So, you advance alchemy/alteration/sneaking in just the right way to let you travel undetected or too fast to catch, then proceed to journey the landscape, entering every dungeon available without otherwise interacting in a way that advances skill levels.

Why? To set those dungeon levels permanently low, so all the side-quests that are randomly generated there will be quick and comical affairs.

Have to defend a slow and vulnerable NPC? Good thing you set the dungeon levels low in an earlier pass through the region.

Now, it's certainly an exploit - but is it cheating?

On the downside, you cut yourself off from any leveled unique equipment that might also be set with the dungeon level - or you might even cut yourself off from many side quests entirely by not having any unvisited dungeons for the game to pick.

Or perhaps the game will 'reset' any dungeon it needs to in order for a sidequest to be placed in it.

It would be an interesting bit of scripting to examine in any case, once we get the editor.

Not that it would matter if it WERE cheating - but it's always interesting to see why people decide to limit themselves, and what they count as 'cheating', and what they feel they want from the experience.

To me, it's actually not cheating enough - I find that there's always much more to explore than people think by saving, and using whatever means are required to try the scenario out in a variety of ways. This has most certainly held true for the epic explorations of the previous TES and Fallout games, and cheating has always been a cherished part of that.

I can certainly understand the "you're ruining the experience" argument - but I've already experienced the skinner box and dramatic storytelling tricks a thousand times over. I know the standard addictive growth arc by heart - and I honestly don't need to walk every step on that path anymore in my gameplay experiences. Now, I gain so much more from jumping around that arc as I explore, and seeing how the game itself acts with many inputs.

Some of most pure, fun gaming experiences I've ever had have been in emulators, twisting the limits of the game to the extreme with savestates and understanding the wonderful absurdities in how they actually work in response to nearly impossible inputs.

Ryan Fenton

the level system doesn't work like that exactly

if you enter a dungeon, the dungeon level will accomodate for your level within it's own level bracket

ex:


you enter a dungeon with a level bracket of 25 to 35 with your level 5 character

the dungeon locks at its lowest level, 25.

you'll die.

I'm planning on doing the opposite to this, and not entering a Dungeon until I'm at least equal to the highest level it can be. Sure, that's a little metagamey but I want the maximum possible challenge from my opponents, and not a cake walk.

I think what he's asking is, if you just enter a dungeon at a low level.. (locking it at it's lowest level) and then leave so you can come back later at a higher level,.. would that be considered cheating?


I say.. sure, it's kind of cheaty - exploity.. but it's your own game and you can do what you want. Unless you have some sort of extreme guilty conscience it really doesn't matter.

It's a one Player game... therefore you cannot "cheat."
Play the game however you like.

The real question is, why would you bother with all that work?? If you want the dungeons to be easier, just change the difficulty setting. (you can make the game easier/harder whenever you like)

It's cheatting, as you are making an elaborate matagaming activity, just to gain advantage.