I have been reading this Skyrim forum for about a month solid and I'm hooked. I'm new to TES series (as of Xmas when my wife got me Skyrim) and I have been trying my best to get a handle on as much as possible. One thing keeps popping up in general discussion that I am interested in hearing more about. Please keep in mind that I am new to this stuff, so don't hate me because I don't know the answer to this very basic question:

What does it mean to have "Overpowered" weapons? Is that just when you max out a weapon with smithing and enchantments? Or does it have to do with mods?

Does the weapon, on maxed out damage, give you an unnecessary edge over enemies?

It CAN refer to mods, but it would be more about the features of the mod giving you a distinct advantage.


It's all a matter of balance. Also, at least with most of the topics it gets brought up in, it's not as much a consensus amongst the community, as it is one person, or a small group of people's opinion. Mind you, the only thing the whole community can agree on is that the game Has infact been released, and the CK has come out. Other than that, we're one big happy anarchy.

I have not done it myself as I just started enchanting at lvl 35. But the general consensus is that if you max smithing or enchanting you will become OP even at master.

Now OP is a subjective term. Maybe 1 shotting everything is boring. But unless you grind these skills you wont be 1 shotting things at lvl 15 at least. Depends if you want to have a challenge constantly or want to feel your character has become powerful. Many people would agree that if you play the game normally and dont grind skills you wont become too powerful to quickly.

140 hours into a character and im lvl 47 no grinding. If this were oblivion I would be close to 100 by now (cause the grind was sooo good)

You are dovahkiin a legendary amalgamation of godlike immortal (dragon) and mortal fesh.

Why should you be anything but OP?

Unless of course you're RP'ing a non-dovahkiin character... But then... Why are you playing Skyrim instead of DAO or DA2?

Overpowered means you have a weapon that has a damage matrix out of proportion for the enemies that are around you. some people like playing like this, while others can't stank it. I personally don't like truly Overpowered weapons, but I do like to have a weapon that's on the higher edge of reasonable. It all comes down to preferance.

For example, if I look up the stats on my level 41 Orc warrior, he has an Orcish greatsword that does 409 points of damage, absorbs 22 points and can paralyze for 5 seconds. It is kind of OP really. (That damage is while wearing his enchanted armor. Naked it is only 146. But the skills apply to both weapons and armor so...)

that's also how you get unlimited magicka (almost)

enchant 4 armor/necklace/rings with spell reduction costs (up to 2 classes per item) at 25%, you can get free spells in 2 classes of magic

-OR-

enchant 4 pieces of armor/rings/necklaces with spell reduction costs (up to 2 classes per item, with 4 classes overall) with 50% or near 50%, and you have free or nearly free spells in 4 classes of magic

What people are referring to, generally, is legendary smithed weapons with maxed dual-enchants on gear and weapons

I stacked up +160% 1hand damage on apparel, with a legendary ebony sword and it hits for 155 damage a swing, before my enchant bonus (which now is almost kinda small lol)

It IS OP when 9/10 enemies that come at you fall to 1 swing.

It's all personal preference... some people enjoy feeling like gods walking around with impunity. Most people like challenge.

The main thing to avoid is powerleveling, or grinding, your crafting skills. Which is the practice of buying up iron ingots and ore to make TONS of daggers which you then enchant leveling both smithing and enchanting while making a ton of money to boot.

My first character did this and it kinda ruined the fun of the game for me. For 1, I will never find gear again... everything I make is superior already.

Instead just level up naturally. Craft leather armor with the hides you collect from beasts, and otherwise just craft armor & weapons you intend to use as well as improving any valuable weapons/armor you loot before selling to increase your profit a bit. Same thing with enchanting... don't enchant gear you smith just to sell, instead level enchanting my refilling magic weapons/staves (using lesser through greater gems depending on how many charges it takes) enchanting looted valuable weapons (after tempering, before selling) with petty gems, and enchanting your own gear with greater (for weapons) and grand (for apparel) gems.

There are also ways you can glitch the system to craft TRULY overpowered gear with ridiculous bonuses in the thousands or hundreds of thousands... Just avoid these altogether.

What happened in the early stages after release was that more than a few people rushed in and power-levelled their smithing skills, and created top of the line armour and weapons when they hadn't really been playing the game at all, only concentrating on boosting those smithing skills to get the top end stuff. It didn't help that there were various youtube vids on how to do it, and cheats/hints etc posts.

What that all meant was that people were then finding that the game wasn't as enjoyable for them, because having that top quality gear took a lot of the challenge out early in the game. However, in all fairness, it was probably more a result of some people's thinking being along the lines of the linear fps games, where the armour and weapons were balanced against the scripted enemies that a player would face...however, that didn't help in Skyrim's open world environment.

One way to resolve all this issue is to take a balanced approach to smithing...get yourself armour and weapons, and boost them incrementally. You don't need to take your smithing to 100 while you are still level 5 character...basically, boost your smithing up a notch, and play on...when you notice that the bad guys are beating you up more, and the opponents seem harder, then boost your smithing up and boost your gear up a notch more. That more or less balances things out.

The other way to do it is to use your smithing skill as a sort of levelling skill. When your other skills get you almost up to the next character level, use your smithing skill to give you that last little boost to level up. That system works really well, and it means that your armour and weapon improvements more or less keep pace with your character advancement.

I know those...

by the way, when you use an alchemy-boosting potion, and craft & eat, they start to get overpowered FAST (ten is in the billions of multiplication, and lets you create/upgrade to millions of damage, with smithing potions)

edit: I'm a mage. we have more base damage (180+ for incinerate dual-cast, for example), but we can only cast that two times before we're out of magicka. and that's around level 30 with ALL points put into magicka AND + 100 magicka per amulets and dragon masks... we die FAST. we play the glass cannon. no armor, but extremely high damage until we run out of magicka (potion of ultimate magicka is a life saver)

Over Powered can apply to many things in this game. The way it is designed, you have the freedom to develop your character anyway you want as you play. The mechanics are in place to let you acquire skill increases as you use them in the normal course of the game. In other words, just playing it, your skills and character will level up as it needs to as you go through the game with little to no grinding.

But, this is the part that allows people to easily create an unbalanced character that can make powerful weapons or armor or potions or sneak or whatever. All someone has to do is Grind and Exploit and they have a character that is way too powerful for what the game throws at them, or worse, they create a character that has high levels, but no combat/defense/recovery skills.

So, play the game, grind out a level or two in skill here and there as needed, and you won't be creating an uber character with uber stuff. Or, if you want to create an uber character with uber stuff, you can. It is all up to you and how you approach things.

I see. This all sounds very similar to what I was planning as my next stage of development for my character. My character is a very good pickpocket and lock picker and a master smith (at level 42) and I've been thinking for a while that learning to enchant would be a fairly natural progression now that I have complete mastery of the forge. And since enchantment deals with armor and weapons it seems perfect for my character's next challenge. So, I think I will begin focusing on enchantment as I play.

Right now, the only thing my character can kill in one swing of the war axe (one handed) is a fox. But my weapons and armor have not enchantments. Generally speaking I think increasing the carry weight is more important to my character than dealing out god-like damage. So, I don't foresee myself really using any overpowered weapons or armor or combo thereof. But as a master craftsman I will certainly make some of those kinds of items. My character is all about crafting the best weapons and armor, but not necessarily using them.

You don't need to grind smithing or enchanting to become op, you just need some luck. 2 hitting most bandits at level 15 is op in my opinion. But it's a luck factor. If you find the right gear, like in Diablo, you can become op quick.

Without enchanting and only smithing to dwemer without any grinding I became op. Due to the fact that I found +20% to one handed gauntlets, and a +15% to one handed ring.

I feel the whole overpowered argument is based on person opinion and therefore irrelevant. I view that things in the game can make you very strong or powerful and its there if you want to usr it. A few examples are increase your smithing all the way up perk up to get the daedric smithing perk improve that gear to flawless. Another thing people say is if you max put the perks in enchanting you get get a hundred percent reduction to magic.

I get twenty five percent reductions in all magic schools because you pretty much have to yo usr your spells effectively, I get a seventy five percent reduction in destruction, because I feel you have to have that to use it effectively. It's just based on how powerful you wish your character to be, I am glad we could be super powerful if we wish, its our choice and there is less restrictions that way.

i deliberately limited myself to only steel armor and weapons, and smithed only materials that I found. Avoided alchemy and enchanting all together. By L35 I'm practically untouchable and can insta-kill most non-boss enemies. The only way to make the game fun again was to remove my smithed armor and weapons. Which means smithing was a total waste of time and skill points. That's why people say it's OP. You don't need to grind it, or to exploit it with alchemy etc in order for it to be OP, those just make it happen after 5 hours instead of 50.

Truly overpowered means the game is no longer fun. As you one-shot your tenth ancient dragon with your fortify-restoration-exploit-smithed-and-enchanted-super-weapon^TM, and that hollow feeling creeps in, it's time to start a new character, and remind yourself why you were playing the game in the first place.

You may be right, but the reason I started this topic is because I literally had no idea what Overpowered (OP) meant.

Also, it seems that some people use OP to refer to the person who creates a topic. Is this to abbreviate "Original Poster"? I'm wet behind the ears when it comes to this forum stuff. So I find it helpful to ask the dumb questions that no one ever talks about. For example, Why do some people refer to The Elder Scrolls as "the TES"... Doesn't the T stand for The? So, that would be the The Elder Scrolls? I'm probably either being too picky about that one or else I've completely got it all wrong (or both).

Anyway, thanks everybody for helping out a noob.

I have two lower powered characters. I just use the OP one for fun.

Edit: OP can mean original poster or overpowered. It's always clear from context which is meant... hopefully...

I find that smithing the lesser gear such as leather or steel without perks is very useful and allows me to make that armor more improved so I could wear it at later levels if my character liked that specific armor.

I was not challenging your post, I just had to say something about it, sometimes threads regarding this issue devolves into peoples different opinions on the matter and the argument goes nowhere.

OP could mean over powered or original post or poster, you just have to read what context its written in. Some forum jargon I do not have the feel for its a good thing to ask that is one reason the forum is here.

You are welcome, I hope my explanation was of some use to you.

Dont bother, just play the game. If you encounter that beast in the game, youll know believe me. And if not, well there is no need to know. The problem is the more you read about it, the easier it becomes to meet it. So stay away.

OP stands for both, depending on context.

I hope we helped you, and the "the TES" is a revisit of the department of redundancy department

"Overpowered" is in the eye of the beholder. It not only varies from player to player, it may vary, from one minute to the next, for the same player. If you feel your weapon or armor is over powered for a particular situation, it is. If you don't, it isn't.

forum talk:
OP: original post, original poster

IRC talk
OP: overpowered

the two clash here. Different dialects.

Definitely, yours and all of the posts so far have been most helpful. This is perhaps the most successful topic I've ever started, and it has taught me a lot.

@ Ncknck - I do just play the game. I think yours is some good advice for anyone who plays Skyrim. But I still feel it's important to know about this issue. You talk to other people who enjoy the game and some have bad experiences due to this overpowering thing. But now, after reading all of these great comments, I can see that they just didn't realize that how they were playing was ruining their own experience within the game.

I just play the game. And even though this is my first Elder Scrolls game and I'm on my first toon (that's what it's called right?), ...even though I'm new I still have preferences for my character and my thief/smith would not use overpowered weapons and/or armor. He would certainly craft those items and know about them (in the normal course of mastering his craft) but he really prefers the simplicity: Legendary Steel Plate armor and dual wielded Legendary Ebony War Axes. My defense is fairly good and my offense is fairly good but they are no where near what is being described here as "overpowered". It's still very difficult to get through most dungeons and caves.

So, I agree. I will just play the game.