily takes away from the challenge of the game by saying "You will always be at sufficient level to deal with this foe." For equipment, it's not like they couldn't put skill restrictions on it. For example, in order to get the protective effects from Ebony Armor, maybe you have to have 50 heavy armor skill?

Level scaling is fine to a certain extent. I still don't really like how it's implemented in Skyrim, but at least it's miles ahead of Oblivion. Morrowind still did it better, but once you knew where to find stuff it became to easy to obtain. It's a very hard balance to achieve, really. And it's impossible to satisfy everyone.

They certainly need to rethink crafting and add diminishing returns, preventing low level crafts to level you to level 100.

I would be happy if they just gave us the option of turning scaling on or off. It seems like it would be a simple enough thing to do, and a huge fan service to people who have different play styles than needing someone to hold their hand all the way through the game just so they don't get too over powered too quickly or too destroyed. In an open world, everyone shouldn't be the exact same level with the exact same level progression.

This... I remember when people complained that they went through the game faster and easier than they should because of they found the best armor and weapons within the first few hours.... Its come full circle now... What a joke.

That's their fault, not the game or the game's design. People look up on the internet where to find the best loot or the most exploitable things in the game, yet blame the game for allowing them to get all that stuff. Then you have people who complain "Smithing and Enchanting is too powerful!!!" So what? Don't use it and don't bother the people who are playing the game how they want. It's one thing when people cry about the plethora of glitches in the game that prevent them from completing quests, it's another when people complain about the way the game is actually set up in ways that it doesn't effect them at all if they don't exploit it.

People complained that once they knew where all the good loot was in morrowind there was no reason to explore anywhere else. At least now you can find a sweet weapon in any dungeon. Im level 26 and I was using a honed draugr axe. I just found an ebony axe in a Dwemer ruin on a boss. This kind of random loot gives me incentive to go visit all the different dungeons because I never know what I may find.

Also I don't use smithing because it cheapens the game. I like to find loot on my own.

Unless they were specifically looking up where to find that, had already looked up where it was, or had played through the game and explored every square inch of the continent, how would they know this was the case? Their "knowledge of where all the good loot was" has to ruin it for the people who want a genuine adventuring experience instead of one holds your hand? I would much rather walk into a cave that had glass armor at the end and get destroyed by the 5 vampire masters guarding it and say "Man...I should probably go do some more adventuring and level up first" than say "Oh, there must be 5 gold at the end of this dungeon! Good thing I can faceroll all the way to the end with no challenge or goal progression..."

I found a Dragonbone shield at level 20. Before I had ever found anything glass, ebony, or daedric.

It annoys me greatly.

I play a thief. I'm always robbing everything I can that is worth it but it ends up mostly being either because I'm collecting (books gatta catchum all) or because I want to feel like a thief and not because there is actually anything worth stealing. If it has a 10/1 gold/weight ratio I take it but.. even peasants have the same stuff as the rich in this ratio. I don't know how many times I crack open a display case to see a worthless iron sword inside. It's as bad as all the ornamental glass swords in oblivion.

At least I'm a PC gamer so the stupidity will be modded out there.

I don't like leveled items either. It adds pressure to do certain quests last, when you're really high level, so that you get the best version (I know a lot of people want nightingale armor etc. to be their end-game equipment).

But what's more illogical is making followers "leveled" as well. Their stats are determined the first time you get them, and do not scale with your character. If I want to use a certain follower for the entire game, why should he/she be gimped as I level up? They should become stronger as you and enemies become stronger.

Yes when I was low level I never seen any ebony stuff, now I'm level 39 and it is everywhere, got a bunch of extra ebony armor and weapons sittin in my house in whiterun.

The problem is within the first couple hours of exploring caves and dungeons, no matter how tough enemies were that were guarding it( you could literally run right by all of them and get the loot at the end of the dungeon and run out without being touched, because of how small all the caves and dungeons were) you would come across the best armor and weapons in the game. The rest of the game you would faceroll everybody. Thats how you knew it was the best armor and weapons.

From what I hear, there are a few bits of high level loot in the game that do not level, I've heard of people finding glass bows at level 5 and stuff like that.

I found an ebony shield at level 10. You can still find awesome stuff and if you didn't read the forums you wouldn't even know it was leveled! Imagine that!

A solution to this, I think, is to, apart from making super strong enemies carry the strong loot more than chests, make lockpicking or whatever you need to do to get to the loot real time, so that an enemy can guard it and attack you if you don't kill it first while you try to get to the loot.

I like it.

My first character had maxed out smithing at around level 12, which is pretty much equal to finding Glass gear on a low level. It's really lame and removes a lot of character development from the game.
I can understand that some people don't want it, but it's pretty damn hard to take out without it bothering people that do want it...

Not to doubt you buddy, but where did you get this info? The official guide states exactly the opposite (yeah, I know, so much for "official" maybe, but still), saying they progress with you, according to their pre-set array of Skills.

OR make the treasure chest at the end of caves and dungeons have a unique key, that only the "boss" of that certain cave has on him, so forces you to fight and kill the important person guarding that individual cave... It would make sense RP wise, seeing that each individual cave is a home to a certain group or species, and the leader would be protecting their valuables. Along with all the unique weapons and loot being in the hands of all the enemies and fodder in the cave to make you actually clear it out to get all potential valuable loot and items.

Nah the problems is not the stuff like Glass gear etc it the levelled Quest rewards & Artefacts having 3 different versions and each has enchantments of different powers on them. The base item is the same in each case. So why are the enchantments nerfed if I get them early? If the later versions are 2 powerful at low level they are still overpowered at later levels.

The only loot that shouldn't be leveled is named [censored], although it would be even better if It leveled with you (Just like the crusader's relics in KotN). I hated getting glass armor in Morrowind right from the start, even if you didn't want to you would come across glass stuff at the beginning of the main quest, making gold also worthless.