I'm tired of crafting

[Fitness Lauch]

It's one of the worst crafting systems which I've ever seen in a video game and Skyrims greatest weakness imo. It's grindy to max out but doesn't require any challenge to do so and can be done on level 1. Can't even say that it's overpowered, it's outright game breaking and feels like a glorified cheat code. Turns even the highest difficulty into a comedy, makes every looted item obsolete (why even bother with dragon priest masks etc when you can just craft something which is ten times better) and ruins the economy (can just harvest my garden and spam potions which are worth 5k gold each). There are literally no trade offs for maxing it out.

Sure, you can ignore crafting (which is what I'm doing) entirely but it's very unsatisfying because you're playing unoptimized. There's not even a trade off, you're just outright gimping your character on purpose. I hope that the next TES game will have a proper crafting system which can be used without feeling like you're cheating. And they should for sure remove all effects which increase your smithing/enchanting/alchemy skill, the professions are already strong enough on their own, there's no reason why they should empower each other on top of that. And they should make it so that you require some rare materials which can't be easily get early on.

[[STD]Random Lead]

Ok...

This is so simple to fix it will blow your mind when you read how to fix it.

Just dont use it.

I know I know what a radical thought and fix.

[Sairek Ceareste]

It's for this reason I nerfed both Alchemy and Enchanting in my playthrough by giving them both a soft and hard cap (thanks mods).

I haven't found anything great with touching smithing though. Probably didn't look hard enough, but with the other two capped, it's more balanced out. That said, I can still one-shot people in Legendary mode so I had to neuter my damage even more with a difficulty mod so now I am doing 1/8th damage to enemies instead of the 1/4th from Legendary mode.


Unfortunately, almost every facet of Skyrim is just unbalanced. From the crafting systems, to armor values, to how magic is just a sub-optimal choice due to spells having zero scaling, etc. And the only way to really remedy this is mods.

Originally posted by STDRandom Lead:

Ok...

This is so simple to fix it will blow your mind when you read how to fix it.

Just dont use it.

I know I know what a radical thought and fix.

Avoiding a problem doesn't "fix" it though.

[Fitness Lauch]

Originally posted by STDRandom Lead:

Ok...

This is so simple to fix it will blow your mind when you read how to fix it.

Just dont use it.

I know I know what a radical thought and fix.

And how does not using it change it from being a terrible system? I guess having a balanced crafting system which feels fun to engage with is too much to ask for because somehow the target audience from Bethesda changed from rpg players to exploiters and cheesers (who somehow don't want to use the console and instead use every exploit in the game, I really saw a lot of people saying they're not using the unofficial patch only because it fixes their resto loop like wtf...).

[Sairek Ceareste]

Originally posted by Fitness Lauch:

Originally posted by STDRandom Lead:

Ok...

This is so simple to fix it will blow your mind when you read how to fix it.

Just dont use it.

I know I know what a radical thought and fix.

And how does not using it change it from being a terrible system? I guess having a balanced crafting system which feels fun to engage with is too much to ask for because somehow the target audience from Bethesda changed from rpg players to exploiters and cheesers (who somehow don't want to use the console and instead use every exploit in the game, I really saw a lot of people saying they're not using the unofficial patch only because it fixes their resto loop like wtf...).

To be fair, Bethesda games have been extremely easy to cheese since Morrowind. This isn't anything new.

I'd say Morrowind is even easier to break than Skyrim. Oblivion isn't as easy to break only because everything scales up with you as you level which in of itself is a massive balance problem though and one you *can't* avoid unless you avoid leveling up in its entirety.

[th]

OP, I have another possible restriction (as we've discussed in the other topic) for your trouble.

Using crafting is too overpowered. Not using it as you say is unoptimized. Well, then, how about something in between? Use it, level the three skills, just don't give them perks. In that case you'll get a weakened crafting possibilities. Naturally restricted if you like.

How about that?

[Fitness Lauch]

Originally posted by th:

OP, I have another possible restriction (as we've discussed in the other topic) for your trouble.

Using crafting is too overpowered. Not using it as you say is unoptimized. Well, then, how about something in between? Use it, level the three skills, just don't give them perks. In that case you'll get a weakened crafting possibilities. Naturally restricted if you like.

How about that?

That might actually work to be honest. That's the case in Enderal actually, you put skill points into crafting but can't select any perks (you can also not max it early on and you need to find blue prints, the good ones are only available in high level areas and it's not possible to create gear which boosts enchanting/smithing/alchemy further). It just feels so weird because on one side I want my character to be optimized but in Skyrim doing so ruins the game.
The problem I have is that I struggle to find a weak spot there the game feels good. I haven't found it so far. Tried to play without companions and without crafting on legendary which works IF I use dual wield. Otherwise the damage will become obnoxiously low later on.
Using crafting feels bad because then I suddenly play on a different rule set than my opponents (this works for dragons or against bosses in Elden Ring but most of the time in Skyrim you're fighting other humanoids and I think that they should share the same ruleset). In my opinion they should just make the highest difficulty so that the modifiers for taking and dealing damage is just 1 instead of 3 and 0,25 and instead give the npcs proper stuff. When you look at the ebony warrior for example he only uses 3/5 in the one handed perk and barely has any armor despite wearing full ebony armor. You wouldn't need those ridiculous unbalanced modifiers if the npcs would start using proper builds with proper gear. That'd already feel much better.

Originally posted by Sairek Ceareste:

Originally posted by Fitness Lauch:

And how does not using it change it from being a terrible system? I guess having a balanced crafting system which feels fun to engage with is too much to ask for because somehow the target audience from Bethesda changed from rpg players to exploiters and cheesers (who somehow don't want to use the console and instead use every exploit in the game, I really saw a lot of people saying they're not using the unofficial patch only because it fixes their resto loop like wtf...).

To be fair, Bethesda games have been extremely easy to cheese since Morrowind. This isn't anything new.

I'd say Morrowind is even easier to break than Skyrim. Oblivion isn't as easy to break only because everything scales up with you as you level which in of itself is a massive balance problem though and one you *can't* avoid unless you avoid leveling up in its entirety.

I mean all elder scrolls games are really good over all but in my opinion the balance and especially the crafting system is the biggest weak spot.

Originally posted by Sairek Ceareste:

It's for this reason I nerfed both Alchemy and Enchanting in my playthrough by giving them both a soft and hard cap (thanks mods).

I haven't found anything great with touching smithing though. Probably didn't look hard enough, but with the other two capped, it's more balanced out. That said, I can still one-shot people in Legendary mode so I had to neuter my damage even more with a difficulty mod so now I am doing 1/8th damage to enemies instead of the 1/4th from Legendary mode.


Unfortunately, almost every facet of Skyrim is just unbalanced. From the crafting systems, to armor values, to how magic is just a sub-optimal choice due to spells having zero scaling, etc. And the only way to really remedy this is mods.

My problem with smithing is that nothing in the game world is tempered. Not a single looted item is tempered and no opponent is using one (except for a companion if you gear him that way) so why did they even implement the mechanic to begin with? It just makes it feel weird and out of place. Like from all the smiths in the world you're the only one who knows how to temper weapons :D

[th]

I agree. An ability to temper their gear is totally logical for NPCs but sadly were never implemented by devs. I wonder if there are good mods with this idea in mind.

[Sairek Ceareste]

Originally posted by th:

I agree. An ability to temper their gear is totally logical for NPCs but sadly were never implemented by devs. I wonder if there are good mods with this idea in mind.

There is a mod that sort of does this and a bit more.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19023

It gives NPCs gear random tempers, and any tempers you do on your gear degrade after a while, depending on context stuff. For example, getting hit by a giant does more degradation to gear than a humanoid sword. Whiffing a swing and hitting a steel beam does more degradation to your weapon than hitting a wooden beam as well.


This kind of nerfs tempering a little bit since it's not permanent, but it doesn't help the fact that tempering still makes gear several times better. With that said, though...
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6285


While this mod adds a bunch of enchantments, it does also have an optional cap limit the whole exploit with enchanting gear to get ridiculously powerful fortification on restoration and smithing and such, which fixes the ability to smith an iron dagger and tempering it do deal something like 382912 damage, or the same for adding an enchant which does equally as much damage to a weapon. And from what I can tell, it soft caps to an eventual hard cap, so it's not like you'll get to 100% smithing bonus on a piece of gear with little effort.
With my level 216 character at 110 enchanting and around +180% enchanting due to gear, potions, food buffs and a couple of other optional modded things, I can only get up to +28% smithing enchantment on anything I enchant; so it really neuters the fortify smithing enchantment effect to make it less unreasonable, as well as every other effect to some extent so you still won't be able to deal thousands of damage with a single enchantment on a weapon.

It doesn't fix tempering's power of making items literally several times better just because you tempered it to legendary status, but at least it reigns in the potential of it in the late game by adding a cap to how much power you can get out of it, making exploiting the system impossible.

[th]

Originally posted by Sairek Ceareste:

Originally posted by th:

I agree. An ability to temper their gear is totally logical for NPCs but sadly were never implemented by devs. I wonder if there are good mods with this idea in mind.

There is a mod that sort of does this and a bit more.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19023

It gives NPCs gear random tempers, and any tempers you do on your gear degrade after a while, depending on context stuff. For example, getting hit by a giant does more degradation to gear than a humanoid sword. Whiffing a swing and hitting a steel beam does more degradation to your weapon than hitting a wooden beam as well.


This kind of nerfs tempering a little bit since it's not permanent, but it doesn't help the fact that tempering still makes gear several times better. With that said, though...
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6285


While this mod adds a bunch of enchantments, it does also have an optional cap limit the whole exploit with enchanting gear to get ridiculously powerful fortification on restoration and smithing and such, which fixes the ability to smith an iron dagger and tempering it do deal something like 382912 damage, or the same for adding an enchant which does equally as much damage to a weapon. And from what I can tell, it soft caps to an eventual hard cap, so it's not like you'll get to 100% smithing bonus on a piece of gear with little effort.
With my level 216 character at 110 enchanting and around +180% enchanting due to gear, potions, food buffs and a couple of other optional modded things, I can only get up to +28% smithing enchantment on anything I enchant; so it really neuters the fortify smithing enchantment effect to make it less unreasonable, as well as every other effect to some extent so you still won't be able to deal thousands of damage with a single enchantment on a weapon.

It doesn't fix tempering's power of making items literally several times better just because you tempered it to legendary status, but at least it reigns in the potential of it in the late game by adding a cap to how much power you can get out of it, making exploiting the system impossible.

Well, thanks. But it looks like both those mods are really far from the point we were discussing with Fitness Lauch.

[Sairek Ceareste]

Originally posted by th:

Originally posted by Sairek Ceareste:

There is a mod that sort of does this and a bit more.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19023

It gives NPCs gear random tempers, and any tempers you do on your gear degrade after a while, depending on context stuff. For example, getting hit by a giant does more degradation to gear than a humanoid sword. Whiffing a swing and hitting a steel beam does more degradation to your weapon than hitting a wooden beam as well.


This kind of nerfs tempering a little bit since it's not permanent, but it doesn't help the fact that tempering still makes gear several times better. With that said, though...
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6285


While this mod adds a bunch of enchantments, it does also have an optional cap limit the whole exploit with enchanting gear to get ridiculously powerful fortification on restoration and smithing and such, which fixes the ability to smith an iron dagger and tempering it do deal something like 382912 damage, or the same for adding an enchant which does equally as much damage to a weapon. And from what I can tell, it soft caps to an eventual hard cap, so it's not like you'll get to 100% smithing bonus on a piece of gear with little effort.
With my level 216 character at 110 enchanting and around +180% enchanting due to gear, potions, food buffs and a couple of other optional modded things, I can only get up to +28% smithing enchantment on anything I enchant; so it really neuters the fortify smithing enchantment effect to make it less unreasonable, as well as every other effect to some extent so you still won't be able to deal thousands of damage with a single enchantment on a weapon.

It doesn't fix tempering's power of making items literally several times better just because you tempered it to legendary status, but at least it reigns in the potential of it in the late game by adding a cap to how much power you can get out of it, making exploiting the system impossible.

Well, thanks. But it looks like both those mods are really far from the point we were discussing with Fitness Lauch.

Yeah, I'm still looking for something that nerfs smithing for a few months now

All I can find are things that change how smithing works -- usually buffs by making it easier and more thematic to level (like mining ores gives smithing skill exp), but nothing that actually changes how powerful it is by making it weaker or flattening its power curve.

If you find anything, let me know too please!

[th]

Originally posted by Sairek Ceareste:

Originally posted by th:

Well, thanks. But it looks like both those mods are really far from the point we were discussing with Fitness Lauch.

All I can find are things that change how smithing works -- usually buffs by making it easier and more thematic to level (like mining ores gives smithing skill exp), but nothing that actually changes how powerful it is by making it weaker or flattening its power curve.

I can only tell that you are in a pretty typical situation. I was in similar situations with mods a lot. Most modders make a lot of unnecessary customizations forcing you to accept their way when you only need one particular and simple thing.

The ideal mod is a mod which is as atomized as it's just possible. Modders which don't understand that typically just a crappy modders. I just ignore such modders and their mods.

An example of an ideal mod:
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/43105
Simple and exactly on point.

[Fitness Lauch]

Originally posted by Sairek Ceareste:

If you find anything, let me know too please!

Enderal does that but it's a total conversation mod (can't put any perks into crafting professions, need high level to max all three of them, it's much weaker over all, you don't have these crazy fortify enchanting/smithing/alchemy effects and you miss other cool stuff if you choose to max them). Not gonna lie, I kinda prefer playing Enderal over Skyrim by now but it's sad that it's community is so small. Gameplay over all just feels better, I only dislike that there's no fast travel but the game adds a lot of "carriages" and teleporting scrolls to deal with that.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by Fitness Lauch:

It's one of the worst crafting systems which I've ever seen in a video game and Skyrims greatest weakness imo.

Play the previous games, they lack any real crafting system at all.

[House]

I question myself what this dude would think about Morrowind, in that game you can craft spells that broke reality xD

Yeah, the Craft system in Skyrim it's too OP, specially Alchemy and Enchanting ( In fact, i think Smithing it's pretty bad and does not needs to be nerf. It's hard to master and give no absurde use ].
But here we go: what type of "skill" you think players should need to level up this habilities? they are crafting, it's impossible to require any challenge. In fact, there's a challenge required: discipline. If the player does not have the discipline to acumulate resources, storage and make the stuffs, they will never level up smithing/enchanting/alchemy ( at least not to quickcly as someone who have method and discipline ].
Most of the players use glitches ou loops of steal or duplicate itens to master Enchanting and Smithing.
So yes, craft it's OP. There's a challenge required, and you dont need to use.
There's a lot of OP NoCraft builds.
Every game needs to have a playstyle for those who like grinding, i feel you are complaining about a thing that you even need to do xD

[mikaeliby]

It´s all about deciding what game you want to play and go with it. My first playthrough I totally ignored crafting/enchanting/alchemy and just upgraded with what I found. It was glorious :) If one sticks to mid-difficulty it really works good with the levelling.