Very High Level

[Toasty]

has anyone got their charachter (without mods) up to a massively high level and completed almost (or every) skill tree in the game, im at level 77 with maxed 1h, 2h, block, heavy armor, sneak, enchanting, alchemy without even starting the dlc. Does anyone find after around 80 it just becomes impossible to level anymore skill points? my xp bar atm takes a while but idk if it gets worse. or is worth it (i dont wana put another 120 hours into another charachter either, im abit of a completionist).

[Clever Monkey]

I don't have the patience to keep making skills legendary until I have all the perks but I do know that people have, whether they used mods and cheats I don't know. Considering most things do not level with you it becomes kind of tedious to do this naturally.
At high levels you are right, it starts taking a huge amount of use to raise your skills and skill increases to raise your level. By this time you have a huge amount of gold so you could use this gold to train 5 times every level which wiill help.
If going for all perks make use of the skills easiest to level like magic . casting high level spells increase your skills quickly.
Save your skill books for when the skills are at level 90 and save the Ohgma Infinium until those skills are also high. there are quests that raise some skills, save those for later.
You probably know all this but others may not.

[datguy13]

I've got a level 92 Nord, which is where about 450 of my 475 hours played has been invested. I've made Smithing, Enchanting and Alchemy Legendary twice each now, as well as made One-Handed, Two-Handed, Block and Heavy Armor Legendary once in order to get to that point. I've also leveled almost all fo the other skills past 85, with most being 100 on top of the Legendary resets. I've found an easy skill to use for leveling like this is Block, since you can also get XP for shield bashes. After a certain point, leveling Smithing becomes crazy easy as well, when you have tons of money and if you invest the time to go mine your own ore and hunt your own leather in the early game, then you can sock away tons of cash between crafting sessions and it pays XP dividends back later in the game.

The problem is that once you get into the level 90-100 bracket, you start requiring anywhere from 200-400 levels of Skills to gain each level. So you can max out an entire Legendary skill and maybe see half an XP level for it if you're really lucky. And then, you very quickly realize that the Vanilla game holds absolutely no challenge for you at this point, and you have to go looking for mods which increase monster stats to an often silly level just to feel the thrill of a challenge again. It's a fun challenge to 'hyper level', but once there, it's a double-edged dagger. =/

[Shrapnel]

God bless you guys who can get that high. At 40-45 I'm like 'ok we're done here' and restart to try a new build / playstyle. 40+ things are just too easy, even on Legendary, if you master focus on the right skills from the beginning.

[Brandybuck]

Getting to level 81 *naturally* (without legendary) is very hard. The highest I have ever gotten was level 77 before I gave up. I hate grinding and to finish out those levels you need to grind them out. The game has long since ceased to be fun because you're so powerful all challenge is lost.

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by Brandybuck:

Getting to level 81 *naturally* (without legendary) is very hard.

Considering the max level without legendary is 80, i imagine it is :D

[Clever Monkey]

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

Originally posted by Brandybuck:

Getting to level 81 *naturally* (without legendary) is very hard.

Considering the max level without legendary is 80, i imagine it is :D

it is 81. you can get 80 perks. hence level 81. level1 +80 =81

[Shrapnel]

Originally posted by Gaweyne:

I've never got higher than level 53 I don't think. I don't have any harddrive space for DLC, so that's just what I get up to in a playthrough + Falskaar + Wyrmstooth Quest mods.

It's fun for a while when you're very high level and can dominate everything (mostly because you feel like you've earned it) but after a while it becomes tedious and it's time to start again.

I'm not even sure HOW you could plausibly make combat skills legendary and level them up from 15 without being owned by everything you attempt to hurt. If I'm level 50 and playing on legendary difficulty how could I hurt anything when my one-handed goes down to level 15?

(Or, is the answer to that, dial the difficulty right down?)

I am absolutely positive heavy armor perk is near useless until you get real armor. (Nordic +)
I was damn near 65 in heavy armor and getting one shot in steel plate. I throw on Nordic, all of a sudden...Ayyyyyyy, what damage? Yes still getting hit, but dmg mitigatation goes through the roof once you throw some steel+ on. I dont want to confirm this by powerleveling smithy and then potentially ruin my game in the process, but I follow a pretty specific route when I play and its always the same pattern I notice. and I restart a lot
edit- sorry forgot my point - You can legendary your main weapon skill if your armor / armor rating is high enough. You'll be doing so much dmg (skilling up) it will only be noticeable for the first few fights

[Shrapnel]

yep the first few fights will be comical and drawn out but you skill on like every 4th 5th hit its crazy

[Avatar1971]

I got to level 81 on the Xbox 360 so no mods and that was way before the LE update. I wish I could say I didn't cheat at all however, but I may have used a certain book to get from level 71 up to 81 before it was patched :-)

[datguy13]

Originally posted by Gaweyne:

I've never got higher than level 53 I don't think. I don't have any harddrive space for DLC, so that's just what I get up to in a playthrough + Falskaar + Wyrmstooth Quest mods.

It's fun for a while when you're very high level and can dominate everything (mostly because you feel like you've earned it) but after a while it becomes tedious and it's time to start again.

I'm not even sure HOW you could plausibly make combat skills legendary and level them up from 15 without being owned by everything you attempt to hurt. If I'm level 50 and playing on legendary difficulty how could I hurt anything when my one-handed goes down to level 15?

(Or, is the answer to that, dial the difficulty right down?)

Enchanting with Max'd Perks and Smithing with Max perks, followed up by a L100 Alchemist with just the right set of Perks making Enchanting and Smithing potions will allow you to get some very potent weapons and armor. I have a set of Stahlrim armor with around 2.5k Rating for the set and a Daedric Sword that has a base damage of around 300-400 (I forget exactly), with +25 Health Drain and +25 Stamina Drain enchantments on it. Once you get to that point, nothing can keep up unless you use Deadly Dragons/Deadly Monsters mods and crank the Hell out of them, even when you revert the Heavy Armor and One-Handed Weapons Skills to base.

Bear in mind that stats like that still require a massive time investment farming the necessary materials. It took me a good thirty physical hours just to make the Stahlrim Armor, and my first set of refined (stat-boosted) Daedric equipment was a labor of love that took close to a hundred hours to fine-tune to my desires- mostly in hunting the necessary Daedra hearts and Black Soul gems because it was actually faster than refilling the Black Star or buying the Daedra heart from the Mage's College.

One of the key factors is to abuse the Hell out of the crafting system when you have time available to invest. I have suits of armor/clothing/jewelery all enchanted with Alchemy and Smithing bonus percentages that have snowballed- make a set of Alchemy gear, equip it to make potions, the Enchanting that potions allow you to make a stronger set of Alchemy gear, repeat as funds and resources permit. The best part is that although it's stupidly powerful, it is actually Lore-friendly! So long as you do not use console commands and do not use mods that augment your Perks or Skill trees, all you are doing is refining your character's Alchemist/Enchanter "techniques" or "gleaning the mysteries of the art" like any of the Legendary Elder Scrolls NPCs would have done.

[raubrey]

Originally posted by Shrapnel:

God bless you guys who can get that high. At 40-45 I'm like 'ok we're done here' and restart to try a new build / playstyle. 40+ things are just too easy, even on Legendary, if you master focus on the right skills from the beginning.

I don't think there is anything wrong with this -- it's a game so there is no right/wrong. But I also think this is more fun to play this way. I too am a completionist but with this game it can get tiresome (for me) if you try to do everything and like you said, the combat is generally easier -- though mods can help that.

[Kryo]

Originally posted by datguy13:

Originally posted by Gaweyne:

I've never got higher than level 53 I don't think. I don't have any harddrive space for DLC, so that's just what I get up to in a playthrough + Falskaar + Wyrmstooth Quest mods.

It's fun for a while when you're very high level and can dominate everything (mostly because you feel like you've earned it) but after a while it becomes tedious and it's time to start again.

I'm not even sure HOW you could plausibly make combat skills legendary and level them up from 15 without being owned by everything you attempt to hurt. If I'm level 50 and playing on legendary difficulty how could I hurt anything when my one-handed goes down to level 15?

(Or, is the answer to that, dial the difficulty right down?)

Enchanting with Max'd Perks and Smithing with Max perks, followed up by a L100 Alchemist with just the right set of Perks making Enchanting and Smithing potions will allow you to get some very potent weapons and armor. I have a set of Stahlrim armor with around 2.5k Rating for the set and a Daedric Sword that has a base damage of around 300-400 (I forget exactly), with +25 Health Drain and +25 Stamina Drain enchantments on it. Once you get to that point, nothing can keep up unless you use Deadly Dragons/Deadly Monsters mods and crank the Hell out of them, even when you revert the Heavy Armor and One-Handed Weapons Skills to base.

Bear in mind that stats like that still require a massive time investment farming the necessary materials. It took me a good thirty physical hours just to make the Stahlrim Armor, and my first set of refined (stat-boosted) Daedric equipment was a labor of love that took close to a hundred hours to fine-tune to my desires- mostly in hunting the necessary Daedra hearts and Black Soul gems because it was actually faster than refilling the Black Star or buying the Daedra heart from the Mage's College.

One of the key factors is to abuse the Hell out of the crafting system when you have time available to invest. I have suits of armor/clothing/jewelery all enchanted with Alchemy and Smithing bonus percentages that have snowballed- make a set of Alchemy gear, equip it to make potions, the Enchanting that potions allow you to make a stronger set of Alchemy gear, repeat as funds and resources permit. The best part is that although it's stupidly powerful, it is actually Lore-friendly! So long as you do not use console commands and do not use mods that augment your Perks or Skill trees, all you are doing is refining your character's Alchemist/Enchanter "techniques" or "gleaning the mysteries of the art" like any of the Legendary Elder Scrolls NPCs would have done.

exactly it that all the time and i don't even notice it until its to late then i have to start a new character again.

[Brandybuck]

Originally posted by datguy13:

One of the key factors is to abuse the Hell out of the crafting system when you have time available to invest. I have suits of armor/clothing/jewelery all enchanted with Alchemy and Smithing bonus percentages that have snowballed- make a set of Alchemy gear, equip it to make potions, the Enchanting that potions allow you to make a stronger set of Alchemy gear, repeat as funds and resources permit.

That exploit has been "fixed" by either an official update, or the Unofficial Patch. Either way there's now a diminishing return built in that only lets you do about three repeats before it maxes out. Which is still insanely powerful enough for anyone.

[Shrapnel]

Originally posted by raubrey:

Originally posted by Shrapnel:

God bless you guys who can get that high. At 40-45 I'm like 'ok we're done here' and restart to try a new build / playstyle. 40+ things are just too easy, even on Legendary, if you master focus on the right skills from the beginning.

I don't think there is anything wrong with this -- it's a game so there is no right/wrong. But I also think this is more fun to play this way. I too am a completionist but with this game it can get tiresome (for me) if you try to do everything and like you said, the combat is generally easier -- though mods can help that.

I sure hope not cause I cant help it lol. Im already playing on Legendary...maybe Im a masochist but once the one-shots stop happening to me, I know whats next, the one shots will start happening to *them*...once combat is too easy, no amount of imagination or roleplaying can keep me in that game.
I've even started breaking from all major campaigns and living only out in the wild (I use frostfall), and just 'doing stuff' as following the standard order of Riverrun, Whiterun and its surrounding areas is making me not want to play. I'll probably start mixing things up and change armors, attack styles to help break up the monotony

[datguy13]

Originally posted by Brandybuck:

Originally posted by datguy13:

One of the key factors is to abuse the Hell out of the crafting system when you have time available to invest. I have suits of armor/clothing/jewelery all enchanted with Alchemy and Smithing bonus percentages that have snowballed- make a set of Alchemy gear, equip it to make potions, the Enchanting that potions allow you to make a stronger set of Alchemy gear, repeat as funds and resources permit.

That exploit has been "fixed" by either an official update, or the Unofficial Patch. Either way there's now a diminishing return built in that only lets you do about three repeats before it maxes out. Which is still insanely powerful enough for anyone.

Who said anything about "repeats"? :)

I use the Unofficial Patches (you'd be crazy not to, since they stabilize the game significantly), so I'm not even sure what exploit you're talking about. What I do is to make a new set of crafting equips each time I want to enchant it to a higher value, and once I have the Fortify buff to where I want it, only then do I make my fighting armor and follow it up with Smithing upgrades and enchantments using the highest available Smithing and Potions available to me.

The buffs are percentage based, so even just adding one piece of equipment with a massive Enchant on it, then adding a potion with a massive buff to it will create even stronger armors or potions each time. You end up throwing away alot of old, weaker gear doing this (I think to date I've gone through something like 15 Fortify Alchemy circlets alone, each using a Black Soul Gem?), but I have yet to reach any "caps" or seen any "diminishing returns" using this method. I basically just gave up with abusing the system when I produced a single Heavy Stahlrim chestplate that had ~3,500 Armor rating by itself and was producing Fortify Smithing potions that provided a 191% increase to Smithing for 30 seconds. So if there is supposed to be a cap to the level, then it's still busted.