» Sat Jun 30, 2012 10:09 am Pros:
- Game is actually very well balanced at Level 1. You don't feel underpowered, but if you're stupid and charge headfirst into a Bandit in Steel Plate Armor, you're screwed.
- Destruction magic is actually very effective and viable. My enchanting is in the 40s and I get +20 magicka per piece and with Firebolt being 41 magicka base cost, one could easily start off combat firing off a few firebolts and finishing with flames. As a matter of fact, if I was to make a pure destruction mage again, I'd probably stop leveling the second I got 60 in Destruction and got Fireball and 2/2 augment and the Adept Perk, as its pretty much all downhill from there.
- Other then being able to throw some weaker enchantments (+20 health, +13 melee dmg) on a few items, you spend most of the time just playing, and not worrying about managing your character, which is something I have a tendency to do too much.
- All of those crappy "Potion of Minor Restore Health/Magicka/Stamina" potions laying around everywhere are actually quite useful, since unless you put some enchants on, your health is stuck at 100.
- Gear like the Daedric Artifacs and Dark Brotherhood gear and all gear with set enchantments can be very useful, as you can't enchant many of the things these items provided at level 1.
Cons:
- If you're looking for something thats going to completely change the way you play skyrim (like being a vampire or a pacifist build) this isn't it, because you basically play the same way, its just nothing really scales up so you can't enchant 4 pieces of armor for +40% melee damage, or cast spells for free, or double enchant weapons.
- I imagine there are some enemies like Dragon Priests with set levels that would be *very* hard to defeat, stuck at level 1.
- For rogue/thief types, not being able to take that first perk that boosts your pickpocket/sneak was a but painful at first.
- Since your enemies only scale by level, and you're still improving your skills, the game will steadily get easier, because you're doing more damage, taking less damage, and your spells are costing less, but your enemies don't improve.
- You will never get to cut anyones head off stuck at level 1.
Observations:
- One could easily get the "level 1" experience without doing it simply by leveling normally, but not putting any perks into any crafting skills. You could still use the skills, but perks in crafting can really throw the game out of whack, and enemies don't really scale in a way to combat the perks and combinations that a player can put together.
- I'm wondering if anyonne has done anything like gotten to level 10-11 or 20-21 and have stopped leveling from that point on? Like where you could possibly fight everything/most things, and have access to some perks, but not hit the armor cap, or get free spellcasting, or any of the other "gamebreaking" type stuff?
Staying at level 1 shows you really how balanced the game is, its actually very well done when you play it stuck at level 1. Since the difficulty level only changes the output of your and your enemies damage, I think they should have had you pick your difficulty level at character creation (and not be able to change it mid-game), and then scaled the enchantments to the difficulty level (Adept characters do NOT need +40% per enchant to melee), it would have led to a more balanced game, not one where you have to "gimp yourself" in order to keep it interesting at higher levels.
Anyway, I recommend trying it. I'll probably stop when I've hit 500 skill ups, or if I hit 100 in any skill, whichever comes first. Comments/questions are certainly welcome.
