The Road to 81

Remove all ads!

I'm getting there. I hit level 75 yesterday. Did Oghma quest, and I've yet to do the bards college. Once complete, all of my mage skills will be at 100 except Destruction, which will be at 98.

I may as well do the Bards College soon, as I've now trained everything I needed to train to 90. Ironically, even though I'm basically a warrior type character, I probably have the least experience in the warrior skills. Two handed is at 90. I found a couple of skill books for heavy armor, and that's at 92. Archery and One Handed (where most of the remaining training will go towards) are about 70 (+/- one or two). So Block and Smithing are the only maxed skills there.

The thief skills have 3 maxed, 3 that need work. Lockpicking is about 70. Sneak is about 80, and Speech is in the high 80s - like 87ish or so. All of which will be leveled through use.

Has anyone done the Lost to the Ages quest? I stumbled upon this one a couple of days ago, and since it's one of the few quests that I had not stumbled across in prior play throughs of the game, I decided what the heck. I've found all four shards, and was having a heck of a time finding the forge. From reading the journal, the only thing they tell you is that the forge is located in an area "west of Riften". I epxlored extensively the area west of the Honningbrew Meadery, both north and south of it, and found nothing. Discouraged, I looked it up on the wiki.

Technically, the journal is correct. The location is "west of Riften". Then again, given that Riften is one of the eastern most locales in Skyrim, just about everything is west of it. But it's hell of a far west of Riften - the closest city to it is Iverstaad.

After looking through the rewards, it turns out you get to forge a item from the aetherium shards you gathered. Either a helm, shield, or staff. The affects of these items seem really disproportionate in value. The helm looks to be the best without question - it allows you to have two active standing stones. The shield seems to have limited utility (well for my character it has NO utility as I don't use a shield, but even if I did, it doesn't seem like a great item). What it does is upon shield bashing an enemy, it turns it ethereal for a few seconds, meaning it can't damage you, but also that you can't damage it. I don't see the practical application of such an affect. Finally, there's the staff, which summons a dwarven spider. Again, seeing as how I can summon a dremora lord whenever I need a summons, I don't really see the attraction of getting a free spider.

So the helm it is. The only issue is that you have to have the helm actually equipped to get the bonus. (Although supposedly it "remembers" what your second stone is if you take it off and put in back on later.) So you can get two active stones, like the Warrior and the Thief (I wouldn't pick mage as I'm done there.) Or, if you really wanted to super charge your advancement rate in a particular set of skills you could take the lover and warrior stone.

My one issue that I'm a little concerned about is whether or not the helm is considered light armor. I have the well fitted perk which grants the bonus if all the pieces you wear are light armor. I'm at the cap, but I'm pretty sure I need that perk going to be there. I'm willing to lose the bonus to archery on my helm and make the switch - I'm one shot killing most everything the way it is - but if it costs me armor, I'm not going to be happy about that.

Finally, the incessant vampire attacks in towns are getting to be a royal pain in the ass. They randomly attack cities, killing the people within. Riften has been hit excessively hard. Numerous commoners are dead. (And I just realized that one person I need may be at risk, or possibly already dead - Maven - which would be really bad, as it would it render the Thieves Guild uncompletable.) Madesi is dead. Both of the homeless people in the marketplace are dead. The latest victim was Balimund, although the Scorched Hammer is still open, as his apprentice now runs the place.

 

Hmm.. interesting new quest items.

However, the helm seems to be classified as a Circlet, ie. counts as clothes in terms of armor. But if for nothing else, wearing it for double-boosting something you want to train yourself ain't all that bad use for an extra inventory row and 2 pounds of weight. And in case it actually remembers which stone was activated second last, it could be used to "store" a Steed Stone for +100 increased carry capacity in an equipment slot where Fortify Carry Weight isn't available otherwise.

 

dmc, that's the right spirit. Fun > powergaming.

I guess the main difference here being that (at least some) powergamers consider successfull optimization as a decent sized chunk of what they call 'fun'.

 

That's exactly what you have to do - train stuff you'll never use. I knew I wasn't interested in making a destruction character, so right off the bat, I knew that I spending 15 level worth of training on Faralda at Winterhold. Your best bet is to pick three or four skill you have no intention on using, and training them hard. (After you get everything you want to train up to 51 first, of course.)

The light armor perks are just better IMO. You may actually want them. (And glass armor is very aesthetically pleasing to boot.) The only two heavy armor perks worth having are Conditioning and Reflect Blows. But those two require you to take every single other perk on the whole damn tree, which range in value from marginal to useless.

Just take a gander below. (Although I will give you a tip that blue flowers + blue butterfly wing = great. Even better if you use those two combined with a giant's toe.)

List of ingredients

EDIT: I know this doesn't apply to you guys yet, but sometime in the next 20 or so days, Dawnguard will be available for PC. In addition to upping random encounters (Legendary Dragons, Dragon Priests in Draugr tombs, Master Vampires randomly attacking cities), it completely tilts the scales in favor of light armor.

The one thing you had going for you with heavy armor, is that by going up that side of the smithing tree, you got access to daedric weapons. Going up the light side, the best you could do was glass, which ranked between orcish and ebony weapons. However, with the introduction of dragonbone weapons, you get access to the best weapons regardless of which path you pursue. Since it's possible to hit the armor cap either way, I can see no good argument for taking heavy armor at all.

 

Daedric looks pretty cool.

 

Been there, I have mentally clicked many items to pick them up.

 

Well, we have at least:
- Plantago Major to cure/resist poison (insect bites and such) and healing potions (anti-coagulation properties)
- Common wood sorrel has refreshing properties (stamina, mana or both?) and tastes good to boot
- Birch leaves are good against a whole lot of diseases
- Powdered elk horn is a stamina increasing agent (Lapland folklore)
- Desert agave (and many other desert plants) resist fire
- Mica is a strong insulator (resist lightning)

These are just a few of the materials I could remember off-hand while not specifically looking after traits that could be mapped into the alchemy effects in Skyrim. I'm sure there are hundreds, if not thousands of others as well. Just google for herbal medicine and you'll probably find a cure for anything, with varying degrees of effectivity.

 

Cripes - and I thought I was really into this game. No, I've never wondered that. The closest I came is that the one vacant area near where I work is filled with thistle, one of several flowers in the game that also occur in real life. (Although I've never thought of Skyrim upon seeing a bee or dragonfly - although Skyrim would call the latter dartwings.)

Anyway, my character is now level 80. Approximately 1/4 of the way to 81 on the experience point bar. And while it's possible to get the expereince bar half way to 82 after reaching 81, you are pretty much going to have max out everything just to break through to 81.

Here's what's not maxed:

Destruction (98)
Lockpicking (95)
Archery (96)
One Handed (92)
Two Handed (93)

That's it. And given that leveling a skill in the 90s only marginally moves my XP bar, I'm going to need almost all of them maxed to get to 81. The good news, as far as one and two handed weapons are concerned, is that I have only done the opening mission of the Companions quest, and I haven't touched the civil war quest yet. So there's lots of melee opportunities left. And as I've said previously, if there's one skill on that list that I have no intention of maxing, it's Destruction. The second "don't care if I max it" skill is Two Handed, and the only reason it's at 93 is that those are from skill books and the Bards College finished after they were at 90. (Same thing with Destruction, but also the Oghma quest for the other 5.)

One thing odd about this game is I've had no luck with animals. Shadowmere took a back hand from a troll off a cliff, never to be seen from again. So then I grabbed frost - killed by a dragon. So then I bought a horse - that one got killed by a forsworn mage's lightning bolt. Exasperated, I bought a dog (Valiant) from the guy in Markarth, and I accidently killed him when he ran between me and an enemy when I was in mid power-attack. Sorry Valiant.

And it doesn't stop with animals. In addition to the numerous NPC that have been killed by vampires (off the top of my head, Balimund, Madesi, Armen, Shadr, the couple that moves to Riften after you do the Book of Love quest - forget their name, but they both died in separate vampire attacks - and a few members of the Black Briar clan - but not Maven who is evidently unkillable), Lydia died as my companion early in the game, Iona got sacrificed to Boethia, well, that's all I can think of. My respect to any of my departed friends who I missed. It evidently is not very healthy to know me.

Edit: Oh, one more thing - I got seven (eventually 8 when I hit level 81) unspent perks that I have no idea what to do with. I'm taking suggestions.

EDIT2: Oh, and getting Speech maxed out is very freeing for this character, as now I don't really have to pick up well, anything. I've long since passed the point where money is an issue (I have close to half a million septims), but I kept picking up high value items to sell when I got back to town. No need now. Unless it's a "ooh - cool item!" I can just keep walking.

Also, by just donig quests, I've collected 18 of the 24 stone of barenziah - by far the highest total I've ever accumulated. I'm actually starting to wonder if I'll encounter the other 6 along the line.

 

Well, I have thought of one reason why you might consider going for heavy armor - albeit it's a very specific scenario. If you were planning on using some of the dragon masks. (Some are categorized as heavy, some as light, so it would depend on which one you picked.) While there are no unique enchantments on the dragon masks, they do possess enchantments that you can't place on masks yourself, and come in combinations you wouldn't be able to enchant yourself.

For example the mask Otar - which is heavy armor - has 30% magic resistance on it. I usually enchant a helm for the bonus to archery and a casting cost reduction to one school, but if you didn't mind giving that up, I can see how you could consider it. There's no other way to get any magic resistance on a helm, and 30% is a significant percentage. Otar + Breton + Agent of Mara = 80% magic resistance while only using one equipment slot, and absolutely no perks.

Vokun could also be a consideration for mages. It gives a 20% reduction to casting cost of Illusion, Conjuration, and Alteration casting costs. While it's certainly possible to craft helms that have a greater percentage of casting cost reduction on them, there's no way to get cost reduction to three separate schools of magic. Picking your other equipment appropriately would allow a 78% casting cost reduction to three different schools of magic, which is pretty good. There is some utility in the combination as well. A mass paralysis or frenzy combined with summons = room cleared.

Honestly though, the dragon masks are most useful if you aquire them early, when you're unable to craft equipment with similar or equivalent enchantments. The downside of that of course is that in order to acquire said mask, you have to fight a dragon priest, which a particularly tough hombres with a low level character.

---------- Added 16 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds later... ----------

I'm nearly there. We can now check off the Companions quest line as done. I got hugely lucky last night in actually acquiring a destruction skill book I had not previously read. So that's up to 99. Lockpicking is at 98, Archery at 96, and both one and two handed at 94.

Here's what I don't get though - they say that the maximum level - if you max everything out - is not exactly 81. You get about half of the experience that you'd need to get to 82. So the max level is like 81.5. Now I know that being 81.5 isn't any different than being 81, but what I thought I had with that was some wiggle room. It appears you get very little wiggle room at all, especially considering that I'll need several more level ups to get to 81.

There's only 19 more skill ups I can possibly obtain, and considering I'm going to need several of them just to get to 81, I don't quite get how there would still be enough left over to get me half way to another level.

 

Victory - hit level 81 yesterday! Everything is at least 97 at this point - Archery One Handed, Two Handed. With Lockpicking and Destruction at 99 - everything else is 100.

The final battle for Solitude in the Civil War quest line turned out to be epic. On the final part, right before you enter to finish off Tullius, a Legendary Dragon decides to land in the middle of the courtyard and proceeds to start wrecking shop. Now, I've already documented a previous experience with Legendary Dragons - on master difficulty these are not one-hit wonders. You need a dozen or more power attacks on them to take them down. I also discovered during this battle that they have a shout I had not previously seen. Don't know what it's called, but when they hit you with it, a strange blue glow comes over your character, and your health, stamina, and magicka start draining very rapidly. Health potions are the only solution here - you can't heal your character because your magicka is also depleting at a fantastic rate.

The dragon killed dozens of fighers from both sides before finally dying. (Of course, he was one-shotting everything he hit.) Ulfric is unkillable during the fight, but even he took a pounding, dropping to one knee numerous times. On a somewhat humorous note, when the dragon lands in the courtyard, I noticed that both sides only attacked one of two targets - the dragon or me. The two sides stopped fighting each other. My only explanation for this is that the warriors on both sides of the battle are town guards, and that their AI script for a dragon overrides everything else. Now some of the Imperial soldiers continued to fight me, but all of the other Imperials and all of the Stormcloaks dropped everything else to deal with the dragon.

But my second ever encounter with a legendary dragon only reinforces my initial opinion - they are not to be trifled with. They're by no means unkillable - I've defeated both of them that I encountered. But if you aren't paying attention they'll kill you quick, just based on the sheer damage their attacks do. The second battle was actually somewhat easier, as other than the shout, the dragon spent more time attacking people besides me. If it's one on one, you've got problems. And that shout that I got hit with is incredible. I have 600 base health, and I had to drink two complete restore health potions - both consumed when my health was nearly completely drained - or it would have killed me. It affects health, stamina, and magicka, and all three drain very quickly, and it lasts for quite a while. My opinion would be that a shout followed shortly thereafter with a bite, would probably kill just about any character. And for any character below the armor cap and/or less than 400 health, a one shot kill from full health is easily possible.