About the crafting system

[vorius]

Crafting is really cool, I like the way they made it in Skyrim.

 

However I find the scaling of profit and skill gain horrendous

 

For skill scaling - I did an observation where I crafted a set of leather armor and then a leather helmet. Despite the leather armor taking so much more material, it seems to have about the same skill gain.

 

Then profit scaling is even worse. First, because of how the game severely handicaps the player in prices (you buy thing at a great premium over the items value and NPCs only buy things at a greatly reduced price from its actual value) it is impossible to buy raw material from NPCs to craft products to sell back at a profit. So I guess anyone who wants to make some coin doing honest work in the game world has to be a master of Speechcraft with all perks invested to haggling. Not very immersive if you ask me.

 

Also its odd how some items costing more material cost so much more than other ones using less material. For example look at the leather helmet. Good profit (at least when just looking at value) compare it to Leather Boots or Leather Bracers which cost about the same material but are less than half the value of the helmet! How odd...

 

Another sad situation is jewelery production. I was thinking wow I got a silver ingot and a garnet, I could sell the material as is or I could use my crafting skill to produce a finished product that will sell for more money! But alas while it does sell for a bit more money it's really not worth the effort! Maybe get 2 gold extra for the labor lol.

 

I also seem to observe that your skill in crafting has no effect on value of the good created. This is also disappointing. A leather helmet is a leather helmet all the world around so it doesnt matter in this game if the producer was a novice or a master.

 

So wile I like the system overall and think its a great addition to the game it certainly has lots of room for improvement

 

[Edit] Thought I would also mention, while the profit in smithing is non-existant to pitiful at best - the profits available to alchemy are overblown! I could buy 2 ingredients from a shopkeeper for 20 gold, produce a potion valued at 250-somethign and sell it back to the ship for around 100 gold depending on speechcraft. So while smithing wont get you anywhere near rich, alchemy sure as hell will!

Edited November 14, 2011 by vorius

[borge12]

I've actually made tons off of smithing. Specifically, jewelry making. Somehow, I stumbled on a spell called Transmute, which allows me to make silver or gold out of iron ore. I buy all the iron ore I can and transmute it all to gold making a crap ton of money after I craft it into rings/necklaces. Lots and lots of money. It takes forever to transmute all of it, but, I end up having to visit 5 different vendors to be able to sell all the stuff in my inventory.

 

Remember, if you get gold/silver ingots, you also get that bit of smithing experience, which you would lose if you just sold the ingots.

 

I also seem to observe that your skill in crafting has no effect on value of the good created. This is also disappointing. A leather helmet is a leather helmet all the world around so it doesnt matter in this game if the producer was a novice or a master.

 

This is true, however, if you reinforce or sharpen the things you make it will change the price. I've been giving my armor/weapons legendary upgrades and it usually doubles the price, which is also incredibly handy. I sold some plate boots for like 500 or so.

Edited November 14, 2011 by borge12

[vorius]

Greetings,

 

That is a nice idea about transmute - I'll have to find that one! But that doesn't really change the profit analysis from smiting because that requires magic to provide the special ore, not all smiths are mages :)

 

 

Wow, you can double the value of items from improvements? Is that from one of the perk related improvements? I so far have only upgraded to 'Fine' and it's a nice increase in value for some items, for most items you lose money paying for the ingot to improve it and then sell it instead of selling the base item straight up.