Max Damage: Can you beat it? UPDATED!

Thread Updated! Damage Recalculated!
Big thanks to Harkin for bringing my attention to The White Phial.

Hello good people!

Today we will be exploring the max possible damage that you can have in Skyrim. Before we get started, I have a few points that need to be made:

-No Restoration Glitches!
-I have undoubtedly missed some things that can raise your max damage. If you know of something please feel free to post it in the comments below.
-Dual wielding sneak attacks are out, due to them hitting more that once
-I am not taking things like falling damage into account as these can scale indefinitely.
-Only Dragonborn DLC is required (I think)
-Necromage and vampirism increases perk, potion and enchantment strength by 25%

-This goes in conjunction with another thread I have made about maximizing your Skyrim character:
http://skyrimforum.com/sf/threads/maxed-character-guide.67731/#post-1631741
I recommend looking at this thread first.

Ok, let's get started!

First off, we will not be using a dagger. I know that the 30x sneak can be amazing, but daggers are not affected by one handed damage enchantments.

Our gear will be as follows:

Now will be a list of the damage increases/multipliers on top of our base 36,550 damage:
-Backstab (perk) for 6x one handed sneak damage
-Ancient Shrouded Gloves for double sneak multiplier
-Berserker Rage (power) for double physical damage
-Power attack for 2x physical damage
-White phial for 50% increased one handed damage
-849 points of chaos damage, 182 points of fire damage
-12150 points poison damage (requires Jarrin root)
-11 points from a critical strike

Now lets put all that together.

36,550 Base Damage + 11 for critical strike = 36,561
36,561 x 2 from power attack = 73,122
73,122 x 2 from Berserker rage = 146,244
146,244 x 12 sneak multiplier = 1,754,928
1,754,928 x (1.5 x 1.25) from white phial + necromage = 3,290,490
3,290,490 + 849 chaos + 182 fire + 12150 poison = 3,303,671


3,303,671 points of damage.

To put that in perspective, that is enough damage to:
-One shot the ebony warrior 397 times on legendary difficulty.
-One shot a legendary dragon 198 times on legendary difficulty.

Now I do understand that all you need is about 17,000 damage to one shot anything on legendary difficulty, but hey, what fun is that?

Again, if you know of a way to increase the damage even farther please share in the comments.

If you want me to make another thread similar to this, please notify me in the comments.

For comparison's sake, have you ever figured out the max damage a two handed warrior could do with the Great Critical Charge perk? I doubt anything can touch the damage you reached there, but it would be interesting anyway

Could your numbers be improved with a stalhrim mace and chaos/frost damage?

For comparison sake: A Legendary dragon only has 4163 hit points and there aren't a lot of beings with more than that so why on Nirn would you ever need to deal out 1.7+ million in damage! Good grief! You could take down a Daedra with that kind of output!

Snake Tortoise said:

For comparison's sake, have you ever figured out the max damage a two handed warrior could do with the Great Critical Charge perk? I doubt anything can touch the damage you reached there, but it would be interesting anyway

Could your numbers be improved with a stalhrim mace and chaos/frost damage?

Click to expand...

The Great Critical Charge perk (and all other critical hit perks) only apply a damage addition that is a factor of the weapon's base damage. This means that no matter how much a two handed weapon was improved, just over 20 points of damage would be added.

As for the Stahlrim, although the added elemental damage would be nice, elemental damage is not affected by sneak criticals, power attacks, or berserker rage. So we would have to sacrifice a few thousand base physical damage for just over two hundred elemental damage.

Daelon DuLac said:

For comparison sake: A Legendary dragon only has 4163 hit points and there aren't a lot of beings with more than that so why on Nirn would you ever need to deal out 1.7+ million in damage! Good grief! You could take down a Daedra with that kind of output!

Click to expand...

Remember that you deal only a quarter of the displayed damage to entities on legendary difficulty, so it's like the dragon has 16,652 hit points. With that said, I completely agree with you. Although NPC's level with you, I think this could be enough damage to kill every unique NPC in the game.

Forgot said:

Snake Tortoise said:

For comparison's sake, have you ever figured out the max damage a two handed warrior could do with the Great Critical Charge perk? I doubt anything can touch the damage you reached there, but it would be interesting anyway

Could your numbers be improved with a stalhrim mace and chaos/frost damage?

Click to expand...

The Great Critical Charge perk (and all other critical hit perks) only apply a damage addition that is a factor of the weapon's base damage. This means that no matter how much a two handed weapon was improved, just over 20 points of damage would be added.

As for the Stahlrim, although the added elemental damage would be nice, elemental damage is not affected by sneak criticals, power attacks, or berserker rage. So we would have to sacrifice a few thousand base physical damage for just over two hundred elemental damage.

Daelon DuLac said:

For comparison sake: A Legendary dragon only has 4163 hit points and there aren't a lot of beings with more than that so why on Nirn would you ever need to deal out 1.7+ million in damage! Good grief! You could take down a Daedra with that kind of output!

Click to expand...

Remember that you deal only a quarter of the displayed damage to entities on legendary difficulty, so it's like the dragon has 16,652 hit points. With that said, I completely agree with you. Although NPC's level with you, I think this could be enough damage to kill every unique NPC in the game.

Click to expand...

I was just being a smart-a**. You make a good point. Fortunately, anymore I usually play on adept (1 to 1). That just makes more sense to me. I was playing on Expert, Master and Legendary and it just seemed so unfair that a stupid bandit could one-shot me when I knew that, on adept it would be a fair fight. I've always had a problem with that matrix. What was Bethesda thinking. If it were me I would have simply made opponents tougher the higher the difficulty, not penalize the player for playing on a harder difficulty.

Look at "Insane" difficulty on Dragon Age. It truly is insane, but, not because you are weaker, it's because your opponents are tougher.

Just beat it! No one wants to be defeated!

http://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=oRdxUFDoQe0

Harkin said:

Just beat it! No one wants to be defeated!

http://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=oRdxUFDoQe0

Click to expand...

? Of course, I should probably watch the video before I question it, but who has time for that... Hold on... I'll be back in a few. I have a video to watch...

Daelon DuLac said:

I was just being a smart-a**. You make a good point. Fortunately, anymore I usually play on adept (1 to 1). That just makes more sense to me. I was playing on Expert, Master and Legendary and it just seemed so unfair that a stupid bandit could one-shot me when I knew that, on adept it would be a fair fight. I've always had a problem with that matrix. What was Bethesda thinking. If it were me I would have simply made opponents tougher the higher the difficulty, not penalize the player for playing on a harder difficulty.

Look at "Insane" difficulty on Dragon Age. It truly is insane, but, not because you are weaker, it's because your opponents are tougher.

Click to expand...

I do agree that the difficulty ratings need some changes. I personally don't see how you could play legendary difficulty without some sort of gear maximization. (not necessarily to my extremes) When a legendary dragon's physical attacks deal 300 points of damage and you take four times this amount in legendary difficulty, even with the 80% armor cap you are taking a ridiculous amount of damage. Not to mention the negligible amount of damage destruction mages do without potions.

Still not as bad as oblivion though, enemies actually took no damage when the slider was all the way up.

how did you get 36k damage on a mace btw ? Enchanting/alchemy exploit ?

If that's the case, what would be your damage output without the exploit ?

Trekiros said:

how did you get 36k damage on a mace btw ? Enchanting/alchemy exploit ?

If that's the case, what would be your damage output without the exploit ?

Click to expand...

He specifically said no exploit. This was through using alchemy and enchanting in tandem without exploiting. Exploiting would have included restoration potions.

Trekiros said:

how did you get 36k damage on a mace btw ? Enchanting/alchemy exploit ?

If that's the case, what would be your damage output without the exploit ?

Click to expand...

My base damage on the mace without a one handed potion is 2783, but for reasons that I do not know damage potions boost one handed weapons more than damage potions of the same magnitude would boost a bow. This results in the huge jump from 2783 damage to over 36,000. For comparison my bow does about 3000 damage with no potion, and with a potion it does around 11,000.

And yes, I did use the alchemy/enchanting "exploit" if you want to call it that.

Forgot said:

Trekiros said:

how did you get 36k damage on a mace btw ? Enchanting/alchemy exploit ?

If that's the case, what would be your damage output without the exploit ?

Click to expand...

My base damage on the mace without a one handed potion is 2783, but for reasons that I do not know damage potions boost one handed weapons more than damage potions of the same magnitude would boost a bow. This results in the huge jump from 2783 damage to over 36,000. For comparison my bow does about 3000 damage with no potion, and with a potion it does around 11,000.

And yes, I did use the alchemy/enchanting "exploit" if you want to call it that.

Click to expand...

Re Bows. I don't even think a Balista does that kind of damage. How can you justify it from an RP perspective? Are you superman?

Daelon DuLac said:

Re Bows. I don't even think a Balista does that kind of damage. How can you justify it from an RP perspective? Are you superman?

Click to expand...

No, I am not superman. But if superman were in the game you can bet I would one shot him.

Forgot said:

Still not as bad as oblivion though, enemies actually took no damage when the slider was all the way up.

Click to expand...

Actually in Oblivion you could make instakill weapon very easy.
-weakness to magic
-weakness to fire
-weakenss to frost
-weakness to shock
-drain life
-fire damage
-frost damage
-shock famage

Manmangler said:

Actually in Oblivion you could make instakill weapon very easy.
-weakness to magic
-weakness to fire
-weakenss to frost
-weakness to shock
-drain life
-fire damage
-frost damage
-shock famage

Click to expand...

With the oblivion difficulty slider all the way up you only deal 1/6th the displayed damage, and with a weapon's weakness to magic and weakness to an element it means you are doing 400% displayed elemental damage to enemies, which doesn't even come close to the 1/6th damage they take. This combined with the fact that at levels 30+ enemies have a few hundred HP makes for a ridiculous difficulty setting.

Typically, I don't like to make my weapons overpowered. Bloodbane and Windscourge both do 723 points of damage per hit. But I digress from the point don't I?

The highest base damage I've dealt with a weapon on legendary is probably my first version of Prolium. Around maybe 9-11 thousand damage. Maybe. I didn't exactly calculate it

I achieved this by using:
-PO helm, gloves, ring, necklace and Circlet of Alchemy. This equals to 125% better alchemy.
-Make a potion of fortify Alchemy.
-Drink Potion
-Make potion of Fortify Smithing, Enchanting and Two-Handed.
-Use one Fortify Enchanting to make four apparel of Fortify Two-Handed.
-Use the other for Enchanting the weapon.
-Use the Fortify Smithing to upgrade the Weapon.
-The moment when you should use the Fortify Rwo-Handed is obvious.

Whelp, after that I dumbed Prolium down A LOT!
Now it does around 500.

Forgot said:

With the oblivion difficulty slider all the way up you only deal 1/6th the displayed damage, and with a weapon's weakness to magic and weakness to an element it means you are doing 400% displayed elemental damage to enemies, which doesn't even come close to the 1/6th damage they take. This combined with the fact that at levels 30+ enemies have a few hundred HP makes for a ridiculous difficulty setting.

Click to expand...

Youre right, I forgot how much they got hp.

Now when you say, I remeber way to get certain skills to max easy.
Use sigilstone to ge armor parts Invisibility.
Use lowest class weapon (Oblivion count XP succeffull hits not damage caused)
Now go harhass some enemy like minotaurs in near unicorn (They wont attach as youre invisible)

When I take down one of those, I have used over 800 arrows (Weakest ones)

Using the Gloves of the pugilist enchantment, could you calculate how hard you could hit with your fists using all these enchantments and stuff?

T. Rakinson said:

Using the Gloves of the pugilist enchantment, could you calculate how hard you could hit with your fists using all these enchantments and stuff?

Click to expand...

I'll try to do that tonight if I find the time.

I would not try nowdays max damage because.
Certain damage levels break game and make it easily CTD.
I once go over to top because negative damage