Skyrim, or, How I Ruined My LifeFollow

I find the leveling pretty similar, actually. It's just you need to specialize more; unlike in Oblivion, where perks are unlocked as you hit a skill level, in Skyrim you both need to hit the level AND need to have the perks available. It makes you a bit choosier, but also limits what you can do a bit more. And I'll probably be the only person who feels this way, but I do kinda miss the stat system and the athletics skill. It was pretty fun boosting my athletics to insane levels and jumping from hilltop to hilltop.

And spell crafting. Yeah, athletics boosting and spellcrafting are what I miss the most. Other than those, Skyrim is a lot better.

I kind of cheated. SpoilerI sat back by his throne and just shot him with Arrows. When I started I was too close and he used the disarm shout while I was drawing my bow. So I was left holding an arrow in my hands and kind of laughed. But if I was standing at the throne he wouldn't attack me, and just sat back as I arrowed him to death.

My favorite Nord-King boss so far has been SpoilerOlaf. I entered his place, with Mr. Ghost tailing behind me, Olaf and Mr. Ghost are duking it out, and I run up to beat down on Olaf. He turns to me, does a Fos Ro Dah and sends me flying across the tomb. Then continues to go back and fight the Ghost. It's like he was saying "@#%^ off and let me fight this Ghost." By the time I was back up on my feet and crawling towards him (must have been stunned or something, could barely move) the Ghost had him down to about 50% life.

Skyrim isn't that great a game. There, I said it. The story is barely there, it's easy to overpower your way through things, it's highly repetitive, and the worst offense is how glitchy and just how many exploits there are. It's an unfinished product. That being said, I still find myself having fun with it.

Yeah, but you don't have to try to avoid gaining skill levels in certain skills while trying desperately to get them in the right ones in order to make sure you don't end up completely hosed when you're stuck getting a five, a four and a freaking two. With perks, you can bank the points until you're where you need to be on that particular skill.

Yeah. While gaining a level because of Speech and Pickpocketing perks technically underpowers you a little, it ultimately means very little. That was much less the case in Oblivion, where enemies would level up with you, but your stats wouldn't necessarily increase proportionately and your overall health was determined by how early, by level, you could cap your endurance.

In Skyrim, you'll be slightly less effective in normal melee combat if you power level sneak up to 100. In Oblivion, improperly doing the same would have been far more annoying (instead of 15 stat point increases that level, you'd get 7).

I'm much, MUCH happier with Skyrim's system.

Maybe up to level 30. Beyond that you end up running of perks to take and have to branch out a bit. I'm level 66 right now and I'm equally effective using Archery, Destruction Magic, and One Handed damage. I'm decent with Conjuration and Two Handed as well. On top of that I've capped and perked Smithing, Enchanting, Light Armor, and some Block. While I haven't put much in the way of perks into Sneak (just the extra damage perks), it's at level 96 and mobs will literally bump right into me in a dark room and still not detect me.

Ok, I just had one of those "this feels too real" moments. I found Bard's Leap and walked to the end of the plank. I'm usually in 3rd person, but wanted to jump in 1st person view. Wow, if you do this, don't look down. I felt my stomach knot up like I was a kid taking swim lessons jumping off the high dive.

I've actually experience this in WoW of all games, too. And that's a cartoon-ish game in 3rd person.

I'm more than plateaued in the sense that I have no more perks to take in order to play my character the way I want to play it. That doesn't mean I'm not having fun, however. I got a quest very, very early in the game to try and figure out a way to get some guy set free from a keep way the hell off in the NW part of the map and I finally got around to doing it tonight. SpoilerI had just done the main story line quest to infiltrate the Thalmor embassy and was more than willing to take a trek off a bit to the west to kill more Thalmor. I expect more Thalmor justicar death squads in the not too distant future.

From a gameplay (specifically, combat mechanics) point of view, my character is OP as all hell. The fun for me now is seeing what interesting things the ragdoll physics system will cause my arrows to do to my victims. I made a bandit do a full sideways somersault with an arrow to the side of the head yesterday, and the day before I shot a skeleton who blew to pieces and I watched one of its hands fly spinning through the air in a massive arc. From a challenge perspective, I can't remember the last time I died. SpoilerI actually came close at the Thalmor embassy tonight on my way through the outdoor area when a guard saw me and about 8 of them came after me, but that's because casters like to hide behind stuff and zap the sh*t out of you and it's nearly impossible to get a bead on them. Bosses die in one hit if I get a shot on them from sneak mode. Elder/ancient dragons die in 3-4 hits. And I'm okay with that. I'm not huge on the 'necessity' of immersion in RPG games, but being as powerful as I am actually helps with immersion. If I drive an arrow through the back of your skull, you're not going to get up and charge after me.

Running around doing main story quests, I found myself back in Riverwood where a poorly timed dragon attack had resulted in the death of the town's blacksmith a long, long time ago on this play through. And here he was, just lying there face down where he died, so I dragged him into the river and watched him float downstream.

But the best so far was yesterday when I came across an elder dragon. I've mentioned before how irritating it can be without the Dragonrend shout to get dragons out of the sky and stationary where they're easier to hit, but in this case there were some baddies on the ground that got the dragon's attention and I manged to get a couple of shots off from sneak before the dragon finished them off. At this point I had the dragon's full attention as it took flight and circled around, so I lined up a shot and when it straightened out for its flaming strafing run I put an arrow in its face. It wasn't dead but it was low enough on health to land...only it didn't land gracefully. It landed on its face and skidded a very substantial distance. I had to strafe out of the way to avoid it. What made it cool was that it wasn't just some fortuitous graphics glitch that made it 'look' like it was skidding on its face...dragons have explicit crash landing animations complete with dust and debris spraying out all around them as they skid along the ground.

The game is enormous. While you'll see repeated themes in various different dungeons, they're all adequately unique that you never feel like you're moving your way through another WoW-esque copy-pasta cave on your way to the boss that is always in the same place. I've explored a very large portion of the map and I'm still constantly coming across undiscovered caves and keeps and ruins any time I head out to do a quest. You've got your 'guild' quest arcs that so far have been entertaining enough to warrant doing, and of course of you've got the generic Radiant Story quests that involve a random objective in a location chosen at random. But what impresses me is the number of unique scripted quests I've come across. SpoilerI did one quest out of the Blue Palace in Solitude to check out the 'strange lights' coming from Wolf Skull Cave. That was cool. Cave cave cave and then blam...opens up to this massive room with a broken underground keep and necromancers doing all kinds of horrible nasty things, complete with voice-over dialogue of the event. I had a feeling based on how the event ended that it wasn't over and sure enough, a few hours of playtime later and courier runs up to me in Whiterun and gives me a message from the Blue Palace asking me to come back because sh*t just got real. I just didn't expect that kind of scripted quest outside of the main arcs.

And lastly, there's all the memes. I've thus far come across 3 sweet rolls in my adventures. I'm saving them up so that one day I can run around and throw them at the knees of the Whiterun guards who talk about how they used to be adventurers...

I'm going to try and finish up this character's time in Skyrim (until DLC, of course) so that I can focus on Bastion and Overlord over my xmas holidays, but I can safely say I haven't been so entertained by a standalone RPG since DA:O.

Edited, Dec 12th 2011 8:46pm by Aurelius

Well I got hit with another odd bug. While diving down into the Wolf Queen's catacombs and picking away at various mobs I saw what looked like one of those undead vikings against the wall. I proceed to bury an arrow between its eyes and nothing happened. "Well bummer time to go loot my arrow" I thought right as I step in the trap and fire jets shoot up around me. "Son of a... let me try that again..." I said to myself as I did it roughly 4 times. After the 4th I tried to hop on the table next to the trap and reach across and, no suprise here, the trap sprung. All the sudden I fell through the map (I guess the flame pushed me through the wall) and I am thinking I am going to have to reload a previous save. Nope, the game dumped me farther into her catacomb, just a short distance from a vampire who somehow was oblivious to the loud 'thunk' my character made as my shins touched my lungs.

The Elder Scrolls games have always been plagued with odd bugs and things you can do to completely break the challenge. I would have to say though that this is the best they have done so far though.

I fell through the world once over this past weekend. Sadly, I don't recall where it happened and don't even remember where it punted me back to but it was some distance away as I recall. I know the exact spot you're referring to, however, as I was just in that dungeon and triggered the trap accidentally with a draugr corpse. I had to grab it by the foot and drag it off the pressure plate to see what was on the wall, but I've got the Sneak perk that allows me to stand on pressure plates without triggering them.

Best line in the game.

Bandit NPC: Die already so I can have your stuff.


I've just run into my first "sh*t" bug. I'm 53 and have just decided to take sides in the Stormcloak/Imperial fight. Unfortunately I've been to the fort the Imperials send you to in order to start that quest line. When I was up there I started exploring around there and was attacked by the bandits outside, so I killed the ones outside, but never went in. However, since the bandits on the outside are now respawns, the quest won't update. No Imperial questline for me.

As of level 36, I still haven't run out of the perks I really really want as part of my primary vision for the character. I still have a few to go in enchanting, 1h and Heavy Armor before I'll feel like I'm really branching out.

It's possible. All I know is that getting multiple twos or threes always left me feeling a bit weaker.

Funner.

Huh, it's actually a word. I always thought it was 'more fun' or 'funnier', but apparently you can combine them and be 'more funner'.

Alternatively, just grab a sword and skewer the ones that don't buckle when they take an arrow in the... face.

Skyrim > Morrowind > Oblivion

Morrowind is an awesome game. That said there are some annoyances that you will quickly notice.

1. It is very rare that you will hear someone talk. Heck the only talking I heard outside of random npcs saying a quick one liner as you pass, do something stupid, or kill them is the deadric quests when they speak to you. Which means you will be doing a lot of reading.

2. Combat is wonky. If you choose to pick up a melee style of fighting be prepared to be swinging at mobs for quite a while until you build up your skill in said weapon type. Oh and there are a ton of various weapon types you can level. Maces, swords, axes all come in one and two handed versions. Swords also come in short and long blade. Daggers, polearms, staves, etc...

3. The biggest pet peeve of mine, mainly due to playing it on the console, is the bloody journal. But since you are picking it up on Steam you can easily mod that out and get a good one. Or if you pick up Bloodmoon expansion with it you can use the updated one.

That said if you do start playing it and want to find a vendor that has a good chunk of change go to Caldera and go in the three story Orc house, (I don't quite remember the name) Ghorak Manor. On the second floor there is a scamp that will buy any weapons, armor, drinks you have at face value. Really nice when you run across a deadric dai-katana and want to pawn it off (the thing goes for 120000g). You will just have to wait a day for his gold to restock.

PS - If you drop something it tends to stay where you dropped it at. I use either the mage or fighters guild halls in Balmora as my temporary storage (alter area and bedroom area downstairs respectfully) until I get around to building my base.

PPS - Regardless what fighting style you pick make sure to get levitate. That is all I'm going to say about that.

Edit: Figured out the name of the Orc's house in Caldera.

Edited, Dec 13th 2011 1:08pm by Criminy

the morrowind goty was included with a pc i bought in early 2003. it looked pretty cool (with a tweaked view distance) but i did the proverbial "go one way, get destroyed by a bandit; go the other way, get destroyed by a sewer rat" beginning. and that was my morrowind experience. if i ever catch it on sale again i'll definitely give it another go.

I know there is a mudcrab that sells booze. All I can remember is that the scamp I mentioned has 5000g, don't remember how much the mudcrab has. I might fire the game up later and check him out to verify.

None of them should affect it at all as far as quest status goes, except for the obvious part where you might find yourself rather less powerful than before and be in a bit of a bind.

Try not to spread yourself too thin. The real power comes from blacksmithing/enchanting/alchemy. If you use those to their fullest potential (even without glitches) you can become insanely powerful. If you ignore them, you'll be facing an uphill battle. There's also a limit to the number of perks you can get and the true strength of any skill category comes from the perks. You can gain skill in whatever categories you want (and even some that you don't just by using them because it makes sense or seems like a good idea at the time) but you'll never really be great with those skills unless you've got the perk points to spend. For me, Sneak would be my first choice to invest points into, since it will allow you to get multiple shots off on a target before they see you.

Also, a sneak-y trick is to use your arrows to distract your target by intentionally shooting past them at an object (or even a wall)behind them. As long as they haven't detected you, they'll turn around and go to the arrow's point of impact to investigate which not only gives you more distance to get clean shots on target, but also gives them a predictable travel path making it easier to lead them and make each shot count.

There are seven(?) others like him. SpoilerCollect all their masks(plus the plain wooden one) for the ability to make another awesome one that has some interesting unique effects.

This video makes me want to make a @#%^ING BADASS VIKING!!!

Maybe he should have embedded it.

Sorry DG.

Too lazy.