The combination of all 3 crafting skills has kinda ruined the game for me. Crafting skills were a big part of my focus initially, so it did'nt take me long to max all of them.What i did'nt expect was the sharp spike in damage output that came with using all 3 together.

Ive used a couple of different builds,but currently i have

100% mana cost reduction on Destruction and Conjuration spells
300 damage daedric sword (lvl 70 skill, 4/5 armsman)
250 damage daedric bow (lvl 55 skill, 3/5 overdraw)
500 health
400 stamina
and some other stuff

This was after taking fortify one hand off a few peices, because 500 damage seemed like a bit of overkill.

This was all done without a single exploit, yet here i sit feelinglike im cheating. After all that work though, im not ditching crafting skills. Thoughts?

The crafting system is great but I think there are things that need to be balanced out and Bethesda has already mentioned that there will be a patched to balance out certain parts of the game so I am sure crafting and enchanting will be addressed. I highly doubt it was their intention to allow us to enchant gear to the point that it cost nothing to cast a spell or to allow us to put so many damage modifiers on gear that the damge output of a sword or bow is in the 500 range, but i could be wrong.

I'm interested in seeing how any new balancing will change things. I sure hope it makes some people happy. I'm lucky I haven't had a problem but I haven't been using Smithing or Enchanting much except for using soul gems to recharge weapons. I never planned to use Smithing because I wanted to focus on magic and I used perks mostly for that and that's turned out well. Whatever the devs do, I'll make adjustments in the next build...and I plan on being happy no matter what they change. When my favorite weapon was nerfed a bit in FNV, I tweaked some numbers in the GECK and changed it back. I'd rather not but it's ok. I think they changed it back again later too.

not by themselves
but it needs balance

the biggest problem is interation between potions, enchant, damage booster perks (armsman, bladesman), stealth, and poor AI
if the AI reacted faster it would not be so bad (since they can kill you too)

it s just like I said to bethesda in the bug sections
x2x2x2x6x2x2 gets quite big

The solution is pretty simple I think. Nerf the speed that smithing is levelled and impose a limit of one crafting skill per character. I kind of think that's why every group (warrior, mage, thief) has one craft assigned to it. If you can't impose a limit then at least make it so that crafting skills outside your major group levels extremely slow. Of course you can just create some limits for yourself but I do understand the temptation in it.

I highly doubt they will nerf anything, except removing the fortify restoration exploit.
yes it's overpowering in the same way as stacking weaknesses was in Oblivion/ Morrowind.
Notice that the fortify enchantment potion is nerfed compared to other skill potions.

They will probably boost destruction and perhaps werewolves.

Nerfing will make many people angry, more so then they play high level characters who has problems getting new perks to compensate.

Indeed, after my first character maxed out smithing and enchanting I found the game FAR too easy, even on Master difficulty. So after 150 hours of play I decided to make a new character forgoing any enchanting.

This makes all the difference! Now Skyrim is challenging, difficult, and *fun* once again. Attaining unique items is special again, unlike having a Daedric bow with 350 dmg that could never be bested and Dragonscale Armor with 62hp/sta and 200 ar.

Until there is a balancing patch, the player must exercise a lot of self control not to ruin the game for themselves. That is, unless they like blasting through it with no challenge whatsoever.

No. No, no, no. They don't need to limit the freedom of other players just because some people powerspam and then come on the forum to whine about it.

Ya I don't get it. I started a new character and have been smithing a lot but I don't have any over powered equipment. Currently I'm at lvl 18 with decent armor, daggers and a bow and I still get my butt handed to me.

If you maxed out smithing / enchantment why *wouldn't* you have powerful gear? That's kind of the point in spending all that time raising those skills. If you got there too fast or you used exploits to get there, well, where's the argument? Don't use exploits and know that if all you do is sit there and smith and enchant then eventually you'll max out.

Nerfing the smithing speed only hurts those of you that play on the xbox and PS3, if they screw with my crafting speeds I can simple "player.advskill smithing XXXXX" while those on the game consoles are stuck. I think the smithing speed is about right as I still have to go out and gather the ore and skins to produce the product. Same with enchanting that can be even worse as soul gems arent cheap at early levels so one has to go out and find them, then get them filled. The craft the item. It is a fair amount of build up prior to sitting infront of the forge or enchanters table.

Imo they need to break the link completely between the crafting skills either by capping the amount of increases they give, or by creating an "anti-synergy" calculation so that when they are used in conjunction they are less effective.

For instance I personally believe that weapon damage increases from smithing should be capped at 4x the base damage. And thats when using the best crafting items and potions possible. Its a bit idiotic to have an smithed iron weapon that can out damage an unsmithed daedric weapon. Basically around 100 damage should be the absolute top end limit on damage, including +skill enchants. That way high grade weapons actually become attractive to the player as a means to improve, rather than just as a fashion accessory as they are now.

I like the crafting skills and I don't want them to take it out, because I want to see what I can do with a separate character years to come. There is a bug that permanently increases my smithing skill instead of permanently increases experience gained, which needs to be fixed asap. I also appreciate them fixing alchemy where in the vanilla version I was able to make a poison dealing 2400 damage without even maxing out alchemy.

But I see why they allowed you to craft iron and steel to be powerful. Oblivion was limited to upgrading to the best armor. If you wanted to wear other classes then you suffered because the player didn't like they way the armOr looked. Glass and elvin looked awful in Oblivion. I am sporting legendary gilded elvin with some glass and some horned Armor. I like making them comparable to higher grade. I'm still using a skyforge steel sword because I don't have the skill tree on the heavy armor side unlocked (level 85 smithing, level 40.5 character). I can squeeze 62 damage on an epic ebony sword. My skyforge is smithed to 67 with buffs I can get about 90 damage.

Agreed. There are always people who start threads like this, and I only hope that any devs reading these forums ignore these posts from people demanding
that this or that skill be nerfed, and focus on more meaningful ways to make this game better for everybody. Not every player sits around grinding endlessly
to minmax these skills (and complain later about being overpowered), but actually play the game.

Meh. The only thing wrong with crafting is that your skill in making items quickly outstrips the items that you find from actually exploring the world or stealing from people. The treasure you find is of such poor quality that I've seriously stopped even bothering with looting bodies or chests - it's not worth the effort.

Yes. Pressing E-R is too much effort for the dreck you find.

Even though i'm not religious, i pray to GOD that they'll fix magic and/or add spell creation in a patch(don't work though i think..) or a dlc.. PLEASE GOD, PLEASE!

There is no need for a hard damage cap. It will just mean there is no difference between a guy with smith and a guy without. Like how there is no armor difference between wearing steel and daedric due to a linear damage resistance formula and a damage resistance cap. (What should had been done is a disminishing formula with no cap.)

For damage cap, just tweak it so that Fortify Onehanded/ two-handed and archery enchaments do not stack. That will roughly more than halven the damage of melee and ranged users.

This is a good point. My third character is a hunter and is the only one that isn't going for GOD tier stats and items. I actually want him to wear hide and leather so I can have that hunter look, so it's a cool thing that I could simply flex my skill points so I can go for a more aesthetic approach.

hasn't ruined my game, i like having a strong character once i'm leveled up.

bethesda doesn't nerf their games, i think most people like how bethesda makes their games, you always get to be powerful if you want as you level up, thats fun to do, but you can always adjust on your nexy playthrough or whatever...its an individual thing and bethesda makes their games with the intent of letting you become powerful and godlike, so i don't expect any drastic adjustments, the skills are fairly well balanced and only need minor adjustments, they certainly aren't broken. not even close.

It's pretty hard to "ruin" a single-player machine-resident game.... I suppose one can "ruin" it for oneself, but that's a personal choice issue.

So long as you don't do any crafting loops there shouldn't be a problem. If you say don't use that fortify enchanting potion to make more powerful fortify alchemy gear. Just because you can do the crafting loops doesn't mean its required.

The problem is that even without loops a player can suddenly find themselves at a point where nothing can stand before them, and the game is then effectively done. Even a relatively "light" unperked smithing can lead to armor well above the cap or weapons that do way more damage than expected. Or with enchanting you can make two school zero casting gear, which also means infinite charges for magical items in the same school.

Imo there needs to be a cap placed on it somewhere as its devaluing the combat as it is now.

yeah it was their intention to be able to reduce magic cost down to zero, without that you would have a lot of trouble killing enemies with destruction magic as you level up, cause shot for shot, destruction magic is kinda weak, the maximum magic spell does like 200 damage and the max axe swing or bow damage etc thats enchanted does like 800 damage, thats 4 times stronger...and its not "free" magic anyway, its kinda like if you had a supply of 1000 arrows, with 1000 arrows you aren't gonna run out, you don't actually have an unlimited amount but it seems like it, so when you level up, its not "free" it seems free because you have enough to get the job done if you have planned out and executed your character a certain way..so it really just represents your ability as a high level wizard to generate the magic you need, and by the way, i play a mage and use all fields of magic and use double enchanting etc and i still use my magic supply up someitmes, maybe not as much of it for one field but when you're casting like 10 spells a minute from all fields of magic, yeah you do use some of it up at times in fights.

I can see where you are comming from. I have never played a mage character before only hybrids that use magic as a 2nd but as a archer I am always counting arrows so I guess its much like a magicka pool.