planting paralysis potions on every town guard for the heck of it is fun

and is a good way to train.

Is there no Arfcom group on ESO?

What's ESO?

Finally got to level 32, already starting to get agitated by the monochromatic color palette ,

I get it.. it's supposed to look like northern Europe, in winter, apparently forever.

But even there there are flowers and stuff.

I'm gonna have to gay it up or I won't make it to level 100 without going cray cray.

Any suggestions on color enhancing mods?

I found this on the you tubes.

I already have a nexus mods account for Mechwarrior5.

What are y'all's favorite color enhancement mods?

I have the steam version, with (I guess) all the upgrades.

The special edition steam was selling during Christmas.

I don't even know how to check my version.

The Elder Scrolls MMO.

It's kind of a nice time to try it out since the latest expansion is only a couple weeks away you can buy everything up to date at once for normal game price.

At this point it's a pretty large and well polished game.

Digitigrade Khajiit Feet.



https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/43833?tab=description

Wow, so it's like the Skyrim version of WoW.

OMG...

Did not know that was as thing.

I just learned about the fallout MMO.

I got skyrim to play when I'm out in the country with crappy dial up internet (satellite).

Same reason I got Mechwarrior5.

Can't do MMO's out here, except WoW, because it's based on stats, not reflexes, with 1000+ms latency, it's impossible to play reflex based online stuff.

I really need a color enhancement for Skyrim, or I won't be able to keep playing it.

Everything is so...grey.

I need to Gay it Up.

Purples, greens, auroras, colorful skies and sunsets, that kind of thing.

The constant grey/cold/bleakness really takes away the fun after a while... depressing.

MxR is a riot, and does preview some great mods, from Nexus and Lover Lab.
I use Flower Girls and Amorous Adventures Plus.



Rudy ENB cathedral, it’ll brighten up your colors, make the landscape, flora/fauna, and weather look more realistic, but as with any ENB you will get true darkness when it is.
Stock up on torches and use the mage light for interiors.
Of course, if your modding, you need FNIS and SKSE, or none of it will work, same if your doing CBP with physics for bouncing boobs, or other mods.
Right now my latest game has about 75 mods which is light compared to some of the hard core I’ve seen.

And yeah, I’m on my fourth play thorough (about 3000 or more hrs total) no way could I make it without mods.
From Sofia to Vilja, Serana add on dialogue, and select expansions like AHO, it just works!

There are followers for every taste, from Khajiits like Inigo, to whatever, me I like sloots!




ETA...
Funny, but with all the work that’s gone onto this game, they can’t program a circle, even big boobs are a series of angles.

A year ago I played ps4 Skyrim again for about a month.  Had to put it down.  That game’s like digital crack.

I feel you. If I had it loaded right now I'd play and be up way later than I should be.

Got skyrim along time ago just never played it. Been into VR and wanted get it on steam but it has always been pricey. Is it worth it to get it in VR?

Honestly, I’d wait a while, it’s getting more popular, prices are coming down like the Occulus, and it’s still a memory hog.

Only have a Rift S and most of my time is playing elite dangerous but would like to get something different. Allready finished alyx multiple times. Attached File

I ran it on my Alienware M15, it ran fine, but I only use it for gaming, trimmed it down to just what was needed to run.
Worked well, but really wasn’t all that great.
Really need to upgrade my desk top to the latest.

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For better eyecandy aspects without going overboard, take a look at:

Static Mesh Improvement Mod - SMIM
Skyrim 2018 Textures
Skyrim Flora Overhaul
Climates Of Tamriel
Ruins Clutter Improved

Neat

@jedione

Its absolutely worth it for VR. If your willing to spend a few hours modding the game, there is a wabbajack mod list for it that will give you all the VR features as well as a graphical overhaul.  Really brings the game up to 2020 AAA levels.

I know reddit is cancer but r/skyrimVR is an incredible resource.

Eta: i've got almost 300 hours into my current save.

I’m not much of a gamer anymore these days.  I did dabble some until my old XBOX finally gave up the ghost.  My crowning achievement on Skyrim was creating a character named Hilda, who would lie, cheat, and steal from one side of the map to the other. She was loosely based on a real life politician.  Sneak, speech, and alchemy were basically maxed out. Some archery skill was necessary early on, for those rare occasions when you couldn’t find another triggerman to do the dirty work. I found that success hinged on always surrounding yourself with loyal followers who were willing to do all the heavy lifting for you.

second time around, first thing got Fendal as a follower. Leveled bows and took back my money, go to level 10 FAST.

Then did companins quest line, got to 20 FAST, Aela got bows to 75, and working with Jorrvaskr now...

Got to Level 21 in just a couple sessions, got dawn-breaker already.



And have enough money to build my house at lakeview (over 20,000 gold!)

Sure is going better the second time.

Going to level blacksmithing and enchanting at the same time, this time.

Amazing how fast you can level once you know the exploits.

I love taking gold back from my trainer/followers.

With they had a light armor trainer/follower.

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Is having a shield and leveling "block" worth learning in this game?

FWIW I fought 8 guys at the same time doing the last companion quest, at ~level 20, took about 3 tries at second dificulty level.

I tried raising the difficulty this time and died badly, and my follower seemed tarded they kept dying on traps....

Even at 3rd difficulty level it was much, much harder.

Of course I was running main quest lines at a much lower level, IDK if that made a difference.

So I played Skyrim at launch and gave up on it after some quest ending bugs.

Sooo nowww, tell me more about VR. Is it worth it for oculus quest or something? Not gonna drop 1k on it until I know I like it.  

Leveling Block and resetting it to Legendary is how you power level and get past the level cap.

I loved Skyrim, but the magic was just repetitive.

I wished they would follow Neverwinter nights or DnD similarities with their magic choices.

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My laptop just now. A lot of the time I have Skyrim paused on it while reading or surfing the web on the tablet. Back and forth between the two.

I play the backstory game a little: this one's succubus race https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/22903 Well, half succubus. Seems that Azura became concerned about the future of Skyrim and all of Tamriel during the Oblivion Crisis, put together a secret cabal of select entities, both daedra and aedra, to ensure the Septim bloodline survived and produced a Dragonborn. What with the Oblivion gates and all that, lets just say Martin Septim had a stealthy visitor one night and woke the next morning convinced he'd had a very, very erotic dream. This character's the result. As part of the cost of making this work, the mother died in childbirth and the kid was raised by a bunch of hot and powerful "aunts" and "Uncle Sanguine". Couple of hundred years go by. When the time was right, she was dropped into Mundus and the game picks up from there.

This is Oldrim and just about maxed out on # of mods right now. If I ever get back to SSE, I think I might try some vanilla playthroughs again, as accomplishment tracking is disabled with mods in SE.  About mods; I laugh myself silly watching MXR's reviews on YouTube, but he's not for everyone by a long shot and many find him immature/annoying. I've found a bunch of great mods from watching MXR and a lot from just keeping tabs on the new stuff as it shows up on the Nexus.

I usually become dissatisfied with how my playthrough is going somewhere between level 30-70 and start over from scratch or a really early save.  Usually something about not liking where the character level is/versus where things are in terms of the different quests. This one might go a bit further. We'll see.

^ She hasn't even made it to High Hrothgar yet, but has been sighted skulking in Apocrypha and is slowly filling the basement level of Guardian's Overlook https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/97174 with loot and scantily-clad vampire followers (think about it; what else in Skyrim is likely to make a succubus feel like she's back at home?).  Besides, the place was bandit infested when she found it, it's only right that any others trying to move in receive an enthusiastic welcome they won't survive.

Edited to add: About leveling and grinding, Click To View Spoiler

Armor appears to be some version of DeserterX's Celes Nightingale https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/67595

The base version is light, but there are a mess of variations people have done. This mod includes a bunch of DX armor mods in one package and does a whole lot more, and includes both light and heavy versions of that particular armor https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/76522

I get the Hearthfire places, put in the outdoor garden, build the greenhouse wing on every one of them and put in the most money making ingredients, along with some blisterwort and glowing mushrooms for smithing, maybe some snowberries to go w. blue butterfly wings for enchanting.

Max Alchemy fast and profit from sales.

Once the balance gets over about 50K and all the houses have been purchased, it doesn't really matter any more and I quit trying, but the money grubbing habits stick with a guy. Currently:

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I’m watching my wife play last night. This is her first time playing anything remotely similar to this. Galaga is more her style.

She’s got Lydia with her, even though I told her followers are more trouble than they’re worth. And for some reason, she’s also dragging along Esburn and Delphine because she has quest ADD.  She goes into the Dwarven ruined with the female ghost archer, so now she picks up a fourth follower. She’s having a difficult time with them negotiating pipes, so I tell her to leave them and I’ll catch up later. She finally gets to the first Falmer and takes it down fairly easy. Unfortunately, Lydia had a staff of Flame Atronach, so now there’s five followers.

In the ensuing melee, one follower must have hit another. After the Falmer goes down, the followers start fighting each other. She screaming at the TV and I am rolling in my chair laughing. It was a glorious train wreck.

At least she won't be lonely!

Can you explain how this works?  I haven't done this yet.

Which, changing difficulty or taking on a follower that can provide training, then going into their inventory and helping yourself to the tuition money after having them teach?
 
Far as difficulty level:
IIRC, there's even a helpful load screen message in-game about how you can change the difficulty at any time, even during combat...
Press "esc" key, select "settings", look for difficulty and set at the level you want.  Done.

Usually there's a quest involved in getting a trainer to be willing to be recruited as a follower and get access to their stuff.  Faendal in Riverwood for example; just help him along with romancing Camilla and you're in.  Aela? Companions questline.  There's a lot to go through before she's ready to be a follower, if you haven't done that one before.

Used to do this, along with using console commands or mods like RDO or NFF to force characters to become potential followers, including skill trainers. I just don't feel okay with my player character taking advantage of a follower's trust that way anymore. All kinds of other immoral or just plain wrong behavior, fine, but getting free training that way sticks in my craw nowadays.  One saying over on the Nexus is "Your Skyrim, your way.", so I'll just go be weird about it over here by myself.

Just a few more grinds and such:

Combined archery and pickpocket: join the Thieves' Guild, find Niruin, the archery trainer.  Wear anything you've acquired so far that increases pickpocket skill.  Get one level of archery training, F5 (for a quick save, which means that F5 at frequent intervals while playing is your friend), pickpocket the gold back again, rinse, lather, repeat.  Get caught? F9 (quickload last quicksave) and try, try again.  Level up after doing 5 courses of training, rinse lather, repeat.  With powerful enough gear and throwing perk points into pickpocket as you go, it's possible to hit 100 in that skill before finishing.  At some point, the tuition cost becomes high enough that there's 0% chance of stealing back the money, so there's the stopping point.  Why Niruin and archery? Because, unlike say, pulling the same stunt while getting training in Alchemy from Arcadia, picking his pocket doesn't result in hired thugs coming after your character's butt at an inopportune moment.  I mean, they have decent loot and usually provide a bit of a workout, but it's annoying to have some rude ass interrupt about teaching you a lesson while selling off a mess of junk and hoping to score some decent enchanted gear off what's-her-name at Warmaiden's or come along begging to be killed just when your character's staggering out of a crypt with maxed-out carrying capacity.

Illusion magic?  Get the spell tome for muffle from a court wizard and just keep casting it while doing stuff around town, hanging in a jarl's hall, tavern, player home, whatever.  Getting up to expert level doesn't take long and then you can have your character acquire the tome for invisibility at the college for extra sneaky stuff, including the ability to eventually abuse the crap out of the Assassin's Blade perk in the sneak skill tree, which helps bring up one-handed much faster.

"Dances with Giants" is my preferred way to build up armor, block and slowly increase restoration magic skills at the same time.  Cradlecrush is a good place to do this, as there's only one giant to deal with and you can either have your character squirrel around the log framework with the dead cow on it while waiting for magic to regenerate or go hop onto one of the 3 big rocks in the area for the same purpose.  Remember that the giant can still reach the player character while on the rocks unless standing on the right spots- key here is to watch and see if he runs away and hides, then you're in a sweet spot.  Shield in one hand, some kind of decent healing spell in the other, highest protection armor of the kind you want to grind away at and a set of robes along to change into to regenerate magic faster while keeping out of the giant's reach.  This has a bit of a learning curve.  Blocking when there's a big windup for a massive hit is a good move and watch out for the backhanded bitch slap without warning that does a surprisingly large amount of damage.  Trying this at too low a level or not doing it right, not paying attention, etc. will likely result in your character becoming a pioneer in the Skyrim space program.  Once again, F5 is your friend.  I have to admit that doing this stunt in a few other places, like Secunda's Kiss, with multiple giants, can be a lot of fun if you get to the point of feeling jaded with doing it the easy way...

Sneak.  This one is ridiculously easy, so I don't do it since the first couple of times after hearing about it to verify that it works.  Before finishing the escape from Helgen at the beginning of the game, there's the sneak tutorial where whoever your character chose to flee with sees the bear and you're given the chance to sneak around the bear or shoot it with a bow, "if you're feeling lucky".  At this point, sneak attack the dude your character's with using a dagger, over and over again and sneak skill can be built up as far as you're willing to go. Yes, it's possible to have a sneak skill of 100 before even escaping Helgen.

I'm very new at this, so bear with me, learning as I go, I'm sure there is a better way to do it, and I did some of this on accident. I'm only on my second toon.

First trick is using Faendal to get to level 50 archery, you'll need to cock block Sven as soon as you escape captivity.

Train from your follower (Faendal) then take back the gold, every time you level up, do 5x training, and at early levels you might level up before you finish 5x training.

Repeat...

I was at level 10 before I knew what had happened...

It makes it super fast to get to level ~20.

As soon as you get Fendal, start working on becoming a Companion.

Once you become a companion, they have several follower/trainers who you can get your gold back from as you train.

Use the companions to level your skills ASAP, and steal back your gold, by the time I was a companion I could easily level halfway up just doing the 5x skill training.  

Then I managed to beat the "final quest" at level ~37... https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Book:_Waking_Dreams

Which let me reset my skills without making them legendary, at the cost of one dragon soul per skill tree.

Then I went full retard on crafting, and that's when I started to learn to make "super weapons", I put all those combat skills into crafting weapons/armor, for a few levels.

Use warrior stone, then make a bunch of weapons/armor, then upgrade them with the work bench/grinding wheel, then switch to mage stone and enchant them.

As soon as you level up each time, use your trainer and take back the gold...

Then sell all the crafted stuff to buy materials for more. Might help to have a bargaining necklace or a few points in speech when you do this.

It actually can make pretty good money, I got up to 40,000 gold before I noticed it.

Between your companion/follower/trainer leveling you, and your crafting you don't need to do very many quest and you will level up a bunch and VERY fast.

And you'll end up with a full set of Daedric armor/dragon bone weapons, all enchanted/enhanced to crazy high power by the time you are ~40-45.

And I did it all pretty fast.

There are feedback loops you can use to power level. Or make money...

IDK about alchemy yet, but I used some looted potions too, when making my "super armor/weapon" sets. Something about letting giants hit you while you block.

Combine that with Companion follower who does block training?

Some people online were talking about getting block to level 100 in ~15 minutes...

Also, do a dwemer dungeon or two early on, and make dwarven bows, upgrade and enchant them and sell them. Makes LOTS of money and levels super fast, fuck doing iron daggers.

Then spend a few dragon souls to reset your perks again (after you finish smithing/enchanting, at level 100) using Black Book: Waking Dreams.

And put it all back in combat skills. At level ~47 I killed a dragon with (apparently) one hit of a double enchanted dragon bone one handed sword...

Also, use the trick to keep Serana as a "second follower"... I like having two followers.

And her quest line lets you get a ton of free soul gems... in the soul cairn. It resets every ~10 game days.

You can fill them as you go with an enchanted bow. Only trick is to kill the the skeletons before Serana does, and try and loot every one y'all kill (which can be hard to find) cause they all drop soul gems. And fill them at the cracks too.

I have more gems than I know what to do with now, hardly bought any at all.

And they drop black gems too.

You can also use potions you've collected to regen your health/magic/stamina, while you power level blocking, or use enchantments to keep your magic up to reheal, or do an alchemy feedback loop, make potions then let giant hit you with your shield up. Apparently making your shield block more with enchantments will also level it up faster (I think I read that somewhere)

Seriously, people were talking about leveling block to 100 and FAST, I think someone said 10 minutes, using potions to keep you up.

IDK about the block yet, haven't played with it, but I got the shield that does damage when you block, so it's tempting.

I'm loving the dual wield + archery in heavy armor play style.

The heavy armor perk lets the armor weigh zero!!!

Wish I had known that when I started.

I feel so overpowered now it's almost sad, even thinking about upgrading my difficulty level to third from the bottom...

There is a restoration skill that lets heal spells fill stamina too, that's what I'm working on now.

This thread is a bad influence.

It’s 3:40pm on Saturday here.  Cracking a beer, and firing up Skyrim.  

I don’t even think I’ve turned the desktop on in 12 months and don’t even remember the last time I played it.

p.s. Serana (as a vampire) is an immortal follower, and my followers kept dying from dungeon traps when I went to third difficulty level... may need to dismiss Aela and go with just Serana for a bit if I upgrade my difficulty.

After doing the 100 smithing/enchanting and then switching my perks back to combat I'm so over powered at level 47 it's crazy. Those crafting potions make a big difference too.

Use enchanting potion to give your 4 pieces of smithing gear extra bonus, then use the smithing gear to upgrade your gear, then use enchanting potion to upgrade the upgraded and double enchanted gear.



Make it complement your play style and you can just wreck fools.

I still haven't found the chaos enchant for my second toon. I want to do a chaos + fire double enchant.

Yeah, working the feedback loop of alchemy to make a potion to fortify enchanting, use potion while enchanting gear for fortifying alchemy, worn to make a more powerful potion to fortify enchanting, 'round and 'round ad infinitum is pretty much routine.  Ditto for taking the current "final level" to do the fortify smithing enchantment and potions to fortify smithing.  A lot of the time, I'll combine the fortify alchemy and smithing enchantments on jewelry and gloves (any gloves encountered get swept up for this purpose) and call the Mk I versions, "crafting ____", the Mk II version "crafty ____ " and the Mk III "craft ____" just to make it easier to keep track of which one to wear when upgrading.  I'll usually grab any hats my character runs across so there's a supply to make "Alchemical hat", "Alchemist's hat" and "Alchemy hat" along the same lines and do a similar thing with vampire robes and smithing, smith's and smith robes.

I'm using a mod that allows the hearthfire house garden spots to grow many, many different ingredients that vanilla doesn't support, so when I grind away at alchemy, it usually involves job lots of jarrin root and nightshade to make a truly vile poison that's worth a LOT, as in thousands per bottle once the alchemy skill gets anywhere. I'd like to say that it's also an excellent spot remover, but I wouldn't know; I can say that it routinely one-shot kills that first dragon after staggering out of Bleak Falls Barrow and off to Whiterun with pretty much any bow I've had a character using at that point.

Vanilla-wise, best money makers/skill raisers I know of are things like canis root and swamp fungal pod or scaly pholiiota and creep cluster.  The different invisibility ones (chaurus eggs/nirnroot/luna moth wing/vampire dust are the different ingredients for that that I can think of off the top of my head) are pretty good in this regard, too.  Just not as renewable in terms of having a whole garden growing the next batch.  I think I mentioned my preferred ingredients for fortify smithing and fortify alchemy in that earlier post.  Personally, other than making money off of them and fortifying smithing/enchanting, about the only use I have for potions is healing for when a fight gets too close pressed for magical healing or an occasional bottle of the earlier-mentioned poison for one-shotting dragons that come to the character looking for a fight.

Again, I don't have the ability to use most exploits in my game due to the USLEEP mod, but I know that there's a popular one involving alchemy/enchanting and... potions of fortify restoration(?) that can be abused to the point of having something like a basic iron dagger that does hundreds of thousands of points of damage per strike.  There are plenty of videos over on YouTube that can steer in the right direction.

The chaos enchantment?  I'm pretty sure that's going to require a trip to Solstheim. At least, that's the only place I can remember running across it.  I will say that there's a unique weapon there with this enchantment that will be gone for good if it's used to learn it. If you're okay with that, head to the Windhelm docks, talk to people on the ships until you find the right one to book passage to Raven Rock in Solstheim, leave the docks after arrival and hang a right onto the street and continue on it out of town and you'll soon get started on the quest that will lead to it.

I have to admit that I'm not big on enchanting weapons, other than as a money making project and means of grinding away at enchanting skill. Probably my parsimonious nature making me hate to have to recharge the stupid things every so often. I usually take it a little easy on doing enchanting until at least getting access to the drain health enchantment and especially banish and paralysis before doing a whole mess of it. Gives time to stockpile a pile of soul gems in advance, too.

Most of the time, I find that just having my character going solo is the easiest way to do things.  Bringing a bunch is okay, if you're feeling a need to get behind a meat shield, but otherwise...as stated in an earlier post, they seem to get in the way more than anything.  Filling up a big house with scantily clad followers really seems to be the best use I can find for most of them these days.

I've tried pretty much every well-known follower mod on the Nexus and a whole bunch that aren't so popular. I learned early on that vanilla voiced followers are just good for extra fighters and eye candy.  It doesn't really matter what special skills, custom outfits/weapons/spells/shouts they bring to the table if they're still talking the same tired lines as Lydia or Jordis.  Custom voiced or fully voiced ones like Vilja, Inigo, Aurlyn Dawnstone, Caesia, Sofia, Recorder, What's-her-butt "Singer-to-Dragons", Mour or whatever the sullen half-dragon chick was called, Acalypha, Auri, Arissa and the like, well, at least it was nice to hear something, anything, different for a change.

Purely my opinion here: If you're going to drag one along, Serana is very best follower.  Some people can't stand her chatter, which has lead to a number of mods with titles like "Silence is golden, duct tape is silver, Serana, Shut UP!"  Me, if I have a follower along, its either because a quest requires it or I want company, so oftentimes a silent presence isn't what I'm looking for.  Thing is, it took a whole DLC to get Serana into the game and it takes a number of mods to make her right, IMHO.  Personally, I'm running these Serana mods right now:
Seductress Serana (appearance mod)
Queen of the Damned - Deadlier Serana (combat changes)
Serana Dialogue Add-On (expanded dialogue, new lines by a different voice actress, romance option)
I have to admit that the last one of those gets a little cloying if the romance option is pursued.  Having her snarl something like "Don't you touch her!" as she charges into a fight once is cute and kind of touching, but gets old after a few dozen times and being asked if she looked like a true femme fatale while putting down enemies can also become stale.

Edit to add:
Not the most recent image I've done of her, but Serana can be made to look like such a bad decision just begging to be made...

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Yes, if you're willing to mod it.  I've got 300 or so hours on my sword/board build.

There is a wabbajack auto install mod list that brings it up to 2021 visuals, and 2021 VR standards.

So many mods on Nexus for this game...and then, you discover Loverslab.

I havent been on Skyrim since I fired up ESO on my PC & Xbone.

Hadn't played in years, but I started again last weekend.  I always default to a stealth character in these types of games, so that's what I did my first time through.  My second, I did a mage, but I stopped halfway through.  This time I'm doing a two-handed weapon fighter/bowman with heavy armor.

Played it for a short time when it was new. Tried it again a few different times over the years. Gave it up, always thought the inventory management sucked majorly even with mods.

My favorite thing to do was buy a house, gather as much random shit as I could carry, walk into the house, and empty my bag onto the floor. Then repeat, until when you run back and forth through the house, it's like swimming through a giant pool of garbage.

I put so much crap in one house it would freeze up my console because it couldn't process all the shit moving in there.
When it did that, I just threw it all outside and trashed the entire street.

i got the game for $10 installed on ps4 then never played it. just finished the platinum on remnant though.

A cheese wheel avalanche down the slopes of High Hrothgar!

I had to look that up.

Here’s a simple mod everyone needs!
Feels good man!

You need to do alchemy as well.    Once your skill tree includes the right perks, the cycle goes like this:  collect the ingredients for potions of fortify blacksmithing and fortify enchanting.   Use the potions to enchant a set of alchemy armor.  Put it on and make better potions.  Use the potions to increase your enchanting skills.  Enchant better alchemy armor.   Repeat to the point of diminishing returns.

You have to level smithing at least to the point where you can at least improve enchanted armor and weapons.   Once you top out the enchanting/alchemy cycle you can max improve a set of daedric armor and weapons then put two enchantments on every piece.   If you do the right mix of boosts for weapons and damage you can get to game breaking levels of damage.   Last time around I got to a point where a maxed out daedric bow would do over 1k damage per shot.

lol

I love my Dwemer crossbow.