xkcd

by **SecondTalon** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 11:25 pm UTC

That was pretty much my reaction too. $20? I can totally wait.

by **Spambot5546** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 12:56 am UTC

DLCs for TES games always seemed kind of pointless to me. Does it add anything that a mod couldn't?

by **The Scyphozoa** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 1:18 am UTC

Um, more world area and quests?
Not that a mod couldn't do quests, but someone's gotta write 'em after all...
(I'm not sure if mods can add world area, but I somehow doubt it.)

by **poxic** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 1:24 am UTC

Haven't looked at Skyrim yet, but Morrowind had lots of new-area mods, with and without quests. They were often of lower quality than the official stuff, but then modders aren't usually spending 40 hours a week at it.

Wait, scratch that. Some do more than that, I'm sure.

by **Magnanimous** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 2:38 am UTC

Tamriel Rebuilt is one of the more ridiculous parts of modding culture. I'm pretty sure that team has added more area than there was in the original game...

by **Menacing Spike** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 10:38 am UTC

SexyTalon wrote:That was pretty much my reaction too. $20? I can totally wait.

Seriously! For that price, you can buy like 8 horse armours.

by **Josephine** » Sun Aug 05, 2012 2:09 am UTC

So, how much does difficulty affect the game? I've been playing largely on Apprentice difficulty (one step below default), and everything just seems very easy to kill. Does it really change that much? I mean, I can kill dragons and frost trolls and giants with novice spells. That doesn't seem normal. And for that matter, how easy would the lowest difficulty be...

by **Obby** » Sun Aug 05, 2012 2:15 am UTC

Josephine wrote:So, how much does difficulty affect the game? I've been playing largely on Apprentice difficulty (one step below default), and everything just seems very easy to kill. Does it really change that much? I mean, I can kill dragons and frost trolls and giants with novice spells. That doesn't seem normal. And for that matter, how easy would the lowest difficulty be...

It changes significantly. Though, if you exploit one of the many bugs (or maybe not a bug, maybe an intended feature) in the game to boost your stats to ridiculous heights, it's not really going to matter what difficult you play on since you'll one-shot everything in the game just by looking at them the wrong way.

As for mods adding new areas, they definitely can. However, they won't be tacked on to the world like another normal area, so you won't be able to just walk there like you can just walk to, say, Solitude. All of the mods that I've seen that added new areas also add some kind of NPC you talk to that transports you there. For instance: The Moonpath to Elsweyr mod. I haven't tried it, so I have no idea how well it works, but I've seen several other mods that have similar descriptions.

by **The Scyphozoa** » Sun Aug 05, 2012 2:54 am UTC

Josephine wrote:So, how much does difficulty affect the game? I've been playing largely on Apprentice difficulty (one step below default), and everything just seems very easy to kill. Does it really change that much? I mean, I can kill dragons and frost trolls and giants with novice spells. That doesn't seem normal. And for that matter, how easy would the lowest difficulty be...

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Difficulty

So, if you put it at Master I think everything will be taking 3x as long to kill as it has been for you.

by **Dark567** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 6:41 pm UTC

I got the new DLC as a gift for my nameday from my brother and its been pretty good. Kinda an addon about the size of the Imperial versus Stormcloak war quests with the addition of two new skill trees. So I think that's pretty big, and its got me interested in Skyrim again after not playing for awhile, so that's cool too.

by **not baby Newt** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 11:19 pm UTC

Oblivion had some mods that added new areas (Stirk; Elsweyr) you could walk to, but for most purposes it's easier and leads to less conflicts to make a new area.

Note that skyrim difficulty doesn't affect followers, summons, frenzy spells... only damage *you* deal and take.

by **Spambot5546** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 11:36 pm UTC

Am I the only one that makes no use of followers? That chick from Whiterun just sits in my house.

by **The Scyphozoa** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 12:51 am UTC

Spambot5546 wrote:Am I the only one that makes no use of followers? That chick from Whiterun just sits in my house.

She was getting insolent so I killed her. I took her out into the fields outside of Whiterun, and I cut her head off with the Mace of Molag Bal, and trapped her soul.

by **SlyReaper** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 7:57 am UTC

The Scyphozoa wrote:
Spambot5546 wrote:Am I the only one that makes no use of followers? That chick from Whiterun just sits in my house.

She was getting insolent so I killed her. I took her out into the fields outside of Whiterun, and I cut her head off with the Mace of Molag Bal, and trapped her soul.

You killed Lydia? You monster.

by **Josephine** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 8:17 am UTC

Well, he got a soul gem out of it. I suppose he could've put it into his primary weapon and carried her around.

by **Koa** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 9:34 am UTC

Cutting off someone's head with a mace must be rather tedious though.

by **Lostdreams** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 11:57 am UTC

Most of the maces in Skyrim are flanged. A mace with flanges wide enough, with only four flanges and a point of impact on the back side, would definitely be able to make it past the vertibrae and most of the trachea. Would it be full decapitation? No. ..but I think most people would still classify it as a decapitation.

by **Spambot5546** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 2:15 pm UTC

If it's not enough to get you on the Headless Hunt it's not a decapitation.

Also, I've gotten to level 40 and still never heard the infamous "arrow to the knee" line. Did it get patched out or something?

by **Menacing Spike** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 4:34 pm UTC

SlyReaper wrote:
The Scyphozoa wrote:
Spambot5546 wrote:Am I the only one that makes no use of followers? That chick from Whiterun just sits in my house.

She was getting insolent so I killed her. I took her out into the fields outside of Whiterun, and I cut her head off with the Mace of Molag Bal, and trapped her soul.

You killed Lydia? You monster.

For my part I was tempted to kill her but then this happened (warning, loud volume video). As a reward for amusing me, I let her live.

by **SecondTalon** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 4:44 pm UTC

Spambot5546 wrote:If it's not enough to get you on the Headless Hunt it's not a decapitation.

Also, I've gotten to level 40 and still never heard the infamous "arrow to the knee" line. Did it get patched out or something?

I want to say that Idle NPC Chatter was patched to be less frequent in general. I may be mistaken.

by **SlyReaper** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 7:28 pm UTC

Menacing Spike wrote:
SlyReaper wrote:
The Scyphozoa wrote:
Spambot5546 wrote:Am I the only one that makes no use of followers? That chick from Whiterun just sits in my house.

She was getting insolent so I killed her. I took her out into the fields outside of Whiterun, and I cut her head off with the Mace of Molag Bal, and trapped her soul.

You killed Lydia? You monster.

For my part I was tempted to kill her but then this happened (warning, loud volume video). As a reward for amusing me, I let her live.

Yeah, that does get annoying after a while though. I deftly avoid a trap, and Lydia blunders straight into it. Every time we go into a dungeon together.

by **MisterCheif** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 9:53 pm UTC

In Dawnguard I noticed that my companion at the time (who I shall not name due to potential spoilers) seemed to deliberately swerve around pressure plates, so maybe companion AI has been improved.

And Dawnguard is pretty awesome. I haven't played as a Vampire Lord yet, as I'm playing my werewolf character, but the werewolf perks made transforming actually survivable (though I think SkyRe may have helped with that a little - but until I got the extra health and stamina perk, I didn't last long.

Spoiler:

by **Magnanimous** » Fri Sep 14, 2012 8:10 am UTC

Magnanimous wrote:Elder Scrolls Fleeting Thought: I wonder how feasible it is to convert the Morrowind/Oblivion maps so you could play them in Skyrim. You'd have to do the borders between regions by hand (and wait for Tamriel Rebuilt to finish mainland Morrowind), and possibly have to adjust the scale so the geography is the right relative size... But exploring a full third of Tamriel would totally be worth it.

Aw yeah, bitches

Spoiler:

by **poxic** » Sat Sep 15, 2012 12:51 am UTC

I am about to install Skyrim! You may never hear from me again -- either I will be sucked into the gameworld vortex, or my machine will die an agonising death.

Or both.

Retroactively spoilered: a pile of rant.

Spoiler:

Final edit, a couple of days later: it runs OK on lowest video settings. Still looks nice. Can't alt-tab away more than once or twice or I get a freeze. Alchemy is annoying, leveling up is annoying, enchanting is annoying, Steam is annoying... but it's still a pretty good game so far.

I'll wait until I finish it before deciding where it stands in my Elder Scrolls list. The last two games made me tear up at the endings, so this one has tall boots ARMOR 1 WEIGHT 1 VALUE $59.95 to fill.

...

Many days later, a new lesson learned: once the damn thing is working all right, DO NOT UPDATE THE VIDEO DRIVER. Goddamnitsomuch again.

by **maninblack** » Fri Sep 28, 2012 7:19 pm UTC

*waves*

Hi! First of all I want to say thank you for this thread, and for spoilering all the spoilers. I have not yet purchased Skyrim, but I plan to and I feel that reading this thread has given me loads of info without spoiling anything not already spoiled elsewhere.

My background, I'm a console gamer through and through. (Please don't beat me up too bad.) I just finished my first play through of Oblivion (on an xBox 360) with a Dumner Assassin. I got all the achievements in the game (with the exception of one of the SI achievements since the story forks and only lets you get one of the two).

I'm waiting for the Game of the Year Edition of Skyrim because I want all the DLC, and I'm tight (read broke).

The reason I'm posting tho' is to get some feedback on my plan/thoughts/personal rules for my first Skyrim play through. Basically I want my first experience to be as real as possible.

My rules:
- No fast travel - carts are allowed
- No magic (period). - no restoration, no destruction, no enchanting, nothing that I couldn't do or learn to do IRL
- Buying/finding/using enchanted weapons/armor is allowed
- Staves are not allowed
- Potions are allowed - maybe I'm splitting a hair here, but these are my rules after all.
- Map is allowed, but not the navigation indicator.... that is (correct me if this is different between Skyrim and Oblivion) the Red or Green triangle on your map that basically leads you by the hand to your destination/target. ... Actually pulling this off might be tricky, in Oblivion this was accomplished by selecting a quest you weren't working on as your active quest and ignoring the red triangle since it likely wasn't in the correct location.

I'm not sure how I feel about scrolls, waiting, sleeping, and eating. I'm thinking scrolls, and waiting will not be allowed, and sleeping and eating will be purely optional.

Like I said I will be on a console (so mods are out), and I won't be playing for a while yet.

I am already enjoying the game vicariously through you all. :-)

by **eculc** » Fri Sep 28, 2012 7:49 pm UTC

warning for your plan: if you consider Shouts to be magic (and therefore unusable) you're SOL at some parts of the game. I know there were several puzzles that required you to use various shouts to complete them, but other than that you might be OK.

by **Will** » Fri Sep 28, 2012 8:17 pm UTC

Yeah, you can do most of the game without access to magic--the only exceptions I can think of are the College of Winterhold quests, and you obviously wouldn't be doing those anyway. However, the main storyline requires you to learn some of the shouts.

by **Adam H** » Fri Sep 28, 2012 9:25 pm UTC

Nah, shouts aren't magic.

But potions? You should definitely put at least a self-imposed cap on things like healing potions and food. IMO there's nothing in Skyrim that is as unrealistic as downing 10 healing potions and 100 carrots during a 30 second battle. (am I misremembering how the potions work? Its been a while...)

by **maninblack** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 6:42 pm UTC

I assumed shouts would be necessary.

Three potions per in game hour. -- or something
Food needs to fit the context -- portable food allowed wherever prepared food only where it was cooked and no food during fights.
Quick saving before attempting something risky is not allowed.

You seem to agree that this would be possible, but how difficult will it be? And do I need to put a rule one where I set the in game difficulty level?

Edit - grammar is not my friend

by **CorruptUser** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 6:47 pm UTC

You can't do the Civil War questline until after you kill that dragon in Whiterun (the Jarl of Whiterun won't talk to you about anything until the 'dragon situation' is resolved, sorta), not sure if the shouting was required or not.

by **Adam H** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 7:10 pm UTC

maninblack wrote:You seem to agree that this would be possible, but how difficult will it be? And do I need to put a rule one where I set the in game difficulty level?

The normal difficulty level should be fine. IMO Skyrim is a very well balanced roleplaying game in that you can ignore the parts of the game you don't like and it won't screw you over. A magic-less character works because you are pumping all your points into health, stamina, and the skills you'll actually use.

by **CorruptUser** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 7:48 pm UTC

...on my characters I'd usually put all my stat increases into health anyway, even the mages. I don't really see the need for points in stamina; it's worth the 3 perks to get the +100 weight cap from the pickpocket tree, which is the equivalent of 20 stat increases. Giving yourself the respite perk eliminates the need for extra stamina anyway. Almost. Plus, vegetable soups give you infinite power attacks/shield bashes, unless you count that as cheating. Magicka is useful for mages, but since you can usually find equipment to make casting cheaper and, with quite a bit of soul-trapping and enchant skill, make your own. But health? I always need more health, especially on Master difficulty.

by **The Scyphozoa** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 8:13 pm UTC

maninblack wrote:I assumed shouts would be necessary.

Three potions per in game hour. -- or something
Food needs to fit the context -- portable food allowed wherever prepared food only where it was cooked and no food during fights.
Quick saving before attempting something risky is not allowed.

You seem to agree that this would be possible, but how difficult will it be? And do I need to put a rule one where I set the in game difficulty level?

Edit - grammar is not my friend

What about autosaves?

And I assume that you're fine with eating any food you find on tables inside dungeons. However, if it's just "restores 1 health", it might not be worth the time it takes to open the menu.

by **m4d4sb34ns** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 8:51 pm UTC

Played Skyrim again today after a long break - finished off all the quest lines I was seriously interested in back in February, but decided to have another go after reading this thread. Spent a while derping around doing quests for daedra, then stumbled upon an electromancer in a small outdoor ruin I needed to check out. He caught me by surprise the first time, and I was promptly shat on. Rather than tooling up with my resist gear and rolling over him, I decided to take him on "properly", at which point an epic battle ensued...

I approached the ruin where he was camped out from the same direction, but sneaking from a distance in the hopes of landing a high-damage opener with my bow. For some reason I couldn't get properly hidden - either something else nearby was watching me or he has amasing eyesight. Anyway, I scope him out and let fly an arrow, taking his health down by about a third. He rounds on me and does similar damage with his chain lightning, prompting me to duck behind some trees. After a minute or two of this back-and-forth fighting it becomes clear I'm at a slight disadvantage - both of us can do similar damage when we manage to land a hit, and both can heal to full easily, but he has a miniature stonhenge-esque ruin to take cover in, while I'm dodging from tree to tree. Time for new tactics.

I switch to firebolt in my mainhand, close wounds in my offhand - I'm wearing my 100% cost reduction to destruction/restoration enchanted armour, so I can spam these spells indefinitely as long as his shock spells don't fully drain my magika. The AoE effect of the firebolts means his cover is only semi-effective, but the lower damage output prevents me from getting the kill. Just as I'm about to back off and rethink my tactics, two trolls come lumbering over the hill on the opposite side of his camp and attack him. Here's my chance, I think, and I move up to the ruins, pull my sword and go for the kill. I either delayed too long or underestimated this guy, as he makes short work of the trolls and the jumping damage of his chain lightning breaks my concentration. I turn back and narrowly escape, struggling to heal as he drains ever more magika from me. After a short sprint I turn, expecting him to be holding his ground at the ruin. Instead, he's chasing after me, still merrily flinging bolts of doom.

Somehow I survive his pursuit and a tangle with a spider, and end up under a rocky cliff just above a nearby village. I'm safe here to heal up, but once again I'm at a tactical disadvantage - the electromancer has the high ground, and there are even fewer trees her to take cover in than up at the ruins. I sprint to the town taking damage as I go, intending to turn this into a wild west style shootout around the wooden buildings. As I run down the road, a man appears and hands me a parcel. Nice timing there, mailman.

Once I've sent him on his way, I look around to see two guards running up towards the wizards' position - finally, some good luck! I know they're not going to last long on their own, so I skirt around the side of the rockface to take advantage of the situation. They make their way up to him, one dying pretty much immediately but the other somehow managing to get into melee distance. I'm still at an elevation disadvantage but feel I have to grab this opportunity if I'm going to take this guy down, so I pull my bow and take aim. 4 arrows and an uncharacteristic amount of praying later, the wizard is finally defeated!

The great thing about skyrim is that these battles are ten a penny, as long as you're prepared to search them out. Even the oft-maligned dragon fights can turn into awesome drawn-out battles if the terrain is right. After this little jaunt reignited my love for this game, I immediately went off and bought the PC version so I can enjoy some mods. Feels good man.

by **mosc** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 9:28 pm UTC

I guess I power game too much. My experience is generally much more of the "if this dragon would just land within 500 miles of me I could be bothered to 1-shot him" type variety.

by **Iulus Cofield** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 8:10 am UTC

Yeah, I'm usually a one man platoon by level 20 and a one man battalion by level 50. I only get epic battles in the first couple of hours of a character.

by **m4d4sb34ns** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 9:49 am UTC

I found that from levels ~30 to 55ish I was godlike to the point of being bored, but since then I've started bumping into more high-level bad guys. Also, I've been steadily downgrading my armour and weapons to Nord hero/orcish levels - running around in daedric and dragon stuff is fun for a while but you definitely starve yourself of fun fights. It probably also helps that I've shifted my style from two-sword berzerker to archer/battlemage.

Anyone know of a few good mods to add nice high-end content? Going to start playing with the PC version properly later today.

by **wumpus** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 1:08 pm UTC

m4d4sb34ns wrote:I found that from levels ~30 to 55ish I was godlike to the point of being bored.

I just finished a game on hard. My guess is that levels 30-50 you are able to keep a few important skills maxed or nearly maxed (I went to level 52, but maxed alchemy). After those levels you barely improve yourself while presumably baddies (or good guys if you are in the brotherhood) keep scaling.

I know the DLCs include "legendary dragons" or something similar mentioned in the accomplishments. I'm sure there are plenty of mods for making things difficult. I suppose you could slide things over to master, but after finishing the companions series, hard wasn't hard anymore (oneshotting Alduin? I know I took way too long preparing everything and all (maxed smithing, maxed enchantments, maxed alchemy), but still he should have taken more than one shot).

I might putter around with a few mods, but I doubt I'll do much more in Skyrim.

Anybody know a good way to delete saves? I have something like 2000 saves. Of course the computer has to ask me if I really want to delete any of them, so deleting through Skyrim (and thus Stream) is out of the question. If I delete them myself, can I tell stream to update the server instead of downloading multiple gigs of downloads for daring to not tell it 2000+ times that yes, I really want to delete that file?

by **SecondTalon** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 2:29 pm UTC

m4d4sb34ns wrote:I found that from levels ~30 to 55ish I was godlike to the point of being bored, but since then I've started bumping into more high-level bad guys. Also, I've been steadily downgrading my armour and weapons to Nord hero/orcish levels - running around in daedric and dragon stuff is fun for a while but you definitely starve yourself of fun fights. It probably also helps that I've shifted my style from two-sword berzerker to archer/battlemage.

Anyone know of a few good mods to add nice high-end content? Going to start playing with the PC version properly later today.

You can always start with Deadly Dragons. Fricken Wyrms summoning Skeleton Hordes and Frost Atronachs are a pain in the rear.

Now.. keep in mind here that when I say "Skeleton Hordes" I don't mean the wussy skeletons you usually encounter that fly into pieces when you look at them. I mean skeletons that soak more damage than a Mammoth and are slinging lighting bolts at you the entire time.

by **Grishnakh** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 2:38 pm UTC

I am trying to do a no fast-travel play through with my current character. It can be a bit frustrating at times.

My biggest gripe with the game is what I perceive to be lazy quest design piggy-backing on fast-travel and quest markers.
Since the quests were designed with fast-travel and quest markers in mind, one small quest will often take you from one corner of the world to the other and back again, just to get told by sir Fancypants that you now have run all the way to the other side of the world again to go fetch something or other. If there was no fast-traveling in the game, the quests would have been designed to minimize running back and forth, with only the occasional great trek across the tundra to some distant location to do something epic.

What I do now is to have ALL my quests active at the same time, so my map is littered with quest-markers, too many to isolate one to follow in my navigation-thingy. Then I look for clusters of objectives on my map and head to that area to complete those objectives before moving on to another cluster. This does seem to minimize the running about a bit. The drawback is that I don't follow a specific quest-line from start to finish, so I often forget what the quest is about, and the brief quest-descriptions doesn't help.
The quest descriptions also makes a "no quest marker"-play through nigh impossible, since often no more information is given than "go to this guy", with no directions or location. So without a quest marker you'll wander around the whole of Skyrim looking for this guy.

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