Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

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.

i used this a lot when i got stuck - http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Skyrim
and yeah all the dwarven/blackreach stuff is awesome

I played something like 120 or 160 hours of Skyrim. Great game but I wish the world was different. I don't like winter at all in real life and I hate the sight of snow. Also the towns and cultures are kind of a drag. Nords suck, the architecture sucks, and I don't care about the main storylines. But I have soooooooo much fun doing some of the smaller stuff and doing the dungeons.

I love snow. Imagine if Skyrim had a snowboarding element - carving clean lines down from the top of High Hrothgar \m/

They sorta do, informally, if you force shout your companion off a mountain. Which is a thing I don't think I could ever get enough of.

I have no real affinity for sword 'n' sorcery stuff, generally. I love this game for the mechanics and the expansiveness and the granularity. Fallout appeals to me more conceptually but, to the relatively shallow extent I've played it, I haven't really gotten into it much. Whereas I've spent a truly obscene number of hours playing Skyrim.

i'd still like to try elder scrolls online, need to find a used copy

Also the towns and cultures are kind of a drag. Nords suck, the architecture sucks
― fields of salmon, Tuesday, December 1, 2015 5:40 AM

lol the towns are like 5 houses with 10 people roaming around waiting for you to trigger their fake interaction dialogue. witcher 3 works similar but somehow feels more real, the villages and cities in that are done almost perfectly. i do remember the skyrim dlc that adds the island to the map looking way cooler than everything in the mainland. even the winter snow people there seemed more interesting.

Yeah I have to admit the sparseness of Skyrim vs Cyrodill is bothering me a bit. And the bleeeaaaakkkk snow. I want the quality and play of Skyrim but with Oblivion's maps included! I dunno I guess I just liked wandering in sunny verdant meadows picking flowers and fighting off spriggans and hangin' at Daedric shrines.

Those spaces are certainly out there. The map is huuuuuuuge.

Riften is pretty. Lots of trees and canals and stuff. Shame about the locals.

A few of the most glorious places are below ground.

Yeah some of the caverns have been rather nice, with waterfalls and moss and things. I encountered my first trolls too, in a tower thing on the way round the mountain? I assume if I just pass that by they wont come after me - they were impossible to beat.

You should be able to beat a frost troll pretty early in the game. The first one I recall was during the Seven Thousand Steps ascent. Not necessarily easy, but doable. Especially if you have a companion.

If you come up against hard blocks, there's always back to the last save and more side quests. For my first playthrough, when I quick travelled everywhere and pushed through the main quest line, I'd do this often. For my second playthrough, I abstained from quick travel (making for a more interesting game, and forcing more strategic quest sequencing), and had levelled up to killing giants before I met Paarthurnax. Once I was silent casting Fury/Frenzy/Mayhem it was pretty much over for mobs, and I'd use Lydia or another companion as a HP sponge against bosses.

san are u playing fallout 4?

I've decided to abstain from all addictive behaviors and compounds for the time being. To be honest, what I've seen of FO4 hasn't inspired much interest, but I may watch a few hours of a playthrough to see if its less of a wooden rehash than I fear.

Trolls gave me the fear early on but after I leveled up some I'd saunter through Labyrinthian with nothing but a bow and some swagger. Hang in there!

I just wish I had more time to dedicate to playing it!

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

There's a fun easter egg of a sort in Blackreach: go to the main temple. climb one of the towers, use your Force Push Shout (or whatever it's called, the one that allows to you push people away) on the big disco ball that hangs from the ceiling, and see what happens.

Another fun easter egg that I discovered all by myself: go to Lost Valley Redoubt, and climb to the highest manmade ledge there. From up there you can see the lake way down below you. Jump straight to the lake so the massive fall won't kill you, and something interesting will happen.