Gimpus Maximus

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

That should be what I named my current character. As is well known, because of the leveling system employed in Skyrim, it is possible to "gimp" your character by leveling skills that serve no combat benefit early on. You gain experience, so you gain levels, and thereby increase the difficulty of enemies you encounter, despite not having the necessary items and skills for combat to kill those harder enemies.

NOTE: If you don't powergame, there will be little practical utility in reading the lengthy post that follows.

I took that concept to an extreme with my current character. I trained the maximum of five times for every single level I earned. I didn't care how I did it. At first I just took Faendal as a follower and took back the money I spent training. Upon arrival at Whiterun, I used Armen and the companions to accomplish the same. Up to level 50, training costs absolutely nothing, because you can pickpocket back the money you spend on training from the trainer with a high degree of success. (Requires abuse of quick save/quick load until you get good at it, but it's best to start training with skills that you only have the base level of 15 at first, because they cost the least, and thus have the highest chance of success to steal back.)

But here's the mechanic that allows this to be so powerful: Since you're stealing the money back, you also are leveling pickpocket. You don't necessarily have to spend your perks in pickpocket, but you're getting the experience either way. Almost every time you successfully pickpocket, you'll gain a level in pickpocketing, up until that skill gets to around 60 or so, after that you'll need to pickpocket twice to see the advancement. As it so happens, the combined experience increase you get from the pickpocket skill and whatever skill you happened to be training can often times exceed the amount of experience you need to reach the next level - even though the only thing you did was train and pickpocket. This then allows you to train an additional five times, and raise the pickpocket skill even further. I was level 10 when I arrived in Whiterun, but I was level 22 when I left, without actually killing anything. All of it was from training, stealing, and a little bit of enchanting/alchemy/smithing experience mixed in.

Now this character was my first attempt at using a mage. And it certainly accomplished the gimp part of the character. I had an extremely limited amount of spells, not much experience in the mage skills, and no perks in any of the combat skills that I had trained. (In fact, at one point I had 9 unspent perks lying around, because I wanted to spend all of them in mage skills, but I was of insufficient level to spend them yet.) So he was gimped.

The other issue is that without perks spent, and only a decent skill level of no more than 50 in anything, it's hard to use those skills you did level to much affect. And that's because the "stealing back the money you spent on training" only works for cheap training skills - and that gravy train comes to an end for training skills beyond level 50. Wearing the boots from the thieves' guild set along with a decent pickpocket skill will grant a 90% chance of success of getting your money back up to level 50. As soon as you hit level 51 though, the cost to train triples, and your 90% chance drops to around 10%.

I have found that a pickpocket skill of 100 in conjunction with wearing the boots from the thieves guild set allows for a 90% chance of success for pickpocket anything worth about 900 gold or less. Beyond that, the chance of success drops off a cliff. Looking at my chance to pickpocket a gold diamond necklace worth 1200 gold, the chance was only 30%. Since even at level 51, the cost of training is 1550 gold, you have no chance of success at all - chance to pickpocket displays as 0%. If you're willing to spend some of your precious perks in pickpocket, as my last character did, you can extend your free training up to about level 75. This is assuming you have 100 in pickpocket skill, are wearing the thieves' guild boots, and have 5 perks spent in light fingers, along with night thief and cutpurse (so all of the relevant perks that will help you in stealing gold). This grants a 90% (or close to it) chance of success for anything worth about 3000 gold or less. The problem with this method is that once you go beyond 75, you'll be looking at more than 3000 gold. (To train to level 90, the cost is 4550 gold.) That's because the wiki page is actually wrong regarding the cost for skill training. It states:

Up to level 50: 10 * [skill level] + 50 That's true.

Level 51 or more: 30 * [skill level] + 50 That's not entirely true. It's true for level 51-75. The cost to train a skill from level 74 to 75 is 2300 gold, which follows that formula.

However, to train to level 76, it costs 3850 gold. That follows the formula:
50 * skill level + 50. So the cost increase is actually greater than that going from level 50 to 51. (In absolute gold, not in terms of a percentage.)

What this means is that you need 8000 - 10000 gold to train 5 times in a skill between levels 51 - 75, depending on where you are in that 51-75 range, and between 19000 - 22000 gold to train levels 76 - 90. That is to say, MONEY NEVER BECOMES IRRELEVANT. You need hundreds of thousands of gold pieces to get your training fix on. This is most efficiently accomplished by taking missions from Vex and Delvin in the thieves guild. It is true that finishing the Dark Brotherhood questline and getting missions from the Night Mother for additional contracts generally offers more than the 1000 gold that you'd get from performing a mission from both Vex and Delvin, it is more time consuming, especially because you usually earn more money by stealing valuables in the home, as well as pickpocketing the owners of the home and business (best done at night, where the homeowners are sleeping). You can typically earn about 2000 gold between the reward and selling off the fenced items for each pair of missions you complete.

But once you actually start going with this character, the sky is the limit in terms of power. I'm level 44 right now, and he's not even close to being "done". Almost all of my skills are at least level 50, but other than pickpocketing, nothing is over level 80. I'm going to blow past the level 50 soft cap without even slowing down. I'm deliberately NOT working much on my crafting skills, because that causes me to level TOO quickly. I need time to procure 10000 gold each level - I can't be getting experience for crafting on top of that. I'm already to the point that I often delay leveling up because I haven't yet trained 5 times. (There have been occasions where I delayed leveling to the point that upon training 5 times, I was already 3/4 of the way to the NEXT level.)

So here's where we stand right now:

All of my warrior skills are level 50-75 except blocking, which is like 20.

All of my thief skills are at level 50-75 except pickpocket, which is the only skill I've maxed at this point. (Note: The thief skills were accomplished without training. All of my training went to warrior and mage skills. I got the thief levels the old fashioned way - I actually earned them.)

All of my mage skills are level 50-80 except Alteration, which is about 40, and Restoration, which is around 30. Alteration will still advance slowly because of transmuting, but I rarely have to heal myself anymore, so I don't see how restoration is going to go up much from here.

[joacqin]

Hehe, when do you actually play the game? I also wonder if you played Oblivion or Morrowind cause they had even more complicated and open for power gaming levelling system.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Well you've GOT to play the game to get the cash. Yes, I do a lot of Vex and Delvin missions, but it's not like you can do those exclusively for money. (Well, I guess technically you CAN but you'd have to do about 10 of each to get the money.) Basically, the strategy is to do a Vex and Delvin mission along with a quest or dungeon of some type. (Like taking out a wanted bandit or a giant with a gold reward attached.) It's all about the Benjamins with this character, and I don't work for free. Now that I have a decent amount of levels in my magic skills, I can actually, you know, do bounty quests. Dragons were a major pain in the ass in the early going because they could one-shot me even when I was level 35 or so. Last night I completed the last of the Delvin special missions, which are basically all bandit camps too (albeit larger than a standard bandit camp, with more treasure).

The character concept is battle mage. I want him to be able to fling spells, and yet be able to whip out a battle hammer when it gets to melee combat. I think he's going to be exceedingly good at it. It's just recently in his career that he's using magic more than melee weapons. Of course, that was a conscious decision on my part. I knew that by pouring all my early training into the warrior tree that I was necessarily gimping the magic side. The early miscalculation was in how much more damage dragons do on the highest difficulty, combined with a lower than normal health allocation. While I am power gaming, I have spent more level ups on magicka than health or stamina. Not a ton more, but I have about 100 more magicka than health or stamina. I'll eventually get free spells, but I'd never be able to use much magic at all if I didn't invest in it. And I still plan on needing magicka for my summons.

So I went with the warrior training early, switched to mage training, and when that's done I'll go back to warrior training. The switch back to warrior will probably happen around level 50. My destruction skill is currently level 77, and both illusion and conjuration are about 70. So there simply isn't a lot of training left to do with those skills. In fact, I haven't trained illusion since I could do it for free. It seems to be progressing fairly well on it's own. My character is quite stealthy as well, and I see no reason NOT to have muffle active whenever I'm in a dungeon. And I always cast frenzy whenever I'm up against more than one enemy, so my illusion levels pretty quickly. Conjuration doesn't level quickly, but I'm OK with that, as it's easily my least-used combat school. What I don't get is why destruction levels so slowly - I use that a lot.

EDIT: The other point of trying this type of character was because I wanted to up the challenge of the game. Granted, when I hit level 60 and am uber in all ways, it will actually make the game easier. But the point was that in the beginning, it was a lot harder - harder than any of my previous characters in fact. Granted, now I'm wondering if this character wouldn't even be more powerful if I concentrated on warrior perks and only dabbled in magic instead of the other way around. Like only work on two schools of magic that I would eventually be able to cast for free. I could attempt to get by with a bare bones minimum number of perks, and have more left over for the warrior side of things. Of the 43 perks I've earned thus far, at least 30 were spent in mage skills.

[Sir Rechet]

So wait a minute.. you did all that to willfully GIMP yourself to increase difficulty early on? While at the same time paving way for total pwnage soon thereafter? Isn't that kind of backwards?

Also.. how did you train so much when you can only train a total of 400 skill levels between character levels 1 and 81? Or did you train some of your warrior skills yourself as well?

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by Sir Rechet

So wait a minute.. you did all that to willfully GIMP yourself to increase difficulty early on? While at the same time paving way for total pwnage soon thereafter? Isn't that kind of backwards?

I guess it is if you look at it that way, but with my previous characters it was total pwnage by the time I was level 40 or 45 anyway. So the end wasn't going to be hard anyway. Now I can dole out a variety of ass-kicking as I see fit. Throw a frenzy into the middle of a bandit camp for some pandemonium, cast a couple of atronachs next to the bandit leader, disintegrate one with chain lightning (is there a death animation for that? The death animations I've seen with spells are pretty much all second rate - I want to see skin melting off damn it!), and crush the last one's skull in with a battle hammer.

Also.. how did you train so much when you can only train a total of 400 skill levels between character levels 1 and 81? Or did you train some of your warrior skills yourself as well?

Yes, I did. While I made sure I trained 5 times every damn level - and believe me once you get everything to 50 it's hard to raise adequate funds before you hit the next level - initially I pumped all my warrior training at the expense of my mage skills. (Mostly because I didn't want to "waste" those training opportunities before heading to Winterhold.) So while I wasn't spending any perks on warrior skills, there was hardly anything I could invest perks into mage wise, so out of necessity I was using bows, battle hammers, and steel armor in the early going, but not wasting my perk points on them. So yeah, I probably trained 60-70 levels worth of warrior advancement in the beginning of the game, but since I was also using the warrior skills I also did some of the leveling through use.

I mean, when I was level 25, I had Fury, but not Frenzy (because it wasn't offered for sale yet, because my illusion skill wasn't high enough), the problem being that Fury tends not to work against a leveled opponent. And while Flame Atronachs help, they aren't going to dispose of most enemies by themselves. They're more like an extra damage source - I had to get in there and mix it up. I did use destruction spells when I could - usually against a single foe where if it took a little longer to kill him it wouldn't matter. But against multiple foes it was flame atronach and hammer time. And I still use my battle hammer now. I've mostly disposed of the bow - I still carry one, but I don't really use it anymore. I can do much more damage with spells from a distance.

But there is something very gratifying when you've killed everyone except the bandit leader, he finally gets up next to you after blasting through your flame atronach, and says something to the effect of "I have you now", thinking you're some wimpy ass mage who is screwed once you get close. Then you take out your battle hammer and effectively say, "Bring it, be-atch!" and proceed to crush his skull in. (Incidentally, two power hammer hits pretty much end the fight. Especially if you start by doing a running power attack - if that connects it's pretty much game over.

My only regret is that this character is finally getting really fun, and I won't be able to play much this week - I'm heading out of state later this week for a wedding in the family.

EDIT: By the end of the game, this character will be close to maxed out. I'm going to go back to the warrior skills once I'm done with training the mage skills, which will be accomplished in the next few levels. Thief skills are coming along nicely enough without help. I'm thinking that by the end game the only skills that will NOT be level 50+ (with the vast majority being 75+) will be blocking, light armor, and restoration. Probably good enough for about level 70ish.

[Sir Rechet]

Oh, that makes sense then. So you're effectively playing the almighty F/M/T from D&D lore. With the extra spice brought by the dynamic leveling thinking you're a high level bad-ass when you're, in fact, just a third of this, a third of that and a third of the other.

That's pretty darn creative way of gaming the system to get the harder difficulty setting as it was supposed to be: rather than (only?) doing the lame straight damage bonus/penalty routine, you get to meet tougher opponents as as a wet-eared newbie, based on the actual skill levels you need to use to bring the opposition down.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Greetings from the great white north - although it isn't all that great and it definitely isn't white.

Anyway, that was the plan exactly. The first 40 or so levels are really tough this way. You are a level 40 character, but you only have the mage skills of a mage that is about half your actual level. Like I said, since I'm training every level, I'm getting gobs of experience from stuff that I don't necessarily NEED, just stuff that is nice to have.

I'm also going to have spare perks left over, although I'm not there yet. If this character does make it to level 70ish like I hope, that's going to equate to about 10 or so spare perks, which probably will go into warrior skills - two handed most likely. But I'm getting all that I want from the mage tree first.

I'm still on the fence with Alteration. I do like the magic protection, which can get to 30% if you get Alteration to 90. Now, I probably won't get it to 90, but I can get 20% with two perks at level 60, which I feel is attainable. However, there are two prerequisite (novice and apprentice alteration) perks, and I have to decide if I want to spend 4 perks for 20% magic resistance.

EDIT: Technically I did NOT train every level. I think I was already level 3 or 4 when I got to Riverwood. Which was actually an oversight on my part. I didn't HAVE to do that mine in the beginning before picking up Faendal, and I could have avoided leveling before going to Riverwood at all.

[Paracelsi]

Not worth it if you're Breton imo, or if you use the Atronach stone.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by Paracelsi

Not worth it if you're Breton imo, or if you use the Atronach stone.

I'm not sure how magic resistance or spell absorption would obviate the need for leveling, or the advantages gained by training. Or does that completely miss your point?

I'm actually rethinking this character. Gimpus may in fact serve more as a proof of concept character as opposed to actually being the ultimate fighter-mage. I'm not disappointed that I made him, because it showed that doing this actually works. It's just that after some more careful consideration, the end design is sub-optimal if you're really trying to make a battlemage or a F/M/T at the end of it. This character is primarily a mage, with a little bit of warrior and thief sprinkled in.

If you're going to be a true battlemage, you need to spend perks in at least two classes, and probably all three. (Not counting the three crafting skills.)

So what I'm thinking is that I'll make a Breton, and go for a more even distribution of perks. Since the last character spent a lot of time leveling warrior skills first, I may as well take some perks in the warrior skills to. The only perks on the warrior tree that were taken with Gimpus v1.0 were the smithing ones. The result was a character who could get by with a weapon in a pinch, but with no perks he was never going to be able to hold his own in any extended battle with anything more than a wolf.

That's going to change. The cost of this is going to have to come from mage perks, and I'll do it by limiting my perk distribution to two schools of magic instead of three. I'll still use all three, but I'm only going to have the perks to fully develop two. And those two will be destruction and conjuration. Illusion will still be decently high just because I always use muffle when creeping around in dungeons. Alteration will gradually level through use of transmute, and of course I'll get a little bit of restoration from healing (although Gimpus only had restoration at 30ish).

The final change with this character is that the mage skills are going to have to develop almost exclusively through training. To limit the perks spent in my mage skills to what I really need, this character won't be able to shine until my enchanting reaches 100 anyway, so he'll actually be a warrior until level 40 or so. In theory, I would require up to 28 levels of training to fully train conjuration and destruction to level 90. (Although honestly, I probably won't need quite that much, as I will use them to a limited extent.)

So here's the plan for Gimpus v2.0. He's a true battle mage, sword and shield style. (After trying one handed with shield, two handed, and dual wielding, I have found that the benefits of having a shield to be the best fit for my play style. Since a shield can be used offensively with proper perk placement, you're not really going all defense by carrying a shield. Like the last character, since some many of the perks are late game perks, this character will continue to improve throughout his life.

Warrior perks:

Archery:
Overdraw 1-5
Eagle Eye

One-Handed:
Armsman 1-5
Fighting Stance

Blocking:
Shield Wall
Quick Reflexes
Deflect Arrows
Power Bash
Elemental Protection
Deadly Bash
Black Runner

Smithing:
Steel
Dwarven
Orcish
Arcane
Ebony
Daedric
(I don't need no stinkin' Dragon Smithing.)

Total Warrior Perks: 25

Thief Perks:

Sneak:
Stealth
Muffled Movement
Backstab
Deadly Aim
Assassin's Blade

Speech (can't help it, I love it):
Haggling
Allure
Merchant

Pickpocket:
Light Fingers
Night Thief
Cutpurse

Total Thief Perks: 11

Mage Perks:

Conjuration:
Novice Conjuration
Dual Casting
Summoner 1 and 2
Atromancy
Elemental Potency
Twin Souls

Destruction:
Novice Destruction
Dual Casting
Augmented Frost 1 and 2
Augmented Shock 1 and 2
Impact
Deep Freeze
Disintegrate

Enchanting:
Enchanter 1-5
Insightful Enchanter
Corpus Enchanter
Extra Effect

Total Mage Perks: 24

Total Perks - an even 60. Easily doable. Well maybe not easily, but definitely doable. The last few warrior perks in each tree are more fluff than anything, and Gimpus v 1.0 had no problem blowing past level 50. But Gimpus v2.0 will have nearly an even split between warrior and mage perks (25 versus 24), with 11 thrown into thief. Now THAT is a true battlemage!

[Paracelsi]

Only meant it as far as sinking points into Alteration for magic resistance is concerned.

You don't need to raise Summoner to level 2, it's only nice if you're a conjurer character and you need to use your minions tactically. As an F/M/T you can simply sneak in, switch to a bow and snipe the things.

[Sir Rechet]

While your character build certainly meets the criteria for a battlemage, game mechanics kinda spoil the fun. You have to select between a bow and spells for long range combat, and neither can be used seamlessly with melee weapons. At the very least there's a short delay while switching between them.

Or is it just me that fails on setting up my quick keys / binds so that it works? Or perhaps you use the voice commands to come over these hurdles?

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Voice commands do not over-ride the slight delay between switching weapons. Although that is kind of realistic. While another weapon should be able to be equipped quickly, it shouldn't be instantaneous. In most games it is - in equipping a new item it instantly appears in your hand. To tell the truth, I probably will NOT be using bows long term. But I do need some type of distance attack for dragons, especially considering my spells will take forever in the early going to knock them out of the sky.

I played for a couple of hours yesterday, got to Whiterun, and already have a level 22 character. (As I said previously, the levels go ridiculously quickly in the early going, as the amount of experience you gain for training the skills plus the pickpocketing experience generally are enough to get you to the next level. Sure, you need more experience with each level up, but that's not a big deal as you also are receiving more experience with each level up in pickpocket.)

Unlike my first character who just about peaked at this point in terms of unspent perks, this character doesn't have any unspent perks. Also unlike my first character, other than novice destruction/conjuration and dual casting, all of them are in warrior skills. I have not yet fought the dragon, which will definitely be able to one-shot me again, but this time I'm hoping with a bit more developed bow skill that it won't be the multiple-attempt ordeal I had the first time.

I also made a few corrections from the first character. For example, I went straight the Riverwood out of Helgen, and trained with Faendal 5 times before hitting level up. (I was just shy of hitting level 3 with the 5 trainings.) I also proceeded immediately to Whiterun instead of doing the Golden Claw quest (which I'm now doing) so I could start training something other than my bow.

The only mistake I've made is that I forgot to buy a muffle book at Winterhold on my first visit. That should also save me a skill point, as I believe the spell muffle is a better version of the muffled movement perk in the sneak tree. Or do they stack cumulatively?

[joacqin]

Pretty sure they are the same thing. Same with the boots you get from the assassins.

[Sir Rechet]

They do stack, however it's kinda pointless that they do. Muffled movement perk gives 50% reduction in noise caused by armor (upgraded to 100% by Silence perk), while the spell gives straight 100% for a total of 150%. However, anything past 100% is wasted points. Since you aim to have Muffle (the spell) on all the time, you're effectively wasting perk points to get more Muffle. So it kinda boils down whether you like Silent Roll and Shadow Warrior or not and whether they're worth the prereq points to get them.

As far as I can tell, only Pickpocket and Stealth have long-term benefits in boosting them with corresponding enchants, apart from the more obvious ones such as One-handed boosting your one-handed damage (but not daggers) and such.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by Sir Rechet

Since you aim to have Muffle (the spell) on all the time, you're effectively wasting perk points to get more Muffle. So it kinda boils down whether you like Silent Roll and Shadow Warrior or not and whether they're worth the prereq points to get them.

That's what I basically thought - that the spell is a better version than the perk. And I only really need the stuff on the right hand side of the Sneak perks. I wasn't planning on going past Muffled Movement regardless, so now I get to skip that one too.

As far as I can tell, only Pickpocket and Stealth have long-term benefits in boosting them with corresponding enchants

I believe Lockpicking would also qualify. Although of those, the only quantifiable benefit would be to lockpicking, as you can see the benefit from improved chance of pickpocketing on the more valuable stuff.

I keep thinking of new builds, although there are some perks that I just don't see the sense in. Aside from the armor perks - and at least some of those that don't just give a straight armor increase have tangible - if not really necessary - benefits, I can't see why anyone would spend perks to fill the speech category. Sure, Master Trader sounds great - effectively doubling or more the gold that every merchant has - but you'd need to fill in just about the entire tree to get there. And the ability to sell fenced items and have run of the mill merchants with more gold isn't nearly as big of a deal if you actually do the thieves guild, and get the fences with 4000 gold each.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Gimpus v2.0 is coming along nicely, now level 30. The progress is much easier when you can reasonably expect to win a fight through use of melee combat. He's not so good that he can just tank everything, and it is definitely advisable to limit the number of enemies you fight at once, but by picking some early warrior perks, and also incorporating stealth into this build has made the going considerably easier.

I'm advancing my mage skills almost solely through training (except for illusion, because I do cast muffle). In fact, for now I'm sticking with the warrior stone, as I'm not casting spells often enough for it to outweigh the benefits of having the warrior stone active instead. I've minimized my trips for training magic by holding off until I'm nearly at the next level. Then I train 5 times, level up, and train another 5 times, meaning I can go nearly two full levels between trips.

The other positive change with this method is it delays the point where I have to spend gobs and gobs of money for training. I'm only now at the point where destruction and conjuration are at level 50 and I'll have to start paying for the training without getting my gold back. I did notice that the conjuration trainer at Winterhold is an expert, not a master. After I checked the other trainers, and it turns out that there is an even split between expert and master trainers. (I had assumed they were all master trainers.) Illusion, Destruction, and Alteration have expert trainers, while Conjuration, Enchanting, and Restoration have expert trainers. I believe one of the court wizards (maybe in Markarth?) is a master trainer, so I'll have to finish up Conjuration there.

So I have about 80 or so more points left to train, and I already trained the 5 times at level 30, so I need 16 more levels before switching back to the warrior skills through the companions. Actually, that reminds me - I haven't even started the Companions quest line, because of the screwed up first mission they gave me. Granted, I've only done the quest line a couple of times, but the first quest "Trouble in Skyrim" where you have to prove yourself to become a member had always been a bandit camp right outside Whiterun. This time they want me to clear out a group of mages, which I'm OK with, but the camp is located way the hell out in the southwest. The closest city is Markarth, but it's no where close. I have no unrevealed locations in that part of the world, and I'm disinclined to trek all the way out there just for that.

I'm slowly expanding my list of perks I want to pick up. I decided that I DO want all three elements in destruction, so that's another 3 points. And I'm seriously considering picking up the "Extra Pockets" perk in pickpocket for the extra 100 carrying capacity. It's not entirely essential that I get it, but it would be convenient, and I already have all the prerequisites, so it's just one more point. Of course the "just one more perk" thinking can be dangerous. I'm now up to 65 perks for the "done" character. So getting to (or at least close to) level 70 isn't really optional if this character is going to be completed.

[Sir Rechet]

I guess as long as you don't mind the early difficulty hump, this would be the preferable way of boosting a wide range of skills at once. Going dual-class style where you suddenly switch over from your newly acquired 100-skills to your new set, quite possibly as low as in their 20's, seems much more of a stretch of immersion.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

I have a question on the destruction perks. Do the three perks final perks for each element - the ones after "Augment [element]" - so Intense Flames, Deep Freeze, and Disintegrate actually, um... do anything in the form of extra damage? If I spend a perk point here am I just spending a perk for a different death animation? What does low health actually mean? If low health is like less than 10%, then I can quite easily cast one more spell to finish them off rather that having them paralyzed or disintegrated. (There's no way I want Intense Flames - the idea of a nearly dead opponent running away from me does not seem like an effect I'd want.

Another odd thing about this character who is now at level 41, is that I've hardly seen any dragons. The last character had dragons everywhere. This character has killed like 3. Seriously. At level 41. And every single one of those has been a town attack, so I've get to go toe-to-toe with a dragon with this character. Given how my previous character fared against dragons for the first 40 or so levels, that may qualify as a good thing.

And levels are still coming really easy. Although now I think I've finally reached a point where generating income isn't much of a problem, because I spent my playing time this weekend doing all of the extra merchant quests for the thieves guild as well as picking up several fences from the thieves main quest line. Alchemy is certainly the biggest money maker of the three crafting skills, with the problem being that it's nearly impossible to unload your potions unless all you want to do is travel from shop to shop.

In fact, if you don't join the thieves guild and unlock the bonus merchants to get more gold into the fences coffers, I don't know what you'd do. Without those, the only places to sell potions are the potion dealers (which typically only have 500 gold) and general merchants (which typically have 750 gold). So you can only off load about 1250 gold per town, and that's the hard way to get rid of your potions. Although you could get the "Merchant" speech perk, which would allow you to unload potions at any merchant. Still the long way, although you could unload quite a few in any town with a lot of merchants, like Riften or Solitude.

Anyway, here's my circuit that I've been doing. It's get thief missions, visit blacksmiths and alchemists while doing them, go back to the Riften alchemists, return to theives guild, brew more potions.

Example: I'll talk to Vex and Delvin, and they'll give me missions. Let's say they send me to Markarth and Solitude on my missions. I'll head over to Markarth, complete the thieves guild mission, but also visit the Hag's Cure and Ghorza, the blacksmith (I have no idea if her shop has a name). I'll buy all the alchemical ingredients and all the iron and silver ore. I'll also visit Endon as I'm likely carrying a ton of potions.

Next stop is Solitude. Complete thieves guild mission. Stop by Angeline's Armotatics for alchemical supplies, Beirand for ore, and stop by Gulum-Ei for potion sales.

Return to Riften. Stop by Elgrim's Elixers and Balimund for alchemical ingredients and ore. Head to the Flagon, visit the alchemy merchant (don't remember his name), and then craft a whole mess of potions from all the ingredients I bought along the way. Visit the other three merchants that usually have ore for sale, selling potions to all of them before heading over to Tonilla, although the Riften merchants typically don't have enough gold by themselves to buy all my potions.

Lather, rinse, and repeat. I only smith when I get a thieves guild mission to Whiterun or Windhelm, as those are the only places that have smelters. Enchanting is done as soul gems allow. (I only buy the petty and lesser ones.) A little tedious, but I haven't maxed out any of my crafting skills, and I need to do that with this build eventually.

[Sir Rechet]

Last time I checked the destruction "finisher" perks are mostly for show, albeit paralyze could be an interesting effect but it triggers too late, at 20% health, to be of (pretty much any) use. Disintegrate is an insta-kill effect but it triggers even lower, at 15% hp.

Doing the buy-craft-sell routine like you describe is soon going to eat a vast majority of you playing time, and it becomes a chore after a while. I did that.. bad idea for game immersion.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

It's already getting freaking old. That's the one drawback to this character build. I've reached the point where I need to gather up around 20,000 gold per level to train. There's no way to do that by general questing, as it causes you to level too fast. So what I'm doing is making this circuit twice every time I level up to pay for the training, and then doing another mission for either the thieves or assassin's guild.

It has also caused me to stop the Thieves' Guild missions for a time and starting progressing the Dark Brotherhood missions, because the next mission for the Thieves' Guild is to track down Mercer through those Falmer ruins, and that's a big ass dungeon. I'm DEFINITELY going to level if I go through that.

The other thing is that this character is now ready to reach his full potential. I just need my crafting skills to be higher to make the proper enchanted equipment to do it, and there's no way to level your crafting skills other than by resource procurement. The fact that leveling crafting skills also provides a solid ROI makes it the most sensible option at this point. I need at least enchanting and smithing at 100, and even though I make most of my money through alchemy, it seems like I get much more experience from smithing and enchanting. Even though I'm an alchemy fiend at this point, my alchemy skill is still lagging behind both my smithing and enchanting skill. (Although that's fine - alchemy isn't the limiting factor in my eventual equipment selection.)

The other thought that occurred to me with this character is that I'll probably never go up the light armor side of the tree again. If I'm playing a stealth character, the armor sets you receive from questing are better than most of what you'll craft, until you can start making your own equipment, and by that time, you'll likely have received dragon smithing. But by going along the right side - with just one more perk spent - will give you access to the superior weapons the ride side offers.

[Sir Rechet]

What would you consider as best enchants for such a character?

Naturally it depends a whole lot if you want to tilt the balance of the build a little more towards rogue, fighter or mage or just keep them about equal, but some of the equipment slots seem to have quite natural "best in slot" regardless. Here's my rough order of priority:

1) Anything that can be enchanted with Magic Resistance should get exactly that. That's 1/2 of Neck and 1/2 Finger reserved. (I'm assuming no shield for this build as it precludes dual-casting, and Magic Resist perks from Alteration tree together with two enchants is enough in my book).
2) Destruction is by far the most important magic school to cut down in mana usage, both for spells themselves and for most weapon enchants, but the whole 100% requires four enchant slots. However, with a bit of extra push from Alchemy, you could combine one from Helm with two different ones (straight reduction and the one that gives +10% mana regen as well) in Chest for about 80% reduction in total while still leaving both Neck and Finger slots available for...
3) Archery. Although it kinda conflicts with spells (ranged damage), it's used for other purposes. Namely, you can't sneak attack with spells and single target dps is much higher with a bow backed with damage enchants. For large crowds of lesser enemies, Fire Storm from stealth ought to be the preferred alternative anyway.
4) One-handed would be the obvious #2 for Gloves (after Archery) but since it doesn't work with Daggers, might as well go with Sneak, same as for Boots. Speaking of Boots, since Muffle enchant is redundant with the spell, there's kinda few really good alternatives remaining. Any single resistance is situational, while Carry Weight at least has 24/7 utility.

Of course, Archery could be traded for a secondary magic school. For example, while Alteration surely ain't no major dps contender, the Master level spell Mass Paralyze could be a total game-changer on its own. And since you're going to want at least Magic Resistance from its perk tree (see #1 above), Stability and Atronach are kinda close picks already for some seriously useful effects for this kind of a character.

Edit: I'm also assuming that Conjuration is a big-time fail for a primarily STEALTH character, more suited as a meat-shield for your average keep-them-at-a-distance mage. Similarly, Illusion is mostly about crowd control, which is why you have Sneak to begin with, and most definitely obsolete if you can Paralyze them? Also, Illusion perks lack the general usefullness that Alteration ones have.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

First of all, I grossly over-estimated the cost of training - and the need for multiple 4K gold supply fences - at least in the short term. Yes, five high level training sessions set you back 20K gold, but I forgot that I now have the merchant perk. Since all the Winterhold trainers are also merchants, and since when you train, the gold gets added to the trainers gold supply, and since a single mass potion brewing session can EASILY net me 15K gold, all I got to do is buy my training back. I'm still happy I got the fences, as I won't be training from merchants forever, but there is less of a need for them at the moment.

So now I'm moving to the optimization part of this character build, namely getting my 3 crafting skills to 100, and then I unleash this character on Tameriel. My guestimate of my character level after maxing these skills is ~50, which is more than adequate to have both Conjuration and Destruction at least 90, more if I happen to level them in the meantime.

Here's the breakdown of the enchantments I picked out, and I'll give the explanation a little later on in response to your comments. The weapons will get priority of being Daedric crafts, for the added damage, although Enthir seems to have a daedric heart in his inventory every time I talk to him, so maybe all of it will be daedric. But high smithing skill + improved ebony armor will be more than adequate to reach the cap. It's simply an aesthetic choice at this point.

Armor, helm, ring, and amulet - Fortify Conjuration and Destruction. The armor specific one that gives magicka regeneration will be added for ease of use of spells not in the conjuration or destruction school, but it's largely superfluous. So yes, I will be going for free spells in two schools, with further explanation below.

Archery. Although it kinda conflicts with spells (ranged damage), it's used for other purposes. Namely, you can't sneak attack with spells and single target dps is much higher with a bow backed with damage enchants.

The problem with that theory is I haven't sunk a whole lot of perk points into archery, nor do I use or train my bow enough to have it be a solid damage dealer. I stopped training archery as soon as I got to Whiterun, and it's only 40-something. I got the three overdraw perks in it, but the only time I really use it is for knocking dragons out of the sky. Or occasionally to start a fight against a distant target.

The plan was to sort of get away from using bows once I got destruction firing on all cylinders, and so I broke from my original character plan. (It wasn't a conscious decision on my part, the character just kind of evolved that way over time.) I found I was far more effective in melee combat than I anticipated. This guy is a BATTLEMAGE. Or a FMT if you prefer. Or, perhaps most appropriately, a FIGHTER-MAGE-thief. Like 45% fighter, 45% mage, 10% thief.

One-handed would be the obvious #2 for Gloves (after Archery) but since it doesn't work with Daggers, might as well go with Sneak ... I'm also assuming that Conjuration is a big-time fail for a primarily STEALTH character

Daggers?!?! I don't need no stinkin' daggers! He is a battlemage, damnit! And he is NOT primarily a stealth character - he only uses it as it serves his purposes for fulfilling his Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood responsibilities. Granted his sneak is rather high - in the 60s - but that's because it's always useful to start the battle on your terms. I don't even HAVE the assassin's blade perk, as I discovered on my way to 50 stealth it was unnecessary.

With the right damage enhancements, sneak power attacks with one handed weapons with the backstab perk and the Dark Brotherhood gloves are more than adequate to take out most any opponent. I concede that I haven't tried the tactic against giants, mammoths, or dragons up to this point, so I can't say it's good enough for ALL enemies. (Yes, my pure stealth character could - and did - one-shot dragons. The dragon was dead before it hit the ground, without ever knowing it was under attack.)

This guy is a sword and shield character in melee! And a specialist in incapacitation with Soul trap and Paralyze on his sword, and gratuitous use of Deadly Bash.

Other equipment:

Gloves - Fortify One-Handed, Fortify Block (the choices are now obvious)
Boots - Fortify One-Handed, Fortify Stamina (probably). Haven't completely decided on the second enchantment, but with the extra pockets perk, I have a current carry capacity of 505, so I doubt I'll need more Carry Weight. Also not sure if Fortify Stamina Regeneration would be better, or just having more of it to begin with.
Shield - Fortify Block, Resist Magic (which is an enchantment I don't have yet - I'll have to start shopping.)

while Alteration surely ain't no major dps contender, the Master level spell Mass Paralyze could be a total game-changer on its own. And since you're going to want at least Magic Resistance from its perk tree (see #1 above), Stability and Atronach are kinda close picks already for some seriously useful effects for this kind of a character.

The issue is I probably won't have enough character levels to train Alteration to level 90. Leveling it to 90 through use is a fool's errand. While I have surely transmuted hundreds of units of iron ore with this character, the level progression of Alteration slows to a crawl after level 40. I would have to train 40+ points in Alteration to even be able to purchase such a spell, and I'm more inclined to sink those points into block and one-handed.

[Sir Rechet]

Ok, I just assumed you're going for assassin with a little mage and fighter sprinkled around.. Yea, that changes the game plan quite a bit. Ain't it strange how it's possible to turn the F/M/T archetype into two so diametrically opposing builds.

I find alteration easy to level as you go by using nothing but Waterbreathing, and starting out as either mage or rogue type will basically throw the spell book at you. Also, even the lowly Oakflesh with its +40 armor is quite a bit when you're decked in your starter armor, barely scratching the 100 armor mark. However, you don't really need (or even want) mana cost reduction for Alteration until you actually can cast those Master spells - ie. about the same time when you can expect to be able to craft double enchants.

I am planning to try daggers so that I can skip One-handed enchants this time. Or more specifically, I want to try a mostly ranged assassin character with bow and spells, and triple crafted dagger is all the melee I'll ever need without becoming stupendously overpowered by design. My early sources of damage will be Bound Bow (now that's a nice starter weapon if I ever saw one) and Destruction in general while I slowly learn how to make daggers worth mentioning in melee combat. Once I do, I should be mostly done with Destruction, using it for nothing more than the occasional well placed major AoE.

Training should be enough to cover the very few skills I don't actively use myself, ie. Heavy Armor, Block and Two-handed even if I'm inclined to drop in a few mid-game points into Destruction so that I can skip at least some of the extremely slow levels in the 70-90 skill range. While I won't be using Conjuration for the summons, I find that I want to be able to choose my Soul Trap targets proactively rather than filling up every stone in my inventory with the 3972 Petty Souls from as many Mudcrabs I happened to stumble across by having Soul Trap on my weapon.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by Sir Rechet

Ain't it strange how it's possible to turn the F/M/T archetype into two so diametrically opposing builds.

Yes. I was reading your post, and thinking, WHAT? No, that's not the game plan at all!

I find alteration easy to level as you go by using nothing but Waterbreathing

You mean you can level waterbreathing by casting it whenever you feel like? Even if you don't plan on going for a swim? Truth be told I have never purchased, and thus never used that spell. On the rare occasions where I wanted to dive under water and find something, I just drank a potion. I never saw drowning as a major risk. The only time it ever happened is the first time I did the thieves guild mission and the room fills with water after killing Mercer. (Didn't notice the head falling off the statue somehow.)

Also, even the lowly Oakflesh with its +40 armor is quite a bit when you're decked in your starter armor, barely scratching the 100 armor mark.

And what about that - does it work all the time or only when you get hit in combat? Spells that work all the time are easily exploited. Muffle is the perfect example too. You can just cast that repeatedly while walking around town and it would level. I use muffle a lot, but only during break-ins and while in dungeons. It still levels crazy fast. Detect Life too. It just seems too cheesy to me though. I justify transmute because its uses the spell as intended, it saves you a ton of money on smithing supplies, and crafting gold rings gives a ton more smithing experience when compared to something like iron daggers.

I want to try a mostly ranged assassin character with bow and spells, and triple crafted dagger is all the melee I'll ever need without becoming stupendously overpowered by design. My early sources of damage will be Bound Bow (now that's a nice starter weapon if I ever saw one) and Destruction in general while I slowly learn how to make daggers worth mentioning in melee combat.

How early can you get your hands on Bound Bow? Probably not in Riverwood, but does the mage in Dragonsreach have the spell available? Plus, isn't Bound Bow an adept level spell, meaning it won't be available for purchase immediately? Not that it's particularly hard to level conjuration. So long as your summons enters combat, it levels the skill, even if he doesn't do much in combat. I remember leveling conjuration by summoning a familiar against the first dragon you fight. I was yelling "Sick 'em wolfie!"

Training should be enough to cover the very few skills I don't actively use myself, ie. Heavy Armor, Block and Two-handed

I would advocate splitting the training between block and two-handed. Until your pickpocket skill gets very high, you will probably get bored reloading the game constantly by trying to pickpocket back 500 gold with a 40 pickpocket skill. Much better to alternate between the two so you're pickpocketing smaller amounts. Your chance of success is higher, and you'll still level up in pickpocket for every successful attempt stealing back 200 gold until you hit around level 60 or 70.

If you plan on continuing to pickpocket during the game, I would also advocate picking up a few perks in pickpocket - light fingers, night thief, and cutpurse. I never regretted those spent points. And it greatly increases your chance of success in your early going for getting your money back from training. I like taking fishing missions from Delvin, as the target typically is carrying around more than just the item you're sent to steal. A lot of times they have a decent amount of gold and magical jewelry, so it's a perk investment that sees quite a bit of use. If you plan to go thief crazy like I did with my all-thief character, sinking the full five points in light fingers will allow you to steal back your training all the way to level 75. (You'll need an item or two to raise your pickpocket to get it all the way to 90% though. The Thieves' Guild boots and a ring and/or an amulet that you equip only when training does the trick.) However, now you're looking at 7 perks, which is a lot to ask for this type of character, especially when 3 perks would prove adequate.

The main reason I would hesitate training heavy armor is because I received a ton of armor levels with my character. In fact, because I was using light gloves (Dark Brotherhood) and light boots (Thieves Guild), I leveled both heavy and light armor. It appears the game doesn't differentiate based on how much of each type of armor you're wearing. Both skills leveled about equally, suggesting that so long as you're wearing at least one piece of heavy and light armor, every time you get hit it adds experience to both skills. The other reason I wouldn't spend too much training on heavy armor is because even with a decent heavy armor rating you'll easily hit the cap.

if I'm inclined to drop in a few mid-game points into Destruction so that I can skip at least some of the extremely slow levels in the 70-90 skill range.

If you do it the way I did it, you can skip a TON of perks in destruction. Namely, you can skip the entirety of apprentice-master destruction perks. You can't skip novice, and you want dual casting, and up until around character level 15, casting flames/sparks/frostbite in both hands levels destruction quite well. After that, you start running into stuff that just has too much health. My metric for stopping destruction leveling on my own was when I reached the point where I couldn't kill something using destruction spell without drinking a magicka potion. At that point, I deemed it had become unsustainable. You can get away with two out of the three "augment element" perks (although I took all three), and Intense Flames, Deep Freeze, and Disintegrate seem largely optional (arguably, in the case of Intense Flames, counterproductive)

While I won't be using Conjuration for the summons, I find that I want to be able to choose my Soul Trap targets proactively rather than filling up every stone in my inventory with the 3972 Petty Souls from as many Mudcrabs I happened to stumble across by having Soul Trap on my weapon.

While I did level summoning through summons, I also have limited use in casting soul trap. I think it shouldn't be too hard to level conjuration this way. Plus, you're using bound weapons, which also seems like a big plus (especially because I assume by using the bound weapon you'll level the corresponding weapon skill as well. Depending on how well that works, you may want to prioritize block for training.

From my own experience of mega training, the best piece of advice I can give you is to prioritize skills that fall into one of the following categories listed by priority:

1. Skills that take a while to level on your own, and that you'll need to use soon. Examples: One-Handed, Block, Two-Handed, Archery. If you plan on using any of them, you can get all of them close to 50 by the time you leave Whiterun. You don't need to train them all out to 75 right away, but shooting for 40 to get 3 perks in overdraw/armsman/etc is advisable.

2. Skills that you're going to want to have a very high level in, but you don't/can't/won't be able to effectively use until they reach that higher level. Examples: Any of the mage skills except enchanting, but especially destruction. I tried to minimize my magicka pool, which as you can imagine makes leveling destruction past level 40 on your own problematic (I could dual cast ice spike twice, or chain lightning once, and then I was tapped.). I eventually stopped using destruction outright, and just trained it 5 times every level, all the way to 90. (Recommend you start working on these by level 30 or so, so that they are ready to go when you hit the optimization stage.)

3. Spells that are extremely useful to have, that you can level on your own, but the sooner you get them to a target level to unlock particular perks, the better. Examples: Sneak and Speech (50 in each). I was reading up on Skyrim USEP, and discovered that Merchant is arguably the most important perk in the game, because it does more than just allow you to sell to everybody. It also increases the number of items all merchants have for sale, in both quantity and quality. This is especially important regarding alchemy merchants. There are several alchemy reagents that will never be offered until you get merchant: Bear Claws, Dwarven Oil, Wisp Wrappings, Powdered Mammoth Tusk are a few examples. It also greatly increases the possibility of finding a daedra heart for sale. I liked the Merchant perk before, I love it now.

One other note that I decided on - I think I will go up the right hand side (heavy armor) of the smithing tree forever more. If I'm wearing light armor, I'll probably be using some combination of the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild set until I can make my own armor. By spending one more perk point by going up the right hand side of the tree, I get access to the superior weapon choices along the way (there's a huge gap between elven and glass weapons on the light armor side, and nothing as good as daedric weapons), and once I get the dragon armor perk, I can use it to make dragon scale armor instead of dragon plate armor.

[Sir Rechet]

Originally Posted by Aldeth the Foppish Idiot

You mean you can level waterbreathing by casting it whenever you feel like?

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.

And what about [Oakflesh et al] - does it work all the time or only when you get hit in combat?

You only get exp when cast in combat. The buff works everywhere, any time, and the base buff amount is cumulative with worn armor. The Mage Armor perk only helps if you have no armor whatsoever.

How early can you get your hands on Bound Bow?

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, both of which should be early visits for both mages and rogues.. and F/M/T is both.

In fact, because I was using light gloves (Dark Brotherhood) and light boots (Thieves Guild), I leveled both heavy and light armor.

I'm going primarily Light Armors, but thanks for the tip. It might be a good idea to have at least one Heavy piece somewhere then, as I don't need Matched Set bonus later on to reach cap anyway.

While I did level summoning through summons, I also have limited use in casting soul trap. I think it shouldn't be too hard to level conjuration this way. Plus, you're using bound weapons, which also seems like a big plus (especially because I assume by using the bound weapon you'll level the corresponding weapon skill as well.

I'm only planning to (ever?) use Soul Trap and Bound bow, both of which are just fine without any perks whatsoever. I do, however, need a magicka pool of about 180 to be able to cast it without any reductions, which is about as high as I ever need for other purposes. Remember, I'm not planning to totally remove the mana cost component of spells, just make it minimal. That ought to keep Destruction going for quite a while longer even if I don't get full mana reduction for it until I reach 100 Enchanting. The early pickpocket-train routine ought to give me enough levels to divert the points into Magicka without leaving me all too fragile when the real fun starts.

If you plan on using any of them, you can get all of them close to 50 by the time you leave Whiterun. You don't need to train them all out to 75 right away, but shooting for 40 to get 3 perks in overdraw/armsman/etc is advisable.

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.

Merchant is arguably the most important perk in the game, because it does more than just allow you to sell to everybody.

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.

One other note that I decided on - I think I will go up the right hand side (heavy armor) of the smithing tree forever more. If I'm wearing light armor, I'll probably be using some combination of the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild set until I can make my own armor.

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.