Skyrim and RPG min/maxing

[goodman528]

Just saw a lot of threads on other forums about the Enchant - Alchemy - Smithing cycle. Where people spend many hours grinding it out, making potions to improve their enchanting, to make enchantments to enhance their potion making, then making potions to enhance their enchantments against, etc, etc. The funny thing is, having done all that their character is level 50+, so in dungeons they would face level 50+ enemies. Just seems pointless.

So I thought of this, instead of the above, why not just max out your destruction magic skill, and nothing else (a bit of restoration too, cos it's necessary), I'm pretty sure you can complete the game before you hit level 20. I think making an ultra low level / high damage character that requires no gear and no money would be super cool. I'm not doing that on my first play through though, cos I want to play the game

 

[Gnometron]

Well, it takes awile to get a skill up to its max. I've maxed out 3 skills (Sneak, Light Armor, and one handed) and im lvl 43, so unless you only focus on destruction and nothing else, I dont see why not.

But, as i think about this more there is another flaw, since you are such a low level you will have a low concentration of magika, so you would be only be able to cast one powerful spell then your suddenly out of mana. Not good when your vsing a bunch of bandits...

 

[Filiecs]

I don't get the grinding mindset either. I just advance those skills along with the rest of my character and only once in a while focus on raising the skill consecutively. For exammple, whenever I'm in the mood for raising smithing I just buy out all the leather and make leather I can when it's available, make bracers, then go on my way. I don't spend hours maxing it.

 

[Mariakko]

I have a habit of hoarding everything I loot and after finishing the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves guild I just Smithed all the ingots, gems, and leather I had until I got level 60 and could make my nightingale stuff good. The less grind in a game, especially an RPG, the better.

 

[MisterShine]

I don't get the grinding mindset either.

If you're used to grinding in MMO's like WoW, the 2~3 hour grind to max out enchanting/smithing is almost no time at all.

Also OP, you only need a few K gold to get started, and if you enchant armors you make with fire/frost resist you'll actually make a profit, meaning once you scrape the money together (a few levels or a good heist from a rich house) you can grind it out pretty early in the game. Granted, just leveling those two skills will get you to the high teens at least, but then if you focus your enchants on your weapon skill of choice (one handed, two handed or bows), even without talents you can become stupidly overpowered, and as you rank up said skills you get even more OP.

Granted, my main Dragonborn is in her mid 50's and only fights Draugr overlords and super bandits, but she still wrecks them with her dual axes.

As for why people do things like this... well, I can only speak for myself, but I enjoy finding ways to break games and become ludicrously strong. Cheating is just... well, cheap. But exploring the game mechanics and outsmarting them is rather satisfying, for a while at least.

 

[Jandau]

First of all, the whole Destruction only won't work. Why? Because you'll have shit magicka levels. Also, there's the small matter of it being INSANELY BORING! Seriously, only using one skill and nothing else the whole game? Jeeez...

As for the whole crafting grind... well, it's not that big of a grind.

Smithing is piss easy to max out. Seriously, Iron Bars and Leather are dirt cheap and you can spam Iron Daggers and Leather Bracers all day long. Seriously, once you get some decent cash (which is extremely easy in this game) you can just hop between smithing vendors and buy the cheap materials to craft. All I did was buy up all the Iron and Leather every time I came to sell my loot and I was maxing out Smithing before level 30 without even trying. Hell, I was able to make Glass gear before vendors started stocking it! Enchanting isn't too hard either. It levels pretty fast and you can spam Petty and Lesser souls on enchants for vendor trash items you pick up. Hell, you don't even need to use Soultrap, just buy filled gems from mage and general goods vendors.

Alchemy is a grind. A terrible grind. Both because of finding out the various effects on ingredients and because it levels SO SLOWLY!!! But you can ignore Alchemy and still get silly huge bonuses on items. The difference is that your Infinity+1 Sword won't rip open the fabric of reality, it'll just shatter the foundations of the world. There's a difference, but it doesn't matter...

 

[Rednog]

I personally don't see a point to it, I've covered a good fourth/maybe close to a third of the map at level 30, at 21 hours in. Hopefully I'll finish everything at like 70 or so hours and then do a replay as a different character build. I really don't feel like doing the various profession skills when they don't make a super huge difference, especially for a sneak character who is all about 1 shot sneak attacking everyone.

 

[violent_quiche]

I'm happy to level the rest as I go, but maxxed smithing as soon as I could. All it took was a couple of hours work and a lot of iron daggers, a handful of which I enchanted just to keep the bank balance up. All those dragon scales & bones were piling up and I didn't want to sell them for squat as raw materials.

Can't say I was bowled over by dragonbone/dragonscale armor as an item though. Functionally fine- pound for pound on par with Daedric (trading strength for weight), just looks kinda ordinary. The real plus of dragon smithing is for near 2 grand value for the cost of a couple of leather strips and dragon parts that I collect as I go, it's a no-brainer as a high value-low cost item.