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I play a warrior dual welding two axes and some heavy armour with a dash of conjuration. I have some skills I want to level like smithing that can be power leveled but I am worried this will cause me to gain too many levels too fast.

The leveling in Skyrim feels fast in general, is it ok to power level up a skill or two or do I risk throwing the game off balance?

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    While in extreme circumstances this can remain a problem, it is much less of a problem than in, say, Oblivion. In Skyrim, not every enemy/dungeon is leveled: some have fixed level ranges - your power leveling won't affect those as much. The main story line is said to be pretty on par with your level, so if you level everything but combat skills, combat might be hard.
    – Konerak
    Commented Nov 14, 2011 at 18:40

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Absolutely, leveling up faster has these disadvantages:

  • You lose the ability to take advantage of the 5 training attempts per level (though this further increases your leveling speed). You should use this in a hard to level category, such as armor, restoration, lock picking, etc.
  • Your equipment will fall behind compared to the increased difficulties of monsters you face. (This is a major issue as facing high level enemies and dragons wearing hide armor is typically not a good idea). Taking it slow gives you plenty of opportunities to hoard up gold and valuable loot for better gear and spells.
  • You may not have enough helpful secondary skills, such as alchemy, restoration, etc to make adventuring easier.
  • Power leveling a none combat related skill (such as smithing) means you won't be as effective in killing those enemies who will be using better gear than you.

The best approach (though time consuming) is to try to maintain a constant level across all your skills. Even though you don't plan to put any perks into most skills it's still beneficial to be able to do some things (such as enchanting, lock picking, or improving gear through smithing).

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    You might want to add that the level scaling is now pretty restricted, you might get a short-term disadvantage, but in the long run it probably doesn't matter if you level up due to some non-combat skills.
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Nov 14, 2011 at 18:38
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    That is true, but the gear they use still make a big difference. A bandit wielding a dagger is a lot less dangerous than a bandit wielding a shocking orcish axe.
    – l I
    Commented Nov 14, 2011 at 18:40
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    I'd assume that the gear is leveled exactly like the enemies are.
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Nov 14, 2011 at 18:41
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    In my experience, leveling up too fast will gimp you. I raised smithing to 100 asap, and even with the best weapons/armor, there are still some npcs that will 1-2 hit me, while the majority die in 1-2 hits. I believe it may be an effect of glitchy scaling...
    – Domocus
    Commented Nov 15, 2011 at 1:55
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    Power levelling smithing should've been the MOST overpowering thing you can do. This one skill gives you several times worth of extra attack and defense. Raising just one offensive or defensive skill to 100 doesn't give you close to the advantage you gain for smithing. Of course, if you leveled it and don't end up upgrading/crafting anything, then... WTF? Why bother?
    – Nelson
    Commented Oct 16, 2015 at 1:42
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Playing a dual-wielding, heavy armored orc warrior on master difficulty. The game was difficult when I was level 15. Like really difficult at some points. Then I power-leveled smithing and made a full set of Daedric armor and two weapons.

Now I feel ridiculously over-powered, even though I gained a ton of levels.

Edit: Oh, and I have not even enchanted my gear yet, although my enchanting skill is at 65, adding quite a few more levels. I even have six perks yet to spend.

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leveling up a skill or two should be fine. in your case, smithing is an excellent choice as you will be able to make really good equipment, and then improve it to be even better.

the game starts getting hard as you level up though, so make sure to increase smithing after adventuring for a while to make sure your other skills arent left behind

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Thus far, I do feel more powerful the more I level up. While raising non combat skill like smithing can increase the difficulty in hye short term, when I then honed my enchanted weapons into doing 150% damage every enemy became easier.

Also, enemies do not seem to truly level scale very much - basic bandit are now very very very easy to kill, the way the game balances this out is by introducing new classes of bandit which only appear past a vertain point. Logically, this means that eventually, once you have leveled past the point that the very strongest of bandits spawn, they will get progressively easier to kill, as they have no more massive stregth increases, and equipment increases are not too extreme.

Still, if you wander in the the wrong dungeon, prepare to be harshly punished. By aweful luck, I ended up fighting two Draugr Deathlords (THE second most insanely powerful draugr in the game) in a row at just level 18. To give an idea of the insanity, they are only meant to spawn at around level 40 and they have 1300 hp. The ebony weapons they dropped once I finally killed them were most appreciated though.

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For a warrior character I wouldn't worry about it. Warriors basically increase much faster in strength then the enemies.

Note it is the opposite for Mage and Assassin characters. Those are in comparison really weak on higher levels, making the game often really challenging.

As a personal opinion I find the game much more enjoyable in lower levels (independent from the class) making it preferable to level slowly.

When in doubt: you still can change the difficulty in-game anytime.

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