The competition has officially begun! It started at Midnight October 2nd/October 3rd US Pacific Time!

Post your characters name, race and gender your chosen difficulty setting, and your chosen 5 core skills or you won't enter the competition! You cannot enter this competition after Midnight October 7 / October 8!

Do it like this: (Example)

(Your name)
(Char's name)
(Race)
(six)

(Chosen difficulty setting)

(Chosen 5 core skills, only ONE craft allowed)

DiD Competition pages:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1516828-did-competition/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1518239-did-competition-round-2/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1520718-did-competition-round-3/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1526780-did-competition-round-4-mage/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1530300-did-competition-round-5-warrior/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1532894-did-competition-round-5-warrior-part-2/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1535806-did-competition-round-6-thief/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1536508-did-competition-round-6-thief-part-2/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1537070-did-competition-round-6-thief-part-3/

General Rules

- No Fortify/Restoration looping
- No forbidden mods (That give players advantage) (If you are new to this, send me your mod list)
-Dynamic Difficulty (Player's Choice ith the following consequences:
Legendary score x 1.25
Master score x 1.0
Expert score x 0.75
Adept score x 0.5
Apprentice x 0.25

Novice = no score)
- No reloading previous saves even if character did not die (unless a glitch occurred)
- No map based fast travel
- Once in Helgen Keep, DiD rules apply (You must go through the cart cutscene!)
- No follower/trainer exploit

- Companions limited to one companion and a dog

(Quest companions like Serana and Barabus have to be taken directly to their quest

destination with minimal side trips.)
- Update at least once every 3 days (If you can)

-If a Player's character dies, he may raise a new character (to be known as a zombie?) and if that character dies a new character may be raised (a wraith?) and so on. At the competitions' end, the highest character score attained (minus penalties) will determine the player's position at the finish line.

Rules Specific to Competition 7

This round is essentially designed to get players to make difficult choices with each decision having considerable consequence for gameplay.

The player will have the option to choose no more than five skills (only one of which may be a craft - i.e. Smithing, Alchemy, or Enchanting) which will be his/her "core skills". Throughout the competition, these will be the only skills that the player can perk, receive training in, or raise skill level without consequence.

There will be a two point skill raise buffer to reduce penalty from incidental skill increase by reading a skill book, or getting training as a reward for a quest. In other words you can raise any skill two points, but on the third raise you will incur a penalty.

Skill raises will be determined against racial scores at starting. Example: if a Wood Elf has a starting skill of 25 in Archery, and Archery is not in his core, he will start receiving penalties at skill level 28 for Archery.
(if you are not familiar with racial starting levels, http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Races is a good page on the subject. This is the page that will be used to determine starting values.

Penalty will be applied per skill increase at the rate of -1,000 per skill level raise for non-craft non-core skills and -2,000 per skill level raised for non-core craft skills.

As a final note, I am going to suppose you all know the difference between normal use of a skill and spamming a skill to get level increases. Spamming skills is just a cheat/exploit of the system, and I am going to presume your momma raised you better. If you don't know what spamming a skill is, imagine standing in knee-deep water casting "Waterbreathing" over and over again... or casting "muffle" every 10 seconds until you run out of magicka.

On that subject, in order to minimize possible skill spamming, it will not be permissible to make skills legendary.

The competition will last for a total of 14 days starting at: Midnight Pacific Time October 2nd / October 3rd and ending at: Midnight Pacific Time October 16th / October 17th.

Previous Competition Winners

First Round
~~~~~~~~~
Rick.

Second Round
~~~~~~~~~~~
Rick.

Third Round
~~~~~~~~~~~
Rick.

Fourth Round

~~~~~~~~~~~
Turija

Fifth Round

~~~~~~~~~~~

Sah

~~~~~~~~~~~

Sixth round

~~~~~~~~~~~

FIRST PLACE: Sah

Second Place: Rick

Third Place: Neildarkstar (I think..)

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1516840-did-scoring-system/

NOTE If you want to build a Hearthfire house, you're probably going to want Smithing as your craft skill, no allowance will be made for increases due to house building.
***

Priest King masks acquired......................... x 1,000

unique artifacts/items acquired..................... x 1,000

Chests looted.............................................. x 30

undead killed............................................... x 100

Daedra killed............................................... x 300

Automatons Killed....................................... x 150

Creatures killed.......................................... x 200

dungeons cleared........................................ x 500

levels obtained............................................. x 100

(for the masks and uniques you will need to keep track of them yourself, the game doesn't do it)

Penalties:

Skills leveled not in the core......................... x - 1000 per skill level

craft skills leveled not in core....................... x -2,000 per skill level

Point Payoff Items:

Current Players:

________________________

Neildarkstar

Daro' Taahni Dead

Khajiit

Legendary

Alchemy

Archery

Sneak

Speech

Alteration

________________________

Neildarkstar Dead

Bula Gra Morn

Orc

Legendary

Smithing

Heavy Armor

2 Hand

Block

Archery

________________________

Neildarkstar

Nina Drelas Dead

Dunmer

Female

Legendary

Alchemy

Speech

Sneak

Destruction

Alteration

_________________________

Neildarkstar

Eleisa
Breton
Female
Legendary

Alchemy
Speech
Sneak
Conjuration
One-Handed

________________________

Brambleberry

Bar'suum Dead

Breton

Male

Legendary

Enchanting, Illusion, Destruction, Alteration, Speech

_________________________

Brambleberry

http://i.imgur.com/ntTeRgw.jpg Dead

Breton

Male (zombie)

Legendary



Smithing, One Handed, Block, Heavy Armor, Alteration

________________________

Brambleberry

Bar'wuut (wraith) MIA

Breton

Male

Legendary

Speech, Conjuration, Archery, Sneak, Alchemy

_________________________

Aireal

Cadryn Luilfr

Nord

Male

Master

2h

Archery

Light

Speech

Smithing

_________________________

Turija

Karrl (the Koward)
Khajiit
Male
Expert

Archery
Sneak
Conjuration
Alteration
Speech

___________________

Glargg

Mogo gro-Glarggash Dead

Orc

Male

Apprentice

Heavy Armor

1 Hand

Archery

Speech

Enchanting

Score: 8095

____________________

Glargg

Formalda Hyde Dead

Altmer

Female

Adept

Illusion

Conjuration

Destruction

Restoration

Alteration

Speech

____________________

Glargg

Terawyval Dead

Bosmer

Female

Adept

Sneak

Archery

Destruction

Speech

Alchemy

______________________

Glargg

Farley Finster

Breton

Male

Adept

Heavy Armor

Conjuration

One Hand

Enchanting

Speech

_______________________

Player....Rick
Char.......Sir Rick Dead
Race.......Breton
six.........Yes Please...Er Male

Difficulty....Legendary ('natch)

Craft: Smithing

Four core: Heavy Armour, Block, One Handed, Archery

Score 58,600

______________________

Meetra Surik

Jane Shepard (shut up)
Breton
Female
Apprentice

Illusion
Archery
Sneak
enchanting
Conjuration

_______________________

Wow, new thread! While I remember, I'd just like to say how much I'm enjoying this challenge, and also thanks to everyone for being so welcoming and friendly and putting up with my incessant questions!

Quite a productive couple of in-game days. Aouregan can now tick off the golden claw, the Dragonstone, the Gloves of the Pugilist (giving some serious thought to risking an enchanting increase to put that,however weakly, on my gauntlets, given punching is my only allowed direct attack) and Dravin's Bow, shame Valdr was bugged, I'm hoping if I steer clear for a while he'll reset. Also got Kharjo's Moon Amulet, and nearly came a cropper in the process as the bandit chief in broken helm hollow insisted on attacking me, rather than Uthgerd, Arzhela (dog's gotta have a name...) or Tanet.

Getting tantalizingly close to fifty conjuration, hoping to make the journey to Winterhold soon for spells, would like a frost Atronach, though I'm not sure how useful they are in Skyrim. Am currently level thirteen and a half. Restoration isn't doing too badly, now I've got a dog to heal (Uthgerd doesn't need much help). Speech is about forty five, I think. Heavy armour is somewhere in the thirties. And smithing is somewhere between dwarven and orcish.

Frost Atronachs are great. They are big and easy to hide behind and draw aggro well. Very durable and big enough to block narrow hallways completely. Plus they don't move around all the time and bump into you like flame atronachs do, so less worry about one bumping you off a cliff. They don't really have a ranged attack though.

In the other thread, Turija said:

If Farley doesn't work out, that's the final backup plan. I realize that I've been playing aggressively. I've also been collecting a fair number of artifacts, so the approach would work if I could just keep somebody alive.

I was really disappointed when Mogo died, because he was actually a good and workable character. I don't think I have ever had the random encounter with the two gargoyles before, and I was at a loss how to handle it, with a magic-weak orc, and no followers. It was like the game decided to pick the worst possible thing to throw at Mogo. Yellow-Boy would have just run away, but Mogo was an orc, and he went down fighting.

Rick said:

A record wasn't in the plan. The plan was to blast through at a low difficulty setting, get a lot of of points, and take the difficulty penalty. We can see how well it's working.

I think the problem is that I'm not respecting the lower difficulty. It can still kill you very effectively. How do I like them apples?

Hmm, that all makes sense, I think I'm still slightly stuck in the destruction mindset, worrying about the Frost resistance that everything seems to have. Plus, I'll still have Tanet, and I abandoned the Atronach stone (back to good old mage, though perhaps I should switch to warrior for armour and smithing next time I'm near home) so my regen is back to normal...

Sah walks out of her room locking the door behind her,

walks down the dark lighten hall and gets into the old 30's style lift

presses basemant button..........some seconds later the lift doors open

Sah walks through the kitchen......& the laundry.........total ignored by the staff she walks down 2 more flights of sitars

reaches a long dark corridor................at the end of it a big black door with a coin slot on it

Sah pulls out a gold coin..........inserts it into the slot

SUDDENLY a small window opens......Sir Neil's eyes appear.............small window slams shut.............sound of locks being unlocked............door swings open

Sah walks into the DiD thread..............TO BE CONTINUED

Don't forget the frost atronach's melee attack. That's good for another 20-30 points on top of its frost cloak. Frost atronachs do well against other creatures with frost resistance/immunity since frost atronachs are pretty tough, they are immune to frost, so any other frost resistant/immune creatures frost attack won't work on them, and their melee attack is decent, with a stagger component when they slam the ground. Remember, a summoned creature is not affected by the difficulty slider, so at higher difficulties, a 20-30 point melee attack from a summoned frost atronach does the same damage as it would on Adept.

Aye, that all makes sense (pity I'm playing on adept, though I think I'd have died to the bandit chief this evening if I weren't!) Thanks! I'm very new to all this conjuration stuff, beyond a bit of dabbling in bound weapons.

The DiD band is playing soft jazz music, Sah walks to the back of the bar to a small table, where a scholar type person was sipping on his brandy and reading his book.

Sah ..............hello Maestro Rick

Maestro Rick ...."Sah! how good to see you",......... "sit" ............*looking at Sah's scared face*........"If I remember it was you dealing the damage, not receiving it?"

Sah ............"just rusty, this one needs the current location of unique items..........has a score to settle"

Maestro Rick ..."Remember Sah no business may be conducted on these premises without incurring heavy penalties"

Sah ......."its personal"

Maestro Rick ...Sah you walked away once, dip one finger back into this DiD pond you might might find something reaches out and pulls you back in forever?"

some time later at the bar Sah orders her usual drink & after the bar woman tells her "never see you like this before, so vulnerable"

she places a drink on a paper towel containing a list of unique items locations......................Sah looks towards the Maestro who is smiling and raising his glass

TO BE CONTINUED

Hello, Kaemrig the Wraith is lvl 15, no negative score yet and good bunch of positive I think.

I've found a few unique items that don't appear in the list but I won't count them in the score. Do the god amulets count because I've seen some people listing them?

Sah

I like it . Elegantly done!

Maestro Rick says 'Pray continue at your convenience '

The only god amulet that counts is Andur's Amulet of Arkay.

@Neil - clerical work for you budd! Bar'wuut was mysteriously disappeared by the powers of Sah Vulon! Late in the night a power outage occurred without warning and Bar' wuut just disappeared. No one has seen him since. There are rumors that he ended up in a bar bussing tables and has reportedly gone into hiding in the back room and never come out when someone that held a striking resemblance to the great Sah Vulon walked into the bar asking for a "List".

this one is starting again ..............is admitting tactical mistake, should have taken speech, (good call Sir Neil)...........overconfidence or just bad judgment

Sah

Sah

Nord

Female

Legendary

1 x handed

heavy armor

block

speech

smithing

so a 5 day late start Sir Rick................this one will catch you in the next 24 hours !!!!

Hey guys, sorry I haven't been able to update lately, but I'll leave you with my last recorded points:

Priest Mask: 0
Unique: 2
Chest looted: 87
Daedra Killed: 0
Automatons killed: 0
Undead killed: 64
Creature Kill: 11
Dungeon cleared: 11
Level attained: 13

Non core raised: 10
Non core craft raised: 0

update part 2

As I haven't played today I have no point updates

pictures

score so far:

28395 (inluding expert *0.75 multiplier)

Karrl had a pretty good night. Killed two dragons (three if you count the skeletal dragon in Labyrinthian) and two dragon priests (Krosis and Morokei), plus picked up a drainspell bow, drainheart sword and drainblood battleaxe, not to mention the staff of Magnus. Also picked up the last Gaulder fragment, the ivory dragon claw, Nosturs helmet and Andurs amulet of arkay.

With the two dragon souls, he activated the first word of ethereal and marked for death.

Magic resistance is 85%, with a set of elemental resistance necklaces he can switch out at 30-40% for each element. Morokei's lighting kinda tickled, for the two seconds he was able to actually connect with Karrl before Karrl summoned an atronach and disappeared into shadows.

Dragon priests don't do well against sneak arrows from a perked bound bow. Karrl tried marked for death on him but missed, so just resorted to his usual cowardly tactics. Kind of an anticlimactic battle once Karrl got back into sneak. Eight or nine arrows shots in rapid succession with a confused Morokei shooting his lightning at random locations since he could not see exactly where Karrl was hiding. He picked a good hiding spot above Morokei and halfway behind a piller.

Marks for death did work well against the skeletal dragon. He was a big enough target Karrl did not miss. It's funny, Karrl can hit a fox on the run with his bound bow from a hundred paces, but this shouting at people is new to him and he is not nearly as accurate. I think it makes him nervous to have to get so close to an enemy. He prefers killing things well before they get within twenty paces which is about double the range of shouts.

Level 24. Skills are:

Sneak 77
Alteration 72
Conjuration 60
Archery 62
Speech 33

All other skills remain at starting levels.

Health 260
Magicka 170
AR 50/210, depending on whether he has iron skin active, but that will increase to 250 now that his alteration is closing in in 75, cause he will start using ebony flesh as soon as he takes the expert perk.

Points update:

AR is only about 155, apparently even with the Dwarven smithing perk and no Advanced Armours, she can still make her Steel Plate better than a set of Dwarven, but I'm working towards Orcish smithing (and buying up any ingots I can find.) I believe the training is also increasing her AR as it's based partly off skill, right? She's wearing Steel Plate cuirass with Dwarven boots, helmet and gauntlets, as the cheapskate Black-Briars apparently make their Mercenaries provide their own, crappy light armour, boots and gauntlets.

Sah, honey, you didn't make a 'mistake' as such. Your initially chosen set up would have worked perfectly in the late game. Once the need to purchase was behind you. Our problem is getting through the first thirty levels!

In any case ha! You know Rick will follow you unto death .......and so I have

I won't say the transition to Zombie hood was painless......I was taken out by a Sweet roll, errrr no sorry....I meant Shagrol. He's the big lummox in Fallowstone cave.

Here hon take my hand...... I've put it in a bag for you .

Starting to get a bit peckish......could do with a snack.....feel like I want some brainsssss. Oooooo look at that! Brainsssss with bunchies on......My favourite....Yum!

Rick's score......found items, chests, Draugr kills etc, less penalties including Ledg multiplier = 58600 ( full breakdown upon request)

So then, an opportunity for a rethink! I'll restart once I've decided my skill set.....

Does anyone know how to work out the potential max level from only levelling five skills? I'd thought it'd be roughly 20-25 (slightly more than a quarter of the pre-legendary-system level cap, based on using slightly more than a quarter of the 18 skills available, varying depending on your starting levels, with higher starting skills having less room for growth) but obviously that's wrong as there are people almost at that who have a long way to go before maxing skills... I've looked at some explanations of how the levelling system works, but I'd have to make a spreadsheet to work it out, really, and I can't entirely be bothered with that.

So, each skillup gives as much xp as the level of the skill, assuming all skills start at 20 and max out at 100 that means (50*99 -10*19)= 4760 xp per skill, *5= 23800 xp total

With that much xp your level should be 40 or 41 according to the formulae I found on the wiki.

Ah, okay, and the XP required to get to each additional level is more so leveling up each additional skill to 100 will give you an increasingly small number of additional levels, right? I think that's where I got confused, I was just trying to roughly divide by the number of skills which is (looking back) obviously wrong. So if I level five skills to 100 it'll take me to ~40 but levelling another five skills to 100 might only take me to, say, ~65 or 70, and then I'd need to level up all eight of the remaining skills to 100 to get the last ~11-16 levels? Thanks, that (along with a bit of confused stabbing of a calculator) helped! Cool, I don't need to worry as much as I thought about running out of perk points (given I don't want ALL the perks for any of my skills), although I do need to worry about tougher enemies eventually

I used to be really good at maths, you know! Stupid disability :/

Rick. Zombie (sick bubble gum)
Ulda
Nord
Female (very)
Legendary

Archery
Light Armour
Sneak
Speech
Smithing

Oh Ulda......even death can not quench my hearts desire
For you, my love reaches beyond the veil
Come to me now my love, let our hearts beat in time once more
Rise within and take from this feeble soul his purpose and mortal will
See through my eyes Ulda, as I feel with your heart
Entwined as one we transcend the boundaries of our realms
We... are... Ulda