The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is a high fantasy, action-adventure role-playing game in which the player takes on a variety of enemies as the last Dragonborn. Each new release of Skyrim, from its original release in 2011 to its 10th Anniversary Edition that released last fall, is a massive game with a plethora of characters to meet, side quests to take on, hidden locations to find and explore, and more.
Skyrim is a massive open-world experience with a long list of activities to do and different ways to go about participating in character progression, including skill trees, gear development, ability learning, etc. Skyrim's three main skill trees are Magic, Combat, and Stealth, each of which has six skills. Magic contains Alteration, Conjuration, Destruction, Enchanting, Illusion, and Restoration, Combat contains Archery, Block, Heavy Armor, One-handed, Smithing, and Two-handed, and Stealth contains Alchemy, Light Armor, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Sneak, and Speech.
Each one of Skyrim's skills has its own tree, or progression system, that requires points from leveling up (done by gaining experience through various activities in the game) in order to gain certain benefits in each skill. So, based on a player's preferred playstyle, a few of these trees will be maxed out, while others are only given a few points here and there, while others still are ignored entirely. Redditor Flynn-451, however, reached level 252 in the game and completely maxed out each of the skill trees in the game, reaching level 100 in each skill.
This is, undeniably, a Herculean feat, as it takes quite a long time just to max out any one of these skill trees, let alone all 18 of them. Skyrim players and their different shortcut methods to reach 100 Sneak or 100 Archery in a fast and efficient way without having to play the game normally are legendary. Skyrim's enemies do scale based on the player's level, but they stop fairly low, around level 40, creating the opportunity to become overpowered very early on.
Skyrim's side quests, smaller, non-story based locations to explore, characters to meet, etc., add hours of playtime to the main story. No two players will follow the same path, which makes for a vibrant and fresh experience each time. Of course, reaching max level in each skill tree reaches a different level of mastery over the game.
Though fully maxing out the skill trees in Skyrim doesn't grant any extra rewards, it is still an amazing accomplishment. Players of the game know exactly how much of a grind must have gone into achieving such a goal.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Anniversary Edition is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.