Crafting armor and weapons has killed the game for me!!

[Dreadarm]

Wow, maybe you've gone a little too gong ho with it too soon then? I'm still wearing steel armor, superior, but still just steel. I think if you went out of your way to get the best armor possible by cutting right to the chase than you've ruined it for yourself and it was not the game's fault.

I don't know how you leveled up your smithing skills that quickly. You said a half hour? And don't you need special ores and ignots to make the armor? Well, that requires going out and hunting for them. I just got Dwarven materials, haven't even stopped by to smith armor yet for them. I'm more focused on doing the quests. I can't get mad at the game if I finish the main mission in the first day because all I did all that day was focus on the main mission. Of course it's going to go by too fast.

I did nothing else but the main mission.

I don't understand how you had all the necessary materials to craft and level up on smithing in a half hour. I think you may exaggerating or you cheated to get to the dungeons or something because it took me a couple of hours just to get through the one Dwarven ruin where I get the elder scroll. And it was fun. :D

Maybe you can focus more on the game instead of the armor and weapons and let things play out the way they're supposed to instead of forcing things to happen right away. You asked for the best armor right away and you got it. So, why are you complaining about it? It was your choice. Not the game's fault.

 

there had to be some cheats used as the npc's do not even carry the required materials for making such things, or he waited untill level X and just accumulated a ridiculous amount of leather and iron. I know i leveled to 60 smithing with just leather and iron to get my plated steal armor. But this took allot longer than 30 mins. more like 3 hours or so.

[fenderkid8]

This is EXACTLY how I feel man. I feel as if everything has become trivialised. It's shocking how easy it is to get awesome gear by doing hardly anything, and getting it so early on. It really does take away the feel of going exploring and finding awesome loot, when you can just made leather bracers for about half an hour and then all of a sudden look like Sauron. It's a bit of a joke, and I feel as if I'm cheating.

 

 

You are in a way. If you want a natural playthrough, don't exploit the levelling system. Only craft as and when you need it, I never level for leveling's sake, I just play the game.

[phantur]

Which is why I refuse to deviate from my iron helmet and hide/leather armor. Partially so I can look the part of the barbarian huntress, another so that the game doesn't just "end". What I did was get some good looking stuff and then hunted fro enchants, broke them down, and enchanted my noob set. Great stats still, just not the best.

[JesterKing]

I'm loving Smithing! At the moment I'm using it as much as possible. If the game gets too easy because of my armor, I'll increase the difficulty or go to a harder area. If it gets too hard I'll do the opposite. The game doesn't level like oblivion so I won't get PWND by too much if I play right. I'm level 17 with a Smithing skill of, maybe, 75.

 

Right now Smithing is too easy, but, man, is it fun! Going and scouring for ores and ingots. That thrill is incredible.

 

I hope someone mods a need to repair my precious armor. :)

[CaptainChaos]

Something else to consider, which someone above also was good enough to point out: if you spend all your perks in smithing, then when you are 20th level, you will have great armor but few fighting skills - yet many of the creatures will have leveled up with you, posing a great threat to you, even in all that great armor.

 

As a strong corollary, I recommend playing Master Level Difficulty. The game is a total joke without it, no matter how you play. If you are a warrior, by 27th level, you plow through everything otherwise. Currently, I have a combined armor score of 270 or so from a combo of Dwarven and Steel Plate armor and I still can get owned (except by dragons, oddly). At 10th level I couldn't even beat Sabertooths; at 20th level they were a challenge. Now, finally, I can hold my own easily with them, but I feel like I E A R N E D that after the long hard slog. And, I doubt dragon scale/whatever armor would make that big of a difference. And, in order to survive my combats, I have spent THOUSANDS of gold on health potions despite maxing out armor, shield and weapon perks. That is your money sink that gives you a reason to keep going out and exploring and making money and finding good stuff. Anyway, that's my advice for challenging game play. I have 60 hours and have seen less than 15% of the map.

Edited November 23, 2011 by CaptainChaos

[Arkune]

Honestly I feel a little bit the same.

I mean when you only craft from time to time your crafting level sucks and the loot will always be better so what’s the point of it? And when you focus a little bit on the crafting (and enchanting) you crafted equipment will always be better than the loot making the loot rather pointless (aside from making money).

I think there are four (or more) parts to the problem.

One is that you are not able to craft consumables like arrows. Yea I know there is a mod now but that's a mod! - Something like that should have been in the game in first place. And not only arrows, because these are basically for archers, but something like throwing knives, traps or other stuff other classes could benefit from as well. That would have allowed to craft “useful” stuff to get the level. Instead you are stuck crafting junk like Iron Dagger or buy the level from NPCs.

The second part is that the stuff I craft is the same as the stuff I find as loot. It is even worse because due to my crafting level the stuff I craft is always better than the stuff I loot. Some kind of random mechanism that allows for exceptional loot and crafts that is not influenced by the players skill levels at all but passively by basic level could break this cycle. That would allow that I still find stuff better than my crafted gear and by luck craft gear better then usually. Also if you remove the influence of the craft level on the items statistics you pull the craft items down to the level of loot. With all the effect stacking this is IMO necessary for game balance.

Number three: The upgrade path is linear and in the end there one item to top them all and no level restriction is enforced. You e.g. go from Hide to Fur to Studded, Leather, Elven, Scaled, Glass and in the end Dragonscale. If you had the craft level and parts you could wear Dragonscale at level 1. The loot table compensates for your level. You won't find a glass armour at level 5, but you could craft one! (No you can't but you know what I mean) - It would have been better to enforce a level restriction on the equipment e.g. you want to wear Dragonscale? - Well you have to be level 36 (random) to do so. The linear upgrade path could be broken by my last point:

Last but least the enchantment system contributes to this cycle. Enchantments done by the player at a high enchantment level are always better than the enchantments of loot (also because you can always have two effects and not only one). There also rarely unique items. There are only so many different enchantments and they lack a certain verity.

Take a look at hack and slays like Diablo. There is basically a infinite number of loot due to the random magically effects of it. Now that would make loot interesting! - Allow the player to craft a and produce very good enchantments but the real deal should still be loot!

It would also force the player to a decision: Do I really want the extra +Def of the Daedric Armour or should I stay with my current Steel Armour that has something like this:

http://arvraepe.be/justanotherblogname/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/diablo-3-item.jpg

[macole]

I am currently at 5 hours gameplay and have full dwarf set.

This is a big part of the problem. Dwemer arms and armor are too easy to come by. There hasn't been a Dwemer smith since 1E 700 and now all of a sudden every smith in town knows how to craft it. Doesn't make sense to me. Dwemer should be restricted to found items hidden in the deepest levels of caves, dungeons and ruins. Very rare, it should mean something to find it. Myself I'm looking for a set of Dwemer light armor. I hear it is 90% as effective as Dwemer heavy at a fraction of the weight, almost on par with elven heavy.

[Naaitz]

The fact that they are there just makes you want to use them, they are just too easy to access and it ruins it a bit..why would you just use weaker gear when you have access to the phat stuff?your kind of reply doesnt belong here.

 

hm, i must disagree here, there is cheats aswell, we all know they "are there" as you say, but most of us manage to restrain from using them aswell...

 

also to the topic of discussion, where smithing is a strong boost in your early game, when you get to higher lvls, (you only get a set amount of perks) you will regret spending your perks in smithing, instead of upgrades in heavy armor etc. as what you can make with smithing you will eventually find elsewhere.

[Arkune]

also to the topic of discussion, where smithing is a strong boost in your early game, when you get to higher lvls, (you only get a set amount of perks) you will regret spending your perks in smithing, instead of upgrades in heavy armor etc. as what you can make with smithing you will eventually find elsewhere.

 

No you don't. Crafted gear is always better and Deadric and Dragonscale/Bone is craft only.

Why is crafted gear always better? - Because enchantments make it possible to boost the item base stats. I have a crafting set I only use for crafting and it gives me 160% better stats on crafted items. No loot can compare to that.

[stimpynexus]

No loot can compare to that.

 

Agreed Arkune.

 

However, the only cool thing about found loot is that most of the special weapons looks really cool.

 

Mace of molag bal, dawnstar and sanguine rose are just examples.

 

I wish that the "found" items in skyrim was the most powerful, at least 20% more powerful than enchanted weapons. :unsure: