I think to OP is on the level. He did use potions of improve (30%) during his upgrades. I think that is what gave him that extra bit of armor.. No, Magic resist is capped at 85%.

OP thanks to you Beth will remove Alchemy, Enchanting and Smithing from the game in TESVI because its overpowered. Just like they did with Potion Stacking, Weakness to Magic Loop and Spellmaking.

Is there some reason I'm not seeing that these would be the "max" stats? What's to keep you from chaining back and forth from enchanting potions -> alchemy gear -> better enchanting potions -> better alchemy gear -> repeat infinitely? The line between min/maxing and exploiting starts to blur a bit here. I'm all for min/maxing (and, in fact, actively pursue it at all possible junctures), but I have to draw the line somewhere.

That being said, others in this thread are correct. Making ridiculously broken stuff is a staple of the series at this point, so Bethesda has delivered once again.

Diminishing returns and integer rounding keeps this from being infinite. Improve a value by a percentage less than 100%, and it will eventually only make small changes... fractions of 1%. The game rounds off fractions of a percent to an integer, which effectively caps the skills, regardless of how many times you loop. It's an overdamped system. Some people are just concerned about the speed at which the damping kicks in.

it seems it will take longer than tomorrow for me to max alchemie. that skillt takes freakin forever.... even slower than entchanting.

Alchemy takes a long time to max. Later on this week if I have time, I'll look up console commands and give step by step instructions so that others can independently verify my results without spending a ton of time. While it is possible people will get slightly different numbers do to hidden factors, I doubt they would be more than 10% off.

Unfortunately I am pretty busy this week at work and also have to do I writeup for a fansite event I was a part of at Runic Games where I got to play the latest build of Torchlight 2. I'll hopefully have time to finish both this weekend.

Is there anything else I should test like the black soul gem or skyforge swords?

Also... I was using a shield for the armor test.

^So when you said there is 65% Magic Resistance you can always have on there. How is this obtained?
Breton 25%/Lord's Stone 25%
Where did you get the remaining 15%

Even with the Alteration perk I'm stuck at 80%. Rather not use a ring if there is another way. I'm probably missing something simple, anyone?

There is a quest chain starting at the temple of Mara in Riften (I think) that gives you resist magic 15%.

Thanks for clarifying; I was confused as well.

Is this a permanent buff, or an item, or a blessing, or something else?

A permanent buff.

I just slapped 2 x +23% magic rests on the gear to bring it up to 71% (25% Breton).

My set ended up with 1700 armour ish and just under 500 damage per sword and i think i'll go back to my old set as it's just too much. Everything i come across dies in one hit and barely scratches me lol.

Rumor has it Magic Resist caps at 85%, which is very reachable, even without the Breton bonus.

Overall this entire thread makes me excited, because now I'm not forced to wear fugly armor to survive. I can enchant up some Glass Armor, and happily tool around with 1k AR, 60%+ MR, and still do decent damage. Seeing the extremes allows me to tone it back to the level I want. Win/Win for everyone.

Do you prefer using Light armor at all for any situation? Or is it Heavy Armor all the way. I'm just curious if I'm going to need to spend a perk on Dragon armor or not. If the heavy armor perk that makes heavy armor weigh nothing also makes it so it acts like light armor on how it barely affects fatigue, Then light armor doesn't seem like it has anything going for it besides having your stamina regenerate 50% faster. Any ideas?

Also, if you could just loop these crafts until you hit the cap on the best gear. Why would you need to max out the +20% perks for enchanting or alchemy. Couldn't you just loop a few more times until you hit the cap instead of using 8 extra perks?(You would still need to have the initial perk in it)

Why would you use Glass armor? If you are going for Light armor then Dragon would be the best.

You know... this loop reminds me of something I used to do in Morrowwind. I would use Alchemy to make Intelligence potions, drink them, and then use the boost that I got to make better Intelligence potions. Eventually I could make potions so well that I would make a few 'god mode' potions that would give me unlimited mana and health regen for several minutes.

I was hoping that these kinds of loops wouldn't exist in Skyrim, bleh. At least it suffers from diminishing returns.

As far as i can tell the alchemy skill level doesn't affect the strength of the potions you make or anything other than which perks you can choose. Meaning that you only need to raise it to 80 for the purposes of this thread and not 100.

This multi-loop doesn't work for very long, which is why he stopped where he did, and why he spent the perks. Once or twice through a loop produces crushing diminishing returns. This isn't even close to the Morrowind Alchemy exploit.

Frankly, I find the Dragon Armor fugly, light or heavy. Daedric is decent, Ebony actually looks good, but I prefer Glass on my Khajiit. It's really a personal preference. Now I don't have to use Dragon or Daedric to get a decent AR. Hell, I might be able to make Orc or Elven semi-viable with this.

That would be moronic if true. Which means i give it a 50/50 chance of being true. Bethesda may rock at world building, but game rules design is not a strong point.

So you're going to wear leather until you get 100 smithing? You'd be really struggling defensive wise if you actually also play the game. I guess you could abuse the oblivion book money glitch and fast travel back and fourth and focus on smithing first, if you cared about creating the perfect perk build or even just console cheat on the pc instead.

I Play on PS3 and i got smithing to 100 in an hour or so. It's actually very easy to do so.

I've made a save game for anyone wanting to mess around with creating the armour in the OP. It has all the necessary perks, ingredients etc to get you going. All you need to do is stop by a shop to pick up gloves boots etc to add your +alchemy and smithing enchants to. Character is right at the beginning of the game before escaping Helgen.

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=258

This is an understatement haha.

Question:

Why not get arcane blacksmith perk?? Is it useless??

It's only for upgrading already enchanted items so is a waste when you can just upgrade before you enchant.

Hey Mr. S!

-Anonymous student