need advice on where to go from here

A little background first. I started playing skyrim sometime in late 2012 after all the DLCs were already out and most people hadstrong characters. I have been playing since then, but have never really gotten past level 40 on a single character. I just seem to get bored of my different builds and play types easily. My problem is that I don't have a single well-built account that I've done all the factions with, or have good crafting skills with, or any of that. I look back on my early characters and find that absolutely terrible perk choices make them unplayable at expert/master difficulty. I'd really like to explore more of the game including the DLCs, but all my characters are essentially for roleplaying. What should I do?

make one that is not for roleplaying

tx12001 said:

make one that is not for roleplaying

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's kind of what my goal is. But I just don't what perks to invest in, what factions to join, and really I don't know how to play with the same vigor of someone who'd never played before.

What I have found is working for me, is creating a character that solely focuses on one or maybe 2 factions. My current character, GroBenjii is level 38, Iv played 130hours, and I have only really become thane of Markarth, done 3Deadric Quests and done several side quests for the Dawnguard (I havent even been to the Soul Cairn yet). I play my factions really slowly, so that by the time I am made the leader or whatever, than Ive earned it at least. The benefit with this is that instead of completing a faction and only gaining 3levels, I finish the faction after gaining 40+ levels. Also, it make much more sense for a new recruit to run around doing all the odd jobs rather than the Harbinger or Arch Mage etc...

Good luck though! It took me ages to beat the rerollitis and find a character that has made it over level 25. My goal is to beat the Ebony Warrior, so I am a long ways off yet.

Where perks are concerned, it's easy to get a little too diverse. I am almost always a 1H/Light armor fighter, so my perks go into One Handed and Light Armor first, with Archery second. I always devote two perks to Smithing, for steel and Arcane, so I can work on my magical armor. I may go to Elven but may not, depending on the build. As I get perk points, but haven't reached a high enough skill to devote them to a specific combat skill yet, that's when i sink them into alchemy and enchanting, as well as the first three in Speech. (It's immensely helpful to be able to sell anything to any merchant, as I can schlep my loot up to the college and "trade" it for grand soul gems. If I want to be a destruction or conjuration mage, the thing I learned the hard way was that I have to pick one or the other, as trying to be both leaves me too weak for either.

http://skyrimcalculator.com/#

Experiment with this...it will show you the rate of increase for each perk in each area. Generally speaking, I try to do the main perk (armsman, etc) up to 5/5 as a priority, but some perks (eagle eye in archery) I do ahead of time, for their particular boost.

If you prefer to use an existing character, you can do the Dragonborn quest line until you get the black book required to clear perk points. Essentially, you read the book on Solstheim and it transports you to where you can spend a dragon soul to wipe all the perk points out of a particular skill tree and back into your available pool. You can then spend them wherever you like.

In previous builds, I've gone so far as to clear smithing once I've done my armor to the max. When I found something I wanted to use, I'd go clear destruction, reload smithing, work on the armor/weapon, and then put it back into destruction (or whatever.)

The book you'd need for that is Waking Dreams, found in the Temple of Miraak....and a few extra dragon souls.

My characters do everything there is to do in Skyrim. They also get all dragon priest masks. They work on getting every shout. They go into every cave they come across. They join every faction. They help every NPC. Their role is to be a person who lives in Skyrim. That's all.

They buy training whenever and wherever they can. They smith to 100 and go legendary pretty fast. Same with Alchemy.

I decide beforehand what offensive and defensive strengths I want, but it always includes archery. In either one-handed or two handed, I choose my type of weapon (sword, mace, war axe, etc) and only put perks on that weapon. I choose heavy or light armor and stick to it. I've never played full mage but I use destruction and conjuration a lot and put perks in destruction, but not conjuration, because it seems like all you need for that is magica. I use a lot of alteration to transmute ore, which helps with leveling quite a bit.

When you play like that, you level up frequently. Just recently, I found Pantea's flute, and leveled up right before I returned to the Bard's college. Turning that flute over, you of course get lots of perks, and then I turned around and bought speech training from what's his name at the college. I walked out of the building 3/4 of the way to the next level! That's almost a whole level in 5 minutes time. And, if I were at level 20 instead of 54, I probably would have easily gained more than a whole level.

One time, after the war, I went into an enemy camp, and killed everyone except the camp commander, who can't die. So I got out my shield and let him bang on it for 3 whole levels! That took about 20 minutes. You can also level up on destruction and restoration doing that. It's fun, teasing that guy until he's huffing and puffing.

Also, my current character joined the Dawnguard right at level 10, having done very little at all since Helgen, and she stuck with the entire storyline to the end. Emerged from Dawnguard at level 41, and had all of Skyrim yet to conquer!

Defeating Miraak and getting Waking Dreams helps you adjust your perk placements. I do that a lot, for example, when I want smithing, alchemy, and enchanting at 100 and don't want to go legendary, I'll trade perks from one to the other.

I play on Xbox and don't use exploits or mods. Anyway, long story short, just live in Skyrim. Don't look at it as a quest driven task that you have to finish.

elias said:

tx12001 said:

make one that is not for roleplaying

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's kind of what my goal is. But I just don't what perks to invest in, what factions to join, and really I don't know how to play with the same vigor of someone who'd never played before.

Click to expand...

Simple. Make a "Do-everything" character. That's usually what I do when I first play a game, I make a "Do-everything" character so I can test every aspect of the game and dive right in. Just do everything, and you won't run out of stuff to do!

Naginata said:

elias said:

tx12001 said:

make one that is not for roleplaying

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's kind of what my goal is. But I just don't what perks to invest in, what factions to join, and really I don't know how to play with the same vigor of someone who'd never played before.

Click to expand...

Simple. Make a "Do-everything" character. That's usually what I do when I first play a game, I make a "Do-everything" character so I can test every aspect of the game and dive right in. Just do everything, and you won't run out of stuff to do!

Click to expand...

What I do pretty much in a nutshell,only after i do everything,restart a new character and specalize : thief only doing stealth skills with little to no killing,etc

Think of a character that would fit you, that's usually how it becomes successful because then, things from there on are more impulsive. My most successful character was level 81 and it was because I was able to stay interested in him. He was like an in-game me.

The longest character I played on was basically an all rounder. (Though I use mods)

Illusion
Alteration
Conjuration
Destruction(Only for runes)
Alchemy
Light Armor
Sneak
Marksman
One-Handed(Dual wield, or spellsword)


Would sneak whilst using Marksman, then when I'm spotted I'll summon x2 Frost Atronach whilst placing 3-4 runes on the ground and then either going like I mentioned earlier, spellsword with bound sword and Alteration for paralyze etc, or dual wield to burst down low armor enemies. Like I said, it REQUIRES mods so it's not possible on consoles but if you play on PC this type of character is so fun and diverse, allowing me to play each quest line in an rp friendly way.

I have found that my most successful characters (ones that I have stuck with to a high level) were ones that were a "jack of all trades" which means basically, DO EVERYTHING. Seriously, throw all morals out the window and just get stuck into it. Thieve your little heart out, assassinate those poor wretches, make a pact with every Daedric God that hold a claim on you, go after that scoundrel Miraak, and probably should have a bash at that pesky black dragon to Why you could even relive your collage years and study a little magic, or try your hand at singing. Couldn't hurt.
My very long point is, just make a character and do everything. You will level up heaps during the main quest lines and also every side quest you do as well. Grind out some smithing, enchanting or conjuration if that's what floats your boat

Every time I create a character for RP I inevitably kill em off at level 20 or so..

Most of my ideas have been stated above, but what I found w/ my original character that makes me keep going (he's level 100+) is that I created a backstory that was compelling to me and thus I was interested to keep advancing.

As people have mentioned, start with a few primary skills and then add in others as you get your primary ones where you want

The best advice I can give here is for your character to sleep regularly, to level up your skills more quickly. Even better if you marry a follower to get the "lovers comfort" bonus no matter where you sleep.

Beyond that - I think I do things very differently than most here, by imposing a lot of limitations on my characters to keep them interesting. Creating a backstory and personality outline that helps guide my skill and perk choices, I usually get to level 50+ before getting bored with them.

I start by picking my primary skills: one combat type (either melee or ranged); one armor type; one school of magic; one craft and either a stealth skill or speech. I will focus on building and perking these abilities.

Then I pick a secondary combat type, magic school and maybe craft. At low levels I will build these skills but never at the expense of the primary skills list, and will use very few perks here.

I pay for training in all the skills I am not building myself.

This method differs a little, but not much, if I am building a mage and will use magic as my combat type. Then I build up Destruction for primary combat and a different school as a second primary skill, then put one-handed (dagger) in my secondary skills list.

I have never had a char in Skyrim that joined all factions, or completed every major questline. I need to feel tied in to my characters to not get bored, and I can't do that by being Archmage, Harbinger, Listener, Guildmaster, Legate/Stormblade, etc. ust can't justify character choices that would lead to that. At most I do two factions (not simultaneously) and the civil war. I either activate the Dawnguard DLC, or do main quest and Miraak, I've never done both.

The first thing you should do is to determine which type of character you wanna be: mage, archer, assassin, warior, warmage...etc . After deciding which powerful character you wanna be in this world all perks will be spent respectively and the tasks chosen will be due to ur attitudes and type. all the best (y)

For whatever reason, my more mele-based characters as opposed to pure (or nearly) mages tend to get further along w/ leveling though this likely more personal preference than much else. I do notice that early leveling on a warrior seems easier and it seems to take a while before a Mage gets effectively powerful. I find noticeable early progress keeps me hooked longer. That said, I do have a Mage that got pretty far, high 50s low 60s so it does work either way

Well there is the way of linking the perks' development to the old rocks and the tasks at the same time. for example, if you choose the rock of the thief and then you start developing the sneaking, archery and the others related to it through playing for the thieves guild, this will fasten ur development in such a field. and you can do the same strategy with other domains such as mae or warior

I can't believe I didn't think to mention this before - chasing achievements can be a great way to stay engaged in the game. It's a nice change to have a different list of goals when all of the major questlines feel stale. If I dont want to do anything in my journal I will look at the unmet achievements list for a new goal. "I need to ride how many dragons? It's on!"

The "Daedric Artifacts" achievement alone takes so much time to complete that it could be a separate questline.

Lucid said:

The best advice I can give here is for your character to sleep regularly, to level up your skills more quickly. Even better if you marry a follower to get the "lovers comfort" bonus no matter where you sleep.

Click to expand...

So, being married ends up increasing your fighting skills faster.

I guess the game is pretty realistic after all

raido KASAI said:

Lucid said:

The best advice I can give here is for your character to sleep regularly, to level up your skills more quickly. Even better if you marry a follower to get the "lovers comfort" bonus no matter where you sleep.

Click to expand...

So, being married ends up increasing your fighting skills faster.

I guess the game is pretty realistic after all

Click to expand...

You're doing it wrong. Or projecting. Or both

Lucid said:

I can't believe I didn't think to mention this before - chasing achievements can be a great way to stay engaged in the game. It's a nice change to have a different list of goals when all of the major questlines feel stale. If I dont want to do anything in my journal I will look at the unmet achievements list for a new goal. "I need to ride how many dragons? It's on!"

The "Daedric Artifacts" achievement alone takes so much time to complete that it could be a separate questline.

Click to expand...

You're right. You need to be at least level 30 to finish the Daedric quests. Some people create a character JUST to do the Oblivion Walker Achievement. I've recently got it myself after a bit of a hiccough. (It wouldn't give me the achievement unless I did the Hircine 2 for 1 glitch). Anyways, I only have 6 more achievements to go!