That's definitely a grey area. I'd still call it an exploit... But only a Bethesda employee could really answer that question, since they know if it was intentional or not. See, I think the effects are "Working as intended" but towards an unintended result.

Now that I think of it, Bethesda could've patched it. They probably wanted to leave us at least the last major exploit. They fixed Oghma Infinium so we couldn't use it with Legendary Skills.

My understanding is that to fix the Restoration Loop and/or the Alchemy-Enchant loop would require redefining the "Restoration" effect... And to my ignorant mind, that sounds like the kind of thing that could mess up a metric ton of unintentional things. It may even necessitate programming an entirely new effect to circumvent the exploit, again... It's not so much that the Resto-loop and Alchemy loop is a Glitch, it's an exploit. The mechanics are working in an unintentional way. Oghma was just a bug.

I cant stop staring at your profile pic dude

But it's such an obvious thing to do, given the existence of fortify alchemy enchantments and fortify enchant potions. How could that not be intentional to allow looping?

Plus, they went to the trouble to put a cap on it, so they obviously knew people were going to do it. If they didn't intend for people to do it, then they would have lowered the cap to zero, instead of the fairly modest increases allowed by the cap.

Design oversight is a hell of a thing. The fact that they capped doesn't add credence to either argument.

Like I said, I don't know, I just believe it's still an exploit. I'm not trying to convince you or reprimand you or anything. That's just how I view it.

Ha! I just can't believe they would make that big of an oversight. I mean its soooo obvious, it makes them look just plain stupid if it were an oversight. Kind of like Homer Simpson when he says "Doh!" Guess I'm just giving them the benefit of the doubt.

How do you explain the fact that they capped then? A half assed attempt to fix it after the fact? But if that were the case, why wouldn't they cap it at zero, rather than the modest increase they allowed?

The exploit makes skill perks have no point at all, we can one hit kill everyone, do we need perk that stagger enemy, perk that give certain effects, perk that reflect damage at enemy, perk that give chance to avoid attacks and so on?

I think Beth should throw away skills in next game and focus on upgrading weapons and armor only

Do you know if it's a hard cap, or a soft cap? It could just be that we're reaching the threshold of what the game allows in the circumstances.

There's also the possibility (As with anything in game design) that the fix can do more harm than the problem already is. The classic joke is "Fix two bugs, six more appear".

A tip, if you don't care about something, then don't post. Simple as that.

IMO, there are tons of ways to balance your game while having Enchanting as one of your skills. My character has it, as part of his RP skills, but I have that balanced with an HP capping (ranged from 100 to 150 HP). You can also balance your game by adjusting your difficulty level, or (obviously), never using the infamous Fortify Restoration glitch, or similar ones, or putting yourself some other limitations.

It's like any good stuff in real life, if you over-do it, you take away the virtue. The original intention I believe is just to link skill trees together so one character won't overlook other skills if they want the best effect. I am grateful it exist so my first character even bothered with making potions (which turned out to be quite fun). I only looped it once so my enchantment went up about 16% and I leave it as it is. In the end having this option out there means my self enchanted "fortify magicka" effect could add 72 points instead of 62 points, which exceeds slightly the best quality you can purchase from a store. After that, I did not even think about going on again to loop this option. Because it would mean another huge amount of time doing nothing but crafting, and it would make the game too easy. So the fun would have been destroyed if this keeps going.

I guess what I'm advocating is a bit of self control, the option to combine alchemy and enchanting is fantastic in the first place, and it should add up to your fulfillment in this game if you try it, but you really should stop doing it it so it won't become a burden and take away what should originally be fun.

It's similar with Legendary skills really, I redo a few selected skills once so I can experience high level in game features without having to level up the things I don't want for RP reasons. But I could potentially just pick some skill and loop it so many times until I have all the perks. I wouldn't even consider doing that because it would be boring, and it would ruin the purpose of the feature.

Or let's put it in another way. People probably would want to do this so they can play on legendary difficulty easily. So they spend a great deal of extra time looping the effects so a legendary difficulty would be easy. And I think: wouldn't it be easier to just slide down the difficulty bar a bit? You get the same result in the end anyway.

Don't know what type of cap it is. I have never actually reached the cap myself but I have heard repeatedly that the maximum you can get is +29% fortify alchemy enchanted gear, which is only 4% higher than what you can get without any looping (16% if you use all four enchant slots). Intentional or not, that's hardly game breaking.

The easy fix that would not create any new bugs would be to delete the fortify enchant potion option or delete the fortify alchemy enchant option. Of course they would have had to do that pre-release or people would have complained to high heavan.

You aren't the first. Stare for 5 minutes and I get your soul.

I personally don't see the alchemy-enchanting loop as a cheat. It's not an infinite loop like with the restoration glitch and the bonuses aren't that huge on the higher difficulties. I usually use it on high difficulty playthroughs to create a high damage dealt/high damage taken scenario without the feeling of purposely gimping myself.

The enchantment cap on vanilla Skyrim is +29% to smithing and +29% to alchemy. This is about 2 loops for a fully perked character. Trying to loop more won't get you anything stronger unless you use necromage and some of the Dragonborn DLC rewards. It's not that bad when you consider that the base game already lets you get +25% enchantments from stores and loot. Being fully perked and drinking a store-bought potion already lets you create +27% enchantments.

If you using fortify alchemy gear to make fortify enchanting portions can maximum give you an 20% bonus over default gear. You do not get the +38% bonus the potion promises. it an bonus for mastering two skills.

The main problem in Skyrim is that skill bonus enchants are overpowered. because most effect is in the perks they did not give the +20 points archery who would cap at 100, make you level up slower. No it does an 20% bonus to damage or potion strength and similar.

Now as this bonus is added on top of the skill and perk bonus it become powerful. If you are level 30 its no problem shopping for an set with gear who give you 100% damage increase. Only benefit of enchanting is that you get it on the gear you want, you get two effect if master and up to 20% bonus on item if also expert or better in alchemy.

It sounds like a soft cap. You could theoretically break it (With exploits I'm positive you can) but how the math works without exploits just doesn't allow it. I still think it's an exploit, but it's of dubious harm.

As for deleting fortify enchant potion, I'm almost positive they did actually delete Fortify Enchant as an Enchantment. (Pre-release) as some in-game literature refers to the effect. That would also have created an infinite (if expensive) loop potential.

As an Aside, there is a fortify enchant enchantment effect now, it's the "Genius of Azadal" or whatever.

I think it would have been better to have "Fortify-Skill" effects to literally fortify your skill, instead of a raw Damage+%. That way it feeds on your own ability, instead of essentially augmented what doesn't necessarily exist.

I do it to give my gear a boost because the original base value for a high level enchanter is offensive in my opinion but I make sure NOT to go overboard.

There is no such thing as cheating in a one player, open world, endless possibility game like Skyrim. So no, I don't. That said, I haven't exploited the alchemy/enchantment loop since Morrowind because I created a wood elf master of all schools who could perpetually fly everywhere (levitate enchantment), perpetually emit light, and perpetually breathe underwater amongst other insane abilities. I was so powerful I killed Vivec.

Now I mainly use enchantment for making money on my non-mage characters, but I never perk it (only on mages) and never use the gear I enchant. Not perking it means that I'll always find better enchanted gear in loot or being sold by merchants, so it doesn't ruin the shopkeeper/dungeon diving dynamics of the game for me. I've always enjoyed looting and shopping for gear in RPGs. If those elements are gone, it no longer feels like an RPG to me. Also, IF I'm going to focus on Enchanting for actual use, I do not Smith for actual use... and vice versa.

Even on a purely objective basis, this is a false statement. The very definition of "Game" necessitates a ruleset by the creators. Breaking the rules is cheating. Fortunately for your argument, the objectivity doesn't go beyond semantics.

Now I'll give you that if you have to hack into the game to cheat but for games that let you cheat by using console commands or cheat codes then you are free to cheat if you so feel like it and you aren't necessarily breaking the rules the devs have set up.

To me it's not cheating because its legitimately in the game for us to use. I think it's really up to the player to decide if it's cheating or not. It's definately a way to become OP (overpowered) but that's why there's harder difficulties.

Not sure how you arrive at that conclusion. If I'm losing at a game of RISK, I can flip the board because the world of physics allows it. So I guess that's not breaking the rules? Not sure why people try to redefine the word "Cheating" as if to ease their burden. You break the design, you cheated. Sometimes it's fun to cheat, really fun in fact, sometimes it's even unavoidable (Like using the console command to repair a bug). I don't see why there's the need to find solace in a delusion though.

Cheat codes are designed to cheat. As for the Dev Console, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Dev Console is more about facilitating modders needs than allowing you to summon anything for the sake of actual game play.

It isn't about passing judgement. Cheating in a single player game doesn't carry any negative weight on the player if it's what they want to do, but the definition of the word doesn't change based on what genre or how many players are involved.

For me, cheating in a single-player game is something I do after I've already run the core design ragged, because I think (Well, I know for myself personally) that cheating really ruins the game, but sometimes you just need to call a jetpack and minigun and strafe the streets of San Andreas.

Depends how you use enchantments, if at all. The cycle grind of Enchant and Alchemy to get maximum boost to both Enchant and Alchemt... is not a cheat, and it takes a long grind to get there.

I've maxed out... but don't use them for weaponry, bad for screenshot anyway, the enemy sparkles in the shots when hit by enchanted weapons. I found that out when taking 3rd person battle screenshots against a bunch of Marauders in Oblivion... I had to do it again without enchantments or spells. A fantastic battle exercise!

Max enchant is great for enchanting a 10 gold pair of shoes into a max sneak/pickpocket shoes, becoming 3500 gold value.

It's not a cheat or exploit in my view, but you could, if so inclined overpower yourself and abuse that capability if so inclined... I don't... and it really took me a long long grind to get there... the Alchemy for instance took forever as I didn't cheat with that either, but it was such great fun discovering mixtures that worked... the enchanting took some time as well. So I deserve what I worked for, and I don't abuse it so it's not a cheat or exploit of something that was a mistake.

....... but you can cheat if you like, seems many do, such as by overpowering themselves which is kind of cheating anyway.

And "gimps"

Unless I am using a glitch or bug I don't consider it cheating no matter how powerful enchantment i have on.