Going All the Way

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Or until I get bored. I'm trying to see how many levels I can gain - currently at level 95 and counting. At this point in time, I'm already pretty much invincible - even at legendary difficulty - so it's more of a matter of how long I want to go.

Although it never ceases to amaze me that I still find new quests in this game all the time. The latest of which is I was attacked by a named Dawnguard member, and on his body were directions to several dawnguard caches scattered around Skyrim. I haven't actually gone to the caches yet, and I'm sure they don't contain anything outstanding, but it's still a quest I haven't received previously.

Anyway, to go as far as you can level-wise, it requires you to make skills legendary. While you can technically pick just a single skill to raise to 100 repeatedly, it is most efficient to pick multiple skills to work on. Making the selections can be a bit tricky. You don't want to pick a skill tht you use frequently, as resetting it to 15 and getting to reassign all your perks in that tree is not exactly sound strategy. OTOH, you don't want to reset a skill that you hardly ever use, as then it's just work to level it back up again.

So here was my plan. I first levelled and fully perked alchemy. I made several dozen forify enchanting and fortify smithing potions and stashed them in my house. So I can gain all the benefits of a high alchemy skill and still be able to reset it. Alchemy has certainly been raised to 100 a few times already, and reset to 15.

But you can't just use alchemy unless you're really patient. So there were a few other selections. After acquiring the skeleton key, all locks, even on master difficulty, are easy to pick, and so I did that. You can't actively work on maxing lockpicking, but by just doing quests and playing the game, it goes up fairly quickly.

I also completed the No Stone Unturned quest, which basically gives you access to unlimited gems. So smithing was another skill that I decided to reset. And, since I wasn't using Paralyze all that much anyway and would be transmuting a ton of ore once again, Alteration got reset too. (Although I do miss the loss of magic resistance - that was an oversight on my part.) I make fairly regular trips to Markarth, as the blacksmith (the one inside the Jarl's keep, not the one outside) is the only blacksmith I've encountered who regularly has silver ignots for sale. And he usually has quite a few - like around 7 or so. For whatever reason, every gem in the game can only be used with a certain metal. For example, you can make both a silver ruby ring and a gold ruby necklace, but only regular rubies can be used in the ring, and only flawless rubies can be used in the necklace. Diamonds can only be placed with gold (flawless make neckalces, regular make rings) and garnets can only be placed with silver. And it's not only flawless in gold and regular in silver. Flawless emeralds need silver, but regular emeralds need gold. So if you really want to use as many gems as possible - and if you're raising smithing you do - getting your hands on silver is a solid plan.

Some other things I've discovered while leveling my skills this time - destruction isn't as bad as I thought. I found that if you get destruction casting costs reduced to zero, wall of flame/frost/shock does the job. Now on legendary difficulty, it doesn't exactly kill things quickly - it takes about a full minute to kill a giant using this method, which is actually a bit longer than it sounds. But since you're just constantly casting it all over the ground, and the giant keeps standing on it, the levels go by fairly quickly - even in the 90s. I actually found leveling heavy armor and two handed weapons to be much more tedious than destruction, and ended up using my discerning the transmundane quest reward on the path of the warrior, and I have no intention of resetting those skills.

Other previously unused perks that I like - Speech! I can't tell you how convenient it is to be able to sell stolen items to every merchant, invest 500 gold with a merchant to permanently raise their gold supply, and have every merchant in the world gain an extra 1000 gold to trade. This means even inn keepers and small merchants with stands set up in the market place (like in Whiterun) which you never visited because they always had like 50 gold to trade now have over 1000. Although you can't invest in those merchants for some reason. It seems like you the merchants need to have a physical shop in order to do it. So you can invest in Balimund in Riften, but not in Madesi. None of the merchants in the thieves guild can be invested, nor can any of the fences, but they all do benefit from the bonus 1000 gold, so now fences have 5000 gold to trade with.

 

That's really cool! Keep us updated. I'm planning to continue for awhile, too, but I've gotten a bit sidetracked this summer.

 

I've finally bought new parts to do a major computer upgrade, will assemble it in a few weeks together with a friend of mine. And Skyrim happens to be at the top of the list of things to do first with it.

Let's see just how much of a difference it is switching over from a singlecore Pentium 4 and Geforce 8600GT.. But hey, this veteran actually survived long enough to see the day when even lowly WEB BROWSING can be enough to bring it onto its knees. Shoddily coded Flash Facebook game + streamed video simultaneously = lag, stutter & gag. Now THAT's something you don't see every day.

 

Well, level 101 now. I haven't played nearly as much as I would have liked recently. Not because of growing bored, buy Magic 2013 DotP came out this week, and I've been devoting most of my game time to that. I was an avid RL Magic fan in my teens and twenties, and while I have no intention of going back to paper magic cards, the online games are much cheaper and still quite enjoyable.

I like the new game because they have included sealed deck play, where you get 9 randomly assorted sealed booster packs, and you make the best deck you can from those cards. So in the sealed game, every deck is unique. They still have the 10 pre-constructed decks to play with, but it's nice to have the randomness where you don't know what your opponent likely has in his deck based on the first few cards you see.

 

You can play on legendary just by getting the latest patch, but for just $20, you can now buy ALL of the downloadable content. Bethesda now offers a package deal on steam where you can pick up Dawnguard, Dragonborn, and whatever the name of the one that lets you buy and build your own house in the wilderness. I thought it was worth it to pay full price for the expansions, so obviously I recommend the $20 investment to get all three.

 

Off topic....

I was lucky enough to buy soem Magic cards when the first came out, years ago. The payoff on the Black Lotus, Icy Manipulator and the various Mox's was awesome. Especially when Legends was released. I bought two boxes of Legends boosters then, as did several friends. At least until they re-released some of the old stuff. Killed the value.

 

Got a link for the bundle offer or is it just USA only? I see no such offer here in Sweden.

 

I don't have a link handy, because I purchased all of them individually. If you can't find the bundle on sale, all I can guess is that it was a temporary Steam sale? That's not what it looked like though when I saw it, as it said Bethesda was reducing the price.

 

Oh! Nice!

All of the DLC's are at half price on Steam. AS WE SPEAK, and until 22 July.