Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

when i get to a new town i feel kind of burdened knowing there are going to be like 10 characters i'm going to go have to talk to

I get that in every rpg ever tbf.

If you're finding the combat a slog I'd recommend levelling stealth + archery, you can pretty much skip the fighting altogether that way.

Or Illusion, so you can just sneak up on people and one-shot them, or Conjure and just let your conjured do the work for you...

feel like all the sneaky stealing/poisoning ppl is the most fun in this game

also archery

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-24-skyrim-gets-mounted-combat-in-new-update

Fixed issue with nirnroot lighting not properly cleaning up

this annoyed this shit out of me!!!

enjoying this more now that i realized i could change it to the easiest difficulty level. just want to explore and have adventures, not die 800 times. still overwhelming though.

liked the part where you're in the crazy guy's brains fighting his fears and paranoia, reminded me of the part in fallout 3 where you're in the virtual reality black-and-white 1950s neighborhood

DLC's out tomorrow. I'm not ready!

oh suite i thought it was a july release date

vampire lord business is not really doing it for me but i'm going to buy and play the fuck out of it anyway

ha rechecking this post:

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

they've done all the shit i thought was embarrassing

hmm well this is a little disappointing

o rly? expound pls

I WILL

i'm only a few quests into it (dawnguard, to the folks at home). apptly there are two branches: become a flying vampire lord or stick with the people who hunt the flying vampire lords.

there's been some stuff added like crossbows and i think some more armor and weapon types (even in crafting??) but i haven't found or done any of that yet

so i'm going through the become a flying vampire lord side with my 'bad' character and the plotting is kind of abrupt and arbitrary, but there are some good puzzles and atmospheric stuff in the dungeons which is a new thing. the main prob so far is the 'flying vampire lord' bit, which is in forced 3rd person, which makes it nigh impossible to hit a fkn thing with your powers. the controls are explained to you in game which means no references at all to which button does what. it's pretty ridiculous.

the drawbacks of being a flying vampire lord are p serious too and those aren't really explained until they start happening to you.

oh and there are special perk trees added to both being a flying vampire lord and werewolf, but i kind of don't care? as always i just wanna know how the quests turn out and check out the new gear.

but if you interested in becoming a flying vampire lord, check it out.

thx. sounds like could def take or leave

yeah I'm gonna skip it

Are the giants noticeably fatter than before?

idk!

Is there an extra chunk of map for this? Or is it all set in locations I've already seen?

there are some new structures and cave entrances to places but no whole new locations

to my knowledge, so far.

this got a little better as i got through it?

there are a couple new areas. nothing in the way of a new city or region or anything, but there is a gloomy hell dimension thing, and a big hidden valley you spend some time in, both of which are pretty. there's a big marquee battle vs two dragons on a frozen lake that's pretty great.

still, the plotting and writing is weak. some of the 'reveals' are important if you care about the elder scrolls world at all.

i don't know if it's the dlc or the last title update, but i'm noticing a few more higher-level versions of monsters (dragons specifically)

oh and you can make your own arrows now.

looks pretty lame if you ask me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gXwNVpDmfo

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Hearthfire

i'm pleased they are giving me the opportunity to be a curmudgeonly beekeeper squashed into a tiny infested house w/ my many delinquent kids

I definitely would play that, except that I have Skyrim on PS3 and they don't even have Dawnguard yet.

I got Skyrim, on the recommendation from a friend, and am diving pretty deep into it. I was up the 3am last night playing (from about 10pm?). It's so great, a really beautiful game. Just running around and picking flowers & mushrooms in the forest is fun. I just defeated my first dragon and got the shout, and mostly I just want to explore dungeons and grind my levels and magic. But it's fun to follow the quests and then stop off randomly to, say, forge some armor or cook some potions. Alchemy is so rad. This may be one of the best RPG's I have ever played. My only complaint is that there need to be more enemies, but maybe i can switch difficulties.

Ok i was in Markarth and i did some stuff for the wizard so he gave me a key to the museum. I went in and started looking around and out of nowhere a guard starts attacking me. Which is odd, because i passed a few on the way in, and even talked to them, and nothing happened. So now i pretty much can't go anywhere without having a zillion wizards and guards kicking my ass.

welcome to Skyrim

yes iirc that part made no sense and is constructed/marked badly

you can get into the 'museum' but the zone past that is a 'laboratory' that you shouldn't go into. no warning

some chatter abt it here:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_talk:Understone_Keep#Calcelmo.27s_Laboratory_Glitch_-_Trespassing.3F

xp haha yes that too

yeah i had that same issue. i was going through all the winterhold missions and i was really into the game, having a lot of fun, then that thing in markarth kind of turned me off the game for a week or two because i was so confused by it. but now i'm back into it.

Oh fuck. Cos i just killed that guard. How did you fix it?

Seems like i can probably just ignore that place for a while and do a bunch of other quests.

Also, Lydia got killed so i went to Riverwood and recruited the chick that took me to my first dragon fight. Now i have no idea where she is, she's completely disappeared!

submit to a guard, either pay a fine or do time

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Crime

the secret to these problems is having abt a million saved games tbh

one of my criticisms of this game & other games like it is a relative lack of attn on ambient sound and ambient dialogue, especially in cases like this.

people say such meaningless shit to you (and bizarrely way to personally revealing). and when you do something like tresspass or murder in front of them, they still don't say anything that conveys any meaningful information about what the is happening in the gameworld. it leaves the player guessing about what the people "think".

I think the ambient sound is great! Though yeah you're right it doesn't serve much purpose. They did get a little slack on the scripting. At one point I was running through the woods and a dragon appeared, who was fighting 2-3 people, I think members of the Companions. I showed up and helped them kill the dragon, then I started talking with them. When i asked if i could join them they said 'I don't know if you are up to the task, and there's no way to test it'. Right after i killed a dragon, which was now a giant skeleton right next to this dude.

The best moments still seem to be when you are just running around open-world doing stuff. I was fighting another dragon and I was perched on the top of a mountain throwing lightning at him and doing my best to avoid his frost breath. Then out of nowhere a cave bear comes up behind me and starts killing me. It sucked, but it was pretty epic and awesome!

I still don't know what happened to the 2nd housecarl, who vanished before I even ran into a fight.

Juiced for games by my trip to Eurogamer, I had another go at getting back into Skyrim last night, and couldn't. I don't understand why not. On paper this should still be right up there with my all-time faves. I've installed a million mods, one of which even promises to make the mages guild worthwhile. What else can I do?

I fixed it by heading off and doing a bunch of other stuff (this game is huge, i have like 30 different missions listed at the moment) and then returning later when i got bored of all that. I did a fast travel to Whitehold and a guard stopped me as soon as i arrived. I could pay the bounty (all the gold i had) or ask to go to jail or fight. I ended up going to jail and woke up in a cage in an icey cave with a Ice Atronach right in front of me. I picked the lock of the cage and killed him off, stealing his soul, and then checked the other cages for loot. Then i ran outside and realized i was in far northwest skyrim somewhere that looked like the Antarctic, and there were more Ice Atrnoachs waiting for me, plus some Mammoth and Frost Bears. A fun way to level up, and I'd rather be doing that then talking to people.

I just bought this even though I have never played a RPG in my life.
I was attracted by all the talk of open world stuff but now I'm wondering if the magic skill points and all that are not gonna turn me off straight away.

The 'perks' system really gets on my nerves. It's a really pretty menu but it's ridiculously hard to find your way around in it and see what exactly you can spend your current points on.

I've more or less gotten into the habit or whenever there is a conversation, skimming over the subtitles, but quickly hitting enter to skip through all the dialog choices. Rather than hear some long-winded story about someone that had a magical something or other but they are in a cave and blah blah, I skip to the end and that little text box shows up at the top saying "Go to this mine and find this". My favorite parts of this game are the fighting.

I've installed a million mods, one of which even promises to make the mages guild worthwhile.

wait waht, mages guild is one of the best parts of the game

otm

That's great news, cos i've been putting it off but im going to get into it soon. Still having fun hunting dragons and drugars in the snow and swamps.

if nothing else the questline comes with a house that is pretty much what i imagine a skyrim pimp living in

Partway through Dawnguard I was asking someone to do something (I forget what) and they were all like "pff why should I?" and one of my conversation options was "Because I'm the boss of the fucking magicians guild yo" and I was like "oh yeah I forgot about that, cool".

Also J'Zargo is one of the best sidekicks.

The mage's guild may be one of the best parts of the game but the questline is FAR too short. Unless there are loads of secret bits to it that I blundered past. I want something that takes a bloody long time to finish, something with loads of depth and controversy, that you can't just storm through. I'm one of those irritating Morrowind fans, remember.

huh i don't think i've done the mages guild at all yet - this is separate from the winterhold storyline, right? i'm on the trail of the elder scroll right now.

I got to a point in the mage guild where there was a big fight in winterhold, but after that it still seemed like there was more work to do if I wanted to keep going.

oh looking online winterhold = mage's guild. yeah that whole series of missions was really fun.