Smithing and enchanting

[chanchan05]

Not really, even on master things felt too easy if you had abused enchanting and smithing. I only played on adept for the first 15 levels of my first play through, then went Master on level 20 onward.

[VonKami]

Same story here. I have 100% smithing and Alchemy and 92% enchanting. I created a wood elf assassin-thief character. I crafted a daedric bow, 2 swords and a dagger with very good damage (bow around 170, swords 140 dmg). I am playing in master from the start. Now i am at level 49. I can kill a boss really easy but I have some difficulties to kill dragons. I have no followers, lonely type as thief might be. And the thing is that thew only quest i finished is to go to Greybears. I will start Thives guild soon, and I am thinking to abandon all my armor (Elven armor so far not something special) and to go to leather or forsworn or even fur to have some challenge.

[Feanoro]

I keep seeing these threads but I don't understand 2 things about these complaints:

 

1. I personally find it normal for your character to improve as you are leveling overall. I mean what's the point of even having levels if you're going to get murdered by every troll that crosses your path? However, on Master difficulty I find many dungeons challenging even at high levels.

 

Take vampires for example, they start using glass armor and elven swords and such, whose power attacks kinda rip through my hp even at way higher than armor cap. Not to mention all the various mages spamming destruction spells like there's no tomorrow (well I guess they don't have a tomorrow hehehe).

 

Also I've been trying to play a battlemage lately on my lvl 68 Khajiit and even though I have max reduction, double enchants on armor with a high mage reduction, etc. I still get hit hard by many enemies because it takes time to kill them.

 

2. Why do you max out Smithing, Enchanting, and Alchemy at the same time? Personally I never put any perks in Alchemy because I know it makes game breaking potions. If you watch out for and collect Blacksmith/Enchanting elixirs you'll have enough to enchant everything you need by the time you get max smithing without completely destroying the game.

 

You could leave out any of these 3 skills undeveloped and you will not break the game. I prefer leaving out Alchemy because I love Smithing and like to have useful enchants on my armor (Soul Trap only on axe, magicka damage on bow, etc.).

 

 

An interesting thing I've found out as well is that if you don't abuse all 3 skills at the same time, at high levels you'll get to find better equipment than you can make (for example with undeveloped Alchemy I can enchant my bow to do a max of 42 Magicka Damage, whereas I found a Daedric Bow of Annihilating that does 60 points of Magicka Damage. Also I can enchant an item to reduce frost damage by a max of around 50% and I just found a Necklace of Warmth that reduces Frost by 70%, etc).

 

Also if you leave out one of the 3 skills undeveloped, you get 5+ perk points to invest in other secondary stuff.

[HideInLight]

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Armor

 

Armor Cap

 

Damage reduction is capped at 80%. If you are wearing all four pieces of armor, this occurs at 567 displayed armor rating. If you have 100 skill and all relevant armor perks, this requires a tempered armor rating of about 135. You can increase your tempered armor rating by 1 roughly every 2 points of Smithing with the appropriate perk, or every 4 without. Therefore, at 100 Smithing you will need 85 base armor with the appropriate perk, which is not achievable without a shield with Light Armor (though Dragonscale comes close at 82 for the set) and requires at least a Steel Plate set for Heavy Armor. With Fortify Smithing enchanted apparel and Smithing potions you can boost Smithing even further, which can potentially allow any material for which a Smithing perk exists to reach the cap. At the extreme end, you will need about 126 Smithing to make Steel Armor hit the cap, and about 154 Smithing for an Elven set. Unfortunately, Fur, Hide, Studded, Leather, and Iron armors are not affected by any Smithing perks and so cannot be improved as much.

 

With the aid of enchanting (fortify smithing) and pre-made enchanting and smithing potions, and of course the appropriate armor perks, you can reach the armor cap with any style or type of armor in the game, even hide and iron armor. All without even using a shield.

 

Shields, spells, and the Lord Stone can reduce the base armor required to hit the cap even further, but these require more management.

 

Also check the curve on the graph how fast armor can scale.