Getting to Level 50 and beyond. Is it Worth It?

[LombardiSpot]

I'm a Mage character and pretty much finished nearly every quest and side-quest, but still want to get a few remaining perks and level my character. But man is it hard when my most used skills are already mastered. So I've started trying to level-up my Archery, One-Handed, Alchemy, and Smithing.

It's actually somewhat fun to be a powerful mage and always fall back on massive destruction or conjure a couple Dremora Lords if needed. But I wonder if perhaps it's better to just start over with a warrior type build and enjoy gaining perks in the warrior skills.

As an aside: It was funny going in to the Boethia cult with a fire-frost ebony dagger and close-wounds armed. I barely did any damage to those guys and they killed my Dremora Lords in a couple hits and then easily mobbed and killed me. My closed wounds and Dragon-Hide was useless. But when I went in casting duel-weild Thunderbolts, and Highborn activated, and two Dremora Lords, even the mob of them coming at me proved no challenge at all. They were stumbling around so much from my thunderbolts that they pretty much stayed in the same place! I love my mage.

Disclaimer: For those that might be wondering about my comment of Dragon-Hide being useless, keep in mind that I was mobbed by 5 high level enemies surrounding me, an enemy casting lightning, others with swords and blades and a guy with a massive ax with these incredibly powerful hacks. Probably the worst-case scenario for a mage with Dragon-Hide. In most cases, Dragon-Hide works great.

 

[Dagmar]

How many perks are you trying to get and what level are you? If you have 100 in all magic skills, and 100 in Speech that would put you at level 50. Alchemy at 100 will make you level 56.

 

[Grogmar Ghrobash]

You could always level up your illusion and thief skills since they both go greatly together. Like for me when my warrior skills are all maxed up and I can't do anything else I'll probably be a battlemage or perhaps just a full fledged mage I haven't decided yet as it doesn't seem very practical for me to be a mage on my Orc.

 

[sprugly]

Once you've passed level 50 and maxed out your often used skill I say new character. The game is far to big for only one character and playthrough

Sprugly

 

[nordicowboy]

I made it to level 46 with my tank before I maxed out 1H, heavy armor, and smithing. With the majority of my points going to health, it lost the intensity. Being able to take 1/2 a dozen shots from a death overlord, and them killing him with a few swings gets boring. So yea, pacing yourself is a good thing.

 

[Brianthelionz]

I just hit 30 and I've just started messing around with smithing probally change it up maybe use archery more and more Mage skills
Typically I use one handed weapons , restoration magic only and heavy armor

 

[dunklunk]

I'm the opposite of you, Lombardi. All my sneak, archery, etc. are all at 100, but my magic totally blows. So now I try to use as much magic as possible, only falling back on melee weapons if magic just won't work.

 

[Luke7050]

I always try to mix and math my combat. Since my one-handed is 100, I am using two handed now and at the same time my destruction is 70 so i switch every once and a while.

 

[Monolith]

I never managed to get higher than level 48 on my first character. At that point leveling slowed to such a crawl that it wasn't really happening at all. I suppose I could've power leveled my alchemy to 100 (I think it was 70-something at that point), or I could've focused on skills I didn't use much or at all, but that would've felt contrived, somehow. He was wayyyy overpowered at that point anyway, even with a difficulty increasing mod, and had almost all the dragon shouts etc, so I chose to start a new character instead. Haven't regretted that decision one bit! The lower levels from 0-35 or so are always more fun than the end-game IMO.

 

[Streets]

I agree with Monolith there, I took my first character to 50 just for that achievement, but he was so overpowered even before that I just wanted to stop. Now I am much more careful in planning out limited builds where each new character will have certain skills and will do certain quests so as not to overlap with another character. I usually get characters around level 30 or so and restart with a new character / scenario.

 

[LombardiSpot]

Thanks everyone! Good answers. I suspected it's pointless. I too noticed the crawling progress at levels 48-49. I finally made it to 50, but that's after going to my Alchemy sachel, pulling all the stuff out, and just making tons of potions. And then I went around with a bow and shot enemies. Which actually gave me an appreciation for archery, in a virtual role-paying sort of way, not in any real sense. At this level I can Conjure a Dremora Lord and shoot or hack away. But it's far too easy and no challenge at all. I feel like a mage wanna-bee warrior.

 

[Uther Pundragon]

As I like to role play my characters, builds and levels don't really concern me. I've had multiple characters and still have not completed everything in the game, nor reached level 50. Some people really like to experience everything with one character. I find it much more fun to have characters with their own stories, goals, achievements, etc.

 

[SGT_Sky]

I maintained one god character so I could get the hard-to-get achievements, other than that I would say new character time