do you get a perk in a skill every time you level up that skill? or when your character gains a level?

I believe you get one perk per level.

When your character gains a level.

Just character levels. Every skill up would be absolutely absurd. There's more than 1440 skill ups. There's only 280 perks.

1 perk per level, until level 50.

Every level.

okay thats what i thought, but wasn't sure. so, do you think it is better to focus on one skill at a time and get all of the perks for it, or go gradually along each of the skills you want to use

Focusing on only one skill is going to be nearly impossible to do.

thanks, i apologize for my n00bness lol

No, until you are capped, around 70. This has got to be the biggest misconception I've seen about the game, it was confirmed by todd you gain a perk every single level, only leveling after 50 is a lot slower.

I could have sworn it's been confirmed that you stop picking perks once you hit 50--in fact, I know that's the case. You can still level up skills and level up in general, but you can't get perks past level 50. (90% or so of the people in the perk thread say 50 perk limit per character, and they design their characters that way).

Yea it was originally said you would stop at 50 but later on in a newer interview todd said you gain a perk as long as you keep leveling up. Sorry I can't be bothered to grab the links right now, I'm sure you can find it.

That was just a popular misunderstanding. Todd mentioned having 50 perks at level 50 and a soft cap. People didn't understand what that meant.

old news. confirmed then unconfirmed. just wait a few days

Hey. The more perks the better, I suppose.

not really, but 70 sounds like a good number

50 perks is awesome. That is 20 more you get than Fallout 3. I think 50 perks will make for some serious bad&^% character builds.

its about 70-75

You're expected to run out of content about 50. You can grind, but enemy difficulty probably is'ntt well implemented.

and thats only if you increase every skill up, if some1 cares anything for roleplaying, or at least a consistand character image, they will never even make that
a barbarian with all magic skills and sneak maxed , lol

At first it is very easy and quick to gain a level, but by each level that you gain, it gets exponentially harder to advance to the next level.

So for a normal game-play, if you are truly role playing and do not want to make a character with 100 for all its skill, you would eventually to about level 50, and no more.

So at first Bethesda told the players that the level cap was about level 50, and each character could gain about 50 perks, thus the misunderstanding started by that info.

But they also told the fan base that if one dedicated player took enough time to max out all the character's skills to 100, after thousands of hours, the ultimate level cap would be somewhere between level 70 and 80, which can not be definitely calculated, because one might specialize at first and maximize skills one by one, or one might bring them up all together and it affects the ultimate level cap.

So if you want to get to the absolute cap, then it would be 70-80 perks for your choice.

And level 50 is no different from level 49 and level 51, but it all gets exponentially slower to gain a level.