Hey all,

I've played all the TES games and expansions since Morrowind, and for the most part I love Skyrim, but something about the pacing bothers me.

In theory, a character in Skyrim can gain 80 levels to reach level 81 if he or she maxes out every skill, thereby gaining 80 skill perks to use out of 251 perks available.

In practice though, I've found that if I divide my time 50/50 between Main Quest + Guilds questing and random + misc questing, I've beaten the entire Main Quest, and at least 1 major guild quest line by the time I'm level 35. In fact, I've completed the Main Quest, a Guild quest-line, the Civil War quest-line, and put in an equal amount of misc and random questing before reaching 35.

So, in that case, I had 34 skill points to use among 251 perks. Since I was playing a Thief, this meant I could max out at very most 3 skill perk trees, but that would leave almost nothing for other skills.

And this is the crux of my issue... The Skill Perks are what make the skills fun to use. By the time you've completed the Main quest, a Guild Quest or two, and an equal amount of side-quests, the story-based questing is mostly over, and you've only tapped into 13% of the skill perks.

I was tempted to avoid the Main Quest until I reached a higher level, until I remembered that would entail playing without any dragon shouts, also not fun.


It's almost as if during most of the game-play I was trying hard to level up my character to obtain more fun abilities, shouts, and loot, and by the time I had them most of the questing was over. Yeah, I could play the Radiant Story based quests, and there's some more Misc quests, but much of that feels like grinding.

It doesn't help that it requires level 50 Conjuration to conjure a bow. I played as a Mage once and after completing the MQ, 2 guild quests, and and equal amount of side-quests and mics Conjuration had only reached 55.

It's an odd chicken and egg problem, I want the fun stuff, but in order to get it I need to finish all the quests where I wanted to actually use the fun stuff.

***edit, bad math.
***edit2, worse math.

Dan O.

It's not really an issue if you just start the main quest line and then hold off on it for a good while. I'm level 52 and haven't finished the main quest. I've found almost ever location on the map now by just exploring as I go from place to place doing random quests for people. I find Skyrim to be much more interesting if I just explore as I go. It feels more natural and there doesn't seem to be any real urgency to the main quest line anyway. I've completed several steps of it but am holding off on it now until I feel I've done everything else I want to complete. There are so many side quests and misc areas to explore in the game that there's no way possible to do everything evenly the way you described without finishing the main quest way too soon in comparison to the other content in the game. But that's kind of how each of the TES games have been. Fallout too for that matter. The main quest line has always been only a small part of the overall game.

My problem is the other way around. I feel like I'm getting way too powerful, way too early

Garrison64,

That sounds like a good approach. It still kinda stinks though that some of the best shouts are only available towards the end of the MQ, as well as some of the best loot.

Right now I'm trying out an idea that may sound completely game-breaking or cheat-like, but I used a mod to max out all my skills.

I didn't try the mod until I had completed the MQ with 2 seperate chars, and had done 3 of the Guilds and the Civil war questlines between the two chars.

Honestly, it's still very much fun, and in some ways more fun having all the perks, spells, and skills at my disposal. I'm not exactly "God-like" because many of the enemies are leveled accordingly. I don't simply waltz through dungeons, I use a smorgasbord of skills, spells and shouts and still immerse in the role-play. I'm playing an illusionist / conjurer / archer hybrid, and I don't veer off and start firing fireballs or using longswords, I stick with the role.

The main down-side is the lack of accomplishment. I go through the quests, and the actual questing is as fun if not more-so, but I miss the feel of leveling up and obtaining new perks.

It's such a mixed bag, I just can't find a happy-medium.

edit: typo

Dan O.

Being Powerful wasn't really my concern, my concern was that despite completing that much questing, without much struggle I admit, I never really unlocked the skill perks and spells I wanted to.

I was a Mage on my first character, and after 40 hours of game-play I still didn't have the ability to use Master-level Destruction spells, or even Expert-level Conjuration, Illusion, Alteration skills. Restoration never broke 50, and my perks were too concentrated on attack / defensive skill perks to dump enough into Alchemy or Enchanting to make them useful and fun.

My Thief was much the same, he never obtained the Master rank in any skill, Marksman and Sneak came close around 90 by the time he was 40 or 45 (after additional side questing beyond what I mentioned earlier).

I felt like I was missing out on the most fun parts of those skills, those master level perks, the spells you can only use when you obtain master.

I'm about level 45, and have only done the Main Quest, Companions, most of the Mages Guild, and part of the Civil War (currently stuck on a bugged quest which won't let me progress). Also only did the necessary quests to buy a house in Riften and Whiterun. Haven't done the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood, and haven't become Thane in any of the other cities. There's still lots for me to explore and do, and the Companions offer an unending number of quests.

And when I start feeling bored of this character, I can go back, start a new character with a completely different skill set, and play the quests again but differently (eg, an assassin/thief with a rough personality instead of an easy-going magic-augmented archer). There's apparently some changes to certain quest lines depending on the order you do them too, which could be interesting.

you can boost any skill you want pretty much up to any level you want within like an hour.

This is the major issue I have with the perk/leveling system - it punishes people who don't specilize, and skills are worthless without perks because all skills were designed to be used with them. If you 100 in 2H but no perks, you actually do less damage and use your weapon WORSE than someone at 60 and all the perks you can get up to that point.

At the same time, perks don't let characters who WANT to specilize actually specilize in any meaningful way (since most of the perks are just throwaway things that do the same job the skill is supposed to govern), and many trees often lack any level of balance or depth.

These are all issues I'm hoping to look into for a mod I'm working on below (shameless plug). I want to make perk trees have more depth, skills be more distinct, and the power of a skill being primarily governed by the skill number itself versus the perks. However perks would allow players to specilize in meaningful ways twoard their favorite skills and perks, in ways that add abilities or utility to a skill.

KorJax,

That sounds like a great idea...

One thought that popped into my head as a short-term easy solution is to increase the amount of perks given for a level up to 3.

Yeah, if you're a die-hard and grind away at the game enough to reach level 81 you'll get 95% of the perks, but if you're an average user who's done the bulk of the questing that's appropriate for your character (College for Mages, etc) and you only reach 40 by the time you're starting to feel the Character's done enough, you'll have about 120 perks, or slightly less than 1/2 of the available 251.

More importantly, you'll be able to max out the perks for one full set of skills, such as all the Thief, or all the Magic skills with a few to spread around (smithing, speechcraft, alchemy, lockpicking).

I find it very frustrating that mages no longer have spells to unlock chests and such, so they must rely on lockpicking, which really needs skill perks.
It's much the same with a Theif who wants to wear light armor, so it would really be best to also have smithing.
Mages also use Alchemy extensively, skill perks are needed make that useful.

One of the other issues is that certain skills are a PITA to level. Conjuration is increased when a summon does damage, after the summon has expired. It's far, far, far faster to simply cast soul trap at living (or dead) things, but that's again breaking immersion and roleplay.

I was doing that when I realized that all I was doing was wasting hours of time I could be having fun simply to abuse the leveling system in order to be able to conjure a bow. In the end I found the max skills mod a simpler and faster means of getting what I wanted.

Dan O.

I'm level 48 and I've only done the town and village quests, daedric quests and a chunk of the main quest. I haven't touched any of the guilds or the civil war yet.

Many of the town and daedric quests do involve large dungeon crawls so you chew through the levels.