So, this concept has bothered me since I began playing Skyrim. Powerleveling. If you don't know what I mean, think about smithing iron daggers over and over until you reach 100 smithing (before 1.5 patch). Or casting Soul Trap on dead creatures to raise your conjuration. It is SO tempting, I'm not going to lie. But in my opinion, it really does take away form some aspects of the game. What are your thoughts? Do you do it? Can you justify it?

I don't usually bother with controlling my leveling because I end up making a new character eventually, which means I just wasted my time.

I'd rather cast 500 muffle spells in a row than actaully using them in a dungeon.. You know.. seeing as it makes noise as you can't have the "quiet casting" perk for a while..

Or.. when do you ever actually use soul trap? I buy my gems.

That being said I really only do it if I make a new character that won't be using magic.

Generally, I've never seen the need to powerlevel...

I don't think Powerleveling Smithing in particular is possible anymore, since Patch 1.5.

As for the rest, I learned in Morrowind that Powerleveling really ruins the game. I like to proceed organically. Adventure+LevelUp+Quest all at the same time. Gives a richer experience than Max Level -> Search for all Artifacts -> Then Quest, like a lot of people do, and something I did in Morrowind at first.

The whole "Level Scaling" Thing came about because of powerleveling. Power Levelers ironically wanted a way to impose severe limits on what they could do and acquire, so they could actually enjoy more content. The result nearly killed Elder Scrolls.

I pick only one crafting skill for each character, either smithing, alchemy or enchanting.

If I'm using smithing, I only craft things that I will actually use, like full armor sets for myself and a companion. It's an excellent way to get rid of excess gold, as I noticed I would clear out a dungeon or two, earn a couple of thousand gold and spend all of it on smithing materials to upgrade every weapon and armor item.

With my warrior character who did quite a lot of smithing, I never got above 60 or 70 smithing skill. Probably about the same for my thief and mage characters who focused on Alchemy. As for Enchanting, I think the highest I ever got was around 20 or 30.

In my case, I have zero interest in leveling any faster. I think in the vanilla game, we already level too quickly for my tastes. I would like to install a mod that slows down the leveling process a bit, as I find that by the time I get to level 30-35 I'm already starting to become too overpowered, so I start a new character. It takes about 150-200 hours to reach this level and I have time to complete perhaps one or two major faction questlines. If the leveling was slower, I might be able to complete more.

I powerlevel sometimes at high levels when leveling up slows down. At lower levels I never powerlevel because I level up so quickly.

I can't see myself EVER using half of the spells for different schools... so yeah, I'll powerlevel them. Among some other things as well
Really though, if someone wants to powerlevel because the enjoy it, then do so. Similarly, if someone doesn't want to, then good for them. The great part is that it's a game where you can play it however you want.

I hardly ever power level and when I do it;s usually when I reach level 50.

This sounds very odd to me. Power leveling isn't cheating and even cheating isn't a bad thing in a single player game, most of the GTA series would be boring without cheats for example.

I guess I do "power leveling" in most RPGs, not by smithing hundrets of daggers, because it's really boring, but by using any trick I can. When I see an error in an enemies AI which causes him to not attack me or affects him in some other way, I use it. Just as I use always the best weapons in multiplayer FPS or the best unit combination in an RTS. It's the way I always played games, I want to outsmart my opponents, although it's not that fun in a singleplayer title since your enemies are generally dumb as bread. It's the normal way for me to do basically anything by choosing the most efficiant way to achieve my goal, self-gimping isn't my thing.

I power level. Some of the characters I have thought of were supposed to feel powerful from the get-go so I leveled up as quickly as I could with the skills they were gonna use.

But the lower levels are the most fun part of the game, don't you think?

Levels 1 - 10, when everything is so dangerous and the world is full of possibilities. This is my favorite part. I just enjoy exploring the world collecting shouts, doing new questlines, collecting spells if I'm playing a mage, etc.. In my case the "goal" is not to reach any particular higher level, just to have fun, doing whatever I think my character would want to do.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Hero

edit: also, do the setlevel command since you're on PC, set it to like 200 or something. Or just advlevel, you get no new perks, and your skills won't level up with you.

Smithing needs power leveling if you want to get it to the top. It's a skill that can't go up nearly fast enough if you only use it when you need to make or improve gear for yourself. I don't spend much time grinding anything else, though it is fun sometimes to let a frost troll beat up on me for a while. I'll whack him a few times, let his health regenerate, whack him some more, then let him get some revenge. Up goes my armor, melee, block, restoration, and even conjuration, when I'm using a conjured sword.

Oh I like the lower levels, just not with my main char. Since Morrowind my TES play style is basically having a main char for the whole story stuff which does everything. My main becomes the big boss of every guild there is, does every side quest, becomes the hero of the given province and is a bad-ass with max level best equipment (mostly modded since I always hate the vanilla armors for some reason) and can kill enemies with his sword, bow or blast them to hell with his falcon punch magick. This character is the one I spend most of my time with, mostly due to doing every quest, and he generally explores the whole map on low level, power levels up to the max and smashes through all the quests. I guess it's become my modus operandi and I am a person who likes to plan things and develops processes for everything in real life too.

On the other hand I have one to four low level characters who will never be the heroes. They don't complete the main quests generally and are strictly for role playing. I normally have a rogue, mage and warrior who do the appropriate guild quests, some side quests I liked from before, and then there's a lot of RP going on because I'm a big nerd and love that kind of stuff. The fourth character is the one for messing around, mostly a really inefficiant build who kills major NPCs just for fun, I'd say he/she is the "faffing about" character for sh*ts and giggles.

But still, my main play style is the process of exploring, leveling up to the max and smashing everything in my way. I would say my main chars are for playing the game and the minor chars are for experiencing the game. The goal for the main is victory and the goal for the minors is roleplaying, or sh*ts and giggles.

i tend to take my time and enjoy the ride

I've only done it with my mage, and even then I wasn't extreme about it. You can see J'Zargo casting spells on the wall, and I've seen Colette grinding some restoration spell.
I don't do it all at once, just a few levels here and there, since the way I typically use spells doesn't always fit the game requirements for leveling. Like how conjuration only levels in combat, but I generally use it to have something else fight so I can avoid combat for a while. And I put up my shield spells BEFORE I enter combat.

I like getting to a higher level before I embark on the finite game content like questlines.
My character is basically me, if I were to get transported to a fantasy setting. She has to be OP in Skyrim, because I'm OP in RL.

What's the called armor on your avatar?

It's the Nightingale armor.

I powerleveled my smithing skill so I could get dragon bone armor. I feel bad for what I did :/

Daedric is better

I personally don't like the results of power-levelling. It detaches me from my character.

I can understand why some people do it, though.

I totally agree with this.

I'm guilty of powerleveling. When I start crafting, I just can't stop.

I'll mine iron and gold ore, whenever I find an ore vein, and I buy iron and gold ore+ingots when merchants have them. I also buy leather and make leather armor from it. I'll then take the smithed items and then start enchanting them. When the merchants run out of money to buy my enchanted gear, along with my alchemy potions, I'll then go visit Eorlund Grey Mane and pay for training so he'll have money to buy my stuff.

If I feel too powerful, I'll just use weaker weapons and equipment, so it's no big deal. Crafting can be addicting sometimes.