The story is the following: I was playing an archer. I enjoyed the game, just finished the thieves guild and dark brotherhood questlines. So it was awesome but then I felt I was a bit weak. And that's where everything went wrong: I searched for "best bow in skyrim" on the interwebs.
I have found out that the best bow is in fact the daedric bow, which is a crafted item. And then I was like: "alright, I'll just powerlevel my blacksmithing and craft it, there's no problem with that."
Soon I had to realize that ALL the best gear comes from crafting, enchanting and alchemy. So I got pretty disappointed and lost interest in playing further because I just wouldn't enjoy the story knowing that there are no better quest rewards or any loot which is better than the über enchanted-upgraded-rainbow coated-shiny 40% bow damage and sneak dragonscale pieces of armor.
Well, I guess real RPG's are not my type and I'll just have to wait for Diablo3 to get the experience I want. But I'm interested in your opinion about this, or if there's anybody else who feels the same.

Loot exists...they just need work and patience to be found ;3

Yeah, blacksmithing and enchanting are broken as of right now. I'm waiting for the CK to address it.

so it's like any other game with crafting...

And I'm pretty sure you can get those without crafting too, but crafting would make them stronger.

Correct me if i am wrong but to be successful with enchanting you would need to have found the loot in the first place to learn the enchantment?

For instance you cannot add fire ability to a weapon unless you had already found a weapon with that ability and broken it down to learn it.

I partially agree with you: the best loot should come from questing and hard-to-beat end bosses in dungeons. Not from crafting!

What I don't agree with is that this takes the fun away from a game like Skyrim. It has so much more to offer than just finding and equiping the best loot. Also, there are very useful artifacts in the game that you really can only retrieve through questing. Think: Azura's Star, for example.

Correct, but you only need to have found the worst fire enchant in the game, grind your enchanting to 100, and place the appropriate perks to get the best fire enchant.

Most people "find" it via vendors.

I agree with the OP, the loot system in Skyrim is very lacking. There needs to be more unique (both aesthetically and statistically) loot and a better loot system in general.

If you want to be overpowered from the start and powerlevel smithing and enchanting, then do it. But don't complain afterwards that you ruined the game. It's not about being the best and having the "best" equipment.

/edit: Maybe one should start a playthrough without using merchants and crafting, only using what you find.

Am I the only 1 that's found tons of rare / unique / daedric artifacts in the game? Seriously, my friend has the billion page game guide and he told me today there's 80 or more unique weapons in the game. I currently have 16 of them which is awesome knowing there's that many quests / places I haven't explored yet. Some of the weapons I've come across were just out in a random ass place you wouldn't expect to find a nice weapon (trollbane 2h mace) or through a chance encounter at an inn (sanguine's rose). On my main character, a 1h/shield nord warrior I ditched the daedric armor I was wearing for the Blade's armor I found because I think my guy looks like a samurai (may just be me) and the Dragonbane sword I found is not that far off from a daedric sword I had been using which gives me an even greater look of a samurai.

Short answer: go exploring, there's tons of [censored] out there you wouldn't have guessed.

This :goodjob:

I think that it is fair to allow the player to exccedd the strength of the world around him. In fact, that is what made Morrowind my favorite in the series. If you don't like it in this game, you would absolutely hate TES III.

People call them exploits, but I do not agree. It requires resource and time investment to attain such powers. There should be a reward for your efforts.

Personally, I just wish they hadn't slashed the potential strength of the Destruction skill.

I am on the opposite side of the spectrum. Alchemy enchantments and smithing are not overpowered. Destruction is underpowered.

Don't you mean a patch?!

Or are you the type that fixes everything after purchasing a product? :rolleyes:

Loot is not a strength of Skyrim, that's for sure.

I wish Beth would take a page from Diablo 2 when it comes to loot. But I doubt it will ever happen.

So does a weapon attack value level up with you? How does it work?

The problem I see (not real sure I haven't got my smithing to 100 yet) is that the materials to make the best stuff are too easy to find? I mean if your going to make the games best stuff things you can smith/enchant yourself it should be hard to find the materials for such weapons and armor, making building it rewarding.

I don't use crafting until it's fixed. What's wrong with a play through with a character that doesn't craft? If you feel too weak, turn down the difficulty.

yes this games loot system is flawed!!

as soon as u obtain an item every1 in the world has it making to the loot u discovered useless and unimportant

this is where this game faisl and this is why im not playing anymore until tyhe CK ios released and the modders can rectify the situation!!

this game would svck if there were no modders!

I have yet to see an enemy in Elven or Glass armor...

I think he's talking about shopkeeper stocks. As soon as you get a new loot tier of loot, you're like "sweet rare loot!". Then you go back to town and every shopkeeper is selling that tier of loot. zzzz

Yes there are tons of unique weapons with special and fun properties. But the fact is, many of them are leveled so they'll become useless later on. While others may just be useless from the beginning.
Say the dragonbane, yea it has special bonus while fighting dragons. But it still can't match an unenchanted daedric sword, which can be forged by smithing easily.

When it come to practical terms, these unique weapons are almost completely useless.

The reason why The Elder Scrolls became so successful is the ability to create modifications and content using official tools. Morrowind and Oblivion were great games in their original forms but the bazillions of mods made them one of the best games of all time.

I for one like the freedom to choose the modifications I want to install. I can't do it in most of the other games because they have only official patches which you kind of have to install. TES has a very large modding community which create top quality content, often with better quality than the original game itself. I'd choose this freedom over official patches any day.

So you playing this game just for loot? Then you horribly fail ^^

Looking up 'what's the best loot/weapon etc.' and reading walkthroughs takes most of the fun out of this game, if you ask me.

You do find lots of loot. You don't need smithing at all. Basically smithing just allows you to get that loot earlier than you most likely will be finding it. Level 38 is when I first started finding glass armor.. now that i"m level 41 it's everywhere.. so is ebony.. The only armor sets I've seem to have found very little of is Orc and Evlen.. have no idea why since I had a full set of scale by level 20. All I can think is that since it just doesn't take you that long to get to level 20 you don't visit as many places as you do when leveling slows down in the 40's.