I have a room with 1 window in and a skylight,

I would like the skylight to come in through the window and light the room but no matter how bright i set the skylight it just looks to dark.

I tried turning light tracer bounces to 10 but its still to dark and i can’t see to get it looking brighter.

The effect i am after is a really soft shadow coming in from the outside (overcast day)

It’s driving me mad I’ve tried everything

ALSO

is there a way to have a sort of skylight for indoor scenes, with no direct point lights just shadowing in the tighter areas?

IMO lighting a room through a window with a skylight, using scanline with Light Tracer for indirect illumination, is not the mose efficient method.
An area light would serve you better for soft light through a window. To brighten things up, use more bounces, and maybe try using some exposure control.
Been a while since I used Light Tracer, (since Max8 when they let you net-render with mr) although it can make some nice images, it was painfully slow sometimes. For this kind of work I would consider making the move to mr, with daylight, sky portals, FG, GI and photographic exposure control. There are tutorials on this if it seems a big step.

is there a way to have a sort of skylight for indoor scenes, with no direct point lights just shadowing in the tighter areas?

To me that seems like a contradiction in terms, “Skylight for Indoors”, if you think about it. Skylight lighting alone gives an effect like AO, in a closed room everything is totally occluded, where would the light be coming from? Unless there is a window, which is exactly what you are already doing. You could maybe experiment with area lights, bouncing them off walls etc.