Skyrim, or, How I Ruined My LifeFollow

Casting has two big problems.

1. How Magicka pools, magicka costs, and gear advance relative to each other. You start hitting some really annoying points where you are going OOM just way too fast, but downgrading your spells is too big a damage loss. It's rectified once you get stronger cost reduction gear, but it's annoying early on.

2. The fact that you have no way to buff your destruction damage. You are essentially going to plateau at 90 damage per spell (though fire can go higher, if the target is on fire, and the other two schools will damage stamina or magicka). I don't remember how strong doublecasting makes it, though. Powerful, sure. But compared to the damage that weapon-based characters can get, even assuming they aren't combining alchemy/smithing/enchanting to ludicrous ends? It just doesn't compare, imo. I really do think that Fortify Destruction should buff its damage.

Only thing I use spells for is to set pools on fire.

At level 51, with heavy armor & smithing capped as well as the difficulty cranked to max, the only issues I have as a Greatsword major/bow minor character are against large groups of mages (I'll snipe those) or the "super" dragons that can spawn on account of the dangerous dragons mod (Dragonrend to keep em' grounded, the darkmare tanks them- yay for invincible horses-& I snipe away from way back).

Other than that, I don't even have to block anymore, really. I only touched magic when required for the mage college quests.

I looted some axe last night that does extra damage against targets on fire. Now I just need a quick-switch bind so I can work on my Puff'n Sting

If you play this on PC, you may be interested in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Creation Kit For PC, released today.

Take the perk to upgrade magic items and you can raise the base damage quite a bit. That sword is pretty fun on Draugers. Sends them exploding and running in all directions. Which can be kind of messy, but fun.

Azura still has her stone in this game. She's on a mountain peak between Ulfric's pad and the mage's college. Less on the case of being "easy" to get though. Without spoiling too much you will have to kill quite a few casters to complete the quest. (on my first character that lead me to quick frustration, haven't been back to try to get it)

Based on four things:
1. Size of soul
2. Enchanting skill level
3. Perks taken that increase the effect
4. Temporary effects or equipment that boost enchanting

Even using a Grand Soul Gem, sometimes my "enchant ring" enchants would only give a +3% bonus at low levels. Once I had the perks and high enchanting, I think it would be around 20%. Guessing that without the perks, it would be around 10% at high level enchanting (maybe 12% or so).

On the topic of soul gems, it's annoying as hell that souls get put into whatever gem you have available. Bought some Grand Soul Gems and accidentally infused them with petty souls.

Battlemage =/= "Pure caster" so nyeah

But thanks for the tip on the rocks. I remember them being scarcer in Oblivion but then I got the Azuria stone and stopped worrying about it. At least now I know I can crank out piles of enchanted crap.

Want!

Had some fun rolling around with my "evil" mage yesterday. He's collecting all the Daedric artifacts and generally being a bit of a power-hungry *******. He roams around killing anyone he can't otherwise get something from, and stealing childrens' dreams. 50% of the time he's also faceless, because his Dragon Priest masks doesn't always like to render.

Started him on the Dark Brotherhood quests. SpoilerWhen given the option to guess which captive should be killed, I totally incinerated all 3 of them. Best to tie up the loose ends, I figured. I was amused to find that that's totally an option.

Edited, Feb 7th 2012 12:42pm by Eske

I did the same thing. Execution style from behind, arrows to the base of the neck.

Edited, Feb 7th 2012 2:17pm by lolgaxe

Pay a bard to sing one song 3,000 times, while you sit leering at them from a corner.