Gimpus Maximus

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by Sir Rechet

It only gives exp when you're at least about thigh-deep in water. So, it becomes "just in case it's deeper than I thought" kind of spell preparation, rather than stupidly spamming it while standing in a fountain in Whiterun.

I guess it had to be implemented that way, as you can't cast spells underwater. You'd have to be able to cast it beforehand.

As soon as you can get to and clear Fort Amol prison, as you get it as a guaranteed drop there. It's kinda halfways between Riften and Winterhold

I honestly don't think I've been there. (Although there a still a LOT of places I haven't been. I don't think I've done more than 4 or 5 of deadric artifact quests, and there are definitely dragon masks which I haven't discovered.)

I'm not planning to totally remove the mana cost component of spells, just make it minimal.

What schools of magic are you planning on focusing on? Obviously you're using both conjuration and destruction, but if you are planning on using conjuration just for soul trap and bound weapons, I'm assuming that you're picking up at least one more school.

Archery will the first one to be trained for two reasons: That's the earliest trainer you can get to, and I will be using Archery as my primary sneak attack so I want it maxed fairly fast.

Well, provided you have the coin to spend, you certainly can work on it early. Not only is Faendal the first trainer you meet, but by the time he takes you to 50, you'll probably be in Whiterun, and can switch over to Aela. After that, Riften is just a carriage ride away to get to Niruin who could take you all the way to 90.

Of course, there is the caveat of having enough money to train, and money is a bit more problematic in this regard, because you cannot do a lot of the things you'd typically do to raise the cash, namely crafting, because you run the risk of gaining too much experience. As you're aware, the higher the level of a skill, the more character experience you receive for advancing it to the next level. If you're only level 20-something, simply training a skill that is already in the 60s or 70s five times will give you most of the experience you need to gain the next level. While there's no penalty for over-shooting the experience required to level up - you're never forced to hit the level up key - if you gain enough experience to level up twice, you'll have to advance two levels as soon as you hit the level up key.

Say you're level 25, and you have enough experience to level up to 26, but you haven't done your five training sessions yet because you don't have enough money. So you don't push the level up key yet. If you then go on a potion brewing spree (leveling alchemy a few times) and then train a skill that is already fairly high 5 times, you'll likely gain enough experience to reach level 27. As soon as you hit level up, you can't just go to level 26. You can't exit the screen after selecting just one level up. You must take two levels (you get the magicka/health/stamina choice twice) and you go right to level 27, thus losing out on the opportunity for training during level 26.

So even though I agree that it makes sense to work on archery early, you may not be able to raise it to a very high level until you're a higher level. There's obviously no limitation in getting it to 50, as you'll likely train the full five times as soon as you get a new level, every level. But once you have to start paying for it yourself, you might have some problems raising enough cash without also gaining too much experience. That's why I did so many Vex and Delvin missions - it's not that I really wanted to do so many, but you get up to 500 gp for each mission, and the only experience you gain is from picking a lock or two.

The good news is that the problem takes care of itself as you advance in levels. Gimpus is now level 48, and requires enough experience to reach the next level that you'd really have to overshoot your goal to risk gaining two levels. But up until you're about level 30, I'd advocate training anything that you'll want to have up to level 50 before delving hard core into paying for things out of your own pocket.

Yes, that a deceptively powerful perk there. Being able to cash in your excess potions as training and/or soul gems is no small luxury.

I can't get over the expansion in alchemy reagents for sale. I listed several of them, but there are probably close to 10 different ingredients that you see for sale after getting merchant that you won't ever see before that. The most useful is probably bear claws, just because there's a few high value potions with that as a required ingredient. While bears in skyrim aren't exactly rare, I still have no desire to go out and actively hunt them for their claws.

But the merchant perk is so useful that it may be worth training speech in the early going (only to level 50 of course). There are trainers at the Bards College, and from the bard in the inn at Markarth, both easy to reach, and require no quest performed before offering training. There really is little downside to doing this, as speech is a skill that will keep paying you pack all game, with better prices for every transaction.

I'm planning to try something seriously different: Only go as far as Elven and Arcane Smithing. Elven is the lightest armor in the game, and since the materials are cheap, I can make dozens of complete new sets as I go whenever I feel like I need an upgrade. There's only a three damage points difference between Elven and Daedric daggers, and totally pales in comparison to the +46 damage bonus available from triple craft smithing.

You won't miss the difference in the eventual end-game damage, but I'm wondering how you hope to get to the end game wearing only elven armor. You won't be able to craft much early on, and the base armor of a full set of elven armor (without a shield) is just 61. Comparatively, the Thieves Guild armor offers a base defense of 68, and the Dark Brotherhood set can get you to 72 base defense. (But only if you pick up the shrouded cowl on the shelf instead of using the shrouded hood Astrid gives you. You'd want to cowl anyway, as the cowl gives +20% bow damage, whereas the hood gives +25% chance to sneak - nothing to sneeze at either way, but damage is king.) In fact, you can mix and match the two sets to get the better attributes from each of them, which would probably be far more useful to this stealth build far into the game until you get that enchanting quite high. I'd take the body armor and the boots from the Thieves Guild set, and the cowl and the gloves from the Dark Brotherhood set (base defense 64 - nearly identical to elven). So the only reason to pick up elven smithing at all in the early going would be for the weapon, which you'll admittedly need as you don't want to be stuck with an iron dagger.

One other thing about a character you plan to train a lot - you pick your race based on whichever one has the best special abilities for your play style. There's no reason to pick a bosmer just to get archery at 25 to start. You're going to level the crap out of it anyway, and it will be 50 before you know it. You'd be much better off picking an Altmer, to get the free +50 magicka, and save yourself 5 attribute increases while leveling up.

EDIT: one other concern for the elven armor is if you want your base defense to reach 567. Each point in light armor gives a cumulative 0.5% bonus to armor rating, meaning even at level 100, you'd only get to 91. Are you willing to spend (a lot of) perks to raise it futher?

[Sir Rechet]

Originally Posted by Aldeth the Foppish Idiot

What schools of magic are you planning on focusing on? Obviously you're using both conjuration and destruction, but if you are planning on using conjuration just for soul trap and bound weapons, I'm assuming that you're picking up at least one more school.

All of the magic schools will get their fair share of using, but only Destruction will see a significant and very early perk investment to be able to use it as you main source of dps early on. I'm assuming Alteration as the second once dual enchants come into play, but that largely depends whether Mass Paralyze is worth its name or not. Conjuration gets a fat zero perks as you don't really want to deal with the extra hassle of summons when using stealth, really.

Well, provided you have the coin to spend, you certainly can work on it early. Not only is Faendal the first trainer you meet, but by the time he takes you to 50, you'll probably be in Whiterun, and can switch over to Aela. After that, Riften is just a carriage ride away to get to Niruin who could take you all the way to 90.

Work on it early until it reaches level 50, that is. Actually maxing it comes a distant second as Destruction is most likely more effective early on for anything that doesn't involve sniping targets from afar.

But the merchant perk is so useful that it may be worth training speech in the early going (only to level 50 of course). There are trainers at the Bards College, and from the bard in the inn at Markarth.

Thanks for the tip, I'll certainly pay a visit to at least one of them early on - not only for the speech training but so that I'll have more fast travel targets to shuffle between when doing the pickpocket train routine combined with a frenzied leveling of all the three crafting skills with store-bought ingredients.

You won't miss the difference in the eventual end-game damage, but I'm wondering how you hope to get to the end game wearing only elven armor.

How come? The base stats of the armor and weapons are largely irrelevant once you reach a decent level in smithing. The catch is that you need to be able to improve items with perk for it to really kick in. Already 60 Smithing, the difference between Flawless (+7/+13) with perk and Superior (+3/+6) without is larger than the difference between Elven and Daedric items. Add in an extremely modest +50% smithing enchanted apparel and another +33% from a self-made potion, both available at very modest skill and perk levels, and you're looking at double boost from Smithing already.

With the four non-shield armor locations available, that's +104 armor for an Elven set (at 60 Smithing) vs. +48 armor for anything else. Except for Steel, of course, since you need the perk in it to get Elven, but there's no Light version of Steel armor. Hence, the perk in Elven smithing. Which, coincidentally, happens to have the second best quality of them all: Extremely low weight. And cost ain't bad either. So what's not to like?

Edit: Of course, if any of the quest reward/looted items can be upgraded with either Steel or Elven smithing, even better. But at the very least, you'll need Arcane Smithing to be able to improve something that's already enchanted.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by Sir Rechet

I'm assuming Alteration as the second once dual enchants come into play, but that largely depends whether Mass Paralyze is worth its name or not.

Sadly, I can be of no help in that regard as I've never cast that spell. Of course you could buy a scroll, make a set of armor which lowers the magicka cost of Alteration magic (because I think the magicka requirement on it is about 1000), and at that point decide whether or not you want to perk up in the Alteratoin tree. As a sneak character, the possibility of making Illusion your second school has a lot of appeal as well.

Thanks for the tip, I'll certainly pay a visit to at least one of them early on

I don't remember either of their names, but the one in the Markarth Inn is quite obvious, as he's the guy singing. The one at the Bard's College may take a bit of looking for. It's the guy with the fur hat that you bring the drum to. Again, no idea what his name is. (I know it's Rjorn's Drum, but the guy you return it to is NOT named Rjorn.)

I'll have more fast travel targets to shuffle between when doing the pickpocket train routine combined with a frenzied leveling of all the three crafting skills with store-bought ingredients.

Now this I find curious and it's definitely a difference between our characters. As I said, in the early going I trained mostly my warrior skills. Once I hit around level 30, I had to limit my crafting not because I didn't want to do it, but because after I got all of the skills I wanted to train for free, the crafting skills were yielding way too much experience. Crafting is profitable, but there's no way when you're level 30 that you can craft 10,000 gold worth of potions and enchanted gear and not level your crafting skills several times. When you're level 50, and you need so much more experience to reach the next level, crafting is an excellent means of raising the funds. My character is now level 51, and he's raising pretty much all the money he needs through crafting. (He still has a ways to go. All 3 crafting skills are in the 60s and 70s.)

How come?

Sorry - I worded my statement terribly. I wasn't suggesting that you couldn't make it through the game using exclusively elven armor. Heck, even without triple crafting, a set of elven armor made with a set of smithing gear and a regular potion, can certainly get to high defense levels.

My point was twofold. 1.) I erroneously assumed that hyper-leveling your crafting skills early in the game would be difficult, for reasons I stated above (I still don't know how you managed). Meaning you wouldn't be able to get the most out of elven armor early on. It was quite some time before I got my crafting skills up to level 60. 2.) Due to that, I assumed that sticking with one of the set armors from the Thieves' Guild or the Dark Brotherhood, (and later on the Guild Master's and Nightingale Sets) would provide a better mix of bonuses than elven armor. The Nightingale Set would also give a boost to Illusions spells while you were leveling to boot.

Hope you didn't mind that I piggy-backed onto your FMT thread. (And I was planning on expanding it with my build today.) I figured that since we conversed at length about this build, and yet were taking our characters in very different directions, it was a means of showing that you can do just about anything with this type of character.

[Sir Rechet]

I haven't actually tried hyper-leveling, but I'm aware that you can't go full bore in both triple crafting skills AND pick pocket training at the same time without risking missing levels as you go.

Rather, I see that pickpocket training will only fuel itself so far. (Unless you do some adventuring of your own in between, of course.) And crafting is rather nice thing to fill the gaps with, as it generates gold that you're going to need later on to be able to keep training at every level.

I created the new thread so that we don't have to confuse readers in which one of the builds - Gimpus or FMT - we're talking about. Let's keep this thread about Gimpus, shall we?

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Oh, I didn't quite get why you wouldn't be able to continue pick pocket training for quite a while?

As I see it, you'll have at least a few skills you'll never train yourself, so those are a-okay to train to 50 at any time, ie. you are good for at least 20+ levels right there and then. You have at least 50 points you can use early on to train stuff you actually need to survive so add ten more. I wouldn't be surprised if you maxed your pick pocket a long way before reaching that so you stop leveling by using it, and that's exactly the gap most suited to be filled with more crafting.