Am I the only one who feels smithing ruined the game?

[Scyris]

I need to ask this because in the older games you had to actually find your gear, in this one, you can bascally craft the best gear removing any real need to explore for it. I mean it sucks going thru all these area's knowing your never going to find anything worth using. It removes alot of the reason to explore.

The smithing system and the magic system are my 2 biggest gripes with skyrim, ok wellt here is a 3rd too, the overly bland world it takes place in. I wish magic was more like oblivion where as you gained skill in a school the magicka costs would drop, though skyrim also needs higher skill to add more damage too. I also dislike the fact I have to remove gear to cast a spell, what was wrong with how oblivion did it?

[A Rock Seller]

A lot of things ruined the game. This however is indeed one of the biggest culprits.

It's kinda funny how you're gonna see the fanboys come in any second saying things like "well it lets me be creative with my gear so it's fine". Yeah, creative so long as you don't mind your character having the exact same f*cking gear as everyone else's every single playthrough. The loot system in Skyrim is broken to no repair due to the introduction of the smithing mechanic. Now now, I already know what people are gonna say... "then play without smithing noob xddddd". Yeah, sorry but in a discussion about the game's flaws that's not really an excuse. It's in the game, it's a flaw. How I choose to tackle it is my own question to answer. I could go on and explain why the magic and exploration is also pretty jacked up in this game but I won't. Instead I'll just wait for someone to come and bark at me for what I said so far.

[ArnMan]

Mods are your friend in Skyrim. I never liked the vanilla Slyrim, especially the main quest (the whole Dragonborn quest is so not roleplaying friendly) and from level two I was killing dragons and actually never died from a dragon attack. I would let the dragons fly around and ignore them and well nothing happened. A couple of NPCs could die or some soon-to-be-respawned guards, but I stayed in a village for three days with the dragon flying around it doing very little. I agree with you on smithing and perhaps you could max your smithing and perks with mods and just be done with it. Use it as you must but after that ignore it. Lots of magic enhancing mods out there for you. One variation of a playthrough I did was to max out alchemy via mods and give my self about 300,000 gold and a nice house and used Skyrim Unbound with no dragons till I reached level 30 (I was a professor of Alchemy roleplay). I also used a dragon power mod to make dragons were really tough. The idea was I wouldn't need to collect every dagger I found to scrape together enough gold to buy something. Fun variation.

Now I am playing a vanilla character, no dragons, and working honestly to level up. Will not get married, but will use any variety of followers a lot. House is in Riften and I am concentrating on the Rift at first as I got totally bored with Whiterun.

[gnewna]

I tend to limit myself to one craft skill (or one main craft skill with another in very limited amounts - e.g. I might focus on smithing but make the odd potion if I'm desperate for money), and this helps a lot. If I'm smithing I tend to mainly focus on using it to make modded gear that's not available in the loot lists (e.g. Regal Assassin is only available through crafting), and to improve (or make matching pieces for) enchanted gear that I find - e.g. if I found an ebony cuirass of health, then I could smith that up to a decent level and make a set of matching boots/gauntlets/helm. Obviously in order to train the skill I'll need to make some items, but I either sell those or, when I get bored of doing the rounds to sell vast numbers of bows, I just stash them somewhere and forget about them. So, found gear will still be better than what I can make, because it has a chance of being enchanted. I also try not to smith above what can be found - if there's no glass showing up in loot yet, I won't take the glass smithing perk, etc.

Crafting is significantly less ridiculously OP if you don't power-level it and use multiple craft skills.


" I also dislike the fact I have to remove gear to cast a spell"

Not sure what you mean by this - in vanilla you can cast in heavy armour with no penalties, as far as I remember.

[MysticMalevolence]

Funny that this pops up a few days after the thread about smithing's uselessness.

[Dark Zendena]

I'm not a fanboy who can't accept negatives about a game I like since I too find things in the game to be somewhat "ruining" of my experience, but there are mods you could download to change how crafting and looting work more like how you're wanting.

Alternate Crafting Sytem (allows player to pay blacksmiths of varying skill levels to craft gear and upgrade gear for a fee) - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50546/?

Xtended Loot (allows customization of AI loot drops) - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/68876/?

Xtended Loot Add-Ons (add-on that allows customization of AI loot drops for drops of 3rd party modded armors/weapons/items of your choosing) - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69041/?