I've been reading the threads about exploiting the alchemy, smithing and enchanting trees to create super armour/weapons.

I was wondering if you can avoid the alchemy tree and create some awesome armour/weapons just using or exploiting smithing/enchanting trees. Mainly so it will be quicker and still leave the game challenging.

Has anyone done this? What results did you get?

Thanks

i have done this and yes it can be as challenging as you want to make it.

my advice is to use enchantments on your armor health, magika etc.

have only one or two magic weapons that are only for emergencies. go up in the skills instead.


i am doing this on apprentice level and it is challenging enough for now.

Do you know what kind of values can be achieved?

I think armour tops out at 80% reduction or about 570 points. Using ALC/SMI/ENC Elven armour could quickly reach the cap.

Basically, if you remove the alchemy part of the method what will you end up with? E.g. would elven armour still hit the armour cap?

you'll be able to hit the cap and produce good enchantments without alchemy. I'm not sure of the exact numbers though. You can buy smithing potions that go up to 50% which combined with 100 smithing and a full set of enchanted smithing armor will still hit the cap with ease with ebony and daedric for sure.

Enchanting effects don't improve that much with alchemy. 25% to 29% on some things. 40% to 48% on other things.

Alchemy is the least important profession if you want to make very powerful characters within what was intended.
You can still hit the armor and resistance caps in elven armor, but your TtBAt0* may be increased from 1 to 2.

*Thwacks to Bring Alduin to 0 hp

afaik the alchemy part adds:

fortify enchanting: 29%
fortify smithing 135% (i think)

long story short, even without the alchemy you still can end up with very high rated armor.

i suggest not maxing out your skill tree perks and dont wear all 4 (or 5 if you use the falmer cheat) of the enchanted smithing armor. it's overkill.

Great replies thanks. I got the impression using alchemy really took things to another level in terms of damage etc and to me it felt too much like cheating / removing too much of the challenge.

Thanks for the tip Amethyst Deceiver, I'll experiment a bit with how many pieces to wear to create something powerful but not one hit.

My current character is a bit of a mess, I ended up doing a bit of everything before skill farming on smithing to get daedric armour around level 30.

I want light armour this time!

I want to restart with a clearer idea of what I want from my character. This game is awesome!