Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I would highly encourage multiple manual saves. They are literally and figuratively a lifesaver. Especially since your game will freeze up on you at some point. It's apparently inevitable. But the journey really is worth all of the little headaches.

I enjoyed Saarthal quite a bit. Because it's an early quest I usually find these less buggy. The one that fucking killed me is the dwarven ruins thing that turns into a giant fungal underdark thing, Difficult, problematic, and impossible to enjoy in one sitting, although it's such an amazing idea. Recently got all the DLC and started a new playthrough before discovering that the vampire storyline intersects with that same ridiculous dungeon. Ugh.

I'm gonna hunt down a copy of the Prima guide and read the shit out of that, then start again I think :(

temple of xrib was so good! no bosses tho iirc

Temple of Xrib? I was thinking of Blackreach (re: fields of salmon's post), which was one of the best bits of the game!

Can't even remember if I came across the temple of xrib or not...

oh wait yes blackreach is the bigger more mushroomy one... that is one of the better bits. xrib is a smaller cave full of falmer. been a while since I played this

always felt it was hard to build up a sense of identity w/ yr characters in this game bc despite it's hugeness it didn't feel like yr actions had much impact on how people reacted to you. i was happy to come up w/ ridiculous names & cycle through a variety of ridiculous hats tho.

interesting revival. i was thinking of maybe going back to Skyrim. i am much more a fan of swords/sorcery than Fallout-style.

does it hold up? my favorite thing ever was levelling up the bow and arrow so i could do bullet-time shooting a dozen enemies at once

I favored leveling up Illusion, sniper casting Fury/Frenzy/Mayhem is super entertaining, and generally just left a handful of maimed mooks to deal with.

Secondary leveling up Archery and Conjuration, a leveled up Bound Bow is available fairly early, and is pretty much the strongest weapon available til endgame.

Someday, I'll travel the Robbaz path to unarmed badassery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhBiNx749Zw

Above should read:

Bound Bow is available fairly early, and levelled up is pretty much the strongest weapon available til endgame.

I started from scratch, and it was a wise move! I'm already way more levelled up than I was when I got stuck, because I've been careful to just venture out on small raids, wander about, talk to a lot of ppl to get quests, etc.

Could stil really use the bloody prima guide, mind.

i used this a lot when i got stuck - http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Skyrim
and yeah all the dwarven/blackreach stuff is awesome

I played something like 120 or 160 hours of Skyrim. Great game but I wish the world was different. I don't like winter at all in real life and I hate the sight of snow. Also the towns and cultures are kind of a drag. Nords suck, the architecture sucks, and I don't care about the main storylines. But I have soooooooo much fun doing some of the smaller stuff and doing the dungeons.

I love snow. Imagine if Skyrim had a snowboarding element - carving clean lines down from the top of High Hrothgar \m/

They sorta do, informally, if you force shout your companion off a mountain. Which is a thing I don't think I could ever get enough of.

I have no real affinity for sword 'n' sorcery stuff, generally. I love this game for the mechanics and the expansiveness and the granularity. Fallout appeals to me more conceptually but, to the relatively shallow extent I've played it, I haven't really gotten into it much. Whereas I've spent a truly obscene number of hours playing Skyrim.

i'd still like to try elder scrolls online, need to find a used copy

Also the towns and cultures are kind of a drag. Nords suck, the architecture sucks
― fields of salmon, Tuesday, December 1, 2015 5:40 AM

lol the towns are like 5 houses with 10 people roaming around waiting for you to trigger their fake interaction dialogue. witcher 3 works similar but somehow feels more real, the villages and cities in that are done almost perfectly. i do remember the skyrim dlc that adds the island to the map looking way cooler than everything in the mainland. even the winter snow people there seemed more interesting.

Yeah I have to admit the sparseness of Skyrim vs Cyrodill is bothering me a bit. And the bleeeaaaakkkk snow. I want the quality and play of Skyrim but with Oblivion's maps included! I dunno I guess I just liked wandering in sunny verdant meadows picking flowers and fighting off spriggans and hangin' at Daedric shrines.

Those spaces are certainly out there. The map is huuuuuuuge.

Riften is pretty. Lots of trees and canals and stuff. Shame about the locals.

A few of the most glorious places are below ground.

Yeah some of the caverns have been rather nice, with waterfalls and moss and things. I encountered my first trolls too, in a tower thing on the way round the mountain? I assume if I just pass that by they wont come after me - they were impossible to beat.

You should be able to beat a frost troll pretty early in the game. The first one I recall was during the Seven Thousand Steps ascent. Not necessarily easy, but doable. Especially if you have a companion.

If you come up against hard blocks, there's always back to the last save and more side quests. For my first playthrough, when I quick travelled everywhere and pushed through the main quest line, I'd do this often. For my second playthrough, I abstained from quick travel (making for a more interesting game, and forcing more strategic quest sequencing), and had levelled up to killing giants before I met Paarthurnax. Once I was silent casting Fury/Frenzy/Mayhem it was pretty much over for mobs, and I'd use Lydia or another companion as a HP sponge against bosses.

san are u playing fallout 4?

I've decided to abstain from all addictive behaviors and compounds for the time being. To be honest, what I've seen of FO4 hasn't inspired much interest, but I may watch a few hours of a playthrough to see if its less of a wooden rehash than I fear.

Trolls gave me the fear early on but after I leveled up some I'd saunter through Labyrinthian with nothing but a bow and some swagger. Hang in there!

I just wish I had more time to dedicate to playing it!

Temple of Xrib? I was thinking of Blackreach (re: fields of salmon's post), which was one of the best bits of the game!

There's a fun easter egg of a sort in Blackreach: go to the main temple. climb one of the towers, use your Force Push Shout (or whatever it's called, the one that allows to you push people away) on the big disco ball that hangs from the ceiling, and see what happens.

Another fun easter egg that I discovered all by myself: go to Lost Valley Redoubt, and climb to the highest manmade ledge there. From up there you can see the lake way down below you. Jump straight to the lake so the massive fall won't kill you, and something interesting will happen.

Also, there's a loophole that allows you to create ridiculously powerful equipment via enchanting and smithing, but I wouldn't recommend using it. (If you want to know how it goes: use alchemy to create a potion that enhances enchanting, then drink that potion to create clothes that enhance alchemy. Then wear those clothes to create more powerful "enhance enchanting" potions, drink those potions to create more powerful "enhance alchemy" clothes, etc etc. Once you've done this enough times, you can create potions that enhance smithing and enchanting so much that you'll weapons will do 10 times more damage and your armor will protect you 10 times more.) After I figured this out, I used it to make my weapons and armor super tough, but because of this the battles became increasingly boring, only on the highest difficulty level did they pose any challenge.

On the plus side, this allows you to use all those cool-looking clothes and weapons that are otherwise too weak, because pretty much any weapon or piece of cloth is strong enough after this treatment. Personally I used the smithing and enchantment potions to make a pair wooden swords (you know, the ones you normally give to your kids as a gift) into killer weapons, then went around slaughtering dragons and giants as a dual-wielding wooden-sword elf-woman. I've read from somewhere that someone else did the same to a fork (you can't enhance a fork's damage by smithing, but you can put damage-dealing enhancements to it) and became the Great Fork Killer.

"damage-dealing enchantments"

Just played this again last night after having an out-of-commission PS3 for months. It looks amazing when you've been away from it for awhile!

I'm now remembering a few things that it took me waaaaaaaaaay too long to figure out during my first playthrough:
-That iridescent substance you occasionally see on floors? Yeah, that's flammable and something you can use to your advantage.
-The stone doors that open with the claw keys? Yeah, you'll notice that the combination is on the key if you examine it close up. You don't actually have to dodge an endless barrage of poison darts while trying every possible combination.

Figuring out the flammable liquid thing was cool, but the stone door key thing is ridiculous! What's the point of those puzzles then, and why would anyone make a code key that has the code in the key itself? It's ridiculous!

lol

I knew I'd eventually stumble upon something in this game that didn't make sense.

Any opinions on whether Oblivion is worth playing if one hasn't already? I mean, is there anything I'd likely get out of it that I wouldn't get out of Skyrim?

Oh i worked out the claw thing easily. The clue said its "in the palm of the hand"!

Loved figuring out the flammable oilslick tho. Wait near one, let all the dragur come at you, fire a blast at it, and step back and watch the 'splosions.

I love Oblivion a lot btw - somethign about the older artwork/graphics has a soft, nice feel and its a warmer climate than skyrim. But after a while the dungeons and crypts - especially all the oblivion plane places - are verrrrry samey, which was disappointing.

yall should fuck w morrowind for real tho

The draugr dungeons in Skyrim get pretty samey too, especially since the game has the same brown/grey colourscale pretty much everywhere. Skyrim is a better game in general, but one of the things I really liked about Kingdoms of Amalur was how the dungeons changed when you travelled the world, so in the forest lands for example they would have this gorgeous, colourful and psychedelic vegetation... But Skyrim is much bigger, so I guess repetitive dungeons is the price you have to play for depth. I would definitely getting the Dragoborn DLC thought, the ash/desert island it adds to the game is amazingly freaky compared to murky Skyrim, with weird (sometimes downright surreal) fauna and flora and weird colours. The other DLC (the vampire one) is not quite as good because it takes place in Skyrim proper, so all you get is some new enemies, new powers, and some new locations. (The creepy afterlife level in it is quite cool though.)

"I would definitely recommend getting the Dragonborn DLC"

Dragonborn is good, I agree.

I was also thinking about checking out Amalur and/or Dragon Age to see how they measure up. Except that I know I'm probably just going to be disappointedly expecting them to be Skyrim.

I think I have some "legendary" edition that includes all the DLCs? It keeps telling me i can adopt kids. Funny, I've sat on this boxed set for like 2 years + without playing it til now.

It came with a giant, thick map printed on some kind of canvas paper!

You can adopt kids in the vanilla Skyrim too, but the Hearthfire DLC allows you to adopt more than one, and also build a home of your own (instead of just buying a home in one of the cities), with its own livestock, greenroom, library, etc. There's no big quests involved with it, but if you're the sort of person who enjoys role-playing and immersion and not just fighting draugrs, it's hours of fun.

I was also thinking about checking out Amalur and/or Dragon Age to see how they measure up. Except that I know I'm probably just going to be disappointedly expecting them to be Skyrim.

IMO Amalur has a better main quest and better visuals than Skyrim... It doesn't adhere to the idea (seen in games like Skyrim and movies like LoTR) that "serious" fantasy fiction needs to have a brown/grey colour scale to feel more "realistic", so it has some gorgeous-looking, vividly-coloured locations and creatures. But on the other hand it has less role-playing options (no marriage, no kids, etc), and there are some irritating bugs (nothing game-breaking, but irritating nevertheless). And the biggest flaw I think is the difficulty; after you've done enough grinding, the game becomes too easy, even at the highest difficulty level. (This happened to me around the half-point in the main quest, though it was partially because I'd completed one of the two DLCs fairly early in the game, thus having done much more grinding than without the DLC.) And since the company that produced Amalur went bankrupt, the bugs and the difficulty issue will never be patched.

I'd still recommend Amalur for the storyline and visuals, just don't expect the gameplay to be as good as in Skyrim.

IMO Amalur has a better main quest and better visuals than Skyrim... It doesn't adhere to the idea (seen in games like Skyrim and movies like LoTR) that "serious" fantasy fiction needs to have a brown/grey colour scale to feel more "realistic", so it has some gorgeous-looking, vividly-coloured locations and creatures.
― Tuomas, Friday, December 4, 2015 6:05 AM

not denying skyrim had too much brown/grey but amalur's graphics and color palette and other games like that are the fuckin worst. a game being in the fantasy genre shouldn't mean it has to look like a thomas kinkade eyesore.

yall should fuck w morrowind for real tho

― adam, Thursday, December 3, 2015 2:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^

never played morrowind but i hear that a lot. any recommended graphics/UI mods for a more modern experience?

stop trying to make morrowind happen