I couldnt wait for Skyrim to come out so I could begin smashing some skulls with a big hammer. I knew from the get go that I wanted to become a smith and refine my gear so I made that my priority. Shortly after working toward that, I realized I wanted enchanting as well because you can create items to increase your smithing. And then I found alchemy does the same. So my goal became to max all 3 skills. I accomplished this last night, 100 in all of them.

I had been swinging a Ebony Warhammer for awhile now with an "Legendary" refinement. It was doing about 100 damage a hit which was nice. I was expecting to get maybe 200 or so on my next hammer. Little did I know how big these bonuses would add up after maxing the skills. The Fortify Smithing potion ended up being +130% and the Smithing enchants added up to +29% on 4 pieces. Ontop of this the 2 Hand Damage enchant ended up being +47% on 4 pieces. The result?.. A 603 damage Daedric Warhammer.

I just 1 hit a dragon.. I swung probably 3 or 4 times, because I never saw its life bar, thinking I wasnt hitting it until it started burning up infront of me. Ontop of this, my armor ended up being at 976 so it wouldn't have hurt me anyway if it happened to survive a couple hits. So it seems as though there is no challenge left in the game for this character. And I am lvl 41 where other people claim that the game is "hard"

My recommendation is not to go all out for all 3 crafting skills to keep some sort of challenge to the game. Think I will reroll tonight and try something new because this game is still awesome. <3

[IMG]http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee367/hillrp/Hammer2.jpg[/IMG]

Hmm yeah. I powerleveled only Smithing with my first character, but it made the game pretty lame. Running around in amazing armour immediately.

I'm also rerolling and can reccomend everyone here to not go all out in those skills.

I have a simplier solution, never use any potion/enchant that let you increase your alchemy/smithing/enchanting skill past the 100 mark, that way you're sure you're not breaking any scaling formula somewhere in the math behind the game.

Moral of the story: Take the game at a normal pace, its more fun that way.

you do look badass though

I think the pendulum has swung too far on this.

I have always felt that the player should, eventually, be able to craft items that were better than those that are to be found in the shops.

But this is too much of a good thing.

Maybe they should introduce a level requirement on some of the more exotic items along with the skill requirements.

eh, the option is there to become a self made god. If that isn't your goal or you don't derive pleasure from it, by all means don't level the 3 crafting skills and use them to buff eachother and make those divine weapons/armor.

Same problem with my first character. Crafting is the easiest way to break the game and it isn't even all that fun.
I just rolled a melee/archer/mage hybrid and I'm going for the Treasure Hunter perk. I will get all my loot off random drops and have fun exploring the world and being surprised with what I get.
It's clear Beth didn't test this part of the game very well or just didn't care how it ruins the game and makes it boring.

I don't do that stuff very often, as I'm off Adventuring and exploring the game.

First thing I did in Riverwood was work on my smithing skills in the forge. I pretty much just run around in superior steel armour though for the moment; at least until I get plate armour at skill 50.

I don't really like the look of the really ornate poncy armours; my character is a warrior/hunter/werefolf and I want to maintain the gritty Farkas-style look.

I've done literally the opposite. Have spent about fifteen hours running around, dipping into the odd dungeon, completeing the odd quest, selling the odd piece of loot, and slowly increasing the skills I am using, in a sort of 'role play' preperation for rising to the mighty challenge of defeating the dragons. The wider your range of skills, the slower everything goes, so I chose a hybrid class (battle mage), with a bit of sneaking, smithing, speechcraft and lockpicking, and everything is going at a satisfyingly steady rate. In retrospect that probably sounds a bit dull, but I hate rushing through and realising I've only highly levelled a few things and can beat anything in the game.
Also, play on highest difficulty : P

...........So your asking the Devs to take away player options?

If you don't want to be overpowered then don't use those skills or simply don't put as much into them.

If you do want to be that overpowered, then you can.

I don't see a problem.

Same thing happened to me, but I really wanted to keep smithing/enchanting.

So this time around I'm not going to:

1. Fast Travel -- Allows me to search for http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=193 which will make me feel like I earned my armor.

2. Buy ingots/ores from Merchants -- Totally kills it for me.

3. Craft three thousand iron daggers.

4. Min/maxing.

After doing this, I've been enjoying Skyrim sooo much more. My Dwarven Armor... it feels.. worthy. Haha.

I know the feeling, the only difference between me and you is that your Fortify Smithing/Enchancement potions and enhants are probably alot stronger then mine. My potions only increased skill by about 25% I think.

My bow [img]http://i.imgur.com/S9JvX.jpg[/img], nowhere near as powerful as your warhammer but it's certainly alot stronger then is should be combined with stealth, crits and all my enchants/upgrades.

^this^

Yeah, I'd hardly call this game breaking. If the game were balanced so people that choose to spend all those hours doing crafting stuff would still be challenged after creating god-like weapons and armor, the rest of us that want to do quests and fight stuff the whole time would be hopelessly weak.

You're creating the best magically produced equipment the world has ever seen...easily better than the most legendary equipment the bard's sing of...of course the person wielding them is going to be an unstoppable force. To expect the game to be challenging for one so equipped is insane.

Of course if maxing out all those skills did NOT allow one to produce such equipment, there would be a whole bunch of people on here saying "Crafting is broken...why bother with crafting if I can just walk into a cave and find something better with no work".

And this is the reason that I won't use smithing, alchemy and enchant enhancing items.

Don't buy Ingots/Ore. Don't Fast Travel. Don't craft daggers for skill ups. I focus on my smithing and enchanting, but I don't buy ingots, I dont fast-travel and I only make armor for skill-ups and it's been pretty balanced so far.

Please for my sake make a video with you on master killing EVERYTHING. All out war with guards and dragons.

or even try taking on the greybeards

How did you level alchemy fast? Struggling with alchemy, smithing is very fast to level and enchanting isn't to bad. Any tips? I won't be playing the game as a master war god though, takes the fun out a bit, but I want to give it a go ha.

Nah dont want the devs to change anything about it. Just want people to know that spending all your time to max the 3 skills will take the fun out of your game. I feel I waisted my time on this character, just glad I did it quickly.


Ran a loop between solitude, whiterun, and riften alchemy stores and just bought them out. The loop takes long enough to fast travel that the stores respawn ingredients. Made 4 pieces of the alchemy enchants which caused potions i made to sell for more than the cost of the materials (some over 1500gold each). It only took about 5 hours to max the skill out.

Krazden, that's a great post about the game. I know it'll help some people. I tend to make a fairly balanced character and take things slow. After 40+ hours, I'm at Level 12 and she's coming along nicely as far as I can tell. She's a Battlemage/Healer though, more Mage than Warrior. I'm sure your next build will be more what you're looking for. Keep an eye on the skies.

Added: And I don't think the game is broken either. Grinding skills and looking for exploits as some have done is not playing a role-playing game. It takes some time to learn to play and I sincerely hope the ones having problems will learn.

i dont know how to get good stuff like that

I don't get this kind of mindset at all...

OK, so basically, you are telling people "These skills make the game no longer fun, so don't use them", and then also say, "No, I don't want the game to be fixed when there is obviously something wrong with the game which makes certain playstyles completely break the game."

It's broken.

Period.

It should be fixed.

This isn't even a matter of not playtesting, it's a matter of not even trying to create a rational scale to begin with. Even without "cheating" by using potions for their intended purposes, even without combining enchanting with smithing, just using smithing alone, the game does not balance out what you can do properly. It's broken straight from the start because Bethesda didn't even bother to take the 30 seconds it would take to ask the question "how powerful is this when I hit maximum rank?" You know, the completely obvious first question anyone would ask themselves when even trying to set the boundaries in the first place.

This is a design flaw straight off the bat, playing the game entirely as intended. A complete failure to think things through on Bethesda's part, in the same manner they never manage to think of even the most obvious ways in which they are breaking their game. Oh well, up to the modders to save Bethesda from themselves... again.