Did anyone else think it was a stupid idea to make Smithing harder? Mainly because for those that DON'T grind.. it will be extremely hard to gain smithing XP? It would have been better if you had to repair your weapon every once in a while... what do you guys think?

I would love that, as it makes sense. The Oblvion system wasn't perfect (carrying 50 hammers around every where), but it had the right idea. Skyrim feels as though it's lost something without weapon degradation.

I think it was busted to begin with. Way too easy. If your not grinding and only need a few levels just as easy to go see balimund in riften for some training

I am kinda neutral on it, but I see where you are coming from. Those who use it normally will be punished since now it will take so much longer to increase it.

Some might argue that now that it is similar to the alchemy skill increase it is better and more fair, but something they seem to forget is that alchemy is a skill you will use more than smithing if you use it normally.

But, as I said, I don't really go either way on this topic.

Harder? You just make bigger things. Its based off value now, so make iron armor instead of iron daggers.

IMO is much better, and I dont grind.

Smithing in its current form is not very good at all.

With my first 3 characters, they would Smith a bit. Basically, they would use up the stuff they found in their travels. I would probably gain one or two Smithing Levels with each character level. Sure, a couple of times I would gain 3 or 4 levels if I was hankering for a Perk because I started finding higher level materials. However, by doing this, I was only Smithing things I was just starting to find in the game and my Smithing did not max out until my character was in their 40's. Which is about right.

Now, I can do the same thing, but I will have to gather more raw materials first.

Why does everyone put Smithing, grinding, broken, overpowered, evil and stinky sweetrolls in the same sentence?

Grind not grind...What difference does it make? You are still leveling. If you do nothing but Smithing. you will be at level 17.5 at when you reach 100. To get a weapon or armor to Legendary, you only need to get to 91, with the perk.

I just tested this not even an hr ago. Brand new character and using the console commands to increase the skill. Them I raised 1H to 100. You will be at level 25.5 after that. That is the absolute minium level you can get by just increasing those two skills.

With level 1 Nord, swords, (Steel, Dwarven, Glass and Daedric) their base damage is 9,11,13,15.

Level 17 - 1H at 100, no perks and no Smithing, the base damage is 12,15,18,21.
Level 17 - 1H at 20, Legendary status is 27,30,33,36.
Level 17 - 1H at 100, 5/5 Bladesman and no Smithing, the base damage is 24,30,36,42.
Level 25 - 1H at 100, 5/5 Bladesman, the base damage at Legendary is 54,60,66,72.

That seems pretty reasonable to me. Where people get the overpowered mess from, is when you continue to upgrade the gear PAST Legendary.

EDIT : Reworked for clarity.

Did you improve the weapons in this test scenario?

Actually no. That was the rating given at the grindstone. Which it has always been the same result in my inventory. I did not actually "hit" improve. I just selected each weapon and it presented the upgraded damage along with the "Legendary" status.

So, I did not "Improve" them, back out of the grindstone and then check my inventory.

I generally think it levels a bit too slowly now, but not enough to be annoying. However the trick appears to be: don't bother to repair anything except high-level armour, instead use ingots etc for making armour; then it levels a lot faster. But yes, I'd like to see a little damage to weapons, but not as fast as in Oblivion, which was just silly.

Those values look way low compared to my 2H character. I did not know 2H was so much stronger......

I am the opposite. I use smithing all the time, so it's not "harder" to get the levels you want. If you use these things "normally" it takes a long time. I use alchemy normally and it's taken FOREVER to get to where I am now. Finally smithing is more like that. It should take forever to get the skill up. the game takes quite a while to play through, especially if you don't rush through just doing quests as quickly as possible. I'm a level 54 thief and it took me no time at all under the old system to get my smithing to 90 and then the last 10 skill levels were harder to get. But now if I played it the same way it would take me much longer and it would be more balanced like the alchemy is.

And I also would love weapon degradation.

Ah...From what I can tell ( without actually testing ) the 2H weapons run about 50-75% higher, than their little brothers. I almost used 2H in the test, but just settled on 1H swords, because it was what I came to first in the "help steel 4" console command.

Ok the curiosity got the best of me. Here is the numbers for 2H. Same test...

Base damage for a level 1 Nord (Steel, Dwarven, Glass, Daedric) Greatsword 19,21,24,27
Level 17 - 2H at 25 w/ Legendary ststus 30,33,35,38
Level 17 - 2H at 100, no perks, no Smithing 26,29,32,36
Level 17 - 2H at 100 5/5 Barbarian, no Smithing 51,57,63,72
Level 25 - 2H at 100 5/5 Barbarian, Legendary status 81,87,93,102

Personally I think...pre 1.5 Smithing was the most broken thing I have ever seen in any video game. Post 1.5 smithing isn't too much better, since it isn't balanced 100% in the right way, but its definitely better than mash x iron daggers for mastery.

I think it's better now, I had abused the dagger exploit for leveling smithing... Much improved it is.

I don't quite understand the problem. No one complained about alchemy, "it's not fair, I can't get alchemy to 100 with damage health : 11 points poisons. The way it is now is just more realistic, well as far as realism goes with a system like this.

Now if the next change log had this : 'Weapon degradation implemented, not on the Oblivion per point system, but a honed, sharp, dull, unusable system. Sharpening and armour repairs available at grindstones, benches and at a cost from blacksmith vendors', then I have a sneaking suspicion that I would not be the only one to be very happy.

I'm still sad we can't craft Khajiit Fur Armor. I would love to hunt those cats to take their skin off.

Problem with smithing is fortify smithing does not increase the value of crafted items, but only tempered items. With the current system I could level up Alchemy to 100 under 1hour. Smithing now happens to be the hardest thing to level up to 100.

you're not punished if you're using smithing legitimately, because as I understand it if you are only crafting things you legitimately want than you will only be crafting things at the higher end of what you have available?

What is meant by "legit"? If you mean, only use it when you need to, then you will never get anywhere.

EDIT : Oh yae...How are you being punished?

Very true.
If you did that prior to the smithing patch you would do far better.

That said, I did not like the iron dagger way of smithing, it needed to be fixed.
THAT said, this new system feels a bit off too.

I have no opinion in this.

I roleplayed smithing a lot. Trained with the local smithees who aren't really spectacular until I reached Dwarven level, then headed to Markarth to study with Calcemo and learn about Dwarven Smithing from exploring ruins and checking out their metals. After that I studied with the Orc smiths, both in cities and in the Strongholds. After reaching Ebony level I studied with the guy in Windhelm until I reached Daedric levles, which I read up on at the College of Winterhold but didn't actually smith because I didn't feel comfortable doing so at the time. After that I went to study under Grey-Mane. With each teacher I left I left behind a complete set of all the highest leveled things I could smith tempered as high as I could as a sign of appreciation for them teaching me.

That sounds like a great Rp experience, I might have to try that sometime. ^^

I think smithing as it is now is better simply because it makes more sense. In the old system you could make a billion iron daggers and all of a sudden you figured out how to make daedric armour. How, exactly? At least this way your needing to craft better armours each time so it makes sense that your actual skill and knowledge will increase. As for raw materials finding them isn't that hard once you know where all the right mines are, and you can always buy ignots from merchants which also makes a for a nice gold dump seeing as you end up with so much anyway.