Maybe someone is RP'ing a crafter, not a combat expert?

sigh
enemies don't care what you're leveling. Time still goes by and they train their skills and get new gear.
By focusing on enchanting more than combat, you're an enchanter. Don't expect and enchanter to waltz into a dungeon and murder everyone easily.

Do you understand this? Its very simple mate.

Stop seeing it as the game punishing you. They're NOT PUNISHING YOU.They're giving you an authentic experIence as a pure crafter. Start taking responsibility over what sort of character you're creating in the TES world.
You're completely missing the point. Please reconsider your complainy position, its you asking for an even simpler and less RP game.

I think the idea is that you're a master black smith, not a master warrior. If you're doing it for the role playing, then yeah, that sounds about right. Someone spending their life learning how to black smith won't be able to fight trolls just like that.
If you're doing it to supplement your combat, then you probably put too many points into it. I just recently started looking at smithing on my level 18 warrior, and so far only have one point in it to upgrade steel further.

There is no issue leveling secondary skills as that, secondary. The point of secondary skills is to augment your primary abilities such as casting spells or swing a sword. If you decide to level the secondary skills and ignore the primary you are augmenting nothing.

Smithing is used to create better weapons and armor to enable your fighter to deal more damage and take less. If you don't work on 1/2 hander or light/heavy armor you are essentially making fancy cloths to get destroyed in because you are not skileld in the gear you just made.

Let's add math into the game for fun. Say working on smithing multiplies you a 40% damage increase. You really like the idea of that so you spend all your time making the best of the best, but your damage is 5 because you never worked on the skill. Now with your turbo godmode armor you are swinging like a noodle hitting for 7.

While a warrior who uses smithing to augment their powers may only get a 20% increase on their damage, but because they worked on their fighting ability their base damage is 8, so with smithing that fighter is doing 9.6 damage. Which I feel is the right way to do it, a blacksmith can make great weapons but a weapon is just a piece of metal until someone skilled uses it correctly.

They can be VERY helpful. I was being chased by a bandit cheif that i couldn't kill, but i remembered a trap door with spikes at the bottom i found when exploring. So i ran back there, and pulled the lever at the right time and watched him fall to his death, it was a sweet victory. It's not always about beating your opponents with brute force, sometimes a beat down with intelligence or just plain luck is more satisfying.

i think the main issue here is that troll's dont spend their spare time for some blacksmithing or picking hers or collecting stamps...they soley focus on bashing skulls

I just hit level 20 and I've been using One-Handed with a little Destruction to back it up. I've also been wearing Light Armor *exclusively*. Unfortunately, those skills (at character level 20) are 54, 40, and 40. Respectively. And that's with training.

Level 20 with a primary combat skill of 54 is not a pleasant experience. Unfortunately, my ventures into smithing, alchemy, stealth, and lockpicking have contributed to this skewing of things. The price I pay for the Jack-of-all-Trades route, I guess.

You know what's really weird about it? I can kill a dragon without breaking a sweat. A single Bandit Chief (and I mean 'single' - that is, *no* backup from lowly bandits) and I'm dead faster than you can say: "Fus Ro Dah!" It kind of svcks. But the game still rocks.

so why then does secondary skills level me up just as much as primary skills.

My character has 50 in destruction, 36 in archery, and 65 in enchanting at lvl 21, among other things

it's not terribly imbalanced, yet i am having a much harder time completing starter companion missions, as oppposed to when I completed them easily on my level 10 character with another playthrough.

Lol, I feel the same way, the game still rocks.

He is not beign a troll... He is basically defendign the fact that this is one of the very few lasting parts of game where you ened to use the brain on your charcter development. Also you need to use brain on combat.

If you do the game is almost oo easy. i find really hard to beleive anyoen that is not rushign directly into combat and tanking all hits on the face could find this game to be difficult on adept level, except if you invested ALL your skills on lockpicking...

There's your problem. You've turned Enchanting from secondary skill into a primary skill. My one handed is the only skill I have above 60 right now and I'm around level 20. Behind that is Heavy Armor, then Block.

By dropping your difficulty when you don't need to, your skills don't advance as much since you need less use to defeat an opponant so you may be shooting yourself in the foot.

However, I find it very difficult to believe. The entire curve is adjusted so far in your favor that I can walk around naked with a club and no skill and still not be defeated by ordinary mobs.

one fair point is that the game with this type of level scaling does not encourage you to try out things or do side-activities such as crafting - regarding the fact that bethesda has stated (exclusively in one of their development videos) that they didnt want a game where you could screw up your character and always change the direction of your development...so thats didnt come out really well....altough it is tough to do...

Their whole motto was "you are what you play". If you craft a lot, guess what. You're a crafter. If you fight a lot, you're a fighter.

It's not rocket surgery.

The thing is this. Enemies in dungeons are entirely combat based, so if their level is scaled to your blacksmith, who might have decent combat abilities, but because his non-combats are so high you will never ever have a chance at combat against these guys.

Level scaling is broken and downright stupid, it ruined Oblivion, and now it sounds as though its ruining Skyrim for a lot of players (I haven't noticed the scaling... as I raise higher in levels, enemies get easier for me).

except that you dont get a "crafting-victory"....

smithing i believe is worth it cause its a good way of manking money plus it allows u to get the best armo and weapons in the game, you otherwise wouldnt get, so that plus working on combat skills makes a pretty good char

If they reduce the level gain on secondary skills they are also reducing the max level and max amount of perks available in the game.

I'd feel pretty safe claiming that speech, smithing, enchating, alchemy are the secondary skills that most people refer to.

So if you cut their value by 2/3 so they don't level you as much then you have to adjust max level and perks.

currently 18 perks at 3 times value = http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1267661-my-experience-with-level-scaling/54 value

14 perks at 3 times value = http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1267661-my-experience-with-level-scaling/42 value
4 perks at regular value = http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1267661-my-experience-with-level-scaling/4 value
total value of 46.

46/54 is 15% reduction in total experience available to level with. I don't know what percent of total experience each level is worth but let's say that shaves off what...the last 3-5 levels maybe? By reducing those values you lose 3-5 levels and perks. Now if you start including things like block, lock picking, pick pocket, you lose even more levels and perks.

So you can reduce the penalty for making a secondary profession a primary skill and reduce the level cap and perk cap or players can level them in a manner that would serve the character better which is augmenting primary skills.

Actually, I'm in my mid 20s and my main combat skills are in their low 50s and high 40s (54 1h, 50 block, 44 light armor) and I'm doing fine. I can 1 shot most mundane guys but I have to be careful around bosses. I think the game expects your to spread your skills out a little. The curve slows things way down the higher you are so getting really high is going to take a while and it makes sense other skills will advance as well.

I got killed frequently on Adapt (before level 30) and I only use combat skills. Welcome to Skyrim... a real game unlike Oblivion (vanilla).

You should always include at least one combat skill in your leveling up activities if you want to be competent in combat. This game includes combat. If you neglect to take care of that skill you will not be skilled in that area. It just makes sense. You'll do better with your next character. Most of us have made character builds when we've played a game we haven't played before that have not worked out; it happens when you start a new game.


lol. Well, and then there's that. I got killed uncountable times when I first got into the game because I was wandering all over the map instead of staying in safe places. Not the smartest thing to do as a Level 2 Altmer mage. But I'm level 6 now, have been leveling up my skills and now I don't die much.

It is all a matter of deciding what you want to achieve in the game. If you want to be able to go toe to toe with all the baddies, most of your leveling needs to be done in combat. Screw smithing and enchanting. But, ahhh! What if you want to be able to create better weapons for yourself? Well, then, you have re-defined what you want to achieve in the game, and that redefinition comes at a cost. You now can create better weapons, but at a cost. You no longer are able to go toe to toe with the worst of the baddies, but you can still hold your own with the rest. But, ahhhh! You also want to be able to create better armor. Ok, but at the cost of getting your rear handed to you by the worst, and you now struggle quite a bit with the medium bad baddies...

And so it goes. I am currently playing a stealthy archer/1h, with a moderate amount dumped into alchemy, echanting, and smithing, and a bit in conjuration and destruction. At level 20, I struggle quite a bit with the higher level mobs in dungeons, and the bosses are a real challenge. I sacrificed the ability to deal with most threats via toe to toe combat to widen my arsenal to include less direct means of dealing with the baddies. I was just sharing with a co-worker my brilliant strategy of sneak attacking a boss with a poisoned bow with my raised zombie standing at the ready to deal with him while I beat a hasty retreat. Raise another zombie, rinse, repeat many times, boss is killed. Some combat confrontations can stretch out into 15 or 20 minute ordeals, but that's what I wanted. I knew going into this character the difficulty I would have, but I also knew Skyrim is so well designed that there would be a dozen new strategies I could employ that weren't just hack 'n slash to overcome the combat deficiencies. That's what makes this game so fun.

First you decide what experience you want, and then you tailor your character around that goal. You don't get to be able to be awesome at many skills and play a style of game that demands you only be super awesome at only one or two skills. If you want some developed secondary skills, then you'd better adjust your play style to something other than strictly combat-centric.

I thought they changed it so that the mobs doesn't get thought with lvls as they did in Morrowwind?

Honestly how is an alchemist supposed to kick ass? Or a smith? Just because you are good at making weapons and potions doesn't mean your going to win in a fight. I do agree that it is a slight issue and that power leveling some non combat skills leads to a more difficult game, but it was too easy at low levels anyway.

It would be difficult to fix it and they won't. I faced the same problem, because I can never have enough health potions so I hunt/cract/alchemy A LOT.

Finally I just tossed all my spare perk points into one handed's base perk (the one that adds 20% damage each perk spent) and once I got it up to 60 I was kicking ass again.

Alchemists have the potential to be some of the deadliest combatants in the game, via use of Poisons and/or Self-Buff potions. Granted the former have the problem of being one-use (unless that's changed, I haven't really looked into them much yet), however the ability to drop even the toughest opponents with a single dagger scratch (unless poisons have been nerfed) is pretty damn powerful.

A Blacksmith probably won't ever be able to pull that off with his smithing skills (again, I don't have one maxed out to test with yet), however what he does do is give himself a significant equipment advantage against opponents within a reasonable level range, as well as potentially a match to ones a goodly ways above him. Granted you will eventually reach the point where he can't improve gear any further, but the fact he can craft top-end gear pretty much at will isn't something to lightly set aside.