Skyrim diehard claims to have the RPG's strongest unmodded character after grinding to level 1,337 by spamming Illusion spells for 43 hours

Over a decade later, Skyrim players are still pushing Bethesda's iconic RPG to its limits. Tamriel's latest absurd accomplishment comes from Pawelos4, who claims to have reached level 1,337 on "the ultimate Skyrim character," who has apparently done everything that can feasibly be done. And they uploaded a stonking 11 hours of sped up footage to prove it. 

Pawelos has a history as a Skyrim completionist; they shared a 100% complete, 527-hour save several years ago. (Their level 1,337 character is also available to download via Nexusmods if you're interested.) In total, they say they've played 1,800 hours of the game – and their Steam profile agrees, with the time split between the original version and the Special Edition – and all of that knowhow has now gone into making the best character possible. 

All of their skills are not only maxed out at 100, but also upgraded to Legendary status. All completable quests, barring those with mutually exclusive rewards and outcomes, have been cleared, they claim. All spells, equipment, rare items, and even consumables have been acquired, meaning the armory of their base is really something to see. And all of this, they say, was done without any mods. 

The true eyebrow-raiser is the headlining claim of reaching level 1,337. Pawelos wasn't satisfied with level 1,000 or even 1,111 because they'd been done before, you see. To reach this new and dizzying height, they spent 43 hours and 7 minutes grinding, and then regrinding, and then regrinding their Illusion skill. Almost terrifyingly, all of the footage has been captured and preserved in a near-11-hour video with footage at 4x speed. "You can set the speed to 0.25 to experience it in real time," the video description reads. Thanks. 

The method involved is actually pretty simple. With help from a few accessories, Pawelos reduced the mana cost for Illusion magic to zero, letting them spam spells unreserved. The spell in question, Harmony, has no major effect on targets, meaning