If you are in the 20’s you definately should have one offense skill (one-handed, archery, destruction, etc.) in the 50’s by now for certain. Backstabbing seems to grow your sneak, not one-handed, so I recomend doing the first couple (very short) Companion missions to have access to the one-handed weapon trainer there, and hitting him up as often as possible, and putting some perks into one-handed as well, if your using the sneaking/dagger stuff (or train up archery, if not).
One other piece of advice: find the Lord’s Stone, which is NNW of White Run. The extra 50 armor and 25% magic resistence it provides were a godsend when I discovered it around level 25–in fact, that was the very noticable turning point where the game became relatively easy again.
Well, it would probably also help if I assigned my perks. I’ve only got one invested right now (Steel Smithing - to improve my armor), but every time I try to go in and start picking stuff out the sheer number of choices pretty much paralyzes me. If Alchemy leveled a little bit faster, that would be great, because my solution to everything so far has just been lots and lots of potions, but I’ve identified, like, two thirds of all the effects of all the ingredients in the entire universe and brewed billions of these damn things and I still haven’t cracked 40. To contrast, I went from, like, 27 Smithing to 38 or so in one fell swoop making daggers and armor after I did some random quest in the world’s biggest iron mine. It took maybe ten minutes. To contrast, looking up everything in the book and matching out my ingredients and brewing stuff has consumed at least four total hours of playtime. I’m not looking forward to what I’ll have to do to get Enchanting up to speed once I run out of effects to learn.
I’m still able to get by, though. My comparatively high sneak lets me shoot dudes in the brains from very far away and then run and hide until they get bored of looking for the guy who, you know, shot them with an arrow or murdered their friend right over there or whatever, and then just repeat that until everybody is dead. I’m considering making it a point to go do the stupid Mage’s College so that I can get some more advanced spells, because my fallback position is Destruction and it used to rock the universe (and I still killed the dragon just called Dragon in swampton with, like, five fire bolts, whereas the Blood Dragons take…a lot more than that), but it’s starting to lose some of its pop.
Giaddon
4884
Wait wait wait – you haven’t even assigned the +20% offense or defense perks? At the very least pick a damn class of armor and start boosting your defense!
Pogo
4885
Youre level 22 but have only used one perk? What? The fuck?
Not as yet. I think I need to sit down and do a spreadsheet to plan the 1-80 slope. Because I should probably put one point in the first perk for a bunch of stuff (Archery, One-Handed, Two-Handed, Sneak, Light, and Heavy for starters).
I’m treating them like rare magic items in any other game. I haven’t technically NEEDED them yet, so I haven’t assigned them. I’ve killed two Blood Dragons by hiding behind cover and slowly plonking them to death with my bow and my tiny idiot spells. I also got the head A’Lakir (or however it’s spelled) somehow. Playing on normal lets me have bad habits.
Giaddon
4887
Don’t waste your time going up both armor trees! Nooooooooooo
Pogo
4888
No.
Shut the fuck up about spreadsheets.
Identify what you are finding FUN and build through that. Get some blocking and one handed skills.
Wow. How can you do it that wrong?
I mean, in one hand you seem a power gamer min-maxer (boo!). In the other hand, you are really bad as a power gamer min-maxer! (light and heavy armor?? wtf).
:P :P
candide
4890
Yes, don’t go wide on perks, go deep. My sneaky character has lots of archery, sneak, light armor and alchemy perks. My whack-a-mole character is all heavy armor, one handed, smithing and enchanting. There are many combinations left with magic perks and such - the game greatly encourages you to try different builds and play styles.
I am doing a jack-of-all-trades, but even with my character I try to avoid the evident redundancy. It’s something like this:
Heavy Armor
One hand
Block
Archery
Stealth
Enchanting
Smithing
Alteration, Restoration
Lockpicking
But i don’t have Light armor, Two Hands, Alchemy, Pickpocket, Speech, and the rest of magic schools.
Archery
Sneak
Light Armor
One-Handed
Lockpicking
Smithing
Also, since the stones are now the replacements for the constellation - The Steed Stone.
Well, my thinking was that I was going to have to wear this crap eventually to get to 80 and max all my skills whether I liked it or not, so I should probably make it so that I could, you know, bounce back and forth a little bit (whereas I assume that scaled enemies at 70 coming at me while I’ve got nothing in Heavy Armor will render me into a thin paste). Same thing with One/Two/Archery. I’m actually struggling right now to come up with ways to use Conjuration, which is my second lowest skill (I’m not a thieving kind of guy, so I have to actively go out and grind Pick Pockets at some point, possibly sooner rather than later, because I like the looks of that Infinity Pockets or whatever the perk is called that increases your carrying capacity). I back-of-the-napkined some numbers and it looked like I could get around all the various skills with the necessary amplification talents as long as I didn’t get too invested in the weird gravy perks that I don’t even want in most of the constellations.
I guess what I’m hearing, though, is that I can’t do that. So I’ll have to take a deep breath and commit to one way as my “primary” approach. Probably Light Armor and Archery to start, with One-Handed as my melee approach. I don’t like that, mostly because I don’t like replaying games to experience all the mechanics (particularly when it’s a first person RPG like this, for some reason).
candide
4894
Then do what I did, play different quest arcs with different characters. My sneaky dude did the main quest and the theives guild. My whack-a-mole does companions and probably the war quest or perhaps the dark brotherhood. And I will roll a mage character to do the mages guild quest lines and whatnot. Skyrim is really like 10 games in one.
edit: and I will make a cat character with purely unarmed attack, just so that I can punch a dragon in its face, heh
That’s kind of why I cut off my first character when I did. Much of what remained was Dark Bros, Thieves Guild and Mage quests. Didn’t seem right for my noble, two-handed swingin’, heavy-armor wearin’ warrior to do those quests.
Now my ultra-opportunistic, morally ambivalent rogue that I’m starting? Well, those are right up her alley. :)
If you’re in light armor, the idea is not to be hit (or at least, not as much), and use more magic/potions/scrolls or whatever to bolster your defense. If you’re in heavy armor, you can wade in and get hit more for less damage. I can’t imagine a need for both armor skills though.
Pogo
4897
Just shut up and put points in whatever. Stop asking for advice. Play the game and figure out on your own how you will counter the enemies that kick your ass… Which I imagine at this point is all of them. Don’t do something that sounds uninteresting just because everyone is doing it.
Benhur
4898
This. I have an archer/sneaky person doing the main quest, a warrior doing companions stuff, and my mage doing the OUTSTANDING Winterhold College quests. I’m an altaholic and I love it.
Skipper
4899
So I have about 135 hours into this game now. Not sure what happened to my life since the release date but I have somewhat of a beard and I’m thirsty.
This is, by far, the best game I have ever played in my life. If this doesn’t get game of the year then fuck the gods that made people that vote for other shit, because I don’t want to live in that world of shitheads anyway. I’ll be quite happy in Skyrim. Mjoll makes me great meals anyway.
KevinC
4900
Alright, my google fu has failed me. I now summon the powers of Quarter to Three to aid me in my time of need.
I’m rolling up a new “indirect” type of character, focusing on Illusion, alchemy, etc. Now that I’m really playing around with alchemy I have a question: What is the difference between “Poison Damage” and “Concentrated Poison Damage”?
