Exactly, if there was some kind of diminishing return on it, it would have never been an issue. But as CCNA has already removed all the balance talk from this thread once, I suggest we change the subject.


CCNA Edit: Yes, let's keep this thread to talk about how to change Smithing and Enchanting. If you want to talk Game Balance, then find another thread for that.

Badprenup Edit: I made it big and red for more visibility ^^

On the subject of crafting in general... I do believe merchants should be able to do commission work for you, and vice versa. Commission work for goods you want should probably be the most powerful but also the most expensive.

Seriously folks, this is a good thread about Smithing and Enchanting changes. Let's keep the discussion to that.

We all know what can happen with Crafting and the game and that is not the purpose of this thread. If I have to remove any more posts that are not about how to change the Crafting Mechanic, then I will really have to moderate this thread. And that means people will be taking the weekend off of the boards, whether they want to or not.

@Badprenup, before you can offer up alternative suggestions you need to delve into what the perceived problems Smithing, and the Smithing Perk tree has.

The single-largest problem Smithing presents is the fact that this is the only method to making weapons or armor stronger. All Steel Daggers are identical. A Steel Dagger at level 1 and 81 are the same. Instead of allowing itemization to scale or have dynamic values, they chose static ones augmented by Smithing. What this means is that unless a player invests in Smithing, they cannot progress with their gear. Major mistake.

Secondly, this is a less discussed but equally important topic, crafted items are not special enough. There are not many recipes, and they are no different than what can be found in Skyrim. I don't think the distinction between Smithing and not should be that you can improve items to ridiculous values. I like that you can do this, but it is too easy to do this. Improving items is a great thing, they just need to come up with a better system that takes some sort of investment to make crazy powerful items.

Now for the Smithing Perk tree. It is pretty much terrible. The concept behind and structure just does not work. Perk investment through the first point to the last should give you some sort of benefit, not just be a stepping stone until you reach the "highest tier" of armor/weapons you can craft and improve. The idea behind "Light" and "Heavy" sides further is busted. Glass is not equivalent to Daedric, especially the weapons. This means a player investing in Light Armor is better to go the Heavy route for Daedric weapons (best) and Dragonscale armor (best). The Light Armor side awkwardly enough has 1 less point investment. They need to have some armor there to fill that void. Advanced Armors somehow combines a Heavy component to it in the Light side. I have definite ideas how to improve this, but that is the gist of the flaws. Enchanting for example which is also a crafting profession gives you benefits from the first to the last. Smithing, is the ONLY tree structured this way.

Please put your two cents in to what I suggested then?

Most efficient way of doing that as regards game space itself would be extra texture layers, assuming it was just a surface colouration thing. O'course that might actually make it run a bit slower, but it would be better than the assorted combo-textures that the alternative presents.

Still... not gonna happen.

I have already suggested that Merchants be an alternative to making our own items, and how to make it more difficult to get uber items just because the character has a bunch of gold. It is on the first page.

A lot of things aren't going to happen, doesn't mean we can't hypothesize and such.

At the very least, that Perk aside, I would have liked to have seen the ability to make multiple types of each items. Like instead of just "Elven Sword" I would have liked to see "Elven Sword Design 1, Design 2, etc" as well as things like "Elven Short Sword, Elven Scimitar, Elven Sabre, etc."


That has nothing to do with the hypothesizing of the actual Skill tree however.

I don't know about the commissioned items being more powerful right off the bat, unless you just meant that you could commission a Daedric Mace at level one if you had thousands of gold. But I think the true power of commissioning items is having them improved for you. But that's a whole other can of worms that I need to think about.

@carrotfeets

I've been studying how Smithing has worked for a while before I started my work, and I think a lot of the things you have said are addressed in what I wrote. Perks give a few static bonuses across all smithed gear, and in order to improve gear you need the proper perk to do so in my proposed system. Learning how to make new gear is now covered by quests available at certain smithing levels. The only thing it didn't address is that there aren't unique items to be smithed, but I rather like what Darkside Eric said on the matter:

I think it would have been nice to have more variations on items, especially if it affects item weight, damage, and attack speed.

Another example, I would have loved to have bucklers, kite shields, and tower shields of each tier. The type would be directly proportionate to item weight, armor, and movements speed reduction; with bucklers being light/fast/weak and tower shield being heavy/slow/strong. Kite shields would be the middle ground. That would encourage players to carry something depending on what they thing they will face. A person fighting a dragon would want at least a kite shield, while a person fighting a bandit with a sword would want something they can move with. And a Tower shield with the Deflect Arrows perk would have no trouble with archers.

I dont want smithing and enchanting to be done differently, as such.
What I want is the freedom to toy around with every mechanic as I see fit.
I want my world to be a toolbox that I can tweak every little thing of.
If this means I can be invulnerable by being invisible or just floating over bad guys, so be it.

What I do not want is to be railroaded and restricted.
What I do not want is being told: you cant do this because of some arbitrary rules we made up.
Why cant I put heal other on a sword? Yes its silly. Let me be silly in this world Im supposed to be free in.

I dont think there is any reason to change smithing and enchanting mechanics as they are now, except from opening them up more.
There is a hardcap on the enchanting/ alchemy loop (without glitches) that does not allow you to create enchantments nor potions above a certain ceiling. I want that ceiling gone.
I also want more mechanics to toy around with, not less. What would have been great is more unique enchanting effects like you can find on the notched pickaxe, or the fiery soultrap.

I was thinking more along the lines of the lore aspect to have commissioned goods potentially being better (slightly) than what you can create.

I believe having a Skyforge Daedric blade made for you could be perhaps just slightly better than your own Daedric crafted blade. Or having the ultimate enchanter enchant a weapon for you and because they are the "ultimate," it's just slightly better than yours.


Definitely agree.

There are a couple of problems with this. First, it would make the smithing skill obsolete. Why waste time, money, and perk points if you can just buy or find stuff of the same quality? Second, it does nothing to address the balance issues that arise from smithing and enchanting's potency. It just extends those problems to people avoiding smithing and enchanting. To the doubters out there, I'm using a mod that http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=4444, and I have to say the results are excellent.

Ok, I understand that. Because after all, the items that they sell commonly would be quickly made so they can be efficient. But if you pay them a special fee for a custom item, it should be better. But you should still be able to craft gear better than any merchant if you get your Smithing or Enchanting high enough. There always needs to be an incentive to do it yourself in the end.

While I agree that it doesn't fix the inherent problems in smithing, as Merari said being limited in doing something svcks. While I wouldn't go as far as they went with it, I think being able to spend lots of gold to have an item made for you instead of spending a lot of time and energy leveling smithing to make lots of gold is a fair trade off.

If I smith, I do it to make my gear, and then sell of the rest of it for profits. If I didn't want to make money smithing, but still wanted good gear, I should be able to buy it the same way others buy my gear if I was a smith.

I'm glad that effectively breaking your own arms has brought you such satisfaction.
Alternatively, you could have just tried not training those two skills so much. Or didn't that occur to you?





That would make smithing and enchanting useless. As in they'd go from being the best skills in the game to totally and utterly worthless in one fell swoop.
Besides... why the hell should some stupid milk-drinker smith with 3 lines of dialog be permanently better than you could ever have a chance of being, even if you dedicate your entire game to it?

Nope, never occurred to me, never saw it posted in these forums, can't believe it took a genius like yourself to show me the light.

Sarcasm aside, I like being presented with a challenge to overcome. I like RPGs because they offer a lot of means to overcome the challenge. I also like the smithing and enchanting system in Skyrim, it has a fair amount of depth and allows a pretty big variety of playstyles. So rather than dumbing the game down by eliminating an entire skill set from my arsenal, I'd rather take steps to fix what's wrong. I also play Bethesda games to mod them, so coming up with fixes like this is as fun to me as playing the game (I'm using the version of that mod that I suggested to the author, and plan to do a more comprehensive job of it once the CK is released.)

I've never advocated for "the same quality." I would just like to "hire" a blacksmith to improve some weapons so that I don't have to bother with leveling the skill, as it honestly doesn't make sense for a lot of character concepts to spend hours sweating over a forge. I have no expectation to acquire "Legendary" equipment in this fashion, as there should be substantial rewards for mastering the craft. However, the binary choice of "level smithing or go with vanilla weapons" is too restrictive in my opinion. There are plenty of suggestions about doing this in a way that is "fair" to people who still level the skill. For example, what if you could only "hire" weapons to be crafted to exquisite quality? Or that Skyrim's blacksmiths can't upgrade Daedric or Ebony? There are ways to improve the experience for players who don't want to be pigeonholed into leveling the crafting skills.

The other point I'm trying to make is that the fact that "improved" weapons and armor don't exist in the inventories of blacksmiths or in bandit dungeons where a grindstone exists is a bit immersion breaking, and it displays that all of those items are solely there for the benefit of the player other than reinforcing the "illusion" that you are exploring a lived-in world.

As far as some of the "drastic" smithing overhauls being suggested, they sound like fantastic ideas for mods, but are a bit impractical to expect for vanilla game updates. One could realistically expect improved weapons to appear on leveled loot lists or in the inventories of blacksmith vendors. Additionally, it doesn't seem too difficult to have a blacksmith improve my equipment for a fee either.

edit: spleling erors

As to that part, I agree somewhat. While you should be able to pay to have gear made better than yours, you should eventually be able to make better gear than the smiths of Skyrim. But in lower levels you should be able to pay for a nice weapon to be made for you that is better than what you can currently make. I think a good drop off point would be about level 50 Smithing, so anyone who doesn't smith can use the advantage but once you hit a certain level of smithing you should be able to make gear on par or better than local smiths.

In what sense does this mod of yours nerf the skills then?
Smithing might be a bit odd in that just doing the simple stuff lets you train it all the way to the max... but last I checked, Enchanting gives you diminishing returns... and essentially, that there should be a learning curve is about the only flaw I can think of in the system.
If it actually diminishes the effectiveness of the final results though, it just strikes me as pointless. Adding more to the path I can understand, but cutting short the experience just strikes me as self-defeating.





And I can cook WAY better food than the gimps at McDonalds do... which is kinda hilarious, as I'm not a particularly good cook.
My point still stands. If anything, stronger.
A world where I will never rise about the level of a McWageSlave is not a world I want to involve myself in.

No it wouldn't.

It would be the situation of do-it-yourself vs. just pay someone to do it for you.

Buying McDonald's is easier, and usually more expensive, than going to the store, buying groceries, and cooking for yourself.

if this game is a mmorpg... then the enchanting and smiting will not be so overpowered as it seems... reason is you can also get help from other players... rather than doing all by your own...

on the other hand, this is Single player game... therefore .. couldnt comprehend why the hell are the in game items not nearly as good as craftable ones... this is the part needed to be fixed..

end game is so predictable... either dXXXX or dxxxxxx set of armor.. both with D :/ nothing better already? Weapons as well ..

That actually sounds pretty good, occasionally seeing improved gear would feel more realistic, would make training smithing less of a no-brainer, and would help boost the damage of NPCs. I'd still want it coupled with a nerf though, there's an obvious balance issue that needs to be solved. Having poked around inside the game files with SkyEdit, it wouldn't take much on the technical side to do, but it would require a lot of play testing to get right. It might also frustrate a lot of people that have developed their character for the existing balance, only to find they're no longer viable after a rebalance.


Soticoto -

The mod reduces the strength of fortify smithing enchanted gear from 25% per piece to about 10%. It gets rid of fortify smithing and enchanting potions. It reduces the max strength of fortify damage enchantments from 40% per piece to about 15%.

Here are a couple of plots. The first shows damage from http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii167/bl3count/meleedamage-1.jpg, but not using fortify smithing gear or potions. The second shows damage with http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii167/bl3count/meleecrafting.jpg. That extra fortification drives damage through the roof (roughly doubles it), so getting rid of it goes a long way towards solving the problem.

Curious... I spend most of my time with ALL my characters trying to achieve the absolute opposite of that.... even to the extent that I enchanted many MANY fortify alchemy enchantments and used the prison glitch to stack them on my character all at once just to make better, stronger potions... for better, stronger enchants...

Reminds me of when I made the mod for Morrowind to fix Altmer because they were too yellow ... and there were cries of outrage. Go figure. Sometimes a "problem" really isn't a problem.

Bethesda seems to have been trying to make it so that you could make any skill viable via enchanting or alchemy, and the changes that mod makes probably take too much away from alchemy. Not really sure, I'll probably end up playing around with more graphs if I get around to tackling a rebalance myself (there are sure to be dozens of rebalance mods released shortly after the CK becomes available, not to mention the possibility that Bethesda takes a crack at it.) In my opinion alchemy and enchantment bonuses shouldn't be as strong as the skills themselves, even combined, since they effect pretty much every skill in the game (meaning you get a lot of flexibility and power with far fewer perk points) so a bit of nerfing is justified.

So you're saying that because you have the choice to use them for multiple things, that they should automatically be crappy at doing those things?

Y'know... this is why I don't generally bother with poisons. The effort to payout ratio isn't that great.
Likewise, if it took getting Enchanting up to 100 just to get an overall 20% bonus to a skill I really needed at its optimum... I'd probably just spend my time AND my perks on something better.
Even the fact that it takes 4 enchants to be able to cast expensive spells for ONE SCHOOL of magic bothers me enough that I deliberately amp my enchanting so I can cover at least two.

The only poisons I find useful are the paralysis ones, but those are very useful. The fortify damage potions are pretty strong, but they're temporary so I don't see them as being a huge balance breaker even at their current strength. The +100% smithing skill potions though, the +100% worth of smithing skill enchantments, and +160% worth of damage enchantments are all grossly overpowered. With the three of those together you get about 5.2x base damage. With full perks and 100 skill in one-handed you get 3x base damage. So a combination of enchanting and alchemy does much more for your melee or archery damage than maxing the appropriate combat skill. You could literally cut it in half and it would still be a significant boost.