Skyrim

Finally got a chance to play skyrim. Holy crap. I see why Morph disappears for so long. That game is freaking amazing! LOL I'm glad I got it for console though. I'll bet it's much easier to play.

Spoiler alert : after the novelty wears off, you will see how this game is a piece of crap. Faster if you've played other games from The Elder Scrolls series

ThePhilosopher wrote:

Spoiler alert : after the novelty wears off, you will see how this game is a piece of crap. Faster if you've played other games from The Elder Scrolls series

LOL Really? What's wrong with it? I'm not gonna lie. I've died so many times....I've just come to expect it. Took a while to get my bearings straight.

Mods are nice, or so I'm told. There are other topics about skyrim around here tho.

After the novelty wears off I'd give Skyrim a 7 out of 10 without mods and a 9 out of 10 with mods. You need the PC version for mods, which is why I'll always consider it the superior version for any TES game.

What is wrong wtih Sykrim? Well, there is a lot of room for improvement in the game mechanics. The armor system is a favored pet peeve of mine, but I won't go into it unless anyone is really interested in knowing. I could easily write a wall of text just on that topic alone. And the truth is that it doesn't even really matter all that much because it's a singleplayer game that focuses on sandbox exploration. The game mechanics in such a game only need to be good enough. Having them be actually very good would be a welcome bonus, but it's not essential.

A bigger flaw is that Skyrim tries too hard to be epic, the same mistake Bethesda did with Oblivion. Elder Scrolls games work best when you are Mr./Ms. Average Adventurer going about his or her daily business of exploring the countryside or getting up to no good in the cities. Things quickly go downhill when you get to the Epic Shit^TM and become Saviour-of-the-World that most of the time everybody still treats as Mr./Ms. Average Adventurer. And then in their "brilliance" they decided to throw in four save-the-guild storylines which are basically a miniature version of save-the-world and suffer from the same problems.

"Did you just become the Archmage? Congratulations! Here's a fancy robe and a new apartment. Have fun. What, you expected that as the Archmage you could actually run the College of Winterhold and make meaningful decisions about policies? Don't be ridiculous."  

And the world itself is a little on the shallow and gamey side. It doesn't seem so at first and there certainly is plenty of lore to go around, but it just can't compare to Morrowind. For example there are about 4 villages in the entire province, comapred to 9 cities. But then again, some of those cities are closer to being villages so the actual ratio is closer to 50:50.   And then we have ruins that are described as villages in books, but when you enter them they are actually standard coridor dungeons. And so on.

That said, the game does have it's strong points. The world is more alive than in any other game I've played. Overall the gameplay is still the best that any TES game has offered up to date. Exploring the world is fun and some of the sidequests are really good (like that lighthouse on the northern coast with the dead family). And the Creation Kit is much more powerful and flexible than the Construction Sets that came with Morrowind and Oblivion. Which brings us back to mods and the beginning of my post.

I see your point on all that. I did a little reading up on that game an got an overloaded snap shot view of what's what. I'm not sure how they're able to squeeze all that story in this game but they did. The armor is very frustrating and the actual action takes a while to get use to. Finding weapons with magical powers just for them to turn around and need to be "charged" up which is usually right about the time you need them to not fail you. LOL All that can be a little much, but I will say this...compared to Diablo 3....Skyrim is epic. LOL

So what's you build?

I might give it another try, aiming for melee/stealth... any suggestions?

My main suggestion is to mod the game. If nothing else, get SkyUI (link), which will also require SKSE (link). And for anyone just starting out with modding, I recommend the new Mod Organizer tool (link). It does everything the Nexus Mod Manager does and better.

But going back to gameplay and builds, I'm going to go ahead and asume you already know how stupidly powerful Alchemy, Enchanting and Smithing are (though personally I can't be bothered to carry around all the potions - I just keep the healing ones and sell all the rest).

Melee/stealth is good. You'll probably want to mix in some armor, likely Light. You could go for Elven or if that's too bright you could do the TG questline and get the most badass looking light armor in the game. I don't think there's a perk that doubles improvement for it, so just raw Smithing skill without perks would be sufficient.

If you have Dawnguard, the crossbows are great weapons for ranged sneak attacks. They have a slow rate of fire, but compensate with high damage. You'd need Steel and Dwarven smithing to make the most out of it.

For weapon perks, don't bother with the weapon type specialization perks. Critical hits do a percentage of the weapon's base damage, before smithing, perks, and enchantments so late game it's just a few % extra damage. Bleeding damage from axes is nice, but takes time to accumulate. By the time it would add up to adecent amount you'll already have killed your opponent the oldfashioned way. Finally, armor reduction with blunt weapon doesn't have much effect because NPC's armor ratings are shit.

Just get the basic +20% per rank damage and then maybe power attack perks, if you feel you need them. Also, each damage perk you get will give you a smaller relative improvement than the previous one, so 3-4 are enough. You can get more if you want, but having all 5 is only 11% better than having just 4.

Lockpicking perks are unnecessary, I can open a master lock without them just fine. Pickpocketing is not that useful either, but at least it's good fun (especially once you get so good that you can steal the clothes/armor people are wearing).

I guess something like this would be good: http://skyrimcalculator.com/380243

I have the two datadisks.

No bows for me this time, I think (how do I get the dragons down? :p ). Maybe deep pockets. Lockpicking did not seem that easy to me..?
Three points to restoration to Avoid death, no Alteration for armor bonus? No points in Alchemy?

Thanks mate.

I have a personal bias against Alchemy because I can't be bothered to carry around all the ingredients and potions. That's a lot of weight that could instead be used to carry more loot. Smithing and Enchanting on the other hand require no extra weight. They just make the stuff you'd be using anyway better. But if you like Alchemy, go for it.

Alteration armor spells are IMO crap. In fact the whole armor system is stupidly designed. It's needlesly complicated, it doesn't provide any interesting gameplay choices, and the results don't make sense.

WARNING: armor system rant:

The only good armor spell is Dragonskin, the master level one. You could still get Alteration for the magic resist, but you can get 25% from the Lord birthstone and 15% for doing the Book of Love quest in the temple of Mara. Then you just need two enchantments and you'll get your magic resist up to 80%. The cap is 85%. So not really worth it.

Related to the armor rant, in the early game you will get virtually no benefit for improving your armor and you armor perks will have very little effect as well. Only once you get a decent skill and decent Smithing, will it be worth to invest into armor perks. However, improving weapon is quite effective, so Smithing is still a useful skill to invest in, even at early levels.

For dragons on a melee character, there is a certain Thu'um, but you get it pretty late in the MQ. An alternative is to drag along a follower with a bow.

I guess Avoid Death is nice, but I never needed it. Open Inventory + healing potions seems to do the trick for me. I'd only consdier it for a hardcore/ironman/dead-is-dead playthrough.

BTW, with maxed enchanting and Extra Effect perk you can get 100% in two Fortify <magic school> effects. That then allows you to cast all spells from that school for free. It's stupidly good on Desctruction spells, if you have the Impact perk. Zap! Zap! Zap! And the opponent is locked in permanent stun. It's less insane on other schools of magic, but still very strong and completely eliminates the need for cost reduction perks and Magicka. You can for example get a Greater Ward spell and keep it up forever. Or walk into the middle of the Riften market, start casting Detect Life and watch your Alteration skill skyrocket.

One more thing about Enchanting, the power of soulgems starts pathetically low and then scales exponentially. You need at least a Greater soul to make a half-decent enchantment, so I recommend waiting with investing into Enchanting perks until you find a Grand Soulgem (or a Black Soulgem or Azura's Star).

Thanks.

Now it's only question of race. My regular Redguard, or the master race, or... Decision about faction to join - or none

Race is largely a matter of personal preference. Mechanically Bretons have the best passive (sweet, sweet Magic Resist) while Nords have the second best passive and one of the strongest racial powers. But that's just the mechanical aspect and IMO style is just as important.

And I remembered another thing about Enchanting. When you're training up the skill, use better soulgems to enchant armor/clothing and the weaker soulgems to enchant weapons. That's because the value of the enchantments scales with it's magnitude and for armor/clothing enchantments that scales with the power of the gem. But with weapon enchantments the power of the soul used only influences how many charges the enchantment has before you need to refill it. The strength of the enchantment itself doesn't depend on the soul used. So if you enchant a weapon using a Petty Soulgem it will still have high value and you can sell it for lots of cash. IIRC the most expensive weapon enchantment is Banish, followed by Turn Undead, and then Soultrap.

So what you do is buy smithing supplies from the smith, make weapons, enchant them with Banish/Turn Undead, and sell them to the smith to get your gold back.

When training up Smithing, how much your skill improves depends on the value of the items you create. At first you can get away making only Iron Daggers, but later you'll have to start making more expensive stuff. Dwarven Bows are generally recommended (they only require 2 Dwarven and 1 Iron ingot to create, but are reasonably valuable). Another good option is jewelry, since it has pretty high values. The downside of jewelry though is that the enchantments you can put on it won't be worth much unless you use a Greater or Grand soul.

Seems I need conjuration for Soul trap, right?
I thought, with the build you posted, I'd have a lot of points left in the endgame to screw around with, so I thought Let's go destruction... might as well be conjuration... whatever

You can get the Soultrap spell but you could also get a Soultrap enchantment. And Dawnguard also added a Soultrap shout (Soul Tear - soultraps target, instantly kills it if it has 300 health or less and then reanimates it for 1 minute).

Link for Mod organizer without registration.
(Please edit your link Draggy, seems mixed with youtube.)

What are the mods for, anyway?
Error code for UI. Do I have to start over after installing mods?

Fixed the link.

What do you mead link for Mod organizer without registration? I can download it just fine without logging into the Nexus.

SkyUI makes the interface much better. I'll show you screenshots of the inventory menu with and without it.

Default Skyrim:

SkyUI:

The default UI is designed for a console controler. The modded UI is designed for PC and using a mouse. You get a much better overview of all your stuff, you can filter it, and you have a host of sorting option, ranging from alphabetical, to enchanted/stolen items on top, to value, weigt, or the value/weight ratio (very useful for deciding what items to keep and what items to leave behind if you're near your maximum load). And it also covers the magic and favourites menus. You can even search by keyword.

SKSE is the Skyrim Script Extender. It expands the games script language with lots of new script commands. That doesn't do anything visible on it's own, but it's required to make many other mods work. SkyUI requires it.

Mod Organizer does exactly what it's name implies. I'd explain in details, but you can just watch this short video instead:


Basically the more mods you use, the more valuable Mod Organizer gets. Previously having lots of mod really cluttered the game's Data folder and after a while it became impossible to track what files came from what mod and which mods are overwriting eachother.

Some other mods I use:

Unofficial Skyrim Patch: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19/?
Unofficial Dawnguard Patch: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23491/?
Unofficial Hearthfire Patch: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/25127/?
Unofficial Dragonborn Patch: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31083/?

The unofficial patches are another set of mods that do exactly what the name implies. They fix lots of bugs and inconsistencies from the base game and DLCs.

Quality world Map: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/4929/?

Improves the world map by adding roads. It makes a bigger difference than it sounds. You also get the option of chosing to make the map look like a paper map instead of a satellite photo if that's what you prefer.

Better Shaped Weapons: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/39870/?

Click the link, look at the images.

Even Better Quest Objectives: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32695/?

A mod for people who don't want to rely on the quest compas to point the way. It gives a more detailed description of the quests and their objectives in the journal.

Inconsequential NPCs: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/36334/?

You'll need to registed and log into Nexus to get this one because it's considered "adult". It adds lots of random NPCs that make the world look more alive. My favourite is the town crier in solitude shouting out the jarl's proclamations. The most likely reason why it's considered to be an adult mod is because the added NPCs include at least one prostitute in Riften.

Better Dialog Controls: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27371/?

When navigatin dialogue options with the mouse and keyboard it often happened to me that I selected the wrong option. This mod helps prevent that.

Uncle Sheogorath's Helpful Tips and Hints: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12234/?

Imagine having Malkavian dialogue for all the game's loading screens. That's pretty much what this does.


Finally you can take a look at the most popular mods of all time and see if there's anything you like: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/topalltime/?adult=2

Nexus wants me to register to download bigger than 2MB. Can't check right now, it's down
Can't install seks through Mod Organizer. The UI looks good, but it's all moot since I can't get it to work without error (neither did a friend of mine).

Edit: I am goooood! Got the UI working.

I think you're not supposed to install SKSE with Mod Organizer.

But cool that you got it working.

So, I'm level 18, am good in sneak & swords (few perks here and there), feel like I can take almost anything (which is mostly true), I hate the look of elven armor and am already thinking about trying different build (battlemage). Oh well. Time to hunt Thalmor.

With arcane smiting, I can improve any enchanted item?
What's the best way to train enchanting? Seems like there's limited amount of soulstones, so...

I think about buying Skyrim myself. With Dawnguard DLC you could be a werewolf, so I am sold   *turns over for belly rubs*





And a cat with a soul of a dragon, turning into a dog:

For once I'm happy my flash is acting up.
You can become a werewolf without DLCs I believe.

Thalmor or bust.

Die already.

Jad.3 wrote:

For once I'm happy my flash is acting up.
You can become a werewolf without DLCs I believe.

Right, but you don't have any werewolf perk/skill (like the howls), you just get the standard Hp and Stamina buff IIRC