TIL “Metagame early or don’t do it at all”

Just picked the game back up this week because I saw it was basically free on Black Friday. Haven’t played in years and immediately fell into the “bored with 3-4 characters by lvl 10” trap. The first two characters I was just winging it. Didnt really like dualwield on my Orc. I was having fun being sneaky on the second but didn’t want to end up being a stealth archer statistic, and daggers are rough without illusion and later sneak perks. Didnt meta game either of those, just wasn’t jiving with the playstyle.

Then came the Paladin I noticed in a YT video. It looks cool as hell with the low tier gear drip but I hit a wall when that gear wasn’t cutting it anymore (steel stuff vs lvl 15~+) isn’t a good time. So my momentum got completely killed and I didn’t know what to do so naturally meta gamed and it killed the character for me when I realized I was going to have to go way out of my way to power leveling smithing/enchanting to make that aesthetically pleasing RP gear work through the entire game.

So now I’m on character 4. A mage, and I meta gamed the shit out of her for about 3 hours. Enchanting, Destruction, and Alteration are all above 70, my damage spells cost no mana and I have decent defenses. Character lvl is 27. I haven’t even killed the first dragon yet, but I’m so invested in this character now because I got the “chores” out of the way first. I also left myself some room for growth (I have a vampire set with Norde jewelry ready to enchant once I hit 100 enchanting for the Yennifer look) and still have skills I want to max naturally through playing (light armor, smithing, illusion, restoration) and now I can smell the roses the remainder of my time with her and plan on enjoying my trecks around this beautiful world without anymore fast travel unless the quest I’m on is giving a “urgent” vibe and I can head cannon that I’m a master mage and can teleport, but it’s very strenuous.

TLDR: don’t meta game mid game, it takes the fun out of it. If you’re going to do it, do it early then enjoy the rest of the game RPing as the powerhouse character you made.. and don’t forget to bump the difficulty up a bit so it’s not a total snooze fest.