Skyrim's perk / skill system is flawed in several ways. The main reason for this is that the combat perks are mixed in with the tradeskill perks. This fact combined with the very limited amout of perks points (PP) you receive makes it very hard if not impossible to be decent at crafting and combat. Trying to make a pure Mage, Warrior or Thief is difficult indeed. Also some some the skill trees themselves are quite useless. If I am wrong on any of this please correct me. I'd love to be wrong.

Alchemy - This tree is a waste of PP. I would rather craft or buy twice as many potions then waste my precious PP here.

Smithing - I can see why someone would spec PP into this tree but when you are crafting say "Dragon Armor" then you will not benefit from anything lower in the tree that you had to spend PP on. I see those as wasted PP.

Enchanting - This is one of the better crafting trees as you do benefit from the PP spent lower in the tree even at higher levels. Still, I could be I much tougher combatant if I spent those PP in a combat tree.

Lockpicking - A complete waste of PP here. I have level 35 lockpicking and have not spent a single PP in this tree and I can already pick Master Locks. So I break a few more lock picks. It's well worth it to save those PP.

Light / Heavy Armor - These trees are very similar but unless you're a Thief there is no reason to pick Light Armor. And where does this leave cloth armor?

Your "skill up" points contribute towards your level and what perks you can unlock but besides that they don't make you any better at a skill. Exp: Using "Flames" spell with level 1 Destruction or level 100 Destruction will both do the same damage. Don't get me wrong. This is an amazing game and I am enjoying every minute of it but I think the Perk / Skill system should have seperated by Combat and Tradeskills.

Although this issue will be fixed very soon for all of us PC users when a mod comes out that gives you 2 PP for every level.

I'll agree on all points but one - Smithing is well worth your time no matter what. As you level merchants sell ebony bars + daedra hearts. Level to 90 smithing by crafting iron daggers over and over (even at level 89 it doesn't take too much to get you to 90 for daedric). Craft daedric, wait a day in game, buy more ebony, craft more daedric, wait a day, improve all of your armor -> game broken.

It's even easier than Morrowind's Alchemy.

You shouldn't get to craft Daedric. The perk should be to IMPROVE Daedric and the armor itself should be found in the world.

Good to know. Thanks Mort. Seems Noone wants to post unless it some flame war topic.

This is incorrect, actually. You can become ridiculously powerful using Enchantment. 0 Magicka to cast spells, +500-5000% damage on one handed weapons, etc etc.

Edit: Should clarify. At higher levels, Enchantment is significantly better than every combat tree. Every. Single. Combat. Tree.

Or because threads disappear insanely fast off the first page and most people don't look on the second, third, etc. page to reply to something?

Sheesh, don't get those panties in a twist.

Exactly my point ^

Some of this is ridiculous. You say you see lower perks of smithing as "wasted PP", yet what do you call it if you're an expert of destruction magic, yet you've put points into cheaper casting of novice and apprentice spells? Some lower level perks are just really really useful early on in the game, and serve to unlock higher perks for later in the game. Stuff like steel and dwarven smithing are really really useful below level 15 because it makes a big difference for the armour and weapons you have. They probably have a bigger impact than a dry +20% that you get for other skill's perks.

Also I'm detecting an MMO mentality. Single player RPG's aren't how good you are at max level, unless you decide it'll be all about that. It's about the journey, not the endpoint.

Heavy armor? Why would I ever want to use Heavy Armor?

It's heavy. And slow.

(Seriously, I think I've only tried Heavy Armor in Oblivion once. Didn't like it. Didn't even consider using it here. Yeah, I'm using a bit of stealth for initial bowshots, but my combat is 1h+shield. )

....


Based on some of the other comments (and following ones from others), I think part of the problem is this burning need to min/max that some people have.

"Level to 90 smithing by crafting iron daggers over and over (even at level 89 it doesn't take too much to get you to 90 for daedric). Craft daedric, wait a day in game, buy more ebony, craft more daedric, wait a day, improve all of your armor -> game broken."

Game broken? Then why would you even do that? Sounds tedious and boring.


What he said.

I agree.

This isn't WoW. Perks aren't Talent Trees. The game isn't centered solely around combat.

I absolutely love heavy armor, and lightt armor. I wish there were more skills, I wish they still had medium armor.

And I think the only reason he is saying you can use Smithing to break the game is to disprove the point that all tradeskills are useless. I kind of like the Alchemy Perk Tree, even though yes they are kind of [censored].

And

Yeah, I agree. I have played to many mmo's and that additude is bleeding over. I'll try to chill and just enjoy the ride. But I do still think it's a little flawed and lockpicking is definitely junk.

See here is where I have a problem with your reasoning. You want all the best but are not willing to spend anything to get there. You forget that smithing all the other armors helped you on your journey. But then again, if you wan to not smith and just use armor you find or buy, that is perfectly acceptable. The great thing about Beth games is that they give you the option to RP anything you want as well as make your personal "perfect" character.

Sadly the best way to level smithing is by crafting iron daggers, not all that other armor

Yes and obviously you should only craft the easiest thing to name and not stuff to help/protect you while leveling. Definitely don't want to craft that steel/imperial/other sets you'll be wearing.

Well, crafting all the stuff you need will give you a handful of points. The other 80 or so will have to be grinded one way or another.

well you could pay for training if you wanted to rp it

Well, actually it is.

But the problem here is different. The real problem here is that for some confounded reason certain enemies actually level with you. That means that if you've leveled your blacksmithing skill and gotten, say, 5 levels in the process then there are enemies out there that are now 5 levels higher in order to "keep up with you". But do you think in those 5 levels they've leveled up blacksmithing? Maybe some alchemy, or lockpicking? Ooh, maybe they leveled speech! No sir, they leveled up their combat skill and nothing else, but you have not. That now makes you that much weaker compared to them, and the improved armour/weapons from blacksmithing doesn't really compensate for that. Not to mention if you leveled up things like alchemy or speech or lockpicking or sneak instead.

That is the reason why Skyrim's leveling system is flawed and makes barely little sense. I know that previous TES games had leveling enemies as well (rats the same difficulty as end-game bosses in Oblivion??), but considering we're in the year 2011 I couldn't even begin to imagine that leveling enemies would make a reappearance in this game.

Simply put you have to lvl and spend perks in your combat skills first. Once you have them at a relatively high level only then can you allow yourself to explore the game from a non-combat perspective. Did you want to try out lots of different skills and try your hand at being a crafter from the start? Too bad, you'll have to wait. Unless you want to cheat, or lower the difficulty setting. Or wait for a mod to come out that will remove leveled lists.

I totally agree with frak. You need the lower level perks to get to the higher ones, and they really do help out at that stage of the game. Iike the magic spells that I belive cost less to cast when you have the novice perk. Learning how to do something in the game isn't a bad thing. It just helps me imerse myself in to my character.

I can assure you - smithing is NOT a waste of points. You can upgrade weapons and armor to experienced (don't know the exact english namings) and legendary and I did this a few hours ago.. and belive it, this wasn't a waste of pp.

Also I'm wearing only light armor, because you're faster and it's easier to sneak.

That's an exploit, not the best way.

Who cares it's amazingly fun. So good job bethesda....beats what I could have made.

Raising one handed or 2 handed or archery, you will increase your damage in those skills without spending your perks. Spells don't improve because they have levels (novice adept etc). Melee and archery improve naturally because you don't purchase melee spells or archery spells... Also lock picking improves as you level it. So your logic is flawed, not the tree.

That wasn't at all what I meant.

You can actually play this game quite well without ever engaging an enemy in direct combat. I don't know if you'd ever finish the main quest, but that's hardly ever a top priority for most people.

How is it an exploit? It doesn't abuse any game mechanics in a way that was not intended. If the designer(s) working on blacksmithing recipes did not think hard enough that daggers give them same amount of level points as some highly-expensive armour and thus would be the most obvious item to powerlevel the skill than in what possible way is it the player's fault?

This contradiction is what I feel is the genius of Skyrim's levelling system. Sure you can grind/cheat/exploit your smithing to 90, but the problem is you step out of town and you get slaughtered because you did't level properly. I actually screwed my first character this way, I spread my points into a lot of non-combat skills off the bat and ended up rerolling because I couldn't survive any encounter at level 10 (kept getting instagibbed by a bandit chief).

This i feel solved some problems with oblivion. I got my character so skilled up in everything that it got well, boring.

Of course, not everyone will agree with this, so YMMV.