Many players have complained that smithing and enchanting are too powerful; a player can quickly max these skills out, and the game becomes too easy. These skills can do more than reduce the difficulty of killing a particular enemy -- they can also grant access to very powerful objects very early in the game. These objects will frequently be far better than any random loot, thereby reducing the enjoyment of "cave clearing."

I have a simple suggestion: In addition to skill requirements, advanced smithing/enchanting techniques should have character level requirements. For example, the game might stipulate that the player cannot make daedric armor until character level 25. This still gives the smithing players an advantage, because daedric objects don't appear randomly until level 46. However, this would also prevent the player from becoming too good too quickly. Everyone wins.

How does that sound to you guys?

I say just leave it alone.

If people want ot ruin thier game powerlevelling let them ruin it. This game isnt an MMO or anything, some people just need to learn self control.

How about no.

I want to be able to use these skills without the game defaulting to Very Very Very Very Very Easy mode.

I myself made a character that pwoerlevelled smithing (i wanted to see what it was like), by level 25 I had it at 100. And you know what? since my fighting skills were underdeveloped for my level the game didn't become easy.

The smithing and enchanting skills arent meant o be your two main skills, they are supposed to supliment your playstyle.

Leave it alone. You can just about powerlevel any skills in this game, so why just target enchanting & smithing? Besides you have to add alchemy to your list before the items are truly overpowered.

It's not just about overpowered items. It's about getting too strong too early. You can do this without making ridiculous items.

Congratulations on being the only Skyrim player in existence who didn't find the game a cakewalk at 100 Smithing.

it's a single player game, let people do what they want...if you want to powerlevel do it, if you dont then dont
pretty simple stuff
and yes pretty much EvERY skill can be powerleveled so lets just restict them all, how bout the player cant use weapons and only can attack with fists till hes a high enough level...sounds great to me

The problem with smithing is that it doesn't level naturally. Once you make and improve what you can at any given point you can only improve it further by crafting useless junk you don't need or training. There needs to be a way and a reason to purposefully keep using it, then that can be made the focus of the skill progression and it can be balanced properly.

That straw man argument makes you come across as a very intelligent and knowledgeable person. Keep it up.

"It's a single player game" isn't a good argument to keep crafting professions broken. We are all playing the same game.

like the fact that iron items should do nothing once you surpass lvl20?

I completely agree with that. IF this skill wasnt such a cakewalk to train far fewer would be complaining about it. Im sure if there was a way to train one-handed really quickly/easily all the way to 100 then people would be saying it was overpowered too.

Yeah, that's exactly the problem my suggestion was intended to solve, if you didn't notice...

I thought this part made me seem intelligent, and I thought the strawman "attack wih fists" thing was great for my image.

I would have liked to see some quests built in, kind of like in the first town where you craft a dagger and helmet for the blacksmith. Perhaps crafting sets of armor for the Stormcloaks, or some swords for the town watch.

I think the leveling could have been tweaked a bit so higher level equipment was worth more experience, but overall I thought it was fine. Would you really want to craft another 500 iron daggers to get the skill to 100?

Plus, one of the downsides is that you used some perks on crafting, instead of other skills.

You could say the samething about number of mage & thief skills. So whats the moot?

It's hard not to use the best gear if it's within your reach.

The game should be decently balanced, so the funlevel isnt reduced. Now smithing/enchanting has a way too big impact on gameplay and is way too easy to get up quickly.
The proper way to fix it though, is to let the tier of the item you smith have a much bigger impact on the gained xp. With the effect that for example smithing iron daggers is pretty pointless once you become 50+ in smithing.

I don't want to be rude, but who is forcing you to level up something you don't like? Because that is exactly what you are saying here. And yes, it is a single player game. That means if you are ruining the game then you have yourself to blame.

I level up smithing late in the game and I don't bother with enchanting and alchemy. I just don't need those. I certainly want to be able to use those in other characters, though. I am certainly not doing it in such a way that it ruins my game. Power gaming is not my thing.

All you need is a bit of self discipline. You can just ignore it if it is overpowered or level it up to something you are comfortable with. I truly hope that smithing, enchanting and alchemy are not dumbed down in such a way that I have to use them or use different rules that are forced upon me, because people like you feel that they are missing out something. I don't understand that you limiting my freedom is fun.

I say just leave it the way it is.

The game itself, genius. In case you haven't noticed your skills level up as you use them.


Okay, to all the "HURRR DURRR SINGLE PLAYER WHO CARES ABOUT BALANCE DURRRR" people, imagine this situation:

There was a typo by Bethesda and every point of Light Armor increases your Armor Rating by 5%, instead of 0.5%.

Would you be wailing "DURRR THEN DON'T PLAY WITH LIGHT ARMOR STUPID" then?

At which point will you take your heads off your asses and acknowledge there's a [censored] problem?

What's most hilarious about this is that many people who now say DURP THEN DON'T USE IT are the same people who cry that Beth removed skills/stats/[insertfeaturehere]. So you cry for removed content and then you will blatantly tell people to not use even MORE content and yet oppose to fixing it?

There's some world record of irony hidden here somewhere.

Or maybe the truth is that you just enjoy being a demigod yourself and you're afraid of a nerf because gasp - then you won't be able to one-shot dragons anymore?

Or increase the frequency of higher difficulty settings.

People don't understand isn't enchanting or smithing the problem, and reach the max lvl don't make the game more easy, is when you reach the cap of armor (576) and the cap of resistance magic (80-85%), then the game become easy, but is a problem of enemy can't pass trought this cap at master difficult too, the enemy simple don't do enough damage for become a problem, bethesda forgotten to give to us challenging enemy when we reach the cap.

If ppl want reach quickly this cap with enchanting and smiting or we reach this with perk i not see the difference we always have svcking enemy.

Skyrim is the type of game where everyone is free to do as their wish! No need for self control, I would exploit whatever I could because for me, that's enhance game play, I like to be to easily kill people rather than killing a whole lot of me brain cells strategizing to kill something---> "*Omge! Is a bear, what I'm I gona do>?!! I have the game on master difficulty,! I need a plan, one or 2 whack from it and I'm dead!!!* think think think...*"

One way to fix this would be to reintroduce gear degradation. If your gear slowly dropped from legendary to epic to flawless etc., and you had to then repair it at a bench with the proper materials (which would be a lot better than Fallout's "bang ten guns together to make one good one"), and doing so boosted your smithing skill, there'd be a natural way for the skill to level. BUT that wouldn't effect balance at all, it'd just save people some grinding (or maybe just make the grinding a little different, depending on how you look at it.) The problem isn't that the skill can be power leveled, its that it provides a huge damage/armor boost that isn't even close to accounted for by the increase in enemy level that raising the skill causes.



This is pretty much it. Crafting a Daedric sword and improving it to legendary boosts your base weapon damage from 7 points (with an unimproved iron sword) up to 24, so it gives you about 340% of base damage. Using +weapon damage enchantments will give you +40% x 4 = 160%, so 260% of base damage. Your weapon skill will boost it by about 50% (so 150% of base), perks by another 100% (200% of base). And these four massive boosts get multiplied together, for a total of 2650% damage. Googling around, I found this table with bandit health values:

Bandit: 35 health level 1
Bandit outlaw: 109 health level 5
Bandit Thug: 238 health level 9
Bandit Highwayman: 318 health level 14
Bandit Plunder: 398 health level 19
Bandit Marauder: 489 health level 25


So, it looks like bandit health tops out at 489, up from 35, so 1300%. Your weapon damage goes up by a factor of 26.5, enemy health goes up by a factor of 13. Higher level bandits also have better armor, but unimproved armor without any armor skill perks has little effect. Level scaling just doesn't keep up with the skills.

A very good suggestion.

It'd limit the worst of the powerlevelling.

Very good idea.