Except that it's totally possible to kill dragon priests very early in the game, with the right strategy. And even the masks, while unique, are still a bit underwhelming if you've leveled Enchanting.

There should be some loot, somewhere, that is better than anything you can craft for yourself. That's the only stuff that is worth getting, without setting any artificial no-crafting limitation on yourself.

It doesn't necessarily need to be better but it could be unique. Like the daedra quest rewards have unique enchantments, sadly the weapons stats svck.

I think the problem really is level scaling and the freedom to do whatever you want at any time. I think some things shouldn't be possible until you're stronger and they should have unique rewards that reflect that.

The problem with the 'unique loot' idea is that if you can get a really powerful item without another of similar power then you don't need either of them, while if you do need another such item to get one then you can't get any of them, and in both cases they're basically redundant. There's also the issue that they can't be significantly more powerful than the stuff you can find/make yourself, or acquiring one breaks the game in half, which makes going to the trouble of getting them of debatable worth.

The idea is to have unique effects not achieveable via enchanting, but also not "better" than, like:

1. shout cooldown reduction set of equipment and hard cap at 80%. this should make shout-based play-style viable

2. armor buff in rings and necklaces which does not count as armor to boost the alteration mage into a tank/battlemage, currently just 300 armor gets them owned too fast

3. Staff that increase destruction damage by 80% and mana costs by 50%. All destruction spells operate in dual cast mode while you are equipping it.

4. Amulets with special activations like 10 damage drain life cloak for 10 seconds whenever you take damage.

Are these worth it, as compared to self-enchanted 4 X +47% fortify onehanded set? Maybe not for the minmaxer. Do they open up new interesting builds? You bet them do.

Especially when you compare it to its Oblivion and Morrowind versions.

All quest rewards are lacklusters, your better off getting your enchanting skill to 100 with the necessary perks and make your own stuff, it's pretty sad when you can make stronger enchantmets than some deadric artifacts have.

It's even sadder when generic leveled stuff is more useful than many of the rare artifacts.