I agree it's very strange. I started under the impression that all armor tiers had a weapon set attributed to them because they did in heavy. The light armor tree is just very strange, disjointed and will screw up your plans.

How so? All I did was point out that 40% of the skill trees are designed in the same manner, no one seems to have a problem with the others. It clearly states that Daedric is on the heavy side, you smith weapons and armor, its does not take huge leaps of logic to figure out that if you want Daedric weapons and armor you must go heavy.

I don't want A and B. That doesn't even make any sense. I carry a shield (and all the perk points that go with that) to take advantage of the benefits of light armor you mentioned. The trade offs is reduced weight and add mobility over increased protection. Weapons have nothing to do with it or at least they shouldn't.

Glass swings faster, Daedric hits harder. That sounds suspiciously like, move faster in light armor, more protection in heavy.

I'm not sure why you think I have a problem understanding how skill trees work, I don't. If that was the case, my post would have been a question not an opinion or point. I think the main problem is that people are surprised to reach Dragon and find that there are no Dragon weapons. Unless you've read forums or a guide it's misleading. Had I known that glass weapons would be the highest level of weapons I could create without wasting 4 more perks, I would have most likely dropped the Block tree and went DW. Still I never complained about my personal character, just that due to Dragon smithing not including weapons, they should have allowed you to continue in the tree.

But that's the thing - they do, at least in Oblivion and Skyrim; I don't know how stuff worked in Morrowind. In Skyrim the smithing is oriented around the material involved, not what you're crafting. You have to learn how to smith steel (or dwarven metal, or glass, etc) but not how to forge a battleaxe. So the only way to be able to improve daedric weaponry (effectively anyway) is to get the daedric smithing perk. Of course they could have separated armor and weaponry smithing, but at only one perk per level that just adds expense. Daedric armor is heavy armor, and that's how they separated the two major branches of the smithing tree - heavy armors (and corresponding weapons made of those same materials) on the right, light on the left.

I don't quite see the necessity anyway; get your smithing skill high enough to take the glass perk and you can already improve any glass weapon enough to where it's gonna give a hell of a wallop to whatever you hit with it.

A glass 1h sword does not swing faster than a daedric 1h sword. Where are you getting this from???? Nevermind, I'm out after that comment.

I really don't understand why some people thought they could go up to dragonbone/dragonscale and then loop around to Daedric. As has already been mentioned, that's not how these skill trees ever work. It's not a loop. It's two routes to get to the same end goal.

The perks build off the previous ones. Dwarven is stronger than steel, so you have to take steel first. Same with Orcish, and so on. Whether you're going up the right side or the left. So if you could look around, you'd have Daedric with no foundation in heavy armor forging. It really wouldn't make any sense to me.

Maybe Bethesda should have split Dragonbone and Dragonscale into two separate perks (turning the tree into a fork) to avoid the confusion.

Yes everyone knows the Smithing tree is stupid. The entire concept of it is flawed to begin with. Smithing is the only way outside of Enchanting to augment your weapons. Since weapons have fixed stats, a Daedric is a Daedric is a Daedric weapon. Not only was there a huge oversight in how the Light versus Heavy Smithing tree was constructed, it even existing is the core problem. The fact that immediately once you gain a tier of crafting EVERYTHING leading up until then is obsolete, well yeah that is a big problem as well.

Personally, I would like to see crafting Perks removed entirely and instead make itemization more dynamic than what it is currently. Vendors would upgrade items, items would scale not only with scale but with character level, and items would have variable stats, meaning it would be possible to find an upgraded Daedric item for example. There would always be a minimum item value (to distinguish tiers) but that isn't to say you might find some Ebony that is superior to your Daedric etc. That is way more appealing than finding a tier of item with no hopes of ever upgrading it again outside of crafting.

If they would have just included Dragonbone or Dragonscale weapons it wouldn't be an issue - OR - if there was an upside to using a glass sword over a daedric sword (speed for example) but there isn't.

Then you punish Light Armor users as your weapons you can craft are inferior (and look butt ugly).

The light armor branch is just badly designed, there's no question about that. That doesn't change what I said, though.

That's part of the downside of light armor - the weapons don't do quite as much damage. The upside is that they have improved mobility and more carry-weight left to carry loot.

In game experimentation

I disagree, you can't go backwards in any of the other skill trees, why should this one be any different at all? It's all about choices in this game. If you want both Daedric weapons and Dragonscale armor for the endgame without using perks in both sides of the skill tree, you'll just have to do without upgrades until you reach 100 smithing,

Both are badly designed. The entire Smithing tree is poorly constructed. From the first point, until the last point I should receive a benefit from the Perks I invest. I do not. They are simply pre-reqs, which for me is why I chose to the Heavy Smithing route despite wearing Light Armor as this gives me access to Daedric Weapons and Dragonscale Armor. I absolutely do not care what-so-ever about Steel, Dwarven, Orcish, or Ebony. That is flawed.

Instead, I would like to see something more like the Enchanting system. The first 5 points add to how much you can improve any item. Perks past that add unique skills to alter crafted items. Total overhaul of the Smithing tree.

Let me emphasize my previous point. If they allowed you to go backwards on the Smithing skill tree, they're going to have to let us go backwards on the other ones as well.

Swing speed still does not make it comparable. Why would I take a weapon that takes two hits to kill an enemy when I can choose one I can do in one hit? Skyrim does not work like a traditional RPG where DPS matters. If you are standing still and whacking away, your strategy is flawed. You should be doing hit and runs or employing Blocking, which means you are losing damage having a faster weapon.

Raise Alchemy, Enchanting and Smithing to 100.
Make a soul catching bow, get some empty grand soul gems, and go kill mammoths for their grand souls.
Enchant the best set of alchemy gear you can (helmet, gloves, necklace and ring).
Put it on and make the best enchanting potions you can.
While under the effect of those enchanting potions, make another set of even better alchemy gear.
Trash the first set.
Using the second set, make the very best enchanting and smith potions you can.
While under the effect of the enchanting potions, make the very very best set of smithing gear you can (armor, gloves, necklace, ring)

Make a glass bow (you don't need to be in your smithing gear or potions, they won't help)

Put on your smithing gear, and drink your smithing potions.

Improve that glass bow. Enchant that glass bow with whatever floats your boat.

That glass bow will two-shot town guards, and one-shot just about everything in a dungeon. WIth sneak/archery perks, it will one-shot town guards.

BEWARE, weeks ago the most popular thread here was about how doing this would break the game, making it boring to fight stuff.
This week, the post popular thread is about how you can't go from light armor to dragon to daedric.
Next week it'll probably be about how the greyboards are obviously having orgies.

Perhaps, but I have a lot fewer complaints about the heavy side than I do the light. The heavy side at least has a steady progression, each including a set of weapons.

The light side, though, has weapons included with three of them and three of the perks include heavy armor. Steel is pointless for someone going light armor, except for the steel weapons. And why is a heavy armor light steel plate combined with scaled armor?

I think it is fine.

1st: going the light route takes 1 less perk to get dragon armor so you are ahead of the heavy side.

2nd: part of the process (why you cant skip from steel to daedric even if your skill is 100) is because you have to develope the skills to work each type of material. Steel works and is handled differently that Dwarven which handles differently than Orcish materials and so on. Just because you are a master at smithing light materials doesn't mean you know anything about handling the materials needed to make Daedric.


I think they put steel plate with scale as adding it to the heavy side would put yet another perk between steel and dragon on the heavy side. Light would be two less perks to get to dragon. And it doesn't go with plain Steel because it has much better protection.

There is no improved mobility between like weapons of different trees.

That's called exploiting the crafting system, it's ancient news.

Regardless, you skip tiers too fast for those perks to matter. The progression of Skyrim is not slow and steady enough for me to feel like those perk points had their purpose. Within the first 2 hours of the game I had an Orcish Bow. By the time my Smithing caught up, I was using an Ebony Bow so it just did not matter that I could improve the Orcish Bow. Same with Armor. The Smithing Tree is just - bad.

If you're on PC, you can also get the http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1935 mod. Looks pretty and they're more powerful than Daedric. Of course, since the game wasn't built with such power in mind, it would be wise to up your difficulty if you use this mod.