"As I left Sovegarde I had only one thing on my mind...a comfortable retirement."

-Ah'Nak, Orc lvl 18

So, at this point in the storyline I decided to "exploit," smithing. I had played the game on Master as a dual-wielding heavy armor wearing Orc warrior. I had not put a single point in any other tree and the game was beyond challenging, but I did it! So, from a story perspective I decided that it Ah'Nak would probably want to relax for a few years after risking life and limb to liberate Skyrim from Alduin. He bought that little house in Whiterun that he always passed by on his way to the traders.

Role-playing on....

His specialty was iron daggers. There was a war going on and as such there was a great demand for daggers. Soldiers needed them not just for fighting but to cut their meat, to shave with, and to throw at targets to entertain themselves at camp. So, he set about crafting them by the hundreds. Of course he crafted other things. A suit of Ebony plate and a pair of Daedric blades. Finally he pulled out all of the bones and scales that he had collected and cobbled them into a suit of dragon armor. Very fitting for the Dovahkiin.

... that's where the role-playing ends...

It took me about three hours of running around to get my smithing maxed so I had to earn my badassery. When I put the armor on it notched the game down a difficulty level. Fights were still challenging but I clearly had the edge. I no longer had to spam potions to keep myself alive. I was satisfied.

Then I decided to exploit enchanting. I used a glitch to get access to an unlimited supply of petty soul gems and enchanted a buttload of daggers with absorb health. It also took about three hours, but it would have taken far far longer if I had not exploited the game. After I was done I had enchanted my dragon armor to give me an extra 200 health and I had boosted each of my resistances to around 40%. I was also walking around with daedric blades that svcked health and stamina from my opponents. In short, I had become a blender of death for my enemies. I could walk into wave after wave of opponents and kill them in 1-2 swings. During one quest 8 or so guards tried to take me down. I carved them up like a Thanksgiving turkey. So, naturally, I got bored and now I am planning on rerolling a new character.

If I had been smart about it and not exploited the glitch to boost enchanting then I would have gradually gotten better and better enchants until around level 50 or so I was in line with the content. However, I decided to mortgage my gameplay experience in the name of badassery. Which is my own fault. No one to blame there but me. I am going to keep the toon around, however, because after a hard day of work there is nothing like slaughtering a few guards with abandon.

Oh poor console players. The work you have to go through to OP your toon...

I play on a PC

I almost think this is a "phase" when you play this game...

1.) Walk around getting owned by enemy bosses in dungeons

2.) Get pissed off and find on Youtube how to craft 8 million daggers in 5 minutes

3.) Walk around in Daedric Armor slashing wolves/bears/trolls in the name of badassery

4.) Still get owned by a Mage boss or Briarheart... maybe because you weren't aware of the level scaling!

5.) Get even more pissed and decide to enchant the eight million daggers with the 8 million petty soul gems you bought with the souls of the 8 million wolves/elk/rabbits you killed roaming the country side.

6.) Find a Fortify Smithing enchant and craft armor that has a rating of 899 when the cap is 567 and craft weapons with over 100 Dmg.

7.) After 49 hours of drudgery, you still can't one hit kill some things in the game and other things are killing/almost killing you and you get EXTREMELY pissed off because you expected to be a god already!

8.) Then you realize... HEY, ALCHEMY!

9.) You introduce yourself to the vicious/recursive loop that is Smithing/Enchant/Alchemy and now you have an armor rating of 445,134,098 when your armor cap is... 567. Now your weapons do 4,234,321 and you one hit kill almost everything.

10.) Set it to Master and guess what... you still one hit kill everything!

11.) Complain to Bethesda that you spent 97 hrs doing all this stuff and the game is... too easy.

12.) Wait for the next Elder Scrolls game to do it all over again...



Not a knock on you, but I was trudging along this path and stopped myself because I found I was not enjoying the game at all doing this.

I am a long time gamer. It is in my nature to find ways to break the games that I play.

Now that I have it out of my system I can go back and play legit.

And I ONLY play on Master.

This stuff is so silly to me. Yes, you can become a god in an Bethesda game... they all allow that. I don't think power-leveling smithing is much faster than running straight to Umbra in Morrowind.

Bethesda games are about exploration, plain and simple. They were never about deep combat challenge.

I've been playing games for over two decades and I don't find it fun at all to find exploits in games because that defeats the purpose of playing them.

I'm glad you play on master, but I wasn't directing the comment solely on you, but just as something that gets my point across and that is exploits can ruin any game on any difficulty.

Hope you have more fun on you next playthrough!

Wow, hi-larious. Don't hold back, tell me how you really feel.

And is telling people that blacksmithing can be leveled by creating daggers really "releasing information to the public?" And did I share the particulars of the soul gem exploit? And are you aware that there is a forum here for cheats/exploits.

Now please do the world a favor and walk yourself into traffic.

Byes

Moya's internal monologue "He's doing it wrong. What he's doing is totally wrong. I'd better tell him it's wrong. Yeah, that's what I am going to do."

Your nerd rage nourishes me.

thanks!

I think that they can be about both. Playing through the main storyline on the hardest difficulty is pretty tough and requires a good deal of strategy and fighting on your terms.

Wow, really? Wouldn't it have been easier to just console code your way to level 50, 100 Enchant and all the perks?

I decided to walk right up to that line but not to cross it.

There really is no difference. Either you are exploiting or you aren't. I could see if this was multiplayer, but it ain't. Next time, use 'advskill [skillname] ##'

Sure. I'll keep that in mind.