personally ive found some really decent loot;
just found some enchanted glass armour....standard glass bow...some smart enchanted weaponary
i think it all depends on your outlook.
I note you perused the guide book to learn what was the best you could get and then became dissapointed when you found out? well then you cut your nose off to spite your face didnt you!
should have kept out of the guide book and found out in your own time and in your own way! then the suprise would be better and the learning curve would have rewarded you in its own time!
i have the guide; but other than a casual flick through the character sections and suchlike i havent touched it at all. if i find somewhere interesting then ill research it later in the guide to see if i missed anything.....but reading/using the guide before that will, to me, spoil the games systems and in doing so spoil the way the game rewards my questing and searching!

the flaw isnt in the game...its in the fact your not happy with knowledge you have now that you should have figured out in game by your own endeavours!

im lvl 25 on one character and lvl 18 on another. the first has just started finding Glass bits and bobs but has had access to Elven since about lvl 20
the lvl 18 dude has just begun finding the occasional elven dagger or sword
both find plenty of orc weaponary but hardly any armour; and both find dwarven gloves/boots and shields but very little of anything else

People saying there is 'lots of loot'. Your standards are different from the OP's standards probably. If you compare Skyrim to a game with a really good loot system like Diablo 2 or Borderlands, Skyrim's loot is rather pathetic. I didn't expect D2 level loot satisfaction from Skyrim so I don't mind, but that kind of thing is important to a lot of people in an RPG.

Yes, its true.
Skyrim has very little diversity in weapons and very little good hand placed loot.
This is a design flaw, a missed opportunity.
I think its a great shame that smithed gear is weaker than legendary, and that there are only a handful of those legendary artifact type pieces of gear.
A lot less than in previous games.
But it doesnt mean that RPG's are not for you.
In some time the modding community will fix all these things Bethesda didnt bother with.
Lets hope you play on pc

no they probably aint...the difference is i didnt read the guide book and look at the big chart that says "this is the best weapon you can have; anything else is pants" and then cry that id spoilt my own game with the knowledge i had garnered!!

play the game and follow its ways and your acceptance of "loot" changes! finding glass weaponary becomes cool! enchanting your first weapon is an awesome thing to do. smithing the next grade of armour because you have just unlocked that perk can evolve into an entire "self made " quest to get the materials! that is what the game rewards!!
the game wont reward researching how to beat the game with the best equipment possible and as quickly as possible.....

maybe its not the OP's fault..maybe the lure of information is too strong these days and the glory of the internet gives us all we need a bit too easily...thereby allowing knowledge of things we dont really want to know but cant resist knowing!

its not the games fault.....if the OP didnt read the guide he woudlnt have found out about the bow and he would have happily enjoyed his game finding better ways to get better weaponary.....
he opened a pandoras box..and now he doesnt like what he saw. and thats the games fault?? how?

and im sorry: Borderlands loot system was cool?? yeah it would have been if you didnt simply find "another gun with another name that does 1 point of damage more than the one you found in a box not 1 minute before"...that loot system was fun for five minutes..but then it just turned into a grindhouse of naff weaponary that basically did the same as the 100+ naff weapons you found before!

There are no better equipment than daedric but thats not really the problem, the problem is that its so much easier to raise smithing to 100 and craft it than finding it, if your enchanting is high enough and you enchant it you will have the best possible equipment in the game, when crafted, upgraded and enchanted.



Thalmor have both light and regular Elven armor.

I have also seen ebony on my first save where i was almost level 60, i know ebony and glass ore/items starts to drop at a higher level and you see it often, Daedric however i imagine it requires near level cap, but accordin to wiki it does indeed drop in both regular and enchanted versions.

I found a glass helmet before reaching 30. I also found some ebony gauntlets. Mostly, I do find the loot to appear based on level, which is a bit upsetting.

Morrowind was fun for loot. There was unique stuff all over the game, some of it in dungeons and some of it in NPC houses/shops. It was possible to get some of it from high-level dungeons if you were a low level and were clever. Thieving was a very rewarding passtime. People complain you get too powerful in Morrowind, but I think that has more to do with being able to stack so many enchantments on yourself that you have the powers of a god.

Some of the unique loot in Skyrim is interesting, but acquiring it never seems to be more interesting than acquiring anything else.

There's plenty good loot out there. I'm at lvl 24 and have found a couple of Glass Axes and an Ebony Blade, too. All of which I upgraded by Smithing, of course.

I really get bored of hearing how Smithing 'Ruins the Game' from the vocal few. It doesn't, to my mind. It's just like every other skill - if you get good at it, it gives you significant advantages. Just like extra damage from One-Handed or Destruction paths, or getting any extra 100 encumbrance from the Pickpocket path.

And it's only really from looting that you discover new armour types and new enchantments to use.

Some people are just too picky. Go looting!

just found light elven myself! just before i turned off last night in fact...so havnt had time to sit and look over the stats yet. but i was grinning when i found it!
and thats what its all about! finding loot for the first time!! i never expected "light" elven...never even considered it might be there...but i found it and its loot!! its my loot! i found it first! keep your grubby mits off! ok its got a little bit of blood on it and an iron arrow sticking through it..but its mine...ok?
you see? i rest my case...finding light elven was a joy for me because i never knew it existed!! OP's joy was ruined because of his knowledge!!

It was the same in Oblivion though. You never even ecountered enemies with Glass weapons or armours until you got up towards lvl 30. It's all part of the balancing. If you had access to those weapons and armours when you were low level it would be far too easy for you. One hit kills left, right, and centre, and nothing would be able to lay a finger of damage on you. Not very challenging.

You are not supposed to have a full set of Daedric armor at level 20, this is only possible because you can level smithing to 100 with only iron daggers and its not intended to be that way im sure.

it should not be possible to raise smithing with the same material all the way, the higher level materials should be required to raise smithing when you reach the desired level, so at 30 you would have to use dwarven ingots and/or steel ingots to raise smithing to 50.

So the materials will keep getting more rare and expencive to buy as you level up smithing, it would take a long time to raise it to 100 and thats how it should be in my opinion.

This is not news, best weapons and armor in Daggerfall, Morrowind and oblivion was generally self enchanted. The unique ones who was better is the exception.
Absorb health is generally the best enchant on melee weapons because the combination of healing and damage, anything without it has to be better in other ways.
Also note that you can usually improve the unique items to.

However I agree that leveled unique items is a bad thing, better with level requirements on quest.

For you you mean?

I never had any issues with "vanilla" Oblivion and had great fun with that game, this time around i cannot even finish many quests in Skyrim since it is bugged!

When you buy let's say a watch in a shop and it doesn't work like intended you return it and DO NOT say: ah well i will fix this myself!!!!

Pfft. Daedric Bows. The best bows are the ones that come with free arrows.

I'm talking about Bound Bows. :hehe: