I heard the level of improvement to armor and weapons goes up with skill and no need to perk...
BUT is it worth the trouble to get 100 smithing just to improve armor and weapons?

Without the perks you won't be improving anything but iron and maybe steel.

And you won't be making anything better either.

Yes, because when you level it up, your overall level goes up. So you can use those perks on other trees

Just get the perks up to glass for light (4 I think is needed), as glass weapons are similar in damage daedric, and the armor is roughly equal to dragonscale. Also the strongest 1h weapon is glass, chillrend.
For heavy then work up to daedric.

Thats my opinion anyway.

Is 100 in any skill worth if it you don't choose perks in it?

No.

I really don't understand why they choose to call them perks, because they don't do anything but make your chosen play style viable.

Workbench/grindstone improvements are one of the most important things you can do to weapons and armor if you want to make them truly effective. Without perks, you're basically getting that (to a certain degree) and a bunch of really easy levels from all the skillups. YMMV.

Am I missing something? If you ignore smithing, you can't get to level 81, which means less perks you can spend on other trees. So why not?

It's worth it, since you can improve materials you don't have perks for. Plus, the extra levels from it is good.

I think it's worth it but I perk it anyway. I love it because you can make decent looking armor quite efficient at higher level (Like the wolf armor at level 30 if you upgrade it to legendary can still kick very much ass)
ALthough you should definitly take the improved magical stuff perk.

You can upgrade everything without perks, perks only doubles the value that you upgrade something and allow you to create the base version of that item. You can't upgrade anything with an enchantment however unless you have the specific perk.

So in other words, if you upgrade an Ebony sword +20 damage without the Ebony perk, with the Ebony perk you upgrade the damage +40 (not sure if diminished returns kicks in, in regards to the perks)

Illusion, conjuration, alteration.

As far as I know the term "perk" in RPGs was introduced in fallout 1, as a special ability you gained every three levels. the reason i thought they called it a perk in those games was because it sounded slightly humorous (which was the whole undertone of fallout, and something it totally lacked in 3) There were more Pop culture references, and silly easter eggs, and wonderfully written humorous dialogue in the first two fallout games which was sorely lacking in the third. and before any of you say that fallout 3 was better than the original 2, I don't think it was, and for that one reason alone. I thought Bethesda was wonderful for making Fallout 3, but it was definitely a weaker sequel.

anyway the point is it made me feel bad that they are still calling them perks in skyrim. they could just as easily be called Feats like they are called in D&D. and they could just as eaily have been called nothing at all, and been better implemented. in fact it would have been better if they had just stuck with oblivion style and made it to where you gain these "perks" automatically when you gain points in the skill. This is one of the few things that i feel needs to stop happening. Skyrim Should not have been made for consoles that are already almost 7 years old. it should have been made for todays current PC technology, and Then ported to the consoles with stripped feature versions. today's Consoles don't deserve this game's full potential that it could have, and should have had.

Illusion no because your spells wont effect anything around you, but conjuration and alteration sure, though alteration is kind of svcky perked or not perked. I'd also add in stealth and light armor if you are a smith, and that is about it.

I advise two perk points into it: Steel Smithing, and Arcane Blacksmith. Then, you can upgrade ANY item to at least "Flawless" quality.

Of course you don't need any perks: With level 100 Smithing, you can upgrade any item to Flawless quality, and not waste as much time stacking Fortify Smithing effects to upgrade anything to legendary.

Just remember to enchant your stuff after upgrading it to as far as you need too if you don't get the Arcane Blacksmith perk.

Personally, I find that come end-game, I don't know why I invested ANY points into Blacksmithing: If you can find/buy the gear you need, you don't need perks to upgrade it.




This is off-topic, but I'm not sure how people can't find the comical moments in Fallout 3 - It was far, far more humorous and silly than the first Fallout (Fallout 3 played like a re-make of the first game, aesthetically.) All of Megaton was a joke (Church of Atom, Cowboy Sheriff, Cheerfully crazy shop-owner, and the guy wanting to blow the place up...), the straight-faced seriousness of Vault 101's situation was pretty hilarious too. And there were lots of Pop Culture references.

Serious games don't have people deluded into believing they're superheroes fighting people who are deluded into thinking they're supervillians and pulling off the delusional fight successfully in-character!

The only game sillier than Fallout 3 was Fallout 2 - but then again, that game is too overloaded with making a joke of the setting to be as enjoyable as the first.

That is my problem with a lot of crafting in a lot of games. There is a weird balance, why level this crafting skill up if you just find better stuff, on the other hand epic rewards look kind of lame if you can just make better stuff. It is why I think crafting skills should focus more on the buffing of items than the making of items.(not saying you can't make stuff, but, but make the bread and butter of the skill be improving items and have the making part be more a fill in your blank spots that are not covered by god forged items)

The primary use of Smithing is improving the items.

When you find something better than a Legendary Daedric Sword let me know.

I'll see that, and raise you a Legendary++ one. :tongue:

More seriously, I agree that crafting starts to lose purpose late in the game; once you have your 'final' gear set you don't really need to make anything, and there tends to not be that much to improve when you go to sell since you start leaving tons of crap lying around in interiors as it's no longer worth picking up.

You won't find anything in random loot that surpasses the best crafts, though, which does raise the question of just what quality of stuff we should ultimately be allowed to make. That said, those crafts are only available if you also grind up Enchanting and Alchemy, since you need to 'over-buff' your Smithing skill to make them, so I'm not sure they actually need to be clamped down on in the first place. It's very much a 'no-win' scenario: if you can find much better than you can make there's not much point in making, while if you can make much better than you can find there's not much point in finding, and either way you lose out on an important aspect of the game.