Firstly I should mention, that I love Skyrim. Why else would i waste 100+ h on one game? :) --------------------- WALL OF TEXT AHEAD. ONLY MY IMPRESSIONS SO FAR. ON TOPIC AT THE BOTTOM ----------------------- I am currently playing my third character. My first was one was a shield using, sword swinging powerhouse on adept difficulty. Whom I played till lvl 45, main quest finished but sitll a lot to be done. I maxed the one-handed +% damage perk as fast as possible, put a few points into blocking and a few into heavy armor. Though the majority went into enchanting and smithing. I pushed my damage through the abuse of fortify smithing and one-handed damage enchantments and potions. Reaching about 850 armor and 320 one-handed damage. (You can increase the damage of weapons even further after "legendary" by fortifying your blacksmithing and improving them + the 160% one-handed damage increase I got through my self-made gear). Dragons where dead in 3 hits. Other stuff in one or two strikes. The magic resistance boost on my gear + the high armor made me almost invincible. For testing purpose I set the difficulty to master, but he was still steamrolling everything. The damage I took increased a bit, but only cause I ramboed everything and didnt avoid hits or used block. Giants still fell in one to two hits. To much power bores. So I decided to limit myself in the second playthrough. I decided I wouldnt use smithing and enchanting, neither would I fast travell. For further pain I disabled the compass and set the difficulty to master :D Took a wood elf and decided to play a sneaky archer/thief. Fights took an eternety. Random low level bandits shrugged of 10+ arrows without dieing and beat me to death withing two hits. With a lot of willpower and patience I played through the thieves guild quests. But a random ice wolf sealed that characters fate. I wasnt prepared. The wolf got my by surprise. I died. I couldnt kill an ice wolf with my archer without the advantage of surprise (sneak attack) or by using potions. For researchs sake I powerleveled smithing to a decent level. Resulting was a much stronger archer, it would be playable like this. But a smithing thief? No way... So i stopped at lvl 24. My current character is a mage on expert difficulty. Well not a mage in the classicle sense. I use a sword, thou its conjured. The idea of a "spell blade" was tempting and sounded playable as the conjuration skill-tree offers some bound weapon boosting perks. In fact the character is very playable. Right hand conjured sword, left hand for pre-fight buffs and destruction magic in fights. Soon i discovered that Skyrim lacks bound armor. But alteration offers good protection if one only wears cloth. The perk "mage armor" (i hope thats the one) offers tripple the effect of armor boosting spells if no armor is worn (100x3=300 Armor through the expert spell). Even thou I am partly in melee, I couldnt afford to put many points into health or stamina, as spells in Skyrim use so much magicka. Bound sword cant be improved much (the perk in conjuration and the one-handed skill/perks, but no smithing) therefor I heavily rely on my destruction spells to lay waste to my foes. At level 29 right now. I upped health by 80 and the rest went into magicka. 20 level into magicka. I still run dry on a frequent basis, like every fight :D Pure mage would have been hardcore in the beginning as the magicka aint sufficient to allow constant spellcasting (at least on expert). I am jet to push enchanting, but time will tell if the spell blade will prevail. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would love to see more perks. Different ones. Specialized perks! Maybe even hybrid perks which are only available if you have skills in different trees. Maybe a further layer of "perks" would be usefull. Like in Fallout. Every few level you can pick from a list of perks which are opened up by your choisses in the trees and maybe even ingame (" You own the spell fire atronarch and got 90+ in destruction? Your attronarch could be an upgraded, more deadly version if you pick this perk"-Perk ). But thats far fetched. What I would like to see is a hard nerf to smithing and enchating. Both are super easy to power level (iron dagger is equal to ebony armor, or something like that, in the progression of the smithing skill at the moment. And super easy to produce on mass) and ridiciously overpowered. Further you lack options if you dont want to take them. Why cant the local blacksmith improve my weapon to a certain degree? Its mandatory to level at least smithing if you want to play a decent weapon based character, which SUCKS!(The reason why I conjure my sword as a Spell Blade. I dont want smithing....) Its just limiting right now. The spells are too expensive in magicka. The damage is ok in my eyes. Maybe a slight overall buff and a bigger buff to dual casting. All in all the perk-trees lack interesting, decision forcing, options. The masteries in the magic-trees are no-brainers, you cant even use the next better spell without em. Instead spell could need its own few perks to power em up with more effects or something. Mastering the basics instead of reaching the next higher step should be an option somehow. Some combat focused "skills" would be awesome too: The only valid way to play an archer in my oppinion is to hybrid with stealth. Archers lack crowd control. More then one enemy rushing at you will no doubt force you to retreat. Might add a perk for piercing arrows, or the ability to craft special arrows. Fire salt + firewood = 10 explosive arrows? Would spice up the game and open up more options. Adding durability to weapons and armor would add another value to smithing. Instead of using the pricy service of the blacksmith people could repair their armor on their own. The perk-trees should force someone into the use of a specific kind of weapon. Maces, axes and swords should all have their own, GOOD, and totaly different perks. Not only one but more. And maybe earlier in the tree. s***. Those are a lot of unsorted thoughts in probably difficult to understand english. I am sorry :) A further thing I should mention: I am thinking of the difficulty setting experienced all the time. Not sure if everything fitts into adept. Sadly most of my wishes are what the are, wishes.
