I guess, I'm trying to map it out on paper but it may be a bit too confusing with all the criss crossed paths, so some my have to be pathed like they are now. Like the Dedication ones should be linked together since they stack.

Though Weapon and Armor wouldn't be their own separate perks to be chosen. You simply choose Focused Smithing and then pick Weapon or Armor.

Well... it's one or the other, right? So there would have to be a perk for weapons, and a different one for armor -- how else can you assign or "pick" one side or the other?
-Loth

Same way you choose Magicka, Health, or Stamina.

Select Focused Smithing (Perk One) and a prompt comes up asking whether you want to specialize in Armor or Weapons.

You can still make both, but only one will be stronger.

It was never a "you have to choose between making weapons or armor."

Woah! Thats a great idea dude. I love it

Especially the part here you are more effective against your enemies or less effective.

Also like blueprinter (the disenchanting for smithing)

Ah, so a player couldn't go back and ALSO specialize in the other choice, i.e., apply another perk point. Okay... hmm.
-Loth

There is no less effective part, unless I worded it wrong?

For weapons you would do more damage, for armor you would take less. Against the chosen enemy.


Exactly. Unless you wished to pick a specific type of the other class Dedication.

So say you went with Armor for Focused Smithing, meaning all your Armor would get a % bonus, but you had also been loving say... Scimitars. So for Dedication you pick Scimitar, so anytime you make a Scimitar it gets a % bonus.

So you could make either one specific weapon have a double bonus, one specific piece of armor have a double bonus, or one of each having a smaller bonus.

Yep, this is mostly moddable... but the blueprint part of this could be tough to implement. You would have to break down the forge almost completely and rebuild it with a dependency on the player having a certain blueprint in inventory. Not sure if we could mimic the Enchanter remembering unlocked enchants or not. Getting the blueprints to spawn in-game would actually be the easy part -- add to leveled lists and merchant inventories... you're done! The blueprint would be consumed upon creating the item, but we could fire a script that re-spawns it in player inventory during the forging process, if there's not an "undestroyable" tag we can enable for the blueprints themselves... maybe set them as quest objects? Yikes... I can see the OCD players pulling their hair out with all of the blueprints mucking up the inventory screen.

-Loth

There are a few things I'd change about your skill tree, but it is vastly superior to the simpleton's tree we currently are stuck with (except with mods!)

Wonderful! I don't agree at all with the Baneful Crafter or Jeweled Equipment, but the rest is brilliant, especially Enchanted Materials. Makes all equipment useful.

This would be a great improvement on the current Smithing skill. Also, it would be great to make armor more customizable, e.g. adding jewelry to armor/weapons (even if it adds no special bonus/effect as in Diablo). The only way you can personalize items so far is by enchanting generic items and renaming them. Imagine making a jeweled blade which had its unique appearance and you could basically make it just because you are a bad*** blacksmith.

Reason I did the Baneful was because well... I dunno, I dig the D&D Ranger thing of having a "rival" enemy type, thought it would be cool to somehow implement that into Skyrim. Jeweled was moreso to get more custom gear, because sometimes fanastical swords with jeweled hilts look awesome, and gave the extra little bonus to be a benefit to gameplay.

So no perks to learn how to work with different kinds of materials? Am I reading that wrong?

I would imagine that different types of metals have different sorts of requirements and have to be worked differently, even if the mechanical aspect of hammering something into shape is the same. Certainly worth a perk. I don't have a problem with that particular aspect of the vanilla skill tree.

I like a lot of the new ideas, though.

The current setup isn't terribad imo. But, having said that, I think some of what you propose would be a good modification. There is already mods out there utilizing this tho....I am using one already that enables the gem work and cloth stuff, for example. The best of what you suggest is the inherent abilities of the different racial armors. And the idea that recipes are learned via the blacksmith 'DE' concept instead of merely getting a dump of all the recipes at the start. There should be a few that are generic for each....a dagger, a shield, an axe....etc. Additional recipes for a racial specialty item perhaps is where racial inherent ability comes in? It would seem to be conceivable that a dwarven made mace/hammer seems to just 'hit' harder....elven armor has a slight resist inherent. Lots of possibilities, and there is plenty of precedents for it in fantasy literature so it 'feels' correct too.

No perks for new materials no, because it would be all recipe based.

So if you manage to find yourself a recipe for Ebony Boots at Level 7 you could make it, if you could gather the materials. It's basically exactly like Alchemy.

Great ideas... i would try such a mod, if it existed

Push forth for talking!

Maybe you could make a perk that lets you specialize in a specific crafting material? Just something that lets you make any armor as strong as daedric can be, without the ridiculous amount of fortify smithing enchantments

That's a bit deeper than I wanted to go.

I like the idea that making certain pieces of equipment would be recipe based. I believe that you have other very good ideas [because they agree with mine ] ... Some of your other ideas I think would be a waste or worse. I'd honestly prefer to merge your ideas with the existing systems:

-- I'd still have a generic "smithing" perk where you could dump 5 points in to improve the results of everything in a similar manner to which you can already do ..

-- Arcane Blacksmith would stay because you do need a way to improve a pre-existing magical item

-- I like Blueprinter as a skill. I think I'd make it a L60 requirement skill so it puts just a whisker more focus on finding or potentially "buying" / questing for a recipe.

-- The "Enchanted Materials" perk should probably be redone from scratch. I think a "Special Materials" perk [or perks] to allow you to work with Glass, Dragon, or Daedric materials would be reasonable. As for the "special effects" I believe those should be in the game anyway and inherent regardless of any other perks you have. I.E. if you make something from Dragonbone / Dragonscale maybe it gives an Elemental Damage reduction and/or buffs shouts in some manner. Using this sort of system Daedric armor may still have the best armor value but Dragonbone Plate may still be "better" because of the special buffs that come with the armor.

-- I believe a better result for "Master Worker" or whatever you'd want to call it would be a 5-10% weight reduction while keeping the same damage / armor value / etc. A reduction in material costs probably doesn't really buy you too much.

-- I theoretically like your idea of a branching tree where you can choose one or the other option but not both. If we implemented this though we should probably redo ALL the other trees / game engine / logic and I'm not really willing to do that [yet].

-- Being able to merge a ring with gauntlets [and then being able to wear a different ring] would be "too much". The Jeweled Equipment perk would be too much ...

Maybe it's just me, but it looks awefully linear. Some of the perks have you choosing options, but there's no branching to it.

Oh, another thought. Just basing it off recipes or plans does not sound like a good idea to me. Even if you get your hands on the plans, someone with a smithing of 5 has no business making Daedric. Sure, they have the instructions, but they simply don't have the skill. So skill really needs to factor into it somehow. Either by materials requiring a certain skill level to produce or by having a chance of failure.

Yeah, it may be a bit too linear, but then the current skill tree is rather linear as it does nothing but scale up through Light/Heavy materials.

It wouldn't be based just off of recipes, just because you find a recipe for Ebony Armor at Level 5 does not mean your skill in Smithing would allow you to create it. The Skill for Smithing would reflect what you could and could not make/upgrade.

New info added and old info replaced.

I highly anticipate the mod this will make

Could a mod completely revamp a skill tree?

I think so. I know there's a bunch of mods that change them around a lot. I've got no experience with it, so I don't know how much you can actually do with the CK with respect to perk trees.