i agree, i keep reading various threads saying stuff like, enchanting broke the game, bows broke the game, sneaking broke the game, geez, you're suppose to be able to get powerful if you want, its like they want it stricter for everyone else and a lot of imposed restrictions, bethesda isn't about hand tying people and imposing lots of strict guidlines on how their games are played..freedom is what its about, its an rpg, its what you make of it, if you want to power level and put all your resources in one or two areas etc, you get to be super good in those areas, if you put a lot of work in an area you should be rewarded, its not a game where you need to worry about how other people are playing and thats what it comes down to, most of these type of complainers want limits imposed on everyone else because they decided to "exploit or power level" something, they want other people to be limited. it ain't gonna happen.

I wasn't able to find any sort of thread that talked about this, so I figured that I would address this:

Conjuration can break literally every single combat skill

Don't believe me? Let's go over the skills you can improve using it, and a short bit how:

-Conjuration, by using the skill (summoning, and using weapon)
-One Handed, attacking summoned creature
-Two Handed, attacking summoned creature
-Archery, attacking summoned creature
-Sneak, shooting/stabbing summoned creature in the back
-Illusion, you can use on the summoned creature
-Destruction, using the spells on the summoned creature
-Restoration, healing yourself after allowing yourself to be hurt
-Heavy/Light Armor, allow yourself to be attacked

So yeah, just a tip, Conjuration breaks everything.

#1 rule for enjoying your TES experience: Don't do anything that feels "grindy."

There are 3 skills I think are broken in this game: smithing, enchanting, and destruction.

Let's say you know that grinding smithing/enchanting will make you too OP too early, so you settle for not buying ANY mats and only building the skills with mats you've found. You mine everything you come across, you kill all those deer for leather, and you soul trap everything before you kill it. Even at this pace of leveling, smithing/enchanting will be maxed well before any of your combat skills. At low/mid combat skills, upgrading gear through smithing is just ridiculous. Enchanting 100 offers you game-breaking survivability and damage output, regardless of the base stats of your gear or you actual skill at using them. In other words, smithing and enchanting are broken because even if you avoid grinding it, you're still way too OP.

Destruction is broken because there's really only one viable way to gear yourself to not svck, and that gearing strategy leads to pretty big problems. The lack of damage scaling means that as your skill increases and you and your opponents level up, it's harder and harder to kill things with destruction. They've got more life, your spells still do the same damage. +Magicka and +magicka regen aren't viable gearing strategies (try it past level 30 and you'll see what I mean), and that just leaves -% casting cost. This is where the game gets broken. Sure you don't have to go for 100%. But if you don't, you're forced to limit yourself intentionally, constantly thinking "hmm, is this % too hard or too easy?"

Conjuration, though, is not broken. Sure, you can spam it to raise your conjuration skill. But you can do that with illusion and alteration too. All of the other skills you listed are easily powerleveled without conjuration. Essentially conjuration provides infinite targets for you to practice on. As mentioned, essential npcs can't die so they can serve the same function.

Everyone grinds through once or twice. If you're too stupid to realize that grinding will ruin your fun, you're too stupid for me to care if you ever find joy in this game.

why are you so worried how other people level up? shooting a lot of deer etc is a good way to level up archery, are you gonna say something about that too? you need to just play your game and not worry about how everyone else levels up.

he will have a higher level conjuration skill. game-fu**ing-breaking. needs to be fixed asap.

There's no such thing as playing an Elder Scrolls game wrong.

However, should *any skill* that you've level to 100 and bought 10 perks in be *very powerful*? How come no one complains that at 100 with a weapon skill, and all perks, even using a relatively low-quality weapon, you can do hella damage and kill high level enemies? Why shouldn't someone with high smithing and/or high enchanting be able to have weapons that do a lot of damage even with relatively low levels of skill in using the weapon?

If the things listed in the original post are bothering someone, my advice is to simply not abuse them. This isn't an MMO where you have to worry about exploits because others can abuse them (and then you're forced to occupy the same game world with these cheaters and their imbalanced gains). Instead, it's just you and a bunch of NPCs who follow their own strict code of rules, and I think you're ultimately expected to police your own actions.

Because of that, stuff like this is on the very bottom of a huge list of things I would like to see developers spend more time on. Where as in an MMO it would be up at the top of that list. Sure, it would be nice if all these exploitable tactics were plugged up in Skyrim, but there are so many other important things to work on, and the truth is these exploits and their consequences can be completely avoided by simply choosing not to abuse them.

In the official Skyrim guide, there's an advice on improving skills. It says
"In general, it's better to increase your skills and level up narutally, rather than trying to find ways to exploit the game. In fact, it may make your adventure harder, since you'll lack the gear and tactics needed to survive higher-level combat."