DrKvothe

An extra 5 or 10 points isn't going to shave off a noticeable amount of time from leveling your least favorite things to 100. Compared to your spells, potions, and dragon shouts, race abilities are also negligible. Pick a race you can stand to look at for 200-300 hours of gameplay. As far as leveling to max, imho melee chars have it the easiest. You can spam magic as you walk to level those skills up, but swinging swords in the air and walking around in armor don't give you skill ups. For melee chars, don't specialize too early. You might see yourself being a light armored warrior that dual wields. Maybe just put 1 point in armsman while you get some utility perks. That way when you pick up a 2h weapon early game it might actually have a chance of being better than your 1h weapons, and you could use it for a while to get some skill ups. Same with light armor; don't put points in that tree to early and you can use a mix of heavy and light. Once your perks become to specialized, there's going to be a pretty big incentive to use the right kind of weapon or the right kind of armor. I don't plan on really specializing until mid game, maybe mid 20s (although 5-6 points in smithing and 8 in enchanting push that up a bit). Maybe use staves you find until their charges run out, then break them to learn their enchantments, rather than breaking them without using them. That'll up your destruction skills. Honestly, i'm almost worried I'll level too many skills at the same time and end up in my mid 20s before reaching too much gameplay. i might miss out on some lower level fun.

But that's exactly what's going to happen. 99% of the time, you won't need it. But as soon as you come to a challenging fight, you'll turn it to EZ mode. Take a quick nap after one of those fights and it's off cooldown again.

Pretty sure you could increase stength past 100 with enchantments and such. So if your strength was maxed at 100, +50 would be +50%. Alternatively, early game it would actually be BETTER than +100%. But a melee orc char would hit 50 strength very early on, and past that +50 strength isnt as good. Half damage taken is considerably better than +100% life, if it applies to magic damage. This is because if you increase your life to 2x, you still have to chug health pots just as fast. If you halve damage, you only need 1/2 the consumables.

I agree with that statement...except that the racial bonus for orcs is a little vague. It doesn't say melee damage. It could be double spell damage too, which would be insane. I doubt it...but still.

It's funny, I opened the link, reviewed the bonuses, came back to post "wtf? why are orcs the best dragon killers?" and found that everyone is already pretty much in agreement. Assuming that dragon fights don't last much more than a minute and that you'll get a chance to rest (to reset the skill) between dragon fights, none of the other races even come close. Nord would be a good matchup against frost dragons and dunmer against fire, but dragons will be attacking physical damage, not just elemental. The double damage thing is just broken, seriously, completely broken. I really wasn't planning on playing an orc...but my first char is gonna be a duel wielding damage machine with a very strong focus on smithing and enchanting. I guess that fits orcs pretty well.

I'd like to throw in my opinion about a few of these: Treasure hunter: I'm assuming that it only applies to chests. If, however, it applies to corpses as well, this is going to be an amazing boost to your wealth, especially if you pick it up early. Even if it doesn't, I'm pretty sure the "special treasure" is the only sort of stuff we'll be picking up anyways. Your basic gear drops are too heavy and cheap to carry back. If I'm right, then "special treasure" from chests might be 30-50% of your income, and a 50% bonus to that is pretty nice. At the moment we don't know what the money sinks are, so there's really no telling how desperate we're going to be for cash. Unbreakable: I think this one is ok, assuming skeleton key is out. Certainly not useful enough to take until you've got your main combat and crafting perks finished. We don't know how hard the lockpicking minigame is going to be. I'm assuming that lockpicking skill level + novice --> master locks perks are going to make the minigame easier. The question is, with, say 60 lockpicking skill and no perks in locksmithing, how many lockpicks will the average gamer break and how much time will we spend on the game's hardest locks. If a few perk points can save me 5 minutes of that minigame every time I see an enticing treasure chest, im definitely getting those perks. Also, my first char's going to be a pretty hardcore enchanter. Will I have access to Open 100-100 cast when used jewelry? Guess we'll have to wait and see.

http://i.imgur.com/ZZhwL.jpg ^^Smithing tree Although to work your way down to daedric starting from the light armor side would require getting to 100 skill in smithing to get dragon, even though daedric only requires 90. Getting glass only requires of skill of 70, meaning you would have access to it earlier than even ebony. If you don't completely ignore the main quest, I'm pretty sure you'll have access to the mats for dragonbone weapons pretty early in the game. Frankly, I can handle using crafted glass weapons or other things I find rather than crafted daedric until I get access to crafted dragonbone. Just a reminder, it seems that the heavy side of the tree has one more perk than the light. So getting glass requires 4 perk points, getting dragon from the heavy side requires 6, and getting glass, dragon, and daedric from the light side requires 6. Another point to make, one that's eluded to in my first post, is that spending perks on light or heavy armor trees seems like a waste early on. I'd rather improve my dps through the 1h or 2h trees, my dps and surivability through enchant tree, my dps and survivability through smithing tree, etc. etc. etc. The armor tree feels like the last main thing I'll work on. Not because it's not useful, just because I can think of about 20 points I'd rather spend first. That said, without the weight reducing perks, heavy armor is completely impractical if you want to pick up phat l00ts. I will probably wear a hodge-podge of light and heavy gear to level up both skills, and when smithing is sufficiently high to make glass, I'll wear that simply because daedric is too heavy. Whether I end up using heavy or light dragonbone armor depends on how they look and the stats. With all the perk information out, I think it's easy to forget that the skills are all excellent in their own right without the perks (other than smithing?). I mean, I'll be using a bow long before I decide to actually put any perks into the archery tree.

Blocking wasn't required to be viable in Oblivion or Morrowind, so I doubt it'll be much different in Skyrim. Learning how to move in combat to avoid your enemies attacks > blocking. However, in previous games you didnt have a lot of fights against enormous monsters. Fights against multiple weaker monsters were much more common. So dragons might change things a bit.But just because you're focused on DW doesn't mean you can't throw on a shield. The only wasted perks are the two points to make DW 40% faster. You could DW 99% of the time and just throw on a shield for dragons. It might even be worth investing in elemental protection and shield wall in the Block perk tree.

For my first play through, I want to play a light armored duel wielding crafter. Essentially, smithing and enchanting will provide large boosts to dps and survivability. Basically I'll take the skills directly up the middle in enchanting, the left path of smithing to dragon armor, and just armsman and dual flurry in one-handed. Other points will be mixed through sneak, lockpicking, archery, and maybe some light armor skills. How are y'all planning to spend your perks?

A bit of stealth is a must, as is one form of melee and one form of ranged damage. I'm not sure exactly what I'm gonna do. I think I'll play around with the combat and the various spells before I assign any perks. Some of you might have figured it out by my forum name, but I think a stealthy mage-thief might be fun. Illusion provides stealthy spell casting, conjuration provides tanks that do steady damage over time, destruction provides nukes, the non-assassin type sneak perks for being extra sneaky, a point or two in enchanting to beef up survivability/utility of enchantments... I'm also interested in a beefier melee with perks in smithing, heavy armor, either 1h or 2h, and a little enchanting and/or alchemy.

1) Level scaling- This ruined replay value for me. It's not like people playing Morrowind would run into super high lvl dungeons without realizing it. But trying to sneak into and loot a high lvl dungeon is so fun! I mean let's face it, with the ability to quick save and load, anybody can take a dungeon their level. My legendary thief-mage should have the option to seak out godly items at low levels. 2) Levitation- Leave the code in please so we can mod it in if we want. Can you imagine how amazing it would be for dragon fights in Skyrim!! 3) "Optimal leveling"- Man, spending hours repeatedly summoning a skeleton then bashing his brains in to level my weapon skills was almost as fun as repeatedly summoning him and letting him try to bash mine in so I could level heavy armor and armorer! I could never level optimally and play the game at the same time. I would have to level sloppily while I enjoyed the game, then spend an hour or two leveling perfectly. Or I could just level perfectly to max, then start playing the game. It's ridiculous that playing the game the way I like forces me to feel like i'm missing out on making my char powerful. 4) Oblivion gates- HORRIBLE. SOOOOOO repetitive! Laziest game design EVER! 5) Other dungeons- for the most part, same as oblivion gates. Nothing special. 6) Epic loot- it should be rare and hard to get, but it should exist. 7) Arena- Pretty darn cool until you beat the quest-line...then it's just crap.