The Elder Scrolls XIV: Good? Bad? I'm the one with the Thu'um!

Though, as mentioned, loading up your companion with petty soul gems and giving them a soul-taking weapon is also hella effective. "Oh, look, I made 300 pairs of magic pants that fortify carry weight for their own weight!"

In my experience, it takes a lot less grinding to get enchanting leveled up, than it does to get smithing leveled up.

Also, weapon enchanting with weak soul gems is much more effective than non-weapon enchanting, the strengh of the damage is static depending on your level, whereas with non-weapon enchanting the strength of the effect depends on your level and the size of the soul gem. Of course, if the soul gem is small, the power in the weapon runs out sooner. I used to enchant every bow I could find with weak soul gems, the way I see it is twenty or thirty guards with five shot bows could probably take down a dragon, but one bow wouldn't do a bandit too much good.

I think I agree that enchanting is overpowered in Skyrim, but in Oblivion feather spells, potions and items are more overpowered than enchanting is in Skyrim (IMO, obviously). There was probably something overpowered in Morrowind but I haven't played that much.

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Originally Posted by halfeye

I think I agree that enchanting is overpowered in Skyrim, but in Oblivion feather spells, potions and items are more overpowered than enchanting is in Skyrim. There was probably something overpowered in Morrowind but I haven't played that much.

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Oh, sure. Morrowind had no end of overpowered things, but that was mostly a function of the magic system having the potential to get stupid broken. At the same time, it made you work for your enchantments. They were stupidly expensive, and that in a world where you couldn't easily offload any valuable loot for its true value.

Even then, you had artifacts that were valuable because you couldn't replicate them yourself. Stuff like the Boots of Blinding Speed, or the spear of Hircine, or the Boots of the Apostle.

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Originally Posted by Mark Hall

Though, as mentioned, loading up your companion with petty soul gems and giving them a soul-taking weapon is also hella effective. "Oh, look, I made 300 pairs of magic pants that fortify carry weight for their own weight!"

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The grind for soul gems isn't so much the problem, so much as the subsequent coming back to town and the mind-numbing process of "ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft, ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft, ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft," ad nauseum and times three hundred.

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Originally Posted by Balmas

The grind for soul gems isn't so much the problem, so much as the subsequent coming back to town and the mind-numbing process of "ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft, ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft, ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft," ad nauseum and times three hundred.

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Eh, I have a farming alt in LOTRO. Tedium is fun. ;-)

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Originally Posted by Balmas

So, Fudgemuppet just released a video on why Enchanting sucks, and I think they make some good points. Namely, enchanting sucks because it's a super powerful skill.

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IMO, the core problem isn't enchanting, it's Skyrim's bad power scaling. Crafting skills are wildly powerful because of how they scale with each other, and with perks and skills. They also provide subtractive instead of factor discounts and damage reduction. So, for example, every point of armor up to the cap is a linear reduction to the amount of damage you take, which winds up being a powerful multiplier of your effective health. The same is true with magicka discounts and your effective magicka, which go all the way up to infinity. It's no wonder that these can provide some insanely overpowered benefits.

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A player who makes the most of enchanting can easily craft items that are as good or better than artifacts blessed by the gods themselves. Why use an artifact of stamina absorbtion when you can craft an item of both stamina and health absorbtion, and in greater magnitudes to boot? Why bother with Chillrend when you can put the same enchantments on a more powerful weapon? The only artifacts that are competitive with what you can make with Enchantment are the things that you can't make with Enchanting, usually due to unique effects.

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Well, there's no right answer to whether the best quest items should be better than the best crafted items. If you can't make anything top tier from crafting, why bother? I'll agree that the crafted gear shouldn't be so far and away better than items you get in the world. Ideally, you'd want crafting to be able to improve, and scale up, dropped rewards. That way there's a reason to do it, and a way to keep dropped items being cool. Give them some effects and combinations which can't be duplicated from crafting, and you're golden.

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he other side of the coin is that if a character doesn't use enchanting, that character is severely gimped comparatively, and will struggle in the higher levels. Try fighting dragons without resist magic clothing, or playing a mage without spell cost reduction gear. Even a pure warrior suffers without his armor of fortify weapon skill +lots%, to the order of being half or a third as effective.

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Yeah, that's scaling problems, and itemization. But also, with the difficulty slider being there, I don't know that it's an objective problem.

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A third problem with Enchanting is that one skill allows you to replace every other skill. Want to be a mage? Congrats, you now have zero-cost spellcasting that lets you be a master wizard for no further investment. Want to be a thief? Even if you have no skill in thievery, you can make up an amulet of muffle, gloves of pickpocketing, boots of fortify sneak, and bam! Instant thief. One skill replaces all the rest.

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But it doesn't. There's no skill that Enchanting completely replaces, and good luck affording to level up crafting without getting some other skills. There's plenty of good perks in every skill tree that are good by themselves, better with crafting, and not redundant. Only the core 'cost discount' perks in magic trees are really the problem.

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On a personal nite, I'll note that this is particularly problematic because enchanting is so bloody tedious to raise. At 1 XP per item enchanted, you're looking at a grind of around 310 items to go from 15 to 100 in Enchanting. And it is a grind; while you could theoretically get to 100 enchanting over the course of an entire game, you're unlikely to make 310 items unless you really work at it.

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I agree that Enchanting is a chore, but surely it's not THAT hard. If I may, consider leveling speech to get your merchants more agreeable, along with the perks that let you sell anything to anyone. Then you can buy soul gems from the game's abundant spell vendors, and sell all the junk you'd otherwise have to lug around to seven different vendors. I don't even bother with using soul trap. Cash->Soul Gems->Enchanted Weapons->More Cash.

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Crafting skills in general are kinda lackluster in Skyrim, but Enchanting's the real problem child. It's boring to raise, but is practically required for every character thanks to the power it offers.

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Disagree, they're all kind of OP. They're tedious to raise, but honestly, I don't mind it too much. I just intersperse dungeon clearing with some crafting, then go back to dungeon clearing to get more materials and gold.

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Originally Posted by Balmas

the mind-numbing process of "ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft, ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft, ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft," ad nauseum and times three hundred.

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Compared to how many times of making and improving an iron dagger? sure the dagger's a little easier per item, but how many daggers do you need? five thousand? ten thousand? I always made leather bracers as a sideline, and I have no idea how many of either it was, just way too many, and much more than enchanting took. I'm pretty sure that with enchanting with high level items I got a level per item at times, and I'm sure it was something like thirty daggers and bracers per level of smithing (less at lower levels, an extra item to level per level?).

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Originally Posted by The_Jackal

Iell, there's no right answer to whether the best quest items should be better than the best crafted items. If you can't make anything top tier from crafting, why bother? I'll agree that the crafted gear shouldn't be so far and away better than items you get in the world. Ideally, you'd want crafting to be able to improve, and scale up, dropped rewards. That way there's a reason to do it, and a way to keep dropped items being cool. Give them some effects and combinations which can't be duplicated from crafting, and you're golden.

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You have to have a bit of a gradient when it comes to quest rewards, I think. There are some items which are basically just "this is my lucky dagger," which is fine as just a bog-standard steel dagger, and then you have stuff like "The god Auri-el crafted and wielded this bow in the war against Lorkhan." To my mind, crafting should allow you to make things that are better than most of what you'll find in the world, but not quite as good as daedric/aedric artifacts.

I like the way that Enaisiaiaon handles it in his Artificer mod. Daedric artifacts are already as powerful in terms of physical damage as you could make with master smithing, but with the caveat of being unable to smith it further yourself. You're not going to be able to improve on a weapon that a god crafted, after all. They also each bear a unique enchantment, and usually have some kind of downside as well. Volendrung weighs a ton, swings about half as quickly as an equivalent warhammer, but makes up for it by sending enemies flying a la Fus Ro Dah. Dawnbreaker does 55 points of sun damage on its own, and triple that to undead, at the cost of swinging at about the speed of a war axe. Wabbajack does 200 points of damage with its attack, and has infinite charges, but also weighs about thirty pounds. Stuff like that, which makes them interesting alternatives to just crafting your own gear.

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But also, with the difficulty slider being there, I don't know that it's an objective problem.

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I've felt for a while that Bethesda's difficulty slider is basically a shortcut so they don't have to spend time balancing the game.

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But it doesn't. There's no skill that Enchanting completely replaces, and good luck affording to level up crafting without getting some other skills. There's plenty of good perks in every skill tree that are good by themselves, better with crafting, and not redundant. Only the core 'cost discount' perks in magic trees are really the problem.

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It doesn't completely replace them, no, but it allows you to obtain similar results with much less investment. Muffle, Fortify sneak, fortify pickpocket, and the sneak attack thing from the dark brotherhood make you a passable thief for almost no investment, even if you don't get the benefit of automatically losing enemies when you start to sneak. Fortify stamina, block, heavy armor, and one-handed makes you a decent tank, even if you've spent the past fifty levels upping your mana. And of course, if you have enchanting, the main difference between you and the archmage is that one of you will have perks to make your spells more effective.

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I agree that Enchanting is a chore, but surely it's not THAT hard. If I may, consider leveling speech to get your merchants more agreeable, along with the perks that let you sell anything to anyone. Then you can buy soul gems from the game's abundant spell vendors, and sell all the junk you'd otherwise have to lug around to seven different vendors. I don't even bother with using soul trap. Cash->Soul Gems->Enchanted Weapons->More Cash.

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Didn't say it's hard. I said it's tedious. It's a skill from which nearly every character benefits immensely, but which is boring to acquire. In essence, all you have to do is acquire soul gems, go to the station, and spend the next hour mashing the same buttons in the same order.

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Disagree, they're all kind of OP. They're tedious to raise, but honestly, I don't mind it too much. I just intersperse dungeon clearing with some crafting, then go back to dungeon clearing to get more materials and gold.

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Oh, aye, especially in tandem with one another. However, it's Enchanting that really causes problem. You can't get into too much trouble with smithing's damage increase, or with alchemy's temporary boosts. But throw Enchanting into the mix, and suddenly you have weapons that deal three hundred points of damage, and permanent max-cap magic resistance, and potions that make the vanilla potions useless in comparison.

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Originally Posted by The_Jackal

Well, there's no right answer to whether the best quest items should be better than the best crafted items. If you can't make anything top tier from crafting, why bother? I'll agree that the crafted gear shouldn't be so far and away better than items you get in the world. Ideally, you'd want crafting to be able to improve, and scale up, dropped rewards. That way there's a reason to do it, and a way to keep dropped items being cool. Give them some effects and combinations which can't be duplicated from crafting, and you're golden.

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Well, there's the right answer: Give unique effects for unique items, instead of just "Enchantment that already exists, but maybe slightly better, but you can't Dual Enchant it".

The Dragon Priest masks are laaaame, and so are most of the other unique items. The Bloodskal Blade and Crown of Aetherium are the only two I can think of off the top of my head.

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Originally Posted by Balmas

potions that make the vanilla potions useless in comparison.

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The carry weight potions still get nowhere near Oblivion's feather potions.

Sarthaal Amulet and the Diadem of the Savant are two more because you can't duplicate those effects.

Iron Daggers are simple, since you get the items then it's two button presses per. Enchanting is eight. (Item tab, item, enchantment tab, enchantment, Soul Gem Tab, Soul Gem, craft item, confirm) Plus you can't even line them up with the 'confirm' dialogue option so you're either using the mouse to move around, or Better Dialogue Box controls.

I'm really partial to Zim's Immersive Artifacts instead. Volendrung has it's standard drain 50 Stamina, but you can paralyze with a Sideways power attack, and while it weighs 35, it also costs less stamina to power attack. Dawnbreaker does 40 fire damage, with a bonus 20 on the first hit to undead, a 35% chance to stagger them to a knee, and a 5% chance to knock them down entirely. Plus if you're a two-handed character, you can swap it out into a two handed version. Wabbajack doesn't do damage, but keeps their health, so while they might be a super tough rabbit when transformed, if you kill them they die instead of just turning back to normal. Plus it can instantly kill very rarely.

What I really like is how strong it makes the Nightingale gear. It means there's some chance you're actually going to want to wear it all, instead of just slapping on one or two pieces now and again. And also the Staff of Magnus instantly kills Magical Anamolies which makes life so much easier doing the radiant quest bits. Also Thane weapons are now interesting and useful, instead of just 'Blade of X'.

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Originally Posted by halfeye

The carry weight potions still get nowhere near Oblivion's feather potions.

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Part of that is because you can't stack them, unlike Feather.

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Originally Posted by halfeye

Compared to how many times of making and improving an iron dagger? sure the dagger's a little easier per item, but how many daggers do you need? five thousand? ten thousand?

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The "iron dagger" trope was out of date by the time I started playing Skyrim, and that was less than a year after its release. If you're grinding smithing like that, no wonder it takes forever. Literally anything else you can make is more efficient, more profitable, and faster to grind.

Leather helmets are a good item to mass produce - each one will improve your smithing about six times as much as an iron dagger. But as revealed to me in one of these threads a few months ago, the real express ticket to smithing mastery is - dwarven bows. For a total of three dwarven ingots, plus one iron, you get the value of (give or take, depending on your skill level) about 40 iron daggers.

Since the smithing XP you get is based on value, it's arguably far easier to grind it by making jewelry. A single gemstone-encrusted necklace or ring will give you a massive boost to your smithing. (And no, it doesn't really make sense that making such a thing gives you more insight into how to craft a honkin' great sword or chestplate, but we'll go with it...).

...Erm, fourteen threads and so much talking about mods makes me a bit overwhelmed.

Seeing the chance, I decided to take a ride playing Skyrim on the Switch (my computer can't handle many games currently, so I'm not using it for games ATM). Do consider that I also got Zelda BotW the same day, and got DOOM later on. I still steer towards Skyrim, just because it's so much fun.

Playing as William, a Breton specializing in One-Handed, Blocking, Heavy Armor and Restoration, plus a bit of Alteration and delving into the godskills (Smithing, Enchanting, Alchemy). Haven't done the main quest in a while, mostly because I feel the need to complete many of the subquests. I also have a hoarding problem - far too many times I end up overloaded, and not just because of the Dragonbone/Dragonscale items, but because of all the stuff I carry (Potions, Ingredients, five different weapons, about 15 pieces of jewelry so I can enchant them, etc.) So good that the houses exist: Lakeview Manor is my homespot, but I also got Breezehome, Proudspire Manor (where wife and kids live), Heljarchen Hall and Honey...erm...that house in Riften. So far, I got to Harbinger (remained as werewolf)/Arch-Mage, only need a few thanedoms, got the Black Star, Masque of Clavicus Vile and Dawnbreaker, have done two back-stabs to people (the Forsworn king and the cultist of Namira; the first because he killed the guy on the shrine of Talos and the second because...I'm not gonna kill the religious guy to have a feast!), haven't done the Thieves' Guild quests (ambivalent towards it) and might not do the Dark Brotherhood quests. I thank Whirlwind Sprint for existing (I haven't used Unrelenting Force in like...ever, but Whirlwind Sprint is a must-have for when I'm overloaded before I had the horse, and THEN I still use it to get to the horse ASAP). And I hated Mzulft because I got overloaded almost at the beginning, went in alone, and had the Slow Time glitch happening at me several times (aka, when time slows to stop an enemy Power Attack using the Block perk, but it doesn't return, so you're in a permanent Slow Time effect). And I hate when they kill my horse. It's annoying.

But still, I feel like I've enjoyed it quite a lot - perhaps a bit TOO much. I rarely feel like I'm doing meaningful choices and actual roleplaying in similar games (*coughcoughDragonAgeOriginscoughcough*), but here, there's a load more freedom. Plus it feels fun to have a hero that, before it even reaches mid-game, it already feels like a walking demigod, and still can get its bum handed to him by a mob, or a giant pulling off a Honeymooners, or an Elder Dragon who happens to cross by while I'm mounted on a horse and overloaded! Thank goodness I haven't gone for the hardest difficulty (...yet!).

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Originally Posted by Temotei

Part of that is because you can't stack them, unlike Feather.

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Well, sort of, however one on one with 100% alchemy on both sides, Feather potions are much stronger too.

Honestly, fighting a dragon from horseback is an experience everyone should have. It feels truly epic.

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Originally Posted by factotum

Since the smithing XP you get is based on value, it's arguably far easier to grind it by making jewelry. A single gemstone-encrusted necklace or ring will give you a massive boost to your smithing. (And no, it doesn't really make sense that making such a thing gives you more insight into how to craft a honkin' great sword or chestplate, but we'll go with it...).

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Grab that Transmute Ore spell and you can level both things at the same time. :smallsmile:

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Originally Posted by Triaxx

Honestly, fighting a dragon from horseback is an experience everyone should have. It feels truly epic.

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Well, it would be if horses weren't made out of paper mache and died against anything tougher than a wolf. #1 biggest problem with horses. Hopefully 6 takes some cues from more recent games and gives you an immortal horse to get around.

Meh, I've never lost a horse while riding it unless doing something stupid with gravity. Even fighting dragons isn't any threat.

Balmas, got a link to your Artificer Mod?

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Originally Posted by T.G. Oskar

...Erm, fourteen threads and so much talking about mods makes me a bit overwhelmed.

Seeing the chance, I decided to take a ride playing Skyrim on the Switch (my computer can't handle many games currently, so I'm not using it for games ATM). Do consider that I also got Zelda BotW the same day, and got DOOM later on. I still steer towards Skyrim, just because it's so much fun.
*snip*
But still, I feel like I've enjoyed it quite a lot - perhaps a bit TOO much. I rarely feel like I'm doing meaningful choices and actual roleplaying in similar games (*coughcoughDragonAgeOriginscoughcough*), but here, there's a load more freedom. Plus it feels fun to have a hero that, before it even reaches mid-game, it already feels like a walking demigod, and still can get its bum handed to him by a mob, or a giant pulling off a Honeymooners, or an Elder Dragon who happens to cross by while I'm mounted on a horse and overloaded! Thank goodness I haven't gone for the hardest difficulty (...yet!).

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Good to see someone enjoying Skyrim, no matter the platform! The sword-and-board paladin is a classic.

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Originally Posted by Triaxx

Honestly, fighting a dragon from horseback is an experience everyone should have. It feels truly epic.

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And now I'm shuddering at imagining trying to fight both the dragon, the camera, and the wonky horse controls, all without being thrown from your horse or getting your horse killed.

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Originally Posted by Triaxx

Balmas, got a link to your Artificer Mod?

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It's actually only on the Special Edition nexus right now, but it could be backported to Legendary Edition with no major difficulties.

I really like this mod. It's not by Enaisiaion like I thought it was, but it embraces the same mindset of letting you build a character on your own, without needing to worship at the triple shrines of the crafting skills. It overhauls most of the unique items in the game and makes them actually worth using. F'r'example:
-Remember the Diadem of the Savant? In vanilla, it gives something like 5% reduction to all spell costs from all schools; the mod changes it to 15% for all schools. It does the same for the Saarthal Amulet. Slap on the Archmage's robes, and you're looking at halved costs for all schools of magic.
-The Gauldur Amulet in vanilla is kind of underwhelming. Fortify all three attributes by thirty points--woohoo. Artificer makes it an amulet that could really be feared, and be worth seeking out after the ancients split it up. You're talking 100 extra magic and armor, 50 extra health and stamina, fortified regeneration for all of them, 15% lower casting cost for all spells of magic, and 30% magic resistance to boot. Now that's something worth trekking all over Skyrim for.
-Dragon Priest masks are themed, with armor types to match. Volsung, for instance, is all about the hoarders in the audience, with increased movement speed, carry weight, and barter skill. Rahgot is heavy armor, fortifies stamina, gives you stamina regen, and gives a hefty bonus to two handed damage. Krosis is all about being a better sneak archer.

Really, it's just a fantastic little mod, and I'd love if Bethesda made ESVI include items more like this.

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Originally Posted by mythmonster2

Hopefully 6 takes some cues from more recent games and gives you an immortal horse to get around.

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Skyrim already kind of does, if you go Dark Brotherhood or play though Dawnguard. My concern is that they're going to do something like they did with Oblivion and (formerly) ESO when the different color horses have different stats. :smallannoyed: I want to pick the color I like, not be stuck with something with polka dots in an unflattering shade of pink if I want to carry more stuff or go faster. That's one of my two big issues with Arvak. (The other being I have to suffer through a large portion of the Dawnguard plot to get him.)

It's not nearly as hard as it seems actually. The hardest part is timing the sword attacks so you hit the dragon and don't get stuck against it. I've never had much issue with the camera, since I tend towards the long sweeping hit and run style of attack. Maybe I should upload a video of a horse back dragon fight, just to show it off.

Zim's Gauldur amulet gives +10% effectiveness to all skills and +10% faster increase. Each of the fragments are specific to one of three sets of skills. So you can stack it with the vanilla lover's stone or the starting stones if you're inclined.

That said I do like a lot of the Artificer changes, Zim's fit my playstyle better.

It's hard for the artifacts to strike a balance between underwhelming and overpowered. The vanilla versions suffer from the first of these complaints, but I think Zim overcorrects. His version of Auriel's Bow, for instance, puts Harkon down in about three shots, which is all very gratifying but not much of a boss fight.

We all agree that the crafting skills are OP. To me the obvious solution is not to inflate artifacts in a self-defeating attempt to make them even more OP, but to nerf the crafting skills themselves.

Riddle me this: why does unimproved ebony gear even exist? If you can make ebony armour at all, you automatically have the skill to double its strength for the very reasonable investment of one added ingot - why wouldn't you do it? And yet nobody ever does.

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Originally Posted by veti

It's hard for the artifacts to strike a balance between underwhelming and overpowered. The vanilla versions suffer from the first of these complaints, but I think Zim overcorrects. His version of Auriel's Bow, for instance, puts Harkon down in about three shots, which is all very gratifying but not much of a boss fight.

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With which perks?

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We all agree that the crafting skills are OP. To me the obvious solution is not to inflate artifacts in a self-defeating attempt to make them even more OP, but to nerf the crafting skills themselves.

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We have a discussion about Ordinator in the last thread, spanning about 10 pages. Do you remember? I feel like he does a great job. And I do not like nerfing crafting for a simple reason: A dedicated crafter should be able to create some extremely powerful artifacts.

Maybe instead make the artifacts give effects you can't reproduce. Archmage's Robes are a great example. You cannot recreate that in vanilla. Mehrune's Razot or Ebony Blade are other examples.

A negative example is Volendrung. Stamina Absorp on a slow weapon is just....meh.

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Riddle me this: why does unimproved ebony gear even exist? If you can make ebony armour at all, you automatically have the skill to double its strength for the very reasonable investment of one added ingot - why wouldn't you do it? And yet nobody ever does.

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Because prices are weird in Skyrim. It should be much MUCH more expensive as it is an extremely rare ore. And if I have a rare ore, I rather craft 6 instead of 5 armor pieces than improve one and create one less. The ore to profit ratio is better. An uneducated buyer (i.e. one who doesn't have the scan-o-vision aka CHIM the player has) wouldn't even pay more for an upgraded ebony armor if it were more expensive.

It's less about the sale value, because by the time you reach Ebony Smithing, money is much less of a problem, so upgrading it is for wearing rather than selling.

Zim's isn't the problem there. It's that Archers are stupendously overpowered anyway. Normally by the time you get to him you're trading way down to shoot him with the 'Legendary Weapon of a God' from your vastly more powerful Daedric or Dragonborn bow. It feels like the epic wars of the gods lasted as long as they did because none of them understood which end of a hammer to forge with.

Well, with decent smithing and archery, the base damage of Zim's version of Auriel's Bow is around 150. Then there's the explosion of sunlight doing another 90 damage to undead. And the arrow bonus. It all adds up pretty fast. And speaking of fast, an under-appreciated aspect of Auriel's Bow is that it's one of the fastest in the game - the speed is the same as a basic longbow, or Zephyr, which is to say almost twice as fast as an ebony or daedric bow.

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Originally Posted by Sporeegg

And I do not like nerfing crafting for a simple reason: A dedicated crafter should be able to create some extremely powerful artifacts.

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Yabut, really there is no "dedicated crafter". There's no secrets to learn, no blueprints to gather, no secret tools or locations to uncover, no quest to prove yourself worthy to study with a master, nothing you have to give up. Well, I guess there are a couple of "secrets" (stahlrim, bonemold), but they're not particularly exciting, and the process of getting them is - exploring and fighting, which is a bit like - well, becoming a bard without showing any proficiency, or even interest, in music or speech, if you can imagine such a thing...

My problem is that someone who's levelled smithing - not dedicated, just naturally alongside their other skills - can, by about level 40 or so, churn out legendary items all day long. "Creating an artifact" should be a big deal, and pretty much impossible to repeat. (The aethereum forge quest has the right idea in that respect, but it's let down by the fact that - it's got nothing to do with smithing. You can complete the whole quest with a smithing level of 15, if you want.)

If I could work my will... to make a "legendary" item, you would have to (1) level up to 100 smithing with all the perks, (2) put on as much Fortify Smithing gear as you can humanly wear, (3) quaff a powerful potion, and then (4) before it wears off, complete some sort of minigame that determines the quality of the final item.

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Originally Posted by Sporeegg

Because prices are weird in Skyrim. It should be much MUCH more expensive as it is an extremely rare ore. And if I have a rare ore, I rather craft 6 instead of 5 armor pieces than improve one and create one less. The ore to profit ratio is better. An uneducated buyer (i.e. one who doesn't have the scan-o-vision aka CHIM the player has) wouldn't even pay more for an upgraded ebony armor if it were more expensive.

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Prices aren't that weird. Tempering to Legendary quality doubles the value of an item, and only takes one ingot. If you have three ebony ingots, you can (1) create an ebony mace, value 1000, or (2) create an ebony war axe, value 865, and have an ingot left over to temper it - final value 1730, lighter, faster and much stronger than the untempered mace. It doesn't make sense not to.

I, too, think that giving artifacts unique enchantments to make them worthwhile would be the best compromise. Perhaps also include some kind of automatic scaling for them, where the more powerful you are, the more of the weapon's power you can use? A hypothetical 100 Smithing 100 Enchanting weapon should be perhaps slightly weaker than artifacts, but it has the benefit of you being able to choose its effects, and have a sword with fire damage, or ice damage, or whatever it is you want.

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Originally Posted by halfeye

The carry weight potions still get nowhere near Oblivion's feather potions.

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Which could weigh nothing, or several pounds, because potion weight was the average of ingredient weight. Man, potions in Oblivion were crazy fun.

That said, I reloaded Skyrim and started over. The only mod I didn't get that I greatly miss is the Bound Weapons mod that let me have a bound pickaxe.

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Originally Posted by veti

If I could work my will... to make a "legendary" item, you would have to (1) level up to 100 smithing with all the perks, (2) put on as much Fortify Smithing gear as you can humanly wear, (3) quaff a powerful potion, and then (4) before it wears off, complete some sort of minigame that determines the quality of the final item.

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I'm with you for pretty much every bit of that except for the minigame. I detest minigames in Elder Scrolls games; their repetitive, facile nature means that they're often just a speedbump that gets in the way of the rest of the game.

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Prices aren't that weird. Tempering to Legendary quality doubles the value of an item, and only takes one ingot. If you have three ebony ingots, you can (1) create an ebony mace, value 1000, or (2) create an ebony war axe, value 865, and have an ingot left over to temper it - final value 1730, lighter, faster and much stronger than the untempered mace. It doesn't make sense not to.

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Source needed on those numbers, I think. Unless you've got a mod that drastically alters the way enhancing a weapon works, making a weapon legendary doesn't change anything but its value and its damage. It stays the same weight and keeps the same swing speed.

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Originally Posted by Balmas

Source needed on those numbers, I think. Unless you've got a mod that drastically alters the way enhancing a weapon works, making a weapon legendary doesn't change anything but its value and its damage. It stays the same weight and keeps the same swing speed.

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The numbers as given match my memory of the unmodded game. My memory isn't great, but the extra damage and same swing speed seem to fit the quote that you replied to.

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Originally Posted by Mark Hall

Man, potions in Oblivion were crazy fun.

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That is exactly what I was saying.