Is it possible for Fur Armor to reach the cap?
You kinda missed that one in the list of All Armors.

Amazing work guys. I won't ever be able to bring myself to use it because it makes the game into too much of a bore for me, but I am seriously impressed by your math and figures.

Well, it's only a few base points less than leather so probably but I think you'd need all 5 agile defender perks.

Are you sure? I've dropped domes in the middle of a Forsworn settlement slaughter. I've had a few that I know weren't the last ones.
Which, I must add, is very satisfying. It's not exactly a perk you need, but I wouldn't play without it.

It's possible for any piece of upgradeable armor to reach the cap as long as you're guzzling hella-crazy potions.

Wait... you got decaps on enemies while still being attacked by others?

-Loth

Edit: Can anyone confirm this? I'm pretty sure I never decapped anyone while still in combat with other enemies -- the kill animations don't play unless it's on the "last bad guy".

Pluto (the mod author) has really put himself into this game. There's PISE, of course, but he also helped out with the Realistic Lighting mod that I have to say is a damn fine piece of work.

-Loth

Insightful enchanter no longer gives a boost to fortify alchemy or smithing but does to all other skills. is anyone getting this issue as well?

I'm pretty sure its corpus enchanter that has been changed. It used to affect nearly every armor enchantment, now it doesn't work at all. That's what I've heard/experienced.

Ok, I think this is new information; I haven't seen this anywhere else, at least.

We already know that wearing fortify [school] apparel reduces the charge drain on weapons enchanted with spells from that school. What I wasn't sure about was how that worked for weapons with dual enchants from different schools, like paralyze + fire damage, say.

After much testing on the Riften population, it appears that the amount of charge drained from a weapon per swing is determined by the most costly enchant on it -- that is, if you have a sword with a seven-second paralyze enchant and a one-second-duration fiery soul trap, the charge drained per swing will be based on the Paralyze effect.

The funny thing is, that determination is static, not fluctuating. So if you're wearing "fortify [magic school]" gear that reduces the cost of the most powerful effect on the weapon, you can negate the charge consumption completely.

I'm not sure I'm being clear, so, example: Put a seven-second Paralyze enchantment and a 25-point drain stamina enchant on a weapon. Paralyze is Alteration, drain stamina is destruction school, so you would think you'd have to wear fortify destruction and alteration both in order to get charge consumption down to a reasonable level. Thing is, though, because the seven second paralyze enchant is on the weapon -- and a long duration paralyze is about the most costly weapon enchant there is -- the drain stamina effect is essentially "free"; all you have to do is wear 100% fortify alteration gear, and no charges will ever be drained from the weapon. Infinite free paralyze +stamina drain, at half the cost in apparel enchantment slots!

That is interesting indeed the only issue is finding a use for 100% fortify alteration. I suppose mass paralysis combined with weapons with 7 sec of paralyze would be pretty awesome. Actually, this gives me a great idea for my paladin build!
also, how do you know which enchantments belong to which school? do destruction based enchantments become stronger/have higher charges as my destruction skill increases? finally, do followrs benefit from this? i know that fortify destruction will not have any effect on spell costs for followers.




Some observations with dual wielding perks and damage in general:

*There is no fluctuation in damage, you will always deal exactly the same damage to same foe.
*Power attacks do exactly 1.5 times normal damage.
*critical charge is useless and only does slightly more than a standard power attack - likely because critical attacks only amplify base damage
*dual savagery stacks multiplicatively with savage strike increasing total damage out put to 1.25, then 1.875
*dual attacks are not actually power attacks, but instead, simply 2 normal swings at the same time, effectively giving the same damage as a standard power attack but applies effects of both weapons
*tri attacks are beastly and will do damage equal to 8.4 normal swings in a very short amount of time when you have both dual savagery and savage strike.

damage with dual savagery | without DS with savage | neither :
tri ATK: 115.065*3 | 76.71*3 | 63.7*3 //triple attack with both weapons
dual ATK: 40.91*2 |40.91*2 |40.91*2 //power attack with both weapons
power ATK: 122.74 | 81.3 | 81.3 //standard power attack
standing powerATK: 153.46 | 101.6 | 81.3
normal: 40.91 | 40.91 | 40.91
critical charge: 124 | 83.08 |

Dual savagery rocks and so does flurry, the only issue is that it isnt possible to viably play as a dual wielder on modded difficulty settings outside of relying on lucky paralyze procs or heavy use of illusion/alteration magic.

With alteration specifically, it's probably only useful for people trying my current build, which is sortof wonky -- I'm playing a spellsword melee'r with only Dragonhide spell for defense. It's really powerful until Dragonhide runs out!

That said, the general principle could be useful for other applications, though; almost all weapon enchants are Destruction school, so a destruction mage wearing 100% Destruction school cost resist could put a hefty Destruction enchant (that had a high base charge consumption) and a short duration paralyze on his weapon, and maybe get a "free" paralyze effect, or a free soul trap (conjuration) or fear (restoration) if they wanted.
Info about which enchants are which school here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Enchanting_Effects#Weapons .

Hm im playing a shield/sword paladin (with costles restoration) but i do have enough enchantment slots to make alteration costless and i cant think of any other useful spell school. I had considered using invisbility+mass paralyze to initiate fight then switch to dual wielding paralyze swords and chainsaw my way through mobs. Costless paralyze enchants is just so darn fun when youre dual wielding i just havent found a way to make it viable vs stronger enemies but for now ill try 100% reduce alteration and see how things go from here.

Looking at the table, im shocked banish is so costly considering its mostly useless. then again by how expensive damage stamina and absorb health is relative to paralyze.

Just to interject, it would be a good idea being a vampire with the perk necromage. You would then get 150 second dual cast Dragonhide.

Dragonhide is a master spell so it cant be dual cast but the vampire + necromage is a good idea.

It's an exception, you can dual cast it for 99 seconds (with the stability perk). So 150 seconds with necro-vamp

Yeah, this is a common thought but for some reason it can be dual cast. Of course, the cost is huge, and it's easy to *think* you've dual cast it when you've only single-cast as both hands click anyway. Still you can verify by looking at duration under "enchantment effects."

Necromage is a good idea but frankly my guy's powerful enough as is -- anything further and the game would get too easy.

he wont be powerful after using this mod: http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4406#

Essentially you can use fort restoration as a fortify alchemy potion for an infinite loop. Drink potion, equip fort alchemy item, item is buffed by the restoration potion. Make stronger restoration potion, repeat. I did this and was making fort enchant potions of times 30k in I think five iterations. Only problem is if you try to put that large an enchantment on a weapon, it seems the system won't accept charge numbers that large and wraps around to thinking it's zero. So there's a practical limit based on how big a number the interface can deal with.

So, is fort restoration potions buffing items a bug or a feature? Anyone know?

It is really just fake difficulty.

I can't wait to get a hold of the leveled lists and creature/NPC info. Real difficulty will be attained, I assure you... monsters with armor ratings, enemy NPCs with viable battle prowess and better perks... damn. At this point, I don't know what I should mod first, the magic system or the difficulty system. They both kinda need an overhaul, but I can't figure out which is more in desperate need... thing is, there will be oodles of magic mods soon, but how many "real difficulty" mods will there be? Probably a million.

This is on my list for modding difficulty:

• Give dragons, et al, some armor to make the bashing weapon perks actually do something
  
• Give enemy boss NPCs better skills and combat perks like armor pen and bleeding
  
• Speaking of combat perks, there's no reason that low-level bandits should NOT have those perks as well... if you're fighting 3 bandits at once, all those bleed effects/critical hits will actually mean something now
  
• Increase spawns in certain locations to "fill out" bandit camps and such... no more "five bandits makes a gang" mentality... I'm thinking like three times that sounds pretty good.
  
• Give more enemy casters the spells and AI to use conjuration... not just summoners and necros. For example, if you come up against an evil Ice mage at "Adept" ranking or above, you will be fighting a Frost Atronach as well. I want the atronachs to match the caster's element of choice, so an "Expert" lightning mage will conjure a Storm Atronach, etc., and ALL summoners and necros will have the Twin Souls perk (even Novices), so fighting them should be a nightmare in the wrong situations. Now using the Banish spell or enchantment might be a really good idea

-Loth

Yeah. I'd like to see dragons and NPCs use the "powerful" shouts like slow time, elemental fury, Marked for Death, etc., rather than just fire breath.

Which reminds me, Marked for Death needs to have a decimal point taken off the effect too -- it's -1500, -3000, -45000, when -150, -300, -450 to armor would be more realistic.

Not sure how much this helps, but when I wear a thieves guild hood, I can then put on 2 circlets and then my archmage robes. I presume this mean you can put on 2+ circlets at one time, sometimes it doesn't work but if I save then reload it always works.

I imagine that it is an unintended consequence as it is completely game shattering. Just for fun I made armor that fortified my health/stamina/magika by some ridiculous number like 100,000 or more. I mad a fortify destruction potion with like +30,000% and one shotted an ancient dragon with the novice flames spell. Its fun to mess around with but it completely nullifies the entire game if you use it the whole time.

I call this an obvious bug, make no sense that fortify restoration should modify enchants in the first place, just spells, potions to would be plausible but would also give an open loop.

Note that enchanting and potions is an closed loop, enchanting can give you 100% stronger potions, however fortify enchant potions just improve skill enchants from 25% to 29%
this is with 5*29% fortify alchemy enchants.

However the restoration loop is nice for special use if you are careful, like giving you am ring of carry loads or good armor rating leather boots and a robe as you prefer the look.

Many thanks for this - it is a very clear, helpful and informative guide. It must have taken you quite a long time to test / compile tests together and write it all up.