Mehrunes' Razor. Though it looks cool, it feels kind of meh to me. What is the actual percentage chance it gives? It feels like 2 percent or something.

My character (assassin. But please, it's just a job to him. Think: Grosse Pointe Blank.) has been having great luck with Valdr's Lucky Dagger. And a Ceremonial Blade. But we just found an ebony dagger at the store, so that will probably replace the ceremonial.

Legendary. So if you were to go all legendary, and re-level up that skill (Sneak), when you reach the pinnacle again, does that mean you now have extra Sneaking ability in addition to the first 100, or did I stupidly do that and only get extra perk points out of it?

Mercer Frey battle was stoopid. Reminded me playing Mario vs a boss. Bummed me out. (I have been squinting, figuratively, this whole time. I feel that Skyrim's writing svcks pretty hard, but I've found a niche for my playstyle in the game.... so I am not looking too hard anymore, lest it curb my enthusiasm for the game world, which is the only star.)

Have not yet returned the Skeleton Key, so don't tell me.

Alchemy. I have put only one point into this, at the lowest tier. As alchemy levels up, will I be able to identify more than one ingredient effect, or do I actually have to put another perk point (or more) into this skill, in order to be able to identify all four effects?

1) This is the stupid thing about the Legendary Skill mechanism. When you Legendary a Skill, you go from being 100 "Awesome!" to Totally Incompetent. Like developing amnesia AND losing all of the built up reflexes. The main thing that Legendary gives you is the opportunity to redistribute that Skill's perk points to a Skill that you find more useful. So if you really must make a Skill Legendary, make it a Skill that you NEVER plan to use again. You might be able to build it up to mid-range numbers fairly quickly, but it will take you forever to build up general experience enough to earn the perk points that you want to apply to the Skill's Perk Constellation. (It takes about a hundred times longer to go from general Level 41 to Level 42 than it does to go from general Level 1 to Level 2.)

2) There is a specific Alchemy perk, Experimenter, which actually contains 3 perks that allows you to get additional Ingredient effects. At the beginning, with no perks on the Alchemy constellation at all, you can learn the first Ingredient effect. You can take Experimenter-1 at Skill Level 50, which will give you the first and second effects. Experimenter-2 can be taken at 70 and reveals the first three effects. Experimenter-3 can be taken at 90, and reveals all four Ingredient effects. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Alchemy

...Which is another stupid thing, because with a reasonably systematic trial-and-error you can pretty quickly learn all of the effects of all but the rarest ingredients, and level up alchemy (and make money selling potions) in the process. Those perks come at too high a level to be very useful, so one can easily save the perk points for something else.

I dunno about that. I remember my high school Chem class where we learned about Qualitative and Quantitative anolysis. When you have four effects that are ranked by their potency within a given ingredient, it stands to reason that it would be harder to isolate and identify the weaker effects. As in, it would take a more talented -- experienced -- (al)chemist to identify those weaker effects. Essentially, your description of extensive trial-and-error testing is suggestive of that (al)chemist gaining experience through "learning by doing". So quantifying the learning process by laying out Skill levels sort of indicates "to know this, you would have to be at least that knowledgeable". So I think the way it is is kind of reasonable.

Ok, thanks for the answers. I did do Sneak as Legendary. With full Sneak tree, before, I was still getting discovered. Including casting Muffle (he can silent cast), and wearing Muffle boots. He wears a mix of clothing and light armor. So I figured that the extra amount of Sneak that I would get, would negate him being discovered all the time, with 100 in Sneak. Sigh.

My character just turned level 47. Sneak is currently at about mid-40s, on the second run.

I am not sure yet, what to do about Alchemy. It feels like I will start being systematic and actually take alchemy notes, much like I did in Oblivion. Wasting perks at my high level, as Glargg has pointed out, seems like a fruitless endeavor. I will just start buying out all dealers, so I can experiment with unknown potions. My failure rate in making new potions in Skyrim, far surpasses anything I've ever done in Oblvion, even when roleplaying an alchemy dolt.

Thanks.

If you simply want to know what the four effects are for ALL of the Ingredients, you should check out these links: http://skyrim.melian.cc/?cmd=cmdSkyrimAlchemyWizard

http://skyrim.melian.cc/?cmd=cmdSkyrimIngredientList

Sure, but in-game, you can work out most of the effects by a systematic trial and error. You simply accumulate a pile of different ingredients, which will include a lot more of the common flowers and mushrooms. You simply go down the ingredient list, matching one of a common ingredient against each of the rest of the list. You quickly get a lot of double-effect matches, which accelerates the process.

Since I play multiple characters, I try very hard to keep my knowledge out of it (I obviously know quite a few potion recipes.) So I make an effort not to take any shortcuts in the "trial-and-error." I assume that mages, being educated, will know at least a few common and important formulas, like Cure Disease, while my non-mages will know nothing about it. But no matter the character, I've found that by taste-testing for the first effect, and then trial-and-error matching, my characters very quickly get a very good working knowledge of the effects.

Thanks for the link, but I don't want to know, what my character doesn't know, at least for now. There will probably be several more characters beyond my man at the moment. And then I will know, what I need to know, when I get there.