Paths mandatory?

New player here, forgive my ignorance but I've noticed that paths fix you into a way of combat at the beginning.

I'm kinda used to Elder Scrolls RPGs where I can start off choosing everything at the beginning. Wondering if this option will be a thing. Doesn't seem to be a path that fits what I want to do or start with.

 

You have to take one of the three paths. You don't have to stay on it.

 

okay thanks, I knew you didn't have to stay on it, I just kinda see it being rather inefficient (power gamer in most MMOs)

 

I chose ranger for light armor and dex, and leveled up using archery but when I was around 20 character levels using /stats command. Then I dropped archery and raised swords and started focusing on subterfuge. This turned out good and I found that I missed less often with the blade and gains were rather quick.

Thing is we are absolutely not locked into any skill regardless of how much we've workwd on it. Getting to 40 skill points shouldn't take long for any skill. Mastery takes more time but feel free to try any combination of skills you want and change it up any time. You don't really waste skill points trying a skill and discovering you like something else.

 

As far as combat goes, it's pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things. The amount of skill points distributed when you start is very insignificant. I usually just take the starting scene that has the most gold laying around...

 

The 3 paths are central to the story line, and will remain.
What Lazlo said above ^^^^ is quite true. The points you get initially can be earned playing in an hour or two, so they don't represent a significant head start.

We'll know more about the three paths as they finish the other two, and then we can decide for ourselves how important each is or is not in the overall scheme of things.

 

Also keep in mind that skills do not decay below level 20!!! This ultimately will be useful and probably should be taken advantage of since it doesn't count against any skill decay or doesn't decay below twenty. So if you have a skill at level 22 don't set it to maintain just set it not to gain if it decays it will stay at 20 anyway. Although even if it were set to maintain it will be such a small drain on the XP pool if decay were apply to it anway. Check the character progression section of the Published Player Instructions.

A skill at level 20 might not be useful for high level combat, but it is useful if you want to have a convinient night sight skill or light spell but don't want to waste your XP pool on it. You only use XP till it raises to level 20 so the light lasts a bit longer, but setting it to maintain will never be a drain on your character again. So I suppose somebody could raise a whole bunch of useful skills to level 20 for utility sake, and focus on their main skills raising them to 60, 80, and maybe a few 100s. Although a skill level of 40 gives you 4 glyphs so even some 40s might be a good supliment skill and is still quite a low drain on the XP pool to maintain. Although it seems that 60s and 80s are worth it if you're serious about combat.

 

I agree..
The skill points to get to level 20 are trivial, and the maintain is zero, so for magic schools that will be used at all, it is beneficial to take all the active skills to skill level 20 just for the higher attunement bonus if nothing else.
Passive skills that are beneficial at all should also be taken to at least 20 for the effectively free passive bonus, past 20 should be considered if it offers something of value.

Even combat skills of 20 are useful,
Extra glyhs to keep the slugs away, for a variety of builds,
With all the other points in the same tree, the skill may still be highly effective even at a 20 skill. (e.g. blades bonus damage passive, or fire magic attuntement + fire damage passives)
Buff skills should always be taken to 20 just because it's free for life to maintain, and makes the buff last longer and usually better.

Like everyone else has said.
Starting character skills points are nothing more than making sure you have a viable build to start with, and only represents a couple hours worth of exp, and less than 1k gold of skill unlocks.
So you wouldn't be hurt at all for picking a path based on story or where you wanted to start on the world map.
(basically it gives you a build that can relatively painlessless farm enough gold to switch to any build you want)

 

I didn't notice my passive skills adding attunment. I'll have to check that out. Although I do like the idea that taking at least a 20 in fire resistance might be useful for at least 5% damage reduction or whatever it grants. A truely veteran character will have stuff to work for, and if or when they do add new skills/trees later on, we don't have to worry about all these other skills effecting our pool.

 

No I guess I wasn't clear.
Passive skills don't help with attunment only active skills do.

Passive skills that are helpful at all should be taken to 20 for the free bonus, more than that should be only be considered if the passive bonus is worth it for your build.

 

yeah I suppose that a long term vet who is a steady player should be able to ultimately do this. I don't see much harm in that, but it doesn't seem vital to making an effective character. However I suspect this is actually more difficult or at least quite a bit more time consuming that it sounds on paper. Gaining that last spell in the tree requires quests and they burn reagents to gain these skills too. Will they be gaining other skills at the same time? Seems like this will be time consuming. Yeah maybe it is something a high level vet might do to round out their character to keep progressing, but it ultimately adds a significant, but not super powered level of attainment that will make them invlunlerable. I would imagine that players will likely always have something to build towards.

 

I don't think it would be limited to long term vets. It's always a matter of priorities, so varying mileage and all that.
For the xp price to get one skill from 80 to 81 you could maybe get 10 skills from 0-20.
So as a character gets deeper into progression, with a build it becomes critical to pick up all the cheap bonuses that can be found to boost that build.
At a certain point, even the quest costs of top tier skills for a tree will be trivial compared to the time it would take to grind another point of a build primary skill.

Day one, this definately isn't a priority, but as a character progression gets further along, and diminishing returns for xp spent gets higher and higher.
It becomes more and more critical to gobble up more of the cheap bonuses that give more bang per xp spent, espcially those that don't come with xp maintain costs.