Noobish questions **SKYRIM EDITION**

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I promised myself I wouldn't get this game.

I told myself- "Self, if you buy this Skyrim game nothing will ever get done around your house. You won't spend any time doing anything else and will probably get fired because you won't go into work." Well I didn't get fired yet, but ever since I bought this game a week ago i've scarcely left my couch.

But here's the problem- I suck. Or more like my character build sucks. Probably both. My guy gets killed by freaking bandits of all things. Repeatedly. They just charge me and my guy goes down like a limp ragdoll.

So onto the questions:

Is destruction magic worth it? I've only seen spells doing 25 points of damage and for the fact that weapons do more and have no limit like magic does that doesn't seem worth it.

Light armor or heavy armor? I played an assassin type character, backstabbing with daggers for that incredible damage, and that is awesome until they find me and beat me to death within seconds. Does light armor make you faster besides just costing less stamina to run in?

(Not a question, just random drivel) Enchantments are so much fun. Specifically fire enchantments. My dual-flame daggers were draining health much faster than two handed weapons just due to the extra fire damage.

Is there a general guideline somewhere as to what type of monsters have what types of souls you can use to enchant soul gems? It seems like nothing I kill with my soul-trapped bow ever fits into common and less soul gems, making weapons a pain to recharge.

Races. I played the Breton for a while cause magic resistance is generally OP in any game. Orcs seem to have a crazy powerful ability as well though. Is the Khajit hand-to-hand bonus ever worth actually using? Does it stack with that heavy armor perk? Because a monk type character would be totally cool to mess around with.

Dual-wielding or Two-handed Weapons? It seems to me like the big advantage for two-handed is the ability to block. But dual-wielding seems to have much more damage capability. Am I correctly weighing the advantages and disadvantages? I don't see any reason to use a shield though.

On the whole, i'd give the game an 8 out of 10 so far. Perhaps it was because I expected too much from many glowing reviews, but I find some parts rather tedious such as traveling for long periods of time around empty nothingness fighting only a few wolves on the way to god-knows-where. But the plus side of that is there is so much to discover, fast-traveling and the whirlwind sprint shout shorten the time considerably, and some parts of the map just graphic-wise are so entertaining they make it all worth it. Though this may be because I am entirely used to Infinity Engine graphics or older.

 

Magic is always worth it, yep. Magic only really scales with specific enchantments and certain potions/poisons and don't scale as well as crafted weapons, but since enemies in the original campaign don't scale as well either then unless you plan on downloading some really hardcore difficulty-enhancing mods it's not that big an issue.
Anyway Destruction magic starts out pretty weak (except for the rune spells) though the game gives you several workarounds for this, including the fact that almost every "difficult" early game encounter usually has spilled burning oil or a powerful trap conveniently placed in the general area. "Think like a mage" and all that, I suppose. Scrolls also help, if you have the gold. Destruction magic gets a lot more powerful as you level it. In particular, dual-casted destruction spells with Impact can stagger just about anything. Gear with bonuses to destruction magic (which lower magicka cost of destruction magic spells) should help. See Aldeth's stagger build for an example of a destruction magic build. More info on destruction-related gear/potions here. Fortify Destruction potions increase spell damage, Fortify Destruction gear reduces magicka cost of destruction spells.

Both Light and Heavy armors can reach the armor cap (see Sir Rechet's stickied post for more details) so in the end it's all about the perks. In a nutshell, Light armor favors sneaky characters and characters who don't plan on getting hit a lot. Heavy armor is for melee juggernauts and the like.

Enchantments are indeed really useful, and so is Enchanting and all the other crafting skills. Ideally you should try and develop all of them, starting with the ones you think you'll need most first. My playstyle is basically summoner/merchant so I prefer leveling Alchemy and Speech first. Speech is not a crafting skill but indirectly it significantly improves your income which in turn boosts your overall crafting capabilities.

More on souls here.

Breton is my favorite race. The bonus summon spirit wolf spell is particularly useful at higher difficulties, since summoned minion HP scales with difficulty.

I know unarmed works in easy mode (saw an unarmed character kill the last boss in youtube) but I have never tried an unarmed character myself. The bonuses you mentioned stack, but unarmed scales badly in this game. Unarmed < magic < crafted weapons.

I'll let the experts handle this one. My experience with weapons is limited - I generally only use the bound variety. I do know about shields though, and I wouldn't underestimate them. The shield perks allow a character with good Block to potentially reduce the damage from powerful melee attacks to zero.

Did you happen to miss this by any chance?
You're not the first if you did, and yeah the general lack of very basic info is annoying.

 

I don't have an answer for most of your questions, but I'm playing a Khajiit assassin/thief. I don't use the claws, but weapons. I find that archery is really useful, in that I can kill or severely hinder (with sneak and archery) most of my foes before they get to me. Then, I switch to dagger in right hand and healing spell in left, and usually survive. There are a few encounters that are still difficult for me, but on the whole, I find this combination very effective. I haven't tried destruction magic, though, and my skill points have been mostly in alchemy and smithing rather than enchantment.

I hope this has been at least somewhat helpful.