By the end of the game, will I be weaker if I chose to improve many different skills , thus stronger if I focus and improve only a few skills? Is there a limit to how much skill improvement you can earn, thus you should focus on improving the most important skills?

Here's my reasoning. I don't fully understand the leveling system, so please correct me:
There's a maximum level that a player can reach. To earn levels, you must improve skills. Therefore, there's a maximum amount of skill improvement which can be earned. If you work to improve in nine different skills, you'll have only improved each skill a moderate amount by the time you hit the maximum level. However, if you work to improve only four skills, you can earn much more skill in each before hitting the max level.

Is this correct? I ask because I'm evaluating the impact of experimenting with skills like Smithing and Alchemy. I want to experience the full game, so I tinker with these minor skills. But if there's a limit on skill improvement, every point I earn toward Smithing is one less in One-Handed, Destruction or another important skill.

Thanks for your input.

Each skill can be maxed to 100, but you can only pick 81 perks.

This game has no end... your premise is flawwed. Some people finish their characters in their 20s and some in their 50s. Some play them to 81. There's no prescribed "end".

Great, thanks. 81 perks is enough to make a character strong in many areas.

My guess is not many people make it to 81 because there's no real reason to do that. You would pretty much have to set out with that goal in mind because you can explore the entire game world long before hitting that point unless you find ways to grind certain skills and that's just boring.

You can level every skill to 100 simply by doing whatever it takes to level that skill. Sneak to level sneaking, hit an enemy with a sword to level 1h, get hit in heavy armor to level heavy armor ext. There is no limit to how many skills you can level to 100.

But as you level a skill it causes your character level to go up slightly and once you improve enough skills your character will level up giving you a perk point to spend. You can only get a specific number of those depending on how many times you chose to level. For me the practical limit, from a role playing perspective, is probably around 55 to 60. I'll probably never play a character beyond that because there's no point in it. So I have to plan my perk upgrades around that number.

Focus first on your primary skills until you get them where you want them. Once you have all the perks you need then you can start putting them into secondary skills that are not as important but can still add to your character's flexibility. Just don't spread your perk points around too much or you will end up with a weak character.

If I remember correctly enemies only level up to 45 or 50, and even then only boss or elite enemies go up to that level.

Even if you screw up on your perk selection you could compensate by grinding to a higher level.

The key to this is..... you gain levels by increasing your skills. The "max level" is reached when all 18 skills are at 100.

There's a difference in perking skills, and simply increasing skills. Perking skills take a given skill to a hole new level, compared with just increasing a skill.

I've got a character that has a wid range of skills. Some Illusion and Conjuration, one-handed, two-handed, archery and block, sneak, pickpocket and speech, smithing and alchemy. Each of these has at least one perk put into it. That's pretty spread out, and he's not a very powerful character, but I'd be lying if I said it's not a very fun build. I have to use each of his skills to get around any given situation, which makes things fun, and the gameplay doesn't get boring by doing the same thing, over and over.

If you focus on all the skills, then yes you'll be weaker. That's why you need to pick 4-6 and specialize those as your main skills. It's still a fine system, it's not perfect but it usually works.

Unless you really spread out your perks so thinly that it's ridiculous, you should have enough good strengths by lvl 40 to make you very powerful, if not earlier. Focus strongly on 2-3 perk trees that you want your character to major in, and you'll quickly outstrip the abilities of the AI, even on Master. Sadly.

Do you still get perks after lvl50 then? I thought you could lvl higher but the perks would stop after 50

Yes you do. You get perks all the way to the max level. It's just that leveling tend to get very slow after 50 or so because you already reached 100 on most of the skills you use. In order to level up after that, you have start intentionally using skills that you chose not to use up to that point. Many people tend to retire their characters somewhere around 40 or 50. But it seems that some people enjoy leveling up their characters all the way to 81.

I believe it is 80 perks when you max all skill at lv81, since you don't have any perk point at lv 1, you start getting perk point at lv2

By maxing all the skills to get to lv 81, skill you don't use will not level up unless you intentionally use it. Therefore, by lv40, almost all the regular using skill already maxed or almost maxed, it will be painful to get more perk point afterward. That's why the soft cap of the level usually at lv50.

Or you can go to the Nexus mod supermarket, and pick up the Community Uncapper mod http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=1175

which allows your skills to continue raising past 100 with normal use, among other benefits. I was totally stuck at lvl 56 with my main char, and leveling had virtually stopped, without resorting to wasting hours doing stupid repetitive pet tricks to level up a bunch of lowbie skills my char neither needed nor wanted. Now, I'm leveling at about the same pace as I should be, which is to say still fairly slowly, but at least the bar is actually moving again, and I'm not stagnating. And I'm just playing normally, not spending hours jumping off cliffs and healing myself, or blasting and healing my poor follower with a million firebolts. Or giving up to start a new char just cuz I'm not making any progress anymore. Highly recommended.

I retired my expert level difficulty characters at 48 and 52, but my master level character at 60. I did about the same amount of content with each, but the extra enemy health on master meant I levelled up quicker. They were all very powerful at the end - too powerful to be much fun going thru enemies like butter.

Cool i didnt know that. Makes it a little easier to pick more skills. Thanks

Personally my main character feels stronger in his 70's than he did in his 40's.

I focus on combat skills first (1h, block & heavy armor) then smithing and then whatever I feel like. It wont make a difference, the game is so easy at 25 and beyond so just go with whatever.

Be aware that you can level up your character with non-combat skills. When that happens, your combat ability does not increase.

However, your enemies will also level up when you do, but their combat abilities do increase. In this case, you'll fall behind them.

So, you must select carefully.

You'd be better of to select certain skill trees that aid your character's skills. I.e., if you're an archer, sneak will help you greatly, whereas speech really doesn't do much for combat.

If you're a mage, and you use a 2H weapon as backup, you should not have to use that weapon often - so there's no advantage to assigning skills/perk points in that area.

The speech skills will increase when you sell stuff to traders, and the 2H will increase in skill when you use it.

So, spreading points around will decrease your abilities early on, while later in the game, everything will catch up. But, you could be very frustrated by then because you suffered in the early part of the game.

Good luck.

I play on the standard difficulty level (Adept?). I put my first few perks into 1H, heavy armour and block. I then stopped taking the perks. My character is level 47 (approx. 450 hours play time) and has circa 38 unused perks. I have only used items found in game i.e. no smithing, no enchanting (other than using the black star) and never use or make potiions. The difficulty of the game can be extreme depending upon opponents but at points is still pretty easy.

So perhaps play 'normally' on Master difficulty and only take every other perk. This gives you every option of easing the difficulty if you are struggling but should still be a challenge in the long term. Naturally everybody has differing ability at these games so adjustment will be a personal thing. Doing this will also allow you to 'spread' your skill/perks about and still have a route out if the difficulty is too high.

(The nice thing about my character now is that I can now make different saves after maxing different perk trees, up the difficulty and see how each build plays out in the later stages of the game)

Eagle15 is spot on, and I'm surprised to took so long for somebody to explain this key point. It's one of the reasons Skyrim's skill/level is more adaptable than many give it credit for, and part of the reason why some people find the game's combat difficult, or challenging, and some find it far too easy. Anybody building pure characters where offence is concerned (one handed, destruction, conjuration etc) focusing on one or two skill classes will find it much easier than somebody who spreads the love around a bit and levels up, say, alchemy, pickpocketing, or multiple combat styles. Of course, if you play for long enough then you'll become a 'master of all trades', but relatively few people do and so the multitalented characters suffer (or prosper, if you're looking for tough battles/a weaker character).

This is why the iron dagger exploit (which may or may not be fixed by now if you're playing v1.5) isn't quite so empowering as you're allowing the enemies to level up while you're increasing only health/stamina (presumably) and no combat skills; maybe your hit multipliers make up for this though, I haven't done the maths so don't quote me here.

This seems to be the case.

No, it isn't correct. You can level every skill from 0 (well, 15 or whatever the starting value is) to 100. That's it. If you dabble in many skills, you'll just have many skills at 100. There is no fixed number of skill gains you can get - leveling one skill doesn't stop you from leveling another. Keep this in mind:
You have to level all skills to 100 in order to get to level 81 (generally speaking). If you focus only on 4-5 skills, then you'll never hit the level cap; specialized characters don't go further than level 50, and usually finish at an even lower one.
You gain levels by increasing skills.
When your skills stop increasing, you don't gain levels anymore.

question:
Does the dificulty level that you are playing influence the experience received?
what i am trying to ask is: does it level up faster with master dificulty, then with novice level?
tnx

This is the exact reason I started the thread. Thanks for clarifying this. I planned to put early improvements into Speech to get good deals throughout more of the game, earning me a greater cumulative amount of gold (I'm an Imperial, can you tell?). Also, I considered smithing jewelry to increase Smithing so I could make better weapons and armor early in the game. Both seem like a bad idea because they're taking away from combat improvements, which my enemies are constantly gaining.Thanks again.

My first character was a jack-of-all-trades type; I had no knowledge of which skills or perks worked "best" and just sort of tried o figure it out as I went along.
As a result, I "wasted" some perks on lockpicking and spell trees that I didn't really use and some other stuff here and there.
I finished the main quest at level 42 (on Adept) and even with a sub-optimal build, I was walking over most enemies at that point.
I breathed a little more life into the character by modding Sylgia to be a follower (to show her what being "off on some adventure" is all about) and upping the difficulty, but my "weak" chracter is still ridiculously powerful now at level 50.

I believe the only reason to be concerned about optimal levels and perks is if there is a specific high-level ability that you've read about that you want to see in action.

No characters in Skyrim are weak by "the end of the game." Some are just more Godlike than others