Im still working my way through this game and am currently at level 42. The only skills i abused were smithing and speech to get them to 100. My other skills that i frequently use (archey, sneak, one-handed, lockpicking, enchanting, alchemy, etc) are in the 50-70 range. I looked hard at my skill perks yesterday and I am very happy and think ive done a great job. The only wasted one i used was I put one perk in the speech tree to lower prices and get higher sale prices. Other than that, I am right on track to maxing out all the ones I want to. I have a friend who is now pissed that he wasted too many perks in the lockpicking tree and he is contemplating starting over because of it... even though he is level high 20's. Although, i did put one into the archery perk that slows time by 25% when you zoom. I think its almost more annoying than beneficial, the jury is still out on that one. I doubt i will put a 2nd point into it to slow time 50%.
Its actually really hard to level up one-handed and archery when I'm killing things so fast.
Alchemy is annoying, it builds up soooo slow with each successful potion and I cant seem to find the recipes for the really good potions, so I'm just guess and testing which repeatedly results in wasting good ingredients.
I've smithed a Deadric bow and upgraded it all to hell by using +% smithing equipment and potions. It has no enchantments on it yet since I'm waiting to get that skill up to 100 before I double enchant it with some elemental damage. I was using dual swords as my alternate weapon (2 Deadric swords), but lately have been playing around with daggers (one Deadric dagger and the one you get from the DB quests). My sneak is enough to that I can backstab people pretty easily.
Speaking of backstab, I'm confused as to what the difference is between the shrouded hand wraps and shrouded gloves. One says double bonus to backstab while the other says double bonud to one handed sneak attacks. I guess one works for daggers only while the other is any one handed sneak attack. Regardless, either will get my backstab to x30 damage with a dagger.
There is always confsing double speak in this game. I have a mask that says +20% to archery, which appears to do the same thing as a different helmet that says +20% damage with bows. There is no consistency...
I finished the dark brotherhood quests, started the magic college, and feel as if i have a long way to go with the main story line still. I took a few weeks off from this game before the holidays, but got back into it full force lately for some reason. I suppose I want to set myself up to enjoy the DLC when it comes eventually.
