I already answered you, way to pay attention.

I'm playing with a nearly maxed skill in archery and maxed out smithing and enchanting, using a glass bow that I smithed to even higher strength after chugging a blacksmithing potion, and the only things I can one-shot are low-level bandits and mages, and most creatures. It still takes me two shots at minimum to take out GIants and at least three for mammoths.

I'm at level 59 on Adept. I'm really starting to find that something's a bit off about all these claims people make, especially when I'm rocking gear enchanted to further increase my damage with bows so that when I equip my glass bow, damage is rated at over 300. I'm not one-shotting much that isn't low level compared to me, and not even when I'm using sneak attack crits.

But then again, I've been playing normally, and not powergaming. The balance is perfect, unless you're the sort of person who powergames his character. Powergaming is going to make the game unbalanced, and in your favor.

And you're suggesting that the balance of the game be tweaked to suit you, part of the minority of the huge gaming audience that Skyrim has, instead of being balanced for everyone else who probably just plays along as the game happens, which is probably how the majority of people are going to be playing it?

This is like that one idiot who kept saying that because he was using top-tier gear, maxed out sneak with the perks that boost sneak attack crits, and using the gloves that further double sneak attack damage, he was overpowered and the game needed to be fixed. Nevermind the fact that he didn't know what "overpowered" meant by his own example, because he was: Maxed out on sneak with the sneak attack crit bonus perks taken, using gear that further boosted his sneak attack crits to the point that as long as he could get the sneak attack crit, he was hitting things with a massive damage bonus that would one-shot a lot. If he wanted to actually prove that he was overpowered, he would've done all that on Master WITHOUT USING ANY GEAR THAT BENEFITED HIM AND MADE IT POSSIBLE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

It's one thing to show that you're "overpowered" when you're high level in certain skills, and otherwise have top-tier gear that outmatches a bandit's. It's another to be able to accomplish many of the same feats with just ordinary, low-tier equipment. Because being able to one-shot Giants on Master with an iron dagger? That might be overpowered, especially if you don't even take any perks in the Sneak skill tree.

The game is balanced fine enough for the rest of us who don't powergame at all, thank you.

*shrug* I tried out pure mage with enchanted apparel, enemy archers 1 shot me but I can easily kill everything since I chain stagger everything. I might not one shot things but considering that nothing even has an opportunity to attack me it's not exactly difficult.

The difference between enchanting+smithing and enchanting+smithing+alchemy is about 1k damage per shot. If you're an orc or using sneak attacks this is obviously greatly amplified.

I am suprised that everyone who says the game is too is ins`t running into the mobs that can one shot them even in their buffed up gear. I agree most mobs you run into are easy, but they should be. You are leveling up and becomeing more powerful each lvl so that common bandit that thrashed you at lvl one become 0 challenge. However there are alot of them added into the lists that can put a serious hurt on you. You just haven`t run into it yet. At lvl 45 last night I fought a dragon priest that I just couldn`t kill. Three hit from his fireballs is all it took to takes away 370 health and I even had the resist perk in blocking and was still getting smashed. I had to leave the dungeon. After like 10 tries I just had to. There aere briarhearts that will thrash you and especially the falmers, ohh the falmers. They will be in a dungeon and you will sweeping them aside until you go to hit that ones guy slowly walking over and he drops you like a bad habit. Some elder dragons will do nothing but the bite attack that from most dragons you don`t even feel it but from them you die in three hits. There plenty of casters that you just can`t kil because they come in groups of three, by the time you get close enough to even hit one of them you are dead because you have been slowed and they just keep moving away nuking you for insane damage with aoe spells.

When you get higher lvl most mobs do become easier but I can`t beleive you haven`t encountered the harder versions. Just keep looking.

Sorry, had to edit my post to say on Master level.

First, what do you mean by crafting synergies. I am assuming you mean leveling to 100, then building everything, improving it and then enchanting it to the max. There are a ton of people on this board who have done that and are complaining that they are getting one shot by shirtless guys in the sewers of Riften on Master.

If what you are saying is that make a difficulty that can only be played by people who are 'power leveling', that is not something I would want in a game, but more power to you, go ahead if you have a PC and make the world harder through the kit when it comes out.

And to borrow from someone who just posted, I'm not sure what you build that you are kililng it with. I'm lvl 33 with 88ish sneak and a bunch of stuff in the 60's. But from mag gear I have found my glass bow (exquisite i think) does 85 (or 84) points of damage, I am using the best arrows I have a lot of (ancient nordic or something) for another 12 points i think so with the 3x sneak bonus I am doing almost 300 points of damage with it (it is not enchanted) and I am only one shotting low level bandits.

What synergies have you exploited that are making it so easy?

This.

@kiralyn2000
I have to agree with the previous poster, and I feel like the game is built as an exploit system that you have to work and strategize to avoid, even on master.
I follow RP rules that limit a particular character based on who s/he is, but there's an added set of requirements outside the scope of character RPing that's forced by typical BGS balance. I think skyrim might be the worst BGS game yet in terms of exploits.

Everybody plays differently, approaches the game differently, etc, and there has to be some leeway in the level scaling to allow for non-combat skills. But it svcks for people like me when I have to stop and think, sword X that I just found is too powerful, so I can't use it.

Right now I can only perk one crafting skill per character. Even that is probably too powerful. There's no need to even think about working an exploit because BGS already built those in, to the point that a lot of skills are mutually exclusive, and I have to work to avoid the exploit system.

I love skyrim, but more playthroughs will be impossible without mods to increase the difficulty and balance the system so I'm allowed to just play the game, rather than constantly worrying about what I need to do to gimp my character.

What most people seem to forget about the crafting "exploits" is that some people actually do enjoy one hitting everything in the game, as it's part of their playstyle and fits with their character development. Removing it would be really lame, because that would simply be saying, "my opinion beat yours." Avoid it if you don't want it. Some of you like to pretend you somehow accidentally grinded alchemy until you could make +enchanting and +blacksmithing potions, then accidentally made 400 iron daggers then accidentally made Daedric armor while using the potion, and then accidentally enchanted it while using a potion. It's really not that hard to avoid being and OCD blacksmith. It's there because some people do enjoy doing that, there's no way you happened on to it by accident, stop pretending it's easy to exploit and don't do it if you don't like the outcome, and let others who do, enjoy their game as they see fit. If you're not using any crafting and you're on master nd the game is too hard, wait for a mod, and pat yourself on the back for simply being too damn good at a game. No one should ever have to suffer from a removed mechanic, just because people whined about how it worked on their game.

Yeah the arch necromancers are really tough at lvl 45, I couldn't fight them without my companion. But then again every time I come back from a huge adventure I put ALL my loot in my place and go back out with nothing, not even my gold. And once I'm barely moving with loot again I buy / sell and drop it all off again and start with just the cloths on my back.

While I don't have an issue with any of the crafting skills on their own, this argument is a bit silly. Given how the crafting skills work you have to grind the skills, it is not like you make anything useful until you have ground them a bit. Hey look I have smithing from the get go I can make stuff worse than I will find, if you only used it when it was natural like when you were trying to make better gear than you have you would never use it. The only way to make it functional is to grind the skill, same for enchanting you find gear that reduces magic cost by 12% if you try to make it yourself it is like 2% reduction. You would never make that outside of the concept of grinding it whether for money or to improve the skill. So you are basically saying, don't use the skill except in specifically prescribed ways where it always stays level appropriate to you. If you have to jump through hoops to make sure the skill works, the skill needs to be worked on.

Does your post incline thay you use the exploit I mentioned or you never tried sneaking ? Even with all sneak perked and maxed skill you can still get spoted ocasionaly in a dungeon. Dungeon are different that open spaces it the regard they are dark even thou they are bright lit confusing isnt it. You can not sneak that well on the surface and certainly not during day light.

But if you combine your sneak with an invisible pot/spell you can backstab ppl in broad daylight standing next to each other, you just need to apply an invisibility pot after every bacstab and be crouched all the time.

I sneak all the time and since 90% of the game is in a dungeon I don't have a problem. Sure I can't sneak in broad daylight in the town, but I am pretty much never spotted in a dungeon and while my skill is now 70ish I have not put a single perk into it. And I don't bother with invisibility since it only lasts 30 seconds. It is very, very easy to sneak your way through dungeons and one shot pretty much everything except bosses. And that is on my mage, my stealth/assassin never gets spotted anymore before he dual strikes someone.

Wait for Martigens Monster Mod. Or bribe Oscuro to stop devving for Obsidian and do a Skyrim Overhaul

You either:

1. Are greatly exaggerating and are only one-shotting the weakest enemies.
2. Lied about not Smithing, because you cannot run around and one-shot "most" enemies on Master without it (If not stealth).
3. Are a stealth build and are just backstabbing everything.
4. Are playing on Adept, not Master.


The most powerful "Assassin" uses Illusion though, so they would I guess be a Thief/Magic user?

Hey guys I power-grinded all my skills and now I is bored.

That's simply not true. I use it whenever I have the materials from exploring. Starting with making my weapons and armor "fine". It goes up according to my level and needs/wants that way. I don't have to grind a single thing to keep smithing up to par, but not overpowered. By the time I was level 50, I could just start making Daedric, and because the materials are harder to find, it wasn't done in one fell swoop. I couldn't make Orcish until it was already dropping in the world, making the smithing advantage simply upgrading my gear. It's an enhancement skill, not a main skill. What you're saying about grinding is just false. I don't expect to have legendary weapons and armor until I'm almost level capped. Which is exactly how it should be in my mind. Some people want that stuff at level 4, and that's fine. Some people do that stuff early, then complain about the game being easy and it being an exploit. That's just ignorant.

Game is awesome except for the fact that it is terribly easy, hopefully a patch addresses this soon.

Edit: not using smithing or enchanting, still a walk in the park.

Level 45+ you probably wont be 1-shotting stuff anymore.

Mages with expert spells are pretty overpowered before 45 as well.

Skyrim isn't exactly a skill game.


It all boils down to preperations, gear & cheap tactics.


Most fights you've already won/lost before you even engage the enemy.


Master difficulty to me simply means I have to bring more potions, specialized gear & maybe use unfair tactics.

Well, everyone, it's time to hang it up.

Someone said it's still a walk in the park, without elaborating what their build is, what the difficulty is they're on, and so on.

A random person on the internet said it without anything to back it up, so it must be perfectly true!

Christ, the only way to have the game truly be easy is to either keep the difficulty to novice or else powergame your character.

And if your measure is by bandits in the same dungeons you've been revisiting since the start: Areas are locked into the level you were at when first entering, and don't scale up very much beyond that, and some enemy classes were set so that their gear never goes above certain tiers. Remember bandits decked out in Glass gear in Oblivion?

No, THIS is utter bull. Some people may behave in such a way, but not everyone had to read about something on a forum before learning about it. On my second character I broke the game with just smithing alone and this was because I had no idea that none of the items that dropped could come remotely close.

Before the game was even released I had hoped that there would be a reason to pick both Smithing and Enchanting, but that you could never create weapons and armor that would equal or surpass the top 10% (at least) of what drops later. This is a clear case of Bethesda being clueless or lazy and not playtesting the game very well. It's way too easy to break. And yes, a person can have self-control and not repeat the same mistakes if they do not want to suffer the same experience, but they should have never been able to stumble upon it in the first place.

And the people that are saying that you need to grind Smithing or it's useless are correct. I've tried on two different characters to only use Smithing "naturally" and never buying materials from vendors. Superior items always drop well before you can craft them, let alone even upgrade them. The crafting skills really are "all or nothing" in this game. By the time Smithing would catch up to drops by just "playing regularly" would be around level 50.


Simply having a companion on anything lower than Master makes the game too easy for most builds. Even if they don't really do that much damage (depends on the NPC), they keep enemies distracted. I didn't even use a companion on my first three characters and the game was excrutiatingly easy, and I was playing on Expert at the time.

Exactly.

I can definitely relate to this topic!

Stopped and (re)started several times trying to find something that felt right for me, and the only way I've found to play that doesn't feel overpowered/broken/dirty is Sword & Shield on master difficulty, with a slew of boycotts across the board. Because of timing, with blocking, dodging, bashing and staggering, there's a lot of room for depth in the encounters. I've been killed by a bear that surprised me, even using potions, and then beaten it my next try without using any, because I learned how to fight it (When it stands up, dodge, don't try to block!). It was rewarding, you know?

For reference: One-Handed, Heavy Armor and Block, with Archery and Alchemy on the side, pretty much. Oh, and the slew of boycotts...

No Enchanting
No Smithing - No upgrading, either.
No Stealing - I feel dirty helping myself 'free' loot.
No Stealth - ESP! Also, just plain breaks AI.
No Magic
No Selling Alchemy produce - Too much free gold!
No Companions
No Pausing - Hotkeys only! Applying poisons being the only mini-exception.
No Backwards Key - Spartans never retreat! But yes. Really.
No 3rd Person - It makes melee a lot more fun, and exploring immersive.
No Skill Trainers - I always felt dirty afterwards...
No Grinding Skills - Duh!
No Compass
No Fast Travel

... I think that's everything.

:|

Find an ancient dragon. Problem solved.

turn the difficulty up perhaps?