Game: Skyrim [Archive] - Gotwoot Forums

Ryllharu

Sun, 11-13-2011, 07:40 PM

I've made my Shield-Maiden, Imperial race. Blocking, Heavy Armor, Single Handed (maces are nasty!), Restoration, and a little Smithing. Level 9 or so.

Once you get the rhythm of blocking down, it's really a lot of fun. Blocking a power attack keeps you from getting killed, though you do get staggered. Blocking a normal hit allows you to connect your own power attack, and with the mace, it's usually lethal. I even got a special kill animation on the first dragon.

The real sweet thing was what I found with a random loot book. Alteration school, Transmute. Raw iron ore becomes silver ore, and silver ore becomes gold ore. 84 magic cost, so you can just use it while you run around.

With the extra gold, I opted to buy a horse. Those things are incredibly annoying. The first time, I left it too close to the bandits, and it got in the way a lot and took out 2 of the 3 bandits, leaving less skill gain for me. The second time I left it too close to the enemy encampment, it killed them all before I could get there! No skill gain!

I'm not really sure what the point of them is. They don't really run faster than I do, even in heavy armor, and they run out of stamina just as easily.

darkshadow

Sun, 11-13-2011, 08:25 PM

KungFu Horse?

shinta|hikari

Sun, 11-13-2011, 08:49 PM

Probably tangled...

Animeniax

Sun, 11-13-2011, 10:21 PM

I lost my first housecarl today. She ran off to engage the enemy while I was shooting them with arrows from a safe distance. Sucks, because she was my packhorse, carrying all kinds of extra equipment I wanted to sell for gold.

Did anyone buy a permanent room in Whitehold? I guess it's the same as your permanent residences in Fallout 3.

edit: I bought the home in Whitehold for 5k gold. Now I can horde all of the treasure and equipment I find instead of dumping it on my sidekick.

Dark Dragon

Mon, 11-14-2011, 03:24 AM

If you're having trouble using light armor, skill up Blacksmith and rush to 30 for the Elven set. It weight almost nothing and offer high defense, excellent for sneaking/stealth kills.

Horses are ridiculous strong in this game. I had a dragon attacked me and my horse proceed to attack it.
My Lydia (who was super decked out) and the horse ended up doing most of the damage.

I don't even remember what's the main quest anymore, just going around gathering ores to raise my blacksmith level.

Buffalobiian

Mon, 11-14-2011, 12:12 PM

I'm a female, black/grey-furred Khajiit. lvl3 only at the moment. Gave her +40% pickpocket skills to start off. :P

I hope to turn her into an assassin character with high sneak and poison abilities. I'd prefer her weapon to be a pair of crazy dual-wielding daggers, though I'll have to work out how I'll get something good to make up for their lack of damage. I don't think I can specialise in forging and magic binding too much, or else I'll be all over the place. Maybe I'll try to buy her good weapons from all the gold I'll be stealing :P.

I also ran into some weird graphical glitches where textures will look different depending on what angle you view them from. Rather, textures will appear/disappear depending on how you look at them. I've been running the game via the exe now and bypassing steam. Seems to be fixing it.

Animeniax

Mon, 11-14-2011, 02:26 PM

Do you guys find that you make characters that represent yourselves and your ideals from real life? Or do you tend to make characters that work best in the game, or that represent how you would like to be/do?

I tend to make characters that represent myself as I am in real life, so they are usually warriors, specializing in frontal assault with weapons. I rarely make mages/thieves.

Funny clip from the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt5aUdijAN8&feature=player_embedded#!

Ryllharu

Mon, 11-14-2011, 04:25 PM

Do you guys find that you make characters that represent yourselves and your ideals from real life? Or do you tend to make characters that work best in the game, or that represent how you would like to be/do?

I make characters that I think will be the most fun to play. They rarely represent myself or what I would do in real life. First off, 95% of characters I make where gender is a choice are female. That's been something I've done since the original Baldur's Gate (mostly to watch the slender leg come in and out of the female mage sprite, or the slight wiggle of the female rogue sprite's tight backside).

Then, I tend to play my characters as Chaotic Neutral. "Because it might be fun..." would be their motto. The other rule of thumb is they brutally return betrayal (again, another trend burned into me from Baldur's Gate, where the opportunity to do so happened so very often). My own personality is more like Lawful Neutral, or True Neutral.

I guess you could say that there are elements of my personality baked into them, but it is mostly exaggeration and superficialities. I certainly don't run around hunting people, like a character of mine will always do. I just like the stealthy gameplay. It's a fun challenge. Blame that on Metal Gear and the Thief series.

Buffalobiian

Mon, 11-14-2011, 07:35 PM

I personally like to think of myself as the intelligent, thoughtful type - which is true to an extent. But what I really want to be (and to an extent I've slowly found that to be more true when it comes down to an actual task) is to brute force my way through without much thought at all. It's so much easier on the brain.

The stealth character I created was because I thought it would be cool. Ryll's comments largely reflect my own.

I do feel like I'm cheating though, since I can always save the game before picking a pocket - and if it fails I have the choice to start again. It takes the thrill out of it, so I might stop doing that now.

Animeniax

Mon, 11-14-2011, 08:21 PM

Yeah I'm bad about saving before I try something. Then I half-ass the attempt (like strategizing an attack), then I die, then reload. If I didn't have the option to reload, I'd take longer to plan and carry out my attack. But redoing several steps/areas to get to the big battles gets too repetitive and tedious, so it's easiest to save right before you attack.

I feel shitty even in the game when I steal. It doesn't help that steal is in bright red lettering.

Buffalobiian

Mon, 11-14-2011, 09:07 PM

I think that saving before you go out into a battle is fine, since you end up having to revive yourself from some previous save point anyway. The problem I have with pickpocketting is that it's not exactly life-threatening. The only bad thing that comes out of it is that someone has a worse impression of you, and a guard may charge you some coins to get off. The fact that I reloaded a few times means I was sort of cheating the system and the whole point of trying to be a better pickpocket.

In light of that, yes I think I'll stop. My coin-steal % is high enough that I won't lose out from having to pay fines with the money I've stolen anyway I think.

I don't get it though. The first perk that you get for pickpocketting increases your chance of stealing by 20% - and you get to upgrade that perk 5x. So in the end I get... +100% chance of stealing? It might have said that the chance decreases with the value of the item and whether the item is equipped or not though.. so that might be it. Still, after a few more lvl ups it almost guarantees my steals.

I guess I could also think about upgrading my haggling skills so I can sell my shit off for even more, but I'm more like a solitary, socially dysfunctional thief/assassin rather than your smooth-talker type of 2-faced backstabber.

Ryllharu

Mon, 11-14-2011, 09:20 PM

My Shield-Maiden got attacked by three saber cats in a row. The horse saved my ass every time. I'm glad I bought it now. We make a good combo. It runs from dragons though. Blocking works well on bears, and even dragon bites, but for some reason the saber cats just chew right through. I can block their initial charge, but subsequent swipes and lunges always seem to hit for full damage. Same goes for trolls, blocking the whole time, dead in three hits.

I obtained the Disarm shout. That makes even the strongest bandits quiver in fear of the Shield-Maiden. One close-range shout, and a mace to the skull makes short work of them. I almost feel bad for them as they feebly attempt to pummel the shield with their fists. I just wish it had a little longer range. I'll have to look for the other words.

My huntress character can solo saber cats, if they even see her creeping through the woods in the first place. I don't think I'll ever bother getting her a horse, despite their physics-bending hill climb ability.

Buffalobiian

Mon, 11-14-2011, 09:29 PM

Hey, right at the beginning of the game, when you part ways with the guy who saved you from the dragon (or as his version says, you saved him), and you part ways to make way to his uncle's place by going over the mountain.

Unless you walked around, did you guys manage to practically jump along the near-vertical wall? I'm not sure if it's just the way physics run in this game, or if it's my cat-like agility at work.

It'll be cool if I can jump people from above like that. I'm also intrigued at how the Shadow Warrior perk would work. It sounds like when you bob down during a fight, the fight stops and they spend a second or so looking for you (as crazy as that may sound). So... does that mean I'm out of sight and can use that Daggerx15 critical hit perk right in their face during a fight? Guess we'll find out.

oyabun

Mon, 11-14-2011, 10:05 PM

Reading your stories about Skyrim makes me want to play it already. I already have a character build up in mind. How is the story so far?

Death13a

Tue, 11-15-2011, 12:18 AM

personally i don't know about the story i just visited Greybeards one time and that's where story ends! too busy running around Skyrim, doing who knows what, there just so much too do that the main quest becomes just A quest that you will EVENTUALLY get to.

Buffalobiian

Tue, 11-15-2011, 12:32 PM

I suck at close combat. I've been increasing my sneak as much as I can since it's no where near ghost-level yet, and have neglected pretty much everything else.

In my efforts to increase my sneak more I decided to stalk this group of bandits as they left their fort. I followed them, sneaky sneaky, but then my reticle said I was detected. Turned out there was one guy coming towards them from the opposite direction, but the two groups made no contact. Since I was detected, I decided to say hi to the guy, and then proceed to pick-pocket him once we pass each other's gaze.

He said hi, but then a second later decided to attack me. His name changed from Retired Bandit to Hired Bandit (or maybe I read it wrong in the first place). And so for some reason now, I have this guy - along with the other 4 who I was tailing.. all trying to get a piece of me.

I put up a bit of a fight, but then was certain I would get overwhelmed, so I ran towards Whiterun hoping to find some shelter. These guys were persistant though, and made their way through the city gate right after me. The guarded did nothing to help, which I thought was strange, so I ran straight towards one to get his attention.

And.. he ran away from me, telling me he wants no part in it. Instead of helping a poor cat in need, they were gambling on who they thought would be the one to take my life. My brother who's playing Nord got help immediately. Racial discrimination right there..

In the end, I managed to kill them all while the whole city just watched. By kill, I mean I jumped high and low all over Whiterun landing a hit when I can, and running + healing as soon as I get hit pretty much.

I then proceeded to attack their fort, since I needed a place to keep all my stolen goods until I find a house. And their fort had keys. I somehow managed to do that too since the bandits refused to leave their mining-cave, so I just leapt in and out of it.

Thankyou, citizens of Whiterun. I'll remember what happened today. I hate you to the bone, but I'll wait. The day I become a full-fledged assassin is the day Whiterun gets washed with your blood. I'll kill you all just like I killed that poor defenceless woman living by herself in the forest.

That's the sort of character I am.

Animeniax

Tue, 11-15-2011, 01:09 PM

That's awesome how this game produces stories like this. If only real life were so interesting.

I have the hold in Whiterun, but I've read it can get burglarized and NPCs can steal from it.

Not sure if this is a spoiler or not, but you have some hard choices to make, like (highlight to see spoilers):

do I become a werewolf or not (there are downsides) and whether to join the Imperials or the StormCloaks

Buffalobiian

Tue, 11-15-2011, 02:02 PM

That's awesome how this game produces stories like this. If only real life were so interesting.

I looted one of the bodies and found a contract on him. The note says something along the lines of

"Here's the amount we agreed on. Now go teach that thief Rachel a lesson. No need to kill her, but make sure rough her up blah blah blah".

This must have been what happened:

-A guy hired an entire fort-full of bandits to have their way with me. One of them went to take the money/job and was on his way back to the fort. He said hi to me, but then recognised who I was, and called all of his mates that happened to be passing by.

I'm gonna find this guy. He was stupid enough to sign the letter for me.

Then I came across this farmer who said that there's this annoying fellow down the road. The fellow's trying to transport his mum's coffin to her burial, but the wagon has a broken wheel. The farmer wants to get rid of him, so asks me to report the fellow to the guard down the road, to make up some crime so he'd get arrested.

Sounded like fun - so I took him up on it.

Animeniax

Tue, 11-15-2011, 02:29 PM

Is your character a thief named Rachel?

I'm having a crisis of conscience. I've been asked by a disreputable scoundrel to do something that will cause an accident that will provide a lot of loot and gold. Before I could follow through, I entered town and everyone is complaining about this scoundrel and the trouble he causes. So now if I help him, it will directly contradict values I hold dearly in real life. But it's a game, so why shouldn't I do it, especially if it means making a lot of gold?

Ryllharu

Tue, 11-15-2011, 05:32 PM

Not sure if this is a spoiler or not, but you have some hard choices to make, like (highlight to see spoilers):
To the first part, I did. But I thought about it for a good five minutes. I've begun to consider that part as my actual "main storyline."

To the latter part, I'm going to check out both, find out which one is the bigger bunch of douchebags, and join the other.

@Buff: That's really cool about the racial discrimination. I was wondering if it was just going to be additional dialogue, or have real consequences. New Vegas just had NPCs commenting on how they thought ghouls smell bad (if your companion was Raul) or that you friend is quite the hottie (if you paired up with Veronica). Nice to know the factions will actually act differently.

Buffalobiian

Tue, 11-15-2011, 08:47 PM

Is your character a thief named Rachel?

Yep. That's my dorobo neko.

Animeniax

Tue, 11-15-2011, 08:59 PM

To the first part, I did. But I thought about it for a good five minutes. I've begun to consider that part as my actual "main storyline."

To the latter part, I'm going to check out both, find out which one is the bigger bunch of douchebags, and join the other.

For the first part, did you know the consequences of you decision?

For the latter, I think I've encountered a quest that you can only complete if you've decided. I'm going to try to find a workaround to see if it really does require you to make a choice.

Ryllharu

Tue, 11-15-2011, 10:12 PM

For the first part, did you know the consequences of you decision?Not all of them, but surprisingly, I've come to terms with the downsides. I work around it, use it only when I really need to, in remote areas. I'm keeping the secret as well as any other member. No one knows except for them, and anyone else who has seen it is dead.

It has just sort of become a facet of the character's personality. It's actually a lot more fun roleplaying it that way.

Animeniax

Tue, 11-15-2011, 10:38 PM

Did you know you lose the rested/well rested exp bonus?

I'm dabbling too much in different areas of expertise. Right now I'm a sneaking archer mage and I've wasted some perks on smithing and shield blocking. I need to decide on a character type and stick with it. The problem is, I don't usually replay games to try different character types, so I only have this one go-through to try things out.

Buffalobiian

Wed, 11-16-2011, 12:51 AM

Some people I can't kill. That's gay.

I have no idea if they're some sort of quest-centric character, but basically this guard caught me hurting someone, and I've since "killed" that guard three times. He just does down though, then comes back up again with full health.

I didn't want to pay the bounty, but I didn't have a choice since he simply refuses to die.

-still increasing sneak.. currently it's like 41, and my character's lvl9.

Animeniax

Wed, 11-16-2011, 12:58 AM

It might be a glitch or quest-centric like you thought. I found a glitch with a mission... you can trigger the quest again by reading a book again. I didn't actually visit the quest location a second time to see what happened, plus I had the quest item in my inventory already.

Lvl9 with 41 sneak? Impressive. You must sneak around a lot. I don't have the patience for that, so my sneak is only in the 50s and my character is lvl19. Is this your only character or did you start over?

Has anyone tried any of the Skyrim mods? http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/14/the-10-best-skyrim-mods-so-far/

I've installed the enhanced night sky mod (#5) and it's awesome.

Buffalobiian

Wed, 11-16-2011, 01:00 AM

It might be a glitch or quest-centric like you thought. I found a glitch with a mission... you can trigger the quest again by reading a book again. I didn't actually visit the quest location a second time to see what happened, plus I had the quest item in my inventory already.

Lvl9 with 41 sneak? Impressive. You must sneak around a lot. I don't have the patience for that, so my sneak is only in the 50s and my character is lvl19. Is this your only character or did you start over?

Had this guy since the start. I do have the Thief stone to make that skill move along a bit faster. My brother said he got shown to the 3 stones after he left the dragon-attacked keep at the beginning. The guy didn't do that for me. I had my brother show me where it was.

Animeniax

Wed, 11-16-2011, 01:07 AM

Had this guy since the start. I do have the Thief stone to make that skill move along a bit faster. My brother said he got shown to the 3 stones after he left the dragon-attacked keep at the beginning. The guy didn't do that for me. I had my brother show me where it was.
Ahh that sucks. I saw the thief stone in the pause screens when you load the game, but didn't have any idea where to find it in game. I imagine you have to do something impressive when fighting the first dragon in order to get the guy to show you where the stones are at.

Buffalobiian

Wed, 11-16-2011, 01:25 AM

Hmm.. well all I did was run, lol.

I've found sneak to be much more opportunistic to use than say, lock-picking or pickpocketting (well the latter is pretty opportunistic.. just gotta be careful). I've spent a night or two just stealing from people's houses, then dumping the good into the barrels outside in between runs so I don't lose everything when I get caught.

btw, what do your characters look like?

Here's mine:

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/2789/screenshot3xp.jpg (http://img406.imageshack.us/i/screenshot3z.png/)

A guard stole my (stolen) amulet, so I'm still kinda pissed about that. I've got a golden one right now that's worth more, but isn't as nice.

Splash!

Wed, 11-16-2011, 02:01 AM

Ahh that sucks. I saw the thief stone in the pause screens when you load the game, but didn't have any idea where to find it in game. I imagine you have to do something impressive when fighting the first dragon in order to get the guy to show you where the stones are at.

Wow, I really should have paid more attention in the early minutes of the game. Apparently there were 2 different people you could choose to follow when the dragon attacked. Also,the Ralof guy was supposed to show you the stones on the way to Riverwood. I didn't even care about following him. As soon as I got out of Helgen, I started doing my own thing, and then arrived at Riverwood much later.

@Buff: Ah you're a Khajit. The behaviour at Whiterun towards you makes sense. I remember talking to this Nordic woman about how Khajit aren't supposed to be allowed inside the town.

Buffalobiian

Wed, 11-16-2011, 02:53 AM

Master-pickpocket dream ruined. The game caps your success rate at 90% for anything.

Guess I'll spend my time picking locks instead.

Dark Dragon

Wed, 11-16-2011, 03:18 AM

Just got my Daedric Armor set, i'm pretty happy with maxing Smithing first so far. Been going the Paladin route with Sword/Shield and Healing magic.

Ryllharu

Wed, 11-16-2011, 04:41 AM

Did you know you lose the rested/well rested exp bonus?Yes, and I didn't mind at all. I'm used to playing New Vegas on hardcore. I don't *need* to sleep anymore (at the penalty of stat reducers and death), so I forget do it all the time. I wasn't using it before other than to kill time so shops were open. The 100% resistance to disease more than makes up for it. My Shield-maiden character has already caught three.

That, and I've found most of the southern stones. Thief/Warrior/Mage stones, Shadow Stone, Lady Stone, Apprentice stone.

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/8508/screenshot3rt.th.jpg (http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/8508/screenshot3rt.jpg)
^ The assassin/huntress

TwisT

Wed, 11-16-2011, 05:01 AM

I'm the same as Ani when it comes to replaying the Elder Scrolls series. I usually replay RPGs many times. Like Final Fantasy, KOTOR, Dragon Age and Mass Effect to name a few. But i played Oblivion half way trough when my hard drive crashed and i had to swap it and reformat. Made me lose everything. So i tried to replay it but it just bored me to death. Tried to replay it probably 5 times but always end with me stopping after a few hours. So I'm guessing it won't be any different with Skyrim.

So i try and make the most of it and trying out different things to find what suits me. i started out with a 1h and shield. I knew i wanted a 1h weapon and not 2h. Rather dual if thats the case. Then i realized that destruction spells is the way to go. With spark i could just nuke every fucker down except boss types. Then i just empty my mana pool and then go with my dagger. Got the double casting which made it even easier. After many hours i started noticing that they just didn't want to die anymore and my Elven dagger did more damage. So i swapped my destruction for the summon flame something. Start out by summoning and then swap to healing and dagger. And that's the formula i use right now. So I've ended up with Resto almost 60, destruction 52-53, Speech 50, One Hand 72ish , Smithing 50+ and most others between 20-30. I've probably explored 70% of the map (i explore allot) and killed about 10 dragons (only 2 from the questline and the rest is unnamed free roaming dragons). Oh and I'm lvl30.

Since i probably won't replay it I'm just trying to experience as much of it as possible and avoiding the main quest line. At least i think it's the main quest. The Graybeard/The Blades quest line. I've also avoided Imperial vs Stormcloaks quests since i get the feeling if i join up with one, some parts of the world will be off limits for me. Like the city that Ulfric is Jarl in i would imagine would all hate me if i joined the Imperials, and as i have understood one of the northern cities (Solice or Dawnstar maybe) is where the Imperials is camped up and strong. And i joined up with The Companions and have done basically everything. I even acquired the power. But now I'm wondering if that is a mistake. As far as i know the Dark Brotherhood is like the "The Hand" thingy (or the exact same guild) that was in Oblivion. I wanna join them once i find them but i just hope my companion status and me accepting the power won't get in the way.

EpyonNext

Wed, 11-16-2011, 05:48 AM

1070

Been playing as a Wood Elf Fighter/Archer. I do a bit of the main quest, and then get sidetracked dungeon diving. This game has consumed 40 hours of my life since Friday.

Animeniax

Wed, 11-16-2011, 09:17 AM

Wow, I really should have paid more attention in the early minutes of the game. Apparently there were 2 different people you could choose to follow when the dragon attacked. Also,the Ralof guy was supposed to show you the stones on the way to Riverwood. I didn't even care about following him. As soon as I got out of Helgen, I started doing my own thing, and then arrived at Riverwood much later.

I wonder if you can go back to Riverwood and find the guys to show you the stones. I'll try that today.

So i try and make the most of it and trying out different things to find what suits me. i started out with a 1h and shield. I knew i wanted a 1h weapon and not 2h. Rather dual if thats the case. Then i realized that destruction spells is the way to go. With spark i could just nuke every fucker down except boss types. Then i just empty my mana pool and then go with my dagger. Got the double casting which made it even easier. After many hours i started noticing that they just didn't want to die anymore and my Elven dagger did more damage. So i swapped my destruction for the summon flame something. Start out by summoning and then swap to healing and dagger. And that's the formula i use right now. So I've ended up with Resto almost 60, destruction 52-53, Speech 50, One Hand 72ish , Smithing 50+ and most others between 20-30. I've probably explored 70% of the map (i explore allot) and killed about 10 dragons (only 2 from the questline and the rest is unnamed free roaming dragons). Oh and I'm lvl30.

A buddy of mine said destruction spells get almost too powerful once you get them to 80-90%. They cause too much collateral damage, so you can't have a companion or use the spell when townsfolk are around or you will kill them all.

I think the shouts serve as a kind of magic for non-mages, but the destruction spells are too powerful not to master. Right now I use sneak and archery to attack, then switch to sword/shield/magic when they get in close. I don't like that you can't really hide once enemies start looking for you. Or maybe my sneak isn't trained up enough.

Here's my character, I'm lvl19 now (I removed his elven helmet of eminent archery for this photo):

1071

TwisT

Wed, 11-16-2011, 09:20 AM

My build right now. (http://www.ign.com/builds/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim?d=00000000000000000010000000000000000000000 00000100000011000111110011001010000000000000000000 11000010000000000000000000000000000040000000000000 00000000000000000000111000111000000000000000000031 1)

The point in illusion is from the start that i regret placing. I almost regret all the points in Destruction too now that i rarely use it. But then again there ain't much else to put it in. One thing I'm wondering though. I usually use daggers (Using the sword Ghost Blade right now because it's weight is 1 and i want the pocket space for loot), but in One-Handed there isn't any perk for daggers. Is swords and daggers the same, or isn't there any perks for daggers except the sneak hit perk?

EDIT: Yea i gave my companion 2 staffs of fireball and she nuked the entire dungeon to hell. But then in the next dungeon i had a quest NPC following us and then they started fighting because both used fireball and hurt each other. Was a real pain. I like having a companion because of the extra pocket space she brings. I usually loot everything that is worth 10 times it's weight. Have Fireball, Chain Lightning and Ice storm myself so maybe i should try out going solo for a while.

Dark Dragon

Wed, 11-16-2011, 10:07 AM

A buddy of mine said destruction spells get almost too powerful once you get them to 80-90%. They cause too much collateral damage, so you can't have a companion or use the spell when townsfolk are around or you will kill them all.

I think the shouts serve as a kind of magic for non-mages, but the destruction spells are too powerful not to master. Right now I use sneak and archery to attack, then switch to sword/shield/magic when they get in close. I don't like that you can't really hide once enemies start looking for you. Or maybe my sneak isn't trained up enough.

I think all magic in this game are overpowered. I'm at level 70 restoration right now and i pretty much don't take damage from anything except a boss character. Even bosses won't do much through my ward and one fast healing spell will recover half my hp bar.

One of my friend is playing a conjuration mage right now and it's pretty ridiculous. He can summon a Deadra or 2 of those spirits thing to fight for him while creating a magic bow that is probably just as strong as my equipment from maxing Smithing.

Penner

Wed, 11-16-2011, 10:21 AM

I made a new character, and was level 8 and just minding my own business in smithing some stuff in Riverwood when i hear this dude say something right behind me, so i turn around and there's three thugs that has apparently been hired to kill me, and they proceeded to do roflstomp my ass within a few seconds lol

After loading i knew they were coming so i was better prepared, but those guys were fucking hard as nails compared to other stuff my level, i had to kite them around town for quite some time with my bow, then melee'ing them one by one the few times they got separated or stuck behind some object.

When they finally died i stole all their shit, and just for the heck of it, i dragged their naked corpses over and threw em into the river, then watched as they slowly drifted down the stream :P

T'was awesome.

Felt quite satisfied after that.

Buffalobiian

Wed, 11-16-2011, 11:36 AM

I don't like that you can't really hide once enemies start looking for you. Or maybe my sneak isn't trained up enough.

Shadow Warrior is what you're after. It's unlocked in Sneak once you build it to 100pts.

The point in illusion is from the start that i regret placing. I almost regret all the points in Destruction too now that i rarely use it. But then again there ain't much else to put it in. One thing I'm wondering though. I usually use daggers (Using the sword Ghost Blade right now because it's weight is 1 and i want the pocket space for loot), but in One-Handed there isn't any perk for daggers. Is swords and daggers the same, or isn't there any perks for daggers except the sneak hit perk?

I'm positive that they're different. The only real way to use daggers outside of sneak-hit is to dual-wield.

I made a new character, and was level 8 and just minding my own business in smithing some stuff in Riverwood when i hear this dude say something right behind me, so i turn around and there's three thugs that has apparently been hired to kill me, and they proceeded to do roflstomp my ass within a few seconds lol

I bet you they're the same thugs who chased me throughout Whiterun in one of my previous posts.

Today I got an upgraded version and had an assassin try to slit my throat instead. He would have been successful too, if I hadn't stolen enough potions to run a shop.

Char's currently lvl16:

Sneak: 50
Lock-picking: 36
Pickpocketing: 56
Alchemy: 21
Restoration:20
One-handed: 35
Archery: 32
Light Armour: 31

Everything else is sub-20. Mostly 15, with a few exceptions.

My archery would have been really bad, but then I went out on a session where I took a bow, 200 arrows, and walked out to shoot mammoths for a while. I originally wanted to build up my one-handed that way, but I couldn't really get close to them without dying. I built up shooting and Light Armour instead, lol.

I really need to find out all about deadly poisons, where to find the ingredients, and start making a shit tonne of it. My magic is shit, and I've done nothing to increase it. I can't even cast this "mummur" spell to soften my footsteps because it costs more than my mana bar. My Endurance is really high though, because I wanted to be able to dish out a whole of dual-wielding power attacks. A side effect is my high carrying capacity, so I might use that for potions and poisons.

Animeniax

Wed, 11-16-2011, 02:51 PM

No offense Buff but those are pretty crappy stats for a lvl16. You need to spend more time questing and using skills in order to improve them. I'm not at my gaming PC right now but I'll list the skill levels for my lvl19 sneaking archer when I am.

Ryllharu

Wed, 11-16-2011, 05:18 PM

Going with what Ani said, those are kinda poor Buff.

My Level 21 assassin/huntress:

Sneak: 73
Archery: 51
One-handed: 40
Lockpick: 40
Smithing: 35/36 (about to pop over)
Light Armor: 35 (guessing this is low because I'm too good at one-shotting things)
Enchanting: 32 (solely from disenchanting items)
Speech: 31
Destruction: 20
Restoration: 21

Everything else is below 20, but Alchemy is the next thing about to get a serious boost. Though I'm still not sure if poisoning the bow poisons the arrows, or just poisons the bow itself (such as when you wack someone in the face in melee range).

You can totally hide once you're found out. I do it all the time mid-battle to boost my Sneak stat, which is why it is 73. You just run away and around a corner, under a cliff ledge, whatever keeps you out of sight for a second. Then you crouch and move away. Stay out of sight just long enough, and they'll lose you. That way you get a boost from each enemy twice. I'm pretty sure you don't get it more than once, but you definitely see separate boosts from:

- Sneaking near an enemy that hasn't noticed you yet. Or killing them or initiating combat via backstabbing.
- Escaping from an enemy that has spotted you.

edit: The little silent rolling move you get makes escaping much easier. You move at normal speed or slightly higher, all while still considering sneaking. Helps you get out of visual range really fast.

Animeniax

Wed, 11-16-2011, 06:16 PM

I think I'm wearing too much heavy armor which makes noise even when I sneak. My sneak is around 50-60 right now. I've tried to flee and hide several times and basically once the enemy sees you, the eye almost never switches back to hidden unless I run several rooms away and hide. I guess once they are aware and actively looking for you, it's harder to sneak/stay hidden.

Buffalobiian

Wed, 11-16-2011, 07:34 PM

Trust me, I know, lol. I keep getting the shit beaten out of me when I do stuff. It's not even like I wanted to level up that fast.. but it just happens. I'm all for increasing my stats without increasing my level, but that can't happen right?

Every increase in skill increases your overall level exp.

It's not like in Oblivion where you can set a commonly used skill as your minor skill, such that you will take ages to improve on it, but you can improve on it almost indefinitely without increasing your own character level.

I think I'll go change my stone over to the Warrior one just to boost my close combat learning efficiency.

Animeniax

Wed, 11-16-2011, 09:23 PM

My lvl20's stats:

archery 55
light armor 50
sneak 52
lockpicking 41
destruction 27
heavy armor 35
block 34
one-handed 47

I have a couple in the low 20s and the rest are in the middle teens. I really need to go find one of these stones.

Also, I found out you don't have to join any group to complete certain quests like I thought earlier.

Ryllharu

Wed, 11-16-2011, 09:47 PM

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be murdering everyone in the thieves guild in a couple days time. They really are pathetic, it will be mercy for them. Though I'll probably do it in a horribly gruesome fashion, so merciful may not be the right term.

Then I might check out the Dark Brotherhood. Possibly kill all of them too if things don't work out. ;)

Animeniax

Thu, 11-17-2011, 02:10 AM

Hint to anyone specializing in magic: visit the college of Winterhold early in your questing. Not only do you gain a ton of skill points for various magic skills, it's a large side quest with a lot of stuff to kill and people to meet.

I'm now switching my skillset to be a thief-mage with specialization in conjuration. I love summoning spirits to fight for me while I take pot shots at enemies with my 52dmg bow that does 2x damage and 30% chance of critical hit when I'm sneaking.

Buffalobiian

Thu, 11-17-2011, 03:26 AM

What would likely be the best dagger material?

I hope there are some top-class crafters and enchanters around. I'm not good at any of that.. but I can pay someone who is.

Dark Dragon

Thu, 11-17-2011, 04:59 AM

You can go gather Ebony and 1 Deadra heart to make the Deadra knife, they're the best crafted weapons in the game.

There's also a quest involving an invitation to a museum, that quest will eventually lead to one of the best dagger in the game if you choose to keep it.

Buffalobiian

Thu, 11-17-2011, 06:48 AM

I see, thanks for that. Good to know there's some good stuff out there. The best I've been able to come up with is a Steel Dagger (fine). Then again, I've only just begun to encounter Elven and Dwarven stuff.

I might as well make use of my Pickpocket tree to get more gold and treasures when I go scavenging.

Updated stats:

lvl20:

Sneak: 71
Lock-picking: 39
Pickpocketing: 62
Alchemy: 27
Restoration:22
One-handed: 43
Archery: 33
Light Armour: 35

Went to the mammoth grounds again and farmed one-handed instead. Too bad Whiterun keeps training more guards from their barracks. I almost assassinated them all too. Really, really wanted to make a ghost town out of that place to serve as an example of those who cross me.

PS: assassinating giants is fun. xD

TwisT

Thu, 11-17-2011, 07:38 AM

Money is not an issue anymore. With Speech at 50+ and the perks that goes with it, an amulet that gives 10% better prices and loot from dungeons i have like 60000. And then i spend about 10000 each level on upgrading smithing the last 3-4 levels. Really want to get that Dragon and Daedric smithing. Have so much Dragon Bones and Scales in my house now. But then i have always sold every magic item. Never disenchanted anything until the last level i got too.

My biggest problem with this run was that i didn't figured out that the carriage at the stables took you to other citys, so i avoided going to places like Winterhold because it was so far to run from Whiterun. And since i always fast traveled to places i never passed the stables. It wasn't until i ran by foot to Windhelm (explored it on my way to Winterhold) that i ran past that carriage and got reminded i had seen that outside Whiterun. Another thing was that i forgot about the fact you could buy skill-levels. First i saw it but didn't have money to waste on it. Then i forgot about it. Wasn't until i was lvl20+ i started to train at trainers.

That would be one reason to start over. Also to make the character the way i want it. To get Sneak, Dagger, Resto my main combat abilitys. And then just learn Summon Fire araoch (or whatever their name is) and get a manapool that is able to summon it. And then get Pickpocket for the training for free trick i heard about (train and then pickpocket the money back, preferably when they sleep), Speech so i can sell my loot for tons, and then maybe Destruction or Archery so i have a means to go range on their asses.

EDIT: How do you screenshot in this game? Can't find anything in controls and Print Screen don't seem to work. Do i need a program like Fraps or something or is there a hidden SS-hotkey? Just got a mask that is so good but me and my companion look pretty ridiculous since my companion has a Dragon Priest mask on.

Buffalobiian

Thu, 11-17-2011, 12:05 PM

Just completed one of the side quests that made my character (well.. me) think about where its morals really stood.

It's about the quest where a middle-eastern assassin-looking guy asks you to find this red guard girl in Whiterun and hand her over to them. Ignore if you wish to stay unspoiled.

So this guy comes up to me and asks me to hand over to him a red guard girl. I end up finding her in one of the shops working as a maid/attendant in Whiterun and tell her there are people after her. She tells me that she's a noble run because she spoke out against the ruling party or something. She asks me to help her, and that she's willing to pay me for it.

I was given two choices:
1) Go to the city where the assassins were and report that I've found the girl, or
2) visit the Dragonreach dungeons to talk to the recently arrested novice assassin from their squad and pump some info from him before raiding the assassin's base.

I figured that helping out a noble will get me some money and treasure, perhaps more so than what some assassin squad could offer. So I proceeded to the dungeon, but the guy refused to talk unless I bailed him out with 100 gold. It must have been a game-locked feature because the cell won't open without a key (can't be picked), yet none of the guards had the key to the cell (only to the dungeon itself).

Why don't I just pay up then? Well... I kinda killed all the guards stationed at the dungeons while I was exacting my revenge..(^see previous post). No one seems to wander in there neither.

Poor girl lucked out. So I went to the city and reported to the Assassin leader. He asked me to lead the girl outside to the stables so he doesn't have to deal with infiltrating the city and dealing with guards.

And so with the promise of gold in my mind, I went back to the shop. To the anxious girl who was waiting for my good news, I lied. I liked thrice. I told her that the assassins were coming right now, and that she needs to hop on to the horse I've prepared so she can get away. She puts all her trust in me and we leave for the stables.

We hurried down to the stables in the middle of the night. She was obviously hurrying.. desperate to slip past the hands of her pursuers. I wasn't quite so in a rush. In fact, if you cared to notice.. you would have noticed me hanging back a little.. eyes narrowed, mouth sneering at the back of the girl who was so naive to believe one as selfish as myself.

When we got to the stables and walked around the main building. She expected her horse. What greeted her from the shadows was a distinctively dressed Dark Elf. An outlandish binding spell stiffled her cry of dismay, and as I looked down at her mummified body, those frozen eyes stared back.

The dark elf assassin told me that she was responsible for the infiltration of the deadric(?) forces in the war down south. Had she not backstabbed them, some city wouldn't have fallen and the war would have been over much sooner. He warned me that I should not have trusted a pretty face (coming from a dark elf, LOL) and paid me handsomely before getting ready to transport the girl back for judgement.

So that was my night of dirty work done. I could have thought about how such a young girl would lead demonic forces into her home country, or whether the assassins were really the ones making things up.

But no. Only one thing crossed my mind.

-It's dark. ....There are no guards. ....And there's a man in front of me with his back turned.

Was.. a man, anyway. But that didn't matter. Turned out he had another 200 gold that I didn't know about.

With his death, the paralysis spell broke, and what emerged was the same woman as before. Same youthful face.. but a very different expression. She too called me a fool for trusting a pretty face before lunging at me.

I ran into the wilderness, hoping to lose her. The plan was to counter-track her after she gives up. I think I heard a jingle in her pocket earlier..

But I guess things don't always go according to plan in life. Who exactly plans for a dragon to pop in from above? It crashed and burned the area behind me. Two wolves seemed to have caught its attention, and perhaps that girl too.

Whatever caught it's eye didn't put up much of a fight. A few moments later, the dragon was once again looking for a source of entertainment. It found me.

It seemed unlikely that I could sneak my dagger into that thing, so I swapped over to an Elven sword I stole from the Jarl, and a Scimitar I stole from the Dark Elf just earlier.

The fools at Whiterun all call me Dragonborn. That I'm the descendant of some ancient race with talents for slaying dragons. Some sort of miracle. As I looked the dragon in the eye, I say to all that: "Bullshit".

I don't know squat about Dragonborns and what not. I don't even know who my parents are. If living on the streets taught you one thing, it's that you can't plan life - but you'd better prepare for it.

And so with a sword in hand, some eighty-nine potions and a will to live, Rachel faced her third dragon.

Dark Dragon

Thu, 11-17-2011, 12:36 PM

i spend about 10000 each level on upgrading smithing the last 3-4 levels.

EDIT: How do you screenshot in this game? Can't find anything in controls and Print Screen don't seem to work. Do i need a program like Fraps or something or is there a hidden SS-hotkey? Just got a mask that is so good but me and my companion look pretty ridiculous since my companion has a Dragon Priest mask on.

For people who plan to level smithing in the future, you don't need to spend a lot of money. Spamming Iron Daggers and Leather Bracers will work just fine and it takes about 10~ craft to gain one level at the 90's. Dragon's stuff are at 100 but they're not the best, the Deadric armor has higher defense than the Dragon's Bones armor. The only reason to bother with Dragon at all is if you prefer light armors because Dragon's Scales offer amazing defense for almost no weight. It's also much easier to get material for the Dragon's sets since Ebony and Deadric Hearts can be a bitch to gather.

Print Screen worked for me, your screen will freeze for a second if it's working properly. Then the screen shot file will be inside your Skyrim folder.

Buffalobiian

Thu, 11-17-2011, 12:39 PM

Is Dragon armour Light Armour classed, or just a lighter Heavy Armour?

Dark Dragon

Thu, 11-17-2011, 01:01 PM

Dragon's Scales are the same type as the Elven's gears so they are both considered light armors. Dragon's Bones are Plate Armors.

TwisT

Thu, 11-17-2011, 01:07 PM

Since it offers less armor but is a higher crafting status my guess it's light armor. Which is what i really want anyways since i sneak around a lot. Well i have used a caster robe since i got my first "50% higher regen" piece. Now i have a 125% robe so my guess i will never get an armor chest piece unless i can enchant 125% or more mana regen in the future.

http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/1589/skyrim01.th.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/846/skyrim01.jpg/) Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

My new mask i got is awesome. +10 speech, 20% better prices at vendor, 5% mana regen and 28 armor.

EDIT: What Dark Dragon said. You can make both. Finally some use for my bones/scales. Just went to my house and emptied my stash of crafting materials. Got myself like 20 Silver Bars, 50 Gold Bars, 150 Iron Bars, 100-200 Leather. I managed to craft from 75-100. only bad thing was that i gained 3 levels on it and i didnt go and train between. Always thought you would be able to just up one level, go to the trainer, up one more level and so on. But noooo. Had to level all at the same time. So 15 potential trained point turned to 5. And with 15 points trained i would probably gotten another level. So much lost potential >_<

So remember. Go train right away when you gain level instead of just continue crafting (if you plan on training for money that is).

Animeniax

Thu, 11-17-2011, 02:13 PM

animus

Thu, 11-17-2011, 04:07 PM

I did that quest too. Although I regret not siding with the girl, because I wanted to kill those guys and grab their scimitars for myself :/ Oh well.

Animeniax

Thu, 11-17-2011, 04:14 PM

You could always visit the city they're hanging out in and try to kill them there.

Ryllharu

Thu, 11-17-2011, 04:30 PM

I managed to craft from 75-100. only bad thing was that i gained 3 levels on it and i didnt go and train between. Always thought you would be able to just up one level, go to the trainer, up one more level and so on. But noooo. Had to level all at the same time. So 15 potential trained point turned to 5. And with 15 points trained i would probably gotten another level. So much lost potential >_<

So remember. Go train right away when you gain level instead of just continue crafting (if you plan on training for money that is).Huh?

I'm not clear on the trainers, mostly because I don't use them very much because they seem overpriced when I can just...use a skill more for free (except lockpicks since they are apparently made of sugar glass!). Do you mind explaining this one a bit more?

I take back what I said earlier, I'm probably not going to murder the Thieves Guild. They're more interesting than I had thought. I'll have to find some other affiliation to murder.

TwisT

Thu, 11-17-2011, 05:23 PM

Well every level you can train 5 skill points of you choosing for a fee. Let's say you want sneak. you have 30 in it. Then you train 5 points and get 35. It works just like when you gain it by sneaking around enemys. Every skill will award XP towards your next level. So let's say you have a level up but having gone to the meny yet and upped it. You go and train 5 points at a trainer, and then you up your level. Now you can train 5 more. Now thats 10 skillpoints worth of XP towards your next level. That should be more then 50% of that level. And the price i think is 10 times your skill level i think. So if you have 30 and gonna train to 31 it will cost 310 gold. Once you get to 51 it follows that formula. After that i think it's 30 times your skill level. So 51-52 will cost you 1560 gold.

You dont really get any extra advantages by doing this except it saves time but drains the purse. And it helps out by upping a single skill fast. For example sneak. Maybe it's so low you have problems sneaking around people. Well train it to 50 in a few levels and all of a sudden you can sneak around pretty good. That's how it was for smithing for me. It was low and i crafted some but neglected it in the beginning. Then i realized i watned that Dragon Armor and stuff since i had 40+ bones and scales. I think i ended up buying 30 levels of smithing from the trainer, and used my stashed materials to craft it to like 98. Then i just bought from vendors and then waited outside the shop for 48 hours and then bought their new shipment and BOOM, it was 100 ^^

Also what are you gonna do with all your money? After i bought my house and all the furniture, i haven't bought anything except spellbooks and the robe that gives 22%less cost on destruction spells and 125% mana regen. I always find better things then i can buy. When the shop sells Elven Dagger, i have already found a Glass Dagger. Once i find Dwarven things in the shops i loot Ebony from dungeons and enemys. I have 68000 now and i reckon i have spent at least 50000 on skill points so far. it will cost you between 1000-2500 to train 5 skills when it's under 51. And almost 10000 when its over 51. Unless someone knows of stuff costing over 100k then there is no reason to hoard money like crazy.

The explanation got a little long winded.

BTW does daedric smithing allow for creating weapons? Because Dragon smithing didn't. Want to craft weapons better then Ebony. But don't wanna waste a perk on it. Oh and DAMN improving weapons and armor became great once i had 100 in smithing. Upped my companions Ebony War Axe that had 42 in damage. It got upped to 68 damage. And her Dragon Plate armor that had 50-something in armor got upped to 80-something.

Dark Dragon

Thu, 11-17-2011, 06:47 PM

I'm not sure i understand Twist explanation.

The iron dagger that take 1 iron + 1 leather strip will still give you skill up points at level 99. It doesn't cost anywhere near 10,000 for 10 level of skill points until maybe level 80+? I find that leveling smithing is generally so easy that you're better off saving your 5 training per level for harder to get skills. The cheapest and fastest way to level smithing is just go gather as much Iron and Leather as you can and make Iron Dagger or Leather Bracers (1 leather + 2 strips). It will always be cheaper for you to go buy iron + leather and skill up from that rather than pay a trainer for it as far as smithing is concern.

Deadric gears use the same material as their Ebony counterpart + 1 Deadric heart. Deadric weapons are the best available crafted weapons in the game. It still cost just one Ebony Ingot to upgrade each piece (same as Ebony) so as long as you have Ebony you're good. You might have some difficulty getting enough Ebony Ingots for the Deadric set though if you've created a full Ebony set. Deadric Armor is also the strongest non-unique set in the game since each piece is a few defense points higher than Dragon's Bones. If you have the full Deadric set then there's really no benefit to getting level 100 smithing unless you simply just prefer light armor (Dragon's Scales). I think Dragon is just higher in skill level because the material is so common as oppose to Deadric Hearts which is rather rare and expensive.

If you're having trouble finding Ebony, go sleep for about a month game time. That how long it takes for the mining points to repspawn. The best Ebony mining spot is southeast of Windhelm hugging the mountains. The mine is right behind an orc fortress that require a special quest for you to enter, but the mine itself doesn't require anything though so you can just walk the around the fortress to enter. The orc inside won't become hostile, they'll just trash talk you the entire time while you're looting their precious Ebony.

TwisT

Thu, 11-17-2011, 08:35 PM

Yea it's cheaper to craft by yourself, but it's faster to just spend some cash instead. That's what i meant by not hoarding your money. Unless you guys have a cash flow problem? And what about sneak, lockpick, onehand, archery and so on. Can't just go buy shit to level. If it's already low it can be a pain to get up. So if you have the cash, why sit on it. Use it for some fast leveling of those crucial skills that you need. 3 points away from getting that awesome perk in a combat skill? Well go train instead of playing 3 hours to reach it is my advice. BTW if you have a problem with cash a good way to earn it is to by Iron Ore from vendors. then get the Minerals Transmutation spell (adept alteration spell) When you used that spell it will turn Iron ore to Silver ore, and then Silver ore to Gold Ore. Then start hoarding Iron Ore and stash it. Once you have plenty just put on your best magic regen gear and start transmuting everything. Then smelt it down to Ingots and start making jewelry of it. Boosts smithing and gets you cash big time when you sell it all.

Oh and if money ain't a problem, best place to get Ebony is from vendor ;)

The weapons & armor vendor in Whiterun usually have 5 Ebony Ingots to sell for me. Don't know if thats because I'm lvl37 or if it's because i sell high level gear to him. Don't remember him selling fancy things like that early on in the game. So if i really need it i will just buy, wait/sleep for 48 hours then repeat until i have the desired number. But so far i have only needed Ebony to improve my weapons and armor i have found since i don't have the crafting skill. I went Elven, Improved, Glass and Dragon since i don't use heavy armor myself. but my weapon problem have fixed itself now.

SPOILER

i went and did all the Daedric quests i had in my journal. And one (think it was Molag Bal) gave me a one hand mace that when upgraded has almost 90 damage and an awesome enchantment on it. It does 20 stamina and 20 magic damage and if the target dies within 3 seconds of getting hit he will fill a soul gem. So now i have soulgems to replenish the charges to. But when i went to Winterhold for a quest, the townsfolk started telling me "Get that cursed mace away from me" and shit so seem at some places people know what it is. My guess is at some point i will get attacked by some group just for wearing it.

Buffalobiian

Thu, 11-17-2011, 09:00 PM

And what about sneak, lockpick, onehand, archery and so on.

Besides hunting Mammoths, I also farmed my skills by attacking this Liar guy outside Whiterun. He doesn't report you, he doesn't fight back, and he doesn't die. I just sat there dicing him whenever he got up.

I really need to find some more good places to steal from, or a land filthy rich in ingredients. I've got a lot of potions, by only a smaller amount is really that useful (and can run low at times), such as Health and Stamina.

The weapons & armor vendor in Whiterun usually have 5 Ebony Ingots to sell for me.

Hmm... can't remember if I killed the owner.. :S

animus

Fri, 11-18-2011, 01:00 AM

Splash!

Fri, 11-18-2011, 02:41 AM

Around level 16 so far, with a focus on Destruction Magic (Frost focused as well), One handed Weapons, Light Armor primarily and secondarily Enchanting. Gonna be a bitch trying to get smithing up for the end game armor sets.

The iron dagger technique that Dark Dragon mentioned is very effective. If you have a bit of money to spare, just buy as many iron ingots and leather strips as you can and mass produce daggers (this is way more cost effective than paying a trainer). Smithing is probably one of the easiest skills to level up. But yeah, power leveling smithing won't do a lot of good unless you have access to the raw materials required to make higher level armors (unless you want to go all the way to 100 and make dragon armor, for which you can easily find raw materials)

Speech, on the other hand, is causing me a lot of grief. I know life in Skyrim would be alot easier if I were richer, but I simply am not making enough money because my speech skill is at about 29 (level 13) and am just not getting good bargains on all the loot from plundering. I haven't even gone for the 5k house yet (just storing my spare items in the Companians Dorm in Whiterun and checking on them regularly to make sure stuff doesn't dissappear).

Animeniax

Fri, 11-18-2011, 02:43 AM

Around level 16 so far, with a focus on Destruction Magic (Frost focused as well), One handed Weapons, Light Armor primarily and secondarily Enchanting. Gonna be a bitch trying to get smithing up for the end game armor sets.

Not at all. Read around, I think it has been mentioned in this thread. I got my smithing up to 41 in about 20 minutes of making leather bracers at the blacksmith forge.

It's awesome being able to use the grindstone to improve your weapons. My superior elven bow does 62 base damage now. Once I get good at conjuring spirits to tank for me, I'll sit back and shoot arrows at my foes.

Kraco

Fri, 11-18-2011, 03:32 AM

Do the dragons have some bounding box/damage detecting issues? My Breton isn't that tough at level 10, but I decided to have a look at the dragon the Winterhold jarl would pay a bounty for. I was sneaking closer and happened to end up to a spot between some rocks that caused the dragon to hang between sitting at its favorite place and jumping to the air. So, it was statistically hovering a foot above the ground. I must have sent 30 arrows its way (since it looked like there was absolutely no way to miss) but the dragon took zero damage. When I moved to a different spot, the dragon finally decided to attack and I couldn't beat it.

animus

Fri, 11-18-2011, 09:19 AM

The iron dagger technique that Dark Dragon mentioned is very effective. If you have a bit of money to spare, just buy as many iron ingots and leather strips as you can and mass produce daggers (this is way more cost effective than paying a trainer). Smithing is probably one of the easiest skills to level up. But yeah, power leveling smithing won't do a lot of good unless you have access to the raw materials required to make higher level armors (unless you want to go all the way to 100 and make dragon armor, for which you can easily find raw materials)

Speech, on the other hand, is causing me a lot of grief. I know life in Skyrim would be alot easier if I were richer, but I simply am not making enough money because my speech skill is at about 29 (level 13) and am just not getting good bargains on all the loot from plundering. I haven't even gone for the 5k house yet (just storing my spare items in the Companians Dorm in Whiterun and checking on them regularly to make sure stuff doesn't dissappear).

Hm, I guess I'll try that when I stop being lazy and have the need and materials to craft those higher end sets.

Do the dragons have some bounding box/damage detecting issues? My Breton isn't that tough at level 10, but I decided to have a look at the dragon the Winterhold jarl would pay a bounty for. I was sneaking closer and happened to end up to a spot between some rocks that caused the dragon to hang between sitting at its favorite place and jumping to the air. So, it was statistically hovering a foot above the ground. I must have sent 30 arrows its way (since it looked like there was absolutely no way to miss) but the dragon took zero damage. When I moved to a different spot, the dragon finally decided to attack and I couldn't beat it.

Don't quote me, but I believe the random encounter dragons scale with your level.

Kraco

Fri, 11-18-2011, 10:39 AM

Don't quote me, but I believe the random encounter dragons scale with your level.

They must, since the random dragon I slew after exiting Windhelm was easier than a white sabertooth. But the one I was talking about isn't random encounter; it's a named quest wyrm. I wasn't really expecting to be able to beat it (and I wasn't about to exhaust my potion reserves or anything for its sake). I was merely wondering if it's a common bug they don't do collision detection with arrows.

Splash!

Fri, 11-18-2011, 12:48 PM

@Kraco

How high is your marksman skill? I remember the way things worked in the older elder scrolls (Morrowind) was that shooting a mudcrab at point blank range with an archery skill between 10-30 worked only 30% of the time. As you mastered it, you could make impossible shots that would self correct, even if your aim was slightly off. Although in Skyrim it isn't as ridiculous, maybe it's a question of how far you were from the Dragon. If you were quite far away, your archery skill might be coming into play regardless of how huge the target is. Either that or it's a one time glitch. Plenty of those happen all the time. I have defeated a couple of enemies that would have probably killed me, had they not gotten stuck chasing me around the corner of a turn.

Kraco

Sat, 11-19-2011, 11:24 AM

The performance of the Thalmor assassination squad left me wondering how they managed to conquer so much land and make the Empire yield. They looked suspicious trotting down the road (and who wouldn't claim the chance when some dominion fools erred far away from towns?), so I decided to donate a few arrows to their cause. The warrior receiving the first arrow was quick to turn around and come beg for more, but apparently not quick enough because the Thalmor wizard blasted some lightning spell right in the back of his ally. The end result was funnily the warrior flying right past me. So, I only needed to sort out the wizard and the other warrior.

Animeniax

Sat, 11-19-2011, 11:27 AM

I attacked that trio too, not sure why. Might have been their haughty self-importance and lack of respect for my station. With my 74dmg bow and 3x sneak attack, I killed each one with ease. I don't know what killing Thalmor will do for you. Maybe attract the brotherhood?

Got my smithing up to 60 with just an hour's work and buying lots of leather. Now I can upgrade all my magical weapons and armor. Even with 180-220armor and 35dmg blade, I still got my ass kicked by some weak mobs. Not sure what's up with the hit/dmg calculations in the game.

Buffalobiian

Sat, 11-19-2011, 12:27 PM

TWICE!

I'm in a mess involving a dragon, a giant, an ice-troll, some bandits, my lackey and myself..

TWICE I've died because holding ALT to sprint, then pressing TAB to access your inventory = ALT-TAB to windows...

/me is very, very pissed right now.

Splash!

Sat, 11-19-2011, 12:48 PM

TWICE!
I'm in a mess involving a dragon, a giant, an ice-troll, some bandits, my lackey and myself..

Lol, that is indeed quite a mess. At level 16, if I catch even sight of a single Frost Troll, I take of all my heavy armor and just sprint the hell out of there.

Animeniax

Sat, 11-19-2011, 12:57 PM

I hate hitting the wrong key. I can never get the Z key to use my shouts, I always press X by mistake. Very frustrating.

But I always hit 'i' for inventory instead using tab.

If one of the other mobs kills the dragon that you're fighting, do you gain less exp for the kill? You still get the dragon soul and loot of course, but I hate damaging the dragon down to a sliver of health, then losing the finishing hit to a troll.

Splash!

Sat, 11-19-2011, 01:16 PM

If one of the other mobs kills the dragon that you're fighting, do you gain less exp for the kill? You still get the dragon soul and loot of course, but I hate damaging the dragon down to a sliver of health, then losing the finishing hit to a troll.

There is no experience gaining in the traditional RPG sense, just improving skills. So basically, the more strikes you make with a sword, the more arrows you shoot at an enemy, the more you blast them with destruction spells, etc. Delivering the final blow is just another blow. Nothing special in terms of improving your skills. So no, it doesn't really matter if you did the majority of the fighting and somebody came and finished it off.

Buffalobiian

Sat, 11-19-2011, 02:03 PM

Lol, that is indeed quite a mess. At level 16, if I catch even sight of a single Frost Troll, I take of all my heavy armor and just sprint the hell out of there.

Yeah.. being a melee assassin/thief, I really need those guys around though. I just can't seem to sneak up on dragons. Now that I'm 100 sneak though, let's see if Shadow Warrior does anything..

(As for that fight, the Giant sent the ice troll flying, and served as the primary target for the Dragon though it in turn wanted to attack me instead. Its pummelled the dragon while I dual-sworded it to death. Then the bandits killed the troll because it had a touch of health left. Turned out the bandits were actually part of the Company, so I said Hi and raided an Imperial camp instead.

PS: It's simply badass when you deal a finishing-move in Third Person with an arrow through your eye/skull.

Kraco

Sat, 11-19-2011, 03:52 PM

I attacked that trio too, not sure why. Might have been their haughty self-importance and lack of respect for my station. With my 74dmg bow and 3x sneak attack, I killed each one with ease. I don't know what killing Thalmor will do for you. Maybe attract the brotherhood?

The wizard, their boss no doubt, was carrying a letter ordering your death. Quite a flattering letter, in fact, calling you extremely dangerous etc.

I lost a dragon due to being too busy slaughtering bandits. The wyrm just flew away before I got a chance to attract its attention. Oh well, I guess there will be others.

Animeniax

Sat, 11-19-2011, 03:59 PM

Spoilerish concerning the dragons returning to Skyrim... which you'd know about if you found the horn of Jurgen, but speaking of "losing a dragon"
.
.
.
.
So we find out what's been waking the dragons. I shot at the mob waking the dragons and chased it away. So the mound continued to emanate power and pulsate, but no dragon came out. I reloaded and let the mob wake the dragon then killed the dragon (mob left). Not sure how it would have affected the game to leave that dragon half-awake in its tomb.

Xelbair

Sat, 11-19-2011, 06:13 PM

I've met my first forest troll at lv 7, skills mostly oriented towards melee combat back then... i've killed it - but only thanks to the nord's racial power and unrelenting force lv 1.
Right now with my gear(smithing and enchanting <3) most of the enemies aren't problematic.

Buffalobiian

Sun, 11-20-2011, 01:12 AM

I think my favourite thing about being Khajiit (besides their inherent qualities) is how brutal they can look in kill-cams. Very animalistic and brutal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83phM8ZNKaY

Buggy ver.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Zs4tKrCVA

Animeniax

Sun, 11-20-2011, 02:31 AM

I need to get my sneak to that point where I can be right in front of them and they don't detect me. Backstab with 15x dmg perk is the best.

Buffalobiian

Sun, 11-20-2011, 04:00 AM

My sneak skill is 100. It's pretyy amazing. I used a potion of invisibility in front of a dragon, but it didn't work.. Dunno if it's cuz he still blasted me with frost so it got dispelled, or if dragons are immune to those effects like they to poisons (or whichever poison I used that it happened to be immune against)

Kraco

Sun, 11-20-2011, 04:07 AM

That's ridiculous already. It's sad to say this, but Oblivion's sneaking wasn't that flawed. Bill's location isn't even in darkness yet the female bandit saw nothing when two of her allies were gutted right in front of her.

I "lost" another dragon. It did nothing but circle in the sky, sometimes flying past even quite near but never attacking or landing even though I must have sent 20-30 arrows its way plus lots of spells. Most never hit but I'm sure a bunch should have flown close enough to get the beast's attention. I wasn't even sneaking. There must be something I'm fundamentally misunderstanding here, but regardless it makes collecting dragon souls harder.

Edit: I wonder if it's my character's looks that make Intimidation work so much more often than Persuasion... Even though my playing style must be 300% gentler than Bill's psychopath killer's style.

Dark Dragon

Sun, 11-20-2011, 07:23 AM

Penner

Sun, 11-20-2011, 08:18 AM

Yeah i had a Dragon just fly around over me abit then fly off, but i reloaded the save to check if it was because my arrows missed or not, and it was. As soon as one of my arrows actually hit it, his healthbar appeared and he started attacking me and the nearby guards, so i guess you have to actually damage it to fully get it's attention :p

Buffalobiian

Sun, 11-20-2011, 10:28 AM

That's ridiculous already. It's sad to say this, but Oblivion's sneaking wasn't that flawed. Bill's location isn't even in darkness yet the female bandit saw nothing when two of her allies were gutted right in front of her.

Hence the "buggy ver". It's actually a lot more "realistic" usually.

But still.. it's pretty far from actual realism. Not that I mind. I'd hate to see sneak turn out to be MGS.

-unless I had a cardboard box.

Animeniax

Sun, 11-20-2011, 10:51 AM

I think i've officially went too far with upgrading.

Maxed enchanting and smithing.

Enchantments = 4x 40% bonus one hand damage, 4x 40% bonus archery damage, 2x 50 health, 2x -25% restoration cost.

My one hand Deadric Axe hit for something like 180 damage + 25 fire damage and paralyze on hit, so pretty much two shotting giants now. I take almost no damage and heal it all back up for free. I did not anticipate all of these upgrades to be this overpowered so it kinda makes the game boring now.

I think i'll reroll and play a pure mage.You should see if you can change the difficulty level to make the mobs harder to kill. I think using a mage won't make the game any more challenging, especially once you improve destruction skills and you can chain lightning an entire room of mobs and kill them all without taking any damage yourself.

Ryllharu

Sun, 11-20-2011, 12:10 PM

@Buff: All the assassinations look like that. It's just you've got a kitty face, where I've got a stern, All-Business Nord face. By the way, there are few things as fun as having your companion distract them, while they run past you. You get to assassinate them, and the kill-cam shows you slicing a throat while your companion was busy blocking.

That's fucking teamwork.

------------------

The real game-changer for me is the 30% faster draw perk on Archery. Combine that with the stagger half the time, and bows become a very viable in almost all forms of combat. The number seems small, but I was kind of shocked how much more effective it makes me. I can even get in two sneak attacks while being in line of sight before I'm spotted by my target (sneak is about 92). Once I get the Ranger perk that lets me walk faster with a drawn bow, I should be able to kite most enemies, while shooting them directly in the face.

I completed the Companions arc [spoilers]:[keeping the Circle as they were, only curing the former Harbinger] and am about halfway through the Thieves Guild quests and also just joined the Dark Brotherhood. Life is good.

Got a sweet daedric quest armor from a random sidequest, so it fits with the whole vibe my character is starting to exude (See Below). A sort of "gone native" even though she already is a Nord, and embracing the daedric influences, while still generally doing as much good as possible. Just breaking most of the laws without ever getting caught. Enjoying what she became, and using all the advantages that it brings, rather than lamenting over it.

That, by the way, is why I love Bethesda games. You get to make up your own character story. While they still do the quests as written, you get to really build your own character, not live out someone else's.

I still can't take a lot of damage, but now that I've got a really kickass battle-axe, I can start to build up blocking when things get really hairy.

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/2483/daedrichuntress.th.jpg (http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/2483/daedrichuntress.jpg)

Buffalobiian

Sun, 11-20-2011, 12:33 PM

Animeniax

Sun, 11-20-2011, 02:04 PM

Buffalobiian

Sun, 11-20-2011, 02:24 PM

I'm playing on adept mode. I wonder how many of you are on apprentice or easy mode, because I seem to struggle to kill mobs that you all are breezing through. Once my equipment/skills get too high, I'll switch to the next higher difficulty, though I've heard there may be a bug preventing it.

There's a bug? Hmm.. that sucks. They even made a point that you can change difficulty on the fly (eg during battles) so that you can.. you know, choose the one that "best suits you".

Update:

Khajiit, lvl28, Adept difficutly.

Sneak: 100
Pocket:77
1-Hand: 56
Lite Arm: 47
Locks: 47
Arch: 33
Alchem: 28
Rest: 27
Ench: 22

Magicka: 130
Health: 220
Stamina: 220

Weapons: Twin Dwarven Daggers (14x2 base damage). Sometimes switching to Elven sword + Scimitar when against dragons.

Apparel: Forsworn gaunts, headress, Glass boots, Scaled Horn armour (armour = 115), Necklace (+20HP), Ring (+15% 1-hand dmg)

Sneak is essential to my playstyle. I can take on some bandits in close combat, but that's about it. Saber-cats prolly need potions (been a while since I fought one square). I won't even think about direct combat with bears, trolls or giants.

You can't block with dual-wielding, but you can sure as hell:

-Pummel them with alternating attacks that drain their stamina like crazy - then stagger at the end
-Use lots of dual-power attacks (or even normal power attacks for the +25% critical) with my good stamina to take them down fast
-Use dual normal attack to give 14 x 2 x 1.4 (one-hand bonus perk) x 1.15 (ring bonus) x 15 (Assassin's blade) = 676.2pts dmg on first strike.

Halve that if you want cool animation on weaker dudes.

Animeniax

Sun, 11-20-2011, 02:27 PM

Are the health/stamina/magicka stats your base stats or with enchantments/equipment?

The bug may not be universal, I just searched and found a thread where a guy complains that the difficulty setting won't change. Might be a personal problem. I haven't tried it myself.

Buffalobiian

Sun, 11-20-2011, 02:33 PM

Base stats. I only use my mana to heal in between battles though (but lately in between dragon swoops too), so I think it's wasted. I should have shared it between the other two categories. I can always wait a little bit longer after a battle to recover, or swap on a coat that gives +50% mana regen to help out. 1 extra unit of weight is pretty easy to handle.

Ryllharu

Sun, 11-20-2011, 02:55 PM

I'm playing on adept mode. I wonder how many of you are on apprentice or easy mode, because I seem to struggle to kill mobs that you all are breezing through. Once my equipment/skills get too high, I'll switch to the next higher difficulty, though I've heard there may be a bug preventing it.
We're just not mentioning it that often. I've said it before, I'll say it again. If get caught, I die. I've never adjusted the difficultly, so I'm on Adept. I save a lot. As in, each time before I crest the next hill, every larger room in a dungeon.

Some mobs are easy, some (bandit camp halfway between Falkreath and Solitude) take me a dozen tries or more. I still get killed by bears if they catch me unaware and I don't use potions. Same with Saber Cats. People with two handed weapons still two-shot me. This is largely because I rarely upped my Health and focused on entirely on Stamina. It has gotten worse since I switched to even lighter armor for aesthetic and magical bonuses reasons. I run around the corner a lot, wait for sneak to go Hidden again. I shoot from nearly my max range whenever I can.

If you're not big on Destruction or Heavy Armor/Block/Restoration, the character requires quite a bit more strategy in each encounter. It's similar to the Fallouts. If you played SmallGuns/Guns (FO3/NV), the game was a piece of cake. In fact, with NV, the game was a joke with high Guns skills. I played on Very Hard and had absolutely no problem. If you played Energy or melee without T-51B, the games were more difficult.

Some builds just work better than others. Skyrim isn't anywhere near as bad as Oblivion, where MinMaxing was a requirement, not a suggestion.

Kraco

Sun, 11-20-2011, 03:55 PM

When snooping through an ancient fortress for a quest, I happened to release a prisoner. Now the fucking idiot is following me like a dog, ruining my sneaking action and as if that wasn't enough, he's always faithfully there to block my way so that when the enemies spot us, I can't back off from the fire and in fact act as a shield for the cretin. I think I'll do bills and relieve him from his fear of bad mages. Permanently.

Animeniax

Sun, 11-20-2011, 06:35 PM

Does anyone know if smithing equipment at Skyforge in Whiterun gives better stats than at other forges?

Also, it's tough to find blacksmith potions... but if anyone is doing smithing, be sure to quaff one for an instant 20% boost to the stats of anything you smith. Only lasts 30 seconds, so plan your smithing and have all required components ready to go.

Kraco

Sun, 11-20-2011, 07:05 PM

There never was a more satisfying slitting a throat scene than the one produced from sneaking behind the fool I mentioned in my previous post...

Also, it's tough to find blacksmith potions... but if anyone is doing smithing, be sure to quaff one for an instant 20% boost to the stats of anything you smith. Only lasts 30 seconds, so plan your smithing and have all required components ready to go.

Assuming the ingredients aren't overly difficult to locate, you could make the potion yourself.

I also used to think the saber tooths are difficult opponents but when I was killing one giant by shooting and running, as luck would have it, I encountered not one but two saber tooths while being chased by the angry giant. I froze the first one with a Shout, then offed the second in mere moments with a nice impaling animation. I don't even know how I killed it so easily and fast. I should find one on purpose to see if it was only fool's luck.

Mediocre Daedric quest spoiler: I happened to perform the Sanguine quest and goddam the fire mage was more difficult than any other opponent I'd faced so far. I really need to acquire fire resistance in some form, though I don't know how much it would have helped unless the percentage was really high.

UChessmaster

Sun, 11-20-2011, 08:09 PM

So knowing nothing about this game, if i didn`t liked Elder Scrolls 4, is there a chance i might like this?

Ryllharu

Sun, 11-20-2011, 08:55 PM

Does anyone know if smithing equipment at Skyforge in Whiterun gives better stats than at other forges?I don't think so, but I made my Daedric Bow there just to be sure.

It lets you forge Nordic weapons if you finish the Companion questline. Plentiful to make with ancient nord weapons and steel ingots...but they're not that good.

Animeniax

Sun, 11-20-2011, 09:08 PM

Assuming the ingredients aren't overly difficult to locate, you could make the potion yourself.I've sampled pretty much every ingredient I've seen in the game (I'm lvl33 now) and didn't find one that said it could help with skills, only stats and spell effects.

So knowing nothing about this game, if i didn`t liked Elder Scrolls 4, is there a chance i might like this?Depends on what you didn't like about Oblivion. If you don't like open world RPGs in a D&D type world, then you won't like Skyrim.

Buffalobiian

Sun, 11-20-2011, 09:16 PM

So knowing nothing about this game, if i didn`t liked Elder Scrolls 4, is there a chance i might like this?

Prolly. I wasn't a bit fan of Oblivion.

When snooping through an ancient fortress for a quest, I happened to release a prisoner. Now the fucking idiot is following me like a dog, ruining my sneaking action and as if that wasn't enough, he's always faithfully there to block my way so that when the enemies spot us, I can't back off from the fire and in fact act as a shield for the cretin. I think I'll do bills and relieve him from his fear of bad mages. Permanently.

See? Should have done what I did. I bet you know what I did. :P

@Ryll: wait till you get Shadow warrior, and perform the move in 3rd person. I didn't know exactly what it meant by "stops combat for a moment". Turns out, you actually go invisible for one second.

At long ranges like yourself, it forces people to lose you. For me, when I get tied up in close combat, I duck - go invisible - and 15x on him in that split second that he loses track of me.

It's useful WHEN I get found, but normally I just either sneak up on them from behind - or roll up really quickly in their face if they're looking at me and double-slice them before they're aware of me. The latter works too, since with high sneak it also affects how long they take to detect you after seeing you (in the dark/dungeons anyway - pretty sure daylight will may be different).

btw: has anybody encountered a dragon at night yet?

edit: Bethesda has announced at the official Elder Scrolls forums that the next patch for Skyrim is due to go live 'the week after Thanksgiving.'

Ryllharu

Sun, 11-20-2011, 09:28 PM

btw: has anybody encountered a dragon at night yet?
I did, right in the middle of Falkreath. I also killed one on top of a mountain close to Riften at night. The fire of the latter was truly blinding.

Buffalobiian

Sun, 11-20-2011, 09:30 PM

I did, right in the middle of Falkreath. I also killed one on top of a mountain close to Riften at night. The fire of the latter was truly blinding.

Ah, good. Hopefully the dragon's eyesight is affected at night. I'm always hoping that sneaking on them is not 100% hopeless.

Ryllharu

Sun, 11-20-2011, 09:32 PM

I did get a 3.0x arrow modifier on the mountaintop one. It was asleep after all. But don't expect it to do too much. The fight was still tough, it actually got worse when it landed. It followed me around the pillars I had previously been hiding behind to get away from its fire breathing.

edit:
This was ages ago, back below Level 16 and the random amulet find that gives me 40% fire resistance.

Now I shoot them in the face while they're breathing fire on me. Frost ones mess me up pretty bad still.

Splash!

Sun, 11-20-2011, 09:39 PM

btw: has anybody encountered a dragon at night yet?

Oddly enough, I have killed about 7 dragons and haven't encountered a single one during the day.

@Ryllharu: The frost ones trouble you more? As a Nord, I find that the frost breath attacks barely hurt me, whereas the fire does alot more damage. Of the 7 I have faced, 5 were frost dragons, whereas 2 were the regular fire types.

Ryllharu

Sun, 11-20-2011, 10:20 PM

@Ryllharu: The frost ones trouble you more? As a Nord, I find that the frost breath attacks barely hurt me, whereas the fire does alot more damage. Of the 7 I have faced, 5 were frost dragons, whereas 2 were the regular fire types.
It's a really good amulet. The frost isn't nearly as bad as when my Imperial Shield Maiden faces it, that's true, but I'm used to not even having to heal. I guess it is a relative scale.

By the way, I faced my first Elder Dragon. It was a frost one (of course). I got too close and got chomped on. Damn thing nearly killed me in one blow! Watch out for them, they're covered in knobbly spikes. I still made short work of it thanks to the (Epic) Daedric Bow.

Buffalobiian

Sun, 11-20-2011, 11:20 PM

Just had some good chuckles reading this review.

http://games.on.net/article/14258/Epic_Review_Skyrim_PC

Animeniax

Mon, 11-21-2011, 01:07 AM

This was ages ago, back below Level 16 and the random amulet find that gives me 40% fire resistance.

Now I shoot them in the face while they're breathing fire on me. Frost ones mess me up pretty bad still.

I found some scaled boots with 50% fire resistance. If I can find that amulet, I'd be nearly impervious to fire attacks.

Does anyone know, are dragon scaled and bones required to make dragon armor? I thought scales would go to making scaled armor, but it turns our that's corundrum. It seems blacksmithing potions do not replenish at alchemy stores.

My armor is currently at 330 without a shield and at 387 with a shield.

Has anyone become a slave of a daedric god yet? I turned down my only offer so far. Had to kill two daedric minions, but then it wouldn't let me loot their armor.

Kraco

Mon, 11-21-2011, 04:01 AM

I've sampled pretty much every ingredient I've seen in the game (I'm lvl33 now) and didn't find one that said it could help with skills, only stats and spell effects.

If you feel like going through lots of ingredients (perhaps with a save-load cycle) mixing potions at random will reveal more effects than just eating raw samples.

Has anyone become a slave of a daedric god yet? I turned down my only offer so far. Had to kill two daedric minions, but then it wouldn't let me loot their armor.

Slave? You mean something beyond the normal daedric quests? Doesn't sound too tempting to become a slave. Especially of a Prince of Oblivion. The quests, at least the three I've tasted so far, are more involving and longer than those in Oblivion.

Ryllharu

Mon, 11-21-2011, 04:05 AM

It seems blacksmithing potions do not replenish at alchemy stores.
Concerning blacksmithing potions, you absolutely can craft them. I only know one of the ingredients, so it doesn't mean much for me right now. I actually read about it in a book in game. If you can find another, you can make a potion.

Highlight only if you want to know: [ Sabre Cat Tooth ]

Xelbair

Mon, 11-21-2011, 08:19 AM

I've finally hit 100 smithing and crafted my full set of dragonscale armor(legendary) and the deadric sword(legendary too). now i just need to skill up my enchanting to make it way more awesome. I've put magica regen on head and chest, and on boots and gloves I've put one handed dmg, on shield - extra hp.

Animeniax

Mon, 11-21-2011, 09:14 AM

Concerning blacksmithing potions, you absolutely can craft them. I only know one of the ingredients, so it doesn't mean much for me right now. I actually read about it in a book in game. If you can find another, you can make a potion.

Highlight only if you want to know: [ Sabre Cat Tooth ]

Yeah I got tired after checking shops at 4 major cities so I looked it up and found a recipe for them. I didn't pay close attention to the ingredients, I just wanted to know if it was possible to make them.

Slave? You mean something beyond the normal daedric quests? Doesn't sound too tempting to become a slave. Especially of a Prince of Oblivion. The quests, at least the three I've tasted so far, are more involving and longer than those in Oblivion.Not sure if it was a daedric quest or not. It was a quest to find the components necessary to trek to the altar of one of the deities, but once I got there I refused to do what he commanded, so maybe I prevented my chance of even starting the quest.

Kraco

Mon, 11-21-2011, 04:00 PM

Sounds like you refused a quest. Aedra are boring, Daedra amusing, so in my opinion you should always accept their quests, even if you momentarily needed to breach your general playing style.

TwisT

Mon, 11-21-2011, 04:50 PM

Playing on Adept too and i haven't really had any problems so far. But I've used the combo 1h weapon and adept healing spell to fight. Starting to notice it getting a little harder now that i swapped to 2x1h daggers.

But i also notice that the dragons scale with your level. So they where all easy before, but i faced 2 ancient dragons (1 fire and 1 frost) at Winterhold Collage. And i have 400hp and it nearly one shot me. And the fire one 1 shots with his breath if i can't hide behind something or spam heals while he does it. But full hp and 1 bite and I'm down to critical hp. If I'm not at full hp it swaps to a killcam right away.

Does anyone know what the level cap is? I'm lvl47 now. Fallout had level caps at 30 if i remember correctly and got upped by expansion packs. My fear is that there is a level cap of 50.

Something funny i noticed. When i went for the dragon armor i went the path of elven-improved-glass-dragon. Turns out i can't get daedric by continuing from dragon to daedric. I have to waste 3 perk points just to get there so now that out of the question. And to whoever wondered, yes you need both scales and bones to make the heavy dragon armor (dragonbone armor) but only scales for the light.

I managed to get my sneak to 100 now after finishing The Dark Brotherhood quest line. Much sneaking and sneak crits skyrockeded it ^^. By far the funniest quest line so far.

BTW there are gloves that double sneak crit. I can't be without them anymore. x30 sneak crit 1shot even the biggest enemys so far. Never been able to hit a dragon or a Dwarven Sentinel yet. Before i used to do a power hit to make sure they went down. Now i can just kill everything with a regular slash.

Animeniax

Mon, 11-21-2011, 05:01 PM

Sounds like you refused a quest. Aedra are boring, Daedra amusing, so in my opinion you should always accept their quests, even if you momentarily needed to breach your general playing style.

I found out you don't really miss out on much except for receiving a powerful weapon.

I read the level cap is 50 (intended) or 70 (theoretical).

I also hear you can get married in this game.

Ryllharu

Mon, 11-21-2011, 05:13 PM

BTW there are gloves that double sneak crit. I can't be without them anymore. x30 sneak crit 1shot even the biggest enemys so far. Never been able to hit a dragon or a Dwarven Sentinel yet. Before i used to do a power hit to make sure they went down. Now i can just kill everything with a regular slash.Same. I love those gloves. Before I'd have to risk it when going for a blade assassination, not sure if it would be a one-shot. Now nearly all are. Regular slashes ensure more kill cams too.

I also hear you can get married in this game.
Yup, you just need to buy (or find) an Amulet of Mara. I bought one off a traveling priest in Riften, and he explained the whole process. There is a good variety and selection of suitors for both male and female player characters. Though some need to have their quests fulfilled before they'll go for it (or strangely enough, merely hired as a companion. Guess everyone puts out for gold).

I'm pretty sure it's only heterosexual...Bioware didn't make this.

Buffalobiian

Mon, 11-21-2011, 08:33 PM

Does anyone know what the level cap is?

Levelling after lvl50 is hard. Theoretical cap is 81.

I haven't got those gloves yet, but I'm getting by well enough.

Last night I confirmed that I can take down dragons one-on-one. Did manage to sneak up on this one perched up somewhere. With Shadow Warrior turning me invisible, I just crouch and 15x them. It doesn't always work on dragons.. maybe 20-30% of the time?

No homosexual marriage? I'm not marrying a guy... (it pained me to kill this one bandit too. She was the hottest character I've seen yet.)

oyabun

Mon, 11-21-2011, 08:35 PM

According to http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Marriage same sex marriage is possible.

Buffalobiian

Mon, 11-21-2011, 08:37 PM

Ooh, nice. I think I'll do that when I retire from killing so much.

oyabun

Mon, 11-21-2011, 08:39 PM

I just became a werewolf last night and I'm planning to finish the companion quest so that I can train skills for free when I become the master of the guild. I also wiped out the dark brotherhood and is planning to join the Stormcloaks. There is just too much stuff to do in just 2 hours of playtime in the weekdays :(

Ryllharu

Mon, 11-21-2011, 09:21 PM

I already finished the companions quests, so I just had my Nord Huntress get married to Farkas. He seemed the better of the two brothers. There's really no benefit to marriage seeing that I'm still embracing lycanthropy. No bonus Lover's Rest for me. Still living in Whiterun, so no shop income either.

Aela the Huntress and my Nord Huntress are super best friends now. That doesn't actually mean anything, but it fits.

Onward to Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood!

Then maybe I'll get back to the main story quests. I'm thinking of either not joining either if at all possible. Being a Companion and a Nord, it seems wrong to join the Imperials, and I refuse to join the Stormcloaks. Ulfric is an asshole.

Buffalobiian

Mon, 11-21-2011, 10:08 PM

Rape Marriage targets:

-Haelga of Riften
-Vex of Thieves Guild.

Hopefully I'll run into the Dark Brotherhood before I run into a quest asking for me to kill them. (not that I won't kill them in the end, lol).

EpyonNext

Mon, 11-21-2011, 10:09 PM

Funny enough, the only reason I joined the Imps is because Uriel is an asshole.

Protip: They are not much better.

Buffalobiian

Mon, 11-21-2011, 10:11 PM

Funny enough, the only reason I joined the Imps is because Uriel is an asshole.

Protip: They are not much better.

I haven't picked a side yet. But I have been wiping out every Imperial and Stormcloack encampment whenever I see them. It's just good blade practice without threat of a bounty.

Animeniax

Mon, 11-21-2011, 10:26 PM

I'm going to join the Stormcloaks.

I don't want to become a werewolf so I may never finish the companion quests.

Lvl36 now. Kind of stuck on which direction to take my character. Might go get married first.

oyabun

Mon, 11-21-2011, 10:38 PM

You may finish the companion quest without being a werewolf or you can become one then seek the cure for it.

@buff the quest to trigger the Dark brotherhood is by checking out rumors in the inn about a cursed kid. Then go to Riften to trigger the Innocence Lost quest.

Animeniax

Mon, 11-21-2011, 11:07 PM

Rape Marriage targets:

-Haelga of Riften
-Vex of Thieves Guild.Umm, you do know Haelga is a whoremaster/whore right? She runs Haelga's bunkhouse (brothel) and one of the quests is to bust her for sleeping with multiple men in town.

You may finish the companion quest without being a werewolf or you can become one then seek the cure for it.
How do you continue the companions quest without becoming a werewolf? It's the only mission left on the companion quest.

Lucifus

Mon, 11-21-2011, 11:11 PM

Once you enter the Underforge, you'll be given a choice on whether or not you wish to become one. Saying no won't hurt anybody.

Buffalobiian

Mon, 11-21-2011, 11:15 PM

Umm, you do know Haelga is a whoremaster/whore right? She runs Haelga's bunkhouse (brothel) and one of the quests is to bust her for sleeping with multiple men in town.

Hoho?

I've been wondering about how I should spend my coinage.. :3

Splash!

Tue, 11-22-2011, 12:41 AM

I don't want to become a werewolf so I may never finish the companion quests.

I am curious as to why you don't want to become a werewolf. Is it just a matter of staying true to your character's persona or are you worried about how it may affect your gameplay? Because you know, there really isn't much of a downside to becoming a werewolf through the companions questline. Unless you really find resting bonuses super useful, but I doubt that's the case.

Animeniax

Tue, 11-22-2011, 12:51 AM

I am curious as to why you don't want to become a werewolf. Is it just a matter of staying true to your character's persona or are you worried about how it may affect your gameplay? Because you know, there really isn't much of a downside to becoming a werewolf through the companions questline. Unless you really find resting bonuses super useful, but I doubt that's the case.

It was at first, but I've since stopped caring about resting bonuses. Werewolf form helps at lower levels, but once you get higher level it's under-powered. I will eventually finish the companion quests.

So I decided to become a Stormcloak. I won't spoil the story, but I have to say: pick your allegiances carefully. They have real consequences for the sides you don't align with.

Xelbair

Tue, 11-22-2011, 03:11 AM

Dark Brotherhood quests were underwhelming, and their equipment lacks style compared to the oblivion.

Animeniax

Tue, 11-22-2011, 09:12 AM

I found the girl I'm going to marry in the game:

1079

Funny stuff, this courier really went out of his way to deliver his message:

1078

Buffalobiian

Tue, 11-22-2011, 09:16 AM

Funny stuff, this courier really went out of his way to deliver his message:

1078

Did he just come to you like that, or did you have the uber-pickpocket perk that lets you take equipped items (read: clothes)?

I've just found that my sneak doesn't work so well anymore, and my assassination with a single dagger strike doesn't guarantee the kill-cam as much anymore. I was wondering if they nerfed the sneak skills in the some sort of update, since Steam was downloading it.. but it's probably because the NPCs have been scaling up while I've been putting perks into lock-picking now to get the unbreakable perk.

Meanwhile, I've got 130+ lockpicks to burn.

Animeniax

Tue, 11-22-2011, 09:20 AM

No, he came to me that way.

The first update/patch is supposed to come out after Thanksgiving.

Also, anyone playing on console... back up your save file. There seems to be a bug that corrupts your save files. A buddy of mine lost his level 20 something character on his X360 and had to start over.

Buffalobiian

Tue, 11-22-2011, 09:22 AM

No, he came to me that way.

The first update/patch is supposed to come out after Thanksgiving.

That's what I thought. Steam insists that it downloaded something though..

TwisT

Tue, 11-22-2011, 09:32 AM

Kraco

Tue, 11-22-2011, 09:48 AM

No, he came to me that way.

Yeah, he ran to me as well when I was out heading to some quest location. At first I thought it's some pervert running toward me and I had the bow out on reflex. But I guess the Skyrim Post simply doesn't pay their couriers enough for decent clothing.

Steam seemed to update the .exe, at least, if I judged things correctly. Despite the fact I had altered it with the application allowing larger memory use.

Buffalobiian

Tue, 11-22-2011, 09:54 AM

I don't know why you would want unbreakable though. It's not like you have a problem with lockpicking in this game. I don't have a single perk in lockpicking and i have no problems picking locks. I waste a maximum of 5 lockpicks on a Master lock. And since they don't weigh any there ain't a problem with weight from having 100+

Oh and i became a werewolf, but i have only used it once. Since you can't actually turn it off by yourself and you can't loot or anything i don't find it very useful. I find the passive buffs good enough. Immunity to diseases and i heard you get extra HP even in human form (never noticed this myself since i didn't check and never heard about it until a while after i turned).

Yeah.. in the big picture it's largely useless. It's like pickpocketting... unless I run into a boss that happens to have an awesome dagger - in which case it would be superb to simply steal it off him then sneak-kill him with it.

I was having trouble running out of lockpicks until I started buying them from the thieve's guild. I was trying to work out if the audio does anything to point you in the right direction when you turn the move the pick (without rotating the lock), but I couldn't find any patterns. Now Oblivion's lock-picking system was one that made sense. A lot of people didn't like it, but the idea was good. It was hard and gruelling, but the human player (us) can learn to accel at it by nailing down the timing/audio cues.

This one's based on chance more so than skill.

Animeniax

Tue, 11-22-2011, 02:46 PM

What difficulty are you guys playing on to have such easy times picking locks?? I have to use 20-30 picks on master or higher locks.

Kraco

Tue, 11-22-2011, 03:09 PM

I'm playing on the default difficulty. Adept? It seemed to me like a Master level lock would take a bunch of picks, and thus I haven't bothered to go through with it. Expert takes at least five of them, unless you get lucky, according to my experience. I have done nothing to increase lockpicking and playing a Breton, there were no boosts, so the skill isn't that high.

I have now a few times encountered a glitch with the healing spell. Or it might not be related to any specific spell, but I have noticed it only with healing. Namely, when I press the right button (the spell being linked to it, with a sword behind the left button), nothing happens. Some unwielding and shuffling seems to fix it, but that's quite annoying when a polar bear with a couple of arrows sticking out of its hindside is right in front of you and its next strike would kill you.

Xelbair

Tue, 11-22-2011, 04:24 PM

Lockpick slightly tilts towards correct position when you are in wrong one, Buff.
On a side note: dragonscale armor is op.

TwisT

Tue, 11-22-2011, 04:42 PM

I don't know how hard it is on console with a controller, but on PC with keyboard and mouse it's real easy to pick locks. On a master lock i usually spend 1-2 picks to find the right position. Then i spend 1-3 to do the fine tuning that opens it. On Novice, Apprentice and Adept locks i almost always get it on my first. Expert 2-3 picks. Oh and i play on Adept (default setting).

The bug where the casting of resto spells (that has a small charge up) have happened to me too. Only way to fix it is to swap the spell back and forth.

Ryllharu

Tue, 11-22-2011, 06:01 PM

I was having trouble running out of lockpicks until I started buying them from the thieve's guild. I was trying to work out if the audio does anything to point you in the right direction when you turn the move the pick (without rotating the lock), but I couldn't find any patterns. Now Oblivion's lock-picking system was one that made sense. A lot of people didn't like it, but the idea was good. It was hard and gruelling, but the human player (us) can learn to accel at it by nailing down the timing/audio cues.

This one's based on chance more so than skill.Well, yes and no. It's a direct copy of Fallout's lockpicking , and the zones are in the same spots. The only difference is that the lockpicks are substantially more fragile. Fallout's hairpins always broke on the third touch, Skyrim's break by force exerted on them.

Hints:
- Always try dead center first. [edit: Unless you have the perk that starts it near it, obviously.] Just a smidgen of a turn to see if it is there. Novice and Apprentice locks are more likely to be there.
- The two next most likely spots are at either 2 o'clock or 10 o'clock.
- If you're light enough on the keys (note: I'm often not), you'll be able to find where too far back is without breaking a pick.
- From there, it's simple bracketing function.
- The only luck involved is picking left or right correctly the first time. I always try right first.
- Remember, light touch keeps the picks from snapping.

It's skill and experience, but it's just not auditory or visual. It's probability and math. Like gun-kata (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHJAuLmJgvA), only not as cool.

Animeniax

Tue, 11-22-2011, 06:52 PM

Yeah.. in the big picture it's largely useless. It's like pickpocketting... unless I run into a boss that happens to have an awesome dagger - in which case it would be superb to simply steal it off him then sneak-kill him with it.

I was having trouble running out of lockpicks until I started buying them from the thieve's guild. I was trying to work out if the audio does anything to point you in the right direction when you turn the move the pick (without rotating the lock), but I couldn't find any patterns. Now Oblivion's lock-picking system was one that made sense. A lot of people didn't like it, but the idea was good. It was hard and gruelling, but the human player (us) can learn to accel at it by nailing down the timing/audio cues.

This one's based on chance more so than skill.
I think it's set so that the more difficult level locks require a set number of tries (depending on your skill level at lock-picking) before you can be successful. I've jiggled the lock in several directions, then come back to the same location I had previously tried and the lock will turn on the 2nd try. I'll investigate to see if I can find an exact number of tries for the different difficulty levels, though it will probably be inexact.

TwisT

Tue, 11-22-2011, 07:12 PM

Like i said i can sometimes get Master on the first try. Master locks without any perks basically only have 1 millimeter of success area. If you almost have it then moving it just a millimeter in the right direction will open it. 2 millimeter and it will end up on the other side of the arc. Higher difficuly just makes the arc and success area (center) bigger if that even makes any sense.

Splash!

Tue, 11-22-2011, 10:44 PM

I don't know how hard it is on console with a controller, but on PC with keyboard and mouse it's real easy to pick locks.

It is not that hard on a console either. The controller vibrates just before the pick is about to break, so you can stop in time. After a couple of tries with the same pick though, it may suddenly snap without any warning.

At 35 skill and no perks, I have no issues unlocking upto expert locks. I could probably crack open master locks if I really wanted to, but I don't have the patience. And so far, I haven't seen much of a difference in the quality of loot behind locks. It is quite unsatisfying to spend all that time on an expert lock and get about 20 gold and a weaksauce potion out of it(happened quite a few times).

Buffalobiian

Tue, 11-22-2011, 11:42 PM

Hmm, I didn't know that the lock shifted in the correct direction after a fail. That's interesting to learn.

@Ryll: I agree that it's more about maths and probability - which is what I said earlier. Oblivion was more about skill. You had to nail down your ear-mouse co-ordination. Higher locks just meant you had to be better at it to perform it in succession without fail. I do the whole "zone" thing too.

I think it's set so that the more difficult level locks require a set number of tries (depending on your skill level at lock-picking) before you can be successful. I've jiggled the lock in several directions, then come back to the same location I had previously tried and the lock will turn on the 2nd try.

I'm more in tune with Twist on this one. The tougher the lock, the smaller the "unlock" areas are. Your "same area works after the 2nd try" could be slightly off - and that makes a difference at higher levels. My lock-picking is 66 atm. With Sneak at 100 and Pickpocket at 81, I changed over to the Lover's Stone. 15% faster in ALL categories sounds like what I need now.

Upgrading Armsman to lvl4 to give +80% damage to 1H strikes has regained by ability to kill-cam with one dagger again. And then.. I ran into an ebony dagger and refined it. :)

For PC players, can anybody play with Shadow Quality set to Ultra? I can all other settings (except maybe AA), but Shadow must be set to High, or it slows down to 10fps or so. And if you're running on Ultra, what's your card?

I've observed that Skyrim doesn't use much CPU power at all. It usually hovers around the 35% mark of my i5 750. BF3 uses around 75%.

Animeniax

Wed, 11-23-2011, 12:51 AM

I hate that you can't remove quest items from inventory and store them, even for completed quests in some cases. I need to get my weight down so I can carry more useful items.

Got my smithing to 98. Two more leather bracer/iron dagger runs and I'll be at 100 and making dragon armor.

Still haven't found the amulet to get married to Sapphire.

Sapphire

Wed, 11-23-2011, 12:59 AM

I'm totally playing this. I got a high elf and a burn the shit outa all da orcs.

I finished the claw quest and the townspeople started attacking me WTF? Some parts of this game are scary. I'm playing it in my friend's room.

Kraco

Wed, 11-23-2011, 03:58 AM

I'm totally playing this. I got a high elf and a burn the shit outa all da orcs.

Nice to see you joined the rest of the world (to quote your own words).

I finished the claw quest and the townspeople started attacking me WTF? Some parts of this game are scary. I'm playing it in my friend's room.

You must have accidentally attacked somebody from the town, or equivalent. Remember that ordinary folks wander a lot around and between the towns, usually using the roads. So, you can't just attack everybody you see in the wilderness (unless you are playing like Bill).

For PC players, can anybody play with Shadow Quality set to Ultra? I can all other settings (except maybe AA), but Shadow must be set to High, or it slows down to 10fps or so. And if you're running on Ultra, what's your card?

I read somewhere the engine uses the CPU to calculate the shadows, not GPU. But that was some forum and thus unverified. It wasn't what I was looking for back then, either, so I didn't pursue the truth. Nor do I know how much sense that would make, not being a game programmer.

Buffalobiian

Wed, 11-23-2011, 04:23 AM

I read somewhere the engine uses the CPU to calculate the shadows, not GPU. But that was some forum and thus unverified. It wasn't what I was looking for back then, either, so I didn't pursue the truth. Nor do I know how much sense that would make, not being a game programmer.

That makes it even more weird if it's true, since my CPU usage doesn't change between Ultra and High.

Sapphire

Wed, 11-23-2011, 08:28 AM

Animeniax

Wed, 11-23-2011, 09:13 AM

I did that early too, killed a chicken and the town guards and citizens attacked me. I guess it goes back to that old saying, "them ain't your chickens!" Pretty much don't have your weapons drawn while in town and you'll be better off.

Level 38 now, 99 smithing.

Sapphire

Wed, 11-23-2011, 09:22 AM

Sexy. I will find a character named Animeniax in the game so I can court him.
-
Cool guide I found (http://www.sendspace.com/file/p3t8wr)

Buffalobiian

Wed, 11-23-2011, 11:17 AM

I killed a chicken on my way out of town. Then when I come back two crazy-ass villagers killed me twice wtf!? So my friend took the reigns and charred the motherfuckers ABWAHAHHA!!! I felt like Kagemane in that biatch.

I now have no choice but to go rogue like Bill.
-
I had COMPLETELY Skyrim-esque dreams all night about making my own choices in life.

Spend 24hrs or something outside of town. Then go back. They'll be less aggressive and go "hey, I remember you...". You're still wanted, but you can bribe them off or pay your fine instead of having a sword stuck down your throat.

I think the aggression happens if someone sees you perform a crime, but you run away before a guard catches up to give you his arrest speech. When you come back next, they default to DIE!!

Talking about die, I killed 2 dragons today. One of them crept up on me and just landed right in front, then started breathing fire. The other one was sleeping.

They took 7 and 2 seconds to dispatch respectively. :)

Oh. Yeah.

Kraco

Wed, 11-23-2011, 01:06 PM

Splash!

Wed, 11-23-2011, 01:17 PM

Raiding a Silver Hand camp/fortress gives so many cure disease potions that you don't need to worry about harvesting ingredients to make them yourself. But then again, seeing how much they like to play with werewolf blood and corpses, I guess it makes sense every man and woman carries a potion.

Already being a werewolf with disease immunity, those cure disease potions are a good source of income. In fact, the loot from the Silver Hand missions helped me make a lot of money, so much that I can easily afford filled grand soul gems, high quality raw materials and other stuff from vendors.

Sapphire

Wed, 11-23-2011, 01:17 PM

[13:14] <Sapphi> cool how a 1 person game merits so much discussion
[13:15] <&DS> say single player
[13:15] <&DS> will make you sound less like a gaming noob
[13:16] <%Xelbair> ^ this
-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pIQLZsB5nfU#!

Animeniax

Wed, 11-23-2011, 05:13 PM

That's an awesome video. Just wait until some high res texture packs are released and we can run the game in true GPU melting glory.

I'm at work right now. I count down the minutes until I can go home and Skyrim.

edit: for the enchanting skill perks that say "skill enchantments are 25% stronger", does anyone know if that means existing enchantments or only new enchantments? Because for the first skill, it specifically says "new enchantments are xx% stronger", but for the others it just lists the spell or skill type as being 25% stronger, it doesn't say "new".

Also, don't bother spending a dragon soul on the "elemental fury" shout. It gives you a speed boost for attacks, which would be awesome, but it doesn't work when wielding enchanted weapons. Utterly useless.

Animeniax

Thu, 11-24-2011, 03:00 AM

I improved my shield blocking skill by 39 points (from 61 to 100) and gained enough exp to level 3 times by fighting this guy outside Riften for about 30 minutes:

1085

Buffalobiian

Thu, 11-24-2011, 03:56 AM

Fighting as in trying to kill him as soon as possible right? Or were you fighting with the intention of farming skills too?

PS: what's that sword?

Kraco

Thu, 11-24-2011, 06:59 AM

Based on the screenshot, he wasn't fighting with the fork of horripilation so there's no way it would have taken 30 mins without the purpose of farming blocking skills.

Edit: So, the carriages have bench space easily for six people, yet if it's boarded by a single person 45 [Tamriel weight units] above the "you can't run" limit, the horse is stuck, but the driver still keeps telling "Get on, I haven't got the whole day to wait" even though my character has been sitting on for five minutes waiting for the travel to start. Honestly, Beshesda has an even lousier sense of humour than I do.

Animeniax

Thu, 11-24-2011, 09:56 AM

I didn't farm intentionally at first. He had a partner and I had to block their attacks or get overwhelmed... then I noticed almost every other time I blocked I'd improve blocking skill, so I kept at it until I hit 100. After I reached 80 it took about 8-10 blocks to improve the skill one point.

That's the Blades sword. It's a steel weapon (I enchanted with frostbite). Not that powerful, but looks cool.

Buffalobiian

Thu, 11-24-2011, 11:20 AM

My character has mostly reached its peak in terms of combat prowess now, so I haven't been farming those combat skills for a while now.

(Combat skills deemed important for assassinations: Sneak [100], 1H [66], Lite Arm [69, 79 through armour enchantments])

The attack and armour still have some ways to go before they're maxed, but in terms of interesting and combat-style-changing perks, I've gotten all of them. All that's left is to get the perks that keep increasing your attack/armour %. I was initially going to get the dual-power-attack perk, but I don't think I will anymore. Even Elemental Fury lvl2 is no match for Shadow-Warrior + Assassin's Blade..

(Quick word now that I've mentioned shouts, the death shout is pretty sweet. I've only used it once by testing it on a deer. It took a good 20 seconds or so to kill it.. but the effect seems permament. I will have to confirm by having it cast on a mammoth or something to check, but it seems it will indefinitely eat away at your target. It's what the poisons should be doing..)

My lockpick [72] and 'pocket [82] skills are mostly for fun. The first one's still useful for infiltration and everything.. it makes burglary jobs a breeze. 350 Gold for like.. 3 mins of irl work. The latter I farmed earlier, but now I don't even pickpocket people anymore. Having to pay a bounty when I can kill the entire Hold but can't sucks. I still pickpocket people when I walk past them if it strikes my fancy though..

I was hoping to hone my Alchemy skills by creating poisons from hell.. but the fact that poisons actually have weight, plus that they're 1-use only (might last 2 hits if you have the perk) makes it seem rather.. lackluster for the effort you're putting in. Plus, hunting for ingredients for the right stuff sucks.

Poisons should last for 10 hits or something.. They only do 10pts of damage anyway..

So, I think I might try out Enchanting instead. It's not that far behind my Alchemy skills (31 vs 34). Frost damage is my favourite. I have yet to unlock Frostbite, but paralysis would be my best friend.

EpyonNext

Thu, 11-24-2011, 11:56 AM

Also, don't bother spending a dragon soul on the "elemental fury" shout. It gives you a speed boost for attacks, which would be awesome, but it doesn't work when wielding enchanted weapons. Utterly useless.

This is(mostly) wrong.

Elemental Fury does indeed not work on enchanted weapons. However you are not taking into account how significant the attack speed boost is. Elemental Fury(with all three words) doubles your attack speed.

Lets do some math now:

You are dual wielding a pair of daedric swords that do about 90 damage a piece, and you swing at 1 swing a second doing 90dps. With elemental fury, you are now swinging at 2 swings per second, doing 180dps.

Now you have the same swords imbued with 40 fire damage enchantment, still doing 1swing per second, you are doing 130dps.

This does not take into account that more swings = more chances for perk procs(i.e. Blademaster crit procs) and that it also doubles your power swing attack speed.

Elemental fury is one of the best shouts in the game.

Buffalobiian

Thu, 11-24-2011, 12:12 PM

The way Ani worded it meant that "Elemental Fury does not happen with Enchanted weapons". They swing at normal speed.

Splash!

Thu, 11-24-2011, 12:56 PM

^EpyonNext is taking that into account. He is saying that in situations it can be worth your while to switch to 2 high quality unenchanted weapons and use the shout to dish out alot more damage than you normally would, even with your enchanted weapons.

It would be way too overpowered if enchanted weapons were allowed.

Animeniax

Thu, 11-24-2011, 02:28 PM

I live by the motto, "if it ain't enchanted... it's crrrrap!" Epyon makes a good point though. If I can find a good non-enchanted weapon, it might be worth using this shout. But I think it's a waste of a shout unless you like resorting to something so lowly as manually slashing/bludgeoning something to death. How totally unrefined.

Ryllharu

Thu, 11-24-2011, 04:51 PM

I only use shouts to debuff dragons (the Marked for Death shout), jump over ravines (the greybeard teleport shout), and to keep multiple bears from attacking me (Kayne's Peace). I just don't really see a use for most of them otherwise given the play style of the Nord Huntress. I might see more use with the Shield-Maiden character.

Got my Legendary Daedric Bow, got a Legendary Daedric Dagger. Now to enchant them. I'm thinking fire.

Animeniax

Thu, 11-24-2011, 04:55 PM

There are enough quests where you're stripped of all equipment that you would need to rely on shouts if you didn't train any magic. I use the unrelenting force shout a lot to give myself some breathing room when too many enemies are attacking at once at close range. Like you said, if you're a huntress stealthily attacking with a bow from long range, shouts aren't very useful for the most part.

Animeniax

Fri, 11-25-2011, 12:39 PM

I thought I read it in this thread but now I can't find it even after searching multiple keywords: someone said they did some set of quests that gave them a lot of gold. Anyone know what quests those were?

Also, talk about skeletons in the closet. My Lydia died several days ago in some dark dank cave. Then her body appeared out of the blue in my spare bedroom in Whiterun, complete with all the equipment she was carrying. I stripped her corpse for equipment to enchant.

1087

Sapphire

Fri, 11-25-2011, 12:47 PM

That's............................................

Ryllharu

Fri, 11-25-2011, 01:04 PM

Also, talk about skeletons in the closet. My Lydia died several days ago in some dark dank cave. Then her body appeared out of the blue in my spare bedroom in Whiterun, complete with all the equipment she was carrying. I stripped her corpse for equipment to enchant.
I got a weirder one than that. I wish I had grabbed a screenshot of it. One of the major characters that dies in a faction storyline appeared halfway in the ground, ghosting/coasting through it as I was running to another unrelated quest. I check back at the base, and he's alive and well again! He's even conversing with the other faction members.

I may have to use the "kill" console command on him, for continuity.

Note: I also had non-stop, unfixable CTDs in Bonechill Pass. It happens every time, and apparently I'm not the only one to get it. I had to use the noclip "tcl" console command to avoid the place and get to the dragon wall that the pass gives you access to. Apparently, you can look at your feet to make it through. The game will crash when a certain object comes into view. Windowed mode may also fix this.

Splash!

Fri, 11-25-2011, 01:07 PM

I mentioned the silver hand quests but that was when my level was in the early 20's. Helped me go from about 7k to 15k. But that was me just being real meticulous about picking up every scrap of loot during those quests. Since then, I have made a lot more money by power leveling my enchanting skill and selling all my enchanted daggers. I have heard from other people that the Dark Brotherhood pays really well though, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

On the topic of money, I seem to be suffering from a glitch that prevents me from receiving my payments for thieves guild missions. It started when I finished this quest for a guy that asked me to find a set of 4 journals.

Buffalobiian

Fri, 11-25-2011, 02:10 PM

The Thieve's guild initially paid me 300 gold per task. It was then upped to 350 gold per task. I'm not sure if it's because I have some sort of item equipped though..

The Dark Brotherhood pays 600 gold initially for cheap murders (go somewhere, kill this guy, come back for gold types). Not sure about the more involved ones where you actually go meet your client and discuss exactly how they want your murders to happen. I'm about to go on mine.

For those of you who made the choice to kill someone to get into the Dark Brotherhood, who did you kill? I thought the mercenary was doing his job, the bitch in the middle was annoying as fuck but didn't mention anything worth condemning her for.. and I snapped at the "Defiler of daughters" even though he was a fellow Khajiit.

Oh, and Astrid > Vex. She's not annoying and rude as hell, though her husband is. It's funny how the Thieve's Guild is always complaining about how badly they're doing, yet every time I see them they're all sitting at the bar..

edit: everybody must read both volumes of the Lusty Argonian Maid. Full set can be found in Riften -> Haelga's Bunkhouse -> Room behind counter -> bedside table. :D

Xelbair

Fri, 11-25-2011, 03:10 PM

Buff - simple answer - every one of them. i had no idea who was the real target so that was the best option to ensure that I've got him/her.
I've read the argonian maid in oblivion. Polishing the spear, eh?
PROTIP: do not lie about cash in the dark brotherhood, it is worth it to say the truth.

TwisT

Fri, 11-25-2011, 03:15 PM

I get 500 for each task from The Thieves Guild. I pick up one from Vex and one from Devlin then jsut fast track out and do them both and fast track back. Not even 5 min time. So thats 1000 gold. And there seems to be an infinite rotating quest cycle of those. And i have only done 1 quest for them so far.

Don't remember where i got it but i got 1500 from some quest that was repeatable. Think it might have been The Dark Brotherhood after finishing everything. Hail Sithis!

Animeniax

Fri, 11-25-2011, 03:41 PM

Dang, I thought there was an easy foolproof set of quests to get gold from. The house in Solitude is 25k!! My best gold was from some daedric quest where the area was strewn with already killed corpses, each yielding 25-125 gold, mostly around 100 gold each.

Also, another glitch: while doing some quest, I ran into two NPCs from the main storyline (you're supposed to meet up with them somewhere). They immediately start following me, even though we're nowhere near the agreed upon meeting place, so besides my usual companion Mjoll the Lioness (best follower in the game as far as I've seen) and the follower I got from the quest I was on, I had 4 high level NPCs running through this quest with me, kicking everything's ass that got in our line of sight. Unfortunately it was cramped quarters so they ended up hitting each other and then fighting until we entered a new area and they'd stop attacking each other.

I didn't want to risk messing up the main quest so I reloaded and avoided running into the two.

TwisT

Fri, 11-25-2011, 05:16 PM

When i did one of the Daedric quests, you where to follow the dog Barbos. Once you had reached the area, he gave you the quest to take Barbos with you as you fetched an item. Then i got Barbos + my companion. And Barbos turned out to be immortal. And i don't mean he could be harmed and then after a while got up with full health. I mean he could take unlimited punishment. And he loved to trap me in corners. Once i got so furious so i started cutting him over and over. Probably like 10-15 slashes before he became hostile and i could see his healthbar. Turned out he never lost any HP no matter how much i hit him. So either he has 100 million hp or he has 100% damage reduction. Anyways i used him to do many quests as he was a great tank. But he always blew my hiding so eventually i just finished the quest.

I heard from a friend that Aranea is one of the best companions out there. You get here if you complete the Daedric quest of Azura. She's a mage to begin with so she will summon a Flame Archnoth (whatever the name is) by her own. So you can summon one too to make a pretty good army. Also with full Dragon Scale armor she becomes a good tank. She have only gotten beaten once and i was quick with my healing other spell so she was down for like 3 seconds. When i had Lydia who was in full Dragonbone armor she got beaten several times and once she even died (although i reloaded). Also giving Aranea staffs made her a nuking machine. 2 staffs of Fireball and she nuked at least 1 each second. Killed off entire rooms in a matter of seconds.

Splash!

Fri, 11-25-2011, 06:04 PM

I was complaining about lack of money early on, but I seem to have resolved the problem.

Kill more dragons and giants, and do as many Words of Power quests as you can. There is usually alot of high quality loot right next to shout locations. At level 31, I have about 40k on hand and a chest full of items worth just as much, if not more. And I spend money all the time on Grand Soul gems and smithing raw materials. I am probably going to buy my second house when I have about 60k :)

It really helps if you have some bartering perks or enchantments. My character is bout 40 in speech, and gets 40% better prices with bonuses.

Penner

Fri, 11-25-2011, 06:28 PM

I took off all my equipment when i ran about town doing various menial tasks and ran close to a child and she just blurted out "NAKED! NakedNakedNaked!"

Made me laugh a little :P

Animeniax

Sat, 11-26-2011, 03:30 AM

Have you guys killed anyone in the game just on principle?

So far: Debane (a-hole beggar), the Talos priest who yells at everyone who passes by in Whiterun, and everyone in the cannibal coven, which unfortunately means I miss out on some small quests.

Ryllharu

Sat, 11-26-2011, 06:00 AM

There's a wizard's son (who was also a wizard, and a douchebag) in Markath that I murdered, just because his father was being a dick and wanted to send me on a fetch quest instead of letting me just pay gold for his research. It's not exactly an unforced encounter, but I totally murdered all his guards too. I definitely could have snuck past all of them, but the level of arrogance in that family demanded a whole lot of throat slicing.

But since things started to get trivially easy with the Level 38 Huntress, I switched to the Level 13 Shield-Maiden for a while. Now I'm constantly getting my ass kicked when I have to fight more than one guy at a time (3+ is a total nightmare). Blocking both of them works for a while, but when I go to kill one guy, the other flanks me and then the two slaughter me in no time. I've got better equipment than them (Exquisite Plate Steel and orcish weapons versus their fur armor and Iron/Steel weapons).

Any advice? This is really frustrating coming off of an Archer/backstab character. I never had these problems with Fallout melee/unarmed characters either.

koppayana

Sat, 11-26-2011, 06:02 AM

I've pretty much killed almost everyone that lives alone in random houses. Getting stage 4 vampirism sucks T-T.

I find enchanting weapons i make while leveling blacksmithing a good way to make some cash and exp. Already bought the house in Solitude and sitting between 50k-55k.

Buffalobiian

Sat, 11-26-2011, 06:32 AM

I kill people for sport. Random houses, Imperial + Stormcloak camps, Whiterun guards because they left me to die that time.

The orphanage lady (Gerral the Kind) was killed mostly out of principal too. She was a complete asshole to the kids. I haven't otherwise met that many people though.. I think I've spent most of my lvls dungeon-prowling more than anything.

Sometimes the NPC's attitudes are funny. The War Maiden fellow in Whiterun always starts off going "I should slam your face in after all you've done" or something, but goes into a cheerful mood as soon as I actually start interacting with him with the E button. Cicero too. That guy claims to remember every single face. He remembered that we met on the road. He remembered that I framed him in front of a guard. He seemed to forget that I beat him to near death nearly 5 times.

As for random bodies, I haven't encountered anything other than a body of a Hunter dropping down from the skies one time as I exited the Dark Brotherhood hideout.

Oh, and body-hugging Assassin armour ftw!

Kraco

Sat, 11-26-2011, 06:36 AM

The shopkeepers pay ridiculously low if you don't have any perks in Speech (like I don't). They pay 100 golds for an item they then sell for 1200 golds. Zenithar's +10% doesn't seem to make that much difference. Yet I wouldn't really want to use perks for anything else but combat (including sneak) and smithing related. Monsters and other villains are just so tough in Skyrim.

Animeniax

Sat, 11-26-2011, 09:32 AM

@Ryllharu: you mean the mage researcher in the dwarven ruins? He's actually really nice and useful, just too absorbed in his work, like many academics, so he comes off as abrupt and assholish. But he's a great source for soul gems and the arcane enchanter is right there too. He also has some quests for you to complete, with healthy gold rewards.

I can't help with the shield-maiden troubles. Maybe get the unrelenting shout up and use perks to add stagger to attacks, that way you can stagger one while you attack the other? Or you might have to keep a bow to attack from range.

I've got enchanting up to 82, perked smithing to 100% improved, and have 4 pieces of equipment that grant 20% bonus to blacksmithing, and a philter and draught of blacksmithing. I'm going to see how strong the dragon scale armor I make can be.

Xelbair

Sat, 11-26-2011, 09:33 AM

Ryllharu

Sat, 11-26-2011, 11:39 AM

Ryll - melee is easy, especially with shield and 1h weapon, wanna few tips?
1) do not keep blocking constantly - block only when there is incoming blow coming and it is not power attack.
2) shield bash is great, use it for a 1s stun on enemy
3) press attack, then before attacks finishes use power attack - you will do normal and power attack without any delay between them, and power attack gives cool short stun too
4)restoration magic, use it.
5) when enemy is blocking with weapon, keep using normal attacks and when he wants to swing bash him with shield - when he's blocking he keeps getting stunlocked, and when he attacks you stun him with shield.
6) slow time shout is your best friend(i can kill dungeons boss before it ends right now, and even before he hits me even once).
7) use heavy armor - just because Deadric Set looks so damn good.I already do almost all those things. The slow time shout is the only one I don't (because I haven't gone looking for it yet). Fighting one enemy is a piece of cake that way.

(edit: I melee dragons with no problem using those techniques.)

I have problems with multiple enemies at the same time. Those tips don't work as well against Bandit Outlaws and Bandit Chiefs, which I always seem to encounter at the same time. They always flank me. Especially once I start going on the offensive. I go to finish off the chief and one of their lackeys runs me through with a greatsword while I'm doing it. Yes I'm wearing heavy armor, and I focus in Restoration. Shield bash is one of the only things I can use to get the bandits to stop blocking.

(edit: maybe I just need a follower at all times.)

Animeniax

Sat, 11-26-2011, 12:02 PM

Buffalobiian

Sat, 11-26-2011, 12:22 PM

If you haven't done the thieves guild main quest, you'd better figure out how to handle multiple high level mobs attacking at the same time before you do. You get attacked by 3 draugr death lords, 2 draugr wights, and at least an ice atronach all at once a few times. You have a high level quest follower, but I always have to summon a daedra to help or we'd have a much harder time.

How far into the Thieve's Guild quest is this? I've halted it for now (I just finished burning the bee hives) to do some exploring, and find the Dark Brotherhood.

And now that I've finished that part, I really liked it. (Dark Brotherhood spoilers below):

Always thought Astrid was somewhat eager to hold onto her leading position, which was why I had my doubts about Cicero and decided to let him go. He was only serving Mother anyway - in the best manner he thought.

I thought I didn't really care for the Dark Brotherhood, but I actually ran back as fast as I could after hearing about how it's getting attacked. I don't think I would actually give a shit if the same thing happened to the Thieve's Guild which I joined before that.

Even sympathised with Astrid.. and went on a hunt to kill the General and the Emperor out of rage more so than anything. (The red effects of the Blade of Woe enhanced that feeling). W

hen it was all done and over, I had a look in the Dawnstar sanctuary for Cicero, but couldn't find him. As I left and wondered what could have happened to him, he pops up and tells me he wants to become Listerner instead. He was right on the mark about my face change. My eyes must have quite literally narrowed as I adjusted my grip on my blade mouse.

The latter part of that arc was pretty emotionally involved for me. Now I've got a trusty steed and a companion to remind me of it. (Cicero's the first person who I actually want to keep as a companion. He's not a boring "Yes master" warrior, and can actually sneak without giving me away). I'll be relocating from Halted Stream Camp to Dawnstar Sanctuary shortly. That place even has visual and aural entertainment in the form of a torture chamber.

-The latter part of that arc also mucked up my play style though.. I had a bounty in Solitude from a prior encounter, but I decided to leave it to create a better atmosphere. Instead of walking on the streets unharmed before attacking the dude's son, it meant that I had to sneak in under darkness and actually kill off any guards that discovered me since they're all pumped and out to get me. My bounty in that hold went up to 6K+. But then came the Chef part, and I couldn't talk to the guy and request access with a bounty - so I ended up serving jailtime instead.

Seriously, people should not be able to recognise you if you have a mask on. That's.. the whole idea of them.

I think I'll just go back in with Cicero now and wipe the place clean.

Splash!

Sat, 11-26-2011, 12:36 PM

Are you talking about that quest with Mercer Grey? Cause I just did that yesterday, and I didn't find it all that difficult. Maybe it's just my play style that relies on restoration, one handed weapons and heavy armor. My restoration spells restore stamina too, so I am constantly sprinting around and delivering power hits. In rooms that have both a boss and multiple cannon fodder, I find that it helps to first use unrelenting force to incapacitate the boss, finish off the weaker enemies and then solely focus on the boss. You definitely don't want to turn your back on a Draugr Death Lord as they can use unrelenting force too.

Animeniax

Sat, 11-26-2011, 01:03 PM

I've heard it both ways, that the game scales the level of mobs to your level. I think this is true for dragons, but not for some missions (the Winterhold missions were really easy at lvl 30). So when I tackled the Mercer Grey quest, it was tough. 3 draugr death lords, other draugrs, and atronachs, as I mentioned.

I wish there was a way to remove quests from your list that you can't complete (because of some other action performed). My list is littered with quests that I can't finish any longer.

I also wish there was a way to save loadouts. Like when I want to do my sneaking attack, I'd like to equip 4 pieces of equipment without having to search my inventory. We should be able to bind keys to a favorites menu for loadouts.

Splash!

Sat, 11-26-2011, 01:12 PM

I also wish there was a way to save loadouts. Like when I want to do my sneaking attack, I'd like to equip 4 pieces of equipment without having to search my inventory. We should be able to bind keys to a favorites menu for loadouts.

I agree. You should be able to create equipment presets to swap between. My battle gear is very different from my sneaking gear and I even a sort of 'running errands gear' that includes smithing and bartering buffs.

Xelbair

Sat, 11-26-2011, 01:14 PM

I already do almost all those things. The slow time shout is the only one I don't (because I haven't gone looking for it yet). Fighting one enemy is a piece of cake that way.

(edit: I melee dragons with no problem using those techniques.)

I have problems with multiple enemies at the same time. Those tips don't work as well against Bandit Outlaws and Bandit Chiefs, which I always seem to encounter at the same time. They always flank me. Especially once I start going on the offensive. I go to finish off the chief and one of their lackeys runs me through with a greatsword while I'm doing it. Yes I'm wearing heavy armor, and I focus in Restoration. Shield bash is one of the only things I can use to get the bandits to stop blocking.

(edit: maybe I just need a follower at all times.)

it works for multiple enemies too - just keep walking back all the time and try to focus one of them, and small tip: when fighting more than 1 enemy ALWAYS have some stamina unless you want to get instakilled.

Ryllharu

Sat, 11-26-2011, 03:15 PM

Thrice-damned Deathlords. No matter how many of the words you have of the Disarm shout, "Deathlord is too strong for Disarm" but the fucker uses it on me a whoops, there goes my shield! And I mean, "there goes." Lost my (Exquisite) Orcish Shield. I spent a good half-hour looking for it. I did manage to find my mace. But then I was completely without my primary combat mechanism for the remainder of the crypt.

Seems really unfair that a deathlord shout always works while mine never seems to work on anything other than peons.

I had to go make a new one.

Animeniax

Sat, 11-26-2011, 04:17 PM

I always thought those were freezing shouts that destroyed your equipment. Makes more sense that it was disarm, since I'd sometimes find my weapon nearby. I really hate that they can disarm your shield. I lost my favorite shield that way, searched the room for a while trying to find it, no dice. That's why I thought it was destroyed.

I think some attacks should destroy equipment in your inventory, like fire-breath melting potions, but that would make inventory management a lot more troublesome.

Xelbair

Sat, 11-26-2011, 04:42 PM

Ryll - after disarm shield is in your inventory - only weapon gets blown away :P

Kraco

Sat, 11-26-2011, 04:51 PM

Seems really unfair that a deathlord shout always works while mine never seems to work on anything other than peons.

They have had centuries to practice.

Splash!

Sat, 11-26-2011, 05:40 PM

Are you playing on Master? I am playing on Adept too but I wonder why I am not having the same trouble with death lords. Not once has one ever used a disarm shout on me. Maybe it is because I don't prolong the battle and go with a full frontal assault. I first blow them away with full powered unrelenting force. Then while they are lying on the ground, I power hit them a few times to significantly drop their health. When they get up, I back off and cast a couple of spells to restore my stamina, after which I go head on and proceed to whack them to their deaths (periodically sprinting out of the way to heal if I take a few direct hits). Maybe it is all the health that I have but my character can really take a beating. 2 out of the 3 times that I level up, I upgrade my health.

Xelbair

Sat, 11-26-2011, 06:40 PM

Deathlords keep spaming disarm shout on adept here... the better version of them is stronger, but it doesn't use that shout i think.
So far i've met Draugr Death Overlord, one fully charged stop time shout and he was dead.

Ryllharu

Sat, 11-26-2011, 06:49 PM

I think my major problem is that I'm lacking some apparently critical, game-changing shouts. I don't need it with the Huntress character, but I do with the Shield-Maiden.

Also, I regret finishing the Thieves Guild storyline. It wasn't really worth it, and now my character (the Huntress) feels divided between two Daedric Princes. I actually think you're better off nearly completing it, then abandoning it completely.

Kraco

Sat, 11-26-2011, 08:01 PM

I have only faced two death lords so far. The first one used disarm once, which I didn't even have back then, and I was all baffled for a moment, then wasted the fool with lots of spells (I guess that might explain why he only used it once). The second one didn't actually use disarm at all but unrelenting force. I thought my character died when I got a third person anim of him falling down stairs, unresponsive. But then I regained control and killed the fool. The draugr was more than half-dead anyway being a pincushion of arrows.

Xelbair

Sat, 11-26-2011, 08:06 PM

Ryllharu

Sat, 11-26-2011, 08:48 PM

fire/frost breaths are useless

marked for death was cool, but slow time is better
Not that they aren't trivially easy to beat by sneaking, but use two (or even three) words of fire breath on a vampire. ;)

Two words of Marked for Death turns the average dragon encounter from a 6-8 arrow affair to a 4 arrow one. Why waste the arrows?

I've found the one/two words of Kyne's Peace to be game-changing saving. Ever get attacked, especially early on, by three bears at once? Wasn't a problem thanks to that shout. Much easier to use the AOE shout than the illusion spell.

Throw Voice is kind of fun because you get all three words at once, but it has limited use now that I have 100 sneak.

Dismay is useless compared to the Werewolf Howl.

Buffalobiian

Sat, 11-26-2011, 08:50 PM

There aren't any game changing shouts, at least i've havent found one. Slow time is cool, but not really game chaning, fire/frost breaths are useless, ice form is totally useless, marked for death was cool, but slow time is better, detect life shout is meh. whirlwind sprint is usefull for moving, and longer jumps, but totally useless in fight, unrelenting force deals not dmg, disarm one is useless.

I see you've left out Elemental Force.

I've found Ice Form pretty useful at times. At one point I used it to ground dragons. Elemental Force is better though since it lasts longer so I can dish out more damage.

I just have to find another Ebony dagger so it works instead of switching to dual-glass because my depleted Blade of Woe is still classed as enchanted.

Animeniax

Sun, 11-27-2011, 02:17 AM

I don't think any of the shouts are game-changing, but necessary if you have a very specialized character that doesn't use magic.

Two words Marked for Death turned the thieves guild boss fight into a joke. My summoned daedra did most of the work though.

I'm level 50 now. Supposedly that's the soft cap, with a hard cap of either 70 or 81. I've heard both. Also leveling after 50 is supposed to take a long time, but I've found it's not been much longer than normal, though it may get harder with each successive level.

I think my major problem is that I'm lacking some apparently critical, game-changing shouts. I don't need it with the Huntress character, but I do with the Shield-Maiden.

Also, I regret finishing the Thieves Guild storyline. It wasn't really worth it, and now my character (the Huntress) feels divided between two Daedric Princes. I actually think you're better off nearly completing it, then abandoning it completely.

I just nearly finished the thieves guild storyline, but I didn't finish, I wanted to hang onto the special item.

Buffalobiian

Sun, 11-27-2011, 07:45 AM

Just following up on random bodies....

-There must have been this dragon that spawned right on top of the Pine Wood Sanctuary or something one time. I fought it away from the entrance, but now whenever I come out of the place, this dragon skeleton would automatically spawn from the sky above me and writhe around on the ground nonstop.

-This part happened when I entered the Dawnstar Sanctuary for the first time to catch Cicero. I headed in slowly while crouched as I was being cautious. I hugged the wall towards the left on top of the stairs as I thought I heard footsteps (or perhaps it was either a trap, or a guardian spawned at a near-but-safe distance) that caught my attention.

Now as I was just about to head down, I somehow thought it was a good idea to glance at the entrance again, so I turned - to see an Imperial soldier run past to get through the door!

What...the...fuck? Out of reflex I quickly doubled-back 2 steps and assassinated him as he wanted to open the door. Only then did I think this might have been Cicero in disguise trying to trick me. (and thought.. Nice One Besthesda!!)

But then.. the body sank through the ground.. and I concluded that it was some random glitch.

Xelbair

Sun, 11-27-2011, 08:21 AM

Not that they aren't trivially easy to beat by sneaking, but use two (or even three) words of fire breath on a vampire. ;)

Two words of Marked for Death turns the average dragon encounter from a 6-8 arrow affair to a 4 arrow one. Why waste the arrows?

I've found the one/two words of Kyne's Peace to be game-changing saving. Ever get attacked, especially early on, by three bears at once? Wasn't a problem thanks to that shout. Much easier to use the AOE shout than the illusion spell.

Throw Voice is kind of fun because you get all three words at once, but it has limited use now that I have 100 sneak.

Dismay is useless compared to the Werewolf Howl.
because i use sword, no arrows get wasted.
Racial nord power is enough and more usefull compared to the Kyne's Peace.
I've left out Elemental Force because i don't have it.

Kraco

Sun, 11-27-2011, 09:22 AM

-There must have been this dragon that spawned right on top of the Pine Wood Sanctuary or something one time. I fought it away from the entrance, but now whenever I come out of the place, this dragon skeleton would automatically spawn from the sky above me and writhe around on the ground nonstop.

I killed a dragon a short walk from Drelas' cottage. Then went inside the building, only to find the inhabitant instantly hostile and with annoyingly powerful spells, so I quickly backed down. When I exited the cottage, the dragon's bloody skeleton suddenly dropped from the sky right in front of me. Damn Bethesda.

Ryllharu

Sun, 11-27-2011, 10:38 AM

because i use sword, no arrows get wasted.Not all dragons land. If you're not a magic user, or get attacked in the marshlands...good luck getting certain ones to land.

animus

Sun, 11-27-2011, 11:54 AM

Splash!

Sun, 11-27-2011, 01:15 PM

I was feeling really cocky yesterday and decided to enter a random Dwemer ruin just because I felt like fighting a Centurion. Instead I came across a Centurion Master. The thing was alot tougher than anything I had faced yet, but I was able to handle it. Upon my triumphant return to Whiterun, some random mage walked up to me in the city and issued a challenge. I thought to myself: "This filth dare challenge the Dragonborn" and told him that I wasn't interested. He said he wouldn't take no for an answer and proceeded to attack me right away. Furious at this piece of trash, I pulled out my sword to teach him a lesson. He immediately backed out of my reach and hit me with a shock blast. I was in awe by how much damage this nobody was doing to me that I didn't even try to use a health potion and went charging head first, only to drop dead before I even reached him. The game reloaded to a point just before the fight took place, but this mage is now nowhere to be found. So I am left with my ego bruised and no way to resolve my feelings until that damn bastard shows up again. I now live in fear of the random mage who may assault me once more.

Animeniax

Sun, 11-27-2011, 01:33 PM

I wish magic wasn't so bad in this game. Sure through enchanting you can get -100% destruction costs, but they're just so weak later on. They have no scaling. In the time you can toss out like 30 spells for 0 cost, another melee build would do that same damage in 2 swings.

It's a good thing I'm not full on mage I guess, and have a 1 handed build to fall back on.

How far later on are you talking about? Because a buddy of mine made a destruction mage and his upper 20s level mage could go into a room and clear it in seconds with chain lightning. Maybe he'd have a harder time with big bosses, but he described how easy it was to kill anything and everything with destruction magic while healing yourself. Plus with bonuses he had virtually unlimited magicka.

I just made my smithing set with all 27% bonus to smithing (I couldn't find the best enchanting potion which would make it 28%) plus a blacksmith elixir (50% improvement to smithing) with 100 smithing and 100 enchanting. My armor rating is 858 and all 5 pieces have dual enchantments in a mix of improve health, stamina, magicka, bow damage, carrying weight, and fire resistance. About to go kill something powerful.

Horror storyDestruction spells can do a lot of damage because I don't think armor rating protects you from it, and most people don't always wear protection from fire/shock/frost all the time. Plus your health is probably only in the 200-300 range, so a powerful spell can kill you in one strike.

Splash!

Sun, 11-27-2011, 01:48 PM

Destruction spells can do a lot of damage because I don't think armor rating protects you from it, and most people don't always wear protection from fire/shock/frost all the time. Plus your health is probably only in the 200-300 range, so a powerful spell can kill you in one strike.

My health is at 310. I have the appropriate items to protect against fire and frost (can resist up to 70% and 90% respectively) for fighting dragons. I just didn't have any shock resistant apparel at the time since I don't often get hit by those spells. I probably could have beaten him if I were mentally prepared. After all, a Centurion Master's steam attack is about as powerful as a Frost Dragon's breath (without any resistance). I was just taken aback about how powerful this random person on the street was, and since he was the one who started the fight, I was kind of annoyed that the Whiterun guards just stood there and didn't intervene to protect their thane.

Edit: I just met another similar mage who challenged me. This time I was ready and decapitated him quickly. Seeing his head roll around the street is just what I needed...

TwisT

Sun, 11-27-2011, 01:51 PM

Buffalobiian

Sun, 11-27-2011, 01:52 PM

How far later on are you talking about? Because a buddy of mine made a destruction mage and his upper 20s level mage could go into a room and clear it in seconds with chain lightning. Maybe he'd have a harder time with big bosses, but he described how easy it was to kill anything and everything with destruction magic while healing yourself. Plus with bonuses he had virtually unlimited magicka.

I just made my smithing set with all 27% bonus to smithing (I couldn't find the best enchanting potion which would make it 28%) plus a blacksmith elixir (50% improvement to smithing) with 100 smithing and 100 enchanting. My armor rating is 858 and all 5 pieces have dual enchantments in a mix of improve health, stamina, magicka, bow damage, carrying weight, and fire resistance. About to go kill something powerful.

Destruction spells can do a lot of damage because I don't think armor rating protects you from it, and most people don't always wear protection from fire/shock/frost all the time. Plus your health is probably only in the 200-300 range, so a powerful spell can kill you in one strike.

Shit son...

If you haven't done the thieves guild main quest, you'd better figure out how to handle multiple high level mobs attacking at the same time before you do. You get attacked by 3 draugr death lords, 2 draugr wights, and at least an ice atronach all at once a few times. You have a high level quest follower, but I always have to summon a daedra to help or we'd have a much harder time.

Is this the part before you get "shot"? If so, I just did that part (just handed the translation to the deciphering guy). All skeletons either died in their sleep or collapsed mid-march without knowing what happened to them. I reloaded that part up to trigger the mess just for fun. Elemental Fury lvl2 and a scroll for Storm thingys took care of them.

Had fun stealing the translation without being fully discovered or killing a single guard. A bit different from my usual kill-on-sight approach just because this would be harder.

On the glitch-front, I had a dragon spawn at a dragon-site that I had already cleared. I killed it, and it fell through the earth. Then I fast-travelled to a nearby location and another (same one?) dragon appeared again, but didn't engage me (and I couldn't engage IT neither). Only lost a potion, but still felt cheated.

Ryllharu

Sun, 11-27-2011, 02:42 PM

I have never encountered a Dragon that doesn't land. I have encountered some that fly alot but that is because they can't land. Dawnstar is one such place. He just flys around nuking and sometimes land on rooftops. But all dragons i have fought are permanently grounded when they go under 50%. And if he is in a place he can't land he will fly far away just to land. In Dawnstar he usually lands a bit from the Kajit caravan camp.
Yah, they land eventually once hurt enough. But Xel said he doesn't use arrows, he uses a sword. It's hard (or next to impossible) to get a dragon to stay grounded if they refuse to land in the first place if you're using melee. You can't hit a flying dragon with a sword alone.

I really hate the ones that only use strafing attacks on goats and shit and then fly away into the distance once they feel satisfied. I'm left unsatisfied! It's pretty tough to hit a fast moving one with an arrow to goad it into attacking you for real.

Animeniax

Sun, 11-27-2011, 03:20 PM

Xelbair

Sun, 11-27-2011, 06:25 PM

Yah, they land eventually once hurt enough. But Xel said he doesn't use arrows, he uses a sword. It's hard (or next to impossible) to get a dragon to stay grounded if they refuse to land in the first place if you're using melee. You can't hit a flying dragon with a sword alone.

I really hate the ones that only use strafing attacks on goats and shit and then fly away into the distance once they feel satisfied. I'm left unsatisfied! It's pretty tough to hit a fast moving one with an arrow to goad it into attacking you for real.

Unrelenting force does the trick if i can hit him.

Animeniax

Sun, 11-27-2011, 07:31 PM

Does unrelenting force cause damage or does it force him to land? In the end, you have to have a ranged attack of some sort, or you'll be doing a lot of running to take out archers and other ranged adversaries.

Buffalobiian

Sun, 11-27-2011, 08:01 PM

I could never quite work out the range and speed of Unrelenting force to successfully hit a dragon.

Animeniax

Sun, 11-27-2011, 08:54 PM

Here's a tip, slightly spoilerish if you haven't completed the thieves guild quest (highlight to see):
even if you get the skeleton key, you have to keep at least one lockpick in your inventory or you won't be able to pick locks. A bug no doubt.

This is what my character looks like bare. I'd say it captures my real self about 95% (the hair and ears are all wrong):

1091

oyabun

Sun, 11-27-2011, 09:54 PM

I started a new character because I got bored with my viking and it seems my wife has gone AWOL. I think I left Alelia(?) the huntress in one the ruins I previously visited. She did'nt come home :(

I created a Breton character and is currently crafting her to become a Battle Summoner. Can you summon a Antorach and reanimate a corpse at the same time?

Animeniax

Sun, 11-27-2011, 09:58 PM

Don't see why you couldn't summon multiple creatures at the same time if you have the magicka. I was going to make a conjurer too but then I found enough staves that let me summon creatures, plus I like swinging my own blade/arrows.

oyabun

Sun, 11-27-2011, 10:02 PM

Yea that is what I'm intending. A battle mage/summoner. I have the option to conjure a weapon or equip one. It makes for more battle experience and scenarios. Conjuring a weapon looks really cool especially when you are using both hands.

BTW you can't summon the same creature unless you get the perk that allows you to do so. But maybe I can summon different types like antorach and zombie.

TwisT

Mon, 11-28-2011, 12:50 AM

I highly doubt it. Since there is a perk that allows you to summon 2 of the same type, it would mean you can raise 2 undeads and summon 2 Antorach. Add to that Aranea as a companion that summons her very own Antorach. That would make it a party of 7, including yourself. Sound a little unbalanced to me. But please let me know if you can do it. If so i will focus all my effort into getting Conjuring to 100.

Buffalobiian

Mon, 11-28-2011, 01:25 AM

Well.. now that the Dark Brotherhood quest is complete, and the Thieves Guild storyline is all by complete, I'm feeling a little empty.

I can't think of any other body that I fancy right now who would ask me to sneak and kill with some sort of plot. I had hoped to make Solitude my playground so that it becomes this impenetrable fortress that I have to infiltrate at night whenever I have to go there.. but that was disappointing. No one even bothers with my 10K+ bounty there.. because they're all dead.. :(

Killing critters, Falmers or bandits aren't anywhere near as fun as killing guards.

The batman Nightingale armour's pretty sick.

Animeniax

Mon, 11-28-2011, 09:03 AM

Weird, but since I found a quest to find several flawless jewels, I can't seem to find them anywhere. Earlier I was throwing them away or selling them cheap because they were so common.

Same with some potion ingredients I was looking for. Just a hint, if a plant glows and chimes at you, pick it.

Buffalobiian

Mon, 11-28-2011, 09:29 AM

Weird, but since I found a quest to find several flawless jewels, I can't seem to find them anywhere.

There's on in the Brotherhood's Pine Wood Sanctuary, if you haven't gotten that one yet.

Kraco

Mon, 11-28-2011, 11:02 AM

I haven't been selling flawless or any other jewels for a long time now. Although many of them aren't usefull anymore as such because I made jewelry out of them by using gold - to train smithing. I'm planning to sell the hoard of precious items once, if ever, I train speech enough to get sensible prices from merchants. I'm not going to sell them for 10% of their worth. That'd be nothing but highway robbery - and I'm not keen to slay merchants like would be the robbers' fate.

Xelbair

Mon, 11-28-2011, 01:12 PM

Banish Deadra enchantment seems to be worth the most on weapons, iron dagger with it + petty soul = 1800 value. i can sell them for 1/3 of that.

Animeniax

Mon, 11-28-2011, 09:20 PM

I've heard you can "advance" quests that you cannot complete normally by using a console command. Has anyone done this and are there any negative repercussions?

I have 3 or 4 quests in my list that I can't complete (because I killed them or some other bug). Also have 3 or 4 items in inventory from quests that I can't complete (like a book that Urag won't recognize I have because I took it from its chest before he asked me to find it).

Ryllharu

Mon, 11-28-2011, 11:23 PM

Not as far as I know, so long as you use the correct ones. It can be tricky to get the correct console command that doesn't break other things. Like a common reset is setting the npc to "never met before" dialogue trees. But if they are a point of contact for a number of quests, that might be a very big problem. I would highly recommend checking out one of the various wikia pages to make sure you get the correct fix to any broken quests. The TES/Fallout communities have always been very good at finding the optimum solutions for Bethesda's bugs.

Cheating via console commands is no big deal. Steam doesn't even recognize you're doing it in regards to steam achievements.

It was something I occasionally had to use in Fallout 3/NV, specifically the dumping quest items taking up inventory space. That was before Bethesda patched NV so most of the quest items ended up with zero weight.

Animeniax

Mon, 11-28-2011, 11:38 PM

Cool I was looking into it and it looked complex and problematic. But it might be worth it to get these quests out of my list. Of course, there's a patch coming out for PC on Wednesday which will take care of some issues. The skeleton key/lockpick bug that I mentioned is on the list of fixes in the patch.

Kraco

Tue, 11-29-2011, 03:42 AM

For simple quests there shouldn't be any issues. However, I'm not sure it will solve anything but the cluttering of your active quests list. It's a part of the discussion script that will remove the item from your inventory, not the status of the quest, I believe. To get rid of the quest item you are stuck with, you'd need to know the item's id code and set it to non-quest item status using a console command. To find out the id, you'd need to either use the editing tools (Creation Kit) or search the net.

Considering something like a stuck book, you could try to place it in one of the automatic book shelves that allows you to store books. At least quest weapons can still be placed in the weapon rack. I had a similar problem with a magic staff some College dude wanted, but I had looted the place beforehand and of course also picked up the staff. So, the quest wasn't working properly. I read from the internets that placing the staff in a weapon's rack and then taking it back would make the game officially realise you have it and the quest can proceed.

Animeniax

Wed, 11-30-2011, 03:59 PM

I've spent over 90 hours on Skyrim.

Kraco

Wed, 11-30-2011, 04:59 PM

After randomly or by luck opening them this far, I finally noticed the circular puzzle doors' correct pattern is imprinted on the claw keys. Once again I had fallen into the old trap of thinking needlessly complicately. I don't know how many of those doors exist in the game, but likely I've only very few left...

Animeniax

Wed, 11-30-2011, 05:17 PM

You actually rotated through all the different combinations to get it to open? It's only 27 possible combinations, but still... work smarter, not harder.

Found this creepy interior home decoration video from Skyrim. He adorns his home with the heads and bodies of women (and only women) he has decapitated with the decap skill:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHvx0l_tVEw

Splash!

Wed, 11-30-2011, 05:28 PM

Just downloaded patch v1.2. A minute into the game and I got attacked by a backwards flying elder dragon that smoked me in 2 seconds because my active resistances were on the fritz. Ah well, I guess I have to take a break from the game until Bethesda undoes the chaos unleashed by this new patch.

Kraco

Wed, 11-30-2011, 06:50 PM

You actually rotated through all the different combinations to get it to open? It's only 27 possible combinations, but still... work smarter, not harder.

That's the number of possible combinations, but let's not forget you'd have to be unluckier than TT to need to browse through all of them. I guess I was really lucky very long because I ramdomly reached the right combo quite quickly. But then when those doors just kept appearing one after another and my luck finally ran dry, I began to think there's no sense to have such a puzzle. The whole thing began at the ruin north of Riverwood. It had those wall carvings I deemed must be related to the door, and I kept staring at them and trying different combinations. But it was nothing but a wicked plot by Bethesda in the end. However, it led me astray. Only when I got to a door with no carvings whatsoever anywhere near it, I realised they were completely unrelated and the solution must be elsewhere.

Having played older Elder Scrolls, it never visited my mind to stare at the key itself. No such details existed previously.

Damn the new patch. It only made the game worse. They shouldn't let drunken people make patches. Nothing else would explain this one.