TheBalance

So thanks to all the feedback stemming from - The 10 Best Perks Skyrim's New Leveling System Has To Offer, I've come up with a polar opposite addition - The 10 WORST Perks Skyrim's New Leveling System Has To Offer. Originally posted on my website, permalink can be found here. Rune Master (40 Destruction) - Comparatively speaking, for a perk this low down the skill tree, it has almost nothing to offer. Runes are only useful and mana efficient when not cast during combat, IE. used to set up and trap an area before engaging enemies. This perk lets you cast runes five times further away - that's awfully useless since I could just walk there and trap the area, and spend the perk-point elsewhere and actually have an impact early-on, instead of wasting a point for this 'time saving' perk. Disintegrate (70 Destruction) - Your lightning based spells turn low-health enemies into dust when it kills them. Cool, so not only are they dead, but I can't animate their corpses. This doesn't do any damage, it's a strictly aesthetic effect. Sure, its great eye candy, but it ultimately doesn't do anything except deny you a summoned companion, if that's your thing. Illusion (The entire tree except for Quiet Casting) - I can't keep droning on about how easy the game is, and how ultimately worthless crowd control is in the game. Most enemies die quickly, and it isn't worth casting (fear) on them when you could just as easily kill them outright. Also, bosses can't get feared. Just kill them, whats the point? Wax Key (50 Lockpicking) - If you successfully pick a lock, you get a copy of that lock's key - if possible. So in a random dungeon you can save yourself the five seconds to pick a lock and open it instantly. Opening a lock with the wax key also denies you the chance to raise your lockpicking skill. Oh, and most locks don't have keys; something like 70% of them, from what I've read. Golden Touch (60 Lockpicking) - Gold is more or less infinite in this game, especially if you invest any points into the speech tree. Even if this doubles the amount of gold found in chests, its still not worth it - almost all your income stems from dragon slaying, grinding out your enchanting or smithing skills, or just selling random loot. Deflect Arrows (30 Block) - This skill isn't TOTALLY useless, as it's required to get further up the Block skill tree, for Elemental protection (which gives you 50% elemental resists when blocking). However, the actual benefit of this skill really makes me question why they even tried to implement this mechanic into Skyrim. So, with this perk, if you manage to block an arrow with your shield, it'll do no damage. Aside from a few VERY high level bosses, I can't remember when I was even concerned about an enemy wielding a bow, let alone threatened by them enough to try and block arrows instead of just walking up to them and owning face. It's also pretty gimmicky at best, even at point blank range - being able to consistently block arrows with your shield isn't very reliable. Ward Absorb (60 Restoration) - Wards in and of themselves are 100% useless. I quote myself from my Skyrim review article; "They put wards into this game too. Spells that take up a hand and let you block other spells. Every character comes with two wards, the A and D buttons, which safely let you dodge every spell in the game except lightning-based ones, which don't hamper physical damage dealers in any way, and are really just invitations to smear the caster's face on the ground with a hammer." Poisoned (40 Pickpocket) - This gem lets you place poisons onto enemies after you sneak within inches of them. This poison then hurts them. I'm dumbfounded at anyone who even considers this perk. Poisons are mediocre sources of damage at any level. Also, you can quite easily raise Sneak (enough to even allow you to get close enough for a poison attempt in the first place) and just backstab them for a 15x multiplier, often two to three times consecutively, instantly eliminating the threat and the need to stand right next to them and risk detection while you try to plant a poison in their inventory. Bribery (30 Speech) - Why would I want to bribe a guard? At level 25, my latest character has over 17,000 gold. I have nothing to buy, and am carrying around at least another 20k worth of gold in equipment. Also, I don't commit crimes because there's generally no reason to. If I feel like going on a rampage and leveling an entire city, I save the game before hand and get it out of my system. Since the random crashes force me to quick save at least twice a minute while adventuring, I always have a fallback in case I mistakenly shoot a guard in the throat. Pointless.

A bit dated at this point, but originally posted on my site just after Skyrim's release. Hopefully it helps a few people along. Coming up with this list was tougher then I thought. Skyrim has a few excellent perks in it, some of which didn't make it here - mainly because their uses were either too focused on a single role - or they required a lot of investment for comparably little tradeoff. No need to keep droning on though - in no particular order, my version of the best ten perks in Skyrim is as follows: Impact (40 Destruction) - Most dual-casted destruction spells stagger opponents. Not only is staggering an opponent cool and hilarious, but it buys you valuable time as a caster in order to make distance, or land a few more spells. Invaluable to any character that uses magic as its primary source of damage. Mystic Binding (20 Conjuration) - Bound weapons do more damage. Not just more damage, a lot more damage. An early early level character can, at Conjuration 25, buy the bound sword spell, and have a ~20 damage one handed weapon. It escalates with Conjuration skill as well, so its always useful, never breaks, and gets stronger as you use it. Conjuration and One-Handed Weapons raise simultaneously while your using it (and raise quickly) all one-handed perks apply as if you're wielding a sword as well. The downside? You need to summon the sword before you fight, which can be annoying. The upside? You also get to summon minions, which are excellent sources of additional damage. Silent Roll (Sneak 50) - While Sneaking, pressing (Alt by default) run will allow you to execute a silent roll forward. Good for closing gaps, requires a somewhat minimal amount of stamina (You can roll 20x with 200 stamina) and great for positioning for backstab multipliers, or just getting around enemies and dodging spells, or dragons breath, with some practice. Assassin's Blade (Sneak 50) - Backstab multiplier increased to 15x. Coupled with Silent Roll this more or less assures you always kill your opponent with a successful backstab. Satisfying and sinister, this perk is easily the highest damage/investment perk in the game. Power Shot (Archery 50) - Stagger opponents 50% of the time. This is to archers what Impact is to mages. Staggered opponents don't move or attack, buying you more time to finish them off. Elemental Protection (Block 50) - 50% Fire, Frost, and Shock resist while blocking. Laugh at spell casters and dragons as they try to damage you with magic. Coupled with playing a Breton (25% magic resist by default) this perk literally assures you that you never have to worry about damaging spells or enchanted weapons ever again. Everything in the Enchanting Tree - From more powerful enchantments, to being able to put TWO enchantments on a single item. The entire tree is worth investing in, as it gives you the maximum benefit out of every piece of equipment. A must have for anyone looking to get the most out of their character. Mage Armor (Alteration 30) - The three levels of this perk gradually increase the amount of armor granted from alteration spells. If you're playing a pure mage, or meleeing in mage garb, this perk is for you. But much like Mystic binding, it requires you to buff yourself with armor spells before combat. Not hard to manage, but can be cumbersome to some players. Fighting Stance/Champions Stance (One/Two Handed 20) - A significant reduction to stamina costs for power attacks when wielding one or two handed weapons, respectively. Less stamina use = more power attacks = lots of pain. Atronach (Alteration 100) - Absorb 30% of the magicka of any spell cast at you. The only 100-level skill on the list. Atronach lets you absorb and regenerate magicka automatically every time a spell is cast at you. Alteration, if used at all, is fairly easy to level, and also provides a 30% magic resistance in the tree (via three ranks in the Magic Resistance perk at Alteration 30). The entire tree really bears noting, as you can easily outfit your character with everything except a shield just by using alteration spells prior to combat.

Yeah man, give it a shot. If anything, you'll be a little more prepared now! ;)

Kinda a bit dated - but its nice to note that you can also benefit heavily from higher end arms and armor instead of going the conjuration route late/game - then just call back on conjured minions and weapons for soul shards and/or support.

Yep, that's a great way to raise skills - and a rather safe one all things considered - you know exactly what you're getting yourself into without the possibility of any surprises. Kind of cheesy and I'm sure people frown upon it, but hey - its your game and your experience, why spend hours grinding on 'real' enemies after tracking them down when you can fight the same enemies twice - the second time on your terms! Also, I'm pretty sure that's why they made necro pets dust when killed. So you can't spam raise/skill up off them :)

Agreed. The sneak attacks can finish off almost anything quickly - and the bow gives you the MUCH needed range damage without the reliance on Magicka recharge and enchantments in order to cast spells continually in combat. What perks/equipment did you go with starting off? I've found the first 10 levels or so are the hardest by far.

It's tough to describe my feelings on some of the responses posted here about my latest article. I thought it was pretty clear that the word Master in the title of the piece referred to the difficulty - a quip, if you will - that would tie into 'mastering' the game. There's a lot of redundancy about 'if you mastered the game, you wouldn't need blah blah blah'. I thank those valuable contributors for their efforts here. . . right. Next, how some perks aren't worthless, and/or how the advice in the post isn't applicable to every play style. Here's a tidbit - the difficulty setting relates directly to combat. Not your ability to farm and sell every item in the game from every house in every city, or your 'roleplaying' of a character that sits in town all day and does nothing. Master Difficulty = combat, which obviously does not apply to everyone's enjoyment of the game - since some people play Skyrim and avoid combat. Which baffles me. But that's their decision. It's rather pointless to say that the points are pointless if your point is only to point out that you don't bother playing the game through it's centric point of development (combat), and instead choose to role play through it doing... whatever it is you do. Go do it and leave the difficulty on whatever setting you wish - it probably won't effect your game much, at all. Why harp about how the points here aren't applicable (to your enjoyment of the game)? Seriously? They're 100% applicable to everyone who thought they needed to up the difficulty on Skyrim - because, in doing so, they only had the combative aspects of the game in mind. What exactly are you trying to argue? That they set the slider up a few notches so it'd be harder to mindlessly pick up items and ferry them to a vendor? Enjoy the game how you want, but don't complain other things need to be listed when they aren't even applicable to the central topic. Good day.

You can "RP" as much as you want to on any difficulty. The only thing that changes when you flick the switch to 'master' is the combat. Go do whatever you want with your RP character build. I apologize for not putting the word COMBAT in big bold letters - but I figured it would be sort of self-explanatory being as the word MASTER in this case obviously refers to the difficulty setting.

Originally posted on my site: http://balance-reviews.blogspot.com/ - when you're done reading, if you've enjoyed the article head over and check out the rest of the stuff I've written about Skyrim (and a multitude of other games as well!) Most of us have probably suffered from Skyrim burnout somewhere over the past few months since it's release. Personally, I didn't touch the game for most of the past two months, but picked it up recently in order to explore the final frontier (of sorts), the Master difficulty setting. I've played through the game a good amount (probably ~100 hours), and have multiple characters over level 30 that range from stealth assassins to front-line melee brawlers and pure mages, so I've got the game play pretty 'mastered' for lack of a better word. I know how to abuse the AI into wandering aimlessly as I tear it apart, and I can keep myself relatively safe from enemies utilizing crowd control spells (illusion) and dodging techniques. At least, that's what I thought going into it. Master isn't so much of a game as it is an examination in endurance and patience. I couldn't tell you the last time I died playing Skyrim prior to raising the difficulty. Even when I started playing the game for the first time, it wasn't very often (save a wandering giant or poor placement in a room of enemies). During my master play through, I had died more in the first thirty minutes then I did throughout all of my other campaigns. I went back, loaded up the save files, and checked. (For the record, I rushed through the intro and went straight to bleak falls barrow). It's with these lessons learned that I provide this very general list of ten things that every player, regardless of their character's specialties, needs to know when playing on the highest difficulty Skyrim has to offer. 1 - Melee is a dance of timing. If you misstep, you die. Blocks need to be spot on, and dodging blows either by sprinting past an enemy, or sidestepping them, need to be clean and crisp. As with every lesson you'll learn, painfully, while playing on the Master setting - practice makes perfect. 2 - Enemies will regularly execute you if you remain in melee range at low health. No blocking, no dodging, no amazing armor to protect you. If you stick around at less than thirty percent of your health remaining, you're asking to get killed. I estimate enemies probably have a 25% chance to do this every swing when your health is low. I've looked for exact numbers to no avail - if you have or can provide me with a source of that info, I'll gladly post it here. 3 - Your current level is the most important tool you possess. That sounds kind of odd, but enemies grow in power SIGNIFICANTLY every time your character advances a level. Keep this in mind when selecting worthless perks and crafting. 4 - Don't even CONSIDER crafting, or any thing that raises any skill not directly combat-oriented until level 25. I'm sure I'll get a comment/death threat from some idiot who thinks that just because they can power level smithing and enchanting to 100 means they should do it. Yeah, you'll have cool and useful gear - but no skills or perks to use it with. As a result, your enemies (which will also get access to your new gear since you leveled up so much) will one shot you since you concentrated on crafting for 20 levels, and they concentrated on combat. 5 - Damage is king. The ability to kill enemies quickly (quickly is a very loose term on the master setting, as everything has tremendous amounts of health) greatly outweighs your ability to sit there and take an extra hit in melee, or an extra spell from a mage. Concentrate your first 15 or so levels exclusively on dealing damage, and/or maintaining your ability to do damage throughout a fight. 6 - Defense is greatly underpowered. Going off what I said before, the best armor and stats in the game won't help you much against a room full of enemies, or one particular boss that shouts you to the ground and kills you before you even get control of your character again. In all respects, enemies are meant to kill you quickly if you stand in front of them - there is little you can do about this. Even magic resistance (while absolutely necessary) is greatly underpowered. Around level 30, with capped out magic resist (85%) you'll still shudder at how quickly you take damage from magic based attacks. Without magic resistance, you will instantly die from every magic based attack, regardless of your health, starting around level 25. 7 - You need to abuse the AI. The artificial intelligence in Skyrim is pretty terrible. Enemies will walk in odd directions to try and get to you, or stand aimlessly for no reason while you cast spells at them from afar. When they do this, punish them. A lot of playing on the Master difficulty is saving and loading games hoping the AI does something stupid - which it often will. I'll be writing an article specifically about this in the near future - some of the things I show you will be pretty hilarious. 8 - Use the Illusion spells, and use them often. You can turn entire rooms of enemies against each other, or send them fleeing while you have time to recover. This one school of magic might be the only one worth noting, except for #9. 9 - Conjuration. With the difficulty raised, non-player characters (NPC's) got a huge health boost. That includes your summoned creatures and raised dead as well. Conjuring minions not only buys you valuable time in combat - but unlike on other difficulties, these creatures will actually do a decent amount of damage and potentially take a few enemies with them. Conjuration goes hand in hand with #7 and #8; abusing the AI, and Illusion spells. The AI will often focus on your summons first - make them pay for it. 10 - The character you're planning to make might not be one that's viable on the Master setting. I use the word viable as kind of a misnomer here; every character can be 'viable', but some are so horrendously underpowered that they just don't fit well on the highest difficulty without reloading every combat scenario dozens (if not hundreds) of times waiting to get lucky and down an enemy. Take stock in what you learn as you go, and consider your lessons learned when making a new character master Skyrim with.

Originally posted from my blog, if you're interested in more articles on Skyrim and/or want to check out any of the other stuff I've written about the latest games coming out head on over after you finish reading! :) Playing a pure mage in Skyrim can be a fun, rewarding experience. It can also be absolutely nerve wracking and frustrating - especially if you turn up the difficulty in the game at all. I've found that playing Pure Mages on the master difficulty can be one of the most challenging experiences video games currently have to offer. But if you try to take the build I am about to propose and play it on the master difficulty, you need to do so with a warning: one mistake, and you die. Playing a glass cannon on the master setting is a commitment to understanding - not just understanding that you'll be saving and loading often, but an understanding of your environment, all your spells, how to use them, and when not to use them. Not everyone will choose to go the path less traveled and undertake Skyrim on its hardest difficulty - this build will work for everyone, novice and master alike - and should provide you with a base understanding of magical perks as well as the spells they allow you to use more efficiently. One important note is that unlike Oblivion, Skyrim doesn't let you customize spells. You can click here to view a list of all the perks in the game, and then from there click on any school of magic to get a full spell list with descriptions. I used the term build loosely, as I'm not a fan of spoon-feeding people a direct way to play their characters. Instead I'll explain a few notes, and let you take the perks you feel best augment your playstyle. -First and foremost, destruction will always be your fallback. You quite simply can not count on the AI in the game (either via a fury spell, or a conjured minion) to act as you intend it to. Therefor it's important to not only invest time into your destruction tree, but to consider completely ignoring conjuration as a primary source of damage until it nears level 100 and you receive some of the higher level summons in the game. *THIS DOES NOT MEAN DO NOT BUILD CONJURATION SKILL AS YOU PROGRESS IN LEVELS. It means don't count on it as a way for things to die. Don't blow perks in it until you've rounded out your character, and understand that conjuring weapons mid-fight is the best way to raise the skill, not by summoning minions and hoping they get a few hits off before they die. I highly suggest building down the fire tree first, and ignoring ice and lightning until level 40+, and even then, use them understanding that you could just kill things faster with fire then draining their stamina, or magicka with ice or lightning (respectively). Completely ignore the intense flames, disintegrate, and deep freeze perks simply because by the time an enemy is already low on health, you can just finish them off with another spell, which you'd have to use anyway to get the effects mentioned in those perks. -Utilize the Illusion skill tree extensively as both a time saving device and a primary source of damage (in most situations) The fury line of spells that makes enemies attach each other can let you clear a room of enemies almost effortlessly. This, coupled with silent casting and muffle lets you do it while hidden and without risking detection. I highly suggest avoiding use of the calm line of spells EXCEPT for situations when you need to rush through an area, and/or pacify an enemy in order to recover. Pacifying enemies to skip over parts always comes back and bites you in the ass one way or another - especially if you're not the sneaky type. -Alteration has some incredible perks available to you, from magic resistance to magic absorption. While just about everything in the alteration tree can be valuable, its important to note that buffing yourself with armor before a fight isn't always possible. Invest in things like the Mage Armor, Magic Resistance, and the Atronach perks. NOTE: If your mage will wear heavy armor instead of clothes, you can somewhat ignore the spells that increase your armor, and you can completely ignore the mage armor perk. *HOWEVER note that your skill raises significantly based on its use. If you take the novice alteration perk, and cast oakflesh on yourself once combat begins, you'll get quick skill gains throughout the game. -Conjuration is great, and really shines late game, but it's little more then a minimal source of additional damage until level 75 or so. Conjuring a weapon mid-combat is the best way to level up the skill quickly. After that, go for the twin souls perk, and summon your favorite companions of choice at level 100. -Enchantment is something that should be completely ignored, perk wise, until level 35+. You'll weaken your character significantly by spending perks in enchanting and receiving almost no benefit for doing so. Once level 35 rolls around, you'll pretty much have your adventuring perks selected and can spend your next few levels getting enchanting perks and double-enchanting your equipment that you've collected up until that point. -The restoration tree really is sort of a waste. While you can throw a few mid-level points in the magicka casting reduction perks - you'll pretty much always be able to heal yourself to full with the level one restoration spell, even without Novice Restoration. I can't keep droning on about how useless wards are - but aside from being staggered if they break (and they will break often) you can simply sidestep almost every ranged attack in the game. Don't waste the magicka instead of just strafing to the left. Combat with a pure mage really comes down to one, obvious, question: 1 - Can I kill everything in this room before it kills me? (If there are a lot of mages, or a lot of ranged damage, the answer is probably no. If this is the case, fury a few enemies or use your conjured minions as a distraction and then finish off the stragglers). Rinse, repeat. It takes some practice, but as I've mentioned - playing through the game as a pure mage is a rewarding experience. It requires not only cunning and patience but a little creativity in order to be successful. As always, feel free to leave your feedback below!

Skyrim, And The Favorite/Hotkey System You Might Not Even Know About (Originally posted to my website, 12/19/11) Check out the link to read it there, along with the horde of other Skyrim stuff I've posted! Let me just start with a bit of a frustrated rant. I've probably played half a dozen characters to level 30+ in Skyrim - tonight I retired a level 34 assassin, because for whatever reason the save became too buggy. NPC's wouldn't talk to each other. I had a few quests (that I had done previously) bug for no reason. Things weren't spawning, and even a brand new bug - I killed a boss, his corpse was on the ground in front of me. I could hit it with spells, shouts, etc. to move it around, but the game would NOT let me loot it, no matter where I positioned the corpse. It dropped an item for the next step of the quest. Very cool. The bugs on this save were bu far the worst and most wide spread of any I've had before - it was multiple quests, NPC's, etc. Really terrible. Moving on. What I wanted to write about this go-around was the favorite/hotkey system, which you might not even know exists unless you've played previous Elder Scrolls games, and/or you've accidentally stumbled across it during your adventures in Skyrim. For whatever reason, this forum won't let me post the full article with screen shots to go along with the explanations. Without them, this won't make much sense. Head on over to my site and check out the rest if you want to figure out how to actually use the hotkey/favorite system, or just use it a little better.

That's Odd, the bound sword should stay at par with the best weapons. It also depends on your conjuration level, finding items that give +% to conjuration apply. Is your level still in the 40's? That may be the problem.

If you want to buff up before combat, sure - I don't think it applies much to heavy armor wearers though. Appreciate the plug from another article :) I'm not far enough into the game to really need the buff, but it would certainly help in the right situations.

Silent roll just lets you close distance and avoid things easier, even in combat. Sneaking is easy, especially with practice.

Nice - keep us posted and let me know if you have any suggestions to better it!