See, that kind of over powering is what Im talking about. I had the most fun doing things just like that. It just saddens me that they took the option away, is all. Now I'm not saying that skyrim is a bad game. I'm just saying that morrowind was better. For a mage at least

My only gripe is that I can't enchant any of the really good looking armors. Seriously, the only set that didn't look completely generic was the Ancient Carved Nordic and Stalhrim armors. Nightingale? Enchanted. Royal vampire armor? Enchanted. I was happy the Ancient Falmer set was unenchanted. It would also be nice to have some prettier and more unique enchantments, though. As it is, enchantments are generic and kind of overpowered.

Edit: Also, it's still totally possible to make OP equipment. I won't list it here, because I personally like it (gives me really good control over how strong I want a fortify potion to be), but you all can find it with a quick web search.

I just want to be able to enchant waterwalking on cloth boots for my magick caster why can't i do that? it would be amazing if i where able to cast spells over water.hell beth at least let us make waterwalking potions for gods sake! and the blood skaal blade is a joke the enchanment anyway the last time i used the thing it barely made a scratch on the npc's health! It should have been like that one sword in the shivering isles. I forget the name...dustfang? But basicly the more kills you got with it the stronger the enchanment would become.they made that whole cresent moon animation might as well go all out?

Bloodskal Blade and Dragon Priest masks appearing in other games make no sense.. I would not count on that.

Silver Swords may not be improved by smithing, but they can be enchanted. They hold a +20 standard toward any undead, including vampires, and can be enchanted for more damage. My sorceress has one that has absorb health and another that does fire damage. She just loves them. Plus, if you have the perk Extra Effect, and you have something, either armor or weapon that has only 1 enchantment on it, you can add a 2nd enchntment to it. Makes those Cultist Robes worth keeping.

Why is that? Non Daedric artifacts held by previous characters are found in newer games. Who's to say that these aren't spread throughout Tamriel in the same way. With the return of the dragons, dragon related artifacts would be highly sought after by collectors. The Staff of Magnus was carried by the Eternal Champion but somehow it ended up with Morokei. How does that make sense?

Because those are artifacts tied to divine origin and many of those types often leave their owners. The Bloodskal Blade is an artifact only found on Solstheim, named after presumably a Nordic tribe. It has only appeared twice in TES, both times on Solstheim. The Dragon Priests are only tied to Skyrim and their masks appearing in all the other provinces is dumb.

In your opinion. Why would being able to disenchant weapons in Skyrim effect a totally different game in the series? Oblivion and Morrowind never took any notice of your personal character's progress in their games; when the next game comes, then any choices you made in those previous games were pretty much a clean slate for the next. Everything I did in Oblivion and Morrowind had no impact on what I did in Skyrim, and vice-versa. Which is why in every one of those games, like most every single RPG, you could become more powerful in the game itself then any of the NPC lore-bound monsters and bosses.


I realize you're speaking on a purely theoretical level, but that's where theoretical ends and realism begins. Of course the lore won't hurt one bit from being able to disenchant "powerful items", just like the lore wasn't hurt when you could take, say, the ironhand gauntlets and disenchant those. That's just picking and choosing which parts of the lore you can bend according to Bethesda's will. If I followed Bethesda's lore to the letter, this game doesn't even have 100 hours worth of content, and everytime I run into a glitch/error I'd have to waste many hours restarting new chracters isntead of opening the console commands and using mods to improve the experience and fix the issues they left in.


But again, irrelevant to me since I'm on PC and I have the freedom available to me to play the game how I wish. It's just a shame for the console users who deal with "Bethesda's lore" that leaves out the human element of the person playing the game.

Yes bit it IS assumed the Nerevarine completed the mq of morrowind,Tribunal and Bloodmoon. It IS assumed that all the questlines of oblivion were completed. Now that there are options who knows how the next TES will treat the storylines.

What's the point in having a unique "artifact" that is never going to get any use? Like stated previously, I can forge a weapon 10x better than any 'divine' weapon. I don't understand... it's a game. They spend all that time to make unique things like the bloodskaal blade with a sweet ability yet all that work goes to waste because how many people play 2 handed characters only? Why couldn't hermaeus mora give us the knowledge in a book to make some of these enchantments?

It's a video game, and the point is that all these weapons and armor with unique abilities would make it more fun for the player who can place them on the armor THEY want whether it is lore friendly or not. They only drawback is that you lose an unique weapon. And most of us would rather use a different blade anyways.

Lore should always > game mechanics.

Why? It's a videogame. Then if lore will alway beats the game mechanics, then why not make truly legendary weapons? oh... because the game mechanics... kinda prevent that.

So basically you'd rather have a really weak "divine" weapon in the game that cannot be unenchanted vs unenchanting said weak weapon and creating something better?

If these weapons were worth using then I wouldn't have such a problem. But they're not.

If it came down to that, yes.

No matter the game genre, no matter the game story line or theme, that game's #1 responsibility is to the player. Lore exists to set up guidelines and rules for the player. Nothing more. In a game such as TES it's #1 responsibility is to me. Lore and story line are in deed important, but I disagree that they trump game play. At any time they may be bent or modified to enhance a player's experience.

That's not to say that I should be able to run around and do whatever I wish, story and lore be damned. On that point, clearly No.

However in this case, being able to (at some point) reforge deadric artifacts in some manner at higher levels as a reward for a certain achievement, my game play ultimately does trump lore. I site as an example face changing and perk resetting. Nothing in lore backing that up, yet it was implemented not on a lore basis but purely for the player's benefit. They didn't break lore doing so, nor did they break the game in any fashion.

Game play > Lore. Always.

The only time that it wouldn't be is when trumping lore breaks or destroys the game as a whole. For example, if I suddenly looted a Frag Grenade from a chest. Sure it would SWEET, but ultimately the presence of that grenade destroys the essence of what TES is all about.

Yeah pretty much in my view.
Its like I choose Auriel's Bow over Zephyr just because I know I'm wielding a special bow despite Zephyr being useful. For my orc I took Volundruug over the Longhammer because its a special weapon despite liking the fact the Longhammer swings quickly for a 2h weapon.
Origin of the weapon is far more fascinating than how quickly I want to kill someone. If I wanted to kill someone extraordinarily easy then I'd just spam them with paralysis poisons.

Technically, Smas is correct about "Lore trumps gameplay". I think when he said that, he was meaning the lore-fact that most artifacts are not breakable via normal means... Heck, look back at the very first TES game. Jagnar Tharn couldn't destroy the Staff of Chaos so he just divided it into pieces and hid them, hoping that no one will find them. So thinking about it, the artifacts are probably not disenchantable either.


To be honest, most artifacts are worth using. Just not all for one character.

This is only partially true.
Yes, the player is who Bethesda is building this game for (obviously). But they build it their way, suiting their lore. If fans like the games based around that lore, they buy them. If not, they don't. Therefore, Bethesda's sole responsibility is not to you. It's to the game itself. They build the game the way it is meant to be so that they can cater to the fans the actual game and its lore.

For the individuals who disagree with this lore (such as yourself), they release the construction kit so that those people can create their own experience that is noncanon and not truely in line with the lore. As I said, there's nothing wrong with this. It is your gameplay but it doesn't trump lore. It's you writing your own version of it.

Lore should always be above gameplay. That's the entire point of the game. If you don't like the lore (the rules) of a game/series, then you may want to play something else (or mod it to suit you). Instead of changing the lore to suit players, they should add new unexplored elements to the lore (which was done a lot in Skyrim), or find ways to work around it without breaking it.

Obviously, Betheada agrees with me on this to an extent, as they didn't allow the disenchanting of artifacts. The face changer and perk respec are bad examples as they didn't break lore, they simply added something new to it. The face changer clearly explained her presence and what she does. The perk respec is just another mysterious form of secret knowledge gained from Mora's Black Books.

I see what you're saying. I do . I just respectfully disagree.

Forgive me for rehashing: Naturally there is a give and take in the creative process, but they have to build it to their demographic. It doesn't matter how well you structure the game story, lore, rules, whatever else; if the game play blows then no one will buy it. That's a crude way of putting it, please know I'm not trying to antagonize. Just expressing

On the second part, I don't disagree with this lore. I think its just fine the way it is. I play on the Xbox360 so I kinda have to like it . I don't have the luxury of using Mods. I just think it would be nice as a player to be able to do more with those weapons so that they can remain viable throughout the game regardless of level.

I agree with those that say they become useless at higher levels. Mehrunes Razor is a prime example to me. Past level 60 I find that I can whack on just about any dragon and rarely have it's enchant pop, and because the base dagger does so little damage it'll take forever for me to kill it. That's with my stealthy character, wearing properly enchanted gear with +one hand. I'm not saying I should be able to one-shot a dragon, but I can create and enchant more effective daggers -legitimately- and kill it faster.

Once I get to that point I hang the dagger up on my wall and forget about it. Same goes for just about any other Deadric Weapon Artifact. The only way I can make the Razor or Molag's Mace viable is by using the alchemy cheat...but that's just too tedious. If done improperly they become one-hit wonders, and that's just svcks the fun right out of it for me .

[Edit]

Sorry for the long post, but I just had another thought to add

On that point I do agree with you. They can't go around changing lore willy-nilly.

That's actually one of the things I love about their lore system. Their writters and dev-teams are geniuses. They intentionally leave it open and totally flexible to accommodate things like the Face Changer and Perk Respec. Those are perfect examples of what I was talking about. They could come up with a creative way to allow the player to fiddle with the artifacts without breaking lore. This illustrates to me that they recognize the importance of Game Play trumping Lore.

Lol, that's not so say that they would or should. Only that they 'could'.

Thank you for actuall taking the time to read and share in a good discussion. I take no offense at anything you've said and certainly don't consider it antagonizing. I hope it is the same way with you. If I came off aggressive or assuming (which I believe I accidentally did when I assumed you modded) I am sorry.

We actually do agree on a good bit of what we argue about, our priorities are just a little different. Nothing wrong with that.

In a game world this big, not every single magic item is going to be "WTFOMGAMAZIGN". Some things are just going to be better than others. It adds flavor and variety to the world.

I like that we have enchantments like the Lunar one, or the Hunter's enchantment that adds damage against animals. No, I'm not going to use those all the time, but they add a little more credibility to the magics of the game world. Same as with real world weapons, etc. Not every handgun is going to be a Desert Eagle or Magnum, not every rifle is a 50 caliber anti-armor one either.

As for artifacts, I chalk up their less-than-stellar enchantments to the fact that they are, indeed, artifacts; they're from a previous era, a forgotten time, maybe the enchanters of that place were not as knowledgeable as current ones, just as on Earth, computers from the 1970's pale compared to today's even bargain-bin PC's.

I use artifact weapons and armor for the flavor they add. Their uniqueness. If I want broken, overpowered nonsense; I'll just craft it.

I would have liked a perk(maybe level 100) that allowed the player to disenchant an item without destroying it. That'd make things with generic enchantments like Royal Vampire armor viable for players to add our own enchantments to. Royal vampire armor isn't an artifact, or even unique(Serana and Harkon wear it, and there are two loose ones that can be found).

Really, I don't think it would break the game to be able to disnehcant a generic weapon without destroying the item in the process.

Neloth said that the staff maker he liked was quite the enchanter of that time but in comparison to the present time his methods would be considered rudimentary.

I like a lot of what been said. There should be a way to disenchant artifacts. If you have 100 enchanting, youre one of the best enchanters in skyrim. You know how to disenchant anything. If not there should be a way to learn how to. After all, even from a lore perspective, these items had to be crafted. Someone knew how to make them, why cant your character learn to remake, unmake or, reproduce them?

Which would then render artifacts as nothing but loose loot to disenchant and rob them of both their uniqueness and historical lore. Awesome.

That kind of knowledge was probably lost. The divines blessed their own artifacts anyways so unless you ask them for the knowledge of how they did it I don't see learning that enchantment. Others like the Bloodskaal blade were enchanted but by those who have been long since dead, you would need to ask the enchanter but if you can't you are SOL. I don't think the divines would be all that happy if you tried to disenchanted their artifacts, look at how pissed Acura was for that guy tampering with her star...disenchantment would not end well especially for something like Molag' s Mace or the Razor.