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

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.

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"