Its a single player game.
Exploits are meaningless.
If this were a multiplayer game. yes it would be friggen OP, but then again, whats the difference between this, and other 'mmos' where instead of this so-called exploit, and games that require you to 'constantly' upgrade your gear to have a bigger 'epeen'?


Heres another thing.
Lets say you max out all your skills, and are probably around level 70.
Do you know how [censored] you'll be, if you dont' have some of this gear?
Level 70 mobs, even with perks, are going to wreck you, if your using the same level of gear they are! (or there level 5 equiovolents)

That note, I'm not even useing this so called 'exploit' and its not even really an exploit, not liek say, in dark souls where equiping an item, and doing a jig gives you access to infinite souls. This is simply, creating potions, that up your alchemy skill. Then enchanting an item, that increaes your alchemy skill, and rinsing and repeating until that bonus becomes larger and larger, and finishing it off, with a blacksmithing potion/enchant, to doubley enchance your weapons/armor. Thats not an exploit, its just the way the system works. Could gamesas have done it differently? Sure, but they also made players WORK at doing this.
They could have simply allowed Fortify Alchemy potions, to create more Alchemy potions, of the same kind until your upwards of +500% alchemy to create the enchants + the alchemy, ect, ect, ect. By doing what they did, you have to sink far more gold into accomplishing it.

Knowing that there is a way to become extremely powerful, but consciously limiting myself to make for a better challenge cheapens my experience of the game. Single player or not is irrelevant.

I want to seek out the best way to become powerful, but I want it to be a rewarding and difficult journey that doesn't break the game. Right now Skyrim does not have that.

That's essentially the point of powerleveling: To max out a level early on so that you can be demi-god right out of the starting gate so you can breeze through things after that.

BUT NOBODY CHOOSES TO DO THAT BUT YOU. YOU ARE SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE FOOT AND DENYING YOURSELF THE FUN OF THE ADVENTURE BY DELIBERATELY CHOOSING TO MIN/MAX WHILE EXPLOITING THE FACT THAT YOU CAN LEVEL SKILLS WITHOUT LEVELING UP AND THUS NOT CHANGE THE LEVEL-SCALING IN THE GAME. AND YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT YOUR OWN CHOICES BEING POSSIBLE FOR OTHERS IN THEIR OWN SINGLE-PLAYER ADVENTURES.

And guess what? Some people like the idea that their characters eventually become gods in their own right, and even without having to powerlevel like you did!

IMAGINE THAT, WOW. SOMEONE PLAYS THE SINGLE-PLAYER ADVENTURE GAME DIFFERENTLY FROM YOU

It doesn't need fixing as there's no PvP element to the game.

I can only think it's jealousy on the part of the people who aren't doing it; they must be pissed that they don't have this stuff because they haven't put the time into getting it. Personally I'm not power levelling my smithing up to 100, but I hold nothing against people who do.

If you really want to control it, the better option would simply to decrease the base values of equipment, and make the values rely more on the player's skill in that area; that way a blacksmith would be unable to forge himself awesome weapons and simply go off and pwn, because he still doesn't have a clue how to use them properly.

For me seeing this kind of exploitable crafting system just feels wrong. I can't possibly imagine Beth is trying to cater to ppl who like to powerlevel and create overthetop items that make the game trivial. And if they are not catering to them ... who are they catering to ?

Yup I completely agree. To use tradeskills in skyrim is totally shooting yourself in the foot and destroying the game. The correct balance for this game to be fun is very thin, and is a trial by error process. You need to be on master so mobs are threatening, but you need not to over-craft. You need to spend your perks, but dont spend them too well or you'll find yourself without challenge.

Like I said, its annoying.

You don't even seem to understand how the game works, you can't level skills without leveling up. If you could, the game would be even more broken due to the level scaling - it'd be like Oblivion in which you could be a level 1 with 100 destruction.
Level scaling is broken in different ways in Skyrim still, though.

I do love it when people using caps locks are wrong.

I like this post. It defines the very reason that it's a problem.

I'm noticing that the majority of users on this thread simply ignore the posts that make valid points while attacking the posts that make weak points by rewording the phrase "It's a single-player game." At this realization, I'm done here.

I just used it to get lvl 60 Smith so i can upgrade magic weapons and armor... i am not going to rush make dragon armor ill do it when theres dragon armors available in game first

Totally agree.

And yet most people would never discover it if they spent more time playing the game and less time on the forums. It's probably an oversight like most exploits in games, and is ultimately harmless.

Still, the solution I have given is better than any other solution about simply nerfing smithing progression, and actually makes sense from a roleplay perspective.

This.

Just the same as in Oblivion, I could level my skills without ever leveling up my character. Just simply never bring up the skills menu, just like in Oblivion, you avoided the level up by never sleeping. I'd miss out on perks, but if leveling skills that much in lieu of player leveling, the difference would be minimal given level-scaling being dependent on player level and not skill level.

But good job on flexing your internet e-peen over a nonsense argument, I applaud your efforts at hubris.

Meanwhile, I'm not the one complaining about anything to do with the leveling system and I find nothing broken nor do I see "exploits" as you apparently seem to.

It seems that when a game gives more options instead of less, more people will complain about even having those options at the expense of everyone else who just enjoys playing the game instead of min/maxing those options.

Though I agree that you can cheat or abuse freely in single-player because, well, it's SINGLE player and you can play however you want, I really don't see how it is in any way a justification for broken/unbalanced gameplay.
Don't you feel idiotic saying "it doesn't matter if there is bad design, you just have to play around it" ?

Alot of people seem to be focused solely on how quickly one can level blacksmithing & completely ignore the fact that you can currently create weapons armor 4-5 times better than daedric artifacts imbued by the gods. Clearly not what was meant to happen. Pretty sure it wasn't in Bethesda's intention to have everyone running around with 670 base damage 2H 1 shotting dragons. Blacksmithing progression needs to be limited & the quality of items you can create needs to be toned down.

Yeah it bothers me that the Daedric lords apparently hand out crappy equipment for the most part, but that's another issue..

I don't know ... it seems pretty obvious the second you see some of the crafting features. Skill improving enchants, stackable mana reduction for mages, leveling up smithing to 100 with daggers, being able to use grand soul gems from the start. Reminds me of AoC crafting.

If this exploit exists in Skyrim you'd not only miss perks, you miss out on +health/magicka/stamina. It'd be very different than in Oblivion, since there are also static level enemies in this game. Regardless, you were responding to a person who was clearly not using the exploit you're talking about now. He didn't level 100 smithing without gaining levels, nowhere in his post did he give any reason for you to assume that, so it's pretty obvious why I thought you were clueless. Your post was worded extremely poorly if this is what you meant.

Nice attempt at saving face but nope, your previous post is still complete nonsense in it's context.

You're still wrong in another way, because he wasn't shooting himself in the foot by doing what you said he was doing, because leveling to 100 smithing without spending the perks would do absolutely nothing for him. I encourage you to go back and read your post and his to see how obviously wrong you are.

I cunningly avoided this conundrum by using self disciple and control.

Well, since you have to choose to stack it/abuse it like a fiend, it is no different to me than the console "killall" command.

I mean, it's not the kind of thing you can do by accident, is it? Or am I misunderstanding and you don't need repeat runs to stack it on top of itself over and over?


You can hardly say you're gimping yourself by not doing it, not truthfully.

The problem is no that smithing/alchemy/enchanting on 100 combo is OP or broken.
Imo it should be like that and at the end game everyone should be able to make themselves godly on an rpg.
The problem is that the above combo is only worthwhile on melee/archery.Since for a mage 0% magicka for spells that only scratch you enemies (Destruction school only) is not that impressive.
Make Destruction and benefit like melee for direct damaging on that extend and we're golden,

And nothing stops you from making good equipment. If you want to be powerful, turn down the difficulty instead of making game breaking gear by exploiting a badly designed system of the game.

I'm one of those who want to use everything I can and fight the game with all the best tactics. In Oblivion, 100% chameleon worked pretty much in the same way as the combo enchant, alchemy and smithing, makes you impossible to kill. I had to deliberately play badly so I wouldn't destroy the little balance the game has. As a player I shouldn't be forced to make my character weak, the game should encourage you to become powerful and also have a realistic limit for it. This effect stacking can easily be fixed by adding a limit of how good gear can become.

I see it like 100% chameleon in Oblivion. Just because you can doesn't mean you should, but you still can. And really, you have to go out of your way to acheive those overpowered equipment.

I use smithing "naturally", and as a result have Flawless Orcish equipment at level 26 and still get owned easily if i don't pay attention.

Well, neither did I exploit it or even got very high levels of it (around 50 armor, no Enchanting used) and still my weapons did 50% more damage when I improved them.
With absuing it to the fullest one could probably one hit a dragon and get a hundred thousands of gold in the process of leveling the skills that high.
Didnt "whine" here about it yet, but It is clearly broken and needs fixing.

Well, in fairness enchanting skill increases into armour is a pretty viable way forward, and means they have to fully level two skills instead of one in order to get there, so I'm personally fine with that. My issue is only that levelling smithing isn't difficult, and therefore there is no drawback to wasting your life as a humble blacksmith and then just deciding you have the gear so you may as well stick it to some dragons.. At least if you're forced to fully level two skills you're putting a lot more effort in.

From my perspective, I'd rather keep the OTT builds that you have to work for, than artificially limiting the effects available simply because people are getting there too fast. Limiting the progress of Blacksmiths via a realistic problem of their combat skills being too low to get the full benefit seems more appropriate.