For people who play without smithing. What weapons and armors are you using now? What difficulty level are you playing? What level are you now and how much damage are you doing and what's your armor rating at the moment? Are you having fun? Do you feel the game is harder?

Good question. As someone who dives into the wonders of alchemy and enchanting as well as taking the opportunity to maximize my armor rating and damage output, I wonder what anyone could do without. Then again, I always play on Master.

Yeah. I'm trying to figure out what armor rating and what damage I can survive with. At the moment, I tend to think that with good armor rating and magic or elemental resistance, a 50 damage sword is perhaps adequate to get to the end game.

Someone told me before that a good rule of thumb for a comfortable number for armor rating is 10 x level. I'm thinking for weapon damage it's maybe level + 10 or so.

The only time i played without smithing was a a cloth mage, relying on the mage armour perks to reach 300 armour when cast.

When I was a mage, I held out on 20 Smithing and College Robes and relied on magic. It would be useless elaborating on my character now because after I got my Destruction to 100 I stopped using magic altogether and pushed my emphasis to non-magic stuff, like Smithing and Archery.

I got to 100 smithing, but didn't use it for making me ridiculously overpowered.

I am level 15 and I play as a sneaking/archery character on master. My armor rating is zero, considering I'm using Jester's clothes from the dark brotherhood. My daggers do 14 and 7 damage, that combined with sneak attack bonus works pretty well. My bow does a total of 49 including arrows. I don't really ever get into melee combat and remain hidden from the enemy so I'm doing pretty well with what i have. I am currently looking for the best gear in the game when I find out what it is.

As a rawrior who uses bound sword and wont touch elven or glass armor...its fun. Lvl 26 and my armor rating is very low 200s. Not using smithing or enchanting, but am using alch strickly for health, sta,, and magic pots, poisens, and elemental resists. Thats it. Let me tell u what, every battle is one I can die in if I dont pay attention. Its challenging, but very doable plus feels very rewarding.

Damage with No smithing without gear to Augment is like... 50ish for a Daedric Sword. Armor ratings I'm not too sure. If you plan on playing at Master Difficulty, you're in trouble. You really need either Potions, gear or perks to be competitive against boss-class enemies in a stand-up fight. Combining all 3 is fine early, but given the nature of smithing augmentation, the higher your skill is, the more OP each increase gets. (+50% skill at 50Skill is only 75 total, but +50% at 100 is 150 total)

Level 53 only using bought weapons (bows) Archery 100 Overdraw 2/5

Daedric Bow of the Blaze = 70. With a potion of fortify marksman (66%) = 116

Ebony Bow = 65 up to 108. With my circlet of peerless archery and ring of major archery = 177

An ancient Nord arrow goes from 10 to 17 dmg with these buffs.

i have one character who did the mq and stormcloak rebellion with a surperior iron claymore and surperior stormcloak armor so she was nearly unsmithed and definitely nerfed. she could have done way more damage with steel perk and steel claymore but I didn't want to. i think she was around 70 damage, she had several fortify two handed enchants. she had somewhere around 170-200 ar at that time. level was about 16-18 when she finished mq.

now she has the Saviors Hide and Wuuthraad, which are both unsmithed and she does about 110-120 damage iirc and around 200 armor.

she did the companion's quest with her iron claymor and stormcloak armor, and officer's helm. she was around 60-70 damage for those.

How do I determine my armor and weapon power levels?

I have a level 27 ranger with no Smithing and every fight is a challenge. I am trying to use Enchanting, but the results are still weak. I currently have a full set of Scaled armor, Elven bows, Orcish arrows, Glass axes and Dwarven swords. I just keep the highest power gear with the enchantments I want which I can find or buy.

You can go to inventory and hover over one of the weapons and on the bottom right it will display damage for weapon you are wielding, next to the carry weight and gold numbers. Same thing with armor rating. Go to apparel in inventory and the number shows up on the bottom right.

Thanks. I think your numbers will be interesting.

i personally think its much more fun to ignore smithing, my current Thief/Assassin doesnt do smithing at all, i dont even improve/upgrade items, bears i generally run away from along with trolls, it gives the game alot more challange and i play on adept allways, never turn down or up..

Niamh actually wears nothing at all in terms of armour or clothing.
All she wears are some archery-boosting bracers, and a bit of magic/health-related jewellery - but nothing too huge, about 30 points extra, for health with a bit more for magic.
She is in effect completely naked.

She's levelling in the low 30s at the moment and very much "Not Running Into Combat Where She Can Hide Behind A Rock And Fire Arrows."
Although that said she practices destruction a lot and so dual-cast flames are an effective defensive option, with an axe as a last resort.
Close-in combat and indeed some ranged encounters can be frantic and brief, especially with "Random Encounters" on tweaked settings, Deadly Combat, and an elevated difficulty.
her world is not an easy one to live in.