Hi all.

(Wall o’ text warning. First post on the forum, so please direct me to an earlier thread on this if it exists).

I have noticed a few threads on other forums speaking about low-level armours and gear and how it can improve immersion, but no advice.

I have a fully-fledged lvl52 Khajiit, but the appearance of deadric, ebony and glass weapons and armours make it feel as if everyone in Skyrim traffics with demons to get weapons. I felt these types of weapons should be exceedingly rare, or of D’eadric or Aedric origins. For him, it is immersive because he is a powerful spellsword and the world is going to pot.

In Oblivion I kept one character, my redguard warrior, at lvl 1 for the whole game, missing out all the deadric quests and level dependent stuff, (I had already done those with my Breton), so that I can use the steel weapons for more than 3-4 levels, i.e. the entire game and that bandits I meet do not have deadric weapons when they only have about 10 gold to their names.

Now, in Skyrim I have two more low characters, one, my redguard warrior, I will stop levelling at around lvl 25 so that all items carried by enemies or spawned is Elven level or lower, meaning no glass, ebony or Deadric weapons, besides those gained from deadric quests and as fixed items (e.g. blade of sacrifice.).

I have 24 perk points to distribute for him. Light armour’s stamina boost, dual wielding, restoration perks. Powerful warrior.

The second char is my orc warrior who I am keeping capped at lvl 5 so that only steel weapons are forthcoming, not even orcish armour or weapons. This is two-fold: I know there are orc weapons and armour fixed around the game, so I don’t need to harvest them from fallen enemies, and more ppl would use steel and iron weapons anyway, in my low-level immersion version of Skyrim.

All four stat-boosts went into health (140). I have 4 perks for him. Armsman 1/5, fighting stance 1/1, light armour 1/5 and steel smithing 1/1.

My experiences so far are that, using the Lord’s stone (25% resist magic, 50 points extra armour, gained from the mountain north of Whiterun), you can be tough enough at lower altitudes (where lower-level enemies mostly occur) to survive without turning down the level difficulty (kept at standard middle 1:1 difficulty), but that you need to make the most of every advantage and know your enemies (e.g. fire for vampires).
E.g. Save berserk for difficult melee opponents and use alchemy to boost health, stamina, mana, etc., when you need it. Alchemy is probably the most useful and then smithing to boost your stats from weapons and armour. Breton is also a good low-level race choice.

Further, by pushing through the initial difficulties, if you are able to level your skills to high enough levels without levelling up, you can still access the master level quests for the skills without being high level (I think. Not tested yet.).

I am finding it a lot of fun to run around with low-level guys, because all the weapons and equipment are more suited to the rural and rustic environments people usually are in and their economic class.

I am going to finish the game with my high-level Khajiit first, to play it as designed (which is excellent, btw).

High-level skills mean less cost for spells, but not for reducing stamina cost of power attacks, which is where the lighter weight of steel or lower-level weapons comes in compared to deadric gear.

Further, high smithing and then enchanting can be used to cover most deficiencies that a character has, or suits of clothes/armour can be made for casting (destruction cost reduction and fortify magicka) and then changed to melee (armour and resistances).

Also, both heavy armours and light armours can be used because no perks are invested in either, making heavy armours give more protection if the levels are equal, meaning heavy armours are the more natural choice for low-level chars. However, I am using light armour on my orc even if he is permanent lvl5, using only my heavy armour when I meet tough melee opponents.

What comments or advice can you give me for playing a low-level character that aims to level up all the skills?

Further, I wanted to say that I love the levelling of the game, but also love bypassing it to keep the game at one level range.
This does eventually make it easy for your eventually overpowered-skills char, but since some enemies are level capped at higher levels, just maybe you can face them down, even if you are not in the required level range for the dungeon.

Finally, shouts are not level dependent, so you can keep your character low-level while accessing some powerful skills and boosts without going for magic training which requires massive amounts of magicka that you don’t have because of lack of stat boosts.

Advice and comments?

I see way less Daedric, Ebony and other high end armors in this game and my strongest character is at level 48. However, at level 48, I expect to see this level of gear.

As for lower end armor and immersion. The way I see it is, if I avoid crafting skills or using them once gained, my weapons and armor are up to the task, but not beyond the task. Crafting skills are what you make of them. The potential to create uber equipment is there, it is up to the player to choose to do that or not.

Finally, the Shouts. There is no skill behind them as you are the Dragonborne. The ability to use them is born into you. As far as not being leveled, I doubt anyone can go through what is needed to learn most, not even all, but most shouts without gaining about 20 levels.

How do you keep a character capped at a low level in Skyrim? In Oblivion, it's possible, by choosing a set of major skills that you don't use except to bump levels. But in Skyrim? Are you using a mod for this? (I'm on the 360, so mods and I are complete strangers.)

Edit: Oh, wait. It suddenly hit me. Never go into your Skills/Level up screen. Ugh! That would be boring.

One thing to keep in mind, is no NPC armor or weapons are improved. Which means that Steel Plate Armor and Steel Weapons can be better and stronger than what any Daedric/Ebony sporting NPC can bring to the table.

i prefer playing TESgames lower level i dont know why but i always did it in oblivon as well i would really enjoy the game until i hit like level 20 and i always deleted the character and started again i dont know why :S.

But i think they should have made Glass/Ebony/Deadric armours rare LOOT drops i prefer the player leveling in skyrim than oblivion because you dont get a noob bandit with full Deadric but i think it gets way too easy when your higher level even when bumping up the difficulty.

EDIT: i do feel that in skyrim you level up way too quickly i do wish they would have dragged it on a little bit so you dont come out of cave number 3 at level 10 :S

Thank you for the replies.


True, which is a nice thing about smithing and which is why I use it for my low-level characters. For my higher-level Khajiit, I improve his ebony armour using my smithing as well.


It can be boring for some, but remember I also play through the normal levels, and this is only another fun thing ppl can do with the game.
Try to take on a dragon with a low-level character. It is tricky, so this is why I am giving my thoughts and asking for advice.
There seems to be a hump in the levelling curve where the game is challenging, before evening out at later levels as you gain power but opponents do not as quickly.

Remember that it is possible to enjoy the game without perks, meaning that I can use any and all weapons, spells, staves, armours etc. when I want because there are no perks, i.e. lots of freedom.

Also, it makes sense that some may want to play their character with steel and skyforged weapons. Currently, skyforged and nord hero weapons are only useful for a short while before better material weapons appear.

This thread is for ppl who want to play Skyrim with only steel, skyforged steel and nord hero weapons and armours after having finished it in the normal way.

Bethesda themselves note that the difficulty setting is there to suit the game’s difficulty to your character, e.g. for weak characters turn down the difficulty, while for powerful characters, turn it up for a challenge. Hence, I am looking for tactics to improve what I would normally cover by lowering the difficulty.


Nice! Me too. Any advice for Skyrim?

Another way to limit how high a level a character can rise to is only utilizing a small amount of skills. My Orc warrior was strictly a warrior. The only skills that improved were one-handed, heavy armor, and smithing. And he only perked smithing up to Orcish so that he could have a good set of improved Orc armor and War Axes and stopped smithing after that. After about 120 hrs of playtime, he's only lvl 32, while other characters utilizing more skills are in the mid-40s with the same playtime.

My lvl57 breton warrior-mage found exactly one daedric bow and one sword (gift during civil war questline) and no daedric armour at all. Much preferred Morrowind's approach to daedric - ultra rare indeed in the base game at least one part was unique and held by a very powerful individual.

At 53rd level Griselda has found 1 Daedric waraxe, no other Daedric or Dragonbone items. That seems rare enough to me.
Ebony and glass are more common but still pretty rare.

Having a follower will also limit leveling, especially during combat, since all the actions your follower takes during combat are actions your character won't need to take. Less actions = less leveling up.

I agree on the "leveling up too fast" bit. It's not nearly as bad as in Oblivion, but at least in Oblivion we could play with Major and Minor skill usage to slow our games down if we wanted to.

RE: the OP. I really enjoy low level play, but I have never been able to do the artificial actions needed to keep characters low level forever (i.e., cannot resist going into the skills level up menu).

I agree with your comments about exotic armors. I just rerolled my first character (a dual wielding Khajiit assassion/thief) and this time I am not perking any armor skill at all and only wearing fur/leather armors. It has been a lot of fun.

Report back on low-level character:

Hello all.

I am reporting back on a month or so of playing my lvl 5-capped orc.

Background:
I have completed most of the dungeons around Falkreath, Whiterun, Windhelm and Markarth.
I am increasing skills used, but not levelling up my character past lvl 5. I should be around level 26-27. One-handed is 50, enchanting is 45, smithing is 31, block is 30, light armour is 42, heavy armour is 36, archery is 49, illusion is 30, destruction is 44, sneak is 60 and the rest I cannot remember.

I have not initiated the Dragon rising quest and have no dragons to deal with, but also, therefore, cannot use any shouts, lacking dragon souls. All dragon lairs on mountaintops are empty and I do not have a house to store things in but this is not a massive problem. Further, if you want to use the arcane enchanter in Dragonsreach, you can walk into the hall and avoid the Jarl to enchant weapons without initiating the Dragon rising quest.

Game play:
So far I must report success in all my encounters, except the Valthume dungeon where there lies a dragon priest. Here there is a hard level cap and the draugr overlord was a mean battle for my lvl 5 orc. I did net an ebony sword and shield, but retreated from the tomb after the overlord battle was more than a match and I decided to do more and easier dungeons first.

Humanoid enemies remain within level range while your character improves skills, but not levels.

This means that it feels as if my character’s gradual training with sword, spell and bow is working and his experience as a dungeon explorer is growing because he can now reliably take out all the sentries of bandit, forsworn and vampire dungeons with single bowshots and then close with spell and sword.

To me, it feels as if my orc is growing as a warrior and learning about battle in Skyrim, where the enemies do not get stronger nor does my character, except that his skills improve.

The fatalities, thanks to the recent patch, are epic and wonderful. Also, it feels as if my character is becoming more deadly and warrior-like while using only steel weapons and leather or steel armours.

I must admit that humanoid enemies are the most fun to fight against, especially Forsworn. They appear as vanilla Forsworn (shaman as well), Forsworn Foragers and Briarhearts, as well as hagravens.
While you must avoid their strikes, because I only have 140 health, if you can land your strikes first, you can take on a number of them simultaneously.

However, being cornered and swarmed means death.
Thus, stealth, protection magic and illusion (muffle is tops and long duration, but you need the novice hood gained in Helgen to cast it) are needed to divide and conquer redoubts and bandit strongholds. Stealthy bow strikes will be the most used initially until your sneak increases above 70 to enable melee stealth strikes. Using muffle helps.

Lesser ward is a must, and consideration for using a Breton and Lord’s Stone is also advised, to block the spells of powerful casters, such as the hagraven in Hag’s End. Her fireballs really hurt, but using a ward means that the spell only shatters the ward but does not damage you, allowing you to close and use power attacks to stagger her and defeat her. Ignore the spiders that she spawns as she is deadliest of the three.

Firebolt, ice spike and lightning bolt are useful. I have not taken runes, but they may prove useful to other players. I have ignored targeted illusion spells, but they also may be useful, though ineffective on higher-level enemies, meaning that, where they would have been most useful (controlling crowds of higher-level enemies), illusion is ineffective. Illusion can still be used to charm enemies and cause havoc, as well as buff allies.

A randomly encountered stray dog shared my quests for a large part of the month, but I let him go eventually when he could not follow me into the abandoned prison near Windhelm. Very useful if buffed with illusions.

Equipment:
I have encountered orchish, dwarven and ebony equipment (this from high-level-capped enemies) in the game all at level 5, so there is scope for a low-level warrior to use high-level-material weapons.

However, I have preferred to stick to my steel and leather equipment because I have the steel smithing perk and I can easily make and enchant leathers. Also, if you complete the Companion’s quest series through to the start of the Silver Hand, then you receive two Skyforged steel weapons from Eorlund. These are very useful.

I can smith steel weapons, owing to perk and will be able to forge Skyforged steel weapons and nord hero weapons after completing the Companions’ questline.

Further, I found a dwarven bow in Hag’s End, but stuck to my Forsworn bow, which is the best for this low level range. It is tempered with steel and the steel smithing perk. Both Hunter’s bows and Forsworn bows can be tempered with the steel smithing perk.

Also, by using enchanting, I can boost my magicka and stamina regen, fortify my health and add resistances to my leather armour and damage to weapons. However, I am limited to petty, lesser and common soul gems, meaning that enchanting must be boosted (using alchemy) to make enchantments more powerful and useful. However, one can easily use a succession of self-made and self-enchanted equipment that is replaced as smithing and enchanting skills improve.

Further, because I will be able to make Skyforged weapons and can easily make more leather armour suits, I can enchant items without worrying that I cannot temper them further owing to the lack of the arcane smithing perk. I can easily make new equipment pieces and enchant them.

Finally, I have 31000 septims to my name.

Any questions or advice?

(P.S. are there any mods or GUIs for not levelling up but checking skills levels? Or maybe for keeping equipment and pieces at a certain level range, or capping the level of enemies or the player’s character or restricting levels in the game? Tx.)