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

And here's how:

The conjuration school is, by itself, a good school. You summon stuff, be it a weapon or a Atronach, and you kill things. This school becomes broken once you start taking that weapon you've summoned (though it technically isn't necessary) and started to use it against whatever Atronach.

Let's use an example of my character that I haven't even put 4 hours into. It's already level 15, with 50+ in one handed, conjuration, and archery. This is accomplished by summoning an Atronach, hitting it enough to kill (in the beginning, and even now because of a lack of any perks in one handed, it takes 5 hits with no power attack.) This levels up conjuration (summoning and hitting with a summoned weapon) and one handed (obviously the attacking with the weapon). Literally the only limit on how fast this goes is by how much magicka you have, and how fast it regenerates. Fun little note here too: it's not limited to one handed for combat skills. Want that two handed to power level? Switch after summoning an Antronach. Want to improve your sneak? Attack when it's not aware of you. Want to start flinging some more powerful flames and frost around? Summon and set that bad boy on fire.

But what you're probably thinking is that this is only attack stuff, and I said all combat skills. Now hold your horses, and let me explain:

After 4 hits, an Atronach attacks you back. Problem? Not if you want your armor to get better. You get the crap kicked out of you, and then get that last shot to make it so that you don't die. Oh wait, now your health is low. Good thing that you can use restoration, and improve that school too.

So, by using this one school, we can improve anything combat related.

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.

Theres a difference between "game-breaking" and overpowered. Conjuration is just overpowered.

And you're also playing the game wrong.

So you're moaning about being able to use exploits to level up skills quickly? This is something that has been in every TES game I have played and it's not just because of conjuration; you can just as easily take an essential NPC into the wilderness and constantly hit them. There's also that exploit in the tutorial where you keep hitting Hadvar.

Pretty much every skill in the game can be boosted in one way or another but in every case it is optional. Yes, you can stand there hitting an atronach, or you could play the game properly and have fun. Nobody is forcing you to stand there summoning and slashing for hours. You are going out of your way to "break" the game.

@Rakra
Technically, there isn't really any wrong way to play a game unless you're using glitches. None of these are glitches, as they're part of the game mechanics. Now the Black-Briar Barkeep that you can repeatedly do Speech checks on to get to 100 in one short sitting? That is a glitch (as you already know lol).

You're level grinding on purpose, so don't complain.

^Amen.

Conjuration isn't breaking the game, YOU'RE breaking the game by using it in a way that was not intended.

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.

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

Well, good for you. Have fun with your OP character.

So basically you have to do things to level up your skills, I still don't think this is a problem. I' had never heard of that method of ranking up skills but it's no worse than any other. If people want to be lame and smack a summoned creature around, who cares, it's boring but it works for them. Really, if I lived in Skyrim maybe that would be a decent way to train myself to deal with daedra? I could summon them and practice my attacks without hurting anyone.

Don't do it. Problem solved.

Trust me. You don't want to summon a Dremora Lord for you to improve your 1 hand or 2hand weapons coz you'll get sliced. Not even the spell "Expel Daedra" will work on the one you summoned. And this is based from my experience.

On a side note: Here's what I do so that my "Atronach" will not be summoned for the purpose of levelling skills: Each time you have a quest like for example kill the leader of the bandit, what I do is I use "Raise Zombie" on every corpse possible but remove their items first (armor & weapon) coz you dont wanna get killed when it starts attacking, then start doing your thing: hitting it w/ 1hand or 2hand or bow or spells etc until the zombie dies or before it turns to dust. I just don't want dead bodies lying around.

I get the feeling that World of Warcraft has wiped and re-written all common sense.

Now when some people play a game the first question they ask is "how can i level up and min/max my skills and gear as quickly as possibly?", and then once they become a god, they whine it's too easy. YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

If you play the game the way it's meant to be played then conjuration is powerful but not broken. It's only your fault if you decide to exploit the gameplay mechanics.

You could do this in oblvion as well. I used to summon things to kill, but I was in mages university and it all felt part of training and quite frankly it was too boring to do for long. Leveling by extroadinary tedious grinding is something the player should be able to do though if they want. I find it more fun to use the skills in day to day exploring and level up that way. However I would find it amusing if a daedra lord appeared and kicked the players ass for abusing flame atronachs.

You could do it in Morrowind as well, it's part of the series. In fact, if I remember correctly, in Morrowind, they even tell you about how you can soul trap summoned creatures and stuff. It's intended. Summoning creatures and training with them is not a "cheat".
You spend time training under safely controlled circumstances. It's not any worse than spending gold to level skills at a trainer - that takes, comparatively, no effort.

Having beaten the guild stuff and main quest, I think I might just train a bit with some summons. I neglected conjuration ever since I noticed how awful it was, my summons getting destroyed super-easy by mobs.

true this.

Conjuration isnt breaking your game,you're breaking your game using conjuration in that way.
I dont understand why people keep omplaining about this kind of nonsense.
If you dont like such tactics then dont frikkin use them.simple as that.
Its not like Skyrim is an online game where other players can get an unfair advantage using such ways.
Its only you.
ANd if you abuse such level grinding techniques then you are to blaim for ruining your game.
So stop whining and start playing straight instead of fu*king up your own game and ranting about it.

Kind of weird that you can get experience in combat, by attacking someone who does not fight you. As If i'd learn karate by punching my wall a hundred times.
A mod/patch should make it so you only train combat skills with trainers or against aggressive enemies.

No, they shouldn't.

I on my next playthrough I want to mess about and be OP, why shouldn't I? PC gamers can use console commands to do whatever they wish anyway, to remove it from the vanilla game just makes those of us playing on the gaming consoles lose out.

True. It is a singleplayer game after all. Bethesda doesn't usually make balance patches anyway. But I would like to see this in mod form.

This attitude is incredibly prevalent on these boards and it is completely idiotic.

There is no "right" or "wrong" way to play an Elder Scrolls game. A big part of the point of these games is that you have the freedom to go off and do whatever you want. The game systems are supposed to be designed to support that style of play, not set up so that if you do certain things you become a god and break the game, that's just bad design.

"Use self restraint" is not a good enough answer; it's exactly the same as telling someone that the "fix" for, for example, their "always crash when I fast travel" bug by telling them "well just don't use fast travel then". Sure, it won't crash any more, but it's not really addressing the problem.

Sweeping balance problems under the carpet does not make them go away, and balance is still important in a single player game. I'll remind everyone that Bethesda did patch the stacking alchemy thing in Oblivion for similar reasons.

You couldn't possibly be more wrong in this case, and I'll gladly explain to you why.

You were right up until the final sentence, then you were very wrong. Here's why: In order to have every possible permutation of every possibly decision and playstyle choice result in the same power level, those choices would need to be essentially meaningless or purely aesthetic. Inherent to the concept of having meaningful choice is that your choices have consequences. I would go so far as to say that this concept is "common sense." It's something that should simply be inherently understood. If you choose (key word: choose) to play in a strange or unconventional way, you should understand that the outcome may be unconventionally bad or unconventionally good, or any where in between. By not trying to clamp down hard on the edge cases of balance, Bethesda actually allows a greater variety of choice and play style, which is GOOD game design.


IN this case, it is the perfect, and in fact, the only answer. If some one decides they like Whopper hamburgers so much that they're going to eat 50 of them a day, and consequently they suffer horrible consequences, the answer is in fact "use self restraint." Your choice to eat 50 Whoppers a day does not represent some sort of design failure by Burger KIng. It's a choice you make, and if you don't like the consequences then make different choices,


Except that it's not only not "exactly" the same thing, it's not even REMOTELY the same thing. "Crashing to desktop" is not something that any reasonable person would seek out. By leaving that "option" in the game, no meaningful choice is being created. If you crash to desktop each time you fast travel, then the only possible choice is to not fast travel, which makes it not a meaningful choice. Further, it makes a major feature of the game non functional. It isn't reasonable to think that Bethesda went to the trouble of coding the Fast Travel option into the game just so that it could create inconvenience and misery for players. It's "common sense" to assume that if you crash to desk top each time you fast travel, that it's a bug that should be fixed. Telling some one not to fast travel is just telling them the very obvious "work around" but it is not an acceptable "solution."

On the other hand, let's say that a player complains that fast traveling prevents him from seeing as many random encounters and/or that using carriages prevents him from fully exploring the game world. Now THAT would be anologous to the "conjuration" exploitation, because it represents again a meaningful choice. Do you want to experience the game in a fully visceral and literal way, or do you want to save yourself some time and cut out a portion of the game that you might feel is a bit of drudgery at this particular time? Any one complaining that carriages ruin the game should indeed "use self restraint." Using a carriage to travel is a choice which you can make or not make, and if you know the consequences of it are not to your liking, then don't do it.


In this case, there is no balance problem, so there is no "sweeping under the rug" of anything. You have choices about how you play the game, and if one of those choices involves you going to a lot of extra trouble "grinding" to improve your character in a way you don't enjoy, with consequences you don't desire, THEN DON'T DO THAT.

Giving players more choice is a double edged sword. For people who have basic reasoning ability and a desire to replay the game in many different ways, choice is a beautiful thing. For those who don't, choice is a brutal and scary thing, and winds up feeling worse than having no choice at all. I think THOSE players should play "Just Cause 3" and leave those of us who enjoy a wide array of choice to play Skyrim.

Good to hear another voice of reason among all this complaint madness.
The sad thing is that lately a lot of gamers have started to misunderstand the concept of 'open world RPG'.
Somehow they went from 'being able to do a great many things and make many different choices,opening up a huge variety in gameplay' to 'choose to do precisely what I want the game to do',then when it turns out of all the thousand features the game has,it doesn't have the specific five that player wants,suddenly its a bad game.
Spoiled kids much?

What the heck are you talking about? I used to do the same kinds of stuff with my summons in Oblivion.