Hi

Skyrim is my first TES game and I am currently still loving it. Having had two characters, I have played through the main quest, the Thieves guild quest and 70+ side/other quests. I am about to start a third character and wanted some advice or ideas.

I found that using smithing, enchanting and alchemy can make your character too powerful and enemies are no longer challenging. So, I want to impose some rules on my third character. Currently I am think, no smithing, enchanting or use of alchemy. This should restrict me to what I pick up and reduce the problem of having to much money!

What, if any, are the serious problems doing this will cause? What self imposed rules have you tried (or thought about) and did they work in terms of making the game more of a challenge?

I know I could bump up the difficulty level but my preference is to leave it on default.

Thanks in advance.

Leaving the crafting skills alone is a good idea, everytime I make rules for myself I get dissatisfied because I feel like I am limiting myself. I've tried no HUD/Fast travel and it just seems very limited to me.

If you want to go without it getting to easy quickly then add combat perks when you feel it will be required for easier combat, you can invest in non combat perks of your choice until you actually require the combat perks for battle.

My rules:
- No fast travel
- Eating and sleeping
- health and stamina limited to 150 (expert)
- Recently took away the HUD and loving it. I no longer mysteriously know everything

You will do fine without crafting. I played my warrior on master without it, and it worked out nicely.

I wouldn't say, leave the crafting skills alone completely. My rule most of the time is: Just 2 perks in Smithing and not using the crafting loop (ergo limiting myself to alchemy, smithing (with the exception of some potions to get lower tier weapons up to average dmg), enchanting gear I find)!

//edit

Oh and like the above poster no compass markers! (But not no HUD, since on Master with Deadly Dragons and PISE you need to know how much health you have )

I play a permanent level one character. This means you don't assign points to health, magicka, or stamina when you level up. This also means you don't get to use skills and perk points. Your skills do level up throughout the game, but without skills/perks, they are a lot weaker than normal.

For example, my character just went to level 95 sneaking yesterday. But without the skills/perks, it's more like level 55, because your skill level is much lower, and you really miss some of those perks. I have to put a lot more thought into attacks knowing running away in sneak mode doesn't hide me. Some of the jobs for the thiefs' guild are very hard to do because of the low sneaking ability.

You live off the land - armor/weapons come from drops, dungeon loot, or purchased from trader.

Other limitations can be imposed, depending on your desire.

Good luck.

I've limited myself to no MQ on this playthru. I'm also not doing any smithing or enchanting, but perking out the alchemy tree. I've done alchemy with all my other characters, but never put more than one rank perk into it. I'm also perking out the speech tree, which I haven't explored yet.

It's a very weak rogue - reliant on sneak, illusion and archery to take down foes. The aim of the game is to make a million gold before level 50. Gotta get speech to 100 asap though, so it stops adding to my general levelling

I do it a bit different, while I tend on every char to gather as much alchemy ingredent's as I run across, The only make what they may need. Sometime's it's enough, sometimes not. But with the exception of my test char, none of my char's have done more than the 1st perk on the tree.

Smithing is the same I gather all the component's that I run across, but don't make everything. and other than my test char I've haven't taken more than 2 perk's, bottom and arcane smithing, to repair "found" enchanted item's.

Enchanting same bottom perk only except test chatacter.

At low lvl's, it work's very nicely, and It make's Deathlord's a real challenge, at Higher lvl's, it make's almost all enemies a challenge. Now I could and probably will end up taking more perk's as needed to keep up with the "bosses". But I usually end up with some "extra" perk point's by lvl 40, I just don't use them unless I need them. Their is nothing that say's you have to use them.

If you keep to a relitively realistic amount of any of the crafting then your character doesn't become OP. It's when you are leveling by crafting that you end up with a problem. With Alchemy only make the potion's that, that character is going to use.

Crafting is fine as long as you don't get carried away.

You could also try becoming a Vampire. It adds a whole other dynamic to the game and becomes something you need to keep under control and work around it.

I'm currently playing a hunter/gatherer sort of character that makes his own armour. He likes to go in heavy as he takes on bears with a dagger sometimes for the sheer hell of it!

I've limited myself to only being able to smith up to Steel armour, as it as a pretty awesome short sleeved version. But I've limited myself to only having one enchanted ring and that is for magicka regeneration, as he has the basic, healing and flames spells and he likes to make sure that he is always able to heal, should a bear scratch the hell out of his face.