Considering 3 approaches to Smithing/Enchanting and could use some advice on how not to ruin my game

[sikonawt]

I'm working on my first character now, a shield/1 hand warrior orc. I'm considering three options for crafting.

1. Ignore it or use it minimally.
2. Focus on smithing and enchanting, aiming to max both and put some perk points into both trees, but refrain from using any kind of "ramp" strategy (discussed below).
3. Use some form of "ramp" strategy to gain extra benefit. A mild ramp would involve enchanting gear with +smithing and then using that gear set to smith out better gear. A more extreme ramp involves the repetitive cycle of creating +enchanting pots with alchemy, enchanting a +alchemy set, making better +enchanting pots and so on until achieving the max bonus and then creating a final set of +smithing gear to smith out some uber powerful gear. I am not considering exploiting the various helm bugs that allow one to enhance this process even further.


I have a feeling that going all out in option 3 will trivialize the difficulty of the game -- so I'm very unlikely to choose that option. Would my description of a "mild ramp" be too powerful, or would only the extreme version trivialize the game?

Similarly, I'd like to use smithing and enchanting... but are they fundamentally overpowered even without using any kind of ramp? If I get smithing and enchanting to 100 with some perks and craft/improve my gear without enchanting a +smithing set, will that alone be enough to trivialize the difficulty of the game?

For reference, at the moment I am playing at the second highest difficulty but am not opposed to setting it to the highest.

 

[Agincourt]

No where your coming from mate tbh...Enchanting/Smithing is pretty overpowered, i enchanted 4 bits i think with +smithing. threw a cheap +smith pot down my neck made some light dragonscale and dadric bows, then threw a cheap +enchanting pot down my neck and fully enchanted everything (Enchanting maxed Middle/Lefthand side) and sorta strolling through the game on master so god know how easy it would become if i did the achemy side as well and kept remaking the gear, and my 2h orc has started to 1 hit Trolls on power attacks with the same sorta set up legendary enchanted gear - Hammer FTW ...so i'd go with option 2 tbh unless you want easy mode i've rerolled my assassin due to this

 

[Gaidren]

Great question.

Part of the fun in games like these, at least to me, is building a powerful character and seeing what is really effective. That being said, it was a bit deflating to me when I realized in Oblivion that I had pretty much "broken the game" with custom spells and there was no challenge to be had at all.

I'd highly advise against the all-out Alch/Ench/Smithing ramp. It will totally break your game, even on Master. I went with max Smithing with a bit of work on Ench as well (didn't get it maxed for the very powerful 2nd enchant, but got it high-ish). Early in the game I switched the difficulty between Expert and Master as needed (until I got some resistance gear I found dragons and dragon priests/mages hard on Expert). Now at level 40+ I never have to turn it down from Master, and I feel a bit overpowered but not ridiculous. The enemies that scale to my level still take several power attacks to kill. It feels like a good balance.

If you ignore crafting completely, you'll feel somewhat weak in my opinion. The only plus side is that gear you will find from quests will actually have a chance at being an upgrade, which may make questing more interesting once you've finished the main story.

 

[J747L]

I've survived multiple Dragons on master difficulty with 0% elemental resistance thanks to 1.2 (no sarcasm, my game became entertaining again). Skyrim seems to be forgiving... sometimes too forgiving. But it depends though on your play, as stated before, the game can quickly become easy on higher levels. You can hold out on some perks and only when your character seem to need it then spend it.

What I realized is that these strategies were formed by gamers from a different generation. That was back when everything was hard leveled and forced players to role-play and power play at the same time. Now, with the level matching, power playing seems to be on the road of becoming obsolete.

 

[sikonawt]

Thanks for the replies all -- and yeah J747L, I do kinda see that. Granted, it does vary a lot based on genre (power gaming is alive and well in MMOs), but certainly for the Elder Scrolls series it has seemed for at least the last 2-3 games that if you try to use powerful combinations then you will end up with a character that can just plow through the game with no trouble at all.

Unfortunately for me, I'm a power gamer by nature. In general I can restrain myself and not go after the most powerful strategies, especially if they don't appeal to me... but I can't really enjoy a game where I have to actively gimp myself in order to maintain any challenge.

I'm glad that smithing and/or enchanting isn't completely OP by nature -- I'd be annoyed if I had to skip it entirely. But I can handle not abusing the ramp chain between alchemy, enchanting, and smithing. It seems kinda exploity even though it isn't technically an exploit, so I really don't mind not using it.