I am sworn to carry your burdens - Skyrimming for fun and profit

http://myfoodlooksfunny.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/funny-food-photos-bacon-skyrim-helmet.jpg

I was going to post to the new Skyrim thread but then I took an arrow to the knee.

now that we can talk openly w/o the worry of boring peeps, 2 things

1. if you want to really tank out Lydia, she will wear any dwarven armor that you give her, even though she wont wear any of the other heavy armor afaik

2. if i had it all to do over again, i would have been not stupid and realized that you can train 5 times per level advance, which means that by now at level 25 i could have dumped 125 EXTRA LEVELS into all of my who gives a shit dont use this skills.

Lydia's wearing the steel kit I gave her.

actually it seems you can train 5 times per level per skill afaict

I tested this by leveling conjuration and then looking at resto to see if the per-level counter was incremented there too and it wasn't

whoa that could be kind of gamebreaking actually, given that i have piles of gold and nothing to do with them pretty much all the time

lydia has refused to wear anything i give her that isnt dwarven for some reason - i figured this out because suddenly she had gold boots on at one point

not that that keeps here from leaping from ledges like an idiot and making me reload.

so what you are saying is Lydia is The Girl with the Golden Boots

does she want her pretty mind back

Lydia wore whatever i gave her that was highest rated, inc any heavy armour, and used whatever highest rated weapon was too. same with Roggi, who refuses to use a shield if i give him any 2h weapons to carry, despite being a supposed shield specialist. i am about the switch him out for a mage i just met, so i'll find out if that guy weighs himself down with plate armour and a glass warhammer too.

you can only buy 5 skills points per level across all levels. it doesn't take long for the cost to become exorbitant for anything skills you actually use.

across all skills, i mean

yeah I don't have nearly enough cash for all that training.

oh so this is broken on the PS3 then? or maybe I just can't read

I gotta say though that I love that you can level by selling stuff to vendors and creeping around, it's kind of hilarious

also by making daggers and bracers

man lydia is broken enough working right that it makes me really irritated that she seems to be super broken in my game. i know this because i gaver her some steel plate armor (rating 70 iirc) and it just sat there in her inventory, but when i gave her the dwarven stuff (rated 60) she put it on right away. and then jumped off a cliff to thank me.

i am not digging the leveling so much in stuff like smithing and whatever, mainly because i am normally so loaded down with loot that it isnt like i am going to haul a bunch of dwarven ingots around with me. also i gotta stop with the alchemy or find somewhere to sell potions for a good price.

i am on PS3 dan

nah dan i am playing on xbox so it might just be broken in my house

xpost oh wait hmmm maybe its broken on 360 then?

i think i have 40k gold, but i am not spending 10k of that to get 5 points better at Speech. i need to save it, just in case.

i am not digging the leveling so much in stuff like smithing and whatever, mainly because i am normally so loaded down with loot that it isnt like i am going to haul a bunch of dwarven ingots around with me. also i gotta stop with the alchemy or find somewhere to sell potions for a good price.

Why isn't Lydia carrying all your ingots and ore and dragon bones and mammoth tusks?

I think I'm beginning to understand alchemy. I still have no clue how to make a healing potion tho.

she is carrying my dragon bones/scales but i am constantly running out of storage in this game. my chest in my SECRET LOCATION IN CASE PEOPLE HAVENT DONE THE QUEST YET is full of shit that i will probably never take out. in fact ive just started dropping potions on the ground right after i make them because it is hard to give a shit about them.

also scrolls are pretty stupid and pointless in this game.

protip on alchemy: start by eating one of every ingredient you have, if you havent done that already

so we're edging towards "Dan can't read", awesome

or it's just buggy as FUCK, I mean I had to reload my game because I broke a bookcase by loading it with books after the game told me it had reached capacity

i am not digging the leveling so much in stuff like smithing and whatever, mainly because i am normally so loaded down with loot that it isnt like i am going to haul a bunch of dwarven ingots around with me.

Why don't you just stockpile all of this stuff at yr house in Whiterun and periodically go back to it for creation binges? There's a smelter behind smith woman's house and you can use all of her tools or the Skyforge, plus there's a tanning rack around there too, and you can put an alchemy table in yr house and I think the magic store lady has an enchanter and if she doesn't, the jarl's mage has one (AND an alchemy table too)

There's even a dude who will let you split firewood if you have an axe

off top of my head, blue flower, wheat, skeever hide are all common ingredients for a heal potion

alchemy is fun but totally unnecessary for the warriory build i have. otoh smithing and enchanting are essential. i have spent so much time compulsively mining :(

at one point i couldn't work out why i had so little room left to carry stuff and then i realized i was carrying 150pts of alchemy ingredients. so yeah, keep that shit in a barrel somewhere.

protip on alchemy: start by eating one of every ingredient you have, if you havent done that already

yeah, but don't do this in the middle of a battle. 'oh I will just pick and eat these mushrooms while fithing five mages, *gets poisoned*'

I'm kinda sad that both my bookshelves in Whiterun are broken, one I can't store any books on the bottom shelf, the other I can't remove the ones that are there.

fithing that's FIGHTING

i think part of it is that everything i can smith is just straight up useless to me, making a bunch of hide and studded armor when i can find way better shit by slapping around bad dudes = whats the point? enchanting on the other hand is awesome.

did we ever do the thing where we said how we were playing this btw? or was that back on ol ILX?

the point = FREE LEVELS

free levels plus with higher smithing skill can improve your gear more. i can get stuff to flawless atm, i guess there are still a couple grades better than that tho, somehow.

flawless with extra pink ribbons on

idk maybe i am being a little too old skool rpg in this, but theres like no reason my dude would be banging away on an anvil to make daggers and shit so i hate the idea that i should do that to game the system? reminds me of why the fable series keeps failing altho at least that doesnt seem serious about what its doing so when you have to kick a chicken a bunch of times to level or whatever it isnt grating in the same way.

(obv this is still better than the last elder scrolls experience where a prime way to level was jumping all the time forever)

I didn't even think about the gear improvement point

It is pointless - until you get better and can improve yr kit - but I still like it? I prefer the play-acting to idk whatever arbtitrary point-allocating systems you had in old skool rpgs.

Quality	       Skill Required	           Effect
      Without Perk	With Perk	Armor	Other
Fine	        14	14	        +2	+1
Superior	31	22	        +6	+3
Exquisite	65	40	        +10	+5
Flawless	100	57	        +13	+7
Epic            134	74	        +17	+8
Legendary	168	91	        +20	+10

xp I mean I'm the kind of player who obessively fills his bookshelves with books, tries to eat proper food, won't go to sleep in the daytime...

it's a little disconcerting that there is ZERO pressure from the game to actually do anything; I've basically been having a blast running around doing all sorts of irrelevant side and minor quests to the point where by the time I went back and finished the "go get the Horn of Jurgenflurgen" quest I was level 15

xp yeah, i like the idea that practicing at shit makes you better at that shit and getting better at shit makes you better overall. i think this is maybe the best character advancement system i have played

'skyrimming' still sounds to me like a reference to a mile-high club activity

but this may be the game that pushes me to finally move on from ps2 ownership

lol dan i haven't got jurg's horn yet and i am level 36. i am going the long way round.

this is the first time in a long time I've played a game that involved copious amounts of aiming where I haven't wanted to destroy the entire Earth out of frustration

xp: lol awesome, how many dragons have you killed? I have done in a whopping... 3.

2. if i had it all to do over again, i would have been not stupid and realized that you can train 5 times per level advance, which means that by now at level 25 i could have dumped 125 EXTRA LEVELS into all of my who gives a shit dont use this skills.

― KERWRONG!!! (PROVEN BY BOOZE SCIENCE), Thursday, 15 December 2011 16:15 (33 minutes ago) Permalink

this is sort of backwards -- if training your skills doesn't give you "xp" toward your next level, then you are shorting yourself on levels, since your skills have a max of 100 but there is no level cap.

theoretically you could train yourself out of a whole level

besides, raising your skills is fkn easy, and training is like thousands of money. totally not worth it imo

"buying" skills points does advance your level just like earning them would

but yeah, v expensive

i think ive killed like 15 dragons but i still refuse to unlock shouts other than a few because WHAT IF SOMETHING BETTER COMES ALONG

xpost but training your skills does give you xp towards your next level tho

basically if i had it to do over again id do the training to get out of the weird stuff like speech and whatever that is harder to really level regularly but is super useful

am i the only one using like every skill except a few? i started as a theify dude but i'm basically doing everything i can now. not using much destruction or alteration, no heavy armor or two handed, and not much pickpocketing either. but other than that, everything, all the time.

this has the weird effect of giving me a high level (30 something now?) but none of my individual skills are that high, except sneak which is in the 70s

xp there's a speech exploit but its super fiddly as they always are

killed maybe a dozen dragons i would guess? i guess they come on stronger later on.

i am absolutely in love with the ice form shout. i got 2 words for it back to back from that archaeology dig where you do the college field trip and then from a dragon peak right by it. it has been a total game changer a few times already

speech xp is applied on every transaction based on the expense of the item -- but xp for stacks of items (arrows, etc) is given as if it were 1x that thing. so, selling them all 1x a time...

yes i have done this.

lol top tip

my #1 go to shout in hard battles is the slow time one. also wrt skills being useless, man the illusion and alteration paths are blah. and yeah also pickpocketing.

the flame breath shout is awesome, it incorporates some of the 'force' shout, so you're throwing dudes around and lighting them on fire.

anyway, i have a lot of ~thoughts~ about the world and plotting of this thing, maybe i'll try to organize them and annoy you all heh

otm about the total lack of urgency in the main questlines. dragons returned to the world, civil war ripping the kingdom apart, would you like to take this pile of salt to a friend of mine? sure!

haha

i finally used a bunch of the perks i hadnt used yet last night and holy shit those things really really make a difference huh

have made a deliberate attempt to narrow range of skills i am using to not spread too thin. for better or worse committed to no magic at all except for occasional fast heal or oakflesh. no 1h or block or light armour. barely any sneak but sometimes you just gotta take that x2 when softening someone up with a snipe.

illusion has clairvoyance and muffle! both super useful. maybe the calm/fear ones are handy fighting big groups but since you can't tell what "level" any of your opponents are it's sort of a crapshoot.

xp i am crazy enough to have written down which perks i wanted

also no pickpocketing. made strategic decision to be good boy and not steal shit because i basically spent half my time in the fallout games stealing shit and i had to break the cycle so i could fit in more time to mine iron ore and make hide bracers.

thought this thread was about rimming while skydiving or something

oh yeah i forgot to add block in my why bother skill list up there

clairvoyance hasnt really seemed to help me much, but i am one of those follow the right wall so i dont miss anything dudes when it comes to this shit. idk what muffle is

my life in rpgs forever destroyed by reading about how to almost always find your way through a maze when i was a kid

clairvoyance is more useful outdoors. muffle reduces armor noise when sneaking, but the nerds can't figure out exactly what the numbers are.

i recommend everyone still earliesh in the main quest save one of their dragon souls bc at one point in the quest you need to activate a shout to progress SPOILER when going to the throat of the world SPOILER and it's a huge pain in the ass to leave the quest to go find a dragon to kill + get a soul just so you can keep progressing

HOW I'M PLAYING:

sneak thru every dungeon
start fights with arrows, often with poison if I remember that I have a bazillion of them
lol at Lydia charging into the fray like a moron
try to Soul Tap mob, get annoyed when Lydia jumps in front of my cast and intercepts it
light it up with Flames or Sparks, depending on which one I have equipped
sigh with annoyance when Lydia leaps into my flames/lightning and screams at me
try to maneuver around to the side to continue face-melting
watch Lydia take a kneww
continue face-melting
drag mob away from Lydia as I continue to melt face
switch to fuckoff 2H axe enchanted with frost dmg and swing away
sometimes I do this dual-wielding an axe and a mace, or the mace and some destruction spell (usually Flames or Healing)
get even more annoyed when I realize Lydia ran up behind the mob and my wild swings have killed her
reload and pay more attention to where my brain-damaged tank is leaping so I don't accidentally kill her
heal up afterward with Healing

If I have major problems with a fight, I summon a familiar or a flame atronarch to keep things except for the mob I'm focusing busy.

In my spare time I run through all my crafting materials for free levels.

I had to stop magpieing everything in the dungeons because I literally cannot carry and/or sell everything I have. I now only take food, ore, ingots, books and weapons/armor that are significantly better than what I have or are enchanted.

lol "kneww" = "knee"

oh shit i never thought of using clairvoyance outdoors rather than bumbling up hills only to find that they are magically too steep to climb all of a sudden! thats actually awesome and v v useful then.

that's kind of what i'm doing except lydia is dead.

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lj9vvpnlRD1qz9upvo1_500.jpg

most of my perks are going in destruction, 1h and 2h

i am currently rolling with an ebony mace that i put a health drain enchantment on in one hand and varied destruction magic in the other, pretty much also sneak as much as possible (altho mapping of the controls means lots of the time i realize i am crouching and whacking people in the knees when i dont want to be thx to this). big fan of the flame enchanted bow sneak shots. pretty much heavey armor 90% of the time, and lots and lots of power attacks. oh yeah and along with lydia i am also traveling with a war dog who is sadly maybe smarter and better at not dying than lydia, but cant carry anything. only use 2 handed when i feel like leveling that and know there isnt anything super nasty headed my way.

oh yeah and liberal use of familiars and the higher level raise dead spell

i threw a bunch of perks in lockpick and it has greatly improved the game for me tbh.

I am tempted to start a parallel game where companion death is permanent, just because that is likely the only way I'm going to see what the other companions are like

I've been perking destruction, heavy armour, block, 2h; might do restoration but speech and alchemy look pretty tempting too.

oh yeah and i am an imperial.

FASCIST

I know I've thrown a random point at archery, alchemy and blacksmithing; can't remember if I did lockpicking as well

lol I'm an Imperial too! Basically I was vacillating between that and Redguard until I read "Imperials find more random money" in the race descriptions. I then of course made my Imperial as dark as I could in keeping with my "first playthrough character looks as much like me as I am willing to spend time on" rule (only I gave him a floppy mohawk because it looked hilarious)

i wonder if some of the weird shit people will say/how they act towards you changes depending on race? like i am assuming that people wouldnt spend so much time talking abt thieving elf scum or filthy lizard people if i was one of them?

I'm a Khajiit. I kept on wondering why people kept on shouting "You'll make a fine rock hat!" at me. It's actually "You'll make a fine rug, cat!"

i'm getting increasingly bothered by how fucked up and evil the whole cosmology of this world is. or more the point, how little the writers have thought to give you (even standard) good/evil choices in some of these quests, and have written-in reactions from the npcs based on what you choose. it's very narrow: once you're in, do it or don't.

i don't know if this is intentional or if its overall meaning was even considered. the "gods" are distant and weak. the evil "daedra" are everywhere, they give away kewl loot, and a lot of times their quests only turn super evil right near the end. thank you for investigating this place for me, now, beat this man to death. what? you can walk way but not say no a lot of the time. it's a really odd oversight.

the same with the racist civil war stuff. i'm playing as an elf. people routinely tell me how the the land of the aryans nords must be cleansed of its cosmopolitan jews imperial outsiders, but they don't have any recognition of what i am, and i can't tell them to fuck off, or anything like that. it's like this element is there, but not REALLY there. dragon age was way way better about this stuff.

xps lol

I sometimes spend time talking to the same guard several times in a row just so I can hear in quick succession:

"Watch yourself, IMPERIAL."
"We'll kill all of those dragons with you around!"
"I've got my eye on you."
"I was once an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee."
etc etc

lol I' am refusing to take a side in the Empire/Stormcloak fight because the Nords are such dicks

^^^ this

Are the imperial/stormcloak quests mutually exclusive?

yup. and buggy too!

bugs in this game are amazing, I have to find this one spectacular movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4QUFfYA0wA

tbf re: racism, theres always kind of a weird thing in most rpgs with race because thats normally built into the structure, ie orcs are strong and mighty but kind of dumb, khajits are good merchants, dark elves are really good at math, imperials make good bards but poor dancers - it does get a little different here tho because all the racial stuff is very open vs say fallout where its pretty clear that people who hate ghouls are scumbag bigots. in this game tho everybody wants to talk to you about how awes nords are or that shifty lizard dude that must be up to no good because wink nudge. its kind of odd, but in some ways seems pretty well handled to me

the most lolsome Nord I've encountered is still the brawler companion how wants you to beat her up before she adventures with you

I mean, waht

i guess it's the diff btw dragon age and this; DA had your intro quests be dependent on your race/class background choice, and how people treated you the entire game depended on it! the elder scrolls games always start with the same nobody prison break. i don't get it, but i guess it's just a tradition now.

it's not like as an elf anyone refuses to trade with me, or offer me work, or anything, even grudgingly. it's like, "WHITE POWER, oh, thank you so much!!"

lol, so basically it's an RPG set in MN

I do agree that DA does a better job of having the world react to your race/class (I mean, you get the elf stuff, but you also have an entire body of paranoid reaction if you decide to be a mage)

yeah that's what i'm getting at: so much of the elements in place in skyrim are there because it would be cool, or there were there in earlier games, or it's fantasy standard, but nobody thought through what it would be like to live with those things/institutions, or how it makes sense as a coherent whole, or how they would be affected or react to a big crisis.

it's like all of this shit is there but none of it matters particularly.

there's a big mercenary guild that has no apparent politics, no position on anything happening, seemingly lets anyone in, gets along just fine with the local lord, and they're all werewolves. being a werewolf is awesome, right?!?!

all my problems with macro picture aside, the micro stuff is just way more absorbing and engrossing than any other game i've played. just doing miscellaneous crap, taking out little mines and ruins filled with fuckos, making stuff, all way more fun than advancing the story

lol I tried going beastmode once and while it seemed like I could soak up more dmg I didn't like that I couldn't loot anything

I did like chomping fallen foes tho, and being immune to diseases is kind of hot, also the lolsome guard comments like "why do you smell like a wet dog?" and "is that FUR coming out of your ears?"

loot rule of thumb: if it is not a. practically useful to me or b. worth at least 20 gold per point of weight, it stays where it is

yeah i was gonna say something like that :)

here's another why-don't-they-have-real-writers-write-these complaint: you have gold ore and ingots. you are a master crafter. the world's currency is gold. anyone else see an opportunity here?

one thing i do not like abt how they did this is that there is never anyone in any cave or dungeon or ruined castle or whatever that isnt dead set on killing you - i went through the first few waiting to shoot at people until their intentions were known but quickly realized that they were never anything other than "KILL U DED!" which has at least a few times made zero sense, ie the hapless scholar lost in a ruin that immediately charged me once i got in the room.

i stopped doing the companions quest basically because i dont want to be a werewolf? can you dump the werewolf thing after becoming one or are you stuck with it from there on out?

yeah, i avoided the werewolf thing so i am not sure why the silver hand want to kill me so much. however, i understand you do get the chance to unwolf yourself if you do go that route

one thing i do not like abt how they did this is that there is never anyone in any cave or dungeon or ruined castle or whatever that isnt dead set on killing you - i went through the first few waiting to shoot at people until their intentions were known but quickly realized that they were never anything other than "KILL U DED!" which has at least a few times made zero sense, ie the hapless scholar lost in a ruin that immediately charged me once i got in the room.

hah I cured myself of that very quickly by going "oh hey Mr. Giant, how are you toda- *squish*" early on in the game

i stopped doing the companions quest basically because i dont want to be a werewolf? can you dump the werewolf thing after becoming one or are you stuck with it from there on out?

just fyi there is literally zero downside to being a werewolf that I've noticed; no one treats you differently and you don't have to transform if you don't want to AND you are 100% immune to diseases, plus there's a strong hint that it's reversible if you really can't live with it

The only ppl you end up wilding out on are the Silver Hand anyway, unless you are like me and use it as an opportunity to try to eat some guards.

yup, npcs have no apparent purpose other than try to kill you until their last breath.

or tend their shops and give you their problems to solve.

xp i think there is a final optional quest that allows a cure.

xxp wait are there times when you go wolf uncontrollably? vs the silver hand dudes?

if you are a wolfman you get no XP bonus after resting. also, no skill increases while in wolfy mode, for obv reason.

lol no, I'm just not communicating clearly

those are the only ppl I tried beast form out on because I was killing them anyway

oh resting gives an XP bonus? ;_;

I kind of wish this game had a real manual

is it ever 'worth it' to let an npc go if he asks for mercy? or does he just heal up enough to come at you again in a minute? i have soul trapped many a begging man.

btw soul trapping, how sick is that, when you think about it??

that's why black soul gems are considered evil i guess

i haven't figured out the distinction btw which souls are 'black'. is it all people, or just important people?

all people. i read a book about it in game. animal souls are white, ppl souls are black.

yeah i feel weird that a bandit is trapped for eternity inside my boots, but it is the easiest way to get a grand soul

our fallen nature and all

xp lol tell me there wouldn't be some lord with a black soul slave farming operation to kit out his knights. does nobody consider basic incentives when they dream up these worlds...

dlc idea

the only creature i have found that gives a grand soul is a mammoth

Haven't had the heart to kill a mammoth yet.

Haha so I have been practicing FOUL ARTS because I've been soul trapping ppl who attack me?

Oh shit I just skyrimmed for five hours straight.

Found dan's dwarvish ruins, full of copious amounts of heavy dwarven artefacts. Unfortunately this was just after Lydia suddenly started refusing to be a beast of infinite burden, and she was already laden down with my ingot collection and a bunch of dragon bones I forgot to sell. However she is wearing a mask I gave her which gives an extra lol every time I ask her to try and carry something more.

The dwarven ruins looked great but were just too big and too samey, as was the mage castle I had to battle through inmediately before. Found both sections a bit of a chore tbh.

i'm so jealous of you guys having lydia - i accidentally killed her within about 20 seconds of the first battle i entered with her.

I really want the potions submenu fixed. All poisons together, all potions together. Then, all magicka potions, all stamina potions, all health potions, etc. Alphabetical order is just a huge chore.

I only ever use beast form to fast travel to places I've not already been to - wolf sprint is way faster than horse gallop.

omg i just figured out something about the alchemy menu

if you go down it's sorted by the effects that you know. but if you go RIGHT from the top of the menu, you go to a list of all the ingredients you have. and you can just mix stuff up blind! which is how you're supposed to learn more effects (apart from eating the stuff). all the ingredients have all their abilities whether you know what they are or not. so by luck (or looking shit up hint hint) you can make a lot of potions right away.

oooohhh...i may try that later. i mainly use alchemy to get restore health and magika potions, because the stores never seem to carry enough and i'm often in dire need in the midst of boss battles.

somehow my heavy armor AND sneak skills are leveled way up. no idea how this is actually working, but it seems nice

if i can unlock the heavy armor perk that makes wearing heavy armor more quiet for sneaking, i should be set there

just letting everyone know.

yeah, experimenting with ingredients is my favourite minigame

especially when you exit the ingredient screen and your dude is like

UUNNNGHHHHHHhhhhh1hh1!!

my character is pretty much always on drugs

It is amazing how little of the main storyline I've done. I just got the last part of unrelenting force push shout last night and I am Level 21.

Anyway, I am two-handed, light armor, conjuring, and focusing a lot of attention on smithing, alchemy, and enchanting. Also I don't sneak nearly enough considering I'm a lizard.

Just fucking twatted a dragon in two goes with force push and then perked up two-handed bashing. That was after dicking around for multiple reloads with a +50 damage fireball staff.

Ooh, good tip. I can never seem to hit with my fireball unless the dude is on the ground already.

Nothing as anti-climactic as a dragon going down quickly though. When I should be "WOO I KILLED A LEGENDARY BEAST" I'm "oh great, more bloody bones to lug back to the apartment".

(Have about 10 spare dragon souls though and nothing I particularly want to spend them on, might feel differently if I knew more words).

Just completed the final penultimate stage in the main winterhold quest, no spoilers but omg lol :D

where does that quest start? i don't think i've done it yet

All mage quests so far:

1) "Dude, we need this special item! Go and get it."
2) I trudge through a dungeon filled with Felons or whatever until I get told that the princess item is not in this dungeon.
3) I go back to college.
4) "That's very interesting. Go try here instead."
5) wash rinse repeat

These quests better get good soon otherwise I'm fucking off to be a singer or a thief or something.

http://i.minus.com/jRWvsnxmjzx58.jpg

Trying to enter Leviathianenenion, those frost trolls were really causing me fits until I firebombed one while it smacked the shit out of Lydia, then dragged the other one past the mining camp along the road over to a bandit ambush, where I let the troll kill the bandits whe I firebombed it from afar. Of course, I think this tactic killed an important NPC at the mine but oh well.

The best part was Lydia jogging up 2 min later all "sup, how's that troll doing?"

Mage quests are a bit samey. Taking a break from dungeons for a while, spent all day today crafting up armour for me and my bestest pal Lydia. NB mordy the winterhold quests start at... winterhold!

Lydia got killed during a stormfront attack in my game - i'd switched to another companion for a while. Her body is still sitting in front of the blacksmiths. :(

RIP

Only realised this recently but if you hold down A when you go to search a body (or pick up an item), you can drag it around instead.

Works for all the objects in the game world.

this thread is really fun to read if you have no idea what it's about but badly want to convince yourself it's about some kind of weird rimjob-related meme

Rule 34

i am watching my brother play this and it is like watching a backwoodsman maniac killer exist in real time, seems boring

It's a bit like all the Elder Scrolls / Fallout games in that there's an awful lot of trudging through wilderness and searching in barrels but it's enormously engaging to play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiJ1or56wr0

haha wth

I have two enchanted elven swords that I named Galadriel and Finrod, and just picked up a bunch of two-handed perks. My follower is J'zargo, and he is ridiculous.

u r drizzt

kinda wish there was some online component to this -- but only so bethesda could mine cool stats like what the global race/perk choice breakdowns are. and what dumm names everybody is using.

That fucking dog! Stop trying to push me off cliffs.

dammit I have to get a dog

ugh you guys i dunno how you put up with followers at all. some quests assign one temporarily and i'm like, get the fuck away from me or go die (but please don't bug this quest to shit)

I have a follower because of things like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MTMwjYgJsFQ

er rather:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTMwjYgJsFQ

I have Lydia and the demon dog hanging with me at the moment. Demon dog literally knocked me off some dwarven ruin at the top of the world. Luckily I weirdly slid down about 400 feet instead of dying. He looked disappointed when I climbed back up 5 minutes later.

the fanmade humor shit for this is really uh something

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYgKeUU35o4

i know this kinda stuff was out there for the fallout games and stuff, idk.

you made me watch that

shut up, you would have posted that shit at some point!

i am not down with nyan cat

man, the thing that gets me about this game is that there's hardly any non-thinking steamrolling in it aside from the wolf attacks; if you don't think/play intelligently when engaged in combat, anything can and will kill you and you constantly have to rethink/refine your combat tactics and properly execute them

I got my ass HANDED to me by the wispmother in Labyrinthian the other day but took her out last night after zoning into a rhythm of dodging her ice blasts and lighting her and her copies up with arrows, all the while managing to avoid Lydia's attempts to kill herself. I started thinking "woo hoo I am getting the hang of combat, check me out" and then promptly got rofflestomped by two duergar ghost zombies.

My absurdly unsophisticated "run up and bash with two-handed sword" method does me pretty well most of the time - although not against the boss at the end of that level tbf.

that seems to be okay with one-on-one encounters but if I get flanked or don't see the other mob lighting me up while I'm bashing away it's game over

also, I think I've said this before but I can't aim for shit, so sometimes I find myself hacking up the wall while a mob chops my neck

Oh yeah, all the time. I put this down to playing with a n00bstick.

it is massively satisfying to fire arrows into the face of an advancing mob and watch it go down in three hits

also firebolt is a FANTASTIC FANTASTIC spell, my only complaint is sometimes I can't find the corpse afterward because it's been blasted so far across the room

just finished the companions quest line and ended it by giving up werewolfism. i found the whole plot a little uninvolving tbh, and they advance it offscreen i.e. important people die while you are off grinding another dungeon for someone... and then you have to go grind another one to avenge them etc.

i'm repeating complaints here, but too many of these places and groups and stories are unrelated and uninvolved with each other, or with the main crisis plot. you are free as a player, but it makes everything too modular. the 'compansions' exist as their own story to be experienced at your leisure. an ancient order of proud warriors, don't you think the imperials, the rebellion, the jarls, etc, would have some interest in what this group does? wouldn't the leadership have some opinion on what's happening in the world? and you BECOME the leader! but you don't really lead. there's no decisions to be made after that. it's not a position with any meaning. afaik it's no benefit to other, later storylines to be the leader of this group. this kind of stuff just bugs me.

is it me or are the quests kind of unimaginative? go here, kill this, get this. maybe i've been mainlining it too much the past couple days. if you're at all anal about completing things on your quest list you will go insane.

i've found the thieves guild and started stuff with them, hopefully those are a little different. it's really the micro-level pleasures that make this game great. just traveling through the wilderness and seeing what's out there is great. all the fiddly details of ingredients and crafting are just really involving.

"involve" is my word of the day i guess

from what I'm seeing of the mage quests, I am assuming the thieves guild is going to go about the same way

goole are you doing the main storyline or just side stuff like the mage/thief/companion guilds?

If it feels like you're just doing side story stuff it might be because you're just doing side story stuff.

i've done them up to the point where you go up the mountain but i haven't gone further than that.

Go farther.

heh ok!

i thought some of the thieve's guild stuff was engaged and there's a few brothers quests that were pretty different from the standard quest-thing and engaging

engaging twice + typo anyway whatever

also firebolt is a FANTASTIC FANTASTIC spell

is firebolt an actual spell, or is just using fire and shock at the same time, left and right hand?

i haven't even tried mixing up magic. i have the doublecast perk (or whatever it's called) so whenever i double up on magic it's usually two fireballs, or two shocks.

firebolt is an actual spell.

dang, i was hoping that there was a spell-combining aspect of the game that i could still explore!

That would be pretty sweet but at least you can use two spells at the same time.

oh god, if there was spell alchemy I REALLY would never play the main storyline (not that I'm playing it now, lol)

just imagine combining Muffle and any Destruction spell; you could make things explode into flame/ice/lightning by CREEPING PAST THEM

somehow the depth of this has gradually put me less interested in playing it. maybe over the holiday.

I want clairvoyance and sparks so I can feel like I'm walking the pattern in Amber.

there should just be a generic "summon artronarch" spell and the destruction spell you equip should determine its type

or you could dual wield "summon artronarch" and get an artronarch that throws smaller artronarchs at your foes

guys fyi i am going to spend this evening playing a spiderweb software game

http://www.spidweb.com/images/Exile1/exile_shot.gif

yeah

protip for PC skyrimmers: if you're an archer, increase the actor draw distance to see bad guys way off before they see you and maximize sniping efficacy.

I keep forgetting that I took the sniper mode perk

also, it's a little silly that the fight with the ghost dog and the ghost wight sitting on the throne with its back to me took like 10 tries for me to beat, but the end boss was easily defeatable by sniping at him from a ledge and the boss back at the school was easily defeatable because there was a long stretch of time where he just stood there with his back to me and let me hit him with a bunch of firebolts

Is this the fight in the leviathan dungeon while you're trying to get this crazy staff? I've just finished that one last night. What am I meant to do with all these stupid dragon bones again?

Also, where are you guys getting all your cash from? I've only got like 1.5k, not enough to buy a house. I keep dumping stuff in my room at college, but I can't stay at college forever (I assume).

You gotta sell some shit man, get out of college and go to whiterun, shopping capital of skyrim! or even windhelm. and, uh, ask the shopkeepers if they have anything for sale.

Is this the fight in the leviathan dungeon while you're trying to get this crazy staff? I've just finished that one last night.

Yeah, me too. I thought it was really, really odd that the two fights before that (the wight and the ghost dog, followed by the two wights that will steal your artronarch from you) were waaaaaaaaaaay harder than anything I encountered in the boss room; in fact, the only thing that hit me in the boss room were a few stray blasts from his storm artronarch. I just stood up on the ledge and rained arrows and firebolts on them while Lydia kept their attention.

I am pretty sure the fight after that in the college bugged out on me but I'm not really complaining, lol.

yeah that ghost wight on the throne was a fucking nightmare, took me multiple times as well

I basically spent 35 minutes banging my head against a wall until it occurred to me to try switching from fire to lightning; two attempts later BOOM DED (and it was only 2 attempts because Lydia jumped into my lightning and died; I think she needs some serious therapy/counseling and the writers missed a golden opportunity for extra hilarity by not noticing her multiple attempts to kill herself during playtesting and scripting her dialog around that)

I don't even remember that wight, he must have been butter under my greatsword of doom.

he periodically shouts your weapon out of your hand

yeah actually when i think about it i think most of my restarts were thanks to dead lydia. goddamn her and tight quarters tbh.

speaking of which, my dog vanished in a big old dungeon and i fear he may be ded ;_;

goddamn her and tight quarters tbh

I'm telling yr wife

haha yeah lets not add to the already existing marital troubles of "why does that annoying woman keep saying the same shit over and over again in that game?!" re:skyrim

Xmas eve skyrim update: got a dog. Barks a lot. Has questionable paw/ground interface. Defends me with gusto but otoh just another AI - artificial imbecile - that gets in the way in narrow corridors. Also got amazing new house in Markarth. Spent five minutes trying to get the dog to sit in front of the fire instead of the middle of the room.

Strange things were afoot in Skyrim over the christmas period. Was just wandering around Markarth minding my own business when I was suddenly surrounded by a whirl of glowing light and i was told that I'd absorbed a dragon's soul. A couple of days later - perhaps it had been there a while - I found a dead dragon in the marketplace. Unlike dragons I'd killed it hadn't burnt itself to a cinder, was just lying there all fat and scaly. Later on, on a trip to Riften I had to fight a dragon outside the city walls. I put the beast to the sword, then turned around to find Lydia and my dog beating the shit out of a horse.

so after the main quest is finished (whatever that is), I can still go around and do other stuff, right?

Yup

an impromptu extra day off due to car trouble turned into an embarrassingly long marathon stint yesterday. i ended up doing basically the whole thieves' guild questline. and hit 100 sneak!

a cool story imo but similar to the companions in that the final stretch involves a pretty creepy mystical element. idk, it's fantasy i guess...

*very minor spoiler*

i wish i could take back the Companions mission where you get the werewolf skill. i never, ever use it, and now i can never be fully rested again?

Can you not get cured?

http://www.gamefront.com/skyrim-how-to-cure-being-a-werewolf/

this game is good but man, i am tired of having to look up stuff on the internet re: completion of quests thx to bugs/haphazard notifications. case in point, the galdurs amulet thing where you get the three pieces and then uh.

also this dog needs to stfu

oh, you can just cure it? i don't know, several times i've had all status effects removed, and yet whenever i sleep it's like "YOU HAVE WEREWOLF BLOOD NOW, FUCK YOU!"

i'll try polyphonic's link when i get home (pretty much all game-related sites are blocked at work)

there is a way to get out of it but it's not scripted very well. i can just spoil it for you here if you don't want to wait

also i cant seem to really marathon this that much, i can basically run a dungeon, load up, dump the stuff in my chest at the mages guild, and then its really hard to roll out and do it all over again right away.

also i think i kind of dislike doing the onehanded + magic thing in this, mostly because the aiming of the magic seems so goddamn fiddly all the time. i pretty much just use shouts for hard fights and only use magic on weaker dudes when i am trying to level

Do conjure instead. It aims itself!

yeah i use reanimate and conjuration the most by far. kinda pissed that i havent figured out how to cast muffle yet, because that sounds pretty awesome.

i do a lot of flipping between weapons and spells and stuff mid-fight. my favorites menu is probably a little too long

use muffle when you're sneaking! just don't cast it when you're near anybody, because (w/o perk) spellcasting makes a noise. tho yeah there's no notification when it wears off (your feet will have blue glowy stuff around them)

no i mean i havent learned muffle yet at all

oh

it's intro level so most mage shops sell it

Lol feeling you on the long-ass "favorites" menu

I haven't been able to play for almost a week due to travels but expect to binge starting tomorrow night.

there is apparently some kind of exploit involving fortify restoration potions. i don't quite understand it but word on the street is that there is a recursive loop you can get into ending up with items? potions? with bonuses in the multiple hundreds of % and worth millions of gold

i get pretty aggro about little advantages but man i fear for the person who figures that kind of shit out. maybe being on pc helps but damn

btw is anyone playing a primarily magic-using style? idk how you'd get thru some of these situations w/o armor, weapons, good sneaking etc. do you have to juggle a bunch of buffs in the favorites?

Finally got home after staying at my folks for Christmas and opened up that collectors edition that I treated myself to.
That Dragon Statue is massive and was put pretty much immediately back in its box and into the garage, but the art book is worth the heavily discounted price I payed for the CE. if its available separately, Then I'd jump on it.

Gonna roll my Snow-Orc tonight and then shit's getting Tamriel.

also i cant seem to really marathon this that much, i can basically run a dungeon, load up, dump the stuff in my chest at the mages guild, and then its really hard to roll out and do it all over again right away.

I try and mix things up a bit with some simple non-quest based riding round the countryside and taking time out to craft some quality armour, potions etc. Have made a matching set of Dwarven and then Orcish armour, and an Elven set for Lydia. Because I love her. Will do it all again, and again, and again, when I get the requisite smithing perks.

I got given this for xmas by my bff and he's nagging me to play it even tho Ive hardly got thru Oblivon yet. Can I just mage it up and wander around doing spells/alchemy/side quests forever like I do in Obliv?

(lol such a girl way to play I kno)

Pretty much. There's no real imperative to do the main quest but you do get some great perks.

Cool, I must get started on it while the holidays are still on then.

(would have started sooner but I took an arrow to... etc)

Old student-slob-days gaming partner visited from America, so we broke into my girlfriend's house to play this on her son's ps3 while she was in the West Country. All got a bit messy when we set off her extraordinarily loud burglar alarm, but she was very understanding, indulgent even, and me & old friend wasted precious grown-up weekend passing controller back and forth.

After the weekend marathon, can now only fit in an hour here and there, but found a rhythm of wandering into a side-quest, eating mushrooms, hammering a few bandits/draugrs/vampires, then tinkering at the forge/alchemy lab.

Became a companion and a bard.

Started off a bit confused & dropping perks all over the place, but getting comfortable with one-hand, heavy armour, sometimes dual wield, sometimes shield.

I;ve been messing around with side quests waaaaaay to much. I'm on L17 and I've only just got the Dragonstone! However, I do have some kickass archmage robes and L55 on archery, so happy days.

My follower has disappeared (I don't think she died, she just . . . went) so I need to recruit. Is Lydia the best of the bunch, and where do I get her from?

You need to kill a dragon at Whiterun - activated after you get the dragonstone. Then the Jarl will appoint her to be your personal slave housecarl.

Aaaah, I think killing my first dragon is next on my to do list. I'll give it a go tonight and see what happens.

so THIS is where the skyrim thread is

guys: skyrim on mac! baller!

The idea of playing through to L17 before unlocking the dragons in a game about dragons is so great.

Now I will listen to Therapist Sweater/J3ff T.'s "Dragon" to celebrate.

this DL of skyrim i got already had a character started (but only right at the v beginning), so i played that guy up to level 6 or so, and i did the dragonstone quest super early, like @ 4/5 i think.

started a new character for the ~full experience~ and have skipped that dragonstone quest for now, just cuz i didn't want to go slog through a dungeon twice in a row. just joined the dark bros

kinda envious of peeps that havent started fighting dragons yet since the goddamn things seem to be everywhere now in my game. still tho, shouts are awesome (slow time u my boo). i am a little shocked by the lack of variety enemywise in this game though, pretty bored with killing draugrs and dwarven spiders over and over and over

ok so here is a question that is maybe really stupid, but: does skyrim automatically adjust the levels of your foes to whatever level you are? i've never seen any indication that the dudes i'm fighting are like LVL 60 TROLLs or anything, but it certainly ~feels~ like quest-specific foes are tailored to your current ability.

which, if true, is awesome game design, imo. i was always a little bummed in WoW that whole areas were unable to be explored because they were above yr paygrade. or that accidentally landing yourself in a new zone could mean instant death because even the lowliest creatures were totally elite. i never played AD&D or anything, but i always thought that the nice thing about DMs was that they could downgrade/tailor an adventure to be commensurate with the players' abilities. and in a sandbox game like skyrim, exploring and side-quests should be picked up or ignored by players for reasons other than "yeah i'm not ready for that right now."

(nb i'm basing this entirely on the fact that i got the dragonstone at level 4. and:

I;ve been messing around with side quests waaaaaay to much. I'm on L17 and I've only just got the Dragonstone! However, I do have some kickass archmage robes and L55 on archery, so happy days.

like, was your experience in the dungeon to get the stone just pitifully easy, or were the enemies scaled up to meet you? i didn't have much of a problem at the entry level (playing 'normal'), and i'd imagine that someone significantly higher on the food chain would breeze through the place)

some stuff def doesnt scale with you, for example my first fight with a giant was impossible but now they are relatively easy to kill, same with not having to run away from bears anymore. not sure about the quest stuff tho

well yeah that's why i was thinking 'quest-related' specifically.

i was able to kill the dragon for the dragonstone quest, and then soon after got aced because i thought i could step to a giant, being a dragonslayer and all

The second time I did the High Hrothgar quest I was farther along, and the enemies on the steps were much tougher than the first time when I only faced some wolves and the ice troll. There were a bunch of sabertooth tigers or whatever the second time, and some spiders.

how's the combat in this?

do you like first person melee?

that's a red line for a lot of people, but i'm getting into it. getting a rhythm down with the blocks, staggering, bashes and power attacks is pretty satisfying imo.

Killed my first dragon last night! Hurrah! wtf am I mean to with these dragon bones? I just left them there tbh, I need to offload some loot first.

re leveling up: It certainly feels like some baddies level up with me, and some aren't. Certainly saber-tooth bears or whatever don't panic me like they used to, but it still took me a couple of goes to kill the dragon.

The idea of playing through to L17 before unlocking the dragons in a game about dragons is so great.

I have to say, the perversity of this did attract me, but it was made easier by the game not really telling you which quests are the "main" quests and which are sidequests. Everything in the "misc" section I'm guessing is a sidequest, but everything else seems to be given equal importance in your journal, so I didn't even twig that maybe dragons were like, the big device around which the game revolves. Tho I suppose I could have worked it out by the whole dragon-attacks-city opening sequence. Oh well.

And I've been enjoying the game sans dragons, just bumbling around the map "adventuring", so I didn't feel much imperative to get on with the main story. I tend to do that with sandbox games tho; I'm very much a sidequest kinda guy.

i was happy just goofing around with sidequests until they all started involving traveling to the very edge of the Whiterun, past several locations i'd never been to before. now i kind of want to get back to the main quest to move things forward a bit. there's a war map in the castle of ulfric stormcloak that reveals most of the locations in whiterun if you examine all the little pieces, and i wish i never would have done so. it was more fun to lack knowledge about what was in the unexplored territory of the world map. now i look at it and see dozens of additional locations in whiterun alone and feel like it will take me the rest of my life to finish the game (in a bad way)

finished the main quest yesterday but will prob keep playing for awhile just so I can get some better armor (I have a full set of dwarves at the moment)

ah transmute spell, you are a grinder's dream

Alchemy for fun and profit: I enchanted some alchemy gear (hat, gauntlets, necklace & ring at +20%) and potions made from two cheap ingredients sell for 120 - 750. The problem has become offloading them, but every cycle through Solitude-Windhelm-Riften-Whiterun yields 5000 gold + enough ingredients to repeat. I'm looking into that Solitude mansion at a young level 33.

A special set of armour just for alchemy! Nice thinking. And one for enchanting too? And for smithing...

The Smithing gear is actually much more effective on a +% basis. There's no enchantments that improve enchanting, but potions can be made.

Downside of the level advancement from learning crafting skills means I'm facing level 35 Elder dragons with level 25 combat skills (but good kit).

wait you can own property in this??

yeah... what did you think lydia was all about?

(jkjkjk!)

Do quests for the jarl in each hold (or high monarch in Solitude) and you become thane and can buy houses, starting at 5k gold (unfinished) in Whiterun rising to 25k in Solitude. Double those figures for full furnishings.

You can also invest 500 gold in businesses to increase cash available for transactions, as a perk in the Speech tree.

The opposite of how I play Skyrim (I've yet to return to High Hrothgar): a speed run in 2 hours 47 minutes (the current record is 2 hours 13 minutes). Too many spoilers for me to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmg6H2qxFAw

speedrunning skyrim seems like totally missing the point

Yeah but 2 hours and 47 minutes later you have plenty of time to play it the right way.

So far the only person or creature he has killed is the dude with the book and the king Draughr in Bleak Falls. He is finished with Dragonstone quest and is only like 1/4 of the way through L1.

Read the collected written works of Skyrim offline on your Kindle, iPad, or other device.

in addition to other treasures (including all my creative writing notebooks from grade school and all my sports + trading cards) i found these in my parent's garage while cleaning out my boxes this week

http://i41.tinypic.com/55gzfm.jpg

sanpaku that is nuts. the writing in those books is so badddd

Eh, they're quick reads, and its a better option for absorbing some of the background (this is my first Elder Scrolls game) than sitting at the desk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=bPHtAHxB3iI

arena!!! lulz

i kind of don't like enemy scaling, it can seem a little bit like it defeats the point. -- i mean then why even level at all.

ff8 had an interesting system but it was broken every which way.

whatever, i am going to start playing new vegas now

Killed the first Dragon last night at level 7. was hungry to get with that shouting that everyone is talking about... As a Melee character, you just have to stay away from the business end of the Dragon, but I'm not looking forward to the later much tougher Dragons..

Not sure whether to stick to 2-handed melee or go though a few dungeons building up the one handed just for a backup.

I swear I hear Colonel Tigh from Battlestar Galactica do one of the opening voices and now every new character is a game of "is it Tigh?"

One-handed is for wimps. Quit cowering behind a shield.

i would use two shields if i could

One-handed is for wimps. Quit cowering behind a shield.

Dual wield one-handed = 2x the chances to accidentally clap Lydia round the head.

One-handed is for wimps. Quit cowering behind a shield.

one-hand + magic

rawwwwrr!

I swear I hear Colonel Tigh from Battlestar Galactica do one of the opening voices

Yeah, he's that imperial captain dude.

Is anyone crazy enough to attempt a complete game? I guess it would all locations discovered, all areas cleared, all main quests completed?

"frakkin nords"