So I just power leveled my sneaking to 100 on the grey beards, and in the process of power leveling smithing.

Now, the problem is that I went from level 8 to 24 doing this and am really worried this is going to ruin the game for me. So for those of you that have power leveled in the early stages of the game (IE: Not even done the storyline), did it negatively effect your experience? I have saves before I power leveled and after, so depending on responses I may just revert back to level 8 and just play the game.

For the first character it would, for me at least.

All the rest of my characters are just checking out different builds and quests, etc. First thing I do when making a new character is hit 15, get a house, and find a certain book.

Then, bam, 81... all skills, and time to just enjoy the scenery. Suppose if I had a PC, I'd do it right out of the gate... but I work with what I got.

Grinding skills/spells becomes really tedious for me after the first character.

I did this once with Pickpocket right near the beginning of the game. Bad idea. Joined the Companions straight out of the gate, started getting trained by Athis in One-Handed and stealing the money back. I was level 20 before I knew it and my combat skills were garbage.

Totally ruined the game and I started over.

Now I don't power-level anything until I reach about level 30 and have played out the "specialized character" bit of the journey.

When you power level a non-combat skill and your character levels up, your combat abilities don't.

However, NPCs in the game will level up with you, and their combat capabilities will also level up.

So, they'll be stronger than you are.

Also, when you power level smithing, alchemy, and enchanting, you'll end up like a god, one-shotting things. That would be a kind of boring in my mind. But you might like that - winning a fight in 2-3 seconds at the most.

I'd say whether power leveling ruins the game or not is mainly dependant on each individual.

Nothing changes in the game story-wise whether you're level 1 or 60. So from that perspective it really doesn't matter whether you power level or not.

If you're into watching your character slowly grow then power leveling might be a problem, because if you hit the cap on all of your skills soon, you won't
level much as you progress through the game and it might become bothersome for you.

Also, you might not be able to fight properly if you level only non-combat skills too much.

The game is out since November, the next in the series to come... in about 4 years? So, yes...

I (semi-)powerleveled Smithing and Enchanting, and it never really bothered me, mostly because they also allow you to create better weapons and armour to compensate.

Yeh....so...ummmm....this isn't an MMO.

What's the point of, and why would anyone powerlevel themselves in a single player game?

And a good portion of the game scales to your level...so again....why?

Maybe because they don't want to spend days doing the same exact boring things till they get to see how different a specced archer plays from a specced mage? Just an idea...

i learned some time ago that powerleveling, grinding, and making a single character a "do all" type is not enjoyable for me.

now it's multiple characters with specific roleplaying.

for me, it turns these epic rpg's into hours of new and fresh entertainment.

This.

You have just made the game harder...

If it's your first play of course it's going to ruin it :/

Why would you even do that if you haven't tried playing normally?

If you've already played then it's entirely you're choice, but your lack of combat skills may screw you in the end.

Then have your archer start tossing spells.
You get 80 perks....more than enough to try various skills and abilities.

And like oc2pus said...you only have like 4 or 5 years to try things out before TES VI

I think the main reason, certainly for smithing and enchanting, was to get out into the game early with uber-powerful weapons and armour. I'm not so sure that it's a good idea though, considering that some perks in some trees are next to useless, and the combat system works in a semi-levelling manner.

I'm level 53, still wearing the first set of plate armour that I picked up, been upgrading it by smithing as the upgrades come available, and I've put reasonably low enchantments on it. Taking the 'right' perks, my armour rating is now into the 400's, and most of my melee weapons are around the 70-80 hitpoint mark. That's more than enough to blitz through the game.

I tend to think that the people who truly power-levelled were the 'rush through the game' types, finish it, then go onto something else. You don't see many of them around on the forums much these days (not from the original crowd anyway).

I've found the best way (for me) to advance and level up is to just plug along, swap and change the Stones every so often so I can improve certain skills faster, and always keep a couple of training slots in skills open for those times when you are almost able to level up, but just want to do it fast to get to the next level. I'm now saving perk poinits as well, because there is nothing worse than wasting a perk on something you don't want, but can't get the decent perk above it in the tree just yet. Some perks are simply not worth having either...such as the 'backwards one-handed paralyse' perk, when in all probability I have a weapon that already has paralyse as an enchantment.

I would never power level on the first play through. Maybe even the second, but If I'm on my third/forth and so on character...I don't want to grind it all again to try out a different build/playstyle. I already put 250 legit hours on the game so I feel i deserve to make an instantly powerful character quickly for subsequent play throughs.

I don't power level

no because i don't do it...

Thanks for all the responses guys. Really helpful!

I reverted back to level 8 and enjoying every bit of it. Was leaning towards this, and was given the push to do it after reading through the responses.

it did for me

Lol, power leveling may actually help your Skyrim experience since a large amount of the glitches that happen in Skyrim are triggered by long term play....

Power leveling makes game-play shorter, but the chance of having a corrupted file lower ( since you're not playing it as much).

Well, if I try to turn my lv40+ archer into a mage, then he won't be a proper mage. Not RPG-wise, and not roleplay wise. Besides, after that point, leveling without abusing the trainer exploits is painfully slow. It's not really worth it.

I prefer to set out with a plan on what class I like to end up playing. The only time I went and just got anything I felt like taking at the moment was my first character, a Nort swordspell, that eventually ended being a dual sword and heavy-armor warrior. It didn't really work out for me. So, I tried almost every possible build with various characters, from destro mage and thief/assasin to monk. I eventually ended up with what I liked best - sniper. But, at that point, I had grown tired of the same quests and dungeons all over again. The fact that the script in Skyrim is below average in most cases doesn't help. The dungeons are all very similar too - once you've been in a couple draugr tombs, you'll never really find anything interesting in another one... dwemer ruins are all similar too, just full of the same traps and annoying spiders, and you know that when you get deeper there are always choruses and falmer... and the bandit outposts - damn, many of them are even complete, shameless copypaste...
They are all very intereting at first... but after about 100-150 or so hours, I've pretty much run out things to do in the world. I've tried just roaming around searching for new stuff and dungeons - yeah, I had fun killing giants and destroying hidden bandit camps, but in all honesty the only thing that kept me playing was trying out new builds. That's what I mainly like in RPGs - all the fiddling with skills and numbers. And I was lucky I had console commands to allow me to skip things like the first dungeon, to jumb straight to lv81 to see how end-game content is (btw, awful - you run around one-shoting everything, then the crappy leveling system allows 1 single arrow to 1-shot you through your dragon armor...). I played a bit more, then got bored even more, and since I had run out of builds, I just uninstalled.

Currently waiting for the CK and DLC, to see if I can make it work that time... gonna building a Black Reaper-style necromancer and go at it again, and hope it works... though I don't see how it could keep me entertained for more than a month more tbh...

BTW was always lv15 by the time I left Riverwood in my latest playthroughs... thanks for Faendel ^^

It depends on how far you are willing to go with Powerleveling. I've done Smithing to 100 but I don't go all the way with my armor, I usually just use Ebony Armor set without the Helmet and the perks for Light armor/Heavy Armor that increase your rating by 25%.

I don`t power level. I tend to roleplay so even by level 40 i`m not super-human powerful.

I don`t understand people who do this then post up to say, "Oh no! Why did I do this?"

Wasn`t it kinda obvious this would happen from the start?

The "uber-powerful" and the "mediocre" both kill mobs and get loot and progress through the story. They both do so at essentially the same rate. They both achieve the same result. It's up to you to play the way you find the most fun.

yes it does