After almost 150 hours of the game, and after me telling myself that the loot will eventually get better, I have to say this is by far the biggest let down of Skyrim. I am opening Master chests and doors and finding things like "Hide Gauntlets" and 2 gold. Or 3 arrows.  
 
What happened to the days of Morrowind when you could find a crazy awesome and unique looking item, weapon or armorpiece from doing a bit of exploring? I remember one time I was just swimming along near Ebonheart underwater (Argonian ftw!) and found a grotto with the Dragonbone Cuirass inside. And finding the Masque of Clavicus Vile on a freaking mage in Sorkvild's Tower. In Skyrim, these items are the main rewards from quests whereas in Morrowind they were just awesome little extras thrown in.  
 
I even think the loot in Skyrim might be worse than Oblivion. Even the Daedric Artifacts (I have them all, just got my last one) are complete shit in terms of stats and effects. Mehrunes Razor does 33 damage when fully upgraded (with 100 blacksmithing but no stacking of +%) and my Ebony Dagger does 46. Does anyone see anything wrong here? What is the point of getting these items if they're complete shit? 
 
Also, the number of unique items in the game is staggeringly low, and when I finally do find something which I hope (before looking at it's damage output) could be worth my time, It's a piece of garbage. Like Draven's Bow. Or Froki's Bow. 
 
Please tell me that I'm not the only one thinking this. It really brought down my opinion of Skyrim.

Yep, master chests sure are disappointing sometimes. I didn't care too much about loot in Skyrim 'cause I've been rolling with my Arch-Mage robe for ages and using conjured weapons when I see fit.

To be honest I don't even think I found ANY chest with anything useful in it.

I have to agree. The loot sucks in this game.

It's awesome that you can craft unique loot yourself by maxing your blacksmithing and enchanting skills but it sucks that it seems like that is the focus. I think maybe it's an attempt to put some focus on those skill sets but it makes it tough for creating characters that have no interest in either skill set. It seems like one or the other is mandatory if you want anything truly epic. Though some of the quest items, like the Nightingale stuff is pretty damn cool.

Go smithing/enchanting or have shit gear forever. I have never, ever found something better than what I can make, with the exception of some mask I got off a wizard that was actually better than my maxed out Dragonscale helm.

@xyzygy: Problem with finding loot is that it is all level based. So you will only be finding ebony/dragon/daedric stuff at high levels. So if you powerlevel your smithing you will always be able to make better stuff then what is in the loot tables of containers

Problem with unique artifacts is only because of how smithing works. You see the 2x bonus perks only affect normal weapons, not uniques. Base damage of ebony dagger is actually 10, whereas the damage of Mehunes razor is 11. So a character who is not into smithing will actually find the Artifact wepons and gear to be generally equivalent or better then normal stuff (better due to enchants). It's only when you put high level smithing or enchanting into the equation when Artifact gear becomes obsolete and crafting stuff becomes dominant.

Imo smithing perks should have been made to affect unique Artifact gear. Hopefully there will be a mod to fix this at some point.

Just Bethesda taking it to that next level of realism. Yeah, like you're going to find dope ass gear just lying around in a chest in the open world. No way it's going to be tons of gold, gems, and a piece of gear or two that have an average or below average enchant. I'm less than 20 hours in, but if you look online you can find plenty of pics and info about some very, very cool gear. I find at least one piece in most Master chests, it just sucks, which makes sense.

But seriously, I'm a wizard so fuck gear. If I want it, I make it out of thin air with my dope ass magic, or I kill mother fuckers with fire and take it from them.

Oblivion was a massive loot game for me, but in Skyrim, although I do still pick up and sell far too much stuff (currently have 400K, I am Skyrim's 1%), I care about random loot far less because I got deep into the crafting trees, including smithing and enchanting, which means the gear I have is better than anything I find in the world. I love crafting systems in games, and Skyrim's is definitely rewarding (provided you have the restraint to not break it, which I do), and I love any game that lets me roll with armour and weapons I made myself; it feels incredibly satisfying. Unfortunately, this did make random loot less meaningful, but I think in general it's a sacrifice that I'm comfortable with. Diablo III will meet all my random loot requirements next year, and Dungeons of Dredmor is tiding me over until then.

I think a few item's base damage is calculated according to your level when you loot it. I know Mehrunes Razor works like that, cause my version was upgraded to 53 damage with a blacksmithing potion. Like what other people said blacksmithing and enchanting kind of sap the urge to replace your gear cause you already insta-gib everything.

I don´t think TES has ever been a loot driven game. They changed the way loot was distributed for one reason only: In Morrowind everybody would just skip all armor/weapons available in the game and go straight to the unique/overpowered stuff.

I think this game handles it way better than Oblivion did. I´m 85 hours in and I´m still finding stuff thats worth keeping. Oblivion went straight to Glass/Daedric/enchantend stuff after maybe 60 hours for me. Then I wouldn´t find better equipment. Not so in this game. The Daedric stuff is not as overpowered as it once was, but it is still very much worth getting. The Razor does more than just the damage you listed.. because it has a chance of killing with one hit. All the other daedric artifacts I´ve found so far are pretty cool too. Nothing too complicated or overpowered but very much worth getting. I think where this game falls a little short of Oblivion is quest design and I feel like I have to start a new character once I´ve hit level 50, which I didn´t do in Oblivion for some reason.

Honestly, if you´re playing an Elder Scrolls game like a fucking dungeon crawler, or care about "DPS" and percentage of high level loot.. I think you´re doing it wrong. But hey, it´s your game- so feel free to ruin it for yourself whichever way you like.

@MaddProdigy said:

But seriously, I'm a wizard so fuck gear. If I want it, I make it out of thin air with my dope ass magic, or I kill mother fuckers with fire and take it from them.

This is also true.

The game doesn't even have loot though really ... it just has tiers of items and then unique items.

@Superfriend said:

I don´t think TES has ever been a loot driven game. They changed the way loot was distributed for one reason only: In Morrowind everybody would just skip all armor/weapons available in the game and go straight to the unique/overpowered stuff.

I think this game handles it way better than Oblivion did. I´m 85 hours in and I´m still finding stuff thats worth keeping. Oblivion went straight to Glass/Daedric/enchantend stuff after maybe 60 hours for me. Then I wouldn´t find better equipment. Not so in this game. The Daedric stuff is not as overpowered as it once was, but it is still very much worth getting. The Razor does more than just the damage you listed.. because it has a chance of killing with one hit. All the other daedric artifacts I´ve found so far are pretty cool too. Nothing too complicated or overpowered but very much worth getting. I think where this game falls a little short of Oblivion is quest design and I feel like I have to start a new character once I´ve hit level 50, which I didn´t do in Oblivion for some reason.

Honestly, if you´re playing an Elder Scrolls game like a fucking dungeon crawler, or care about "DPS" and percentage of high level loot.. I think you´re doing it wrong. But hey, it´s your game- so feel free to ruin it for yourself whichever way you like.

This.

Oblivion was the same. Once I hit 100 smithing I basically only looted gold that I had nothing to spend it on.

Its not WOW or an mmo, its not about the loot. Loots just there for the sake of it so you get something from a corpse or the occassional chest. Speaking of which chests are really there for increasing your locking picking skill, whats inside is just a little

reward. Like previous people already mentioned, if your class is armor based go smithing, there is no finer kick ass looking set then the daedric armor and weapons. Enchant the armor and weapon to fit your style of play and bam you got your "crazy awesome and unique looking item".

Smithing ruined the loot in this game. My first character, I blissfully ignored it and did fine. Now? I'll pick up a stock ebony weapon and toss it, because my smithing stacked steel sword I crafted blows it away.

That and chests always seem very dissapointing when it comes to loot.

Fortunately, mods make it so you can enchant unique items, but without that ability, I can forge something better and enchant it to my liking.

The loot is very unremarkable, but that's just one of the smallest problems I have with the game.

Theres the problem, smithing lets you refine armor and weapons. So a legendary steel sword yes could be higher lvl then an ebony weapon with no refinement done to it. But a legendary ebony sword will be almost 3 times as strong as a lgendary steel sword. It only makes sense cause the orders iron, steel, dwarven, steel plate, orcish, ebony, dragonplate, daedric. Point of note on the skill tree dragonplate comes last but it is inferior to the daedric, not sure if that was mistake on bethesda's part. Pretty much the only thing I found disappointing with smithing was that. Dragging back all them heavy dragonbone and dragon shards or whatever back home only to find out daedric armor beats it out.

@faizjuma: I think they put dragon at the top because it is both light and heavy, it would be unfair to stick it under daedric on the heavy side of the tree as it would force light armor users to waste several perks.

Not sure why the heavy isnt higher armour than daedric though.

@faizjuma said:

Point of note on the skill tree dragonplate comes last but it is inferior to the daedric, not sure if that was mistake on bethesda's part. Pretty much the only thing I found disappointing with smithing was that. Dragging back all them heavy dragonbone and dragon shards or whatever back home only to find out daedric armor beats it out.

Actually, the perk tree is non linear so they are not implying that Dragon is the best. The reason why it sits in the middle is because it is the only type with both heavy and light versions that are made from the same material. Left branch is light smithing and wraps round to dragon, and the right branch is heavy. Only makes sense that they meet in the middle.

Yep. After I put together a full Dragonscale set and some Daedric weapons (not that hard to do) no loot has mattered. The daedric stuff I've found so far is just decoration for my house.

I'm just questing now for the story. Which is fine, but stuff is starting to get monotonous.

Smithing is were that loot comes from. I'm 100 hours in and haven't found anything as good as what I make myself. I wish I could disenchant some of the things I've found so I can make even crazier stuff.

The game doesn't even have loot though really ... it just has tiers of items and then unique items.

I'm really not having that problem. I'm over 80 hours in and at level 40. In most of the master chests, I usually find over 200 gold, a powerful spell, a new spell tome, powerful potion and then some expensive resalable items. Mix or max, but they're usually worth my effort to open them.

I've found some decent loot. Besides, Master locks are there to level Lockpicking.

@Claude said:

I'm really not having that problem. I'm over 80 hours in and at level 40. In most of the master chests, I usually find over 200 gold, a powerful spell, a new spell tome, powerful potion and then some expensive resalable items. Mix or max, but they're usually worth my effort to open them.

This. Master chests may not have uniques but they haven't been a waste of time for me.

There are unique weapons, but yeah they are pretty underpowered. W/e, they look cool on my weapon racks in my numerous houses.

Morrowind: My armour was stuff I bought.

Oblivion: My armour was stuff I looted.

Skyrim: My armour is stuff I've made since loot is really bad.

@xyzygy: Sadly, I think it's more a problem with how overpowered smithing and enchanting are in this game as opposed to a lack of unique loot. Sure, you can use the razor before you get your smithing to the highest levels, but as soon as it passes that checkpoint, you'd be gimping yourself. Same with not using smithing anyway. I personally don't think the response of "don't use smithing then" cuts it. If you're going to be melee, stealth, or ranged, you need a good weapon. Not using smithing to your advantage is a punishable player decision as well as poor game design.

As opposed to being a healthy augmentation, it's an end-all, be-all with a set pathway, as someone said, with tiers of loot. It makes the most exciting part of loot, unique or not, is the amount of gold you can get for it, not its capabilities.

The Elder Scrolls games in particular have always had problems with there not being enough variety in loot. It must be really difficult for them to make a game that has a large variety of loot in such a huge game because of the sheer size and free roaming nature of the game.

They prolly can't assign specific loot to individual chests since they can't accurately determine what level or place in the game a player will be when reaching said chest. Even handing out specific armor pieces in non main quest lines would be difficult to do since again, who knows if the player will reach that quest at level 5 or level 30. What would be way over powered for an early level player may still be grossly underpowered for a late game player taking on the quest. The few times I've run into the set pieces that get given out, (theives guild questline), they almost seem super overpowered at low level. I have a hard time thinking I'll find anything to replace the pieces I got from that quest in the near future if ever. This pretty much makes everything I find from this point on armor wise just stuff I might pick up, never to wear but to either disenchant or to sell and that's disappointing.

Unless you've got a more rigid structure game where the developers can limit where a player can go until a certain level either by making the enemies more difficult or just having blocks in place to prevent them from even getting into areas, we're stuck with what we've got here. Also, doing that would sorta ruin the core of what I think of the Elder Scrolls games to be. I suppose they could go the diablo route and just have a bunch of different modifiers that can randomly be applied to loot, but I sorta think that's boring too. Dunno. It's really too bad because games like these benefit a lot from awesome loot and it's totally missing from all of Bethesda's games =\

There ought to be some locked end-game-style dungeons that you can only get into at a certain level which feature some badass unique loot. It wouldn't be that difficult to implement.

It's something I really hope some DLC might offer. Really as long as it's not some more horse armor bullshit I'll be looking forward to it.

I like my Ebony War Axe so far.

I must say I am kida disappointed with the loot. All of the items my main char has have been acquired via quests (specifically the thieves guild and the DB quest lines), with the exception of the Dragon Priest mask I'm using.

Being able to unlock every chest and door in the world and finding absolutely nothing remotely useful or valuable sure as hell is a disappointment.

It's not Diablo folks. I've found a lot of really cool shit, but none from chests. I don't want to find shit stashed away in a chest. I want it through quests. I wanna pry a cool sword from the hands of some rotted carcass I just put back into the ground. So I dunno what you're issue is. Elder Scrolls has never been about finding shit tons of crazy unique gear. I've spent about 110 hours so far and I've found enough cool things for me to be happy, and not so many as for me to wonder why there's so much cool shit just lying around. And when I do find cool shit, it's cool beyond the stats or even appearance. It usually has some story behind it.

Yea, it's true. Just get Smithing to 100 and you can create all armors and weapons. Even then, you can still enchant them if you level that up as well.

It's better to me that you have to really work for it now, but it does get tiresome finding generic crap all the time.

@MordeaniisChaos said:

It's not Diablo folks. I've found a lot of really cool shit, but none from chests. I don't want to find shit stashed away in a chest. I want it through quests. I wanna pry a cool sword from the hands of some rotted carcass I just put back into the ground. So I dunno what you're issue is. Elder Scrolls has never been about finding shit tons of crazy unique gear. I've spent about 110 hours so far and I've found enough cool things for me to be happy, and not so many as for me to wonder why there's so much cool shit just lying around. And when I do find cool shit, it's cool beyond the stats or even appearance. It usually has some story behind it.

With all due respect, what the fuck are you talking about? Morrowind was FULL of loot you "just find" on the ground. And it was usually the best of the best you could get, not this crap that "tides you over" until your smithing gets to 100.

Look up the artifacts for Morrowind, then Oblivion, then Skyrim and notice the pattern. I don't like seeing these "you don't play TES for the loot" responses when loot should be as much a part of the game as the story is.

@Ulain: Even then, it wasn't the reason played. Loot is why you play games like Diablo. It's not why you play ES. If you want better loot, there are games out there for you. A game doesn't need to be all things to all people. Skyrim doesn't need unique shit scattered all over the world. I'd rather have meaningful, sparse super awesome gear than 100 random half assed unique weapons. Want better loot? Play Morrowind. Or better yet, play a LOOT FOCUSED GAME. And stop whining because you don't constantly find special unique overpowered gear. Morrowind is ONE game in a pretty sizable franchise. I've never given two fucks about loot in an ES game. I'm of the opinion that really cool loot being rare is way better than constantly finding "cool" loot that's just a different name applied to the same shit you've already seen. It wouldn't make any sense for you to just constantly be shedding your gear for yet another piece of "awesome" loot. I enjoy the loot in this game. If you aren't going to go the Borderlands way with it and just be totally batshit crazy and have a shit ton of different pieces of loot, I'd much rather be super stoked to find a rare bit of gear because it's not often you see cool stuff then constantly find amazing gear. I'm more than happy with enjoying quests and the awesome combat and the stories and exploration offered by the world. If you want loot, get loot. Does Halo need loot, as well? No, it doesn't. And neither does Skyrim.

Does anyone know if the Thief perk to find special treasure affect this? I'm hoping it does, I just started a new game with the intent of developing a Thief. That means no blacksmith perks so I won't be creating gear, and minimal enchanting

the best loot ive gotten so far has to be the ancient shrouded gauntlets which give 2x sneak attack with one handed weapons. This combined with the mid level sneak perk gives 30x sneak attack damage.

I've hand the same  weapon and armor like 30 hours. It really sucks

@xyzygy: I feel like you've never touched Oblivion if you're offended by Skyrim's loot offering. Also, it makes complete sense that lowly bandits and whatnot have hide armors. I figure I should also reinforce that the loot you find in this game mostly scales to your level. You won't start seeing glass armor until you're, say, around level 30.

I figure I should also say that Bethesda (rightfully) reserved all the best grades of armor and weapons for the smithers. As far as I've been able to find, Daedric and Dragon quality gear is only available through crafting. The best you'll find otherwise are Daedric artifacts and glass/ebony quality stuff.

@faizjuma said:

Theres the problem, smithing lets you refine armor and weapons. So a legendary steel sword yes could be higher lvl then an ebony weapon with no refinement done to it. But a legendary ebony sword will be almost 3 times as strong as a lgendary steel sword. It only makes sense cause the orders iron, steel, dwarven, steel plate, orcish, ebony, dragonplate, daedric. Point of note on the skill tree dragonplate comes last but it is inferior to the daedric, not sure if that was mistake on bethesda's part. Pretty much the only thing I found disappointing with smithing was that. Dragging back all them heavy dragonbone and dragon shards or whatever back home only to find out daedric armor beats it out.

I've always considered Dragon smithing to be a light armor affair, with the added advantage of having an additional Dragonbone set.

I've hand the same  weapon and armor like 30 hours. It really sucks

It's not Diablo folks. I've found a lot of really cool shit, but none from chests. I don't want to find shit stashed away in a chest. I want it through quests. I wanna pry a cool sword from the hands of some rotted carcass I just put back into the ground. So I dunno what you're issue is. Elder Scrolls has never been about finding shit tons of crazy unique gear. I've spent about 110 hours so far and I've found enough cool things for me to be happy, and not so many as for me to wonder why there's so much cool shit just lying around. And when I do find cool shit, it's cool beyond the stats or even appearance. It usually has some story behind it.

@xyzygy: Your memory is doing some impressive work with Oblivion's system. In Skyrim, plundering a dungeon might actually be worth something. At level 45, I find myself walking out of most dungeons with at least 5000 gold-worth of stuff. In Oblivion, not only was it even less likely to find loot that is meaningful, but the plunder would rival the repair costs of your armor after the adventure. We're talking pocket change, a couple pieces of abysmal armor, and maybe a gem. In Skyrim, you'll walk away with a handful of gems worth a ton of cash, probably a solid 5-10 valuable potions, at least 3000g worth of armor/weapons (at 45), and you may even stumble into a word of power.

And, like both of the more recent Elder Scrolls games, they aren't Diablo styled loot adventures. There is a best armor set; there is a best weapon. If you know where to look, you can snag those fairly early on. I was outfitted in all the best everything for my character type by level 35. There is no better in the game. Smith yourself a set of Daedric armor, double-enchant it, and snag yourself the Mace of Molag Bal, and you're ready to go. The only other unique items worth collecting are the oddities (like the Robes of the Emperor), and the Daedric Artifacts. Everything else exists as valuable pieces of equipment to be traded in for gold.

These games are not meant to be loot-driven games. It's like being disappointed that KOTOR only had a handful of armor. This is not The Elder Scroll's forte. Even Morrowind, retrospectively, was only so loot-driven. These games are about the experience of exploring, the wealth of meaningful questing content, and the ability to freely develop your own character as you play. Asking for a Diablo loot system would only be a detriment to the game, as it would negate the importance of Enchanting and Smithing as valid areas for skill investment.

went through cave and chest at the end had hide armor.

got quest and went back through same cave and this time it was dragon armor in same chest, pretty decent.

as for chests with locks? all have been shitty. near end of my game play i started to ignore them. really why bother with them at all?

have to say lock picking is about as useful as the speech tree.

So far as I'm concerned, the loot is vendor fodder. I never felt a need to use any of the stuff I found after a few hours, the exceptions being the Dragon Priest masks. The last sword that I picked up and started using was the Dragonsbane I stole from the Blades, and that's because it does equivalent damage to my Deadric Sword.

Nice read, but mehrunes razor has a small chance of instakill and never needs recharged. it saved me a couple of times

great! my 9,999th iron dagger