Does anyone else feel this way? You push your way deep into an ancient crypt, fighting off whatever creatures may be near the surface. Maybe as part of a quest, you unearth an age old catacomb that hasnt been visited by man in centuries. Lo and behold what do you find? Torches, candles, braziers, scones, and lamps, burning bright like they were lit yesterday. This just doesnt seem realistic and kind of ruins the illusion of the game. One of the interesting parts of cave-crawling is having a reliable, effective light source allowing you to see traps, enemies, and most importantly, treasure. It is understandable that a cave, occupied by a group of bandits will have plenty of lighting, the bandits need to see. While an ancient barrow filled with draugr that would have been mostly un-explored wouldn't have the same lighting. The torches would have long since burned out, the braziers reduced to piles of ash, and the candles nothing but stumps with pools of hardened wax beneath. What kind of oil would the draugr have had at their disposal allowing them to burn torches for centuries. I think having explainable and logical lighting situations would make future games more interesting and utilize the lighting mechanic like it never has before, from something that is never used, to something that is incredibly important when exploring any type of location that wouldnt normally have active lighting.

Lets rewind bact to that crypt. You slide the tiles on the ancient Nordic puzzle door into the correct position and slip the corresponding dragon claw in place. You feel the air rush into the ancient passageway that untill now has been undisturbed. Instead of lit torches everywhere showing you a nice yellow brick road to treasure, the light from the room you are in gradually fades into darkness as it spills into the passage beyond. You can just barely make out the sillhouette of an old brazier still filled with fuel but un-lit. You cant see what lies beyond the darkness at all. You tip your torch into the brazier and a fire flares up out of it spraying light into the next room, but before you can take in the details something else takes up the center of your vision. The half rotted face of a draugr who seems none to happy you disturbed his nap.

This type of situation is much more satisfying in my opinion as an explorer. This could be done with un-lit torches, braziers, candles, lamps, you name it. By simply using something like a torch, fire spell, or fire based enchanted item you light up the area fitting of that object. You could also spam your flame spell leaving smoldering fires to give you quick lighting, or cast a magelight or candlelight spell, you could choose to simply rely on the light of your torch, or on your own eyes (if you are a kajiit or if night-eye spells/potions are re-introduced). This would give things such as torches, lanterns, and light spells the valuable position they deserve in exploration. As the game currently works, you can simply turn your brightness setting all the way up, the bright areas are still playable and the dark areas are easy enough to see without a light source. Realisticly, stumbling in the dark in a creature-filled-deadly-drops-armed-to-the-teeth-with-traps crypt is just asking for death. This would also increase the usefulness of detect life spells (or maybe enchantments/potions) as it would help you see that enemy before the light would allow.

Lots of cool things could be done with this. For example, since lighting would be more rare when dungeon crawling, magical light sources such as balls of light (such as the lighting in the midden under the College of Winterhold) or enchanted braziers/torches (which might be identifiable by mis-colored flames such as green, blue, or deep red) could be placed in fitting locations. This could also add some dramatic effect to discovering certain awesome areas. We have all seen the movies where someone lights a torch and it catches some flamable substance on fire which runs around the room lighting up torches and braziers revealing a (insert dramatic awesome thing here) from the darkness. Treasure glitters in the light and creatures are awoken by the disturbance. Or something like this could happen automatically someplace like a Dwemer City, activated by the opening of a door or by a pressure plate. While not lighting the torch could result in things such as making it easier to sneak past the denizens beyond. One thing I loved seeing in Skyrim was the ability to take torches off of some walls. As a stealth addict, I loved grabbing every torch as I went, shrouding myself in darkness and eliminating my foes one by one.

To sum it all up, lighting should be a HUGE part of exploring and treasure hunting in dark caves, but as of now it is under-used and under appreciated. Here is some examples to help some people understand what kinds of areas should be lit or unlit.

- Ancient crypt undisturbed for hundreds of years: unlit

- Cave inhabited by bandits: lit

- Cave inhabited by trolls: unlit

- Cave inhabited by trolls who killed the bandits a couple days ago: lit

- Ruin that has been meticulously studied by scholars for months: lit

- Portion of the Ruin that has untill now been undiscovered because no one thought that pushing that particular stone was a good idea: unlit

The list goes on... As always guys, thank you for reading my post. Please leave feedback and tell me what you think (more importantly so that the peeps at Bethesda can see it )

Yes. Torches in Skyrim have almost no use. You are supposed to use them for lighting, but everywhere you go it's already lit. I never carry them. Making places dark and unlit gives the torch a purpose. Not to play off Minecraft, but if you could build your own torches when they become useful would also be useful. I am finding the urge for a "light brazier" animation as we speak.

Really the biggest deal for me is the beginning of the game. When I run my game with mods that effect lighting the beginning little delve through that imperial fort is really hard because of certain spots being really dark. There is no torch available from the start. I mean, to me that just shows that they really aren't too important anymore and just fill a roll of immersion in the game.

I don't want it to be impossible to see without a torch but it would be nice if everything wasn't so lit that a torch made you feel more comfortable in those deep dark caves.