I think it's that I was allowed to use the new shouts they taught me even though I'd only killed two dragons, but before I can learn more, I've got to play catchup. Got 4 souls now, but 5 words, so just keeping an eye out for the next dragon.
Someone mentioned reading the books on your phone rather than the PC - how do you do that? Is there some sort of 'Books of Skyrim' ebook?
They say they give you the soul when teaching you the words.
I've got loads of souls saved up, not really bothered with the shouts to much, I should really have a hunt round a few more dungeons for the words.
Now I've got a legendary Daedric bow made with a full outfit with smithing boosters and potions and enchanted it's balls out with shock and fire damage there's not much that needs finishing off at close range!
It has been a boring time maxing out smithery and enchanting though, I must have hundreds of crappy enchanted rings!
With a high enough smithing skill (boosted by potions) you can get to the armour cap (530 or so I think) just by using steel plate armour – anything above that is just for looks.
There's also a way to create a 'potion loop' such that you can make ludicrously powerful potions fairly easily. I've avoided the temptation to make weapons with 5 million damage on them, and limited myself to reducing destruction spells cost 90% less.
First, you need a Fortify Alchemy gear set. Basically, just buy Grand Soul Gems with Grand souls and enchant a set of armors/jewelries. Your enchant skill doesn’t matter, but if you have some skill, things will be quicker. If you don’t know Fortify Alchemy, you need to find an item that gives Fortify Alchemy effect, then you need to disenchant that item to learn that effect. Alternatively, you can use the alchemy items you find, just 3 or more would suffice, but it may take a while to find, so enchanting is better.
Next, you need ingredients for Fortify Restoration potion, those are:
(the first three are the easiest to get – the fish can be found is pretty much all rivers and lakes)
You should have at least 20 potions worth of ingredients. If you aren’t skilled at enchanting or alchemy, it will start of slow at first because of low percentages, but, if you keep doing it, soon it’ll start rapidly increasing.
Now, how to make thing work:
Repeat this as long as you want, every time you do this (correctly), your alchemy gear stats will increase, and the next fortify restoration potion effect will also increase. After getting a satisfactory increase (entirely up to you, either 850% or 50000%, your choice), create 10 or so fortify restoration potions, so that you can use that on Fortify Smithing/Alchemy gear (use the potion and equip/unequip/reequip your gear).