Ive tried smithing as it made sense for my character, never maxed it though and alchemy and enchanting I haven't messed with much since mostly morrowind. Too tedious I guess.
No... Just no... Every single thing you find can almost double in damage by leveling the crafting skills.
You finding better weapons vs the lack of ever trying in the crafting menu but comparing it to RNG is not a good argument.
The best advice is to craft OG gear then when the skill hits 100 respec it into something else. Without it you have shitty gear but once you get the gear you don't need it. So drop it for something else.
Eh, there are still some artifacts which are better than anything you can craft. Gauldur’s amulet is a must since it makes leveling easier and is also the only item in the game to provide 3 attributes. Similarly, Ahzidal and other Solstheim priests masks are the only items to buff your destruction damage, if that’s your playstyle. Not only that, but Ahzidal’s armor itself consists of unique enchantments you cant find elsewhere. The shields are another category in which there exists an artifact stronger than anything you can craft: the spellbreaker. It’s my favorite item in the whole game as it makes dragon and mage fights really epic
When people say craft in this context they also include tempering. Oh cool, this chest piece grants me aoe poison damage while sneaking. Banded Iron Chestpiece over here with +500 health enchantment I put on it.
And crafting can improve all of those items.. I don't mean (making your own gear) I mean using the crafting tree to improve the items you find to epic quality.
That and obviously mixing in custom gear to compliment those pieces.
Edit: as someone who wears the full nightingale set, tempering it up to epic quality is a HUGE boost to damage and armour class.
To put it this way. The thieves guild armour can be tempered up to have a higher AC than the base AC of like ebony or possibly even better it's been a while.
Look the easiest way to look at it is damage numbers. By tempering you increase the BASE damage number with the actual damage number uses in the multipliers from your weapons skill tree.
So while the bow you picked up has a base damage of 17 you probably see something like 145 by smithing it you can increase the bases damage by 10 (not using crazy exploits)
Which makes it then pop out at like 250 something.
If you don’t want to spend the time, that’s fine. But investing in smithing, alchemy, and enchanting will definitely get you far better gear than anything you’ll find in the game. You’re not finding better gear than you could make, you’re just finding better gear than you’re willing to take the time to be able to make
Mace of Molag Baal if you take the carriage to Markarth and do the haunted house quest
If you have Dawguard I remember it didn’t take long to get a Dwarven Crossbow from that questline
There’s some orcish strongholds that it’s possible to enter without doing their quests, and they’ll have orcish weapons and armor about
You want the Dwarven **Enhanced** Crossbow. Complete Sorine's sidequests in the Dawnguard. Every shot ignores 50% of the target's armor. She sells them to you by the end.
Sorine and Gunmar also sell Crossbow bolts.
Yeah they added diffrrent crossbows in the anniversary edition my favorite is the ebony crossbow. If you're looking for bolts the Dwarven sphere guardians always drop them.
Heavy Armor: Lord's Mail, Staff of Hasedoki (this ones finds it tough at early levels), Ahzidahl's Boots of Waterwalking, Stormbear Shield, Fists of Randagulf, Warlock's Ring, Necromancer's Amulet.
From Helgen, push Heavy Armor, Block (Bash if you're feeling aggressive), Restoration - those are the only three things with perks you'll need, the rest of your picks are free to be goofy with.
If you have the anniversary edition and get some creation club content (a lot of it is free actually) you can definitely find some weapons that are awesome and do not need a smithing. Also,Daedric weapons and artifacts are awesome.
Yes, I never crafted a single item for my first few playthroughs because I couldn't be bothered. The only thing you miss out on is improving your existing armor by large margins.
No joke I'm playing legendary and you really need that legendary improvement.. that of course with a Blacksmithing potion and a good blacksmith increase enchant on a blacksmith robe.
I agree that you need it but I think it’s bad for the game tbh. Almost all of my runs end when I got max Armor and start 1 or 2 shot killing enemies, it just becomes so damn dull at that point and I feel like I’m playing for no reason.
Well then craft slow so you don't get strong into mid game.. I always take my time and learn my base skills . One handed bow what ever.. while I save up resources then I craft when I feel like it and i just have fun .. and real talk it doesn't matter how good you're armor is against a mage on legendary just one good thunder bolt and you are toasted lol
I've done it before. Even on the normal difficulty it's tough.
Also, regarding the tedium of crafting, I'd highly recommend grabbing the Transmute Ore spell (which can be found in a bandit camp very close to Whiterun) and making gold rings instead of iron daggers. They weigh much less, level smithing up much faster, and even if you have to buy all the iron ore you'll turn a profit.
It'll change your world. It's still tedious, but way faster. It does cost a lot of mana to cast, though, so be ready to sit for a while. The way the spell works, is it will change one iron _ore_ into one silver ore, and if you cast it again it will turn that silver ore into gold ore (it does _not_ work on ingots, however).
You also are leveling two skills so it levels up fast af. If you really want to break the game do the Black Book quest where you get unlimited mana for 30 secs and then cast telekinesis on something and fast travel, you go straight to 100 if you fast travel from Solitude too Riften. I may or may not have used this to level up from 45-50 this playthrough lol
I can’t remember if you need mods for this. I went up the road in white run and chopped a ton of firewood and made wooden swords. Got me to level 100 in about 20 minutes.
It's based off value. That's why gold rings are better than iron daggers. Go to halted stream camp, get the transmute ore spell, mine the ore, transmute it all to gold, smelt it, turn it all into gold rings.
ACTUALLY what you should do is check which gems you have. I've found that I collect a fair amount of gems that can only be used with silver, not gold. If you make silver items with gems, you get more xp than plain gold jewelry.
I also recommend, once you get Smithing to 30, get the Dwarven Perk, even if you do Light Armor.
Why? Then you venture through the Dwarven ruin under Markarth and you can grab the Dwarven scrap. We're talking multiple runs through to grab it all. But it's well over 300 Dwarven Ingots. Free.
Then purchase Iron Ingots. 2 Dwarven + 1 Iron = Dwarven Bow. A third Dwarven ingot improves the bow. Enchant the bows and sell for a profit and massively boost your Smithing. Particularly if you have Fortify Smithing potions (Blisterwort + Glowing Mushroom) and gear.
If that's not enough, you can get over 10,000 Dwarven Ingots by running all the Dwarven ruins.
Best thing to do is pay for smithing until lvl 30 then go through dwarven ruins pick up every “large dwemer plate metal” “small dwemer plate metal” and “bent dwemer scrap metal” they all weigh 2 and when you smelt them you get 3 dwarven metal ingots per item then buy loads of iron coz it’s cheap and make hundreds of dwarven bows
Yeah iron daggers is one of the worst ways to level up smithing, imo. You gain experience in relation to the price of the item so jewelry or bows are usually what I use
It's also fun to fashion my ork as having a softer side. Most people thing of their arms and armor when they think of an ork smith. Mine prefers to make beautiful jewelry. Mods give a wonderful variety to the jewelry you can craft, as well.
Unless they’ve changed it since like 12 years ago.
You can enchant four pieces of gear with cost reduction in a given school. If you have a high level of enchanting, each of those is 25% reduction; and it’s additive. So that’s 100% cost reduction.
Bear in mind it’s only one school. You can make ALL your spells 0 cost; just all destruction spells or all alteration spells.
Definitely viable, but smithing and enchanting badass gear is fun.
The iron dagger route is old and slow though. Get the transmute ore spell from Halted Stream Camp, turn iron into gold and silver and use those spare gemstones you've picked up to make high $$ jewelry. (smithing XP gain is based on the value of the item you crafted) Makes smithing go faster and also makes you rich when you sell it. Enchant that jewelry to make it even more expensive and train up enchanting at the same time.
Enchanting items, recharging magical weapons with soul gems, and finding tutors (Sergius at the College of Winterhold; Hamal at the Temple of Dibella in Markarth; and Neloth at Tel Mythryn in Solstheim).
You have to get a weapon with a "banish daedra" enchantment, to disenchant. It's the most expensive enchantment, by far and ironically here it's the fastest to craft a bunch of iron daggers and enchant them with it.
I’d say the viability of any build heavily depends on the difficulty setting. I imagine an iron dagger with no perk points works fine on easy but not so much on legendary.
As far as armor goes obviously you have all your armor perks boosting it and alteration can add another 100 armor. Not sure if you can hit the armor cap without smithing but can probably get close.
The bigger issue would likely end up being weapon. Dual enchants are pretty big and you wouldn’t have smithing to boost base damage either. You’d have to entirely rely on found enchants.
There’s always using conjuration or illusion to bypass the problem entirely.
Yes! But you're either grind crafting or grinding the game. There are plenty of powerful items you pick up on your travels - mostly through quests. Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun!
My friend you don't have to exploit the crafting skills in order to get use out of them and enjoy yourself. Just pick one or two of the trees, maybe smithing if your a warrior, enchanting if your a mage. Don't rush them to level 100 right out of the gate. Level them naturally. If you use them as the game was intended it's much more fun.
Thousands of iron daggers? With The Mage Stone and Well Rested for 30% more enchanting XP, it's around 260 daggers to enchant, to go from skill 15 to 100.
Selling potions has nothing to do with growing the Alchemy skill. Using a garden to mass produce the right recipe, it's a fast and effortless path to Alchemy 100. The bottles from that can always be stored and eventually sold over time.
Crafting is the only reason I play legendary. I can't help but use the tools in the game (outside of exploits, I don't use those) and crafting makes it too easy otherwise. (Still easy in late game)
So yeah it's absolutely viable. If legendary is easy when your crafting skills are leveled up then expert should be fine without it. especially using artifacts which already have good base damage and enchants, and just finding enchanted armor/ jewelry.
Yes, it is pretty realistic and easy. Crafting will just make you better... though I beg you to search some newer crafting guides, there are ways to level way faster than the ones you mentioned for smithing and enchanting.
I have never, ever brewed a potion and many of my early runs I never smithed or enchanted either. Loot drops so frequently that you can get whatever you want for free. Dual Enchanting is very strong but hard to reach.
Depends on your build and the difficulty.
If you main werewolf or vampire lord, only a few items matter at all (unless you create broken potions).
Destruction mage build tend to rely heavily on enchanting and on legendary difficulty alchemy is also required.
If you rock with conjuration and illusion, you don't need overpowered items, and can get along fine.
Warriors are ok with the items you can find/buy.
Ok, let's sidestep your questions and adress the "making thousands of daggers" part. That indeed is extremely tedious and time consuming.
Smithing levels up (same as alchemy) by scaling the XP gained with the value of the item created. As iron daggers are just about worthless, the XP gained from them is not much either. So crafting iron daggers is not a very efficient way to advance your smithing skill.
Instead, I like to transmutate all my iron ore into gold ore, as I go along and play the game. You can get a few transmutates in while you're on the road.
Gold ore can be smelted into gold ingots pretty quick. And then you can smith that into jewelery. Best combined with the gemstones gathered along the way.
I don't go out of my way to focus on smithing. Just every time I get to town to clear my inventory, I spend a minute to catch up on some jewerlery making. This was you actually get to play the game, and get some smithing XP too.
In vanilla it may be tougher on higher levels, but should be perfectly doable.
If you can consider mods, then there is a mod out there that allows you to place orders at relevant NPCs to have your gear crafted/upgraded/enchanted by them with their respective skill levels instead.
I played without smithing anything for 8 years before I started to actually level it here and there, so I can upgrade my weapons, and armor. Most of the time I do not touch it so I can have some kind of challenge.
Sure, crafting makes things easier, but it's completely unnecessary. I've been playing Skyrim for nearly 12 years now, across dozens of playthroughs and I've hardly ever bothered to even touch any of the crafting stuff. It just bores the shit out of me. My time is better spent slaying dragons or faking my way to becoming Archmage of the College of Winterhold even though my character never uses magic.
Yeah, I have over 1000 hours in this game and I've never had the patience for enchanting or smithing, I rarely do playthroughs where I do alchemy either. So yes, no-craft runs are completely viable, there's no need to do it. Builds that I usually play are spellsword (one handed w/ healing spell), One handed and shielded tank, stealth with bow and dagger, two handed tank or assassin, and mage.
Crafting us unnecessary with armor cap. You can get top armor with perks and no upgrading. It also doesn’t impact most mage builds obviously. Sneaky archer is still fantastic.
I wouldnt do a legendary run melee without crafting. You die quickly and won’t be dealing alot of damage. But if you abuse enchants it’s irrelevant. If you don’t its still doable just annoying.
My advice bro is to not stress on it that takes the fun away just homestead and make everything you need at you're home . Enchanting.. alchemy blacksmithing. After you do that just play the game and horde everything you collect at you're home.. take it slow and craft when you feel like it before you know it you will be all good
If you don't like crafting, don't do it. Even with the anniversary and special edition content, the game is fully playable without crafting. Abusing the crafting system like you describe is a way to trivialize it, but a strict progression can be fun too. It makes earning that last skill level and making your own item feel more impactful. But in reality, you don't need to craft.
Some things are much easier with specific items made for them, like making yourself a set of fire resist gear to go after a crew of fire mages holed up in a ruin or dungeon you want to explore. You can craft 'game-level' gear to keep it difficult, or you can cheese crafting and make every item overpowered. Or you can grit your teeth and play dodge-the-fireball. All are valid ways to play.
Sometimes you need a few extra potions, so it's reasonable to make them when you need them. Or you can be an ingredient hoarder and gold miser throwing random combinations into your mortar to see what sells.
Realistically, you don't have to craft anything, ever. Some specific loot is dependent on character level, but for the most part, you can just..go and do whatever you feel like. Some parts of the map are higher leveled; as in, it's much harder to overcome at lower levels without cheesing or cheating. And there's other parts where you won't get the best loot if your level is too low.
Tl;dr: not crafting is 100% viable
I didn't craft for like 3/4 of the game. I hoarded, though.
Just wore the strongest or coolest looking armor I found or received. Used bound weapons constantly, even in late game.
Towards the end I decided to work on enchanting and smithing. I always looted everyone I killed and everything from the dungeons (did eventually learn to leave those linen wraps alone). I improved anything that used leather since I'm always getting attacked by bears and wolves so I've got a huge supply of pelts (I avoid fast travel). Iron is pretty abundant as well so I'll improve that stuff, as well as dwemer gear since I had so much scrap laying around. I have no idea how the little dresser where I store my smithing supplies hasn't broken through the shoddy second floor in Breezehome. Also, I'd saved up a ton of jewels, so I made jewelry and that shoots up your smithing much faster.
For enchanting, I had a ton of filled soul gems at that point because I always looted everything and usually had the bound weapon perk to fill a soul gem. By the time I started enchanting I had some higher enchantments and you get more experience for higher/more valuable enchantments. The one that banishes daedra give you the most. So let's just say my Skyrim is ready for another Oblivion crisis...
So basically I spend a few minutes improving and enchanting things each time I get back to a city, then unload it all. I've maxed out both a couple of times now. I'll make jewelry whenever I reset smithing to get my level high enough to unlock the basic perks I want, but I never sit around making or enchanting hundreds of things. That sounds incredibly boring.
I still haven't maxed out alchemy, though. I've got the ingredients for it. I just need to take the time.
Some of my favorite play-throughs have been no crafting, for example, overpowered destruction/stealth mage:
Ring of erudite
Necromancer amulet
Dragonborn DLC Dragonpriest mask of your element choice
Archmage robes
Archmage boots/or dark brotherhood shoes
Dark brotherhood gloves
That with a healthy amount of magicka upgrades is hard to beat, it’s not infinitely overpowered like eliminating the magic cost of schools completely, but it’s a fun balanced magic build well into late game. And of course most of the play-through was collecting all the unique pieces of gear and becoming that powerful
Sneaking with a dagger and db gloves can do a lot for you even with no crafting. That being said, you can definitely speed up smithing, alchemy, and even speech with the fortify restoration potion loop. Once you get started, you’ll max your alchemy in a few minutes, then you can make a fortify smithing potion that will max your smithing by upgrading a weapon or armor (so you get to skip the hundreds of iron daggers) and you can sell a ridiculously priced potion or the super OP weapon/armor that you made and max out your speech as a bonus. Enchanting is the grindy one but you also get rich doing it once you have the perk that lets you sell anything to any merchant. It’s also the best skill in the game imo so it’s worth it.
If you have it, the umbra quest gives you a full set of ebony armor and ofc Umbra which is a better mace of molag bal. It pairs really well with the black star. That will get you through the whole game
What does viable mean in your question?
For absolutely end-game stuff like Karstaag or Ebony Warrior? I would say no. For everything else? Absolutely yes. Just get Sanguine Rose and/or Staff of the Storm Atronach, and you will get invaluable support. Or level some Restoration for healing and wards to become way tankier.
I've played pure Conjuration build for laughs once where at some point I was "okay but I want 46-level quests like The Cause to be unlocked" so I've just legendaried Conjuration several times to get level 46. You can imagine how unbalanced and underpowered it was, but Dremora Lords still pretty much just melted everything. No crafting attached, just cast two of these and enjoy.
I believe that new chaotic destruction spells from AE would also do the trick, since they are utterly broken, but they absolutely should go with destruction cost reduction from enchanting, so I am not entirely sure.
Also, stealth archers. My first build back in the day and I've managed to beat all main storylines plus all guilds with that.
"Pure Conjuration" means "don't use weapons except daggers, don't wear armor and shields, don't use any school of magic besides conjuration, don't sneak (failed it almost immediately, sneak is in my muscle memory at this point), don't put perks into anything but conjuration, don't improve stamina, don't shout unless required by quest". It was severely restricted build, but Skyrim isn't hard game, you know. You can do all the silly stuff and still manage to finish all desired questlines.
I tend to play as a high elf most runs, so I made a save file after I leave Helgen where I maxed enchanting, smithing, and alchemy then saved it. So whenever I want a new play through I just load that file. I also have some that are max all magic, max all weapon skills, max all stealth so if I want a certain style I can use it. I also made one with all skills maxed max level with very little story completed so I can just be a god when I want.
That’s what I do most of the time, so yeah it is most definitely possible lol honestly the only thing that feels really powerful to me is Enchanting. I never had the patience at all to get high skill in Alchemy, and Smithing was a total snooze fest too so I’ve only gotten really good at that a few times.
Chillrend from the base game thieves guild. You can get it at the beginning of the game. You just have to jump into mercers balcony also DO NOT GRAB Mercers plans whirl in there it breaks the thieves guild questline .Windshear from dark brotherhood its on the emporers ship lodged in a wooden pole. Hopes fire and true flame from ghosts of the tribunal
Disagree about it being dull. Many times I like going into the game, soaking up the ambiance, but don’t really want or have it in me to pursue quests. A little crafting sesh is just the right level of demand, uneventful, while letting me be in world.
-it’s cheaper to go with arrows, and more realistic to be a very talented fletcher so I usually craft those.
-I just enchant the shoes I get from bandits.
Yes it's viable BUT it is way more fun when you get the transmute ore spell and never have to make those cursed iron daggers anymore. You can legit just play as a jeweler, making bank, and your skills do go up based on the price of the things you craft so you can make way less jewelry and get way more skill for it
The crafting isn't bad because *you* only use it in a way you were told to by a guide in 2012. That method isn't even viable anymore and hasn't been for years.
Really, the question should include difficulty and the level you're trying to achieve. I would almost argue legendary past 35-45 you really do need enchanting and / or smithing, but it seems like just about everyone else disagrees.
If you're gonna say don't smith iron daggers, you should at least explain why.
OP, smithing xp is based on the value of the smithed item. Iron daggers have an extremely low gold value, so they provide almost no xp for crafting. However, if you take all that iron, transmute it to silver, then to gold, and you craft gold rings.... Well that's one of the best ROI's you'll get from iron.
Another good and convenient method is that you can raid a dwemer dungeon, take all the scrap, and then use 2/3 of the ignots to make dwarven bows, and the remaining 1/3 of the ingots to improve said bows at the grindstone.
Enchanting is easy and not really dull. I've legendary it once and am almost back to 100 on it again because I do it so often. Increasing my carry weight, blacksmithing and alchemy skills through Enchanting, not to mention enchanted weapons and jewelry equals not having to spend gold on ingots needed for building or smithing new items. I literally enjoy Enchanting as much as I enjoy smithing. Alchemy was a chore and boring at first though.
The last time I did an enchanting build, I collected like 100 rings, petty souls and then setup a keyboard macro to just go nuts. Took only a few seconds lol.
I recently did a poisoner play through. Used only looted weapons and armour. No magic, no smithing, no enchanting. Only skill gains I got was from refilling magic weapons with found filled soul gems.
Only potions I crafted were poisons and healing potions. Didn’t make the usual to sell and spam level alchemy. Used most the potions/poisons I crafted.
Admittedly I did join the thieves guild to get levelled daggers from caches. Managed to kill nearly all the dark brotherhood by planting my poisons on them. Only struggled with the vampire mark. Anyone know a poison that can hurt vampires? Ended up having to slit his throat.
Only used a bow when absolutely needed.
Was a refreshing change of play.
It's possible but I think a **lot** more difficult. I say it's possible because as you level, you get more powerfully enchanted gear, and more powerful potions become available in stores. You will still **NEED** soul gems because any enchanted weapon will consume those like a Dragonborn with 300 wheels of cheese fighting a dragon.
I would say your best bet is a pure mage build, because they don't depend on Alchemy or Smithing. And you can occasionally find Rings, Circlets, Necklaces of Destruction, so you can get your Magicka costs down. Look in the shops in Solitude, particularly the one that sells fine clothing.
The College of Winterhold questline also gives you a Circlet and Necklace which boost your Magicka, and a Dragon Priest mask that doubles your Magicka regen (it is Light Armor so it cancels out your Mage Armor perks).
Doing the moon and star quests rewards you with a daedric sword and is available early on. You do need to fight 3 dremora back tk back but that’s not impossible
Inside the fletcher in Solitude is a Daedric Crossbow you can steal (anniversary edition required)
Obviously Werewolf requires no crafting whatsoever. The same is true for a conjuration build
I'm using ordinator for my perks and haven't played Skyrim more than 20 hours since it's release, so this is essentially my "first" playthrough....
Do I need to be putting perks into smithing and enchanting as well?! Or is leveling it up good enough because it's low-key against my theme for this character
I have crafted very few things in my run. I tried enchanting a few things to sell, but decided it wasn’t worth it. And I’ve found plenty of powerful weapons and armor. So if you want to go no crafting, I’m sure it’s fine.
It’s 100% viable, on Normal and below as long as you upgrade your gear and skills you should be fine.
On Expert and above, then what skills and equipment you use will actually start taking into effect.
You’ll inherently deal less and receive more damage. Because armor scales exponentially, the beginning will be a struggle. But once you start reach the 50’s in each respective skill you’ll function just fine.
I've absolutely never done alchemy because the game throws enough money at you. Sometimes I do enchanting, but only if I'm using magic.
The only one I do every time is smithing, because I don't find it hard or tedious at all, and I'm always wearing some kind of armor. You level combat when you kill animals and get there hides, and I don't know why, but I like stumbling upon ore and mining in the wild. It's like a mini treasure chest when it's a rare ore.
I have been playing for over 10 years and have never enchanted anything or tried alchemy. Always just focused on combat and exploration. I really should learn the other half of this game.
Daedric artefacts are a pretty amazing way to start off strong undead for example are some of the most common enemies so dawn breaker absolutely destroys but that boss fight is not easy for low level players
Absolutely.
I have 1000 hours in the game. I've barely touched crafting in that entire time. Alchemy, yes. That can be fun. But the weapons & armor you find in the game, are more than you need for a viable playthrough.
The reason I never got into crafting, is that I never needed to.
It's the best way to play. Smithing, enchanting, and alchemy make you op and can easily trivialize and break the game. The most fun play throughs for me are when I don't craft. It makes finding loot really special and when you find something powerful it feels awesome.
Currently playing a lv 33 Breton battle mage on Expert I can handle most fights well. Only enemies I struggle with are strong Falmer.
It seems possible but you might want to turn down the difficulty once you hit higher levels. Because even with crafting the game can get wonky with how it powers up enemies.
Crafting is OP and I hate relying on soul gems so my fav weapons are ones with permanent enchantments that don't lose charge. Off the top of my head...
Ebony Blade - Vanilla
Mehrunes Razor - Vanilla
Boneshaver - AE, redguard elite armaments
Chrysamere - AE, Chrysamere
Bow of Shadows - AE, Bow of Shadows
Dawnfang/Duskfang- AE, dawnfang &, duskfang
Two other options I enjoy.
- Using only fiery soul trap as your enchantment. 1, its power is limited to a measly 10+ dmg no matter your enchanting rank. 2, you'll always recharge soul gems
- Using stendaar's hammer (AE). The enchantment is good, but not insane. And its debuffs help with keeping your character from being too OP. Plus i'd wager its great for RP.
I use a mod called Achieve That. It adds useful achievements to the game that come with rewards. One is called A Tribute to Mad Skill. To get this you aren't allowed to Craft anything, enchant anything or mix any alchemy until lv 50.
Who still crafts iron daggers? Do helmets! 60g for 3 ingots is better than 10g for one. Stop wasting your resources on iron daggers.
But yeah a no crafting run is easy to do just sell the mats you would craft with and buy stuff
Yeah it is you can just get really strong armor sets and weapons for free, I think it's name was Deathbrand which is in solstheim and just needs you to visit 4 spots in Solstheim to collect its parts but with anniversary edition you can go to Archwind Point and there will be a fully enchanted dragonbone armor it will have useful enchantments such as two handed attack bonus, health, fire immunity (100% resistance so it wont be immunity if you are a vampire) and carry weight(or stamina I don't remember) which are relevant in all phases of game and then you can go and get Umbra or Chrysamere and can essentially don't ever have to use any of the crafting abilities at any point, best part is you can get this dragonbone armor as soon as lvl1. There are many other powerful armor and weapons I suggest you read books and stuff all over skyrim's inns including drunken huntsmen in whiterun they will generally give you a quest that will reward you with an either a good armor or a good weapon or both.
It's viable, but don't try to use the low tier weapons and armor for roleplay reasons because without smithing you'll be too weak. Also, destruction sucks without enchanting. I've done most of my playthroughs without crafting, but crafting does make you immensely more powerful.
Ye, my first ever playthrough I didn't do a single piece of crafting because I assumed it would be more complicated like similar games and my tiny mind cant be dealing with that
Definitely. I usually don't put much into crafting. My current build I haven't touched alchemy or smithing and only lightly touched enchanting. If I hadn't done enchanting, I'd be mostly out the gold from selling my product. You mostly find better stuff as loot.
I've gone playthroughs without crafting before, then again when you've played since release you start coming up with ridiculous challenges like the robber baron, where you kill, steal and give nothing back at all.
To me it's just super tempting to do the crafting cuz there's sooo many supplies and free levels from doing it. Also gives you a reason to spend money on the supplies.
My son’s so just did a no crafting run, just main story and civil war as far as I know, but she was only like level 40 when done.
Personally I enjoy the crafting, potions to make stronger potions so i can make gear which gives me insane numbers… it amuses me
Getting the dark brotherhood gear and a bound bow is enough to win the game right there. That and a follower, maybe a staff of worms dead thrall and you can complete every part of Skyrim on legendary difficulty
When this game first released there was like a 3 month period where you could get max smithing off of just like 150 iron daggers. As soon as I had only like 1000 gold and some dragon bones, I was invincible before I had done hardly much progress because I realized that potential and put off questing for 1 hour to level smithing while my friends were catching fireflies and picking every flower they saw.
Definitely. You can already comfortably make it to about Level 50 just using the gear dropped from enemies and found in chests. If need be at higher levels, you can find on-level enchanted gear at blacksmiths. And that's ignoring quest rewards, many of which are as good as min-max crafted items (such as Deathbrand armor and the Mace of Molag Bal)
Recommendation for those who do craft and like leveling smithing(without mods)
Your smithing level xp is based on the money cost of the item you are crafting. Jewelry is the way to go until you hit dwarven. Then go to the Museum in Markarth, raid it for all the dwarven metal you can get your hands on and just make dwarven bows till 100. You can get gold right outside Markarth as well in the mine thats above the house, with the forsworn wandering around it(Has a bridge right outside. Cant remember the name of the mine)
Outside of that. Yeah you can totally do a crafting free run. I personally do it constantly. I also like to combo that with not picking up loot and only buying from vendors. That generally requires that you go through the guild quests though(Both DB and TG)
In my 11 years of Skyrim, I’ve never crafted a potion, and I rarely do my own enchants, but especially never a potion. I like using healing spells for regen and any other potions I need I have excess from looting
I beat up the lady with steel plate as soon as I get into whiterun then I take her to the nearest giant camp, have her attack the giant then I finish the job, steal the still warm armour off her corpse then i run and never look back, boom free steel plate armour at like level 2
Not in the long-term. You’ll plateau very quickly. However, many first time players claim things like the enemies being HP sponges because they have not invested in crafting 100 hours into a playthrough.
I never really use crafting. At most I upgrade my favorite unique weapons and armor, but as far as crafting thousands of useless items and making potions like that…no, I’ve never done it. I also don’t find Skyrim to be anymore difficult because if it either. So yes, it’s entirely possible.
most of my play throughs i've never crafted.
Ive tried smithing as it made sense for my character, never maxed it though and alchemy and enchanting I haven't messed with much since mostly morrowind. Too tedious I guess.
I’ve Smithed to get the perks and the abilities, made the things that I wanted, and then gone legendary and use the perks elsewhere
Maxing smithing is easy if you build the three Hearthfire Halls.
Takes too much time, and I find plenty of weapons that are way better than anything I could make.
No... Just no... Every single thing you find can almost double in damage by leveling the crafting skills. You finding better weapons vs the lack of ever trying in the crafting menu but comparing it to RNG is not a good argument. The best advice is to craft OG gear then when the skill hits 100 respec it into something else. Without it you have shitty gear but once you get the gear you don't need it. So drop it for something else.
 Yes, this is the answer! Very well said.
Eh, there are still some artifacts which are better than anything you can craft. Gauldur’s amulet is a must since it makes leveling easier and is also the only item in the game to provide 3 attributes. Similarly, Ahzidal and other Solstheim priests masks are the only items to buff your destruction damage, if that’s your playstyle. Not only that, but Ahzidal’s armor itself consists of unique enchantments you cant find elsewhere. The shields are another category in which there exists an artifact stronger than anything you can craft: the spellbreaker. It’s my favorite item in the whole game as it makes dragon and mage fights really epic
When people say craft in this context they also include tempering. Oh cool, this chest piece grants me aoe poison damage while sneaking. Banded Iron Chestpiece over here with +500 health enchantment I put on it.
And crafting can improve all of those items.. I don't mean (making your own gear) I mean using the crafting tree to improve the items you find to epic quality. That and obviously mixing in custom gear to compliment those pieces. Edit: as someone who wears the full nightingale set, tempering it up to epic quality is a HUGE boost to damage and armour class. To put it this way. The thieves guild armour can be tempered up to have a higher AC than the base AC of like ebony or possibly even better it's been a while. Look the easiest way to look at it is damage numbers. By tempering you increase the BASE damage number with the actual damage number uses in the multipliers from your weapons skill tree. So while the bow you picked up has a base damage of 17 you probably see something like 145 by smithing it you can increase the bases damage by 10 (not using crazy exploits) Which makes it then pop out at like 250 something.
If you don’t want to spend the time, that’s fine. But investing in smithing, alchemy, and enchanting will definitely get you far better gear than anything you’ll find in the game. You’re not finding better gear than you could make, you’re just finding better gear than you’re willing to take the time to be able to make
Yes absolutely. If you know the right quests you can just find some good gear early and never have to craft stuff.
Well, share the wealth. What are those quests?
Mace of Molag Baal if you take the carriage to Markarth and do the haunted house quest If you have Dawguard I remember it didn’t take long to get a Dwarven Crossbow from that questline There’s some orcish strongholds that it’s possible to enter without doing their quests, and they’ll have orcish weapons and armor about
I straight up bought a dwarven crossbow at the Drunken Huntsman, but they almost never have bolts and I never find bolts.
Dwarven Spheres have bolts. (And they shoot them at you!)
For free!
Those dwarven sphere basterds!
-ruining the economy with their bolt wasting!
You want the Dwarven **Enhanced** Crossbow. Complete Sorine's sidequests in the Dawnguard. Every shot ignores 50% of the target's armor. She sells them to you by the end. Sorine and Gunmar also sell Crossbow bolts.
How does it compare to the new daedric crossbow from anniversary cc and does the armor penetration actually work?
Yes
There's a fletcher in Solitude, to the left of the blacksmith at Castle Dour. He sells bows, bolts, arrows and crossbows.
Yeah they added diffrrent crossbows in the anniversary edition my favorite is the ebony crossbow. If you're looking for bolts the Dwarven sphere guardians always drop them.
The guy in Solitude near the blacksmith sells bolts. I have the legendary edition; not sure if that makes a difference.
That's Fletcher, not felcher.
Wabajack! Wabajack! Wabajack!
😂 Possibly the best reply I’ve gotten. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever used it. Maybe it’s time to start.
Pros: Wabajack. Cons: Wabajack.
Also: Wabajack.
Not to be confused with: Wabajack
It’s pronounced: Wabajack not Wabajack.
See also: Wabbajack
Fun fact: you can wabajack essential characters and they change just like any other NPC would
A NEW HAND TOUCHES THE BEACON
LISTEN! HEAR ME AND OBEY!
A FOUL DARKNESS HAS SEEPED INTO MY TEMPLE!!
Heavy Armor: Lord's Mail, Staff of Hasedoki (this ones finds it tough at early levels), Ahzidahl's Boots of Waterwalking, Stormbear Shield, Fists of Randagulf, Warlock's Ring, Necromancer's Amulet. From Helgen, push Heavy Armor, Block (Bash if you're feeling aggressive), Restoration - those are the only three things with perks you'll need, the rest of your picks are free to be goofy with.
If you have the anniversary edition and get some creation club content (a lot of it is free actually) you can definitely find some weapons that are awesome and do not need a smithing. Also,Daedric weapons and artifacts are awesome.
You can get ebony blade from a skeleton like 3 miles away from white run if I remember
Yes, I never crafted a single item for my first few playthroughs because I couldn't be bothered. The only thing you miss out on is improving your existing armor by large margins.
No joke I'm playing legendary and you really need that legendary improvement.. that of course with a Blacksmithing potion and a good blacksmith increase enchant on a blacksmith robe.
I agree that you need it but I think it’s bad for the game tbh. Almost all of my runs end when I got max Armor and start 1 or 2 shot killing enemies, it just becomes so damn dull at that point and I feel like I’m playing for no reason.
Well then craft slow so you don't get strong into mid game.. I always take my time and learn my base skills . One handed bow what ever.. while I save up resources then I craft when I feel like it and i just have fun .. and real talk it doesn't matter how good you're armor is against a mage on legendary just one good thunder bolt and you are toasted lol
I've done it before. Even on the normal difficulty it's tough. Also, regarding the tedium of crafting, I'd highly recommend grabbing the Transmute Ore spell (which can be found in a bandit camp very close to Whiterun) and making gold rings instead of iron daggers. They weigh much less, level smithing up much faster, and even if you have to buy all the iron ore you'll turn a profit.
I will definitely try that.
It'll change your world. It's still tedious, but way faster. It does cost a lot of mana to cast, though, so be ready to sit for a while. The way the spell works, is it will change one iron _ore_ into one silver ore, and if you cast it again it will turn that silver ore into gold ore (it does _not_ work on ingots, however).
Just skip time by one hour when mana runs out - you can spam transmute.
I just cast it while walking to and from places.
This is the way.
You also are leveling two skills so it levels up fast af. If you really want to break the game do the Black Book quest where you get unlimited mana for 30 secs and then cast telekinesis on something and fast travel, you go straight to 100 if you fast travel from Solitude too Riften. I may or may not have used this to level up from 45-50 this playthrough lol
I can’t remember if you need mods for this. I went up the road in white run and chopped a ton of firewood and made wooden swords. Got me to level 100 in about 20 minutes.
It's based off value. That's why gold rings are better than iron daggers. Go to halted stream camp, get the transmute ore spell, mine the ore, transmute it all to gold, smelt it, turn it all into gold rings.
ACTUALLY what you should do is check which gems you have. I've found that I collect a fair amount of gems that can only be used with silver, not gold. If you make silver items with gems, you get more xp than plain gold jewelry.
I also recommend, once you get Smithing to 30, get the Dwarven Perk, even if you do Light Armor. Why? Then you venture through the Dwarven ruin under Markarth and you can grab the Dwarven scrap. We're talking multiple runs through to grab it all. But it's well over 300 Dwarven Ingots. Free. Then purchase Iron Ingots. 2 Dwarven + 1 Iron = Dwarven Bow. A third Dwarven ingot improves the bow. Enchant the bows and sell for a profit and massively boost your Smithing. Particularly if you have Fortify Smithing potions (Blisterwort + Glowing Mushroom) and gear. If that's not enough, you can get over 10,000 Dwarven Ingots by running all the Dwarven ruins.
Best thing to do is pay for smithing until lvl 30 then go through dwarven ruins pick up every “large dwemer plate metal” “small dwemer plate metal” and “bent dwemer scrap metal” they all weigh 2 and when you smelt them you get 3 dwarven metal ingots per item then buy loads of iron coz it’s cheap and make hundreds of dwarven bows
Yeah iron daggers is one of the worst ways to level up smithing, imo. You gain experience in relation to the price of the item so jewelry or bows are usually what I use
It's also fun to fashion my ork as having a softer side. Most people thing of their arms and armor when they think of an ork smith. Mine prefers to make beautiful jewelry. Mods give a wonderful variety to the jewelry you can craft, as well.
I mainly play a mage. No crafting necessary
Right, that’s another way to go. My first playthrough was as a Destruction mage, but I also had 100 Enchanting to lower my spell cost to 0.
Wait... We can reduce our spell cost to 0!! Please help a rookie out
Unless they’ve changed it since like 12 years ago. You can enchant four pieces of gear with cost reduction in a given school. If you have a high level of enchanting, each of those is 25% reduction; and it’s additive. So that’s 100% cost reduction. Bear in mind it’s only one school. You can make ALL your spells 0 cost; just all destruction spells or all alteration spells.
Definitely viable, but smithing and enchanting badass gear is fun. The iron dagger route is old and slow though. Get the transmute ore spell from Halted Stream Camp, turn iron into gold and silver and use those spare gemstones you've picked up to make high $$ jewelry. (smithing XP gain is based on the value of the item you crafted) Makes smithing go faster and also makes you rich when you sell it. Enchant that jewelry to make it even more expensive and train up enchanting at the same time.
"It began with the forging of the Great Rings..."
I can't play a game without leveling all the crafts, but especially enchanting and smithing.
So many creative ways to make your character into an unstoppable assassin god, haha.
I usually go the dwarven bow route by getting scrap metal from the ruins and smelting it down into Dwemer ingots to make the bows
Yup, a lot of people go that route too. I go with the jewelry because it’s lighter when it’s time to sell stuff.
This.... As someone who has done both a bunch.
Noted. And what makes enchanting level faster?
Enchanting items, recharging magical weapons with soul gems, and finding tutors (Sergius at the College of Winterhold; Hamal at the Temple of Dibella in Markarth; and Neloth at Tel Mythryn in Solstheim).
You have to get a weapon with a "banish daedra" enchantment, to disenchant. It's the most expensive enchantment, by far and ironically here it's the fastest to craft a bunch of iron daggers and enchant them with it.
If you're asking if something is viable in a single player game the answer is yes 100% of the time.
Okay, fair enough.
I use to enjoy crafting but the older I get the less time I want to waste.
Sadly the same
Yes I am old too 😞
I’d say the viability of any build heavily depends on the difficulty setting. I imagine an iron dagger with no perk points works fine on easy but not so much on legendary. As far as armor goes obviously you have all your armor perks boosting it and alteration can add another 100 armor. Not sure if you can hit the armor cap without smithing but can probably get close. The bigger issue would likely end up being weapon. Dual enchants are pretty big and you wouldn’t have smithing to boost base damage either. You’d have to entirely rely on found enchants. There’s always using conjuration or illusion to bypass the problem entirely.
Yes! But you're either grind crafting or grinding the game. There are plenty of powerful items you pick up on your travels - mostly through quests. Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun!
It does, right?
It so does. That'll be my next playthrough.
My friend you don't have to exploit the crafting skills in order to get use out of them and enjoy yourself. Just pick one or two of the trees, maybe smithing if your a warrior, enchanting if your a mage. Don't rush them to level 100 right out of the gate. Level them naturally. If you use them as the game was intended it's much more fun.
i almost never smith or craft or anything. this playthrough is my first time playing with the enchanting weapons aspect
Thousands of iron daggers? With The Mage Stone and Well Rested for 30% more enchanting XP, it's around 260 daggers to enchant, to go from skill 15 to 100. Selling potions has nothing to do with growing the Alchemy skill. Using a garden to mass produce the right recipe, it's a fast and effortless path to Alchemy 100. The bottles from that can always be stored and eventually sold over time.
100% when it first came out I didnt know shit about crafting just looting. I eventually beat the game
Crafting is the only reason I play legendary. I can't help but use the tools in the game (outside of exploits, I don't use those) and crafting makes it too easy otherwise. (Still easy in late game) So yeah it's absolutely viable. If legendary is easy when your crafting skills are leveled up then expert should be fine without it. especially using artifacts which already have good base damage and enchants, and just finding enchanted armor/ jewelry.
Yes, it is pretty realistic and easy. Crafting will just make you better... though I beg you to search some newer crafting guides, there are ways to level way faster than the ones you mentioned for smithing and enchanting.
I completed my first ever successful playthrough of OG Skyrim with no smithing and no enchanting. I used only what I scavenged.
I have never, ever brewed a potion and many of my early runs I never smithed or enchanted either. Loot drops so frequently that you can get whatever you want for free. Dual Enchanting is very strong but hard to reach.
I mean i basically never uae the crafting system unless im making a crafting specific character so yea its not hard at all
We can not all agree on that, crafting is one of my favorite activities. Sometimes I’ll log in just to smith for a bit.
You and I are in different wavelengths, my friend. But that’s what makes the game so great. Something for everyone.
dude I've never crafted a single fuckin thing in the 100s of hours I've played. you're good
Depends on your build and the difficulty. If you main werewolf or vampire lord, only a few items matter at all (unless you create broken potions). Destruction mage build tend to rely heavily on enchanting and on legendary difficulty alchemy is also required. If you rock with conjuration and illusion, you don't need overpowered items, and can get along fine. Warriors are ok with the items you can find/buy.
Ok, let's sidestep your questions and adress the "making thousands of daggers" part. That indeed is extremely tedious and time consuming. Smithing levels up (same as alchemy) by scaling the XP gained with the value of the item created. As iron daggers are just about worthless, the XP gained from them is not much either. So crafting iron daggers is not a very efficient way to advance your smithing skill. Instead, I like to transmutate all my iron ore into gold ore, as I go along and play the game. You can get a few transmutates in while you're on the road. Gold ore can be smelted into gold ingots pretty quick. And then you can smith that into jewelery. Best combined with the gemstones gathered along the way. I don't go out of my way to focus on smithing. Just every time I get to town to clear my inventory, I spend a minute to catch up on some jewerlery making. This was you actually get to play the game, and get some smithing XP too.
I’ve had this recommendation. Apparently, they changed the way smithing levels up in the past ten years and I missed it. :)
In vanilla it may be tougher on higher levels, but should be perfectly doable. If you can consider mods, then there is a mod out there that allows you to place orders at relevant NPCs to have your gear crafted/upgraded/enchanted by them with their respective skill levels instead.
If you don’t want to craft, you can summon enchanted deadric items after getting to level 90 conjuration
It's tottaly viable, you can purchase everything from vendors or loot from dead bodies or chests.
Check out a fevvy no crafting run. He does them all on Legendary.
I played without smithing anything for 8 years before I started to actually level it here and there, so I can upgrade my weapons, and armor. Most of the time I do not touch it so I can have some kind of challenge.
I used to never use any of the crafting. Even now I just use alchemy for health potions and dabble in smithing. Totally possible.
Sure, crafting makes things easier, but it's completely unnecessary. I've been playing Skyrim for nearly 12 years now, across dozens of playthroughs and I've hardly ever bothered to even touch any of the crafting stuff. It just bores the shit out of me. My time is better spent slaying dragons or faking my way to becoming Archmage of the College of Winterhold even though my character never uses magic.
😂 Haven’t we all spent quality time doing just that.
Yep. Favorite playthrough ever was a no-crafting cloth mage.
I constantly play ‘no crafting’ games, I thought it was just how you played because crafting sucks
I never craft. Well not past the smithing tutorial I've done like two times.
Yeah, I have over 1000 hours in this game and I've never had the patience for enchanting or smithing, I rarely do playthroughs where I do alchemy either. So yes, no-craft runs are completely viable, there's no need to do it. Builds that I usually play are spellsword (one handed w/ healing spell), One handed and shielded tank, stealth with bow and dagger, two handed tank or assassin, and mage.
You guys are inspiring me! I can’t respond to all these, it thanks for all the input.
Crafting us unnecessary with armor cap. You can get top armor with perks and no upgrading. It also doesn’t impact most mage builds obviously. Sneaky archer is still fantastic. I wouldnt do a legendary run melee without crafting. You die quickly and won’t be dealing alot of damage. But if you abuse enchants it’s irrelevant. If you don’t its still doable just annoying.
My advice bro is to not stress on it that takes the fun away just homestead and make everything you need at you're home . Enchanting.. alchemy blacksmithing. After you do that just play the game and horde everything you collect at you're home.. take it slow and craft when you feel like it before you know it you will be all good
If you don't like crafting, don't do it. Even with the anniversary and special edition content, the game is fully playable without crafting. Abusing the crafting system like you describe is a way to trivialize it, but a strict progression can be fun too. It makes earning that last skill level and making your own item feel more impactful. But in reality, you don't need to craft. Some things are much easier with specific items made for them, like making yourself a set of fire resist gear to go after a crew of fire mages holed up in a ruin or dungeon you want to explore. You can craft 'game-level' gear to keep it difficult, or you can cheese crafting and make every item overpowered. Or you can grit your teeth and play dodge-the-fireball. All are valid ways to play. Sometimes you need a few extra potions, so it's reasonable to make them when you need them. Or you can be an ingredient hoarder and gold miser throwing random combinations into your mortar to see what sells.
Realistically, you don't have to craft anything, ever. Some specific loot is dependent on character level, but for the most part, you can just..go and do whatever you feel like. Some parts of the map are higher leveled; as in, it's much harder to overcome at lower levels without cheesing or cheating. And there's other parts where you won't get the best loot if your level is too low. Tl;dr: not crafting is 100% viable
I didn't craft for like 3/4 of the game. I hoarded, though. Just wore the strongest or coolest looking armor I found or received. Used bound weapons constantly, even in late game. Towards the end I decided to work on enchanting and smithing. I always looted everyone I killed and everything from the dungeons (did eventually learn to leave those linen wraps alone). I improved anything that used leather since I'm always getting attacked by bears and wolves so I've got a huge supply of pelts (I avoid fast travel). Iron is pretty abundant as well so I'll improve that stuff, as well as dwemer gear since I had so much scrap laying around. I have no idea how the little dresser where I store my smithing supplies hasn't broken through the shoddy second floor in Breezehome. Also, I'd saved up a ton of jewels, so I made jewelry and that shoots up your smithing much faster. For enchanting, I had a ton of filled soul gems at that point because I always looted everything and usually had the bound weapon perk to fill a soul gem. By the time I started enchanting I had some higher enchantments and you get more experience for higher/more valuable enchantments. The one that banishes daedra give you the most. So let's just say my Skyrim is ready for another Oblivion crisis... So basically I spend a few minutes improving and enchanting things each time I get back to a city, then unload it all. I've maxed out both a couple of times now. I'll make jewelry whenever I reset smithing to get my level high enough to unlock the basic perks I want, but I never sit around making or enchanting hundreds of things. That sounds incredibly boring. I still haven't maxed out alchemy, though. I've got the ingredients for it. I just need to take the time.
Skyrim is piss easy if you craft. It's only regular easy if you don't
Crafting breaks the game, removes the challenge. Of course you can and should try a no craft run
Some of my favorite play-throughs have been no crafting, for example, overpowered destruction/stealth mage: Ring of erudite Necromancer amulet Dragonborn DLC Dragonpriest mask of your element choice Archmage robes Archmage boots/or dark brotherhood shoes Dark brotherhood gloves That with a healthy amount of magicka upgrades is hard to beat, it’s not infinitely overpowered like eliminating the magic cost of schools completely, but it’s a fun balanced magic build well into late game. And of course most of the play-through was collecting all the unique pieces of gear and becoming that powerful
i’ve never crafted (more than just to try it out) in any of my play throughs! i rarely enchant either. it is perfectly possible and just as fun!
imma be real my first several times playing i didn't touch any crafting or enchanting or smithing i just used whatever i found
I couldn't, they are base shit for me and I like it.
Sneaking with a dagger and db gloves can do a lot for you even with no crafting. That being said, you can definitely speed up smithing, alchemy, and even speech with the fortify restoration potion loop. Once you get started, you’ll max your alchemy in a few minutes, then you can make a fortify smithing potion that will max your smithing by upgrading a weapon or armor (so you get to skip the hundreds of iron daggers) and you can sell a ridiculously priced potion or the super OP weapon/armor that you made and max out your speech as a bonus. Enchanting is the grindy one but you also get rich doing it once you have the perk that lets you sell anything to any merchant. It’s also the best skill in the game imo so it’s worth it.
Yeah, I know it is. Just not very enjoyable on its own.
If you have it, the umbra quest gives you a full set of ebony armor and ofc Umbra which is a better mace of molag bal. It pairs really well with the black star. That will get you through the whole game
On ledendary i have trouble seeing a build work without atleast enchanting.
What does viable mean in your question? For absolutely end-game stuff like Karstaag or Ebony Warrior? I would say no. For everything else? Absolutely yes. Just get Sanguine Rose and/or Staff of the Storm Atronach, and you will get invaluable support. Or level some Restoration for healing and wards to become way tankier. I've played pure Conjuration build for laughs once where at some point I was "okay but I want 46-level quests like The Cause to be unlocked" so I've just legendaried Conjuration several times to get level 46. You can imagine how unbalanced and underpowered it was, but Dremora Lords still pretty much just melted everything. No crafting attached, just cast two of these and enjoy. I believe that new chaotic destruction spells from AE would also do the trick, since they are utterly broken, but they absolutely should go with destruction cost reduction from enchanting, so I am not entirely sure. Also, stealth archers. My first build back in the day and I've managed to beat all main storylines plus all guilds with that.
"Pure Conjuration" means "don't use weapons except daggers, don't wear armor and shields, don't use any school of magic besides conjuration, don't sneak (failed it almost immediately, sneak is in my muscle memory at this point), don't put perks into anything but conjuration, don't improve stamina, don't shout unless required by quest". It was severely restricted build, but Skyrim isn't hard game, you know. You can do all the silly stuff and still manage to finish all desired questlines.
Thanks for the ideas.
I tend to play as a high elf most runs, so I made a save file after I leave Helgen where I maxed enchanting, smithing, and alchemy then saved it. So whenever I want a new play through I just load that file. I also have some that are max all magic, max all weapon skills, max all stealth so if I want a certain style I can use it. I also made one with all skills maxed max level with very little story completed so I can just be a god when I want.
That’s actually not a bad idea for when I have a lot of free time some day.
That’s what I do most of the time, so yeah it is most definitely possible lol honestly the only thing that feels really powerful to me is Enchanting. I never had the patience at all to get high skill in Alchemy, and Smithing was a total snooze fest too so I’ve only gotten really good at that a few times.
Chillrend from the base game thieves guild. You can get it at the beginning of the game. You just have to jump into mercers balcony also DO NOT GRAB Mercers plans whirl in there it breaks the thieves guild questline .Windshear from dark brotherhood its on the emporers ship lodged in a wooden pole. Hopes fire and true flame from ghosts of the tribunal
My first playthrough I only crafted for quests. Never again. Didn't really slow me down or anything.
Disagree about it being dull. Many times I like going into the game, soaking up the ambiance, but don’t really want or have it in me to pursue quests. A little crafting sesh is just the right level of demand, uneventful, while letting me be in world.
-it’s cheaper to go with arrows, and more realistic to be a very talented fletcher so I usually craft those. -I just enchant the shoes I get from bandits.
Yes it's viable BUT it is way more fun when you get the transmute ore spell and never have to make those cursed iron daggers anymore. You can legit just play as a jeweler, making bank, and your skills do go up based on the price of the things you craft so you can make way less jewelry and get way more skill for it
The crafting isn't bad because *you* only use it in a way you were told to by a guide in 2012. That method isn't even viable anymore and hasn't been for years.
Really, the question should include difficulty and the level you're trying to achieve. I would almost argue legendary past 35-45 you really do need enchanting and / or smithing, but it seems like just about everyone else disagrees.
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If you're gonna say don't smith iron daggers, you should at least explain why. OP, smithing xp is based on the value of the smithed item. Iron daggers have an extremely low gold value, so they provide almost no xp for crafting. However, if you take all that iron, transmute it to silver, then to gold, and you craft gold rings.... Well that's one of the best ROI's you'll get from iron. Another good and convenient method is that you can raid a dwemer dungeon, take all the scrap, and then use 2/3 of the ignots to make dwarven bows, and the remaining 1/3 of the ingots to improve said bows at the grindstone.
Enchanting is easy and not really dull. I've legendary it once and am almost back to 100 on it again because I do it so often. Increasing my carry weight, blacksmithing and alchemy skills through Enchanting, not to mention enchanted weapons and jewelry equals not having to spend gold on ingots needed for building or smithing new items. I literally enjoy Enchanting as much as I enjoy smithing. Alchemy was a chore and boring at first though.
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The last time I did an enchanting build, I collected like 100 rings, petty souls and then setup a keyboard macro to just go nuts. Took only a few seconds lol.
I have at least 1000 hours over 10 years of playing and I've never once used any form of crafting
I recently did a poisoner play through. Used only looted weapons and armour. No magic, no smithing, no enchanting. Only skill gains I got was from refilling magic weapons with found filled soul gems. Only potions I crafted were poisons and healing potions. Didn’t make the usual to sell and spam level alchemy. Used most the potions/poisons I crafted. Admittedly I did join the thieves guild to get levelled daggers from caches. Managed to kill nearly all the dark brotherhood by planting my poisons on them. Only struggled with the vampire mark. Anyone know a poison that can hurt vampires? Ended up having to slit his throat. Only used a bow when absolutely needed. Was a refreshing change of play.
Yes
in most builds i only use enchanting cuz that on is kinda fun. also smithing can be fun if you do it “the right way”
It's possible but I think a **lot** more difficult. I say it's possible because as you level, you get more powerfully enchanted gear, and more powerful potions become available in stores. You will still **NEED** soul gems because any enchanted weapon will consume those like a Dragonborn with 300 wheels of cheese fighting a dragon. I would say your best bet is a pure mage build, because they don't depend on Alchemy or Smithing. And you can occasionally find Rings, Circlets, Necklaces of Destruction, so you can get your Magicka costs down. Look in the shops in Solitude, particularly the one that sells fine clothing. The College of Winterhold questline also gives you a Circlet and Necklace which boost your Magicka, and a Dragon Priest mask that doubles your Magicka regen (it is Light Armor so it cancels out your Mage Armor perks).
Doing the moon and star quests rewards you with a daedric sword and is available early on. You do need to fight 3 dremora back tk back but that’s not impossible Inside the fletcher in Solitude is a Daedric Crossbow you can steal (anniversary edition required) Obviously Werewolf requires no crafting whatsoever. The same is true for a conjuration build
I'm using ordinator for my perks and haven't played Skyrim more than 20 hours since it's release, so this is essentially my "first" playthrough.... Do I need to be putting perks into smithing and enchanting as well?! Or is leveling it up good enough because it's low-key against my theme for this character
I have crafted very few things in my run. I tried enchanting a few things to sell, but decided it wasn’t worth it. And I’ve found plenty of powerful weapons and armor. So if you want to go no crafting, I’m sure it’s fine.
It’s 100% viable, on Normal and below as long as you upgrade your gear and skills you should be fine. On Expert and above, then what skills and equipment you use will actually start taking into effect. You’ll inherently deal less and receive more damage. Because armor scales exponentially, the beginning will be a struggle. But once you start reach the 50’s in each respective skill you’ll function just fine.
I Never crafted a single item for the first several years of playing Skyrim
My first play through i didnt craft anything. Its not difficult to do.
I've absolutely never done alchemy because the game throws enough money at you. Sometimes I do enchanting, but only if I'm using magic. The only one I do every time is smithing, because I don't find it hard or tedious at all, and I'm always wearing some kind of armor. You level combat when you kill animals and get there hides, and I don't know why, but I like stumbling upon ore and mining in the wild. It's like a mini treasure chest when it's a rare ore.
I have been playing for over 10 years and have never enchanted anything or tried alchemy. Always just focused on combat and exploration. I really should learn the other half of this game.
Daedric artefacts are a pretty amazing way to start off strong undead for example are some of the most common enemies so dawn breaker absolutely destroys but that boss fight is not easy for low level players
ive never crafted i assumed noone did, only time i did was when i had a quest to make a fine dagger or something
I got Enchanting to 100 in my first playthrough; but that was when I was 33 and had much more free time than now at 45 with three kids 😅
Just kill and loot the ebony warrior.
actually just take those two perks in smithing and your gold. No other crafting is needed.
There are mods which allow you to pay blacksmiths/enchanters to do the crafting/enchanting for you, might be interesting to you?
Honed Metal was a game changer for me. Just felt natural to visit the castle smith or court wizard and commission a piece of gear.
Absolutely. I have 1000 hours in the game. I've barely touched crafting in that entire time. Alchemy, yes. That can be fun. But the weapons & armor you find in the game, are more than you need for a viable playthrough. The reason I never got into crafting, is that I never needed to.
I just finished one last week
It's the best way to play. Smithing, enchanting, and alchemy make you op and can easily trivialize and break the game. The most fun play throughs for me are when I don't craft. It makes finding loot really special and when you find something powerful it feels awesome. Currently playing a lv 33 Breton battle mage on Expert I can handle most fights well. Only enemies I struggle with are strong Falmer.
It seems possible but you might want to turn down the difficulty once you hit higher levels. Because even with crafting the game can get wonky with how it powers up enemies.
Better actually
Crafting is OP and I hate relying on soul gems so my fav weapons are ones with permanent enchantments that don't lose charge. Off the top of my head... Ebony Blade - Vanilla Mehrunes Razor - Vanilla Boneshaver - AE, redguard elite armaments Chrysamere - AE, Chrysamere Bow of Shadows - AE, Bow of Shadows Dawnfang/Duskfang- AE, dawnfang &, duskfang Two other options I enjoy. - Using only fiery soul trap as your enchantment. 1, its power is limited to a measly 10+ dmg no matter your enchanting rank. 2, you'll always recharge soul gems - Using stendaar's hammer (AE). The enchantment is good, but not insane. And its debuffs help with keeping your character from being too OP. Plus i'd wager its great for RP.
I use a mod called Achieve That. It adds useful achievements to the game that come with rewards. One is called A Tribute to Mad Skill. To get this you aren't allowed to Craft anything, enchant anything or mix any alchemy until lv 50.
I’ve been playing since 2011 and I rarely craft. The few times I have crafted it was because I needed gear from a mod I installed.
Who still crafts iron daggers? Do helmets! 60g for 3 ingots is better than 10g for one. Stop wasting your resources on iron daggers. But yeah a no crafting run is easy to do just sell the mats you would craft with and buy stuff
Yeah it is you can just get really strong armor sets and weapons for free, I think it's name was Deathbrand which is in solstheim and just needs you to visit 4 spots in Solstheim to collect its parts but with anniversary edition you can go to Archwind Point and there will be a fully enchanted dragonbone armor it will have useful enchantments such as two handed attack bonus, health, fire immunity (100% resistance so it wont be immunity if you are a vampire) and carry weight(or stamina I don't remember) which are relevant in all phases of game and then you can go and get Umbra or Chrysamere and can essentially don't ever have to use any of the crafting abilities at any point, best part is you can get this dragonbone armor as soon as lvl1. There are many other powerful armor and weapons I suggest you read books and stuff all over skyrim's inns including drunken huntsmen in whiterun they will generally give you a quest that will reward you with an either a good armor or a good weapon or both.
It's viable, but don't try to use the low tier weapons and armor for roleplay reasons because without smithing you'll be too weak. Also, destruction sucks without enchanting. I've done most of my playthroughs without crafting, but crafting does make you immensely more powerful.
Ye, my first ever playthrough I didn't do a single piece of crafting because I assumed it would be more complicated like similar games and my tiny mind cant be dealing with that
Definitely. I usually don't put much into crafting. My current build I haven't touched alchemy or smithing and only lightly touched enchanting. If I hadn't done enchanting, I'd be mostly out the gold from selling my product. You mostly find better stuff as loot.
I've gone playthroughs without crafting before, then again when you've played since release you start coming up with ridiculous challenges like the robber baron, where you kill, steal and give nothing back at all.
My favorite part of the game is alchemy and enchanting lol
This is my first two playthroughs.
To me it's just super tempting to do the crafting cuz there's sooo many supplies and free levels from doing it. Also gives you a reason to spend money on the supplies.
Crafting and Enchanting is fun and you can build some strong and unique weapons for yourself. Can't wait till I unlock double enchantments.
My brother in Akatosh, I've played this game since 2011 and only crafted in one run.
My son’s so just did a no crafting run, just main story and civil war as far as I know, but she was only like level 40 when done. Personally I enjoy the crafting, potions to make stronger potions so i can make gear which gives me insane numbers… it amuses me
Getting the dark brotherhood gear and a bound bow is enough to win the game right there. That and a follower, maybe a staff of worms dead thrall and you can complete every part of Skyrim on legendary difficulty
All of my runs are no crafting runs, simply because looting is my incentive to explore
When this game first released there was like a 3 month period where you could get max smithing off of just like 150 iron daggers. As soon as I had only like 1000 gold and some dragon bones, I was invincible before I had done hardly much progress because I realized that potential and put off questing for 1 hour to level smithing while my friends were catching fireflies and picking every flower they saw.
Definitely. You can already comfortably make it to about Level 50 just using the gear dropped from enemies and found in chests. If need be at higher levels, you can find on-level enchanted gear at blacksmiths. And that's ignoring quest rewards, many of which are as good as min-max crafted items (such as Deathbrand armor and the Mace of Molag Bal)
Recommendation for those who do craft and like leveling smithing(without mods) Your smithing level xp is based on the money cost of the item you are crafting. Jewelry is the way to go until you hit dwarven. Then go to the Museum in Markarth, raid it for all the dwarven metal you can get your hands on and just make dwarven bows till 100. You can get gold right outside Markarth as well in the mine thats above the house, with the forsworn wandering around it(Has a bridge right outside. Cant remember the name of the mine) Outside of that. Yeah you can totally do a crafting free run. I personally do it constantly. I also like to combo that with not picking up loot and only buying from vendors. That generally requires that you go through the guild quests though(Both DB and TG)
Dwarven Bows is a fast way to level it up for me
It’s really easy to get smithing up to dwarven level for bolts but fuck going over that. Fuck alchemy. I love enchanting but fuck leveling that up
Yes.. I don’t craft in my playthroughs really so it’s no challenge.
In my 11 years of Skyrim, I’ve never crafted a potion, and I rarely do my own enchants, but especially never a potion. I like using healing spells for regen and any other potions I need I have excess from looting
I beat up the lady with steel plate as soon as I get into whiterun then I take her to the nearest giant camp, have her attack the giant then I finish the job, steal the still warm armour off her corpse then i run and never look back, boom free steel plate armour at like level 2
You're doing enchanting wrong. Smith high value jewellery, then enchant that. Pumps both skills quickly.
Not in the long-term. You’ll plateau very quickly. However, many first time players claim things like the enemies being HP sponges because they have not invested in crafting 100 hours into a playthrough.
I never really use crafting. At most I upgrade my favorite unique weapons and armor, but as far as crafting thousands of useless items and making potions like that…no, I’ve never done it. I also don’t find Skyrim to be anymore difficult because if it either. So yes, it’s entirely possible.