Shep, if you get the crafting gear suggested by the Guide in the beginning of page one you only need 2 armor perks with Elven to hit the cap: Agile Defender 1 and Custom Fit. This is assuming you eventually reach smithing 100 and enchanting 100. If you decide to skip alchemy and use store-bought pots I think you can still hit the cap just adding one more agile defender rank. For blocking, it matters on what kind of shield you are using or if you are blocking with a weapon. Weapons are very good for blocking, but miss out on a couple of perks in the blocking tree. Getting 4/5 Shield Wall will get you to the cap with a 100 block and NO enchantments if you block with a weapon... if you use a shield, the perks/enchants are fewer or unnecessary, depending on how good of a material your shield is.

-Loth

Okay thanks for that. I don't plan on making the crafting gear as I feel it's sort of game breaking. So I'm thinking I'll need all 5 levels of agile defender plus custom fit to reach max armor damage mitigation. I honestly don't mind if I'm short by 10 or 15% but if I can get it close that's cool.

In terms of blocking I'll be using my 2h so I'll be going the 4/5 shield wall. Not to worried about the other shield perks because arrows do the most to me followed by magic and I'm fairly decent at dodging arrows. Endgame I'm planning on the atronach stone so that should put me at what.. 75% resist magic I think I'll be okay with the no shield.

Are either of these achievable without the store bought potions?

Rather, can I get close to max damage mitigation (armor) and close to max block without having to buy the potions from the store? If not that's cool, if the store offers them it's no biggie. I just don't want to 'exploit' the smithing alchemy coding (personal preference)

Thanks for the quick response Loth.

Hmm... just using store-bought potions and NO crafting gear? Yeesh.

Okay, yeah... you might need all the perks you can get, my friend. The max potion you can buy is +50% smithing, so at most you will have a 150 smithing skill when doing improvements... it looks like you can get to legendary level 3 before you hit a wall at skill level 143. With elven gear and all the perks you'll get to 567, but it's gonna take a while.

-Loth

PS You can use Block runner and Quick Reflexes with a 2Hander... they are awesome when used together, but you need a Blocking of 70 to get block runner, and waste 2 perks on arrow deflect and elemental protection getting to it. Just a heads up.

I can dig it. While I want to be bad ass, I don't want to be godlike. So if I'm short on a few things and it takes me some time to get there.. I'm all for it.

it's all bout the journey my friend


Thanks for the answer.

You can make essentially unlimited versions of each. I've made upwards of 20,000%, which is enough to essentially make the game trivial wearing a dagger and boots.

You need a certain minimum of both Alch and Ench before it will take off - otherwise, the (geometric) progression converges, esp. since the game seems to round down. There isn't a set number because it's a combination of both, but for example, 14% Fortify Alchemy per gear (56% total) and 27% base Fortify Resto potion (i.e., with no gear on) will diverge, but 14%/25% will not; 16%/25% will diverge, but 16%/21% will not; etc. By my reckoning, it takes at least a few perks in both Alch and Ench, but you don't need any skill levels beyond what's required for those. You can definitely do it with 20 Alchemy and 50 Enchanting, and maybe even less Enchanting.

On that note, I see the thread mentions the Resto loop, but is there a reason for not using it? This may have been discussed before, but I couldn't sort through all the other threads...both techniques are game-breaking, but the Resto loop can be done at much lower levels, so you don't miss out on that experience as much. At least, that's my take on it...

Because everyone knows that restoration is not a valid school of magic.

But mostly because the restoration trick is not a designer intended feature and will get patched sooner or later.

Do you really think the alchemy/smithing loop is design intended?

Optimization through intended means. Using the the restoration loop is in the same realm as just using the console and yes it is all about the journey. The destination ultimately may feel rather empty when you can sneeze and everything around you will turn to ashes.

Even if it was not, 25%*4 is not too far off from 29*4 and with enough perks and planning a similar effect can be achieved.

I may be naive, but I don't think the designers/programmers meant for any of these loops to exist. Even in my beginner programming classes the common teaching is a loop that results in these types of things is unintended.

Well, the fortify enchanting loop does terminate due to the logarithmic relationship so it is not infinite but I agree it likely wasn't intended. As for the restoration loop, yes that was a major oversight and truly breaks the game.

They knew about the fortify intelligence potions feedback loop in Morrowind before release and it was in, the shock damage + weakness to magic + weakness to shock worked better in Morrowind, in Oblivion it was changed so the weakness effect was only effective on second strike, yes you could drop the gatekeeper with that enchant on an iron dagger at level 50.

It's an closed feedback loop in Skyrim, limited how powerful you can make items, fixing it would pretty much break the skills if you only used two of the smithing, enchanting and alchemy skills

The Resto Loop goes out of bounds with regard to what we can call "intended game mechanics". That is why we mention it in passing but don't focus on it. The crafting template and minimum build requirements set forth in the Guide rely upon what you can achieve without "glitching" (if that's even the right word), and represent the base minimum perk investments to hit the various caps in armor depending on what style of gear you choose to use. Since that data came out thanks to testing by several contributors, these threads have become more centered on unearthing other game mechanics that were poorly understood or completely unknown.

Many of the game features are poorly documented in the help screens, or are completely wrong... for example, did you know that a 2H sword swings the same speed as a 2H axe? The in-game loading tip concerning this is incorrect. We have found other things as well, such as the perk descriptions for the Shield Wall being wrong, and the loading tip that says blocking with 1H weapons is better than blocking with 2H weapons... the truth is, all weapons block the same base 60% no matter what type of weapon you are using.

-Loth

It does not terminate if starting values are high enough - it's a progression with a geometric component. Basically, it comes down to whether the "increment" (amount added from one iteration) ever reaches zero. You can express that as a quadratic function, where the coefficients are functions of your base Alch and Ench bonuses, and if it has no real roots (i.e. no roots for which it equals zero), the progression goes to infinity. It is not hard to achieve that condition in game.


I suppose that sounds reasonable...maybe the important part is that it takes a lot of skill investment/leveling to do things the "normal" way, but the resto loop can make you godlike at pretty low levels. I hate to assume anything about "intent" unless gamesas actually comes out and says something (or patches it). But I definitely feel like I've "earned" the gear more when doing it Cheshyr's way.

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. I suppose another key point is that there are limits to how high you can go, where the Resto loop has none (at least, none that matter).


Hmm, I strongly suspected a number of things like that - is run speed reduction due to heavy/light armor also bugged? Are these things collected in one place anywhere handy?

The testing we have done with running in armor was focused on stamina depletion, and it was discovered that the total weight of all "worn" items was directly proportional to stamina depletion. Interestingly, wearing Elven armor (the lightest and easiest to hit the cap) did not vary significantly from running naked!

As for speed testing... hmph. I don't think that's been done yet. Wanna take a shot at it, Rynas?
You'd need to set up:

1. A place for a controlled run that you can repeat easily and mostly exactly
2. Several sets of armor (get with the console if necessary)
3. A timer

The data you (or anybody else) gathers could be posted here in the thread, and we could extrapolate approximate slowdowns (if any) for each armor type as a percentage of normal (naked) running speed. Also, we could see what armor pieces contribute the most to slowing, or if it's just a simple thing based on weight -- like stamina depletion.

-Loth

I believe Cheshyr tested relative run speeds in various sets of armor. IIRC, there was no difference in speed; only in stamina drain.

I remember the stamina trials he ran (as I noted in my prior post), but are you sure he was testing speed, too? I can noticeably tell that my char is slowed in heavy armor vs. robes -- or maybe it's just me. Let me look up some console codes for some armor sets and I'll report back, because this is gonna bug me otherwise. No sprinting now... just running. Need to find some kind of timer around here in the apartment...
-Loth

I can attest to running speed differences between heavy armors vs robes as well.

Here's the numbers (which is more reliable than my anecdotal experiences):

The testing area was inside Solitude... from the arch in front of the Blue Palace to the arch in front of the training grounds that have that big red wolf banner hanging down. It is a straight shot down the path and does not require any movement from side to side to complete.

Naked : 27 secs : 0 total weight worn
Elven : 27 secs : 7 total weight
Glass : 27 secs : 13 total weight
Iron : 28 secs : 46 total weight
Daedric : 30 secs : 81 total weight

The tests were run in duplicate to reduce the possibility of measurement error, and are rounded to the nearest whole second.

As you can see, there is a slight difference in running speeds, but not a very large one. The daedric one surprised the most, as a loss of 2 seconds from Iron with not even double the weight makes it not seem very linear... but I'm not the math nerd, so take that with a grain of salt.
-Loth

Edit: Hilariously, the Conditioning perk for Heavy Armor actually works as advertised, as when I repeated the daedric testing with the Conditioning perk, the time dropped to 27 secs. Obviously, getting the weightless perk for light armor (the name escapes me as I type this) will not do that much as far as speed goes, as the difference in running speed is negligible to begin with.

Even a marginal difference still means something especially with the amount of walking you'll be doing in skyrim. sadly, this is even more reason to ditch the extravagant daedric god armor of awesomeness for some lowly steel armor or hideous elven armor.

It might be safe to assume that running speed is proportional to worn weight in the same way that stamina drain while sprinting is. But you really notice the mobility issue when you are sprinting vs. running in heavy armor... daedric armor just gulps down your stamina bar like a frat kid with a bottle of Miller Lite.

-Loth

Things have really slowed down here. How about adding some of the interesting enchanting synergies detailed on this thread?
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1312501-the-way-of-the-artificer/page__fromsearch__1

I found http://i39.tinypic.com/wb7xoi.png and http://i42.tinypic.com/2cpf0gl.png to be pretty funny. Got linked to me from a friend.

I cannot take credit for those tests. They were done, but not by me. If I remember correctly, the big difference was Stamina Drain between armor sets. The speed differences in most cases were due to racial height differences, not armor types... although it appears Lothario has data that contradicts this, so grain of salt. Also, Khajiit just run faster.

Sorry... lots of last minute things to do before the holiday. Don't want to go on vacation with unsolved R&D problems on the brain. I'll get this updated and kickstarted again in here somewhere, when I have a little bit more time.

Big ups to Loth for more solid research.

In my mind, it doesn't really change anything from a character planning perspective. If you want Heavy Armor, Conditioning or Steed Stone is required.