I've had a pretty stand-offish relationship with crafting in RPG games in the past. Ever since NW2 made such a big deal out of it under the 3.5 rules and I worked so hard to get all the skills and ingredients together to make all the lovely things on the recipe lists you found in the game - only to find that it was an absolute nightmare to get the right skill levels and the right spells into a single character and worse, certain ingredients had obviously been put in sufficient short supply to basically stop you from making anything like the stuff you set out to make. Grrrr. Gothic 2 you could make the best sword by far if you went the mercenary route, but you didn't get the damn thing until right at the end when you didn't really need it.

It seemed to me game designers fell into a trap: either you could make better kit than you could find or you could find better kit than you could make. They couldn't decide because if you could make better kit than you could find what sort of reward makes sense at the bottom of a dungeon? And we can't let them have +5 weapons until at least half way through chapter 5 can we? In the end they would put the player through a whole heap of grinding hassle for little or no return, leaving you with the feeling the whole crafting thing was a sham, nerfed, a waste of time.

In Morrowind and OB I have always collected soul gems and enchanted stuff of course - TES has always been different that way - but that's never felt like crafting to me for some reason. I've never really got alchemy going to any great extent - never felt the need for it.

This Skyrim situation is for me entirely different:

• I find by experimenting with ingredients I can make multiple effect potions that shoot my alchemy skill up so fast i can level more or less at will and make potions worth 800 or 1000 septims a shot. So I decide to plan a two week trade expedition to realise thousands of septims to pay for 10 levels some training or other I want on the back of it.
  
• I find I cant resist picking up every ingredient I can find, which also gives me a good reason to scan the beautiful landscape rather than just sit and gawp at it, because I really want to practice to up the strength of my fortify enchantment potions for obvious reasons
  
• I find myself stumbling on some mine in the hills occupied by some soon-to-be-ex-lowlifes and thinking "Oh yummy! Free ore! They've even got a smelter here!". I've never felt that way about mines before.
  
• I find myself collecting every little soul gem I can find, and buying up every low level one the traders have got in stock, and then planning hunting trips to fill them all and collect moutains of skins, finding all sorts of interesting places to come back and explore when i fancy a dungeon crawl in the process. Then back to Whiterun for a happy day's crafting and enchanting watching my smithing and enchanting skills ticking over nicely.
  
• I find a 2000 septim sword in an end-of-dungeon chest. Do i care about the crumby sword? Do i hell, it's one handed anyway! But It's got a paralyse enchantment on it! Oh joy, I should be able to have some fun with that!

And so it goes on. In short I have never felt so engaged with the land, the fauna, the flora, the towns, the traders, the whole process of earning a living in Skyrim. Apart from an ebony bow I stumbled on and a few special purpose trinkets I've kept, I don't use a single item I haven't made and enchanted myself. That's the point of this ramble - because I can make better stuff on the whole than I can find, and because the making of it involves a whole plethora of different intereactions and activities in the Skyrim world beyond just doing quests and dungeon crawling, I find myself getting far more immersed in its beautiful landscape than even Morrowind.

For me this is because they tossed the RPG rule book on crafting out of the window. "Let them make the armour, let them make the swords that write the legends!" they said. Well done for that, Bethesda I say. IMHO it works, very well indeed.

Disagree.

There's a lot they could do to actually make crafting a lot better. First of all, remove the natural exploits. I don't really care about the potion-chugging fortify Restoration crap (To be honest, they should fix that just so fortify restoration effect works, but whatever) as that's obscure enough to ignore.

My biggest issue with crafting, particularly smithing, is that without Enchanting, actually crafting your armor/weapons is utterly pointless. (You loot/buy superior versions). My next biggest issue with smithing, is that it naturally overpowers your character. You have to really restrain yourself if you want a challenge at higher levels. (Just improving your weapons makes insanely overpowered items later)

The second issue could be fixed by some value adjustments. Changing the gap between individual tiers of weapon/armor quality above Flawless (Epic, Legendary -> Legendary +1-unlimited) would keep the challenge alive while allowing future growth. The irony is, this particular issue would have been well-served in Oblivion, where boss enemies constantly level up with you. It doesn't work so much in Skyrim without minor adjustments.

The first issue however is a much more problematic design flaw. There's a few ways to get around it though. I'd personally love to see enchanting services in the game (Not as strong as a self-made master enchantment, and prohibitively expensive), but I think I'd rather see hyper-rare Crafted only items. Even the Dragonbone/Dragonscale stuff can be looted, but I'm talking more than a generic material. Unique, 'custom' weapons which only one can be made of in a given playthrough.

I think that's pretty much the line many previous RPG's have taken - crafting has been nerfed/restricted in order to prevent acquiring over-powered equipment, and the alternative of increasing the difficulty of opponents rejected on the grounds that it would make crafting more or less obligatory instead of an option.

The point I tried to make is not that I like the idea of making over-powered equipment, but that immersion in the fabric of the game world is significantly increased by making crafting on the scale you tend to in Skyrim worthwhile. I do not disagree with you that making equipment that renders much of the game pointlessly easy is undesirable, however IMO, or rather my limited experience of Skyrim so far as I've recently got it, this turbo-boost to game world immersion trumps such objections and points the way forward in the genre.

Allowing players to create more powerful items than the daedric princes can is one of the worst ideas I can think of. Especially since you can do it so easily. The gap between crafting and non-crafting players is extremely huge in Skyrim.

The whole grinding and finding the right ingredients: Sure, that's a good thing. But, all-in-all, the crafting in Skyrim is not right at all.

I get your point were the crafting system engages you into the world, but I think thats only because its a means to an end. sure its a big plus you're paying attention and your curiosity is sparked, but the end tail of said journey is a lackluster one. it would have been made so much better not only with Criminal scums statements but also that Materials provided different properties and weren't ENTIRELY exclusive to a weapon type.

I mean who said "elven" weapons can't be Iron or steel? I know the aspects of said elven weapons and I'm not looking for a retextured Elven Sword made of Iron, or an Nord version of an Elven weapon. but atleast let it not be so black and white? what happened to speed/weight differences and enchantment potency?

Yes crafting is excellent in SKYRIM and am finding myself doing things i never did in past Elder Scrolls games or doing them more. Now when playing MORROWIND or OBLIVION am doing soul trapping and getting more involved with alchemy thanks to how satisfying and easy it is to get into in SKYRIM. They could have made it bit more detailed but i think the perk tree helps with that.

You're missing key operative words.

It's too easy to become overpowered. I don't care about being overpowered, but you should really have to work at it. Taking one perk (Steel Smithing) and being able to make a Steel Sword with 360 Damage isn't exactly what I'd call a good design choice.


I know... right? Artifacts pretty much don't exist in Skyrim. There's just some really lame item that gets outclassed by shop loot when you can get it.

There are some exceptions, but it's easier to just ignore them and say all the Artifacts are pretty worthless.

If I had the choice of keeping crafting as it is, and removing it entirely, you better believe I'd keep it, but there's really no reason to leave it broken in future games.