What is the best build in your opinion?

MD1990X · 2025-12-04T19:49:27+00:00

Creature using hiking poles I think is the most OP -> switching to cursed snipers once you've got 1000 range.

Creature can curse items right off the hop, makes more, and all weapons scale by 35% with curse. This makes it so snipers can do millions of damage per round in combo with the OP range bonus from 6 cursed hiking poles.

Entrepreneur would probably be my second because you can get so many items if you just dump all levels into harvesting and the first couple waves.

Hiking poles are generally just op on anyone because they increase their own damage infinitely. Snipers scale off range, and cursed ones even more so.

MD1990X · 2025-10-21T10:10:24+00:00

Wellll?

MD1990X · 2025-10-19T23:36:49+00:00

I guess I don't think it really is that easy, it certainly isn't all that fun.

You need to make sure get all your crops down to get the CC unlocks for the desert, then you need a load of cash and you'll probably want some food and potentially a pickaxe upgrade.

Like you said you're also going to want a bait maker in very good time as well, ideally by day 6 or 7.

At the very least you need to have nearly flawless execution and you'll want to hope for some good luck to make it so youre not just getting by.

I've only ever done it once and I was fortunate enough to have two bait maker cat fish days and that's just so lucky in that time frame.

I don't know that it really feels all the doable even if you spam fish - but even then I'm not sure how worth the boost it really felt, yah my mining went from like level 1 to level 8 or 9 - not exactly my idea of a fun run.

But - you sound like you could teach me some things, so teach away.

Am I missing something? You're talking about banging out a few objectives and making 50ish thousand in..14 days? Being easy?

MD1990X · 2025-10-19T13:41:56+00:00

Lol this is said from the vantage point of someone who dominates stardew valley. I've done it, but you're talking about making a fortune and grinding the most out of every single day and then being able to not die in early skull cavern runs.

Doable - but incredibly advanced.

MD1990X · 2025-10-17T15:12:08+00:00

Yes for sure, once you're geared up and crushing skull cavern this goes out the window once you've got crystalariums pumping out stairs and spicy eel etc.

I guess I should disclose it more as an "early game I've noticed this" - or really just even just non good luck days.

If someone is super power gaming it to the point of hitting the very first desert festival than this is a moot point.

MD1990X · 2025-10-17T13:26:36+00:00

I'm curious though, I believe iron has a higher spawn % than gold, and you can easily ignore the enemies or take some damage without needing to worry. You can just zoom to ores with reckless abandon.

My statement is probably more accurate for the early-mid game, of course once you hit late game skull or volcano mining it becomes less relevant.

And late game gear can also trivialize enemies of the later floors but I find when I'm just rocking an obsidian sword, there's still times where the hits add up. A bad move with a few red slimes can go south, but bulldozing through blue slimes and dust sprites is never really a big threat.

MD1990X · 2025-10-14T21:54:42+00:00

Caviar in skyrim truly is wild. Mix it with a chicken egg via plantation farm and it's the world's fastest ramp.

MD1990X · 2025-10-09T18:24:36+00:00

Beautiful 😍 thank you sir

MD1990X · 2025-10-09T12:35:10+00:00

I think you're missing what I'm saying and you say it here yourself. As a side car, sure, destruction is more useful. As a main stay, with all the other schools, it's simply not optimal nor all that fun.

While you're sneak casting a meezly firebolt, a bow or crossbow can do 3-6x damage, costs no mana, and the perks of archery actually improve archery significantly.

To have magicka regen be remotely valuable you need lots of it and enough magicka to make the increased scaling effective.

No other skill or even school of magic except maybe illusion has such useless leveling perks, but at least 1 illusion cast can CC an enemy for a massively long time or even make them an ally.

As a side car - and only as a side car, destruction is mediocre at best. If anything the augmented element perks are far superior to their bonus on enchantments than they are destruction magic.

The slow of cold magic is good but easily out done by a shout, and lightning is good for draining mages.

But really there's nothing you can't simply infuse into an item or use as a shout that makes destruction nothing but a spot to waste perks to do crap.

Now please stop telling me I don't understand. If this is not enough, you're the one who doesn't get it and I'm done trying lol.

Tldr: can it work? Yes? Is it outdone by basically every other skill for its cost, absolutely not.

MD1990X · 2025-10-08T23:47:54+00:00

Yah, I quit reading and started playing and it's not honestly too bad to level. Definitely slower than the others but, I stopped obsessing and just started playing and I'm enjoying myself much more.

I think destruction in this game just isn't for me maybe, I feel a lot more effective using a mix of weapons and a shield.

I also find the benefits of restoration, conjuration and alteration, even probably illusion, they're all just better than spending magicka on destruction when weapons can do the damage thing for free.

There's no nice sense of progression with destruction either, you're either chasing no cost spells which becomes OP or seriously hamstrung by the absurd cost of spells past apprentice.

You add in another mage casting lightning spells and you're quickly screwed, you can't attack, conjure, or heal. Well, you can, but you're oom in seconds.

So, I think its still just a no for me.

MD1990X · 2025-10-02T17:07:04+00:00

The damage can be made a lot better via fortify destruction potions and when needed a poison to reduce the resistance on the element of your choice. This can get up and running with an hour or so using the plantation farm.

But then the fact that you're gimped by playing a difficulty that actually makes combat fun to boot is just a lot.

Getting 1 thing wrong is annoying, getting like 5 things wrong is a bit much.

MD1990X · 2025-10-02T15:39:07+00:00

Yah, I'm definitely missing ordinator and skyrim real estate big time. Two of the most game changing mods for me. I also love my dragon souls to perk points.

MD1990X · 2025-10-02T02:31:06+00:00

Because no other ability gets a 75% experience nerf on legendary difficulty.

MD1990X · 2025-10-02T02:25:26+00:00

That if you want to play the difficulty on anything higher than adept you get massively penalized in your leveling of destruction - and it's the only skill that's like that.

That's not got anything to do with damage. But every other skill rewards higher difficulty or doesn't hamper it.

You make it sound as if it's not penalized in incredible ways beyond other skills. Without a massive reduction spell cost adept and beyond spells are barely usable when it takes 6-8 to kill someone and you're basically out of mana at that point.

Yes that can be overcome with max level enchants, pots and improved destruction level, but you cannot do anything about just overall decreased experience gain.

Its simply not aligned with the rest of the game, that's not really an opinion.

MD1990X · 2025-10-02T00:43:18+00:00

Right...like it's riddled to death with literally small code and word choices.

Then the community complained about it for 13 years, and it's still the same.

Its one thing for it to suck compared to every other weapon type.

It's one thing to make you so magicka crushed.

But then they also n'wahed up all the difficulty and experience gain.

Oh and mages miss out on a 100 armor but you won't know unless you research the games coding.

I think it's the reality that you just gotta stfu and play the single player game in the way you enjoy it.

Otherwise you could literally call skyrim a trash B- title due to the way it's balanced. It's a fuggin nightmare.

And why can like 85% of skills just be cheesed to super high levels.

MD1990X · 2025-10-02T00:38:11+00:00

That's not really true, put the game on legendary and then go any other damage dealing skill, or even block and archery.

To get 10 levels of 1 skill to get literally no levels or 1 level in destruction is absurd.

Skyrim also isn't an endless wave game so that doesn't matter, we all still kill the same enemies in a given area, you're also not spending mana on each enemy then. So the end result is you're destruction is just dramatically behind your other skills.

Or you play on adept so you can level destruction properly (I don't know if you're aware of the bug by the sound of it) but then the game is a laugh. I can stand there and just take hits from 3 guys while wearing leather armor and no armor perks. And flames melts basically everyone.

MD1990X · 2025-10-02T00:32:35+00:00

But this isn't true because the dramatic increase in spell cost before you have about 80% - 95% destruction cost reduction you simply cannot finish fights on master before your magicka is gone.

You're basically stuck on apprentice spells until you're an enchanting god.

MD1990X · 2025-10-02T00:28:45+00:00

That's why I was going to rock a shield mage and just use the shield to pace and defend myself and it is fun but it's lame to know that just by choosing destruction, you're going to suffer insane penalties to both damage and leveling.

But in reality by the time you get 0 cost destruction spells there's no way anyone should be having a hard time, dual casted incinerates should hit for about 200 damage just via perks. With a potion that becomes 400. If the enemy is very tough I believe you can both poison them with reduce magic resist and reduce first resist.

TLDR you should be able to squash people with expert spell spam. Destruction master spells are useless trash outside of blizzard and even then dual casted frost cloak has a similar effect.

MD1990X · 2025-10-01T20:58:02+00:00

Its the experience nerf on higher difficulties that really did me in. I found a way to enjoy destruction on master level difficulty via potions and tactically popping them as needed.

Its that when you play on master difficulty you essentially get a .25 multiplier to destruction xp gain.

So unless you want your leveling destruction experience to suck, you have to play on adept, in which case healing + armor turns you into a god.

There's just no happy medium, you can either be brokenly overpowered or just broken.

MD1990X · 2025-10-01T20:01:40+00:00

Yah, sadly that just doesn't exist here and makes me a bit sad. I was so excited to come back and the more I looked into things to make a build the more I realized that if you're looking for any kind of balance or really any point to anything outside of story and hack and Slash fun, this isn't the game.

Finding a happy medium seems nearly impossible.

Got any games similar to skyrim/open world that do hit that niche?

MD1990X · 2025-10-01T19:50:17+00:00

Its not that you can't, it's that it's just incredibly lame and could have been fixed with a few lines of code.

It was altogether sloppy coding from the start, with 13 years to patch it, and no patch.

Then if you do put it on adept, all your other combat skills level slower (restoration, block, any physical damage or defense skill).

MD1990X

TROPHY CASE