You are saying that you limit yourself and thereby maintain your fun. It is not too far from what I do. I ignore some things and continue to have fun, too.

I like exploration more than I like role-playing or a challenge, and I end up looking at lock-picking, smithing, enchanting, alchemy, one- and two-handed combat, light and heavy armor, etc. and gain a high level. After I reached level 30 did I switch to Expert and now at 60 did I finally go to Master. I am still getting a challenge out of some fights.

I'm level 67, approaching level 68, and I'm close to maxing all the skills. The only ones that I'm seriously low in are pickpocketing (@20+) and conjuration (@54)...you can do it without grinding.

It is not so much limiting myself, instead it is I focus on the game, not my character. My character develops as it needs to just by playing the game. Sure, I might grind a skill a level or two here and there to get to a Perk I might want, but other than that, I just play and let things progress as they do.

Yes, you can use all skills, why would they be there not to use? All skill leveling gives XP as well (unlike previous TES games), so you gain a lot of x-points leveling the skills, and gain them very fast when starting them at low levels of use. You can literally get most skills to level forty and gain enough XP to be uber-powerful without using perks. You can also get all skills to level 100, though that would be time consuming without using exploits. Also, getting there would mean mostly running around killing things and doing non--combat activities to raise all of those skills. If you quest while trying to raise all skills, you can just about finish everything in the game, except the regenerating quests that offers the same task over and over again, and make it to about level 35. As you can see, attempting to go all-out to level 100 on everything would be terribly monotonous, unless that is your thing.

And no, I never made all skills to level 100. The only ones I did make (without using exploits), were the ones that were all too easy to do, Smithing, Enchanting, Alchemy, One-Handed, Restoration, Destruction, Conjuration and Light Amror. I made it to level 52. Now that the CK is out, I will play again and this time, do little if any questing to level up. I found that if I go into interior areas that set the strength of the enemy based on your level to be kind of a bummer, so I'd rather go in them at higher levels for the challenge.

Correction, TES games have always leveled your character based on Skill advancement only.

I have a friend who's working on it....

He uses a few grinding tricks (ie; he cast muffle a lot to help level illusion) but he's merrily going along leveling up all his various skills on 1 character...

personally I find it a lot more fun to have innumerable characters who make use of all the skills between them... that way I'm neither over-leveled for content, and get to use associated perks as well... but some people have a burning desire to do absolutely everything with 1 character...

depends on the player.

It HAS been done though... that's how we know the effective level cap is 81

Untrue. I said "All skill leveling gives XP as well (unlike previous TES games)", all skill leveling gives XP, meaning in Skyrim. Previous TES games did not do this as you could only level up by increasing your "major" skills only.. In Oblivion, only the 7 major skills I used allows leveling up and give me XPs to use in my attributes. Yes, I can level all skills, but not all of them result in giving me XPs or increases in levels, unlike what Skyrim allows.

Yes, in Oblivion Major Skills were what counted to character leveling, but your minor skills counted towards what attributes you leveled. In Morrowind, both Major and Minor Skills counted towards character leveling, but all skills, inc Misc, counted towards attributes. So, all skills have an influence on leveling in TES. The only thing that has changed is what has a direct impact on when the character levels.

I have my main character who is level 81, i have great fun with him and still loads to do Hes my only character as well dunno if i will make another one.

I have 100 in every skill. Stop playing that char because it feels like a waste of time to continue doing quests. Its almost like I'm playing god mode on pc.

Depends on how much of a masochist you are.

It's impossible if you have a life,

I got my mage to 78 just because there were perks I wanted in all the mage skills, and light armor, and crafting, and even pickpocket perks for carrying capacity, and sneak...

Maybe I dont use all of them all the time (such as illusion and alteration) but I wanted to try them as well as have in case I needed. Ive rerolled archer now and will probably not need to go as high a level to get the perks I want.

edit: no cheats, though I will admit to going afk and letting bandits beat on me for block/heavy armor skillups.

oghma infinium and you will see.

many exploit "features" of the game to level to 81 quite quickly. You can probably do it from start in a single Saturday of "play" if you're willing to do what needs to be done to do it. You can power level quite quickly.

Oghma Infinium, level 81 in 20 minutes or less.

i am at level 81 with all skills at 100 and did not use any glitches or console commands.......

i didnt even get the oghma infinium until after i had maxed out all my skills......

i still have 10 skill points i havent used..........

81 and a half to be exact.

i can see how someone would be able to, but i think youd run out of quests/side dungeons to do and just end up killing random respawns. no fun for me.

right now im lvl 44 maxed out my hvy armor, two hand, and smithing. now im going for one hand, archery, light armor and blocking. you kinda feel like you started the game all over since you switch/mix up your weapons and armor to ones with lower skill levels.

I know a guy who maxed out, even said that differences in patches or something boosted him to level 82 instead of the normal 81, also this was his first TES (the publicity that the game got was huge, it's odd to hear jocks talk about Skyrim)

Trainers help a lot with leveling. If I don't use a skill often, then I pay a trainer to help get the skill up.

I'm attempting a lv 81 character, though if I come up short after doing every single quest and clear every dungeon, then I won't resort to exploits just to do it. I mainly just don't want to start over from the beginning after I've spent 200-500+ hours with a character and have to re-do quests, clear the same dungeons again and etc. I start over constantly in many of my games and the feeling of deja-vu burns me out.

If my Nord happens to feel too powerful, I'm not opposed to having him fighting with hand to hand, wearing regular clothes, as if he was a martial artist.

If I can get 43 levels doing only quests given from Whiterun and Riverwood, the rest of Skyrim should be able to handle the other 38 levels.

I have five characters. I am well placed to build em' some more.

I have a level 42 Mage Destro/Conjure with Conjure at 100. Could take him further and perhaps armor him to some extent.

A level 43 Battlemage with the battle part well worked out. All Deadric with a big sword. He could use some more magic to take him further.

A level 22 Kajiit who is not doing much these days. I'm not sure what to do with him.

A level 12 Breton who is working out well and he will be a "middle of the road" kinda guy.

My favorite at the moment, a level 42 Dark Elf semi evil super sneak badass. He is shaping up very well.


I can from here go on to many things. I think I'll take the Mage places for the next little while.

My char is on level 81 with all skills at 100. I'm on Xbox 360 and never used any glitches/exploits. So it's not impossible. Hey, I only have ~250 hours on the game.

What I did was start off with one combat style (sneak/archery), then when the related skills hit 100 switched to another combat style involving other skills (for me, I went to one-handed, two handed, then magic). The other skills (speech, lockpicking, etc.) I just let level up naturally as well as getting a bit of a helping hand from trainers.

Skills such as smithing, alchemy and enchanting I mostly collected all the ingredients/resources for while out exploring and questing, then crafted as much as I could with them and sell of the products (which also helps with speech skill).

Magic skills I rarely used early on in the game (apart from Restoration), so I got lessons from trainers whenever I ran into one, until I'd finished with two-handed and switched to magic combat. I leveled destruction naturally (removing magicka cost with enchantments helps A LOT), and by that time I was level 72. From there I power-leveled the rest to 100 by casting spells over and over since I almost never use those schools (Illusion, Alteration, etc.) and would have never even come close to getting them to 100 naturally.

So if you can stick it out with the one character, and with a little leveling strategy, not before long you'll be coming up on level 81.

Or you could cheat and Ohgma Infinium your way there, but where's the achievement in that?

After playing through a bit, I started an experimental character to mess around with. I gave him 100 in everything and most of the perks. I don't think I would have the stomach to organically level skills up though.

Pretty easy to hit 100 in everything.

Lover's Comfort + Lover's Stone + Trainers = Fast Forward

Being 81 gets old really fast though...

Skyrim shines for me at around 35 - 40.