The Road to 81

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Restart. I think I've got it this time. Leveling Light or Heavy armor from 15 to 90 through use is extremely challenging, unless I want to stand around getting whacked by a giant for hours on end. Not my idea of fun. Same goes with the glacial speed of restoration leveling (even though you can do the two simultaneously). So I'm taking a step away from power gaming. (Well, not really, I'm taking a step away from power gaming in the sense that I'm only power gaming to the point where I can still maximize my time playing the game, and not doing silly stuff like power leveling after the initial training spree.) So I'm not going full bore crafting as soon as I'm done training.

To that end, I decided to just objectively look at the 18 skills, and ask this simple question: Given that you can fully train from 15-90 five different skills, which five skills are the most tedious and time consuming to level? These include any skill you don't want to actively use in the game. The list is surprisingly easy to come up with. I have no intention of ever using destruction. I'll chose either light or heavy armor, and one or two handed weapons - I'm up to 3. The final two are restoration and alteration, not because I don't plan on using them, but because they have glacial rates of advancement.

This means there's no room for early training of speech. (So I'm not pure power gaming.) At the same time, it places less emphasis on early crafting, as I won't have the merchant perk for a while, thus severely limiting where I can sell stuff. Granted, I can (and have) already earned several level ups for speech, restoration and alteration, but not to the point where I'll earn 35 skill levels between them to be able to squeeze speech in.

In fact, I've decided that the optimal way to level my crafting skills is one at a time. I'm much better off picking one of the standing stones, getting lovers comfort, (which also nets me another general merchant), and getting a great big +35% bonus to one single crafting skill. I'm doing smithing first. It will be followed by enchanting, with alchemy last. I'm doing smithing first because of my limited ability to sell stuff. There are a whole lot more weapon merchants with decent gold supplies than there are alchemy merchants, and the mages at Winterhold will purchase enchanted weapons. I'll eventually switch to the lovers stone, but I want smithing out of the way first, not that I'm going to power level any of them.

My next decisions were light or heavy armor, and one handed or two handed weapons. I decided on light armor, for reasons that have been discussed extensively, and one handed dual wield, as discussed in my other thread. I'll go for glass smithing, which saves me not only a point in smithing, but also will allow me to go all swords for my weapons.

Projected skills are tweaked based on my expanded knowledge from my previous playthrough. This is a pie-in-the-sky, "perfect" list:

Warrior:

Archery: Overdraw 5/5, Critical Shot 3/3, Eagle Eye, Power Shot (10)
One Handed: Armsman 5/5, Fighting Stance, Bladesman 3/3, Dual Flurry 2/2, Savage Strike, Critical Charge, Dual Savagery (14!)
Smithing: Steel, Arcane, Elven, Dvanced, Glass, Dragon (6)

Mage:

Alteration: Novice, Apprentice, Magic Resistance 3/3
Conjuration: Novice, Apprentice, Adept, Expert, Mystic Binding, Soul Stealer
Illusion: Novice, Apprentice (half cost Muffle), Animage, Kindred Mage, Quiet Casting (5)
Restoration: Novice, Recovery 2/2, Avoid Death (4)
Enchanting: Enchanter 5/5, Insightful, Corpus, Extra Effect (8)

Thief:

Light Armor: one each - 10
Pickpocket: the three standard and extra pockets (4)
Sneak: Stealth 1/5, Backstab, Deadly Aim (3)
Speech: The three standard (3)

Which leaves me 2 to spare, I'll figure that out when I hit level up at 80.

 

Hm? I consider Alteration as one of the reasonably fast levelers, just as long as you have an RP reason why your character whips up a Waterbreathing spell whenever there's water above your knee level. "You never know whether someone decided to put a well there." Although you do need to get to 40 Alteration to be able to buy the spell, just as Bound bow/Conjuration. Failing that, using Telekinesis for picking up stuff from high shelves, such that you only see what's on top of it when you stand a good distance away, levels it fast as well. I'd much rather give the slow leveler award to Conjuration.

I don't exactly follow how it's better to train your crafting skills only one at a time. Surely you don't mean base to 100 in one without even touching the others in the meanwhile? That takes just three times as long as doing them all three at once. Or did you mean you pool up resources a bit so that whenever you do crafting, you can always get a good chunk out of the way at once so that you're not switching standing stones the whole time?

 

??? No. Alteration, along with Destruction, Restoration, Heavy Armor and Two Handed will be the skills I train. I described alteration as having a glacial rate of advancement. Glaciers move very slowly last I checked.

A couple of other points. I picked Imperial as a race, based strictly on what you get as starting skills. I'm going to train both Destruction and Heavy Armor to 90 without using them, so picking a race that has 20 to start with in each saves me two full levels of training, and I save another two levels of training by having restoration start at 25. Four was the most I could get with any race, although there were a few that would save me 3 levels worth - the orc would save me two in heavy armor and one in two handed. The Altmer would save me one each in Destruction, Restoration, and Alteration. The Dumer would save me two in Destruction and one in Alteration.

Some other early things I noticed. I'm not sure how experience is calculated for Conjuration, but it appears that bound swords give experience at a much faster rate than bound battleaxes, for whatever reason. Yes, you can cast two bound swords as compared to one bound battle axe, but if it is strictly based on magicka used, and bound battle axe costs nearly twice as much magicka to cast as compared to a bound sword. The base cost of a sword is 93, and the axe is 169. But for the first 10 or so levels, every time I went double cast bound sword in combat, I gained a level in conjuration. I still haven't picked up the bound bow spell, but it's on my to-do list. I'm not sure if I have the level requirement for it yet, but I have to be close.

The other thing I'm considering is the order to train things. Obviously, I want to train all the skills I plan to train to 51 first, as that training is free. (I also noticed that the level 50 to 51 training is still cheap - it's at level 51 to 52 that it triples.) But I'm wondering if there is an optimal way to do the rest. My initial thinking is to train the skills I'll never use first - I may pick up several levels in things like Restoration and Alteration while I'm training other stuff like Destruction, Two Handed, and Heavy Armor, effectively reducing the total number of training levels I need.

Like I said, since I'm not hard core crafting yet - I'm putting a little effort into smithing, next to nothing in enchanting except for disenchanting stuff I find, and I haven't brewed a single potion yet - I'm actually playing the game. I just can't do any huge dungeons yet because I have to keep my rate of advancement somewhat in check. But the reason behind that decision was because I don't have the merchant perk, so the only places I can sell potions are general merchants and alchemists. The real plan is to start enchanting daggers after I start paying for training, as enchanted weapons will be purchased by the mages, but unenchanted ones won't. It will also give me a more uniformed advancement rate, as I won't finish my crafting skills until I'm a fairly high level.

---------- Added 19 hours, 29 minutes and 6 seconds later... ----------

EDIT: I think the difference of opinion regarding conjuration/alteration is that I use summons, and you generally don't. I didn't have too much of a problem maxing it last game. I agree that in the early going, you'll level alteration quite quickly. Heck, just from clearing out HSC you probably have enough iron ore on hand to level the skill multiple times. But I have found anything past level 40ish is slow, and near-impossible to level the damn thing I high levels. My last character had alteration 93 when I quit, and I think I literally had to transmute hundreds of units of iron ore to go from 90-93.

The other thing I do (typically) is get the reduced casting cost of conjuration spells. With about 150 magicka, you can, upon finding an enemy cast a summons, soul trap him, and cast two bound swords. In the early going, that four spell sequence will easily net you two levels, and that's with one enemy.

Regarding crafting, it's a simple matter of logistics. I'm going to concentrate on smithing, but I will be doing some enchanting as well. (The first thing I do upon arriving in town is sleep, for the resting bonus, to get either 10% or 15% before I do all my crafting and selling to level those skills at the best possible rate.) The reason I'm not going alchemy in the early going is that I just don't have enough places to sell potions. I'm going to be based out of Riften. So I have one alchemist with a 500 gold piece supply, and the Pawned Prawn with a 750 gold piece supply. Sure, I can go to Tonilla, but typically I'm carrying around enough stolen loot that I empty her gold supply with that, and since she's the ONLY place I can sell stolen loot, obviously I have to prioritize that.

OTOH, enchanted weapons can be sold to general merchants, blacksmiths, and all the mages at the College. Since I'll be training a lot at the college (3 out of the 5 skills) that's a great place to sell off enchanted weaponry. But, unless you have the merchant perk, mages do NOT purchase potions. So just as a matter of being practical, what the hell am I going to do with all those potions I make? Later on I'll have the merchant perk, probably around the same time I start unlocking the bonus merchants in the thieves guild. That's when I want to do alchemy. When I have 4 merchants + Tonilla in the Ratway, three more in the Riften marketplace, the court mage, the general merchant, and the alchemist, and eventually my spouse. That's around 14,000 gold worth of potions that can be sold off, compared to about the 2,000 that I can currently do.

Some other general calculations. I will need a maximum of 75 training sessions to level Two Handed and Alteration, up to 70 training sessions to level Heavy Armor and Destruction, and up to 65 training sessions to level Restoration. That adds up to a maximum possible amount of 355, which can be accomplished in 71 levels. So I know what you're thinking - I have 9 levels to spare, why not siphon them off into Speech and get that out of the way early? The issue is I don't want to come up short on training. I know I've already blown past a few levels by over-leveling by training. In addition to getting a max level character, I also want to play the darn game. So I'm not going to run around in an effort to perfect level up in the early going. If I over shoot and gain two levels, so be it. I like having that 9 level cushion.

Come to think of it, it's probably MORE than 9 levels, as I'll inevitably level some stuff, like alteration, several levels on my own. I'd much prefer to have extra training levels left over at the end, to speed up some of the other skills. Just because I don't find it necessary to train things like Lockpicking, if I have all the other core skills maxed, training something like that will certainly speed the process along. Or hell, come back and train speech at high levels, when it advances really slowly.

Some other general techniques I have planned include holding off on doing the bard's college until I have all 5 of the skills I'm training to 90 finished. The college will get me to 91. The other thing I have to decide upon is where I want to spend my free 5 levels from the Oghma Infinium quest. I'm leaning towards the mage, just because Destruction is the one skill I'm not planning on leveling at all, and if it helps me towards getting those last 5 levels in Alteration and Restoration, so much the better.

It's also rather convenient where my training options are located. All of them are either at the College, or in Whiterun. Although I will have to complete that quest for the priestess in Whiterun to be able to train levels 76-90 in Restoration, but that's still just the two locations.

 

Oh, I see. Of course Alteration levels slowly if you only try to level it with Transmute. Although calling THAT pace glacial is still being unnecessarily polite.

Never actually tested casting Bound Sword, but very good to know that it improves the skill at such speeds. I know from before that Soul Trap gives decent cast exp, just that ranged characters such as FMT have issues with using it early on. Also, the cast exp from summons seems extremely wonky, but it might be due to the fact that I have mostly cast them from Sneak so that I'm not actually in combat mode when casting it?

So the question becomes whether there's a spell (or preferably several) in each and every magic school so that it satisfies the following criteria:
1) Needs to give decent cast exp (Transmute does NOT qualify)
2) If cast exp is only awarded while in combat, must not hamper the spell's use if cast that way. Getting your armor buff online after the combat has started is fine, but casting a summon after the fact will still have the mobs running for YOUR head, not your summon's, unless you somehow rout them.
3) You actually have at least somewhat RP-ish reason to keep casting the spell repeatedly or at least often enough for it to matter (Prime example: Muffle with sneaky characters)
4) The spell is relevant for the task at hand, ie. no Bound Sword if you want to train Destruction or Archery or Detect Life when in Riften - you already know the town is full of people, so no need to find it out again.

While I agree with the idea of picking the skills you do not / want not train yourself and just train them up with points, you can only pick five skills if you do it the way you noted above. If you instead exclude only the skills you never plan on using at all and train them with points while you get some freebie early points on the others that still see at least SOME use, however little that might be, you could effectively train at least a couple more skills.

Specifically, although the FMT is designed such that a significant portion of at least Archery and One-handed will be trained yourself, and at least a good few levels in Destruction, any leftover training points you manage to squeeze out by doing at least SOME work yourself on Restoration, Conjuration/Alteration or maybe even Block could mean the difference of having to trudge through five more dungeons to get your one-handed from 80 to 85, when you could just train past a few of those extremely slow high end levels having everything else trainable maxed by then.

 

Apropos of nothing that you just stated, but here's some very useful information on how not to waste three perks:

Just was watching an online video showing the effects - or lack thereof - of the weapon-specific perks in the one handed and two handed skill trees. He started with bladesman and deep wounds perks. The author showed that there really is no point to these perks, as the added critical damage is based on the base weapon damage, and does not take any weapon improvements into account. So even with a deadric great sword you're looking at a average damage increase of 6 per hit, even with all three perks, and just 3 per hit with a daedric sword. Given that you're likely using a weapon that has a damage per hit well exceeding 100 (or likely even over 200), the gain is so marginal that there's no reason to EVER pick those perks.

Likewise, he showed the effects of the mace skills, and pointed out the same thing that I pointed out in the other thread - that since it only affects enemies that have armor. Over half of all enemies in the game have no armor, so it won't work on them. The remainder that do have armor usually have light armor on, with a total defense of 100 or less. So the only utility this perk has is when you're fighting an enemy that is wearing some type of heavy armor, and they are few and far between.

The author was a little more friendly as regarded the axe ones, but not much. Like swords, the extra damage is calculated based on the base weapon damage. That means even with deadric axes, you'll get an extra 5 damage per second for 5 seconds. The only redeeming quality of this is that the damage DOES stack, So if you're dual wielding axes, you can have many of these stacking all at once. That said, if you're hitting an enemy that many times with a deadric axe, chances are it's dead already.

Conclusion - none of those are worth even one, never mind three perks.

EDIT: As for your criteria, bound sword seems to qualify for conjuration as do summons, but as you stated that must be cast DURING combat. Works best in a cramped hall where they have to go THROUGH the summons to get to you. Otherwise the summons is just some passive dps.

Muffle for illusion.

Alteration - the only one I can see is using the ward spells in combat, even if you don't really need them (although in that case there's no remote RP reason to use them).

All destruction spells are either equally qualified or equally disqualified based on your opinion of the skill. (Would a triple crafted fortify destruction potion make the skill worth it? Ignoring for a moment that you'd have to drink one before every battle as they only last 30 seconds - how much would you be able to squeeze out? 47%?)

Restoration - there is a skill that does level restoration quickly - guardian circle - as you get the experience for it regardless of where it's cast. The problem is that it's a master level spell - meaning you'd already had to have your restoration skill at 90 or better, and given the huge casting cost of the spell (~700) you'd need to wear -% restoration casting cost. It would only be a solution for levels 91-100.

 

The ward spells are Restoration, not Alteration. However, in my experience, Alteration levels pretty fast by casting Water Breathing and/or the armor spells. Trick with Water Breathing is that it requires you to actually stand inside a body of water that is deep enough to dive in at some point. Stairs down to a hallway filled with water, ladders down from piers, ramps around pirate ships down to the waterline and such are perfect spots to whip it up. Failing both, Telekinesis has plenty of uses for a packrat wanting to loot everything from top shelves that you cannot reach otherwise.

I guess the solution to the summons not picking up aggro is to do Line of Sight pulls (World of Warcraft style, a skill every tank character NEEDS to master), ie. set up a trap behind a corner, peek in and aggro the mobs (preferably with a Sneak attack with your Bow) and pull back so that none of the mobs can get a line of sight to you without going around that said corner. And while the mobs are on their way, whip up a summon to stand just behind the corner, so that they see the summon first instead of you. This has the additional advantage of splitting up the group, as the ranged enemies stay back trying to figure how to get a clear shot at you while the melee mobs charge in.

So far I haven't found a spell that would qualify for criteria #1 in either Destruction nor Restoration, but that has more to do with them being counted out of the amount you either do to your enemies or the damage you need to heal on yourself.

 

I agree. The only reason Guardian circle would work on very high levels is because it can be cast anywhere, and it gives experience regardless of whether or not it heals anyone or makes any undead run away. You get more experience the more people it affects, and any non-hostile NPC counts (as does yourself). So like the Riften or Whiterun marketplace with people walking all over the place is perfect, and even better if you happen to have a follower around.

Granted, I also consider doing this extremely exploitative, as there's no reason why you'd need to cast Guardian Circle in town. Another very easy way - if it works, I cannot say I've tried - would be if you've progressed decently far into the College of Winterhold quest line and have found the spell Equilibrium. I can't say I've ever used it myself, but with Equilibrium converting health into magicka, it would seem like you could essentially damage and heal yourself indefinitely, just by alternating between castings of Equilibrium and your healing spell of choice. But that's even cheesier than the Guardian Circle.

It is also for the reasons you state why I feel that the Oghma Infinium quest has to be done with the mage path, and only after you've trained all mage skills to 90. (The Bards College likewise shouldn't be done until they're at 90 either.) You're most likely using the skill quests to get Destruction to 96, but I can definitely see the six point bonus to all mage skills being useful to get Alteration and Restoration closer to 100 as well.

I think this kind of long-term planning is necessary on this personal quest to level 81. Most specifically doing quests that give free level-ups after you've got everything you could for free through training. It should also be noted that it's not necessarily in your best interest to read a whole lot of skill books along the way, unless it's a skill that you are going to be maximizing through use anyway.

With the warrior skills, heavy armor and two-handed could be somewhat problematic leveling past 90 as well. (I guess technically past 91 - if we count the Bard's College.) Especially Two Handed, as there's no means available short of using a Two Handed weapon to get experience in that. You could adventure for a while in Heavy Armor to raise it, and get the same bonuses through crafting that armor so that you're at or near the armor cap even if you don't sink a single perk into Heavy Armor. So you're not totally gimping your character by making the switch. But if you switch from One Handed to Two Handed, you most certainly are gimping yourself.

Which leaves the thief skills. I could definitely see myself switching over to the Thief Stone late game to maximize the skill gains. All the thief skills will level through simple use, and so anything you can do to cut down on the time it takes to max them will be a good idea.

I'm a little annoyed by the recent events of my current character. I can't get married. I got the Amulet of Mara, proposed, and showed up for the wedding. The bride is there, as are all the guests, and Maramal is standing in the front of the assembly looking like he's ready to go. But when I walk up to him, I only get the standard dialog options of "Do you accept charity?" and "I'd like to know more about Mara." Selecting these dialog options does not cause the ceremony to start. So I might be hosed here. Not that I need to get married, but since I always rest prior to crafting anyway, I may as well get a 15%, as opposed to a 10% experience bonus.

 

Which also makes it just as much of an exploit to cast it as is Soul Trapping dead bodies or Detecting Life in Riften, unless you actually have a reason to expect undead behind the very next corner at least.

I guess it's prudent to clarify my stance on exploitative leveling in Skyrim. It's available to just about all skills, to the point of being able to reach character level well into the 60s without ever leaving Whiterun on your very first visit there. However, it's very repetitive in nature and removes a very important part of the satisfaction of doing things the way you're supposed to do them. While I certainly like the idea of reaching level 81 just as anyone else, I am of the rare sort of powergamers that still actually wants to EARN it, the hard way. Rather, I find it much more interesting to find out how much less of actual IRL time/mouse clicks I can get away with by just being smart about training, planning ahead and that sort of things.

I tried that as well, and felt even more cheated out of my gaming experience afterwards.

My thoughts exactly. Archery and One/Two-handed are all decent dps candidates so I'm not going out of my way to train them, I'm just using what I'd be using anyway. Definitely not so with Destruction, although there's still completely valid applications for it. I like blasting stuff even if it doesn't lead to immediate and considerable dps benefits, such as placing Runes tactically and having a Cloak spell active just because I can. However, using ONLY those as a source of experience to train it will lead to rather extreme slowdown if I were to train it myself all the way from, say, 60 and upwards. However, "starting" from 96 doesn't sound all that bad, and since it also helps Restoration to push past those extremely slow upper levels, it's a double win to use it precisely for that.

Obviously, and a big part of what I find fun in planning details like this in advance. Why waste skill books on early levels when you could use them to snatch that elusive 99 to 100 skill-up? That's what I'd call getting A+ score on long term planning.

Armor skills level fast enough once you start going toe to toe with your enemies, and since you can train them both at once while at the same time saving a motherlode of perk points by perking neither one, why not? Two-handed is the only bummer in the works, but that's precisely the space you have since you can get to 81 even if that one skill stays at 90.

I don't quite envision having any one of the Thief skills (including Lockpicking) NOT maxed by the time I'll be nearing the upper 70s in level, but yes, picking the Thief stone could be used to push it past the final hump.

You DO know that this is one of the very few things in this game that actually depends on the time of the day, apart from Merchant schedules and stuff like that? Sounds like you just showed up before or after the allotted time. Other than that, sounds strange.

 

Well, yeah. I never said it wasn't cheesy - in fact I said it was certainly exploitative. The only way you could possibly RP such a thing was if a dragon was attacking the town and you started dropping them down everywhere the help the guards out (because it heals anyone in the circle). And not only is it cheesy, it's not even particularly efficient, owing to the large casting cost and the long time it takes to cast the spell.

I did show up in the middle of the day, and everyone (the bride, Maramal, and guests) were already in attendance. I just walked around running into people, and eventually Maramal started the ceremony. So good times. Although I do have to get around to doing a few more Riften quests to buy the home.

As am I. There is a huge difference between wanting to have a high level character, but also wanting to play the game as intended. If you rely on exploits, then you're just working the system, finding holes in the programming that the developers did not intend.

I have to say I'm not hell-bent on getting through the Thieves guild missions. I definitely want to do the special Vex and Delvin missions for the extra merchants, as that also increases the money available from fences. And you get half of your fences without touching the Thieves Guild main quests.

Last night I did the quest Unfathomable Depths. It's the first time I prioritized that quest as one of the first things I got around to doing. In fact, the only other quests I've done are grabbing the Dragonstone, clearing out HSC, and doing the first Companions mission. Then Unfathomable Depths.

After doing it early, I am left to wonder why I haven't done it early in ALL my playthroughs. The dungeon itself isn't that hard save for the end boss, which I had to lure out to the spinning blade trap to kill. I guess I could have killed him just by firing arrows, but considering I had already pumped a half dozen into him, and barely scratched its health, it would have been time consuming.

Anyway, the larger point here is that I walked away with about two dozen filled soul stones of various sizes, and about an equal number of empty ones. Again, why don't I always do this quest first? I also conveniently picked up the banish enchantment on my first merchant trip after finding all the soul stones. Now granted, I'll have to put in the work to actually fill the stones (something that's impossible in a Dwemer ruin), but this should greatly speed up my enchanting leveling. The other good part of all this is now everything short of a filled grand soul gem will bring a positive return on investment. Of course, I'll still purchase the filled grand ones, as I'll need them on the stuff I keep, but there's no reason to purchase any unfilled stones for quite a while now.

Overall, the leveling as you go, and not maxing your crafting skills very quickly as proven to be quite an enjoyable experience. There's no way to quick-find 40 or so soul gems at no cost, and I've also got quite the nice stack of enchantments built up already. The only one I've purchased thus far has been banish - although I will purchase both one-handed and archery at my first opportunity, provided I don't find one on my own first.

Conjuration is working spectacularly for me thus far. Even though I have the warrior stone active, my Conjuration skill is actually a little higher than my one handed skill (44 Con, 41 1H). That says a lot, as the main source of the XPs goes into casting bound sword which is then used in combat. The other thing is when I finally get around to Alchemy, I'm going to be able to make a TON of potions. I've collected every alchemical ingredient I can find, and I'm walking around with about 50 weight units of ingredients in my inventory. I literally have hundreds of ingredients at this point.

Which brings my nicely into my next topic. After discovering that Critical Shot in Archery, and the sword specific skills in one-handed and two-handed only add to the base damage of the sword and don't get multiplied by overdraw or armsman, it freed up quite a few perks for me. I also realized that with Light Armor, I counted all of them, when what I really meant was "one of each" - just one in Agile Defender - not all 5.

So I recounted up my perks, and even added a few and I came up with this:

Alteration - 6 (might as well spend one more and half-cost Transmute and Waterbreathing)
Conjuration - 6
Illusion - 5 (getting Apprentice to half-cost Muffle)
Restoration - 4
Enchanting - 8
Subtotal - 29

Light Armor - 6 (one each)
Pickpocket - 4
Sneak - 3
Speech - 3
Subtotal - 16

Archery - 8 (Eagle Eye, Power Shot, Quick Shot)
One-Handed - 10 (Armsman, all 3 dual wield, Fighting Stance, Savage Strike)
Smithing - 6 (Steel, Arcane, all light)
Subtotal 24

If my math is right, that's just 69 perks. Meaning I have 11 to spare. So now, I can see no reason to NOT pick up Alchemist 5/5 and Benefactor. I guess I'll need Physician too, even though that won't directly help with most potions. So I guess I'll have all trade skills maxed out and well-perked. That certainly wasn't the intent, but there really isn't anything out there that I "need" to have more than that. And there still are 4 more perks out there if I decide I want to pick up something. (I think the Alchemy perks are the only ones that directly increase the rate at which you level by increasing the value of potions produced.)

One more thing - picking the Warrior Stone has turned out to be a very good decision. It's allowing One-Handed to keep up quite nicely, and I'm still getting the 15% resting bonus that I would have got with the Lover Stone before I sell, purchase, and craft (provided I'm doing it in the city with my spouse, which is why I need to buy Honeyside). The only thing I'm missing out on is extra experience for Conjuration, but as I said above, that hasn't proven to be a problem.

 

Now there's a good sport - taking on a Dwarven Centurion (with regards to Unfathomable Depths) with far less than perfect items and still actually killing it. Of course it's doable as it's (mostly) a melee unit and not extremely fast either, so you could just kite it to death in that vast room you fight it in, but still.

Other than that one final hurdle, I'd also recommend Unfathomable Depths to be one of the very early quests you do in your character's career, for the reasons you already listed above.

 

Oh, you've got to kill it. Running away from the end-boss of a dungeon is cheesy. And you're being generous with saying "far less than perfect" equipment. I don't carry weapons with me - the only ones I use are the bound spells.

 

Blimey, when I saw 'The Road to 81', I thought you were talking about your age!

 

Upon thinking a little bit more, I realize that I am still undecided about alchemy. If I REALLY want to max out all skills, I can use those late game 11 perks into 2-handed and destruction, to make things go by MUCH faster.

Now I fully realize what I'm giving up by not investing in alchemy, but here's my thinking. I can STILL make 25% improve smithing gear and 25% improve alchemy gear without it. Since I'm already spending those perks in light armor, I'm going to be at the armor cap without needing triple crafted smithing potions (although I'll still drink the best I can make before doing the armor anyway).

With the weapons, I will be giving up a bit, but with full smithing gear equipped, the best fortify smithing potion I can brew, and the bonus from Unfathomable Depths should still result in a very solid increase in weapon damage. It won't be optimal, but I should only be giving up one - or at the very most two - improvement levels.

With the enchantments, I've tried it before, and I discovered that with the best fortify enchanting potion you can brew without perks, results in a 42% bonus to 1-H, 2-H, and archery damage, as opposed to the maximum of 47%. Again, not a difference so large that it will make a serious difference.

 

Barmy, I thought he was talking about the number of characters he's created.

 

Naw... I've actually only played through the entire main quest twice.

Total number of character developed to reach the point I'm at now? Well, I'm not really sure, but it's certainly a number in the single digits. I'd say about 6.

 

Now level 49. I've only maxed out two skills at this point: Pickpocket and Enchanting (with the warrior stone active no less!) Most of everything else is between 50-60. This includes things like Archery, One Handed, Sneak, Speech, Illusion, and Conjuration. The only other 60+ skills are smithing, which is around 80, and Destruction, which has been trained to 80+.

I finally got tired of lugging alchemical ingredients around, and so I decided for a massive brewing session. I leveled the skill from 15-60 in one go. I had to rest a second time in the middle of it to reset my resting bonus. I haven't trained it since, and I'll probably hold off until I have a ton of stuff again.

As has been previously noted, with all of the improvements you can make to weapons and armor, even without triple crafts, what you chose as you end-game equipment is more a matter of aesthetic appeal than anything. It's been a while since I've gone up the light armor side of the tree, and I have to say I am quite satisfied with the visual appeal of being outfitted in all glass equipment. I'll still take dragon smithing, because eventually I'm going to have to make dragon plate armor to max my heavy armor skill (the only other heavy armor perk I have is steel, and without triple crafts, you won't hit the armor cap with Steel), but I think I'll keep glass as my light armor for the foreseeable future.

The reasons that I don't triple craft has very little to do with perk allocation (although admittedly, I do spend fewer perks this way). It has more to do with two other factors:

1) I like a lot of the light armor perks, and wanted to take them anyway. Since Agile Defender (+20% light armor), and Well Fitted (+25% if wearing all light armor) are prerequisites to the rest of the tree, I don't need a triple craft to get my armor rating to the cap. I also get the +25% bonus from Unfathomable Depths. All I have to do to hit the cap is spend one additional point from what I was going to take anyway to get Matching Set (+25% if wearing a complete set) to hit the cap. So there is no downside from an armor perspective by skipping the triple crafts.

2) As for weapons, you are giving up some damage, and it's twofold. First, you won't be able to improve your items nearly as much, because your smithing potions won't be as good. Secondly, the best enchantments you can place on your equipment to improve weapon damage will be capped at 42% instead of 47% with triple crafted stuff. Since the bonus percentage is applied after the improvements from smithing are factored in, the 5% weapon damage is not as insignificant as it first sounds. However, provided you have the perk, it's still easy enough to improve things to at least the second legendary level, which is plenty enough damage for any fight. Even dragons go down pretty quickly (a couple of power attacks). If you don't have the perk, you're stuck at epic for most stuff.

Finally, for the first time ever, I found a weapon with the fiery soul trap enchantment. I have never seen it available for purchase, and I only found it by doing a dungeon I stumbled across near Saarthal. I don't know if it's a fixed drop there, or if I just got lucky since I'm a fairly high level, but it's the one enchantment that I had yet to find previously.

So now I am dual wielding two FST glass swords. It's basically 10 fire damage for free, as you get 10 fire damage regardless of whether you set the soul trap at the maximum of 5 seconds, or the minimum of 1 second. At higher levels, it's a lot easier to just have soul trap on your weapon than to cast it. By getting it, and still improving your damage by 10 per hit, so much the better.

The only thing to decide upon is what to do next. I haven't done any of the main quest lines yet, although I have advanced the main quest line considerably. (I like being able to get quests from the Graybeards for words of power, and they won't give you them until you complete at least the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, and of you're going to do some dragon hunting, may as well do Blade in the Dark too.

 

Looking good for you, it seems.

It's actually a relief that going full-bore powergaming isn't a requirement in this game since you get "good enough" stuff long before reaching the unholy trinity of triple crafts. Rather, it allows the selection of gear based on other, usually secondary qualifications such as aesthetics. Which is a good thing considering that both Dragon sets are fugly (IMHO) and Daedric is a wee bit too otherworldly and demonic to fit the idea of certain RP molds such as Paladin, good-aligned Cleric deities or even a Knight.

Who knows, maybe I'll try a more traditional mage one day now that I know that wearing that Archmage's Robe won't necessarily make me a squishy? (Vampire + Necromage = -33% magicka reduction enchants..!) My hat's off to folks that actually manage to play glass cannon builds, that's just not my definition of having fun in a game.

 

If we're talking about armor where "good enough" means getting to the armor cap, then the difference between glass and dragonscale is marginal indeed, practically to the point of irrelevance. While there certainly is a difference between leather and glass, the difference between glass and dragonscale is very small once you factor in the upgrades.

So small in fact, that it is unlikely that the selection of glass versus dragonscale would be the determining factor in whether or not you reach the cap. Holding everything else constant, in terms of smithing/alchemy/enchanting ability, and the associated perks in these skills along with perks in light armor, chances are that any given character would either fail to reach the cap in both, or meet the cap in both. The difference is so small between the two armor types that it would probably require a very specific skill and perk setup that you'd get to the cap in dragonscale, but not in glass.

 

It's a rather specific case, but here you go:

Also, by good enough I also mean that you reach the point of being able to kill mobs with a comfortable amount of hits. Sure, one-shotting everything is undeniably more powerful, but I'd rather WANT that the strongest adversaries stick out a bit by requiring at least a few hits from me, barring successfull sneak attacks.

 

Level 71 - Finished the College of Winterhold, now proceeding back to the main quest line, so I can start the Oghma Infinium quest. I guess you don't technically have to proceed to that immediately, but it only makes sense to do it all in one go if you're going through Blackreach to get the Elder Scroll anyway.

And that brings my nicely to my next point. I need two more training sessions to finish training two handed, and then I'm done with all of the must-train skills. At that point, my skills will look like this (the "~" means I'm actively leveling it, so I can't state exactly where it will be at the point I collect the blood):

Warrior:

Archery ~70
One Handed ~65
Two Handed 90
Heavy Armor 91 (found a skill book)
Block 100
Smithing 100

Thief:
Sneak ~80
Light Armor ~100 (presently 98, so with a free one coming from the bards college, it likely will be maxed)
Lockpicking ~70
Speech ~80
Pickpocket - 100
Alchemy - 100

Mage
Alteration - currently at 90
Conjuration - currently at 88
Destruction - currently at 92 (found two skill books - woot!)
Restoration - currently at 94 (so it's "done" if we count Bards College + Oghma Infinium)
Illusion - 100
Enchanting - 100

Looking good. After finishing my training, I suspect I'll spend my last few training sessions on whatever skill is lowest - which ironically will likely include my "core" skills, like archery and one handed.

Here's the plan on the rest. Assuming I spend the Oghma Infinium on the mage skills, all of those are quite nearly done. I only have to get all of them to 94 to finish them, and the general plan is to make sure I get Conjuration and Alteration to 94 by the time I use them. If I have to "settle" for 98 in Destruction, so be it.

For the fighter ones, I think my best bet is to equip a two-handed sword and heavy armor for the civil war quest line. Lots of wimpy enemies, no chance of sneaking anyway, seems like a reasonable option.

One more point on heavy armor. One of the additions to Dawnguard was an increase in the different types of enemies you find in the regular game as well. Notably there are two new types you find in falmer areas. First, you get a Charus Fledling, which have wings and fly around. Not too hard to kill, and they drop chitin just like regular charus do.

Of more interest, there are Falmer Warmongers. They are equipped with Falmer Heavy Armor sets. They appeared to have a very high armor value, so I picked up the pieces, and brought them back for upgrading. I wasn't disappointed. I don't have daedric smithing, but I did happen to find a daedric breast plate. I upgraded it - again, no perk - and it turns out that the falmer heavy armor absolutely is better by a fair margin once both are upgraded. That may no longer be true if you have daedric smithing, as presumably falmer upgrades work like leather and iron, in that there is no perk that improves them. But it looks like the level 91-100 heavy armor skill is going to be done in heavy falmer armor. I have the chest pieces, gloves, and helm. No boots yet though. I put two handed enchants on them where ever I could, because as I said, I'll train both of those together. I haven't crafted dragonplate armor, and I do have that perk, so that may beat out falmer armor, but I think I want to use the falmer armor regardless, unless dragonplate is considerably better.

The thief skills will just have to be grinded out. There's nothing to really "work" on. Lockpicking is a function of the number of locks you encounter, and speech is just through selling stuff. Sneak you can actively work on, but that's ahead by a wide enough margin that I should finish that first anyway.

Cautiously optimistic at this point.