I was just wondering, what do you all think of looping?

If you don't know what that is, it's when you get Alchemy, Enchanting and Smithing all to 100 (preferably for best results) then you make a Smithing set of armor + jewellery and a set of Alchemy. Then you use Alchemy to make Smithing potions then pop that potion while wearing your Smithing gear then make your beastly armor + weapons that you will be using, THEN you enchant that gear with Enchanting potions.

...or something like that...

Anyway, what do you think of this? Do you think it's right? If so, will you be doing it to get ready for DLC?
If not, why?

Really interested to hear your opinions on the matter.

HACKETT OUT.

To each his/her own. Since console gamers can't use console commands: go for it.

I made a set of Alchemy gear that I looped, but only used it once for the hell of it. I can improve leather-based armors past the cap by 'normal' means and my Ebony Daggers can 2- or 3-shot Death Overlords so I'm good.

I personally don't do it because it would take any sort of challenge out of the game for me and take up quite a bit of time and materials. But if someone else wants to do it in their single player game then whatever. I do on occasion use enchantments to boost my potions but that's only to help level my alchemy, and nothing extraordinary.

I guess I'm just indifferent to it.

I looped my stuff once and ended up getting 588 armor rating and 330 on my bow and 167 on my sword with some pretty nice enchantments. All Daedric. But, it doesn't really even count as looping because my Alchemy is still like 40 and my Enchanting is low too so I didn't get that high a damage. I know someone who, while sneaking and after a potion, could hit 4000 damage with his bow. For a player like me who doesn't get on much and likes things easy, this sounds very nice and I'm looking into doing it before DLC

It's called looping? I don't like the name. I demand another term for this practice.

I find looping acceptable. It's clever, and requires some substantial preparation to achieve OP state. On the other hand, I think abusing restoration glitch to get to Super-OP state is in rather poor taste. But seriously, this is a single player game. You can do whatever you want. Only person you are cheating is yourself, if you think it's cheating. If you don't think it's cheating, it's not cheating. It's a single player game.

Exploiting

If my assassin chick is wearing her DB stuff she can backstab for 5160. ...normal improvement.

Oh, I thought the OP was referring to the Resto Loop - that's the one I did the one time. I'm too lazy to do the 'normal' loop for only like 3-4% boost per item.

One things for sure, it seems to me that looping in general is a tad glitchy. Maybe it's due to the overwhelming number of factors such as Enchanting level, Smithing level, Alchemy level, Heavy/Light armor, if you use jewellery right, if you follow the steps exactly to get max OPness etc. Or maybe the game just gives out random percentages sometimes. I'm more leaning towards too many factors but who knows.

I have resisted the temptation. This is the farthest I went with the exploit:
Using the very best fortify enchant potion found in the wild I made a full set of fortify alchemy gear. At the alchemy table, wearing my enchanted gear, I made a better fortify enchant potion and +smithing potions. At the enchanting alter I used the potion to make a set of +smithing gear. That's as far as I'll go.
Now I can improve most (all?) armors to the cap, Daedric bows to ~200 or so, etc. Any more would feel like cheating. Plus, I get so bored of collecting the appropriate gear/ingredients/soulgems/smithing materials/etc. Every time I get a new item it's like, crap. Back to Windhelm and the grindstone.

Have you seen this thread?

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1342463-complete-character-design-freedom-damage-resist-caps-and-ridiculous-damage-thread-10/

It's pretty awesome thread.

Sorry, but the procedure you describe is not a loophole or an exploit. That's just "having skills maximized and using them".

It becomes a loophole when you either do the restoration glitch or the fortify enchantment loop.

The restoration glitch means: Enchant a set of Fortify Alchemy gear and wear it. Brew a potion of Fortify Restoration. Drink it. Re-equip your Fortify Alchemy gear. Make another potion of Fortify Restoration. Repeat until the amount of Fortify Alchemy is absurd. Then brew a bunch of potions - Fortify Enchantment, Fortify Smithing, and a bunch of normal potions like Restore 2000000000000 Health and the like. Do with these overpowered potions whatever you like.

The fortify enchantment loop means: Make your set of Fortify Alchemy gear again and wear it. Create 5ish potions of Fortify Enchantment. Use them to make another set of Fortify Alchemy which is slightly better than the previous one. Make another set of Fortify Enchantment potions and repeat the process. After quite some time, your Fortify Alchemy will be as absurdly increased as with the Fortify Restoration glitch and you can then create your overpowered potions as well; also of course a nicely overpowered set of Fortify Smithing gear with another bunch of Fortify Enchantment potions.


So. My opinion on these is that it's very good that they exist. Nobody is forced to use the glitches, but if someone wants to play a one-shot-killer in Master difficulty (with some extra difficulty mods, perhaps), then they can do just that. It is a single-player game, so nobody except the player themselves is bothered by that player's activities.

I myself used the Fortify Restoration glitch one time and got scared when I realized that I could improve the armor rating of one set of gloves so much with it that the gloves alone would have crossed the armor rating maximum. I then decided to wait until the potion's effect wore off and re-equipped my blacksmithing gear before I improved the whole set of armor normally - if I want to be a one-shot-killer, I'd play in Novice difficulty.

It's not an exploit. The game has a built in limitation to the gains you'll receive after a few times of the Alchemy/Enchant thing.

The unlimited Restoration potion thing is a bug, and I wouldn't use it, but other players can play how they want to, since it's in the game they paid for.

Don't forget that it takes time and application to get those 3 skills to 100, and then make all the potions and enchanted gear you need. It's not as if it's opening the console and typing tgm. Also, some people discovered this for themselves by playing the game, not by reading about it on a forum, so they had no preconceptions about whether they were 'cheating' or over powering their characters. They were just experimenting with the limitations of the game.

Some people also get satisfaction from having the game hit them as hard as possible, and to be able to make their character hit it back as hard as possible. Skyrim is far from a hardcoe niche game, but don't forget there's mods.

For a console user, these Restoration and Fortify Enchant "glitches" happen to be pretty convenient. Thank you guys for expanding my view and telling me things I wasn't aware of before. All of you have very interesting opinions and I thank you for sharing

Personally, I can't find any kind of goal in it. I want my favored weapons to be the best they can be, but there's no "best". At this point, I just plan to improve my junk with 100 Smithing, no enchantments or potions. If I really feel like doing more, I may wear +100% smithing gear, made without Fortify Enchantment.

Can this raise a bonus over the natural 25% you get with max skill? Say I have a 100 rated enchanting, will enchanting bonus gear let me create a destruction reduction cost item over the 25% reduction?

Yes. I think you can get about 33% with this, but I've never done it, so I'm just going off other enchantments I've created. That's using a potion that is created with an end of loop set of Fortify Alchemy enchanted gear.

That sounds about right.

Totally unnecessary, but fine if you want to sink the time.