The days for PC skyrim players reaching a max level are over, and soon will be for the console players. I, myself, have never reached a level 81 playthrough (or 50 for that matter). The latest level I have made to was level 43. It was a Dragon hunting Nord Sword and Board wearing enchanted dragonbone armor named Dovah Kriid, roughly translated as Dragon Slayer. After completing the Dragonborn DLC storyline, he was deleted. My reason was I no longer played him and found him boring to play as anymore.
TL;DR What build have you kept all the way to the old max level? What kept you going? Did you have other builds in between or was it all or nothing? What kept the build fun and interesting and special enough to spend probably months playing. Long posts are encouraged.
I've had zero characters make 81st... I'm not interested because I role-play. My highest was in the low-mid 50's. I retire most in the mid 20's, but I've had a few in the 30's & 40's (but I get bored with these as things become too easy). I doubt I will go higher, even with the Legendary skills - it doesn't fit in role-play (unless my character gets amnesia or something - how else can you explain losing all perks and resettng a skill to 15).
I've made it to 53 with a character before, finished the Dawnguard questline and all the other ones for that matter and just deleted her afterwards. Fun fact - I played on Master and beat the game without a single perk being spent. That's about when I started looking for new challenges, restrictions to gameplay, that sort of thing.
For the record it was a female Orc with Heavy Armor, Block, One-Handed, Restoration, Destruction, Sneak, Alchemy, Enchanting, and Smithing. Steed Stone I believe in order to negate the movement penalties of heavy armor, and Orc so that the Berserker Rush could level the playing field against bosses. Smithing was particularly hard to do without perks but even if she couldn't craft anything, she could still smith them pretty well, and even without abusing fortification effects too much a few items granting +16 or so to a skill is worth it if you can make enough of them.
That character basically proved to me that money is, and always will be, the most powerful asset an Elder Scrolls character can possess.
I'm not a big roleplayer but the fabled 'level 81' has just never got me excited. I can't relate to a character who has mastered every skill, it's my in-game definition of 'career suicide'.
Level 50 was/is apparently the 'soft cap' so I always make a punt for that level with my characters, I do alot of roaming to build levels rather than picking my way through the factions, I do this in most the ES games. Getting lost is my favourite way to play.
I've recently put together a level 60 build though and it was awesome right through the playthrough...
My tip is to create a character that never quite feels 'finished'. The best way to do this is to create a build with a slow experience curve, 9 - 10 skills aren't out of the question (battlemages and spellswords are a good base for these kind of characters). Make sure that hitting the armor cap is going to take much more time, if you're capping out armor by level 25 then you will start feeling 'done' with your playthrough due to less challenges.
You need to create a build that constantly has something to look forward to in the skill list, high level perks like 'extra effect' or 'twin souls' are good motivation to stick with a character.
I got attacked by 3 werewolf 'vargr' a few days back, that had never happened to me before so Skyrim does throw some cool new things at high level characters.
I hit 81 using the Infinium glitch, if only just to face the Ebony Warrior. I gave up leveling normally when I reached about level 65...leveling past about 50 is impractical in most cases, you have to use skills that are unperked and low ranked, meaning you're mostly using exploits to level them up.
I see now why most of the builds i've seen on youtube that are level 81 completely invulnerable. With 100 in everything the game does become easy. For me there is a curve between level 10 and 20. At 10 I am a vulnerable weakling and as such power level to get perks. By 20, I have received the perks that took away the challenge. This is why I decided to go with an archer that does not use any crafting. I keep hearing how rewarding it is to go through the game without smithing, enchanting, or brewing. Now I just need to figure if i want an Argonian or a wood elf. The decisions in this game never end lol
not really, some skill are relatively too easy to level up even without perk.
I level up my heavy armor by enchanting my armor with health regeneration and find some weak critter to hit me... goes afk and voila, lvl 100.
but the regeneration got to be faster than the dps. Sometimes gotta lower the difficulty to do so.
I think I am the only one who are insane enough to do that :p
I maxed out Skyler with the Infinium glitch but that's only for the Ebony Warrior fight. Other than that all my character "retire" around the level 20 range, though I have several below that and a few I really want to see through to the end. (by "end" I mean the end of the build)
My record is 80. And just so you know, i am OCD and cannot handle being level 81, it's too uneven for a level cap. Anyways, he's a Toxicologist/Battlemage, dark elf, full perks in one handed, smithing, conjuration, destruction & alchemy. I love to rp as him because he has a riekling follower which i have named Scathe. (After Scathecraw the plant) It's an amusing build really. Other than that, i've never been higher than 60.