The fact that they are possible is the problem... and casting Soul Trap on a dead body is CLEARLY an exploit. It cheapens the experience.

I've deliberately avoided enchanting perks as it's a game breaker (100% more effective??!??!), and it shouldn't be that way.

i started playing on master and earned every bit of my 100s in alchemy, enchanting, and smithing. as i trained those to 100 first and the scaling quickly kicked in, for the longest time some of the weakest bandits and critters could could kill me in one hit. After hours running away from so many snow wolves, i don't feel like a cheater at all.

permanently enchanting a belt with levitate, armor with resist magic, and wearing the boots of blinding speed in Morrowind. now that's an "exploit" :celebration:

When are you going to realize that smithing isnt a exploit and the armor bonus and damage bonus isnt that great unless you do the whole alc/enchant routine.

I just pray you don't find the Oghma Infinium cheat, or you'l be making complainy threads in every single sub-section.

People's game, people's choice how they play what they payed for.

None of those are exploits. They are possibly bad game design but not exploits.

You forgot:

Speechcraft: Black-Briar Meadery, Bartender has a persuade which passes around 25ish speech, and is always available as a choice, just keep spamming it.

So by doing something boring for a long time, you eventually make the game boring. Well done.

As this is an entirely single player game, you're welcome to do as you wish. Me, I'll just play naturally thanks. Having a whale of a time

But, nice to know I can grind something if I've a mind to

They're opening a new path, I'd say.

It's not where they should be going...
They're making things in a different way.
But they're not wrong in most of the decisions.

If you don't want overpowered enchanting/smithing/etc. just don't do it. I know you mention that in the OP not to flame about it being a choice, but there's nothing left to be said beyond that. Every person who spammed the various exploits did it on purpose (which by the way, thanks for providing the details, so we can make sure these topics continue to flourish). Case in point - I enjoy crafting the odd article of whatever, but have never mined/bought up all the iron ingots around and made a crap-ton of chintzy daggers. My level is about 40, my smithing about 60, and I very much now appreciate being able to upgrade my dragon priest's mask. It's not the game's fault it's possible to cheaply blow these skills up, it's the gamer who decided to halt their gaming experience, to focus on powerleveling a skill, to use said skill, and then to come here and complain that they (and by proxy everyone subsequently from this point on) shouldn't be able to do it. Here's hoping in the 10 pages this post will surely run, I get to remind everyone 5 or 6 times of this FACT.

* Ridiculous

Not unless you choose to do it after enemies difficulty cap off later game.
Dont always have to do it right in the beginning.
I think i might use some of these when i reach level 60

i know what you mean.. i for one was a total abuser of athletics in the previous elder scrolls games..all i would do was run run run. in oblivion, for an example, i would run laps around the imperial city to exploit athletics and level it up.

they probably removed athletics because of me and how easy it was to exploit it. they just wanted to dismiss their reason calling it a useless skill.

You can just soul trap Lydia continuously if you really want, pretty sure you can do Calm on her for illusion too. (If you have 0 cost illusion really, you can just spam Calm on anything)

As was mentioned, its prettymuch inherent in any skill that covers non-combat use that you'll be able to grind it up (Though even smithing, you have to get iron from somewhere, or constantly wait another 48 hours to buy ingots)

This is a pet peeve of mine, too. I'll leave you're / your usage as an exercise for the student.

On topic, I'm not qualified to say if the direction the series is heading is right or wrong, but it's not going in a direction I like (not the skill leveling exploit, though, which has always been a feature of TES). Iron Daggers are this installments version of the restore 1 hp spells or levitate an inch for one second of previous versions, and if people want to raise some skill by using them, I don't think there's much Bethesda can do to prevent it.

After the initial thrill of seeing how quickly you can raise your character's level subsides, the system (as always) works great if you gain your skills through normal use and results in an entirely different game.

The thing about these exploits is, you don't stumble upon them or trip over them playing the game. You have to grind them out while playing the game. So, if you use exploits to power level your character or a skill, then you only have yourself to blame or thank for this.

If you just play the game, the skills and character levels go up naturally and very little grinding is needed. Other than occasional grinding to buff up a skill, like you want to get certain Perk and you need a couple skill levels to acquire it. This occasional grinding has been part of RPGs since CRPGs were created. It can be doing a skill over and over again, or you can do a few Radiant Quests. However, playing this way, I don't see anyone exploiting their character to godhood, just progressing their character with while playing the game.

In other words, You Reap What You Sow.

The OP gives his grips on the "exploits" people can use to advance certain skills but fails to tell us how he would differentiate legitimate use from spam training.

Arbitrary rules such as leveling limit per day merely prompts the determined user to find means to circumvent these ridiculous rules and punish the normal players.

*Sigh* Ohh look another " I grinded all the powerfull skills up to 100 in 2 days of play time and now I don't have anyting to do" boo hoo thread.

As one of the posters above put it. This is your own damn fault. Your the kid who ate an entire family size bag of snickers in one sitting and is now crying because your stomach hurts.

Please..please stop saying that your game play was broken just following normal game mechanics and you didnt do it on purpose or you did not know.

For most of the exploits I have read about you have to do the following:
-Abuse the Wait function
-Craft 100s of iron daggers over and over and over
-Abuse the fast travel and wait function together in order to purchase enough iron to make these 100s of daggers
-Continuosly cast the same 1 spell over an over again on some npc or creep

This list can go on and on. But basiclaly repeat the same behavior over and over.

Guess what...this is how the skill system in this game is designed. You use to increase. So how is using skills an exploit?

THis game is not supposed to be a grind fest that takes a year to reach the top level of each skill with 100s of hours of gameplay. It is an experience and immersion that when done at a natural progression and speed results in maximum fun.

I have two play throughs. My first is at 77 hours into the game and I am only level 36. I have gone out of my way to level up blacksmithing wihtout abusing any of the above. I have reached only 64 ish and am far from OP on Expert/Master

Typical reply: It's your own fault.

It really isn't.

You are not exploiting game mechanics.



What if someone wants to, I dunno, RP a character who only uses items they themselves created? -broken game- Lets say they are a mage and they think enchanting should be high too as it's a magey type of thing to do? -broken game- What if someone wants to be really good at making poisons for their sneaky attacks? -broken game-

Now, say someone wants to be a sneaky character that makes use of some magic spells like invisibility or bound weapons, but also uses poisons on their bow or dagger. -insanely broken- Anyone that has played this game for a few hours realises there is a potion that improves enchanting, they may also realise they have an enchanting epell that increases potion making. It doesn't take a degree in maths to realise the following:

1)make +alchemy enchanted items.
2)use +alchemy items to make a +enchanting potion.
3)make even better +alchemy items.

repeat steps 2+3.

Then.. don't do it? Don't exploit it and then complain. No one here likes that.

i hink i might use that conjuration one to help get my rp started, cheese for you sir :foodndrink:

I think a lot of these exploit complaint threads come from the MMO mindset.

The Elder Scrolls games are ment to be played as a "role playing game"

If you play these games like WoW or Sonic it's not going to be as fun.

So let’s start by saying 2/5 of those are beyond wrong op. smithing and Enchanting, if you only blacksmith and enchant objects you planned on using you would never hit 100 in ether of them, unless you try to use and wear everything in the game. With smith you could never get to 100 even if you made 1 set of everything for yourself and 1 set for your two best followers, you are required to make lots of useless stuff to improve the skill. Then with enchanting the same goes, if you used enchants on you and your best followers equipment 50 times you would still not max it out to 100. You require a lot of rubbishing enchanting and smith if you ever want to have 100 points in ether.

not sure if it is listed but I also want to add that there is a person in riften you can persuade over an over again to get to 100 speech.

Yup this was what i stumbled onto a few days ago, but i am waiting to hit 100 enchanting before i start... getting 100 in enchanting is a pain in the butt

Just tried out Muffle, and yeah, that's insane. Just casting it once pretty much always seems to raise the skill by one point instantly. Surely that's a bug?

Heathenite, you had me worried. Then I read this from you:

"1)make +alchemy enchanted items.
2)use +alchemy items to make a +enchanting potion.
3)make even better +alchemy items.

repeat steps 2+3. "

Thankfully you stumbled upon the exact supposedly game-breaking recipe for disaster. Not avoiding it now becomes YOUR fault