Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Bug or Feature ?

To make a bit of money I decided to buy daggers, enchant them and resell them. That worked fine and I was feeling like Whiterun's local enchanter for a while.

It also maxed my enchanting skill in no time. Next, I enchanted my own personal armor set. That seems a bit too good to be true now, does it not ?



14 comments:

  1. be careful there guy. You are gaining levels which means the creatures will be stronger while your combat skills are still low.

    The game was designed to punish you if you don't level up smartly and evenly.

    You are a great smith with low level weapons and armors and combat skills. A great blacksmith won't make for a great warrior.

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  2. Come on, Goodmongo. What happens here is the opposite. That's not better.

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  3. Nils, gear is much more important then it was in Oblivion. Without gear you go OOM very quickly or have a weapon that does crap. Not to mention your skill and lack of perks in a fighting weapon or spell area means you get stomped fast.

    This is easily proved (but time consuming). Go skill up smithing and enchanting and reach level 20-30 in the process. Then see how long you last.

    Can smithing and enchanting lead to some great weapons? Sure they can. But placing an uber health enchant on steal armor isn't OP at all. So what if you add 150 health to a 38 armor piece. Your armor will still max out around 100 or so which is WAY below say 600 for a full daedric set.

    You make a claim that this is Op in some way yet fail to pffer any proof except your opinion or gut feeling. I would be more than happy to debate actual numbers.

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  4. I don't need 'proof'.

    When I enchanted my equipment I suddenly moved from being seriously constrained by mana to not being constrained by mana at all.

    And it's all due to the "4x stacking of -25% mana costs for 90% of the spells I cast"-enchantment.

    I wrote before that you need to try to not optimize the fun out of Skyrim. But it's so damn hard if putting common-sense enchantments on your equipment already does it!

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  5. Your spells cost zero mana. Great! Unfortuantely they still do very little damage right now as your skill in destruction would be low. (Unless you actually quested to raise it). Plus your health is low so if that level 25 creature hits you, you most likely will be dead in one shot. Your defense is almost nothing and it will take 20 spells (10 damage each) to kill the creature with 200 health.

    So yes you don't go OOM but if they get to you how do you survive?

    I will say that this does provide something that was probably unintended. All resists and many other things are capped at 85% so this 100% spell cost reduction is probably an oversight on their part.

    Eventually when your destruction reaches skill 50+ you will be super strong. But even if you didn't pick enchanting and instead picked alchemy you could replenish all your mana by drinking 2-5 potions anyway.

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  6. Goodmoongo, yes, you can still die. Yes, things don't die when you look at them. Yes, it's harder than WoW at level 30.
    Look, you don't need to tell me this; I know. All I am saying is that suddenly all mana constrains when casting destruction spells have been lifted and I wonder whether this is a bug or a feature.

    I have virtually stopped playing this char since I discovered this, so maybe it's still amazing fun, and I am missing out.
    I can't know how other people react to this. Perhaps they like the game even more without mana constrains. But I suspect that this is not the case and my own feelings and behaviour(!) contradict this claim.

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  7. As I was thinking about this how is it OP? I mean you could just as easily picked alchemy and made a whole bunch of restore magicka potions and used them during the battle. So going OOM has multiple ways to overcome it and it's been that way in Morrowind, and Oblivion.

    In Skyrim the restoration tree has perks to greatly speed up magicka regen and alteration has the atronach perk to absorb magicka.

    You still need to take the master perk or greatly increase your available magicka pool. Even if it cost no mana to cast it you still have to have a big enough pool to even attempt to cast it. So if that destruction spell costs 400 magicka without the master perk your pool has to be 400+ even if you get the 400 back. At least this was how Obilivion worked so I'm guessing Skyrim's mechanics will be the same.

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  8. Even if it cost no mana to cast it you still have to have a big enough pool to even attempt to cast it.

    This is wrong in Skyrim. If it costs little mana to cast, you need little mana to cast it. The enchantments don't give me mana back; they reduce the costs of spells. And I don't need the mastery perk anymore. The spell I am casting in the vid is Thunderbold. Thunderbols is an expert-class spell. With these enchantments I could chain cast it before I got expert, already. It costs 3 mana right now, because my chest only reduces mana costs by 22%. Without the perk thunderbolt costs 6. I have 300 mana without wearing any items and 600 about with the items on the vid.

    ---

    The idea of OP is useless here. I am OP, because I always found a way so far to beat all enemies in all kinds of situations. When I was ported into the soulstone and was almost instant-killed by fireballs of three deadra, I sprinted past the enemies, sneaked, used invisibility, re-emerged, killed only the boss and ignored the adds. Worked - after some 10 minutes of trying.

    The point is not that some things allow you to succeed - like using potions. The point is that when those things aren't necessary, my mind starts to feel boredom: is stops being busy.

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  9. I am OP, because I always found a way so far to beat all enemies in all kinds of situations. ... killed only the boss and ignored the adds. Worked - after some 10 minutes of trying.

    I'm really confused here. You say you are OP simply because you killed a boss? You admit it took 10 minutes of trying. But to me OP would mean you went in there without any strategy and killed the boss and adds without any worries.

    If you died even once that means you are not OP. Or does not being OP mean you can't defeat some bosses?

    The game has to let all character types eventually defeat all monsters. If it didn't then people would complain that they can't be what they to be. I really fail to see your logic.

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  10. You wrote before that nothing changed with the enchantments because I could always have used potions. I gave you an example that shows that even if potions don't change the fact that you succeed, having to use them still make a difference. And in your last comment now, you agree :)

    ---

    Doing just a tiny bit of min/maxing I managed to reduce my mana consumption by 104% now by using a potion that enhanced all enchantments while enchanting two of four items. Luckily that turns out to be 'just' 100%.

    And I can do it with Restoration and destruction spells at the same time.

    Here's the video - I also added it to the post. I just removed mana from the game while casting 95% of the spells I ever cast.
    Among other things, this makes half of the perks in my main spell schools irrelevant ...

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  11. Enchanting to where you don't need perks to effectivly cast master spells is a poor design, I agree. I have not reached that level yet so I didn't know for sure and could only base it on Oblivion.

    But in the end this gains you just 4 perks so its not that a big of a deal. Here's my logic.

    To get the two enchants per item requires 4 perks. You now enchant some items and this means in two spell schools you don't need the adept, apprentice, expert or master perks. That is a savings of 4 perks.

    While not the best way to do things 4 perks is not a game breaker.

    BTW I still don't understand how you can be OP if you still died to the boss and had to figure out a strategy to defeat it. That sounds like normal play to me.

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  12. Skyrim power curve for enchantments/smithing imho is horribly broken .It goes from "meh" to "godlike" really fast. Stacking enchantments are to blame as well as perks. They increase power and order of magnitude, which is imho absurd (10-30 % would be more reasonable)

    I am sure modders will fix that BS, but as it stands right now its really easy to break game if you level up and use OP skills.

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  13. So you've slaughtered hundreds of living creatures, ripped the souls from their broken bodies and bound them in eternal agony, in order to gain limitless arcane power?

    Yup, working as intended.

    Congratulations on becoming the archetypal Evil Archwizard. Expect an adventuring party of noble heroes on your doorstop soon.

    (And yes, these moral concerns are featured in-game, as well. One of the books you can find flat-out states that Soul Trap is essentially a Necromantic spell, and the only reason why College/Mage Guild keep labeling it as Mysticism or Conjuration is because it is far too useful to ban)

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  14. Goodmongo you are wrong. Increasing your enchanting/smithing is actually a very good way to increase combat effectiveness in this game.

    For example on my melee character I made iron daggers to get 100 smithing and then switched from full dwarven to full dragon + ebony axe. If I used those 4 levels to improve anything else my increase in power would not have been as large. Later in the game when you get alchemy and enchanting as well, there is nothing else that is as effective as 130% smithing potions used to improve your equipment.

    Your point about 4 perks in mastery vs perks in enchanting/alchemy is also wrong. The 4 points in mastery have the sole effect of helping your magicka. With enchanting/alchemy you make gear that has this effect and in addition you can make more gear to sell or for your follower as well as make super powerful potions.

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