Poisons are completely sub-par compared to Enchants and the values you can obtain.
Managing charges is far easier than managing Poisons.
Enchanting benefits your damage ENORMOUSLY.
Enchanting is the single best performance increasing tree provided.
Enchanting scales better.

If it is a performance question, no doubt Enchanting is better. You can have both however.

Hard cap is level 80+. All skills at 100, no possible way to level further.
Soft cap is level 50+. It takes a lot of effort to level after that point and it's basically not required at all since in the game mobs and dungeons never go higher than lvl 50.

in respose to tile: no

Enchanting is much more beneficial to armor than it is to weapons. Enchants can strengthen your stealth and archery related skills greatly. But in terms of damage output, enchanting really only does so much. Even if you tack on a powerful elemental enchant, it'll be negligible compared to the damage given by your archery skill, the bow, the arrows, and any sneak bonuses.

This, my first character had enchanting perks on 100, and it became very boring playing. The second is a illusioninst archer, without enchant or smithing, now the game makes sense o/

Gotcha. Thank you.

Still like to hear more opinions if anybody has 'em. This character probably won't get started for awhile yet.

Yea, pure warrior should smith. Im not a pure warrior, Im playing a theif, assassin, whos not affraid to get up close with blades so I enchant also. I have one ebony sword with fire, and another to capture souls

My first and current character is a Nord warrior. Never did any enchanting, on purpose, it would be out of character.

He does some smithing, since that seems like a warrior type skill.

He will mix potions but no perks in Alchemy. Alchemy is more of a hobby for him.

But no enchanting. And no magic except for basic restoration (no perks in restoration).

That is workable for me.

Generally speaking, Enchanting is by no means 'essential', although if you play on Expert or Master it becomes more valuable.

In my individual case, though, it is essential, because I play Dead-is-Dead and need the bonuses, especially Magic Resistance, for the added survivability they provide. If not for the fact that Dragons often get the first strike and usually use a breath weapon for same, my sneaky Archers could probably get by without, but since said breath attack would be lethal without resistances I end up enchanting against it anyway.

i like Smith for warrior type since the extra dmg and armor you get, and im playing on master level

QFT.

Even going with 2 of the 3 tradeskills is enough to break it at master level. I made one character using the often advocated enchanting/smithing/alchemy combo and it was boring after level 30. I know that isn't exactly what we're discussing here, but I felt like mentioning it in case you are considering multiple tradeskills.

My favorite characters have been the ones where I followed an archetype rather than trying to min/max all my skills and gear. Enchanting could definitely fit in with an illusionist character, but I would avoid coupling it with alchemy or smithing if you do choose to go that route.

Yay, found my old account login info. This is the OP, by the way. :B


I like following archetypes as well, but with mixing illusion magic in already, I don't feel enchanting is out in left field. It does sound like a pain in the bum, though. Gotta cast Soul Trap (which would kind of defeat the whole stealth thing?) or hope I can find a weapon I want to use with the soul trap ability on it. I don't like to metagame this stuff (IE, look up where I could find one), so the whole prospect seems really off-putting. By contrast, I enjoy finding alchemy reagents. Is enchanting as unwieldy as it sounds on paper? =/

I hadn't decided yet if I'd go for a mix of archery and dagger or pure archery. I was gonna kind of just play and see what I end up favoring. I love the deathblow animations, but archery doesn't seem to have them?

Its not required, but honestly of the 20+ characters I have made since the beginning I don't think a single one of them couldn't enchant their own stuff. None of my characters have ever maxed out a skill though before I moved on to another character.

i've been avoiding enchanting altogether, so that my characters wouldn't become overpowered. I'm also playing on expert...

All I can say that enchanting is not a "must have" in any scenario, alchemy will do fine. In fact, alchemy will probably just mean you might have to do some extra planning to beat a tougher encounter, which should only be a good thing.

Maxing things out with enchanting, alchemy and smithing is just pointless, maxing smithy and enchanting also makes master a walk in the park so I thought I would try a game where I used no enchanting and no alchemy.

I came to the conclusion that even just using smithing can make master way too easy and that's just one of the three skills. With a new character I got up just about where glass was appearing in shops, grinded smithy to 100, bought three items that boosted smithy from Whiterun stores gauntlet at 22% and a ring and necklace at 20%, then a bought a blacksmith potion from Whiterun alchemy shop for another 50% better smithy, upgraded the glass Warhammer I found over in Markarth and then bought three two handed boost items (at 30-35% each), I have two handed at about fifty with some of the perks. When to the closest mammoths near Whiterun and a dragon attacked (only a blood), tapped my berserker rage power and nailed it with two shots from my Glass Warhammer. If I had used the berserker potion I bought it would have been one shot.

It'll only get sillier as I advance in two handed and get more perks, did Beth not see how easy it was to get huge bonuses from any type of crafting, makes three fun skills utterly pointless as I'm only an average player with zero strategy but really using any rafting skill makes the game unbalanced to all but the most terrible players.

For starters they should have made it a hundred times harder to level smithy, plus they should have done away with the enchanting xp that you gain from disenchanting stuff, that would help a bit. Then they should have killed some of the crafting interactions, for example here shouldn't be a fortify alchemy or fort smithy enchantment, no one needs weapons and armors as powerful as that makes them. Then they should have toned down the bonuses on items in shops and the wild, instead of 22% then should be like 5%-8%.

So now I've wrecked half my characters this way, luckily another one of my characters is a Mage so wears only robes and does zero crafting and of course has zero armour, still too easy with double dremora. I don't have the patience to play DID so I think I'll make up another Mage and keep at 100 health, try a few classes of magic I've not used much. Any suggestions?.

I find smithing and enchanting fine together; even on Adept. I don't use alchemy and I don't use +Smithing or +Enchanting potions or items though, so that may be the issue.

So, any comments on how tedious enchanting is, assuming I don't cheat to figure out where to find a soultrap-enchanted weapon?

I like alchemy, it allows me to create whatever buff I want, as well as restorative potions, I also find it extremely fun and rewarding to collect my own items. All of my characters use alchemy to a certain extent.

Enchanting is a powerful and useful skill, I would only use it for certain types of characters. With this skill you can buff yourself however you wish too. This is a skill to consider for any warrior.

You grinding it or levelling it naturally?. I think I got it to close to 40 just buy disenchanting stuff I had found on my travels, I did 40-100 one evening, for the soul gems I just bought all the filled ones from farengar, my missus, belafor etc in whiterun, then flipped in COW and bought from enthir, faralda, Phineas etc, did the Xbox fast wait trick and then repeated. No chance of me running around looking for wolves and crap, even with a bound weapon, not got the patience for that.

Uh, if I did it I would level it naturally. It's actually a little hard for me to not run up alchemy on my current character, though, because I just enjoy experimenting, lol. Anyways. I try not to be cheesy with anything.

Don't you have to fill soul gems regardless to enchant and then recharge your stuff? (I guess really only weapons need recharges, not armor.) Or can you take enchantments from one thing and put them on another? It's really the whole soul gem thing that has me going "Eeeeeeeeeeh" before I'm even out of the gate.

They sell filled ones so you don't have to fill them yourself if you don't want. I have stacks of cash (Im obsessive @ looting even the veg comes with me) and all the speech perks so I just do a big shopping spree and buy all the filled soul gems from the dudes above. That lasts me for ages, they don't have to be recharged often (there's a sliding scale you set when you enchant between power of enchant and number of usages) but if it starts getting annoying recharging often just use higher value gems.

I'm a huge fan of paralyze potions for an archer character. The ingredients can sometimes be difficult to find, so it pays to buy recipes and buy the ingredients from alchemists. It helps if your char is squishy or if you rely on sneak and a high level enemy comes out of nowhere and gets a drop on you.

Illusion also works magnificently well. Remember that dual-casting Illusion spells doubles their level effectiveness (Level 6 fury dual casted will frenzy a level 12 enemy) and the human effectiveness adds ten levels (6+10) x 2 = 32.

Sneakshotting with Archery is just stupid once you get your sneak past 50. I actually avoid abusing it too much so the game doesn't get boring.

Enchanting isn't a "must" with an archer character. Enchanting, I'd argue, is much more necessary for a mage (for mana redux), but it is a huge boon on other characters. You can increase your archery damage +200% with enchants alone when you get your enchant really high (I avoid doing this. I only stick with a helm that gives me +37%). When you get double effects, the powers you can grant yourself are pretty absurd.

Smithing is another huge one. You can double your bow damage with it, which really stacks up on sneak crits.

Hmm, that's a lot to think about. I might actually consider enchanting if I don't have to fill the gems myself. It seems like playing on the default difficulty, though, should mean I can happily muddle along without it. At this point, I'm leaning toward alchemy again just because I enjoy it. P:

Thanks again everyone. You've all been super helpful.

Enchanting isn't anywhere near being a must. Infact I would recommend playing without Enchanting (and Smithing) for the game to retain any sort of challenge. Using either of these makes the game extremely easy.

I completed two characters without using enchanting except as an item value increaser. My first (major in sniping, minor in dual daggers) character used enchanting only to increase item value (being a thief/money oriented). My second orc mage uses it for his weapons (found or bought) as recharge, but that's it. My mage (playing now) just tipped 100 tonight. He uses enchanting for personal use and discovery of new enchants. At level 40something, you can see I didn't spam, really, just a few rings for the cash to buy spells. He also hasn't touched smithing other than to craft his own jewelry (gold/diamond/dual enchanted). I'm not really sure how anyone can level alchemy. I spam potions with whatever I find and haven't topped 50 with any character.