I'm a sneaky archer, I use sneak and I use bows/daggers and I love it.
Boring build I know but I enjoy it, add a bit of conjuration in and I'm a happy kitten.

Up until now I've been just going with enchanting, making a fortify smithing outfit and adding sneak/bow damage enchantments on my gear. I've felt pretty godlike, I can one shot nearly anything without using any poisons or anything either, it's just barely at the brink of being too much but not quite. I'd do 4 pieces of smithing gear, each doing a +25% bonus equaling out to a 100% overall boost, it was just right.

Today, I decided to dabble in alchemy...
I made some gear with +25% alchemy bonuses, five pieces totaling 125% extra on my alchemy skills.
(Yes, I used a Falmer helmet for a small boost but that's not what this thread is about.)
I used those to make smithing potions and wow. I usually don't do any smithing perks so I thought I'd get the Daedric perk on that tree while I was at it and I've got to say my bow and daggers are staggeringly better. I almost feel like I'm cheating but I've used nothing but what the games given me...

Has anyone else come across something like this? I didn't realize that using alchemy would allow me to advance my character to such a point, it was surprising to me to see the final results. I now know why I see so many folks here purposefully make themselves weak.

EDIT: Just to avoid any confusion, I'm not saying that anyone doing this or not doing this is gimping themselves or cheating in any way. I'm not telling anyone how to play their game either, I was simply trying to say that I was unaware that by avoiding alchemy I was restricting my potential damage and defense to such an extent.

I do not think that using alchemy, enchanting and smithing in tandem to create stronger gear is abusing the mechanics at all. To me abuse is using them to loop and build beyond the basic abilities of each of those skills. Simply using them once to make a basic set of gear to improve your build is in no way an exploit, simply taking advantage of what is given.

you weren't gimping yourself before, you're just abusing the mechanics now.

I find it amusing that if you actually use the system, you're suddenly a cheater

I didn't abuse anything, I just got a wild idea to try out a perk tree that I had never tried.

I find it amusing that you seem to disregard the OP glitched to buff his smithing.

I believe the game purposefully gives players the means to become very OP, because there are many players who enjoy playing that way. The actual game mechanics without the Restoration bug, will taper off your ability to improve weapons and gear, so it was intended.

Other things that will make your weapons even more powerful are the quest 'Unfathomable Depths' from Riften to get the perma-buff Ancient Knowledge. And becoming a Vampire and taking the Necromage perk will make your Enchanting/Alchemy loop more powerful, which makes you able to improve your weapons even farther.

Being able to one-shot stuff on Master is fun for many people, and for those who don't enjoy it, there are other ways to play besides going out of your way to max your skills and get all the buffs to make your character OP.

to be fair you did use 5 armour bits, that is an exsploit, but even if u only used 4 ud probably still be op. But self regulate, games like beths makes give you the freedom to be a peasant or a demigod, you have to decide and limit or expand to suit that, to think a game off the cuff on the fly could actully regulate a balanced yet variable experience is preposterous. I hate terms like gimping and cheating, it's your game, it 1 player, your simply regulating your experience, playing your role, surly that's what's ment to happen?

Welcome friend to enchanting/smithing/alchemy club.

You can push it just a bit more by making potions of fortify enchanting potions and using them to create more powerful version of fortify alchemy gear.

The process is described here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Enchanting#Optimizing

Also here: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1342463-complete-character-design-freedom-damage-resist-caps-and-ridiculous-damage-thread-10/

I especially love the Complete Character Design Freedom thread on this forum. It was a very nice and well organized group effort to understand and share how to create a powerful character efficiently.

The game is extremely customizable. I try to be careful to be just strong enough so the game stays fun. At Level 41 now, I might bump up the difficulty to see what happens. I really want things to stay challenging.

I remember an old article in Game Informer that someone wrote about how it's ok to bump down the difficulty and it's nothing to feel bad about because games are supposed to be fun. You know how some people think they should be played on Master... I don't think I'd have much fun if I did that. I just want to find that sweet spot where it's a challenge but not frustrating and still explore the Perk trees to see what's there without being godlike. Those who want to be godlike can still play that way too. Fun for all.

"Waaaaah! People are playing the same game I like to play, but in a manner I don't. That's cheating! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

I swear that's all I hear from some members on this forum. It's not Call of Duty, or Mass Effect, or Borderlands. This is a SINGLE PLAYER game. Get over yourselves and let us play how we want.

Necromage vampire can make you more powerful

actually, you did abuse it, you used the smithing/alchemy mechanics in such a way as to exploit them beyond their intended ability, you abused the mechanic.

I'm not saying it's cheating or anything, it's just that you were implying that anybody not doing it was gimping their character, when rather you are just Over-powering yours.

He can use the "create fortify alchemy, create fortify enchanting, rinse and repeat" mechanic to circumvent the "5th equip" exploit. Will you still say he exploited if he used that?

That's the way things were designed. Intended or not that's the way it is. It's like saying that looting everything and selling them all gives you way more money than not looting anything and not selling anything, allowing you to simply train from trainers instead of grinding them yourself, and as such it is "exploiting". Get over it.

You're not playing how I would play. Unacceptable.

But in all seriousness, I've never been too big on alchemy besides poisons and such but I've been tempted to try. I normally ALWAYS make a sneaky archer, but on my most recent file, I swore bows away for a melee only sneak, no daggers. Gimped, sure but I love that Blades Sword. I may look into this alchemy stuff now though.

I actually think it's good you can make stupidly powerful armor for one simple reason, my favourite armor sets are fairly low level, and I can get them to the armor cap by using the crafting skills. I don't want to walk around in Daedric anymore (I did at one time!), Dragon Scale is quite frankly hideous, the armor sets I love the most are steel, steel plate and orcish, so being a high level character I still want those sets to provide me with the protection!

The flip side of this is: if you grind crafting skills early you gimp yourself the other way, you are absolutely awful at fighting and will struggle to kill pretty much anything, so gathering materials can be a very risky enterprise (especially as smithing is MUCH harder to hit 100 now). I tried one playthrough when I went to Markath immediately after escaping Helgen with the purpose of clearing all the Dwarven materials to boost smithing asap. This actually took a long time to do, I ended up being level 30 just from grinding all my crafting skills but with no combat skills at all. I found Kolskeggr mine impossible, due to the Briarheart being able to 1 shot me. The only way to kill Nimhe to even reach Nchuand-Zel was by running in, hitting it and running out again for ages till it died (it's too big to fit through the door).

By the time i'd grinded all my crafting skills to 100 and made my perfect armor set I was too bored to play anymore!

I got an alchemy overhaul mod on PC, preventing me from even creating fortify smithing / enchanting potions. Now I'm a happy panda.

But on the PS3, I didn't even touch alchemy or enchanting. Too muc power isn't fun!

I didn't glitch my smithing, I wore a falmer helmet to boost alchemy.
How did I abuse it?
I didn't loop anything, I didn't enchant > alchemy > enchant the heck out if it to become invincible.
I made one set of smithing gear and one set of alchemy gear to make one potion of smithing.
That's not abusing the system at all, that's using it as it was intended.

Sure I did use a Falmer helmet for a small boost but I didn't cheat either alchemy or enchanting to get the results.
Even without that small boost, the point is it's totally more than I expected it to be.

OP: "it's just barely at the brink of being too much but not quite."

That's where I want to be. I'm on my 3rd playthrough right now, and I haven't quite attained that but I'll keep trying. I'm at the stage now where I have OP potions and way too many ingredients and no reason to use either, with the armor (cloth or leather or guild) and weapons (double-enchanted & smithed way up) that I now have. I've bumped up the difficulty too.

This time, for the 1st time, I tried the Oghma merry go round, and went up 10 levels before I knew what was happening. I regret that, but I'm trying to perfect my mage archer and some of those mage skills are damn near impossible to raise to 100 without grinding somehow; I thought Oghma was the answer.

I was happy to see smithing was brought closer to Earth with 1.5 and look forward to my next character.... I'm thinking about no extraordinary efforts beyond experience itself, and training when I can afford it. It's called "grinding" for good reason, and I'm ready for that feeling again that I had with the very first character, that I could die at the drop of a hat.....but Dovahkin is much smarter now.

The difference isn't worth a quarrel. You got a +125 bonus using the Falmer helmet, but you could have gotten a +116 by using inherent game mechanics to boost four slots to +29 or you could have gone higher by using the Necromage perk. Either way you're within the scope of effect levels that were clearly intended by the developers.

Your opening post seems to wonder how that impacts your playing in the long run.

Alchemy has long been the most powerful skill in the Elder Scrolls series. It's actually toned down quite a bit from Oblivion, which was toned down from Morrowind. Once you find out how well this works it can be difficult to keep the game interesting.

There are basically three ways around that dilemma:

1. "Gimp" yourself deliberately, as you suggested.
2. Play a one life to live character. Ramp it up, but consider it game over if he or she ever dies.
3. Change the difficulty slider.

Skyrim seems to have a better difficulty slider than previous games from this series. Am playing on Master level for the first time, reached level 25 recently. It feels much more realistic. Gems are scarce enough that it's necessary to budget and prioritize which equipment to enchant. Got the Black Star recently to work around that problem, but acquiring it was hard work and ordinary bandits can still take me down if I'm sloppy and let them gang up. The game definitely keeps its challenge.

It's a SADBOX game. If you want to use everything at your disposal and be a god go ahead. In my opinion the crafting skills allow me to role play because with those I can viably use low level armor and weaponry.

This game is what you make it, it gives you the tools to do so; it's a one player game, do what you think is fun.

Feel like I'm cheating? No, not as long as PCers are allowed to use mods.

My Ebony Daggers do 163 each and my Forsworn Armor is past the cap. I earned the Smithing, Alchemy, and Enchating (for the most part) skills that made that possible.

I goofed around with the Restoration Glitch once for hell of it, but none of the gear I use has been exploited.

I used the Oghma Infinium on both characters:
1) on my 1st one after he hit 51 simply to regain 3 perk points I 'wasted'.
2) on my 2nd one to get her from 23 to 42 (I didn't feel like grinding)

I used 5 pieces of Fortify Enchanting gear to make one Fortify Smithing potion because I was curious - I used the potion to improve weapons that I reverse pickpocketed to NPCs.

Exactly.

...and speaking of Borderlands: Sirens are a little OPed.

Now I get +125% Fortify Smithing potions with 4 pieces of gear and +138% with 5. Pre-1.5 if that makes a difference.

Good point; the distinction is worth mentioning. The original reference was to four +29% equipment bonuses on the natural slots. An additional +125% sounds about right for a potion. If you want to be insanely powerful, add weapon proficiency bonuses for combat gear against melee opponents.

I lost interest in that character at level 48 and changed the difficulty slider.

That I don't bother with. It seems like too much work see-sawing the Alchemy and Enchanting to get an extra +20% on my gear. That's no small amount actually, but between the 4*+25% and the potion I'm good.

After improving my gear post Vampire + Necromage I now have an Ebony Bow that does 704 damage. Although I still don't one-shot difficult enemies. I'm not going to assume that Vampire + Necromage was intended to make me Smith better weapons, but it's too late for me to revert to a non-improved save.

Sometimes I just get in the mood to sneak around sniping with my bow, so I can relate to the original poster enjoying how powerful this strategy (sneak plus powerful bow) can become. With the Assassin's Blade perk (that I didn't take), daggers must be powerful as well.

I have 4,000,00 health and I'm ok with that.