Original Thread: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1250101-layout-of-perk-trees/

I still have to decide on what I want but so far I think I want:

12 perks for Destruction
8 perks for One Handed
9 perks for Light Armor
8-12 perks for Alchemy

And I know I need to leave some for Conjuration and maybe a few for other skills.

Has anyone else counted the number of perks?


I got 250 not 280

Maybe they counted race perks, quest perks, and special supernatural perks that change your biological nature.

6 perks for Light Armor are so pitiful it makes me cry.

Yeah I was hoping for better ones but I'll manage.

Do we know if it's possible to do a power bash without a shield? As in, using a 2h weapon or a 1h weapon with empty off-hand?

I am a little confused which path I want to take for Conjuration so if anyone could help me out with some questions I would really appreciate it.

So when it says 'reanimate undead' I have to cast a spell that does that after I kill say a skeleton champion and that skeleton champion will come back to life and fight beside me correct?

Does it work for any creature I kill say wolf/bear/ice atronach?

I'm used to only being able to summon 1 creature in Oblivion but I kinda want to be able to summon two at once but if it costs me 3-4 perk points it may not be worth it. :-/

This is awesome, hats off to the helpful pirate.

Yeah reanimate works on most things, I think the only exceptions would be dragons and other summoned creatures (since they vanish rather than leave a corpse) maybe some paranormal enemies too like ghost and wisps.

^ Thanks for the help.

I think I'll end up going that route but if I need extra perks it may get cut. :-/

Just one doubt about the perk trees...When two paths leads to the same perk I have to pick them both or only one is enough? Let's take Alchemy, for example...If i want "Snakeblood" I have to pick "Concentrated Posion" AND "Experimenter" or just on of them?

lol this is hilarous. Between werewolf confirmation, and the one-handed perk tree (faster attacks and extra damage for dual wielding), more than half the people that spent MONTHS complaining about the lack of the former and the underpowered-ness of the latter (which is more than half the complainers) should feel like fools now.

No. You can pick just one.

Pretty sure you will only need to fill one pathway to get to perks like that. Would be pretty silly otherwise in my opinion.

There are 6, but they are good. Any Light Armor user I play will be maxing out that tree.

Another doubt...I'm planning to build a stealth character that will use bows to make distant and silent kills. In F:NV, sneak shots where critical shots 100% of the time. My doubt is: since I will use the bow only when sneaking, the "Critical Shot" perks will be useful? They will be cumulative with "Deadly Aim" sneak tree perk?

Yeah, I spent a few minutes just now with the Heavy and Light armor perk trees in a side-by-side comparison and I would say they're just about equal. Here's my take:

The perk that makes Heavy Armor weigh nothing is powerful indeed but look what you have to do to get it. You need to ge the skill to 30 and take Fists of Steel, which is great if you plan to do some 10 finger beat downs, but completely useless if you're going to be using weapons/magic all game, like myself and most others. Then you have to get the skill to 50 and take Cushioned, which is pretty whatever. Nice to have, but between the Etheral dragonshout and the auto-save feature, dying cause you falled is just not going to be much of an issue. Then you have to ge the skill all the way up to 70 (you'll almost certainly be very high level at this point) and take the perk. On top of all this, that whole string of perks take you on a branch away from the rest of the perks, that you'd then have to come back to. Maxing out your skill and perks in heavy armor is a HUGE investment and in the end may be only slightly better than light armor, if at all.

With light, you get the same Weightless perk at level 50 and because of the layout of the tree, you can still very easily arrive at the final perk, which IMHO is better than the final perk for heavy armor. Dealing extra damage to an enemy (heavy's reflection) is nice, but you're in heavy armor. You're designed to take lots of hits so that you can stay in your opponent's face much longer and therefore get in more hits in a shorter amount of time. With light armor, being able to skip on on ALL the damage from a hit every 10 hits means YOU last longer in battle, so it's almost like getting a nice solid boost to your armor rating. Couple that with the extra stamina recovery perk, and then compare that you heavy's lower stagger perk. The two trees are basically equal IMHO.

Heavy requires a moderately larger investment for MAYBE a slightly larger return, and light armor has an easier tree where you can get the top perk by using less perk points.

Great anolysis. I'd add that whining because the perks require you to wear light armour in all slots is pretty absurd too. That's like saying "I took the sword damage perks, why don't I have added mace damage?"

like most games do you have to spend points in the bottom perks to advance to further ones?

For anyone that updates the wiki, for alchemy one perk is missing and one has the wrong description as it should be;

Physician (20) - Potions for restore health, magicka or stamina are 25% more powerful.

Benefactor (30) - Potions with beneficial effects have an additional 25% greater magnitude.

Which brings the total perks to 251.

Is it me or can you bypass all the heavy armor making perks in smithing and get to dragon armor using the light armor perks by using less perk points?

Heavy armor you end up spending a total of 6 points to get to dragon armor. (Steel+Dwarf+Orc+Ebony+Daedric+Dragon)
Light you end up spending 5 points. (Steel+ Elf+Adv+Glass+Dragon)

For us min/maxers there might be something there if we can still make heavy Dragon armor by going that route.

Maybe the game check if you have Glass Smithing or Daedric Smithing and based on that it allows you to make proper armor ( light or heavy )

I don't know why (maybe because I'm in spoiler overload and information is getting mixed up in my brain). But with perks, Can we upgrade any of them or is it just the 6 we choose?

You could go through the light armour tree but you'll essentially waste perks. If you go through heavy armour you also get the option to improve weapons (as of now it looks like there are no dragon weapons) so you could still have use of improving deadric weapons by double, otherwise you'd have to settle for glass weapons to improve.