LE Crafting skills overhaul?

[Citruszinus]

Skyrim seems to have one persistent problem, and that my friends is alchemy, smiting, and enchanting. No matter what type of character I make, having these skills seems essential. The problem is that it reduces build diversity, for example, anyone in heavy or light armor would be a fool not to use smiting since it adds so much armor and damage to items. Leveling these skills can also cause a rift in player strength and NPC strength, for example, leveling alchemy and applying perks to it can grant some powerful potions early on, but it will not give you the survivability of leveling/"perking out" heavy armor.

 

My suggestion is to:

 

1. Remove level experience gains from the crafting skills. This way NPC's will not become stronger just because you learned how to brew a few potions.

 

2. Make it so that skill perks will automatically activate after a certain character and skill level has been reached. For example, you decide to level smithing, and want the ebony armor perk, you must first be level 36 since this is the level that ebony armor and weapons appear naturally in the game, you must also have a smithing skill of 80, since this is required to craft ebony armor in the un-altered game. Now you might be thinking "thats stupid, why would I even want to be able to make ebony armor if its already dropping?!". Remember though that having this perk unlocked also means you can improve ebony armor and weapons twice as much, making it worthwile to spend some time working on it.

 

 

This may seem overpowered at first since you are essentially getting free perks in 3 trees, but having them unlock at a certain level means that you can only gain so much advantage from these trees at every stage in the game. Where as in the un-altered skyrim you could power level blacksmithing to obtain 80% damage resistance early in the game, which is over powered.

 

I may be wrong, please give me some feedback on this, thanks for reading.

 

 

TL;DR: Remove level experience gains from the crafting skills/ Make it so that skill perks will automatically activate after a certain character and skill level has been reached.

Edited February 3, 2013 by Citruszinus

[ripple]

Leveling these skills can also cause a rift in player strength and NPC strength, for example, leveling alchemy and applying perks to it can grant some powerful potions early on, but it will not give you the survivability of leveling/"perking out" heavy armor.

 

The problem is not the skills but Skyrim's level scaling. It was worse in Oblivion when bandits would level scale with the player character in strength and also in gear (leading to ridiculous things like bandits decked out in full ebony and glass armour late game). The popular 'fix' to this issue is to use a de-scaling mod (ERSO, ASIS encounter zone plugin, Morrowloot, and some hopelessly outdated mods like the Scaling Stopper) so that the game world does not give a crap what level your character is, and low level critters will not cease to spawn entirely after your character hits a certain level threshold.

 

Alternatively, there is also 'Economics of Skyrim' which allows you to pay NPC smiths to craft and temper armour/weapons for you, thus release your character from having to engage in any smithing activities at all (not sure about enchanting, might be in the author's plans down the road).

 

As for removing leveling experience from certain skills, I think the Community Skill Uncapper can do that.

Edited February 3, 2013 by ripple

[Citruszinus]

I read over Economics of Skyrim, while it does sound nice I have a large problem with being able to travel to Riften, buy a full set of ebony, have it improved and then take it to be enchanted for a couple of coins. I'm sure the prices are hefty but I don't see there being a way to find the line between too little and too high a cost for such things. Also I don't think it attempts to cover alchemy at all.

 

Scaling stopper also seems nice but it takes away constant challenge with a side of growing strong (which my idea would hopefully provide) and replaces it with a ridiculously difficult early game and an equally ridiculously easy end game.

[ripple]

I read over Economics of Skyrim, while it does sound nice I have a large problem with being able to travel to Riften, buy a full set of ebony, have it improved and then take it to be enchanted for a couple of coins.

 

I've used EoS and never managed to find a full set of ebony on any vendor. By the time you can collect an entire set from vendors, it's already dropping as loot (and it won't drop as often as the annoying vanilla level scaling loot system, where 'rare' gear has no meaning once you pass certain level threshold). EoS is not as imbalanced as you suggest.

 

Scaling stopper also seems nice but it takes away constant challenge with a side of growing strong (which my idea would hopefully provide) and replaces it with a ridiculously difficult early game and an equally ridiculously easy end game.

 

Scaling Stopper is outdated (last I checked) and has not been updated to support many of the mods it depends on. Using it will cause no end of grief. I use my own custom de-scaling patch, which limits the range of level scaling for encounter zones (and covers MOBs as well as loot). Some zones have low level scaling range (mostly around Riverwood and Whiterun), other zones have various higher level scaling range, and some zones will level scale indefinitely. It's basically how ERSO and ASIS handles level (de-)scaling, and fixes the problem of 'late game no challenge/no place to grind in early game.'

 

Your idea wouldn't fix the problem, because it actually limits the highest level the player character can achieve (since you no longer gain level experience from crafting skills) and thus limit the level of MOBs who normally level scale with the player character. It'll make the early game really easy (because the MOBs spawned will typically be on par with your character's combat skills, and there is virtually no chance of encountering a real challenge), and the late game pretty much the same as vanilla.

 

And again, the 'no level experience for certain skills' is, I am fairly certain, already doable with the Community Skill Uncapper. In fact, it does something even better than what you are asking. The Uncapper can actually slow the rate of skill gain for select skills (e.g. crafting skills) so they won't raise as fast as other select skills (e.g. combat), and

 

You can decide how fast leveling a skill does level the player's character.

Edited February 3, 2013 by ripple

[Citruszinus]

I play master difficulty exclusively without companions so I don't see it making things too "easy" with those specifications. The only easy dungeon I ever enter is bleak falls barrow, and even then I still have to climb on top of rocks, abuse potions and run away just to survive.

 

While you are correct that it would lower the max level the player can achieve, that shouldn't, in turn, limit the scaling of mobs in any way. The whole point was to increase build diversity. So now that you don't have to spend perks on the same 3 crafting skills that you almost have to have on every character you can throw in some destruction or illusion on your heavy armor sword and board knight. Mobs will still level with you, while you will have the advantages of crafting skills, those advantages will be limited in way that helps balance the game rather than break it, while also allowing you to invest in other skills making each play through more unique.

 

Again I could be completely wrong, and I love debates so bring on any criticism.