So, many people have been complaining lately about Smithing being overpowered. I myself agree to a certain extent. The logic behind the fact that a mentally challenged skeever can smith dragon armor after creating a bazillion iron daggers remains a bit elusive to me, but I guess practice makes perfect. Nothing fundamentally wrong with that approach, if it weren't for the endless amount of resources available to all eager blacksmith apprentices.

The skill itself is not overpowered - how could it be? - but the rate at which it progresses seems to be a bit over the top, especially with the endless amounts of iron available for those with a bit of gold. My warrior spent one hour (in real life, that is) in Whiterun, hoarding and buying all the iron available in Whiterun. Every 48 hours I was able to get my hands on at least 5-15 iron ores and 20-60 iron ingots. Result: Near instant epic Smithing skill without ever having created something useful, rendering all but my not-so-precious dragon armor completely and utterly useless.

Now, what if a modder were to drastically reduce the amount of resources that vendors sell? Say, 1 to 3 pieces of iron ore and the same amount of ingots per vendor for every 48 hours, no more, no less. Perhaps even increase the price as well. That way, without abundant resources, you can't just spam the cheapest item 25,000 times in a row in order to become a master smith. You'd actually either have to go out and mine some of the stuff, or travel from city to city/wait 48 hours to stock up on every valuable piece of ore for sale. The latter option would be quite time-consuming and downright boring; this would make Mining even more useful, as you get free ore and nice views!

Yay or nay? Note: I'm not a modder, it's just an idea that came to mind whilst thinking of ways to balance out some of the easy-to-level skills.

It just seems silly to me that I can master daedric armor by just making iron daggers.

Smithing plus enchanting is god mode.

Smithing isn't broken. I'm able to make all kinds of cools stuff. Why have you written a giant post In a thread about smithing being broken when it is fine?

Turning smithing into a grind that would rival everquest isn't the answer.

Slightly lowering just how much you can improve weapons and the rarity of the ingredients would be a much better way to do it.

You know how smiting can be fixed the easiest way possible?

Add lvl requirements to craft armor for example min lvl 30 to craft ebony min lvl 35 to craft daedric and so on, that is the most effective way.

A huge reduction in exp is what smithing need's, i have only explored 30% of the map yet i have more smithing resource's to get 100 at least 4 times over.

Well if you're happy getting bored for an hour more power to you. I'm levelling it normally with materials I find as I quest. I don't have spare hours to dedicate in such a fashion. I just enjoy the game while I can.

It takes 2 hours and 24 minutes IRL for 48 hours to happen in game, and even 60 ingots is not enough to take you from a novice smith to a master.

There is no need for a fix, if you could do it in an hour IRL it's clear you abused the waiting features to have the iron-ores respawn, anything is too easy to get that way, "alchemist only sells one or two of a really good potion ? No problem just buy it and then wait 48 hours and now alchemy is redundant!".

Those that complain about the crafting skills being OP are those that abused them, there is no need to change anything for those, that would only end up changing the game for those not abusing them too and possibly for the worse than for the better, for example by only giving those that really do play without abusing wait only 3 ingots every 2 hours and 24 minutes (1 hour and 36 minutes if you roleplay sleeping for 8 hours every day), all the while leaving people who do abuse it only having to abuse it a little bit more.

Or you could simply impose those ideas on your own character and NOT make 25,000 iron daggers (actually, I think it's around 450 if memory serves) and force yourself to make other things instead, in order to raise skill... I'm on PS3 so as of right now modding isn't an option. So this is the approach I'm taking on my second play through. Going to slow down and enjoy it this time. :thumbsup:

This doesn't seem like a good solution, especially since all it really means is you have to buy/rest more. Doesn't actually solves the issue, just makes it more annoying.

A better way would be to change skill ups in smithing to only work with progressivly better armor types. Iron until 30, Steel until 40, etc. It might take a bit more time if from 60+ you can only make Orcish armor...

There are 2 options to "fix" smithing.

1. Add a level requirement to be able to smith certain armors.

2. Make it so you have to smith each item of dwarven before you can smith orcish, each item of orcish before you can smith ebnony, etc...

Turning smithing into a massive grind will only frustrate players doesn't make any more sense than the way it is now.

That seems a very good idea. My idea was just a loose thought - lower the supply in order to increase the 'value' of a single piece of ore. Oh well.

For the record, I wasn't bored during the hour that I spent working on my Smithing skills, but after reaching level 100, it felt a bit... disappointing. As in: Wow, I'm already there... now to get rid of these daggers.

Why not just have the XP that you get from crafting be somewhat proportional to the value / difficulty of the items that you are crafting??? This way when you are normally playing the game [and are crafting new weapons, armor, etc. when you get a new "bump"] you will get reasonable XP and progress well. This way if you just play the game and outfit yourself and one or two of your favorite followers you should be in great shape.

The way crafting is now if you want to craft all the good stuff you probably do have to abuse the system and craft hundreds of daggers [or hide bracers]. The idea you get roughly the same XP for a dagger or a suit of Dragonbone armor is kinda silly.

YMMV.

A more reasonable approach would be to assign skill levels to items/materials and when you're skill level exceeds that value (or that value + x) then you can't get skill ups from it anymore (pretty much like in every MMO to date).

so Iron daggers can get you to skill level 30 (for example), then you need to move to something harder. Then all iron goes grey (no skill ups) at say 40 then you have to move to steel, then the next material etc etc.

So you have to work your way up there.

I would just make certain key ingredients for the high level stuff rare and only optainable at high levels

:D

why don't you just not abuse the system? no one can make you abuse it

This is not a multiplayer game or a MMO, there is really no need to fix smithing since its a single player game. If you don't like it then simply don't use it, or make your own level requirments or do most people lack that self control. Although you don't really need that many daggers early on it still requires money if you buy the raw materials for it.

And smithing alone will help for the most part, but it won't really save you against magic unless you pickup enchanting, even if you run around in full daedric frost dragons will still kill you in 2-3 breath attacks and if you are not careful you can still die against other forms of magic.

Maybe they should make it so lower level items (like iron daggers) stop providing experience to smithing after a certain level, so that way you NEED to make higher level things with more limited resources to proceed in smithing.

I believe smithing is fun, and I liked the idea of increasing my smith levels from time to time. Appearantly the idea appeals to others as well. Yet it seems smithing is far more complex than the game allows it to be , especially if you are allowed to create anything beyond predefined items.


Reducing the amount of aviable resources seems too ad-hoc.

For my understanding each item class should be considered separately, you get better at crafting daggers if you craft them, but only daggers. And the experience you gain from crafting iron garb should drop significantly after learning the higher quality materials. Further more: More complex and material intensive items earn more exp., while an irondagger is noting more than a gloryfied toothpick and should be considered as such.

The first idea seems a little excessive to be elegant (still very important) the second one could be implemented in a manner of minutes i believe.

Huh? Maybe if you are level 10. At level 33 it takes 5+ Frost Breaths.

I'm not a fan of the first one, as you should still be able to be a master smith at relatively low levels, and completely inadequate for fighting. Not that I would play like that though. The second one makes more sense though. But I'll add a third and a forth:

3. Amount of skill earned at high skill levels decreases for low level items. So maybe you can craft dwarven items? That means you'd have to craft 100 (or something) iron daggers to get the same skill increase as crafting a dwarven dagger. It just doesn't make sense to become a master of anything doing entry level activities. Maybe you could reach master this way by being determined enough, but the annoyance factor would be a huge deterrent.

4. Amount of skill points gained decreases with each item of the same type produced to the point where you're not generating skill points at all anymore. 1st iron dagger = full skill increase. 100th iron dagger = 1/100 skill increase and no more beyond that. Let's face it, if I cook tea 100 times, I won't get a better chef keeping doing that.

Too late to fix it now... but Iron Daggers should never skill you up past 5 or maybe 10

I guess the game was so massive they are just letting details like this go

Simple tweak exp gained is proportional to the dollar value of item created.