5/5 enchant, insightful, corpus, extra
5/5 alchemy, physician, benefactor

not sure why it's not working

Have you actually ... loop ... it once or twice?

If you've got 100 Enchanting, 5/5 Enchanter and Insightful enchanter but your Fortify Alchemy enchant is only 20% it sounds like your game is bugged.

Check your active effects and make sure you don't have anything negative in there, if not then you're screwed

Cheshyr, smithing is driving me insane. Save me!
This works perfectly for armor skill ups with the correct perk;

ROUNDDOWN((SKILL-5)/(103/6))*3.6+2

But I can't for the life of me get a calculation to work with not having the perk.

Edit; Okay, I got this working;

ROUNDDOWN((SKILL+11/3)/(103/3))*3.6+2

I still don't like them, but I'll work with what I can get >.>

yes several times. without it increasing from those caps.

and there is nothing wrong in my active effects. Sigh I had a feeling it was bugged.

If you're on the PC, open the console and type 'player.removeperk 58f7d' and see if that has any effect on the number. Some people have reported that perk broken so some verification would be good.

I just made a new character and just power leveled alch, smith, enchant by using console commands for the items needed. Exactly same thing happens. enchants are capped at 22% and pots are capped at 28%. arrrr this is frustrating

tried that. No effect. With or without that perk it is exactly the same.

You and I have arrived at the same spot, and I'm not happy with it either, which is why I didn't post it.

Major problems I've having:

• Smithing Improvement seems to be normalized around Perked skill, not Unperked.
  
• Where do all these magic numbers come from? (103, 6, 5, 3.6, +2???) [I get similar numbers, but they should be variables, not magic numbers]
  
• Are our numbers being influenced by the reported 100-skill bug introduced in v1.3?

I'm going to have to put the problem down for a bit, and come back to it.

@ChooseADisplayName
Your problem has happened to a ton of people. For some, completely reinstalling fixed it. For some, tweaking mods fixed it. For some, buying a legit version fixed it. I'm not calling you a pirate; I'm just listing the solutions I've seen. I would suggest reinstalling, and if that doesn't fix it, assume you're stuck with it until they patch it in the next few months.

(103/3) is (34+1/3) which is the jump between unperked skill steps 34, 34, 35. For perked steps it is (103/6), or (17+1/6), 17, 17, 17, 17, 17, 18
3.6 is the amount smithing increases each step
-5 is because 22-17=5, so your skill is 5 points off,
11/3 is 3+2/3, which is because 31-34+2/3 = -3+2/3, so again your skill is off.
+2 is some random modifier that makes it all work

Where did they actually come from? I have no idea. I would guess that 3.6 and (103/3) are just arbritary numbers they decided to use because they had to use something, Why they didn't start the calculations at 0 I don't know.

can't decide if I should keep illusion or not.. 2 dremora lords are more than enough, and there will be 3 once I get a follower/companion. Illusion seems interesting, but pointless in my case.

Just in case you didn't see it, I posted this quick summary at the end of the last thread;

I wouldn't recommend it. Illusion and Conjuration fulfill the exact same purpose in combat; crowd control. Perking both is overkill.

Thanks for reposting that. It kills me when I miss this stuff.

I'm leaning strongly toward Two-Handed Axes, simply for the interactivity and increased mitigation of blocking. Is Limbsplitter worth 3 points in your experience? My conclusion from all our One-Handed weapon spec number crunching was that they're all pretty weak.

I assume we won't be able to produce a crafting template for how to optimize each weapon type for Alduin (10 standing power attacks on normal) until after you and Cheshyr finish your heroic mathing?

Been working on it for a couple of days;
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Auz-AA0GFObBdDFWS3BtTmw1aFRwcjJaWHBRZWxEQnc&hl=en_US#gid=0
If you want you can PM me your gmail address if you have one and I can give you editing rights to play about with it.

The smithing mathing is done far enough that we know 'how' it works, we just don't understand 'why', which is enough for a spreadsheet

Edit: I love seeing all the anonymous people popping in and out

I wasn't questioning your math. We literally arrived at almost identical equations. It was the 2nd part that bugs me... you don't just have that many arbitrary numbers in coherent systems. That may be my faulty assumption (coherent). But it should make sense, once we pin down where these magic numbers come from.

All those numbers scared me off

Haha, the first two pages are all that would be played about with if it was a working sheet. The calculations are what makes everything tick behind the scenes, though some of them are just annoying to work out.

Just a quick point, as some people have noted above.

A contender for the maximized perks includes removing corpus enchanter, adding the elemental enchants, and adding destruction 2/2 in your element of choice.

This way your magic resists are higher, your damage from enchanted weapons is much higher. Along with the fact that shock weapons will send your opponents flying across the room with killing blows trololol.

Also, i think elemental damage on the weapon + fiery soul trap, along with fortify destruction enchants, is really really good as the weapon stays charged forever. Plus you really don't need the stamina weapon enchant, if your stamina goes down to 0, you do have 100 alchemy, drink a restore stamina potion that you made, they are super easy to make.

just my two cents, really like this thread series, especially now that destruction is viable for me again!!

I am currently play a Khajiit monk and was wondering about whether or not I will be able to hit armor cap using my flavor armor-set... which doesn't include a helm or (heavy armor) chest...

Here's what I plan to use at end game:

Dragonbone Gauntlets/Boots
Ragged Pants
Ring/Amulet
Smithing/Enchanting 100 (perked) and Enchanter 5/5
Ebony Flesh via Alteration
Juggernaut 5/5

So, if I smith Dragonbone gauntlets and boots to Legendary 200% with Smithing enchants and uses Fortify Heavy Armor enchants on my gear with 5/5 Juggernaut will I be able to hit the cap? I won't mind needing to cast Ebony Flesh to do so. The build will use the Atronach Stone at end game so I would prefer not needing to use the Lord Stone if I have to.

My spreadsheet says with Dragonplate Gauntlets and Boots, with 5/5 Juggernaut, 4 x 29% Heavy armor enchants and the top alteration spell, you'll be at 570 armor, but since you're missing two pieces of armor you only get +50 from the hidden bonus putting you at 620 Armor, which is 74% mitigation. So it's close, but you wont hit the cap. Lord stone will put you at the cap if you really want it.

Thanks for that! Honestly that's high enough for me considering how low my armor has been so far (running around with Superior Wolf Armor at level 26) I have leveled the [censored] out of restoration. End game I am looking at roughly 70% physical damage mitigation, 65% magic resist and 80% spell absorption on-top of high level restoration. Not bad for only wearing two pieces of armor. Going to need all this protection when my unarmed damage caps at 68

Make sure you've got your +29% smithing and alchemy sets and your 32% enchanting and 130% smithing potions ready to go by the time you get those armor pieces

I totally forgot about unarmed damage as well, I'll have to start looking at that and put it into my sheet.

looks like restoration might be more useful and I can use it without having to spend a single perk unlike illusion which requires lots of perk points to become useful. Though using only 2 perk points, I could get the perk to regenerate stamina, and eliminate the need for a 'fortify stamina regen' enchant, which I had on my boots, freeing that up for something else, like muffle. I want 2 schools, just to make things interesting. There's no other enchantments I really 'need' .. I don't need 400 base damage on weapons, 200 is enough. I don't 'need' waterbreathing, and don't really need to max out magic resistance having the spellbreaker which seems to absorb damn near all magic and using conjuration with 2 dremoras well that's powerful enough in itself. Looks like a better approach.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Combat

Pretty much the unarmed bible right there. Unfortunately there isn't much number crunching to do as the math is pretty straight forward. Good for me though considering I svck at math

Domilasa:

Is TtBAt0 "Total Time to Bring Alduin to Zero"? If so, I assume the displayed value is seconds. I'm not sure how long the Alduin fight should last for it to be considered non-trivial. =/