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

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.