Natural Level up vs Forced

[Chessalavakia]

What level do your characters generally reach before you adjust their rp or force them to level up (Force = Exploiting or randomly deciding to spend 100,000 gold to level up smithing or alchemy).

Most of the character's I've made are lucky to hit 40 before they get bogged down and start leveling very slowly. Is my leveling abnormal or do many people not make it anywhere near the level cap?

[Yaije]

Seeing as how the level up system is based on how many skills you train, unless you actually go out of your way to train... all of them... you won't get anywhere near the cap of 81. I'd bet some characters top out at 30~ or so if they strictly adhere to certain skills.

Hell the only reason I bother leveling some skills at all is to get more perk points to make some of the magic schools more worthwhile (illusion mostly)

[Hissien]

I force conjuration and illusion.

[Isildor]

It depends on what you mean by forced. I force alchemy early in the game by grinding out potions. Smithing in the same way, but it took longer. Using just the skills I need in the game (grinding alchemy and smithing), I ended up about 53, if memory serves. Some skills have never been used (two-handed and pickpocket) and I've only trained about 5 times or so, but might be more.

[Alarra]

I got to level 66 mostly naturally, playing however I want. The only one I feel I've truly ground at was smithing, but not to level in general, I just wanted daedric weapons and then dragonscale armor, so about lv 86-100 for Smithing was just me making tons of jewelry and dwarven armor.
I did slow down a lot at level 40, making slower and slower but still steady progress, but for the last two or three levels I've started to get to the point where I AM trying to level stuff just to level in general - I switched to Heavy Armor, and I've started trying to cast more spells, block more, and use 2-handed instead of sneaking and killing everything with arrows or my one-handed sword.

[BunBun299]

I got my main character up to level 81 naturally. That is, while I did train almost every time I leveled up, most skills I just forced myself to use. I was majorly releaved when Light Armor and Archery maxed out, as neither fit my play style. It took over 400 hours of game play. The other character I maxed out I got to 74 before I got frustrated playing a sneaky mage like a barbarian and just exploited the Ohgma Infinium to max out my remaining skills. I did it legit once, and got all the skills I actually use to 100 legitly, felt no need to do it again.

[Medomé]

I get to the mid-50s before I force some skills for a jump to ~70. I exploited my way to level 80 in order to get Legendary Dragons and the Ebony Warrior on my Dragonborn, but I lost the Oghma Infinium on my vampire.

[GoatLiver]

It depends on what skills you use, but for most of my characters I generally get to around level 35-45 by the time I have completed most of the main quest lines I want to do with them and have main skills at 100.

There seem to be some common secondary skills on nearly all characters I play, things like speech get to about 50 just from selling loot. Lockpicking gets to about 55-60 just going through dungeons. Restoration gets to about 35-40 from healing after fights.

[PhanttoM]

I've gotten most individual skills up to 100 legitly (though never all at once) and I can't imagine having to go the extremely long way again.

While I generally don't glitch abuse, I do make use of the absurd percentages that the game mechanics dish out. (Like 0 mana cost via enchanting)
So the stuff I powerlevel is pretty much all skills that are passively level up. The stuff that I always force to level 100 nowadays is listed below.

• Spell cost removal via enchanting.
• Conjuration: Cast dual bound swords while running in circles around a mudcrab.
• Alteration: Cast stoneflesh on self - later levels use detect life + telekinesis in a town marketplace.
• Illusion: Cast muffle on self.
• Restoration, Block, Light armor, Heavy armor: Be attacked by 4 frost trolls in labyrinthian while healing self.

Sometimes I might use the same frost trolls to level up archery, one/two-handed a little bit, but never beyond level 40-50ish.

[Duderino Abides]

The only thing I can say I might "force level" would be alchemy, although making potions is pretty useful for trading.

[House of the Wolf]

Just thought I'd share this little bit: "Force-leveling", to me, is a loaded-term. If one wants to get better at a particular skill in the real world, what do they (generally) do? They practice that skill many times, eventually (slowly/quickly) improving through repetition (ie, "training").

That said, the Armor, Smithing, Illusion, and Sneaking skills are each that I generally "train", the rest I let raise through casual play.

[PixiePayton]

I defiantly force smithing as early as possible so i can have all the best gear, but I do agree with House. I would say that while I do try to level my smithing pretty hard core I usually work it into the rp and then logically speaking she would practice or pay someone to train her to get better at said skill

[Arterion]

The game is already easy as it is so I prefer not to force any skill levels and level ups. Once my characters are past level 40, which is somehow a natural level if you max the core skills of your build, than you have to force level if you want some challenge. The skills that usually get this treatment are Illusion, Alteration and perhaps Enchanting if suits my build.

While I am a minmax person at heart I prefer to enjoy the lower levels as far as possible since once you max the core skills the whole game becomes almost too easy, especially if you are a melee monster. On several notices I have forced Smithing and Enchanting but only due to curiosity and in an attempt to create a powerplayer character, yet...it backfired when I killed dragons in five or so swings of my two handed axe...thus the game was utterly obsolete.

Long story short I much more prefer to roleplay than powerlevel and I have a great problem with keeping my character level low since regardless of what you do you level your skills fast, too fast.

[Believe]

I don't give a damn about level caps or any of that nonsense, so I only level up skills that suit each character. I think the highest I've had so far is about lvl 39.

[cowleyj]

I am at level 54 and I forced conjuration a bit.

[Chessalavakia]

Thanks for the input. I admit the language might have been a little loaded I was just wondering if I was playing improperly or if lower levels were normal ish.

[Mod-Loving Wood Elf]

If I have a sneak-based character I usually "force" pickpocketing.... but that's because it's so darn fun and useful.

Of course, I always end up forcing smithing or getting Eorland to train me. Immersive Armors mods requires some pretty high smithing for its most awesome armors.

[CBR JGWRR]

Thanks for the input. I admit the language might have been a little loaded I was just wondering if I was playing improperly or if lower levels were normal ish.

Your doing fine.

The great thing about Skyrim is it's equally fun with a maxed out level 81 character who could one shot Karstaag's ghost, who casts every spell in the game for free, who basically could run around naked except for jewelry and never die, as it is to play a level 8 character running around with fine grade fur armour.

[Evil-i]

I just use whatever level-ups my playstyle naturally gives me, so my characters mature organically. I've never felt compelled to pre-plan a character and shoot for max caps.

[Leilah]

I just sort of hope for the best, really. My current character is now at level 24, and honestly, I'm now sure how much further she'll level up. I sort of grind smithing and alchemy, but that's when she needs money, not specifically to raise a skill.

[Mattbott]

i have one character who will go for max level to get the big boss fights and cheevos ( ), but my other heroes are nearly there in the mid 20's - 30's and have more or less reached their potential

tho they may well get to 40 ish through training and practising, which are justifiable parts of character development imo.. you can only learn so much from experience in the short span of game-time TES games take to play out (strange that from Helgen to looting the Ebony Warrior may well only have taken less than a game year)

[House of the Wolf]

For me, I find my goal-level of at least 46--which provides the best versions, each, of Chillrend and Dragonbane, my two favourite weapons.

[umber hulk]

mid-50s my natural skills were maxed out, so i force-levelled to 70 for some extra points, but i think i'll leave it there, i can't see myself tackling destruction at any stage, too out of character, too much of a grind.

[Mattbott]

mid-50s my natural skills were maxed out, so i force-levelled to 70 for some extra points, but i think i'll leave it there, i can't see myself tackling destruction at any stage, too out of character, too much of a grind.

i agree completely

My super fighter hero guy wants to meet ebony warrior and mega dragons but he can only do so after he's has become a master alterationist silly or paradoxical..

Spoiler:

maybe if you bought all the perks in a skill then you could improve it beyond 100 and continue to level up.. something like that. I like the open ended skill idea and it could be made to work balance-wise in a single player game imo

[Finn Wolfshorn]

The only things I actually "force-level" on every character are the crafting skills. With smithing, my usual routine is to buy every piece of leather and strips from blacksmiths (in addition to tanning my own) and convert it to leather bracers + improve all loot before selling it until I get the Arcane Blacksmith perk, because it just sucks to find some nice enchanted gear only to find that my unenchanted improved stuff is so much better. I also smith all silver and gold I find into jewelry. And when I visit an apothecary's shop I buy up their inventory of ingredients if I can afford it, make as much poisons and restore health/magicka/stamine potions as I can and combine the rest randomly to discover new effects. I'm a little more lax on enchanting, mostly because I don't always have enough spare soul gems, but I try to train that too whenever I can. Everything else sort of levels naturally as I go (with the possible exception of speechcraft and lockpicking, which I find the game sort of forces you to use a lot.)

I don't like to force-level skills just to level up, but I'll admit that my Dragonborn (= MQ, not DLC) character, who used to be a dual wielder, has taken to blocking lately - not only in order to level up but also because I've discovered that it's hugely useful. It's got him to level 60 so far, and we'll see whether he'll start using two-handers and heavy armour as well, but I'd rather avoid it.

The other alternative I've taken with my vampire character is using a mod that instantly kicked her from level 59 to 81, + unlocking all perks. Funnily, that hasn't changed the style I'm playing her that much - she's still an assassin using mostly sneak, one-handed and archery, just better at it.