That's just a guess, I really didn't watch the clock. Keep in mind I used the console to give myself the ingots and strips, so all I had to do was spam the clicker until it leveled each time, lol.

The problem which makes it "game breaking " (in quotes for the explanation below) is that people, by doing this, immediately have the ability to craft incredibly high level gear, which they then use in game. That makes their character extremely overpowered compared to the NPC enemies. People have Legendary Daedric Armor and weapons at level 17, without equivelent conbat skills. But with the weapon/armor advantage, they don't need the combat skills. As they level those up, the "overpowered" factor only increases. Thus, the game becomes "ridiculously easy" and therefore, "broken".

I put game breaking and such in quotes because, as the OP has shown - and others have also indicated here - you can't do this by accident. The game is not broken, IMO, if you intentionally exploit something in a way it was not meant to be. There is no conceivable way that a game designer envisioned someone choosing to do nothing by craft iron daggers until they leveled up 17 times before doing anything else in game. To me, it's like driving your car into a pole and then complaining the headlights don't work.

Why would you use the Lord stone? The Warrior stone gives a higher bonus.

I think they have to know. Training is what and how TES works. People have always stood on a bank and let Mudcrabs hit them to raise their Armor skill. there is nothing wrong with that. If you do NOT craft a lot of items, to sell or just to level, you will NEVER get to 100. Even after 300+ hrs. The same can be said for any skill. If you do not spend time with your One-Handed skill you be for ever getting it to much above 80. By that time you have exhausted that character and are ready to start another one.

THIS. And another thing I haven't seen really hammered home is cost. I just checked again with my Level 1 guy, and at Warmaidens his Ingots were 21 gold each, and Leather Strips were 9 gold each. I crafted ONE dagger and sold it to him for 3 gold. Using my numbers (574 daggers made) here's the breakdown:

574 Ingots @ 21 Gold each = 12054 Gold
574 Strips @ 9 Gold each = 5166 Gold
That's 17220 Gold total.

574 Daggers sold for 3 Gold each = 1722 Gold, or a HUGE loss in cash.

Now granted, this don't account for your Speech going up, but it's apparent that they either have to be giving themselves gold with the console to buy materials or lying about their claims. If you explore and kill and loot the fallen, you HAVE to be increasing other skills in the process, thereby leveling up by other means than Smithing as you go. I don't see how it can happen any other way.

How entertaining could sitting and doing nothing but making daggers be though?

For the higher damage resistance. +50 Armor , +25 Magic reststance. I wasn't using the perk to help me with the experiment. I use that blessing when I play so that's what I had active.

Interesting. Maybe I will try and see how long it takes if you craft 100 gold rings.

for the sake of the argument, its much cheaper to just buy ores and smelt them into ingots never looked at my stats but an ore is usually 6 septims in my games

It isin't and that's the whole point! It's grinding, not playing the game. BTW, I liked you until I saw your sig. My cute Breton female archer named Cienna Jervette will be hunting down your Thalmor worm brothers soon! Look for the arrow to the eye. That's usually her trademark, lol. (Just kidding!)

Aha, thanks for the tip! I'll have to remember that.

Ha! I'm afraid it is not as thrilling as beheading a Foresworn, but it is on par with summoning duel Bound Swords to increase your Conjuration skill to be able to get the Dead Thrall Spell.

Or make 300 potions to be able to create a deadly poison to place in the pocket of a target, after you spent 1 hr reverse pickpocketing 300 gold in your companion to get the Poison Perk from the Pickpocket tree.

In my opinion, crafting isn't broken unless someone delibarately cheats or does nothing else in game. In both of my playthroughs I have spent plenty of time crafting daggers and enchanting them. It was like what I did after a quest. Head into town to sell off loot and make some stuff if I had cash and/or materials. Without using console to give me all the iron and leather strips I needed, it's takes quite a while to get enough materials to build enough daggers to get smithing to a high level. Sellers don't have that much in stock and even mining every bit of ore I came across, I didn't hit smithing level high enough to do Daedric until my overal level was pretty high.

If you got the Transmute spell from alteration, you can buy ore, convert it to gold and make gold rings. Which you can enchant, or just sell, for major profit. To buy more ore, OR iron ingots and leather, to make daggers and level smithing.

They made it easy, on purpose!

xP Better watch out for some undead Khajiit.

Back on topic, I could never understand how people could just sit there and grind. It would pretty much kill the game for me. (At least in Morrowind/Oblivion, you could grind and do other things at the same time.)

You can't grind Conjuration that way though. You have to summon Bound Swords and actually fight against real enemies with them for it. (So there's entertainment there.)


If someone grinds...they shouldn't call any thing broken because they broke it themselves.

I've been saying this same thing for weeks now. Almost 500 daggers to level is NOT an accident- you don't 'accidentally' figure that out in game, you read it on the forums or the wiki. After you find it, if you still do it in game, it's intentional.

The crafting system isn't broken. What is broken is the will of people who can't figure out to stop themselves from doing it. It's like blaming the cake when a fat person can't stop eating it. BAD CAKE! BAD!

By running circles around mudcrabs! A more boring way to grind Conjuration is to Soul-trap corpses.

Repeatedly summon duel Bound Swords while standing on a rock, above a wolf or a couple of Slaugherfish. Your Conj will fly up there.

I see nothing wrong with grinding. If that is what you want to do. Your not cheating. Your not using a glitch to manipulate the game. You are doing the work and reaping the rewards for doing so. Your are still raising your game level, which in turn raises the enemy level. Even if you get ahead in the level scaling it wont be for long. You will be leveling up something else. As a matter of fact you can get behind in the scaling by grinding just as fast as you can any other way.

Training - as I use it - means buying training from trainers. To me, that's one thing, and makes sense . . .it costs money, you pay someone, you get better.

But really, grinding is not - to me - playing the game. It's cheating the game. It may be acceptable to many gamers these days, but it's not playing the game. It's working. Now, if you want to load up Skyrim and create yourself a blacksmith, or an alchemist, that's fine I guess - I'm not here to tell anyone how to play their game. Go do that, make 8000 iron daggers or health pots or whatever, and sell them. Build up a crapton of cash and enjoy.

But it's an exploit, nothing more. It levels one skill - and your character in the process - while doing nothing in terms of gameplay. It doesn't make the game broken in any way - it makes your choice of gaming rather different than that of most others (i'd imagine) and can't possibly be what the designers intended. Whether you're making 574 iron daggers, or letting a mudcrab hit you 978 times to build up armor skill . . . it's not playing the game.

Just my opinion.

The other side of that is...if you decide to roleplay a blacksmith or an alchemist, don't cry when you hit level cap! You decided to do one activity in the game over and over again. What the heck did you think would happen? Just as in real life, you practice something repeatedly, you'll become a master of it. Derp.

Personally I think ~500 daggers of the lowest tier is too few, and I am no power leveler. I am personally in favor of systems like WoW or TOR where only items with crafting skill requirements close to your actual leve give you exp.

IE: Glass armor needs 70 smithing. So making glass armor will work towards advancing your level, where as iron items with 70 smithing wont help at all since they are now mundane items you have probably crafted many of already to near the point of perfection.





You dont like MMOs, do you? since a form of grinding is always in the cards.

Nothing personal to you at all, but please don't compare this game to WoW or any other MMO. The grinding mechanics and level restriction system therein are there to KEEP YOU PLAYING and create multiple player BALANCE, not to make the game enjoyable.

If you enjoy grinding, this is not the game for you. This game is not, nor ever should be, about grinding.

True, but this leads to the complaints that are so frequent: "Game is broken, I'm level 17 but everyone one shots me!!!" or "Game is broken, I'm one shotting everything with my legendary Daedric sword of awesomness one level 4!!!!".

Bottom line, as many said - if you're going to grind one skill (whatever it is) you're going to end up overpowered or underpowered, depending on what you power-leveled. It was your choice, it's not the games fault.

I agree with your first point. A master blackmith should not improve his skill by making an iron dagger.

To your second point, never played one - don't find them interesting, particularly because of the grinding aspect and the rush to get the best, most uber gear possible. In a game, I want to explore, and experience - not focus on the best stuff, most gold, best build, etc. I don't grudge anyone enjoyment of an MMO or that playstyle, but it's not for me, and I don't think it's really necessary in a single player game.