LE An idea for Smithing

[Electricjudge]

Maybe with the mod, special daedric and aedric soul gems could be made that could be like an on-the-spot enchanting altar. It could give the weapon gold or crimson scripting depending on the type, allow you to rename the weapon and give you a vampiric or hallowed/holy enchantment.

[Unleashin]

Yes well, iif you HAD the daedric talent, you can then UPGRADE THEM, from what you would normally get as a drop, and normally, if you are that high, it would be well over DOUBLE what they originally were.

 

OK, I don't know because I haven't got that far into it yet. I'm sure you are right but is it worth investing all of those perks on something which for a long time is not worth doing. Even then I guess they would still look the same, so you still have the issue that every Smith in the whole of Skyrim uses the same materials to make the same items. Seems a little odd to me. Again, if I had the talent, I'd want to create something unique, even if it didn't have double the function.

 

 

Its well worth the perk points. A standard elven bow (me being a sneak hunter) is i think, at my current char lvl (33/35) is 32 Damage. Now, that alone isnt great, it takes so many arrows to take down one foe. With my elven smithing, and my smithing being about, idk, i think its 52 now, with a nice set of +%smithing enchants, i can put that normal elven bow from standard 32, to a (Legendary) 68 damage. Over double damage. Now, that, is well worth having, more than doubling your damage, is well worth it. Plus, if you only need the LIGHT side of armor, just go up the elven tree side, and not the dwarven heavy armor side.

 

Smithing is an invaluable tool, and i'll level it at least to 60 on all characters because it helps immensely, i would say you just havent played around with it enough to get enough gain from it, in the beginning, added 1 damage to daggers etc, yes, was crap. At 50 on the other hand with some smithing enchants, it is WELL worth it.

[jeffrobot]

Yes well, iif you HAD the daedric talent, you can then UPGRADE THEM, from what you would normally get as a drop, and normally, if you are that high, it would be well over DOUBLE what they originally were.

 

OK, I don't know because I haven't got that far into it yet. I'm sure you are right but is it worth investing all of those perks on something which for a long time is not worth doing. Even then I guess they would still look the same, so you still have the issue that every Smith in the whole of Skyrim uses the same materials to make the same items. Seems a little odd to me. Again, if I had the talent, I'd want to create something unique, even if it didn't have double the function.

 

 

Its well worth the perk points. A standard elven bow (me being a sneak hunter) is i think, at my current char lvl (33/35) is 32 Damage. Now, that alone isnt great, it takes so many arrows to take down one foe. With my elven smithing, and my smithing being about, idk, i think its 52 now, with a nice set of +%smithing enchants, i can put that normal elven bow from standard 32, to a (Legendary) 68 damage. Over double damage. Now, that, is well worth having, more than doubling your damage, is well worth it. Plus, if you only need the LIGHT side of armor, just go up the elven tree side, and not the dwarven heavy armor side.

 

Smithing is an invaluable tool, and i'll level it at least to 60 on all characters because it helps immensely, i would say you just havent played around with it enough to get enough gain from it, in the beginning, added 1 damage to daggers etc, yes, was crap. At 50 on the other hand with some smithing enchants, it is WELL worth it.

 

Question for you - so you can deal more dmg. Is that making the game funner? I can understand feeling like a badass for a while afer you've created a bow that 1-shots everything, or armor that make you unkillable, but are you still enjoying the game at that point? For me right now, the fun of combat for comes from fighting people that are right on the edge of my being able to kill them. Guys that will kill me in two hits if I let them, and I have to dodge in and out with my daggers to bring down.

 

I like the OPs idea because it could add a lot to the RP side of the game, like forging distinguished looking weapons and giving them to companions/all the guards in your home city so it looks like you all belong to some private faction, or something.

 

The OP also talks about making your weapons specialize in certain things, which seems to me would create more interesting combat than just a straight +dmg.

[scrutio]

Yes well, iif you HAD the daedric talent, you can then UPGRADE THEM, from what you would normally get as a drop, and normally, if you are that high, it would be well over DOUBLE what they originally were.

 

OK, I don't know because I haven't got that far into it yet. I'm sure you are right but is it worth investing all of those perks on something which for a long time is not worth doing. Even then I guess they would still look the same, so you still have the issue that every Smith in the whole of Skyrim uses the same materials to make the same items. Seems a little odd to me. Again, if I had the talent, I'd want to create something unique, even if it didn't have double the function.

 

 

Its well worth the perk points. A standard elven bow (me being a sneak hunter) is i think, at my current char lvl (33/35) is 32 Damage. Now, that alone isnt great, it takes so many arrows to take down one foe. With my elven smithing, and my smithing being about, idk, i think its 52 now, with a nice set of +%smithing enchants, i can put that normal elven bow from standard 32, to a (Legendary) 68 damage. Over double damage. Now, that, is well worth having, more than doubling your damage, is well worth it. Plus, if you only need the LIGHT side of armor, just go up the elven tree side, and not the dwarven heavy armor side.

 

Smithing is an invaluable tool, and i'll level it at least to 60 on all characters because it helps immensely, i would say you just havent played around with it enough to get enough gain from it, in the beginning, added 1 damage to daggers etc, yes, was crap. At 50 on the other hand with some smithing enchants, it is WELL worth it.

 

It's good to know that smithing at higher levels is valuable, but there is still a certain routineness to it which makes it seem like it could be so much more. I'm sure improving weapons at higher levels gives good bonuses, but if you made your own weapon it would still be identical to if you found one in the world of Skyrim. The advantage of smithing would seem to be on the improvement of weapons but there is only one way to improve the actual weapon before enchantments. My point about the mod would be to add some more variety to the weapons and armor that are created. Skyrim is big and the cities and regions are quite distinct, yet every Smith crafts the exact same weapon from the same material. Does that seem reasonable? The inventory is not that big especially when you have heavy material items, but wouldn't you like to be able to improve weapons in ways that would give them different bonuses so that you could customise your weapons for a variety of different foes?

 

It's not that I think Smithing isn't valuable, I was happy that it was going to be in the game, I just think there is scope to improve the system currently in place and to tie it in with the lore of Elder scrolls. It's not only about the Damage value, at least it isn't to me.

Edited November 22, 2011 by scrutio

[cooltrickle]

I agree with the OP. This is one thing that bugs me about RPG games; often you are stuck using ugly equipment because it has the best stats. I would love to find take a unique design to a smith, with the materials and pay for it to be crafted. Maybe even watch him make it.

 

Also, I can't believe that upgrading your weapons and armour does not change their appearance. I suppose it's because the PC is stuck with console textures. Talk about disappointing. And what happened to the Dwarven armour? It looked great in Oblivion with exquisite detailing, now it looks terrible. I actually put a perk into dwarven smithing to make the armour. What a waste!

[scrutio]

Yes well, iif you HAD the daedric talent, you can then UPGRADE THEM, from what you would normally get as a drop, and normally, if you are that high, it would be well over DOUBLE what they originally were.

 

OK, I don't know because I haven't got that far into it yet. I'm sure you are right but is it worth investing all of those perks on something which for a long time is not worth doing. Even then I guess they would still look the same, so you still have the issue that every Smith in the whole of Skyrim uses the same materials to make the same items. Seems a little odd to me. Again, if I had the talent, I'd want to create something unique, even if it didn't have double the function.

 

 

Its well worth the perk points. A standard elven bow (me being a sneak hunter) is i think, at my current char lvl (33/35) is 32 Damage. Now, that alone isnt great, it takes so many arrows to take down one foe. With my elven smithing, and my smithing being about, idk, i think its 52 now, with a nice set of +%smithing enchants, i can put that normal elven bow from standard 32, to a (Legendary) 68 damage. Over double damage. Now, that, is well worth having, more than doubling your damage, is well worth it. Plus, if you only need the LIGHT side of armor, just go up the elven tree side, and not the dwarven heavy armor side.

 

Smithing is an invaluable tool, and i'll level it at least to 60 on all characters because it helps immensely, i would say you just havent played around with it enough to get enough gain from it, in the beginning, added 1 damage to daggers etc, yes, was crap. At 50 on the other hand with some smithing enchants, it is WELL worth it.

 

Having played a lot more of the game now (although nowhere near as much as others on here because I'm a little too busy) it is obvious that the smithing is a useful function in order to get really strong weapons and armor but it to me the smithing still seems fundementally broken in most part because it is a 'useful function'. It gets to the point where I can create a glass sword that is so strong that it because ridiculously easy to kill people or daedric armor that i have made that i can stand toe to toe with anyone or anything with little fear of dying. Yet the weapons and armor look exactly the same as another item and have no mystique to them. I think that is what is missing about the weapons and armor throughout Skyrim and from those created by Smithing is that they are all so generic and the only thing that matters is the strength value. Yes it is well worth it if you simply want to smash through everything but for me a huge part of the fun of an RPG is finding something unique and interesting in a cave that is completely different from something you would craft yourself and different again from something someone on the other side of Skyrim that has never left their city would craft.

 

I want to be able to meet a Smith in a town and learn something new and interesting from him. Maybe at first they don't want to teach me their skills because I haven't proved a worthy enough Smith to learn from them (so they give me some tasks to do to build a relationship with them) or they don't trust/like me enough so I have to talk more with them and charm them. But I want to be able to develop my skills from the different Smiths around Skyrim, learn new things from books I find with ancient crafting instructions, have unique looking items and unique functioning items. I'm told Eorlund Grey-mane is the best Smith in Whiterun, but other than him being a 'Master' trainer I see little other evidence that he is the best Smith other than him using skyforged steel. His blades still look the same, still function the same and still feel the same in the game.

 

I'd rather take a lot of the huge upgrading out so that it is impossible to make a normal steel sword that can kill everything and instead add uniqueness from the places you go and the people you meet. Then it wouldn't matter so much if you have crafted 1000 iron daggers to get your Smithing rating high (and it might help the balance if those simple things gave less towards your Smithing rating) and more about how you have developed your relationship with the Smiths, completed tasks for them, found books and ancient texts detailing how to create different items, selecting the types of upgrade to your weapon to make them more tailored to how you want your weapon or armor.

 

I'm never going to have the time or the skill to make a mod like this but I would really be indebted to anyone who would be willing to take on such a task. I'll happily detail every small thing I would like out of the mod but it would really change the game for me.

[yota71]

if you want to make it more difficult (recipe overall to find ) use lorecraft, it will make the vanilla and some expansion (like jaysus sword or weapon ot the Third era) much more difficult to craft (because you have to search for the recipes) ihave used this mod for over 100 hour, and i have just found less than a half of the recipe :) someone, (like daedric recipe) are truly difficult to find :)

 

Here the link: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9959

[Sacreficium]

Instead of just books you could add some unique NPCs that are able to teach you various methods of smithing that you can not find anywhere else.

As an example: an orcish smith that can be found, dunno, traveling between the orc camps can teach you some secrets about orcish smithing per quest like angis bow training.

 

What ya think about that?

 

edit: i had a idea like yours xD

 

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/637678-daedric-armor-change/page__p__5023322__fromsearch__1#entry5023322

 

edit: it would also be great if weapons and armors would use up with time so that you have to repair it like in oblivion

Edited April 6, 2012 by Sacreficium

[scrutio]

Instead of just books you could add some unique NPCs that are able to teach you various methods of smithing that you can not find anywhere else.

As an example: an orcish smith that can be found, dunno, traveling between the orc camps can teach you some secrets about orcish smithing per quest like angis bow training.

 

What ya think about that?

 

edit: i had a idea like yours xD

 

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/637678-daedric-armor-change/page__p__5023322__fromsearch__1#entry5023322

 

edit: it would also be great if weapons and armors would use up with time so that you have to repair it like in oblivion

 

Absolutely I think that NPC's should be teaching you about Smithing methods. It doesn't make sense to me that by making a whole load of iron daggers I can suddenly be the best smith in Skyrim it just isn't very RPGish and doesn't give me any sense of achievement or mystique. I know people can say 'then don't craft iron daggers' but if it is in the game then it is going to happen. I've been thinking about it quite a bit and I think this is how I see the mod going:

 

1. Balance the smithing by reducing the effect of the improvements so that weapons can't be improved to one-hit wonders so quickly

 

2. Balance the improvement in smithing by making smaller items have less influence on your smithing skill and larger more complicated (rarer) items having more influence on your smithing skill. Maybe even after you have created 10 of an item it no longer increases your smithing skill (obviously the number has to be correct to make sure that the player can still advance)

 

3. Change the base 'rating' of items when crafted by different smiths. A Master smith should have a little higher base rating and a Novice a little lower. That way 'standard' items aren't all identical but rely on the skill of the Smith. Therefore if a certain Smith prides himself in his smithing with Steel items and is making swords for the Stormcloaks then that may be seen in reality by the stormcloaks carrying a little higher than average 'standard' items.

 

4. Add many different items for each material, so that rather than only seeing a normal steel sword there are many variations of it. This will add more flavour to the game while still being Lore-friendly. It doesn't make sense that every Smith in Skyrim makes the exact same item from the same material. Would a Smith in Windhelm make the exact same sword as Smith he has never met in Falkreath?

 

5. The player can only make items that they have 'learnt'. These items can be learnt in multiple different ways:

a. Learning from a Smith. If the Smith makes items that the player hasn't learnt they can ask the Smith to teach them. In order for it to not be a case of simply going up to every Smith you meet and learning new items the player would have to prove their ability or earn the trust of the Smith. Some may involve quests a little like the quest that were done in Oblivion to earn the trust in the mages guild so it could be going to find a rare Ore, or crafting an item to take to a client, or finding fire salts to keep the furnace working etc. Other times it may be that the Smith deems your level insufficient and you are unworthy to learn certain items from them. In order to learn that item the player will have to increase their Smithing skill. (of course this could also work in reverse and the player could teach a Smith certain items, for example you want to teach an Imperial Smith a certain type of axe for them to be able to make better axes for the war against the stormcloaks)

b. Learning from random NPC's. There may be certain NPC's you find in Skyrim that have knowledge of items that are not so common in the world of Skyrim, such as Orcish, Dwarven and Elvish items. These NPC's may be willing to teach you about items from their heritage or that they have discovered, you may have to do a favour to earn it off them, you may even threaten to kill them if they don't give up their secrets etc.

c. Books can also have documented items with some being very rare and potentially powerful items from a lost age. Obviously they would need to be Lore friendly but there are plenty of stories about great warriors, queens with special swords etc. These could be scattered around Skyrim, buried in crypts with their authors, found in chests or bought from shops etc. Obviously the rarer the item, the rarer the book.

 

6. Different improvements can be added to the items to make them more customisable to the way the player plays the game. Again it seems a little strange to me that improving a steel sword would be exactly the same every time. There could be different improvements for weapons such as sharpening (giving a general increase in performance), adding a jagged edge (giving an increase and a bonus against beasts), adding a second material for example making the leading edge of the a steel sword with glass so that the sword in general is a steel sword so mostly uses iron ore (giving an increase and bonus against armor). For armor it could be having a special heat treatment to make them tougher against animals, or coating to give a bonus against arrows etc.

 

7. These improvements also need to be learnt and the effectiveness of them is obviously boosted in the normal way via the perks. With the balancing in point 1 the overall improvement may not be as big but the bonus should see different weapons perform differently against different opponents which would lead to the need to carry different weapons and armor rather than only because of enchantments. (would also make selecting enchantments far more meaningful to match with the items performance improvement)

 

8. Adding a module in the item creation when forging the item to modify slightly the aesthetics of the item. This module could be almost identical to the face creation module where you can pull the cursor in different directions in the box to manipulate different parts of the face, but instead to be able to modify different parts of the produced item:

a. changing the length of the item

b. changing the width of the item

c. changing the thickness of the item (the combination of a, b and c also leads to determing the weight of the item possibly)

d. determining the color of certain things like leather on armor

e. changing handle dimensions and hilt dimension

f. adding curvatures

Obviously the item would start with the base look that was 'standard' but using the modification module the items can become completely unique. Obviously there would need to be some serious work done on this part of the mod so that the items are still usable and fit with the meshing but I hope that it would be possible to use the face creation as a base.

 

9. Using jewels and other aesthetical improvements. There are so many jewels and stones that are picked up throughout Skyrim which can obviously be used to make jewelry but it would be great if they could be added to the unique item. In the module it would be like adding war paint, scars or tattoos to the face in face creation, but instead it offers different ways to split and position a stone that is in your inventory (obviously this consumes the item). The placement of the stones could be stretched located using a similar tool in the creation module. Also it would be cool to learn some particular Nord, Elvish, Dwarven design elements (such as Elvish script) which could be 'options' in the module.

 

 

Part 4 obviously needs a lot of item designs made (although it may be possible to combine with other items/mods with their agreement as a way to implement those items effectively into the game).

 

Parts 5, 6 and 7 will obviously need some quest creation, dialogue, bartering systems added maybe even some NPC creation as well as books and placements.

 

Parts 8 and 9 might need a lot of work and I don't know if it is possible to use the face creation module in this way, but would be such a cool way to add masses of variety to the items and crafting.

 

I know it is a huge undertaking and might need a group of people to do it and it seems like there is a little interest in the mod but not so much interest in the actual modding. If any skilled modder likes the idea it would be awesome.

[wierdestkidyoullevermeet]

i like the original concept of thought you had going in your first post;

 

make crafting a more dynamic and ongoing process, instead of sharpening your blade once, and having it be a permanently buffed damage, instead make it more of a temporary process that decays over time, so you have to resharpen your blades every once in a while, it would add to the immersion.

 

think of it like this, visit the sharpening stone before you leave town, and it stores X number of charges almost like an enchanted weapon, after using it for a time, it loses its edge and you need to revisit town to sharpen your blade again, to get the damage buff back,

 

you could incorporate this to most weapons, so instead of needing materials to sharpen weapons all the time, just using the wheel in town is enough

 

edit: also to add to this idea, you could have different types of buffs you could apply at the sharpening stone, to match different types of play style, such as faster attack speed, or a poisoned effect (you apply the poison you have at the stone, it carries that effect for a small time frame)

Edited April 9, 2012 by wierdestkidyoullevermeet