Let me begin by saying I like what they have done with both of these skill trees. Smithing is vastly improved from the previous Elder Scrolls & enchanting has some neat changes as well. That said, there is something that MUST be addressed. Currently blacksmith & enchanting are utterly broken. A player can create items 2-3 times the potential of any daedric artifact in the game. How does this make sense? "Ha, I spit on you puny gods & your feeble craftsmanship." Theres no way of justifying it. Once a player unlocks random dragon spawns, he/she could just sit in a city, cut wood all day, level these 2 skill trees with the profit from cutting wood, have the best armor/weapons in the game without ever having set foot in a dungeon. Really?

Some of you will argue "Well, if its that game breaking don't use those 2 skill trees!" Why use any of the skill trees then? Why use weapons/armor? Why not just run around naked? Is it unreasonable to want a fantasy setting where things actually makes sense (God imbued weapons stronger than what you can craft)

Potential fixes:

Remove essential ingredient necessary to level up said skill trees from vendors

Buff Daedric Artifacts

Scale down the 2 skill trees

I am suprised no one else is put off by this. People complain about animations, vanity cams and so forth, yet it doesn't seem to matter that the environment they play in contradicts itself. Correct me if I am wrong, but is this not the first Elder Scrolls where players can create weapons that completely dwarf the fabled, legendary weapons of myth? I know in Morrowind/Oblivion this was not the case.

I think those weapons are legendary due to the extreme degree of skill the smith had in making them. If your smithing skill is 100, then shouldn't you be counted among the legendary crafts too?

You should check out the mods section. People are discussing this very issue.

Although, if you don't play on PC, you get what you get.


I personally don't have a major issue with it. Could it be better and more balanced? Sure. But for me, it's just not something I worry about too much.

And
Still, it is a bit overpowered. That is why I use Steel Plate rather than Dragonbone. Well, that and that steel plate looks amazing IMO.

Actually, In Oblivion you could as well, with weapons not armour, because you could have ridiculous Spell Stacking and destroy everyone. But surely with Master Smithing/Enchanting you would be legendary enough to create insanely powerful weapons and armour?

Potential spoiler if you don't know how they work!!


Crafting
- items, recipes, enchants that improve crafting skills no longer exist in the game (existing replaced with generic effect)


Enchanting
- it is now possible to disenchant already known effects but for only 25% or normal experience (additional 4 items for the same level up)
- petty soul gems stop advancing the skill at 30, lesser at 50, common 70 and greater at 90


Smithing
- advanced armors changed places with elven making it more accessible for players who specialize in heavy armor
- ebony requirement down to 70 from 80
- arcane requirement down to 50 from 60
- Imperial armorers have found a way to keep their armor light even when using steel (stats have been balanced though)
- items now stop leveling smithing 5 points into the next tier: iron & leather at 25, steel & jewelry at 35, advanced & dwarf at 55, orc & elven at 75, glass & ebony at 95
- to repair an enchanted item you need both arcane and responding armor type perk
- upgrading enchanted items stop advancing the skill additional 10 points higher: iron & leather at 35, steel at 45, advanced & dwarf at 65, orc & elven at 85



Fix the crafting buffing each other and fix the exploits that allow you to level the skills to 100 with basic materials and the game will be more balanced.

IMO what is broken is that you can make iron daggers and lvl smithing to 100 with that. It costs like ~10g (iron ore and leather strips) from vendors to make one. Then another thing thats broken is petty soul gems. If you learned a good enchant like say turn undead or life absorb you can enchant those same daggers with a petty soul gem (bought for ~110g) and get a dagger with a value of 450-500g wich you can sell for ~150-180g at the vendor. So even if you buy iron bars at ~20g its still a profit :S

Now imagine if someone has points in better prices... you are now not only lvling 2 powerfull ability's to obtain some very powerfull gear. You are making money doing so!

Now the only "downside" from this is that you lvl up aswell. Normally this means the enemy's get stronger and you dont have the skills/perks to deal with it. But if you do this after you obtained the materials for the dragon armor and some basic enchants like fire/frost/lightning resist you now have a character thats very durable. You can also improve you armor and weapons to legendary giving you the needed damage boost. And depending on lvl craft some realy nice weapons (deadra/glass). (buy materials from the vendor with the money you made, or the grand soul gems, or both).

What is all that Dina a mod your working on?

Sounds quite lame if you are able to do that.. :/ Doesn`t concern my game tough since I`ve never used any alchemy/smithing/crafting in morrowind, oblivion nor in skyrim. Still sorry to hear about that.

And change the standing stone, so you can level each profession even 20% faster and when you are done get 50% spell absorption.

- items, recipes, enchants that improve crafting skills no longer exist in the game (existing replaced with generic effect)
- petty soul gems stop advancing the skill at 30, lesser at 50, common 70 and greater at 90
- items now stop leveling smithing 5 points into the next tier: iron & leather at 25, steel & jewelry at 35, advanced & dwarf at 55, orc & elven at 75, glass & ebony at 95

So where in the lore does it state "Dragons are not Better than Daedra"?

ofc its absolutely stupid. i mean looting and looking forward to loot is an incentive for me, but maybe i am cheap.

i also dont think that smithing, enchanting, alchemy should count towards leveling the character, but should be considered secondary skills. because not utilizing a skill because you might level to fast seems like a bad joke.

but the award for bad game mechanics imho goes to he fact that you can level smithing to 100 by crafting iron daggers.


p.s i feel like the world, the quest and the story was designed by geniuses, while the mechanics , the non scaling magic system and the ui was made by their [censored] brothers.
i constantly feel like touching the perfect boobs with thick gloves on when playing this game and hope for decent mods BEFORE Knights of the old republic comes and i stop to care.

This is indeed annoying i had t make my difficulty higher because of this, i have currently now orcish armor upgraded and trades are barely even selling dwarven armor, so because of this i up my difficulty one scale up from the middle one , i mean smithing seems to be a bit broken

Well, its not an MMO, so it really doesn't matter if something is "overpowered" or whatever... Put that aside, if you do work at the smithy all day making iron daggers leveling up to 100 (and made that dragon armor), you will have leveled up pretty far, and the world has gotten harsher, tough you have no clue what a sword, axe, mace, bow, spell or whatnot do, and have only wore an armor for show, never learned how to effectively use it... I think my warrior who has leveled smithing "normally" would have a better chance (that's smithing, enchanting however would properly give you some damage boost, but you would still die, and it's still not an MMO)

EDIT: If you don't want to be able to make that ebony armor before you can find it in caves or whatnot, don't use smithing

Also is it just me, or can you craft just about any armor style in the game...

EXCEPT NORDIC??

Am I missing something?

Yeah it is a problem but if you put it the other way around than smithing would be useless.

Each armor shoud have pros and cons so the epic ones you loot from dungeons could have special bonuses unobtainable by other means (smithing/enchanting) while being inferrior in other certain attributes to a craftable armor of similar quality, i.e. providing much high dmg mitigation than crafted armor while being extremely heavy and drain stamina quicker. Or have very high protection against some types of dmg while poor against other.

Some kind of balance needs to be in place so that each way of obtaining armor is a viable option.

From this very good explanation it sounds that the balance it pretty good. Thinking outside your character, how could you have master crafters being able to make legendary weapons for a living unless they could actually do it without being forced to be adventurer types as well. Ok so maybe it's a pointless task to allow this in the game but if npc's are supposed to have real lives then such feats need to be possible. And why not have the opportunity to play a crafter type character and be able to make a living from it rather than seeking fame and fortune dungeon hacking. Maybe not the most exciting game you would have ever played but the opportunity is there.

Self enchanted weapons in Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion made any daeric artifacts look like low level items.
soul trap + drain health 100 + shock damage 15 + weakness to shock 100+ weakness to magic 100 in Oblivion.
Weakness to magic 100+ absorb health 100+ soul trap+ calm creatures in 30 feet in Morrowind.

In Skyrim enchanting look like it has been nefed some but we have gotten smiting.

I agree with you, broski. The Steel Plate is hands down my favorite armor set in Skyrim. (Now, if only I could get the damn arrow stuck out of my chest. That glitch is really annoying)

It fits my Paladin look with a great sword on my back.

Well, OP did say that it was "God crafted armor", which i think probably refers to daedric. In that case it wouldnt make any sense, no matter how legendary a smith you are, to smith something beyond that of a God; what would that make you? Uber god?

God slayer. By default greater than a god

It's a roleplaying game, if you wanna cut wood and blacksmith then do it. Look at the blacksmith NPCs in the game, it's possible they have never been in a cave or dungeon but instead made a living from making armor and weapons such as ebony, steel, daedric and so on. That's what roleplaying is all about ''playing a certain role'' wanna be a blacksmith? Do it. Wanna be a Woodcutter? Do it, wanna venture into caves and dungeons? Do it.

IMO, I really liked what Bethesda has done.

Another thing that's sort of related that I don't understand is why the so called "greatest smith in Skyrim" in Whiterun still only sells as good armor as all the rest. It wouldn't really have been that hard to let him sell somewhat improved armors, although I guess that might've made Smithing slightly less useful. As long as the cost for these masterwork armors was really high it would've worked quite well. And it would've helped not making Smithing mandatory.

Actually, i think i can savely say that your "normal" warrior has less armor and less damage then a powerlvled character in blacksmithing. Because of the BS character having better weapons and armor aswell as having them improved to legendary. Simply because you gain acces to weapons and armor your standard character needs twice the lvl to get acces to. So even if you got 3/5 weapon damage and 3/5 armor it still wont outscale the way higher base damage of the blacksmith characters gear.


Oh i agree, the added option of having a "trader" is kinda cool. Chopping wood, smithing daggers, enchanting daggers, selling them for a profit etc. Its all kinda fun (though from a pure game POV totally broken as your power lvl increases ALOT once you got enough pieces to make dragon armor)