Technically the breakdown isn't really in the smithing skill's gain but rather the materials to MAKE the high end stuff.

Nobody is complaining about one shotting people with Iron Swords, but rather full suits of ebony and daedric armor. Where are they getting the majority of the mateirals for those? NPC vendors. That's the real source of the problem. If you had to actually go out and kill whatever it is guarding ebony mines and collect those daedra hearts in your hide armor, this would be a different story being told (for the most part - I realize you can improve iron armor to be pretty damn powerful too, but nobody is doing that).

So I can effectively roleplay

1) murderer
2) not a murderer
3) a thief

The reason it boils down to those 3 is because with every NPCs, that's all it boils down to. You can either murder, not murder, pickpocket, or go to cave for them.

Such diverse options.

If it gets to easy you can always run around with a kitchen knife and just your Friut of the Looms !!!! See how that works for ya ? :toughninja:

Those are the three broadest categories, yes. There are more subtle things you can do, though I doubt they'd come to one of such little imagination.

I just don't remember having to revert to older saves on Oblivion as much as I did in Skyrim, because I keep trivializing my characters.

It first happened on my smithing90 enchanting60 warrior, now it happened on my rogue with 100stealth and db gloves.

I'd assume the same will happen on my mage once I get 2 Dremora Lord or 80Enchanting, from what I've heard.




A bit silly. Maybe another difficulty setting or better balance w/ those skills?

Really, I think your problem is that you haven't upped the difficulty enough. You can play on Novice and complain that just about any skill is overpowered.

My first Elder Scrolls character is always as twinked out as I can possibly make them, and I still can die really quickly to certain mobs on Master difficulty.

Trash mobs are a different story, of course. But they're trash mobs; what do you expect?

I havn't changed it from Master. My rogue and warrior puts me to sleep


I think this is the easiest TES by far. IMO. (without exploiting) I honestly can't wait for better balance mods.

I abused it as well, just like spell making in oblivion. I could create the most powerful spells at low levels. With smithing I just grinded my way to 100, i had all the items to do so anyway at the time :/

No one knew at first how badly Bethesda botched the balancing this time around. I think many people finish the main quest first, and then come to the forums where they see their bad experiences confirmed. As you level up blacksmithing making iron daggers, it is entirely realistic to expect that the game will stop levelling you up at an appropriate time. It makes absolutely no sense that you can learn how to make perfect Daedric armor by exclusively making hundreds of basic iron daggers. If Bethesda would use a common sense approach to their design this would never have happened.

I don't know that I could agree with that. In Oblivion, every single thing in the game leveled with you. You could be the Grand Champion of the Arena, Archmage of the Mage's Guild, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, Guild Master of the Fighter's Guild, the Grey Fox, and the Champion of Cyrodiil all at level 5.

how are you making deadric at low levels? i mean you need incredible smithing...plus deadric hearts and ebony ingots. Also if people didn't spam smithing it would actually take forever to raise, so you probably wouldn't get 100smithing untile you were very high leveled

Smithing breaks the game. I stopped at 80 when I got my legendary Ebony armor and weapons and realized there was nothing to strive for in the game anymore. The damage is done. Things are officially boring.

Being able to create a Mary Sue is appealing to 14 year olds who want to one shot everything. advlts need balance. The whole notion of choosing NOT to level something because it breaks your enjoyment is ridiculous. We spend the first 20 levels struggling to get gear to overcome difficult fights, then all of a sudden everyhting is too easy... and we are told we abused the system. Yeah right.

I never said I was a role player, at least in the sense that you might be defining the word.

I like role-playing within the mechanics of the game. I role play to decide which faction to join. As a Dunmer, I was upset that Ullfric seemed to be content letting the Dunmer in Windhelm live in the slums, and it seemed clear that to foster the best future for my people in Skyrim that I had to back the Empire. As a battlemage I tried joining the mage college to become better with my magic, but it seemed clear that they were too focused on scholarly pursuits, and that with the threat of the dragons, I had to focus on acquiring power, opting to retire to the college after I'd dealt with the dragons. I role play in these situations because the game "allows" me to.

But in other aspects the game seems to have made it clearer what to do. The game tells me, for example, that this sword does more damage than this one. I don't decide to use a weaker sword because it's demanded by the role of my character. The game mechanics make it clear which sword it better. This is something I generally don't like role playing around. The game mechanics don't make it as clear about which guild is better, which faction is better, which companion is better, which side quests to take first, etc. In all these things I'm fine with role playing to make the decision. But when game mechanics exist I generally follow them.

re: leveling smithing makes looking for loot obsolete....


Personally, I don't think so. Without a high level of enchanting to go along with it, nothing you can Smith will be more useful than the enchanted things you can find. I leveled my Smithing up on my current character, and only ended up making less than half my gear. Couldn't replace the 50% frost resist shield, or the 50% fire resist boots, or the archery-bonus gloves. Also couldn't make better weapons. Now, I did use Smtihing to improve those items. But just having a decent level of Smithing didn't make dungeon-diving pointless.


Now, I'm talking about gear at equivalent levels - yes, if you power-level your Smithing so you have Glass/Daedric/Dragon when the rest of the world hasn't gotten beyond Steel, then it'll be better than the enchanted loot you can find. Me, I leveled Smithing as I went - I only hit 100 Smithing in the 40's. I started making Elven and Glass gear a few levels after I'd started finding it in chests, not 10+ levels earlier.

But even at level 50+, without high-powered Enchanting skill, I still can't make better gear than I can find. Smithing lets me make the stuff I do find better, and lets me fill in the slots that I haven't found good stuff for.

Smithing levels fast whether you make iron daggers or not. Another reasonable way to level smithing is to make jewelry out of all the gems you find. In about 10 hours of gameplay, my smithing jumped 10 points just crafting jewelry and upgrading found items for Lydia.

Wouldn't you have to go out of your way for that to happen?

I mean it never happened to me atleast. Problem in Skyrim is this stuff is naturally happening.

I'm not sure what it is we're supposed to be debating, since I agree 100% with everything you've said.

However, playing, say, a Nord barbarian who refuses to wear Daedric for what should be rather obvious reasons is an entirely reasonable scenario as well. Will this be the case with every character you make? Most certainly not.




Not really, unless you define doing available content as going out of the way.

I got caught in this to on my main character. I fixed it by giving it to Lydia to wear, I switched back to my strait up Ebony armor and no longer have to worry about Lydia dying on me.

...right if you don't spam smithing you raise it 1 point per hour, thats fairly reasonable, to raise mine the last 20 levels i had to camp in front of the smith in whiterun to get supplies, i mean you pretty much have to go out of your way to really raise it up, even after that you have to go explore to find ebony ingots and daedra hearts, or dragon bones

Yep. My current char uses Companion wolf armour and if I wanted to I could have Ebony but I like the wolf armour, like the way it looks and it fits my char as Harbinger that he wears it.

I'm not quite sure how to address this problem. So smithing allowed you to get gear you considered to be game breaking too early? You would have gotten the gear eventually, had you not taken smithing. What would have happened when you found the gear, instead?




Actually, I'm not 14 years old, nor do I (in my own opinion, anyway) have the maturity of a 14 year old. Also, I'm still failing to see how the game is "too easy" with the implementation of difficulty settings.

That's sort of exactly what I'm saying is not a reasonable scenario (for me). I'm fine with letting the fact that I'm a dunmer force me to side with the empire, because game mechanics do not dictate that one faction is better than the other. I prefer not to do things like letting my role force me to not use armor that game mechanics show is clearly better.

There is no gear, on its own, that will make your character exceptionally powerful. The only way to do this is to synergize all three crafting skills and loop enchanting and alchemy to buff smithing.

I abused the Difficulty setting.

It's unfair that dragons do not have access to this setting.