I feel like this game made bounds with certain things compared to oblivion, but i feel like some of it was lacking in certain areas. I want to look at the crafting in this game, and this is my personal opinion on it, and i feel like this addressing of the problem and talking over its fixes would help create a better more self involved gameplay that we all know and love, and expect from a bethesda rpg. Not that this game doesnt have that kind of style already, but just to add to it.

Now onto what this wall down here, which talks about the problems i thing this system has, and the potential it has for being very awesome


1. To start off smithing, to me this was a very cool idea for me being able to make my own armor and adding to its complexity by me having to obtain materials to create said items. A few things to fix would be the fact i can just go to every major hold and buy a ton of iron ingots and skyrocket in smithing, a real small problem not really game changing unless you have full legendary steel at lvl 10, which to the more hardcoe players this seems extremely gamebreaking being able to gain a pure armor rating/weapon damage boost at a low level, i agree this is a little unfair, but by no means are you tarnishing your own experience of the game if you so do choose to exploit this.

2. Alchemy, potion making and sorts, i havent really messed with it. But what tinkering i have done with it and seeing what others say this isnt really flawed, works very well seeing that you have to EAT the ingredients to find new affects to create new potions, instead of just mindlessly creating 500 lesser potions and putting it into a perk to be able to automatically create an object of that craft without any real exploration.

3. Enchanting, a little frustrating to me that i want to have a resist shock enchantment and a resist fire enchantment and i can only have them on the piece i disenchanted from. That is really dumb to me because there are only certain enchantments for certain things, so unless i use a shield i can never have two resist element effects, unless someone else has found a resist element piece because after playing a few different characters to lvl 30+ i have never found any resist stuff that wasnt on boots, or a shield. Also, i feel like the old way of enchanting was tons better (oblivion), basically going into my main point to fix this issue for the crafting flaws.

This issue here is i feel like their isnt a deep enough connection with smithing and a warrior based class, and magic and a mage based class. In reality, i can just power level enchanting by holding onto all of my filled soul gems and putting enchantments on random crap even if its on my warrior so i can get more powerful enchantments that way. This leads to my main point that character involvement should have an absolute gigantic influence on the crafting skills.

Heres my take on how it should be, i have a two hand, heavy armor nord. As i further progress in my heavy armor and two handed skills i gain a better understanding of how they work and what would make them better and more efficient, so i can go to a person who has recipes of sorts, kind of like how alchemists have potion recipes in the books sections. Except it would be similar to a blacksmith, and they could sell you books on how to forge certain things, and you would need a lets say 20 skill in two handed in order to understand what is actual being said in a book that tells you how to forge a steel greatsword, and you would need 20 in smithing to understand how to forge the steel itself. And to add to the prestige of being able to gain higher level armors and weapons, the higher and more exotic the materials the harder it is to find a trainer with the knowledge of how to craft such wonders. Similar to finding the masters of skills in oblivion.

Now on to enchanting, it only makes sense that the only way to add magical enchantments would be if you understand the magic itself to work into the item you want/need. So if you want to add stronger fire damage, you better have been able to cast a few high end fire destruction spells, but also with your better understanding of being able to deal fire damage, you should also be able to protect it. Compared to the teaching elements compared to what i said about blacksmithing i feel like this would add to that extra little challenge that keeps the players coming when playing TES games. This could prove to be a lot better than the cookie cutter system of hoping to find a certain enchantment you want, and then mindlessly leveling the skill to get a half decent enchantment out of it.

This ramble/rant hasnt been to attack the creators and say they failed in any way, i just want this to be seen and critiqued accordingly to help add to the expansive majesty that is TES that these makers have already given us. Please dont say anything about OMG china called, the least you could do is skim over it and say something if you want to add or discuss it. Because i care a lot about this game, its universe, and its mechanics and i want to see if i, with the help of anyone willing, can make this game even better with everyone else in hand.

Smithing: make the skill increase based on the value of the item created, like Alchemy. Two Iron Ores creates one Iron Ignot. Upgrade bonus is a % based on the base damage of the weapon.
Alchemy: Remove potions that boost non-combat skills from the game. Yes, completely.
Enchanting: Reduce the base enchant bonus by at least 1/2 all across the board.