So you're running a dungeon in, what, an average of 3, 4 minutes? Because if you're putting a (48 hours of game passing, since the vendor restocks) dungeon run in between each time you buy a dozen iron bars from the smith, I'm not sure how "3 hours later - maxed smithing!" works.



And as for where I got the "camping" thing from - virtually everyone complaining about how "broken" smithing is proceeds to say "And I just stood at the vendor and kept WAITing to restock on bars, until I had smithing at 100. How dare the game let me do that!" :rolleyes:

I honestly think you're just mad at yourselves for taking advantage of an exploit and now when you tell your friends "I beat the game on Master" they just laugh at you and say "Ya because you cheated! You folded S/E/A!"
Because honestly, there is nothing stopping you from starting again and NOT cheating.

Afraid not, no changes please.

@ OP: The same can be said about Sneak, Block, both types of armor skills, Illusion, Restoration (to an extent), Alteration, and Lockpicking (as with Restoration, to an extent)
Yes, you can grind smithing for a couple of hours and become a master smith, but with all of the skills I mentioned, you can do the same thing (albeit with MUCH more time involved)
You can get sneak to level 100 in Bleak Falls Barrow at the beginning by just sneaking into the pedestal for a few hours. Voila, Master of sneaking.
With both armor skills and Block, you can sit near a wolf or skeever or mudcrab (or even a dagger wielding Forsworn after killing off the rest of the tribe) and just take the beating and get those skills up while popping potions occasionally and getting your Restoration up to boot (takes a very long time I imagine, just as Restoration did in OB).
Illusion, you can just sneak around and cast "Muffle," and with Alteration I imagine you can simply throw on waterbreathign every couple of minutes.
Lockpicking, simply break your picks until level 75 then get the perk that says lockpicks don't break and tackle Master level ones


EDIT: However, I do agree that smithing a dagger gives you way too much experience. Based on the materials and amount you use to make something, your smithing should level up accordingly. Also, at lower levels, smithing mundane things like iron, steel, Dwemer, Orsimer and very rarely, ebony, should have a failure rate

It seems to me that some of you are arguing that a new player cannot be expected to know that over-leveling smithing could adversely affect their gameplay. And using this as your rationale behind patching the game mechanics.

But I genuinely don't think it's posisble for most new players to disproportionately level smithing. You just do not have enough money to 100 smithing simply by buying ore and ingots - you'd have to do a fair amount of adventuring to build up the necessary gold. And if you use materials you've found yourself - again you'd need to have played the game for a while first...

Therefore, what we're talking about is actually the (vocal) minority here who have inadvertently (or not) power-leveled their craft.

To make game changing decisions based on a minority is not practical.
___

The other side is that experienced players can adversely affect their gameplay because they know how to over-level their craft. But to this I think the 'self-control' argument really works.

If you go out of your way to power-level crafting because you want the best items asap, you're not in a position to complain about the game being too easy!

The funny thing is all the people who crying about it being seem to forget you can raise your smith skill by using the pelts of animals you ACTUALLY kill. Smithing isn`t broken nor is any other skill. It`s the players who do not have enough self control and actually sit in town and do the wait game for the merchants to restock ore that brings these topics up. I mean seroiusly, if that`s how you play your game thats how you play your game, but don`t complain about something you have 100% control over. That`s like a smoker [censored]ing he has lung cancer when he didn`t have to smoke to beginwith.

there are far too many topics on how crafting skills are this and that. It all boils down to the person playing the game. Skyrim gives you the tools to take your character progression many different ways. But most of you are playing it as a cookie cutter game and are only concerned with numbers. The game offers immersion and feeling more then how much damage can my sword do if I max my crafting first.

- You are admitting there are exploits but that they shouldn't be fixed.
- You still consider crafting daggers an exploit.

I'm done posting on this thread. Nothing will be come from it, either it will be fixed by them or by mods. Most likely mods. There's absolutely no reasoning with people that consider making daggers an exploit. Many gamers did this without knowing they were going to end up one shotting everything afterwards. An exploit is something you have to go out of your way to do, and know that you are doing something wrong. Buying Iron Ignots whenever you go into town and crafting with them is not an exploit. My mind is blown by some people's logic.

Anyway, i'm out.



You actually think we sat there and made 200 daggers in one go? Man.. are people really this dense? You make the 200 daggers over a couple hours or more of gameplay, buying iron anytime you go to town inbetween quests and using it to craft. Using your time wisely in now considered exploiting and stupid. I mean really.. no point in posting here. I'll wait for the mods to fix my game, if there are other people that like to set guidelines so they don't break their game.. then that's their choice.



Fast travel affects game time, travelling to a dungeon, completely it in 20-30 minutes, and going back to town is usually 48 hours of game time. Assuming so, because my stores are ALWAYS restocked when I get back. Whiterun has 4 merchants that carry iron ignots and ore. Each visit will net you about 50 or so, you need roughly 200 to max. 4 dungeons and you have nearly enough materials. Which means roughly 2 hours for 200 daggers. I didn't exactly have a stop watch out and time everything I did, it's all estimated.. I maxed smithing fast by doing this.

Console commands are in the game and I am not saying REMOVE THEM I CAN'T STOP MYSELF.
Wait for your mods. It's the ONLY way the changes you want will happen.

How many iron daggers do you need to make to max smithing? ...

There is just no way you can accidently craft hundreds of daggers. By your own definition you are describing an 'exploit'.

You didn't have to do it that way. Either live with the choices you made or start again and don't do it.

you think buying stuff in bulk and than mass producing [censored] you don't even need isn't going out of your way?
you honestly think that's the point of this game?
like I said it's not really an argument about balance but more about what you expect from the game
and I can't imagine most people would expect this

than again perhaps i'm wrong
people's preferences have baffled me more than once


I just think nerfing it wouldn't do justice to people who don't want to spend half their time buying stuff or crafting stuff they don't even need in some menu

this is an RGP not some management sim
the lack of depth in the crafting system should make this perfectly clear, all it boils down to is getting the ore and selecting what you want from some list
there's no customization or anything.
it's clearly not one of the core game mechanics, fighting monsters and doing qeusts is

Even if you don't powerlevel smithing you still have the option of insane 130% smithing potions and 39% enchanting potions on top of 29% smithing/alchemy gear. Everyone has easy access to this late game assuming they played at least one character to max alchemy/smithing/enchanting (I don't know why you wouldn't.. it seems intended to level these as you level). Should these stats be possible? I don't think they should be. If people want to be a "god" then they can set the difficulty down, but gear that can one shot things on master shouldn't exist. Master should always be a challenge in my opinion.

And I do agree with you. If I was going to play again I would never buy items from merchants.



*Sigh* You CAN'T compare console commands to the actual game. You can't possibly be serious with your logic?

But seriously, i'm off now.. was finishing up a few more replies.

I'm sort of glad smithing is overpowered. I find rather poor loot in terms of weapons and armour, so if I hadn't gone down to route of smithing a million daggers I'd still have elven daggers and (this was a lucky find I must admit) my ebony bow for my level 34 toon.

Honestly, smithing isnt OP at all. The way you can lvl it is abit lame, sure.

Enchanting however is totally broken. ~90 resistance to fire, frost and lighting? How is that not broken? over 100 to all 3 with an alchemy potion. Or even better, a breton (25% magic resist) with the lord guardian stone (30% magic resistance) and 2 magic resist enchants. Enjoy 100%+ magic resistance... (or a shield with magic resist enchant instead of breton). Why is this a big deal? Because you can kite melee and dodge arrows. You dont need armor of you dont get hit. You cant dodge aoe spells, but why needs to when you are immune to there effects?

But that isnt all, + 150%+ weapon damage? NP! Fortify smithing/alchemy? making them over 100%+ more effective? NP! Talking about alchemy, forty smithing potion! NP!

No, honestly, the thing that "beaaks" smithing is the fortify smithing trough enchanting and alchemy. And even then its no where near as broken as enchanting. (it doesnt realy matter to me though )

I guess I am a noob. I haven't crafted one otem yet. To busy exploring. Did skill 1 & 2 handed to 100. Perked them iut. Lvled restore a few perks, 50 destruction. and 5/5 armor bonus.

Can't say crafting has ntrested me, not like i have receipes around me, or know where to farm, how to mine. And am lvl 35 so I am moving along.

But daedric already has a requirement of 90?

Adding an overall level requirement is a silly solution. The point of TES is that you can basically do anything at any time. So limintg when you can get a specific type of armor is foolish.

This is also true, but Smithing with perks in it is already quite powerful on its own. I think the problem is that Bethesda tried to make every tree combat viable - I don't really feel like doing the math right now, but I'd say that putting 5/5 into first tier Archery gives about the same damage increase as having double-improve in Smithing or 5/5 + skill perk in Enchanting, with latter probably pulling ahead. Somewhere along the line they obviously forgot that people will be able to take both and thus boost the damage/survivability through the roof, which breaks the game balance even on highest difficulty.

To everyone who whines about powerleveling smithing. It's not about powerleveling at all. The crafting problem doesn't really become the problem until you put perks into them. And it becomes exponentially worse when you add a second crafting profession into the mix.

Frankly it's frustrating to see how people don't get what Tyrindor and others are saying, because it's pure logic. Or get it and be against it - why? Because you're afraid something will change for you? It won't. It would be easy to balance the crafting trees so that you can still oneshot most mobs on Novice or Adept or whatever you guys play on, but at the same time impossible to do on Master. Which is essentially what we're asking, for hardest difficulty to provide some challenge. And before someone else comes up with the argument "but then don't take crafting". NO. I enjoy min/maxing, I love optimizing the way my character develops and in most computer rpgs this isn't a problem, because those games are properly balanced. In fact, min/maxing is sometimes the only way to play in some of them. In Skyrim, the game punishes you for this by not being fun anymore.

Actually buying stuff from merchants to smith is a legitimate approach to power.

The problem is it is TOO EASY to level blacksmithing because:
1. Ores and ingots can be too cheap.

At skill level 60 or so, it takes about 2000 gold to level up your skill through a trainer. This shows how hard it is supposed to be to train up a skill. Something is seriously wrong if you can just increase blacksmithing by crafting iron daggers which only cost a fraction of that amount. If blacksmithing is meant to be so easy to level, why in the world does the training cost 2000 gold then?
This is proof that blacksmithing is currently way too cheap to level.

So the cost to level up blacksmithing by making it yourself should be a bit less than 2000 gold, assuming no perks in Speech (more on this).

2. There are no diminishing returns from iron daggers.

There are diminishing returns for improving iron daggers, and it won't increase blacksmithing as much as say improving dwarven daggers. This shows that there is supposed to be some form of diminishing returns for iron stuff.
There are diminishing returns for another crafting skill such as alchemy. If you try to make Cure Disease potions at higher levels, they only move the skill bar by 1 mm or so. Why give alchemy diminishing returns, but not for blacksmithing?

This shows that there is supposed to be some form of diminishing returns in general for all professions.

Conclusion: Blacksmithing is currently too cheap and easy to level and needs balances.

However, just because I want to make it harder to level blacksmithing, doesn't mean I am against grinding blacksmithing. I just want to balance it.

Power-leveling blacksmithing is a valid approach to power. There are many races that have bonuses to blacksmithing, and they deserve to be better at combat through superior equipment. Other people are better at fighting through combat skills but have relatively weaker gear, blacksmiths are better at fighting through superior gear but have relatively weaker combat skills. It balances out.

All smithing should result in a net loss, unless you take the Speech skill. If someone invests heavily in the Speech skill to get better deals, they deserve to be able to power level blacksmithing at a profit in the safety of towns, resting every 48 hours. This is because they spent perks in the Speech skill to get cheaper mats, and they will be relatively weaker than other people in combat. So they deserve this "edge".

If someone wants to spend perks in Speech in order to get a better deal, they deserve it as well.

Conclusion: Power-leveling blacksmithing by waiting every 48 hours for merchants' inventories to refresh is valid, as long as it is costly and requires Speech skill to break even or make a profit.