So is it possible to play a warrior without ANY crafting skills?

[Nord Warrior]

I play on Expert and I like being warriors, but I'll always have smithing or enchanting, never tried going without. Has anyone tried it? I imagine weapon damage would be really, really low. Btw, no using enchanted gear either.

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[Cordelia]

Sure, if you want to reinforce the dumb Barbarian stereotype -- YOU MAKE ME SICK!

But really, yes. I think so. Crafting skills are there to supplement gameplay, but just as you can go through the entire game without using all crafts, you can go through the entire game without using any crafts, you'll just have to adjust to the fact that no crafting means slower leveling.

 

[Nord Warrior]

I never said anything about dumb barbarian stereotypes, not all warriors are smith's, alchemists and enchanters. I was just asking dude.

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[Cordelia]

*Lady. And I wasn't serious. It's humor.

 

[Nord Warrior]

Besides, slower leveling is a good thing. It means you would have more time to find better items and have skills in the right place before the game gets harder.

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[Cordelia]

Then it offers you nothing but benefit to forgo all crafting by the sounds of it.

 

[Matt]

What you imagine is correct. I did a playthrough with an Imperial brute who used hammers. Unfortunately, if you expect the game to become more difficult as you gain combat levels (even on the highest difficulty setting), then you are in for a world of disappointment. No matter the difficulty, once you reach a decent level in two-handed or one-handed weapon wielding, the game becomes easy if you use equipment such as elven or higher. At overall level 35 with no enchanted weapons or armor I was killing dragons with one blow. At level 42, I gave up the playthrough, as no enemies proved to be a challenge. If you are looking to make the game as hard as possible, stick with low-level gear such as steel and you might not meet with the same disappointment I was left with.

 

[Nighthiker77]

You are going to level much faster without crafting (relative to areas cleared) because weapon experience is per hit regardless of damage, and your armor will level faster too because you will get hit more.

I played master with no gear, smithed weapons for my follower, and mystic bound weapons for me, and my damage output was dramatically lower with fortify archery enchantments.

I would say definitely no on master, maybe on expert. It would definitely be exciting. No armor enchantments is going to make it extremely difficult for a warrior.

 

[Dagmar]

Without Smithing or Fortify weapon skill enchantments your damage isn't going to scale well with the game. This is especially true if you play on a higher difficulty setting like Master. I have the build for my Nord shield maiden warrior but with the use of Smithing and the use of the Shield of Ysgramor and Amulet of Talos. With a Skyforge Steel Sword her damage capped out at 85 points of damage. For your build without Smithing it would cap out at around 65 points of damage.

I can pretty much guarantee that on Master difficulty setting you will die a lot with that build if you're also forgoing any use of magic (i.e. Restoration healing spells) and/or potions, and if you are allowing for use of either you are going to find yourself relying on them a lot. On Master difficulty setting your enemies will outdamage you. Without healing potions and/or spells, your only equalizer would be the fact that you have superior physical damage resistance over your enemies but if you're being attacked by multiple opponents that won't be enough in most situations. I'd also say that a shield is going to be a must for dealing with magic damage as the most you can get outside of racial abilities is 40% with the Lord Stone and Agent of Mara power so the Elemental Protection Block perks are going to be priceless for the build.

 

[HappyFaceClown]

Well its certainly not recomended but very possible, i've talked to lots of people who play like that, some even choose to take it one step further and farm all there own gear never buying anything, that is insane! But some people love a challenge and are willing to go to extreme lengths to get that challenge, i personally would never even dream of playing in such a way but a lot of players do. Better have tons of patience tho and be prepared to die.... A LOT. lol

 

[TJ0331]

I would do it if it sounds appealing to you. Honestly thats what skyrim is all about. I do new builds every day almost because I like to try new things.

 

[Dawn]

The problem you will have is that difficulty scaling in this game is pretty poor. For the most part, it is a simple hack and slash equation of either out-damaging your opponent and winning, or not and dying (oversimplified for sure as you can also avoid damage, and to some extent, avoid almost all damage if you are willing to abuse sneak, terrain and the stupid AI while picking off enemies from range).

The difficulty slider and crafting both change the equation in similar ways, higher difficulty lowers your damage while increasing your opponents damage and health, while more / higher crafting offsets that by increasing your damage done to your opponent while decreasing the damage you take (and with alchemy even allow you to spam heal yourself with pots, besides increasing your damage and reducing the damage you take).

To me, there is little difference between playing on a lower difficulty setting with a lot of restrictions (e.g. little to no crafting) or playing on a higher difficulty setting using all crafting.

They both attempt to balance the damage out versus damage in equation where you have a reasonable chance of dying if you play poorly while having a reasonable change of killing your opponent if you play well.

All I can say is give it a try and realize you may have to adjust the difficulty slider to find a working balance where things are still challenging, yet not so much so that the only way to survive is to spend ten minutes abusing sneak and the dumb AI to beat every opponent, and reloading every time you are ambushed.

Personally, I feel it will be easier to find a working balance that stays challenging by restricting crafting such that capping damage mitigation is not possible (e.g. armor caps, magic resistance) and adjusting the difficulty slider than it would be to try and find a balanced challenge by increasing the difficulty level, yet still using crafting and maxing out damage mitigation.

And of course by going full warrior and needing to be in melee range all the time, your balance point will be different than someone playing a sneak archer picking off enemies from range. Most likely you will need to decrease the difficulty level as you will be taking more damage in melee.

 

[TJ0331]

Just do some crafting and not OP crafting.

 

[Bjørn of Helgåfjord]

It seems like it's pretty easy (or maybe that's just on lower difficulties here) to find decent armors and weapons early on in the game, without really having to buy or smith much.

For example, on my Viking, a big skill for him would be smithing, but I could already find a good deal of Steel weapons and such before I even got the Steel Smithing perk. For example, you don't need to buy a Skyforge Steel weapon but it's still quite useful for awhile.

A lot of bandit big-wigs appear to have pretty much a full set steel armor if they're bandit leaders, for instance, along with enchanted weapons of all sorts. I've found a whole Dwarven Armor piece (just the main body armor, not gauntlets and such) along with one or two enchanted weaps just sitting in Valheim Towers before. Of course fur and hide armor, iron weapons, etc are quite easy to find too on normal bandits.

Even glass and Ebony weapons/armors I've been able to find, if I remember correctly. Not quite as easily, but I found them.

SO, to answer your question, it may not really be a necessity. If you're rich in the game you could probably just throw down some money on better weapons and armor too, and wait until the next best stuff becomes available.

However where smithing becomes useful is in that in between period, where you can improve what you already have, since you can't get anything better.

 

[Pete]

Yes, its quite doable. First thing to consider: will you have beast form or vampire lord available? If so, I don't see any problem. Both these forms ofter much more utility when your character isn't overpowered with trinkets.

No special form? Consider mastering shouts. Yes shouts! The most important being the obvious: unrelenting force. My last iron warrior (only iron 2H and iron armor), sent many a troll over a ledge that way.

Not into shouts? The keep perks to survival skills only (your weapon and armor). You'll find charged soul gems and an enchanted thing here or there.

My best 'classic dagonborn play thru': Iron warrior, shouts, purchases of nasty poisons.

 

[Nighthiker77]

Maybe an absolutely no casting or crafting character would finally give me a reason to wear heavy armor.

Another interesting aspect would be that it would make damage enchantments a lot more valuable.

 

[TJ0331]

You could do it. Especially if you did alteration to cast flesh spells and you could also paralyze people with it.

 

[LuChao]

My best warrior did nothing in terms of crafting and he destroyed everything due to epic perks

 

[Daelon DuLac]

Sure, why not. By the time you get all perked up in any of the armor or combat trees, you can pretty much kick almost any butt you want to without being all perked and enchanted up.

Me - on my warriors (especially my new Orc Urug'Hai), I always join the Companions and, frankly the Skyforge steel weapons really don't need any improvement. They kick a** from the start and, even without improvement, by the time you take all the perks you're doing almost as good of damage as daedric anyhow.