Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

i played dragon's dogma, i believe because of a mention in this thread. i think it was okay? i certainly liked it more before i sat through the terrible, long, final sequence. it is part of that genre of pretend open world rpgs, which tbh i kind of like. some of it was a bit broken, but the pawn idea was cute at least. certainly it was one of the worst plotted games of recent memory, with horrendous no budget voice acting/ translation out of the original french (i assume?). but most of the time it was actually fun to play. the giant monsters were a really nice feature although they got tired eventually and probably weren't hard enough. no real tactics, just doing he same shit over and over to whittle down a massive HP bar.

anyway, pretty good. i would neither recommend nor discourage

PS3 died just before xmas with me about 30% into this game - got a new machine now but cant describe how much losing that saved game hurts

You'll eventually lose game progress with one of the game breaking bugs. This will just get you used to the heartache.

mmo got beat up in beta reviews pretty bad.

xp noted... I feel 30% progress is the point where I might not have the courage to re-start a game (esp one as huge as Skyrim)

based on a day or two of beta testing, i thought the mmo succeeded in feeling more like an elder scrolls game than a mmo, but maybe too much so since there wasn't any clear advantage to working with other people. also having tons of other people running around doing quests in parallel with you but not actually interacting with you kind of breaks immersion, and these games were always mostly about immersion for me.

based on a day or two of beta testing, i thought the mmo succeeded in feeling more like an elder scrolls game than a mmo, but maybe too much so since there wasn't any clear advantage to working with other people. also having tons of other people running around doing quests in parallel with you but not actually interacting with you kind of breaks immersion, and these games were always mostly about immersion for me.

agree on the immersion part. in the single player I would get all anxious sneaking through dungeons and in the mmo I just ran around and really didn't care about stealth (even tho I had a stealth character)

how is stealth even possible as a plausible game mechanic when there's other ppl running around?

I just got Skyrim a few weeks ago (I'm v cutting edge with my gaming). I think I'm fundamentally missing some aspect of how to play this game, because I die constantly and it gets really annoying going back and redoing everything all the time. I read some stuff about levelling and now I'm wondering if I've fucked my character up already somehow, I'm that shit at it.

you're not behind the times, I'm looking forward to playing this in a year or two!

I started on a new character a little while back after spending an obscene amount of time leveling my first dude up to the point where next to nothing hurt him and almost every enemy crumpled on one hit.

A couple of quick tips:

1) Don't rely on autosave. Manually save as often as possible.
2) When you're at a single-digit level, pick one or two or three things that you'd like to be good at, and do those things as much as possible and, when you level up, use your skill points on those things. So if you want to be a sneaky archer with awesome heavy armor, sneak and shoot arrows as much as possible and let dudes hit your heavy armor as much as possible. And that stuff will level up pretty quickly. It seems like a no-brainer, but it really is that straightforward. And I'll double down on the armor tip: getting hit is key to leveling up. It took me way too long to figure that out. Get hit, run away, heal up, go back and get hit some more.
3) Scavenge like a mofo. Lots of good stuff out there. When you kill someone, check their stuff and check the armor/weapon ratings against what you currently have. Upgrade if possible, as often as possible.
4) Just completely ignore the giants for a while. They will knock you the shit out.

I was a little iffy when I first started playing but Skyrim ultimately resolved into maybe my favorite game ever. And I'm not really that big a fan of sword and sorcery stuff, either. It's just solid and immersive and a whole lot of fun once you dig in.

1) Don't rely on autosave. Manually save as often as possible.

3) Scavenge like a mofo. Lots of good stuff out there. When you kill someone, check their stuff and check the armor/weapon ratings against what you currently have. Upgrade if possible, as often as possible.

4) Just completely ignore the giants for a while. They will knock you the shit out.

Also: there are two ways around the mountain and the other way is better imo

Hare far in are you, Colonel?

Oh, yeah. You do need to experience being pummelled by a giant at least once. Just, y'know, save your game first.

I never really bothered with cooking or food at all. I thankfully realized pretty quickly that it was mostly pointless. Conversely, it took me way too long to figure out the usefulness of smithing and enchanting.

I emphasized scavenging, but you'll learn over time that it's a selective activity based on how you choose to play. Like, you don't need to be constantly picking up ingredients if you don't have an interest in alchemy. When I first started, I picked up literally every basket and plate and tunic I happened upon. Quickly learned the pointlessness of that endeavor.

Buy a house quickly so you can pile up junk in it.

it's like you already know me

Acquire a follower and have them collect loot for you. If they pick it up themselves, they can carry an infinite load. If you try to trade stuff with them, they'll stop accepting at a point. Just don't accidentally kill your follower somewhere inconvenient while they're carrying 8,000 of your items. Because it sucks.

With alchemy you can easily make tons of money, just look up the expensive potions and track those ingredients down. You can get into a loop going from town to town buying ingredients and selling the expensive potions and stockpile more than enough.

Oh the grinding.

I'm also yet to get to Skyrim (still playing Oblivion!) but what helped me enormously was buying a Prima guide, especially for setting my character up to start with. I like playing hands-off battlemage styles, so I made sure I picked a breton as theyre fairly immune to magical attacks. I'm subsequently hopeless at melees and even rats get all in my face but I can slay shit from miles with my staff ov doom.

Theres a few ES wikis that are useful as well.

funny thread revival, just after I loaded this up too yesterday.

Not played it for a while, never got too far but remember collecting a lot of books that I wanted to read. When I logged in yesterday just couldn't remember anything, controls etc. Want to start from scratch I think, it seems to great a game to just ignore in my library.

(and I'm all Farming simmed out!)

"tooooooo" great a game, obv

As far as I've gotten with my new character, I've just been staying in that first town you visit and venturing out on little daytrips to level up and to mine ore (I've opted this time around to only use weapons and armor that I create myself). I've found that it's been a pretty decent way to reacquaint myself with the controls without butterfingering my way through life-threatening situations.

I had the best intentions of trying a semi-pacifist run this time (only defensive kills) but it's way too fun + easy to arrow people from the shadows. I haven't senselessly murdered any villagers inside of their shops, though, so that's something.

Bizarrely, I just started a replay of this 2 days ago.

One tip I have is literally just sneak all the time - there's really no reason not to, and it passively buffs the skill whenever someone is around. I'm not in any way a stealth player in this game, but the surprise attack bonuses are totally key.

My original character is undetectable in broad daylight if he's crouching and not moving much (and also has the armor that casually poisons enemies when he's in stealth mode). Thanks, sneak skill!

when i was playing this the character system was such that you had to do a little bit of advance planning to get the build you wanted in terms of perk selection. i never played after that patch that allowed you to roll skills over and cash in your perks (gameyest shit ever btw) so i guess that's sort of moot

i guess my only advice is to only pick up stuff that has at least a 10:1 cost:weight ratio (or any magic item you haven't disenchanted yet).

The skill point cash-in is tough to use, I've found. The first time I hit level 100 on a skill and opted to make it legendary, I didn't realize that that particular skill got knocked back down to 15. It wasn't worth the skill points that I got to redistribute in that instance. But if you figure out how to game it (my trick has been to grind away at and use skill points on skills I don't particularly care about and then redistribute them to the skills you want to hone), it's a cool option.

Or, wait, no, I just rapidly levelled up on non-essential skills and used the points I accrued on, like, becoming Master Sneaksmith.

But if you figure out how to game it

once you've hit smith and enchant 100 and churned out all your maxed out gear you don't really need them anymore. alchemy too maybe if you brew up a huge enough inventory

100 pickpocket lets u turn entire towns into nudist colonies

still like playing this just to hear the soundtrack

I got cocky after doing so well in Oblivion and finally fired up Skyrim a couple weeks back. After doing the first parts and killing the first dragon easily, I got overconfident and went "MAGE TIEMS" and walked on foot all the way up the mountain to the college.

...only to get sucked into a questline that forced me into a dungeon with the guild to hunt for some relics, that apparently is basically impossible to complete at my level (lol I'm only L4). Aaaaand I cant back out of the dungeon without beatnig the boss (wtf, Bethesda). Aaaaaand of course I have no saves from pre-dungeon, do I.

&*^&^$%^ I dont want to have to start all over again ;_;

Also what the hell did they do to alchemy, it seems all kind of dumbed down now.

I'm trying to remember what quest/boss you're referring to. But try knocking the difficulty level down temporarily. I had to that a couple of times early on when I kept getting the shit kicked out of me (by dudes who are an easy one-hit kill nowadays).

Under Saarthal. It took an hour, and so much anger and swearing I thought I'd genuinely cracked, just to beat the sub-boss dragur. Apparently the end boss one has changing elemental protection, I'm short on good spells, and I think i already have the game on easy :( wah.

I'm having a hard time remembering that place myself, but a quick Google search reveals a lever to a door out of that place somewhere near a blue orb? If that rings a bell? I remember one or two places in the game that I couldn't figure out how to get the fuck out of, and that might've been one of them.

Oh god if I can back out of that quest I totally will. I really need a prima guide for this damn thing.

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

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

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

temple of xrib was so good! no bosses tho iirc

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Above should read:

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

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

Could stil really use the bloody prima guide, mind.