Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

so just how camp is people's appreciation of skyrim, on the whole, as a fictional environment

why is there always a whiterun guard in my house just ...leaving... whenever I return back to my wife from a long adventure? what kind of shop is she running?

that and the dead naked lydia in the spare room make me thinks our marriage is not what it should be.

xp A restart solved it. Star of something? I got to take it somewhere to get fixed. Then I got the note telling me the HORN has been stolen, so that's something else for me to do.

Trying to get a half a broken amulet, and there's a bridge that won't come down. The lever just booby-traps some spikes at me. It's very frustrating. I don't want to have to go to a walkthru, but it's pushing me.

lol I didn't even notice my horse had been killed because it ran away and got into a fight with some other random creature I didn't know was there and I assumed it had done its usual "run from scary fight and magically appear at next destination" thing

lol i hopped on a horse at one point, it must have been left over after some bandit encounter or something? idk. i rode it around for a few minutes and then left it somewhere.

i played through the college of winterhold questline, and at the point where the magic anomalies are attacking the town, there was "my" horse, getting killed.

there were about 10 solid hours of gameplay between these things, swear to god, never saw the horse once in that time.

I went to the fruit n veg stall in Winterhold, asked the woman what she had for sale. "Some people call this junk. Me, I call them treasures." Ok good luck with yr treasure cabbages luv.

Winterhold Windhelm Whiterun. So many similar names in this thing.

yeah that's a problem

markarth, morthal

kind of lolling at the idea of there being characters in this game world who would be all "basic foodstuffs? that's junk!" but then I remembered we are in Nord country

Venting frustration.

http://i43.tinypic.com/24zjeo1.jpg

am I missing out on anything by not going underwater?

There are underwater chests here and there, but so far I haven't found anything spectacular (read enchanted weapons/armor) in them, just ordinary loot.

Northwest of Winterhold there is a wreck of the Pilgrim's Trench under 100+ ft of water, just visible if you swim out to the middle of the frigid bay. I suspect that one might hold remarkable loot. My alchemy mojo is pretty good (60+, with perks, and +20% hat/necklace/gloves/ring), so I've got some 90 second waterbreathing potions. I just haven't had another excuse to head that way (nearby catacomb Ysgramor's Tomb looked main questy).

magic is a slow business

There are ways of leveling magic quickly (eg. casting muffle anywhere, casting soul tap on bodies, healing self after self-injury on spikes @ Halted Streams Camp) but I'm roleplaying here.

I halted my first playthrough with a stealthy archer/dual wielder/crafter at lvl 40 doing Thief's Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests as I felt a bit overpowered on main quests. Second playthrough I'm trying a stealthy conjurer/illusionist/crafter/archer doing Mage & Bard College quests mixed with main quests at Expert level. I sort of direct the action from the rear, and silently casting frenzy and later sending in my atronach & tank to mop up the carnage is fun. I've forgotten where my shout key is.

I'd add the symbiosis between enchanting/alchemy/smithing is great, and one can really "level up" with just 4-6 perks in each. Alchemy is a fast, painless gold generator after a slow start.

Of course, this guy beat the main quest just investing in heavy armor, smithing, and enchanting:

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

sneak makes it pretty easy to exploit any fight. kind of wish it was handled more like deus ex - where once they were tipped off you there it was harder to sneak up on them even after they stopped searching for you.

I leveled sneak highish (30some) just by doing a few dark bro missions and got through the dragonstone dungeon without waking any draugr, it ruled

i am working on grinding enchant, smith and alchemy up to 100 and i have grand plans to make insane gear. i'm going a little bit ham w/ this.

here's a tip (that may come close to a cheat for some of you): when selling a bunch of crap off, sell what you can (after buying whatever you need), and then stand there and wait for 48 hrs. the merchant's money supply will refresh. works great if it's at a thieves guild fence: more money, plus a bunch more lockpicks to buy.

Note that fast travel consumes game calendar time too, so you could just as readily have a circuit of market towns you frequent to offload loot (or in my case, valuable potions.

A video I came across at this excellent compendium of Skyrim tricks and tips is the series Felix the Peaceful Monk, who plays as a pacifist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2d2KRIUYCM

It will be interesting to find where Felix is halted in main/faction quest lines.

here's a tip (that may come close to a cheat for some of you): when selling a bunch of crap off, sell what you can (after buying whatever you need), and then stand there and wait for 48 hrs. the merchant's money supply will refresh.

h8 this shit

imo waiting is always cheating

we all cheated while ilx was down

ok that stamina/cooking tip is pretty nuts - but i probably won't take it to heart.

Aaaaargh! I put all my loot in my chest at Uthelred's house in Whiterun, and when I went back to get it later, it was all gone! That has seriously pissed me off. I thought ex-followers' houses were cool to put stuff in, but apparently not. I had a fortune in amulets just to start with!

I think the same thing happened with my room in the mage college. I wouldn't have thought that counted as a public area.

oh shit i've got tons of shit in the dark bros sanctuary

Don't worry, the dark brotherhood are known for their trustworthiness.

I will be playing this for the next year at least.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bifmj1O3D24

not feeling the disco inferno but the SNAP INTO A SKYRIM is awesome

ive benen the deenger zoon

Anduin's ice cave lair with all of the psycho stabby ghost girls was really frustratingly difficult... right up until it suddenly became super easy; I don't even know what I did differently tacticswise*

I pwned Anduin by hiding around a corner and chain-casting artronarchs, lol

* well actually yes I do; on the pull where 2 ghosts and a zombie would run up and own me, I let Lydia and a flame artronarch soak up dmg while I stood in the back with J'Zango's flame cloak on and ran away from things when they tried to kill me until they exploded

only 1 r in atronach /annoyingstickler

my bad, I meant rartrornarchr

sometimes the centurions bug out and stand there like punching bags. dwarven craftsmanship way overrated.

I started a third character last night. My orc will be focusing on two-handed, destruction, and illusion.

I feel like I may have overpowered my archery, I've got 4 bits of +28% enchanted armour, and an exquisite ebony bow (which also does fire damage), and the 3x multiplier for sneak attacks, and a 70+ archery skill level, and as a result I'm knocking out about 360 points of damage per arrow. I'm killing frost trolls with one shot. Might switch to destruction spells to mix it up a bit.

I've started levelling up some of my neglected non-combat skills and I think the bad dudes are getting slightly harder, had to think about dodging and blocking again for my last boss fight.

lol this is getting sad. last night about 2am, finally got enchanting to 100, after doing the same with smithing and alchemy. i am going to make some sick shit.

yes i had to head a meeting at work this morning.

lol I decided last night to start concentrating on destro spells as my main dmg method because I'm currently just slightly average across 2H, bows and spells because I haven't focused on anything

i really don't know why but i like grinding? it's worrying. like if i'm on my way somewhere and an undiscovered cave heaves into view, i'm like, sweet i should clear that thing.

How did you get alchemy so high? It upgrades so slowly for me. What is your alchemy grind? Also what is your enchanting grind? Do you buy a lot of cheap soul gems?

lol ok, prepare for the ocd blast here:

alchemy grind: enchant/get yourself a 'suit' of +alchemy stuff and keep it in a box near a table you own (head, necklace, gloves, and ring iirc). there's an equivalence between power, price, and skill value, so the more expensive the product the better the grind. certain fx are more expensive: paralyze, invisibility, slow and damage magic regen are pretty high i think. (if you want to get a little cheatier, sanpaku linked to a webapp that will spit out potential recipes in order of price for given ingredients). the potions don't have to be useful to be expensive, just the opposite in fact. totally fucked up multi-effect potions can be worth 1k+ easy

enchant grind: i use a lot of bound sword/bow with the conjuring perk that auto-soultraps. making sure i have a lot of empty soul gems, after a quest i'll have a bunch of them full. and buying the cheap little ones too. i think enchanting a bunch of jewelry is best because of weight, and the waterbreathing effect because the power doesn't matter. spam a bunch of rings with the weaker souls. it does take a while tho.

smithing: pretty straightfoward.

(selling off all your potions and crap enchants grinds your speech too)

oh and the right standing stone + 'well rested' before doing any of this helps too

What is your favorite thing to smith? Early on I was doing a lot of iron daggers because it's cheap to buy a bunch of iron ore and ingots, but do you upgrade faster if you make higher class daggers or etc.?

I smith leather/hide bracers mostly

i don't think so, but even if so it's probably not worth it cos of price & availability.

hide bracers are another cheap option. if you're outdoors enough you can end up with plenty of hides

also, jewelry.

xp

guys I actually paid money for an iPhone app that helps with alchemy (basically just give it your inventory and it'll tell you what's available)

That's a real AA level confession.

haha that's only cos if yr on pc it's a bitch to flip to the free webapps amirite

Started this in earnest last Friday. On Monday night, when I was wandering around Blackreach picking up 30 specimens of Crimson Nirnroot, I decided I might have a problem and took the day off yesterday. Came back with a vengeance today though. Neverending. Beautiful game. I never get into these sorts of things but I find myself really looking forward to side quests. I've also found that the whole Winterhold College sidequest is a pretty big quest in an of itself. Would be kind of awesome if it tied in with the larger narrative.