My main weapon (one handed sword) deals 250 damage (208 base plus 42 fire) at level 42. The game is extremely easy for me with a weapon dealing that much damage along with maxed armor.

I've been considering restarting the game and not using smithing and enchanting so much next time. Is the game more enjoyable that way? What is the sweet spot for weapons and armor for making the game a challenge yet not overly so?

I found it considerably more enjoyable without smithing or enchanting, be it mage, warrior, or rogue.

They just made those skills too damn powerful.

In your current game, you really only have two choices to keep it challenging:

1) Switch to lower quality gear/weapons
2) Bump up the difficulty level

In future playthrus, you don't necessarily have to avoid smithing and enchanting all together, but rather pace their advancement slower. If you advance them without much grinding, you'll probably find a reasonably equitable pace. As certain parts of the level-scaling play out, you may find enemies getting a bit weaker before you hit the next "scale-up". Is what I generally do is slow down, or even stop, smithing/enchanting during those lulls in the level-scaling and then improve the skills and my gear a bit when I hit the next vault.

By slowing the rate of the crafting skills, you'll get an even better feel for a decent pace as the game goes on and easily recognize the hilltops and valleys in the level-scaling.

Edit: As a bonus, you'll really appreciate the combat perks you take moreso without smithing/enchanting being OP.

Hmm, interesting. The best weapon I had on my main character did about 105 damage. This was with 100 Smithing, at level 50. (Daedric sword, boosted to Legendary with Smithing, plus some +damage perks and armor enchantments. The enchantment on it was Soul Trap, 1 second.)

My guess is that he's got a setup something like ...

• Smithing skill at 100, daedric perked, 4 x 29% enchanted gear, 130% potion >> daederic sword 14 (bd) + 46 (legendary 21) = 60 dam.
  
• One-handed skill at 100 + five armsman perks = 150% dam. bonus
  
• Gear enchanted with Fortify One-Handed equaling about 200%.

This would lead to ... 60 * 350% = 210 dam.

It's just a guess though.

Not even close. I've got a couple of ebony swords I smithed up that do around 240 damage each, with this scenario: 100 smithing, ebony perked, ench gear for about +65% smithing, and a +50% smith potion; one-handed at 90, 5 armsman perks, gear enchanted with Fortify One-Handed to about +100% or so. If I used all those things you listed, they'd be up around 500 damage or more, I bet (or even a lot more...).

Yes! Leave crafting behind. At least avoid power levelling.

i just intentionally limit the damage to my weapons, my deadric sword does less than 150 and thats plenty for me on highest diff

I keep all my weapons around 100. If I wanted to feel overpowered I'd just `tgm.

It's not difficult to change a few things in your current game to make it feel less easy, use weaker weapons/armour etc.

You went out of your way to make a really powerful sword... of course it's going to do a lot of damage. If it didn't you would either complain that the skills were worthless or that it was "necessary" to make one in order to play.

Hmm. I think I had two +20 smithing items, perhaps a 30 or 40 potion, and around 30-50 one-hand bonus on my armor. No daedric perk, since I went up the light armor side (the sword was one I found in a box.)

Also, I didn't particularly set out to target a certain level of ability to "make myself weaker". That 105 damage sword @lv50 is just where I ended up through (normal for me) play.



In the end, there's no real need to "avoid" crafting, as long as you're not the personality type that needs to over-do it.

This is my first run-through. I am finding it getting too easy now, even though I hoarded up most of my perks and didn't spend them cause I wasn't sure what to get. Obviously at this point I can see I should just get what I like cause I don't need to min/max this game to be strong enough to win it. I'm level 50...I just reached 100 smithing. I'm carrying Dragonbane which is smithed to 98 base damage plus its bonuses. I'm playing this run-through on the default Adept setting. I didn't grind smithing but I've worked it a lot, kind of grabbing a ton of loot, improving it and then selling it back...so I have leveled a lot of non-combat skills faster than my combat skills. My 1-hand is about 90 now but block still down about 60. I've played kind of like a jack-of-all-trades which in theory should make this harder. Anyway, my smithing (using about +60% in smithing gear and a +40 smithing potion) improved Dragonbane to legendary. Most of my gear is ebony but I don't have the smithing perk for that yet.

Anyway I just killed Alduin.... At level 48 in ebony gear and 30 unused perks I was able to beat down all those Dragur in Skuldafn and kill Alduin. There was some challenge to it (they didn't die in one hit; I had to fight) but I didn't die at all doing this scenario for the first time.

So I guess it's time for me to turn up the difficulty to Expert.

I usually have a decent crafting skill, but I balance it with not using enchantments or potions that increase it and I use lower quality gear(out of personal preference). My favorite weapon is the steel warhamemr which have a damage of 90 at legendary with barbarian 5/5. Not to powerful and it is barely useful for blocking, at least compared to a shield.
I also use steel plate, but I specificly chose not to take the matching set perk making it max out before reaching 500 AR(it's not bad, but many enemies will rip right through it on expert which is my prefered setting).

I limit my magical protection to about 50% resist fire and frost, making me voulnerable to lightning and all non-elemental magic. Combine that fact that enemy mages becomes very powerful at higher levels and I am very weak towards shock mages, and frost mages often kill me as well because their attacks also slow me down.

That is how I make it a bit more interesting.

If you don't want the game defaulting to My First RPG then avoid Smithing, Enchanting and Alchemy altogether.

That's not a powerful sword...
My Nord Hero weapons (sword, greatword, war axe, battle axe) are smithed up to ~350 (one-hand) and ~400 (two-hand).
All the weapons I had previously smithed up to ~1000 damage have been retired, heheh...
No fun.
Goes without saying you need Master difficulty!
Newaryon, maybe you're not looking at it the right way...
Adept is great to begin.
At around Level 30 you need to switch to Expert to keep things interesting.
Then once your character is able to smith enchanted items and becomes very powerful, switch to Master.
Since a 'runthrough' can entail several hundred hours, why not use the difficulty slider as intended?

Adept difficulty enemies are like children! Inept children. The chances of you dying are very slim...
You recognize this right away when you change to Expert.

I found that the sweet spot for me (crafting wise) was as follows:
4 pieces with 102% smith and a couple of potions that up smithing by 120-125%
By using this ^ my Imperial bow is now doing 250 damage, Imperial sword is doing 300 and my dagger is 150, couple this with master setting and I found the sweet spot for me.Fights are not one sided, the only badies that I'm able to one hit are those in clothing or fur/leather if they are wearing armor(especially heavy) the fights usually last around 3-4 min if I play around with dodging/foot work 1-2 if they piss me off and I'm out for blood or their head. I find it rather unrealistic that an arrow or two doesn't stop em dead in their tracks or 1-2 well placed strikes of my sword wont put em to the dirt so I even the odds a little, they cannot one hit me and I cannot one hit them.

On my current Warrior character I'm using a Daedric War Axe that deals around 100 damage (lv 40, playing on Adept/Expert depending on the situation). I only used Smithing to achieve this, no Enchanting, and it works just fine. Nothing is too challenging, but battles are never easy either. Perhaps I will start feeling overpowered when I start finding Fortify One-Handed items, but then I can always bump up my difficulty.

Might as well just crank it up to Master, I guarantee you won't feel any pain. Once you get used to enemies taking 2 hits to bring down instead of 1, you got Master beat (hmm, almost a pun there, somewhere).

I can one shot most things with incinerate, so I avoid that spell unless Im facing archers. But Icy Spear is about 150pts of damage, and that's my main spell.

I haven't tried Smithing or Enchanting yet and I play on Master. I just use the equipment I find or am given from a quest. It makes the game much more challenging but also gives this sense of reward when you find an awesome piece of gear in a dungeon that helps your character. Recently I found a ring that gives +60% Magicka Regeneration which is great for my mage. I also found a ring that gives +35% bow damage which is perfect for my archer.

Crafting is way too OP, I avoid getting any of the Smithing perks but Steel and Arcane blacksmith. But it is a hard balance to find between Challenging and Fun, and Challenging and Frustrating.