Barbarian Assassin

Remove all ads!

Master level enemies don't have more health, you just do half damage to them. Although the effect you note while killing them is indistinguishable either way, but I'd assume you only get their unmodified hit point's worth of kill exp for Destruction, or any other skill that levels by doing damage, for that matter.

But I guess it's worth taking a peek whether there's a difference if I let a Novice difficulty level Giant tickle me vs letting a Master level one beat me to pulp as to how much my Armor skills benefit from it. *Makes a note to self*

 

Leveling armor by letting a giant beat on you on master difficulty certainly isn't fun. As I noted with my last character, you take a LOT of damage on master difficulty. Block training is not so bad, because you reduce the damage by a percentage - an even increasing percentage, in fact, as the skill improves. But leveling armor skills by taking a beat down from a giant is not fun.

In fact, that was the main reason I restarted my character. There was no way I was going to do that from level 30 to 100. That's the other thing. Unlike block training, it appears you need to take a lot more hits from a giant in order to level your armor skill. So it's more dangerous, less fun, and much more time consuming. So much so that I'll suck it up and do it to go from level 91-100, but not from such an early level.

 

Sorry if I seem dense, but wasn't the point of NOT training armor skills because you're going to get hit anyway a lot during your journeys, hence never actually having to do a thing specifically to level them? And all of a sudden we're discussing prancing around Giant camps with the specific reason to level your armor skills? Or are you after getting to the armor cap NOW rather than later all of a sudden?

 

It was only in response to your note to self. Pointing out that getting an adequate sample size to judge if there's a big difference in experience gained by letting a giant pound on you is going to be arduous on master difficulty, because even if you have around 400 health, and giant on master difficulty will kill you in 3-4 hits.

But, as regards the now abandoned character, since I was NOT using heavy armor throughout most of his adventuring career, the only was I could level heavy armor was after the fact, by getting pounded on by giants. And one of the reasons he became abandoned was I don't have the stomach to do that.

As a side note, the new character has an extremely similar play style as compared to the previous character. I don't know if I'd call him a "Barbarian" Assassin, as typically the barbarian archetype uses a two handed weapon with light armor. The most common archetype I've seen with using two weapons is a "ravager" or "blazesword", neither of which I think a particularly good nor informative descriptions.

 

Ok, so I did some testing. Crafted a -100% restoration cost set so that healing wouldn't be a problem and found a suitable pack of Bandits that would gladly slice, hack and shoot me full of arrows for a good ten minutes in a row.

Starting stats: Restoration 48, Heavy Armor 38, Light Armor 37.

After ten minutes of beating at Master level: R55, H56, L41. Notice the extremely skewed improvement in Heavy Armor compared to Light Armor. This was caused by me wearing Steel in every slot except for boots, where I had my Elven boots.

After a reload, switching my body armor to Elven so that I have two Steel pieces and two Elven and another ten minutes of beating at Master level: R54, H54, L56. Light armor was pulling very slightly ahead, although it started at a lower value. This confirms that you need to have 2 Heavy and 2 Light pieces to level both about evenly.

After yet another reload, 2+2 armors, ten minutes at NOVICE difficulty: R50, H54, L54. Restoration leveled only twice, since there was very little damage that needed healing, just as expected. However, armor skills improved just as fast as when doing it at Master difficulty, hence the experience gain must be calculated BEFORE difficulty modifies the damage intake values.

I also did a trip into a spider-infested cave and let them spit their poisons on me from a distance so that they wouldn't bite me. Although I did quite a bit of healing during the minutes I was there, I got a fat ZERO improvement on my armor skills. Hence, you need to be taking physical damage to actually level your armor skills. Kinda expected, but wanted to double-check.

 

But it also kind of proves my point about the slow leveling of many skills, Restoration especially. Remember that I leveled block from base to 100 in about 20 minutes, counting a quick trip back to Winterhold so I could train before double leveling. Actual in-game time was probably more like 15 minutes.

You took 10 minutes to gain a little under 20 levels. The problem is that the higher the armor skill gets, the longer it takes them to reach a new level. It's not like another 10 minutes would bring you to the 70s, and another 10 minutes after that would get you to the 90s. Given the exponential increases in leveling requirements, I'd imagine that it would probably take well in excess of a hour of doing that to level your armor skills to 100. Which you can do, I guess, but I am definitely more inclined to actually, you know, play the game.

 

Of course. No one in their right mind would actually train their armor skills this way. I was more interested whether difficulty setting affects your leveling. For armor skills: no, for restoration: yes, but only because you take so much more damage, and its leveling doesn't care how exactly the damage was received to begin with.

Also, it was nice to know that the amount of armor pieces worn correlates into how fast that type of armor skill advances. Now I KNOW that I need to advocate for 2+2 pieces armor setup for the FMT v2.0 instead of 1+3 or 3+1, rather than just ASSUME stuff like this.

Things still to be tested/evaluated/computed:
- Find the most suitable method of leveling Conjuration, that does NOT include Soul Trap. Line of Sight pulls with summons together with Bound weapons sounds like it should work satisfactorily. (As long as I can only say SHOULD, that's not good enough.)
- The value of having stuff like Quiet Casting, Impact, Merchant and Deadly Aim as soon as possible vs. getting them later, as you just can't have EVERYTHING at once.
- The long term value of having Adept Conjuration perk so that you can cast both Frost Atronach AND Bound Bow in quick succession without devoting enchant slots for it. Since it takes literally AGES to be able to craft a set that allows the proper use of Destruction, the FMT thus becomes a Archer/Conjurer for quite a while, waaaaay longer than I anticipated at first. And if Adept Conjuration is a good pick, how about Expert for Dremora Lords?
- Put (Mass) Paralyze into use to see what that "unless they resist it" clause in its description means in practise. Just a simple level limit as with Illusion spells? Or some sort of a percent chance? Based on enemy level, their level vs yours or what? Can you Paralyze dragons, dragon priests or Draugr Death Overlords? Effective cast range? Experience gain in/out of combat?
- Find a suitable amount of magicka reduction that allows the use of the spells you're actually USING a lot. For example, while many Destruction spells have rather low base magicka cost, you still need preferably 90+% cost reduction to actually kill stuff with it, especially if you play on Master difficulty. Similarly, while Muffle doesn't really require much, dualcasting the mind affecting spells certainly does.

 

I can help with some of these.

It does, but it doesn't do it particularly quickly, unless you devote yourself to that play style. I also wouldn't discount the use of soul trap - provided you are casting it on a target that is alive. Let's put it this way - you seem to be working towards two incongruous play styles - simultaneously leveling Conjuration and Destruction is simply infeasible. If you try to do both together, the only thing you will accomplish is a slower rate of advancement for both.

If you're using destruction spells, you can't be casting bound swords. If you do not want to pay for training in Conjuration, you have to use that school a lot, and since you're limited to one summons at any given time, bound weapons are the best way to increase the experience gained.

I find this method works very well and can be done with only a few spells, 3 perks, and a base magicka pool of about 150. You need novice and apprentice conjuration, and mystic binding. In a battle you cast a summons first (right in front of you so it gets in the way of you and the enemy), then immediately soul trap the enemy, cast bound sword in both hands and enter melee.

I'm telling you - even if it's just a stupid draugr, chances are you'll gain at least one, if not two levels. You need the perks and a base magicka pool of about 150 to actually pull off casting all four spells in quick succession. That will easily get you to the point of being able to use Frost Atronach and Bound Bow, and then you actually have some decent stuff to work with.

Well, that goes back to the previous discussion. If you chose to level conjuration first, then Quiet Casting is preferable over Impact. The ability to silently cast Bound Bow will be be invaluable. Obviously, if you prefer to work on Destruction first, go with Impact.

This is yet another variation of the same question. Take it from someone who has leveled Conjuration on their own with minimal training. Since the Dremora Lord is so much better than a Frost Atronach - they can easily go toe-to-toe with a Draugr Overlord - if you've already spent the perks to get Bound Bow and Frost Atronach, of course you want to spend one more to pick up the Dremora Lord at half cost. It also seems like the rate of skill advancement is based on the quality of summons, and even at high levels, about a half dozen dremora lords is usually enough for another level.

I'm pretty useless here, as my only experience with Paralysis is through weapons use. I know that Dragons can and do resist paralyze when you place it as a weapons enchant. I know that Draugr Overlords generally do not. I don't recall its effects on Dragon Priests. Of course, this goes back to the opening comment - I prefer to get paralysis from weapons more than the spell itself.

Well, what about the possibility of using triple crafts to reduce three different schools of magic? You won't be able to get any of the three for free, but you should be able to get -58% on one, and -87% on the other two (one of which should definitely be destruction). You probably don't need any magicka reduction on conjuration - the summons are hardy enough that they don't need to be cast in quick succession, meaning the decision is between Illusion and Alteration.

 

That's what I was hoping for but I hate begging..

Oh, I'm not actively trying to avoid Soul Trap. Just that it has such a requirements list for it to be actually useful (alive target, have empty soul gems of appropriate size in inventory, short cast range and no immediate other uses for the magicka it costs to cast) that I don't want to base my leveling plans on using it. But whenever the stars actually align, of course I'm going to cast it.

No, definitely not at the same time. I plan on using Conjuration for the rather lengthy period between having maxed Pickpocket by pickpocket training (so that crafting no longer causes over-leveling hazards) and being able to craft me a set that finally allows me to start using Destruction in earnest. Fortify Archery works OK even when the percentages are low, Destruction cost reduction.. not so much.

I originally thought that it would only be a short while, but since you pretty much need to reach 80 Enchanting and 5/5 Enchanter to do it, that's a rather significant portion of the characters entire career. Especially since I'm going to stick to the idea that I travel to towns whenever my adventures take me there, NOT when the merchants in the town I'm currently in have run out of raw materials for me to keep on crafting. It felt really stupid to travel around for a few months of game time JUST so that I could get all crafting skills to 100 straight away, I can tell you that much.

This has the positive side effects of slashing off a nice chunk out of the skill levels in Conjuration I would have to train with points later, puts the skills in Archery I acquired from Faendal into actual use straight away while at the same time avoiding the biggest woe of adventuring with sub-standard gear, ie. who's going to do the tanking for me. (No followers for the FMT as they are yet another gameplay hassle I just don't want to deal with unless I must.) Besides, even with the current bugged state of summons for my poor old computer, I can actually see myself using a summon here and there all the way to the end game, so putting some of the perk points I can save by avoiding Armor skills completely could be used to boost Conjuration instead.

That's exactly why the FMT will train Conjuration to 40 during the early pickpocket training, ie. to be able to cast Frost Atronachs and Bound Bow. However, I had conveniently missed the (now) obvious fact that you pretty much want to cast them straight after each other, which requires either serious cost reduction gear - just as unavailable as it is for Destruction I'm waiting to get my hands on - or Adept Conjuration perk.

Speaking of which, Conjuration seems like the absolute best choice out of all the magic schools to actually have the cast reduction perks for. High level summons (read: Dremora Lord) cost quite a chunk of magicka to cast, but fall in line after being halved. There's no incentive for dual-casting anything, and in terms of leveling the skill, that's actually detrimental. Also, using cost reduction gear on something you only cast a couple of times per MINUTE, tops, is so much fail. Finally, as Adept Conjuration allows you to have BOTH your tank AND your dps online straight away with a reasonably sized magicka bar, it's not like that you wouldn't get pretty good mileage out of what essentially becomes a pre-req point much, much later.

While both are valid points, I had totally other uses in mind for them. Quiet Casting is what allows me to place Runes as a pre-buff of sorts while I'm still scouting, or place a Frost Atronach if I absolutely must ensure that it grabs the aggro of the mobs straight away. I'm still going to train SOME Destruction all along, Impact just makes it possible to tackle tougher monsters head-on.

With a quick search on Youtube, I found a few videos of people actually using Mass Paralyze. Who'd thunk..? Anyway, it became quickly apparent that the "resist" is chance-based rather than level-based, and rather low at that. Two castings is usually enough to make a whole crowd stiff statues. I also found out that most tougher dudes are specifically immune to paralysis effects, although not Death Overlords. So the question thus becomes whether it's worth giving up a pretty much guaranteed Sneak attack to be able to start a fight with a Mass Paralyze from Sneak. Against large crowds, presumably, but unlikely otherwise.

Two schools is already pushing it, requiring the sacrifice of at least one enchant slot for Archery and pretty much requiring playing as a Breton so that the missing Magic Resistance enchants won't bite your hide. Three would require rather extremely spell-based approach on all things Skyrim before I'd actually consider that.

---------- Added 15 hours, 31 minutes and 56 seconds later... ----------

Ok, a bit more testing. This explains more than just a few things..

I crafted myself some Conjuration cost reduction items and went dungeoneering. The spider cave I found earlier was just perfect for this, as I wasn't in immediate danger of dying even if I got surrounded. So I picked a Conjuration spell I wanted to test, and killed stuff using ONLY that. All tests were done at Master level with at least a few repeats through the whole dungeon.

First out: Frost Atronach. Its melee attack quickly dispatched of any spiders, except for the Giant variant at the very end of the cave. That actually managed to KILL one of my frosties. Not only that, but the Frost Cloak effect surrounding the Atronach killed most of the lowest level spiders before it even managed to get off a melee smash attack. However, in tight passages they were just about useless as they couldn't move through most of them, so I was constantly killing my own summons to be able to get past them myself.

Second: Dremora Lord (unperked, so had to rely on cost reduction gear): Nothing surprising here, except for the amount of damage these dudes put out. Two (power?) attacks from him was enough to kill the Giant Frost Spider, the big boss of the whole place. Dremoras are actually slightly smaller than my own character (Altmer), so going past and even around them in tight passages is easy. They also follow you pretty neatly, just about as well as any follower does, adding further to their value.

Third: Bound Bow. I one-shotted everything except for the large spiders that just barely survived one hit. The big boss spider required a few hits, like four or so? I did, however, have one of my Fortify Archery enchanted items on me (+47%) and my Archery skill sits around 65 (although only 3/5 Overdraw) so don't expect quite as much starting out fresh.

Now, I wasn't only testing the skills themselves, but also the cast experience you get by using them. Unsurprisingly, Frost Atronach gives a slight bit more than Bound Bow, but Dremora Lord is straight from another planet in that regard, easily corresponding to a good 10-20 casts of either.

But now for the BIG one: Not only are my summons bugged in that they can take literally ages to materialize, if at all, I also do not get ANY exp for casting them should that happen. In one of my tests with the Dremora, I failed to receive cast exp for all of them except for the very last I casted to take down the Giant spider. This was easy to spot, since even at skill level 90, successfully casting one is a sizeable chunk out of the entire skill level. Also, since the game apparently checks whether you already have a summon at cast time, I sometimes managed to summon half a dozen Atronachs or three Dremoras at once, ie. all I could cast with just one magicka bar.

Luckily enough, Bound Bow is not affected by any of this. It appears just as it should and works without delay. Also, while it doesn't have exceedingly high cast exp, needing about 40 to 50 casts per skill level going from 90 to 91, that's a spell I will be casting a LOT, much more than Transmute in fact! Considering the bugged nature of summons, there's no major loss either if I start combat by placing a Frost Atronach from Sneak.

Looking good..

 

Agree on all points. There's absolutely nothing in Conjuration you want to spam, and thus there's no good reason to have gear that lowers casting cost, when with just a few perks spent you can get away without it. Assuming you wanted Mystic Binding which requires Novice Conjuration anyway, it's just 3 more perks to get Expert Conjuration and be able to cast whatever you want. The only use I can see for the dual casting perk (I didn't take it) would be so that your bound weapons last as long as Muffle, and then just recast them all at once. But you're right that it actually will slow the rate that the skill advances.

The frost atronach is only a stop-gap measure until you get the Dremora Lord. The frost atronachs can't even fit through most doorways, and are therefore of limited utility in any dungeon.

I TOLD YOU!!! These guys are bad ass. They can go toe-to-toe with Draugr Overlords.

And don't forget that the bound bow won't be your end-game bow. I've done a little more research on this myself, and it turns out a bound bow firing daedric arrows isn't as powerful as it sounds. All the perks in the archery tree apply to the bow itself, not the arrows. So regardless of what perks you take, a daedric arrow will always do 24 damage. Generally speaking, once you've invested a few perks and actually make your own legendary bow, you'll easily out-perform the bound version, even if you aren't using daedric arrows, especially once you start counting the enchantments.

Fiery Soul Trap always does 10 points of fire damage, even if you set the soul trap on the minimum setting of 1 second. So as long as you are using a dwarven arrow or better, the arrow damage will equal or exceed the arrow from a bound bow, and the enhanced damage on the bow itself will allow for greater total damage.

Absolutely. It was the dremora lord that allowed me the last 25 or so levels of conjuration. As an aside, I also tried out the "permanent" summons, and I found the dremora lord to be superior in every way. First of all, the permanent summons appear to not actually be permanent - they frequently fail to materials when you travel to a new area. Secondly, they do not appear to do any more damage in combat than the temporary versions, and thus I still found myself using the dremora lord.

One of the really strange things about summons is that you seem to get WAAAAY more experience if you combat-cast them. You do get a bit of experience in Conjuration when they enter combat, just as you get a little bit of experience in Conjuration for using the bound weapon, but the initial big boost to experience seems to happen when you cast them in the midst of combat. If you cast them prior to being in visual range of an enemy, you apparently get no experience for the casting itself, even if the enemy detects the summons shortly thereafter.