Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[koro]

A lot of the "HD textures" mods drive me up a wall. Nearly all of them look like dogshit ("Whatta ya mean some half-assed upscaling and cranking the sharpness up 6000% doesn't make things look AWESOME?"), many offer no discernible difference unless you're zoomed in as for as possible, and people have been scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to "HD-ize" that others haven't yet in an effort to secure more Nexus community asspats. And so much of this stuff snowballs in popularity and ubiquity that a lot of other interesting and worthy mods get buried.

[Rendakor]

Started up a new playthrough as a mage, I plan to focus on Destruction. Which of the perks are worth taking? Is dual casting actually good, or can I get away with doing MH Spell, OH Shield so I can block, bash, etc.? Is any one element better than the others?

I've got a couple mods on too, including one that adds more spells, SkyUI, the map Haemish mentioned, and maybe a couple more.

[Ingmar]

My understanding is that late game your damage will suck without dual casting.

[koro]

Short answer: Every perk except the Rune-modifying one, the second tier of Fire (the fear proc), and the Master Destruction perk (the Master level spells - all of them - suck) are worth taking. There are serious enough downsides to each element that focusing on a single one is folly, but if you put a gun to my head and made me choose one, I'd have to say Fire.



Much longer answer: Unmodded, Destruction is a very weird beast. Dual casting only provides a 10% damage boost in exchange for a 40% increase in mana cost. If not for the Impact perk, Dual Casting would be essentially worthless for a Destruction-heavy mage.

The skill itself is also very odd. Unlike weapon skills (which Destruction is most readily comparable to), points into your Destruction skill do not raise your damage; they lower your mana costs. I believe it caps out at 25% at 100 skill. The only ways to increase Destruction damage are via the element-specific perks and through custom-made +destruction potions. Destruction also levels incredibly slowly unless you use very high mana cost spells on a regular basis, where it then becomes about the same as something like a melee weapon skill. Problem is, spells cost so damn much and your mana regen is so crippled in combat that you have to make a decision between gassing out after a couple of high-damage spells that will be very unlikely to kill your enemy, or to try and pace yourself with a lower tier spell and get jacksquat for gains, hurting you in the long run.

The biggest problems arise as you get higher in level. Spell costs balloon as you move up the tiers, necessitating the half-cost perks and an enormous investment in magicka -- you'll probably be looking at something like 2:1 or even 3:1 magicka:health throughout the game. Essentially everything will one-shot you. But even with the perks, high skill, and a ton of magicka investment, spells will still chew through your blue bar in the blink of an eye; half a blink if you dual cast. At that point, your only recourse for keeping your magicka reserves going to keep your spells that have long since capped out in damage useful against enemies with ever-increasing HP pools is to make spells more efficient with magicka cost reduction enchants, which leads to a different problem. Even at 80%+ cost reduction, Destruction spells cost a shitload of mana to cast. So if you go up to 100%... everything becomes free. Then the game is broken and you're pretty much unkillable because you can then chain-dual-cast spells infinitely, keeping your target staggered with each one. Oh, and all those perks you spent on lowering Destruction spell costs? They become useless.

So if you're going to be doing a Destruction-heavy run, I highly recommend a mod like Leveling Destruction Perks or Balanced Magic (which mostly affects Destruction, but tinkers with a few other things as well).

I've played two mages to the mid-40s who've used Destruction as their primary source of damage: one plain vanilla (my first character), and one with a Destruction-altering mod. The difference was night and day. My first character had to increasingly lean on bugs -- like the one where Conjuration summons can be absorbed by the Atronach standing stone, giving you back double your mana for easy refills in combat -- and the Conjuration school itself to make up for Destruction's poor damage and poorer mana efficiency. My second character was actually a threat with Destruction spells without being overpowering and I never had to use Conjuration as a crutch, freeing me up to try different things like a heavier focus in Restoration and dabbling in Illusion.

[Rendakor]

Thanks for the tips koro; I've grabbed the Leveling Destruction mod because the alternative would be to just reroll a melee character.

Edit: Does armor restrict magic? I've just got gimpy robes on at the moment, but I'm wondering what I should look for going forward.

[koro]

Nope, armor doesn't restrict magic at all. The only thing is that mage clothes are the only ones that come with some of the more mage-friendly enchants like "xx% <Magic School> cost reduction + <75-125%> boosted mana regen" by default, which you can easily duplicate via enchanting.

[Rendakor]

Yea that was the plan; I just didn't know if there was a baked in penalty for walking around in plate. Thanks again.

[K9]

I'll echo what Koro says, although I will say that once you can get the Wall of XXX spells destruction becomes a ton of fun. I don't think you can really take it in isolation though, you'll need a second school to help you control mobs, either Conjuration (Frost Atronachs have got me most of the way to ~40ish on my mage, they make good tanks) or perhaps illusion for fear and paralyse. I'm running something like a 4:1 or higher mana:health ratio and there are times when I get 1-shot, but it's not really so often or bad. I also have restoration at around 60ish levelled mainly from self-heals and healing companions, I haven't powerlevelled it.

The rune spells are fun, but really aren't that great. In general fire spells are the best since you generally just want to kill enemies quickly. I haven't ever been able to notice the mana-draining effect of lightning spells being useful. Frost spells can be useful as CC, and the AoE frost spell you get at adept is pretty decent. The elemental cloak spells are pretty useless for a pure caster, but would probably be decent for a spellsword. The wall spells are best though in my opinion, since they don't damage pets or companions, and they do a ton of damage.

[apocrypha]

The instant-hit of lightning spells can be very useful for sniping moving enemies, particularly dragons.

[K9]

I thought so, but then I keep getting the feeling that they have a maximum range, unlike fire and ice spells which travel forever, and flying dragons usually seem to be out of range. Might just be me though.

[koro]

I've never had much luck with the Wall-type spells. They don't seem to do continuous damage while you stand in them, instead acting more like UO-style wall spells that only damage you as you move through a tile occupied by the wall; getting enemies to run through them enough times to do any sort of appreciable damage -- since they rarely follow you in a straight line if you kite them -- is usually more trouble than it's worth for me.

And yeah, the stamina/magicka drain from Frost and Shock spells are completely useless (until they're used on you, of course). You can do a full power power attack or bash with as little as 1 stamina, making the Frost one pointless and the magicka drain from Shock is useless for two reasons: First, enemy mages have insane magicka pools, so you'll kill a mage long before your "half health as magicka damage" side-effects do anything appreciable. Second, enemy mages have full mana regen at all times; there's no in-combat regen penalty for them like the player has. So if you, by some small miracle, do get their magicka bottomed-out, it won't matter since they'll have enough magicka to cast something ridiculously powerful in about a second.

[Rendakor]

I guess I'll start working on Conjuration as well then; I don't really like CCing but pets are ok. On that note, what's the console command to make companions not die? I'd like to just get a tank minion and not have to worry about accidentally killing it.

[koro]

"setessential <baseid> 1"

So for Lydia, it'd be "setessential ac2ae 1".

[Lakov_Sanite]

Even without max enchanting you can easily get 100% cost reduction on destruction spells and chain casting dual-fireball is how do you say, GG

[Sheepherder]

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Console

help [name] 4 is a very useful command.  For example, substituting the name of a perk in there tells you what it's ID is, which lets you add or remove it.  Yay for respecs.

[Spiff]

What about using staffs to cut down on Magicka costs btw? I figured that's what they were for.
Hardly touched magic thus far, since it's what I'm planning for my Altmer-snooty-bitch playthrough next.

That would probably rule out dual-casting though (could go for staff in the one hand and the shield-spell in the other).

[koro]

Staves aren't bad, but finding a good one is an enormous crapshoot; I suspect that, like some axe types, leveled lists don't have a good selection of staves in them, so you end up seeing the same useless Flames/Magelight/Calm staves over and over. Some staves also have very weird charge levels that aren't consistent with each other. For instance, a staff of Firebolt has 23 charges by default. A staff of Lightning Bolts, which is the same level and damage, only has 1.

But if you can find a good one and can tolerate the annoyance of having to keep it charged with soul gems, they can be pretty useful.

Edit: So much for the Creation Kit's "late January" release.

[Sheepherder]

Ayup.

[apocrypha]

I thought so, but then I keep getting the feeling that they have a maximum range, unlike fire and ice spells which travel forever, and flying dragons usually seem to be out of range. Might just be me though.

You are absolutely right, they have a max range, I should have stated that. What I tended to do was use lightning to get the attention of a dragon and then fire to actually kill it.

Even with the range limitation I personally found it easier to hit flying dragons with lightning bolts than slow fireballs, but I'm a slow old duffer who's always been rubbish at leading a target.

[koro]

So Bethsoft's released the Creation Kit...
...preview video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udM4VvSL2VA

Gotta say I don't really care for the idea of downloads apparently being automatic and out of my control once I "subscribe" to a mod.

[Murgos]

Gotta say I don't really care for the idea of downloads apparently being automatic and out of my control once I "subscribe" to a mod.

So, uh, don't subscribe to the mod?  Just install it the old fashioned way or use the nexus mod manager.  Anyway, I'm sure that if people bitch enough they'll put in a way to turn off updates for specific mods.

Anyway, I wonder how Steam is going to handle the more 'eccentric' mods or if they will be relegated to Nexus forever.

[Lucas]

Looks like the creation kit is being released right now (together with the mod database on steam). Also, the surprise that comes along with it it's the official High Resolution Textures pack (free DLC):

http://store.steampowered.com/app/202485/


Oh wait, did I mention that the size of the Texture Pack is 3.1GB ?  

[NiX]

Looks like the creation kit is being released right now (together with the mod database on steam). Also, the surprise that comes along with it it's the official High Resolution Textures pack (free DLC):

http://store.steampowered.com/app/202485/


Oh wait, did I mention that the size of the Texture Pack is 3.1GB ?  

Given the initial size of the game, I'm not surprised. Fairly reasonable for how many textures are probably in the game.

[HaemishM]

Ooooo, I'll have to download this tonight. I've been running a mod for hi-res textures and haven't really seen much difference.

[Lucas]

Official Creation Kit Wiki:

http://www.creationkit.com/Main_Page

Page is being quite hammered, as expected.

[Ironwood]

Oh wait, did I mention that the size of the Texture Pack is 3.1GB ?  

 

Fuck.

[Tannhauser]

Well, I decided to finish the main quest over the weekend and thought it was enjoyable.  Not up to Bioware story-wise, but it got the job done and I was satisfied.  Happened to ding 35 when I killed the main guy.  Bonus!

Not going to bother with the Creation kit, will wait and play the best stuff that comes out. 

[Lucas]

Well, hats off to Bethesda for the free texture pack: I've been playing with it for a bit and the improvement is quite noticeable, especially with the weapons/armor/clutter/furniture (judge for yourself, compressed pics on the net are not reliable). More subtle, imo with landscape/terrain. Still, it's a handy thing to download if you are into texture mods: consider it a "lite" (1024x1024) version that it's officially endorsed and provided, cleanly packed and ready to use, with minimal impact if you are playing Skyrim on a good rig.

[K9]

Valve mods Skyrim 

[Lucas]

Valve mods Skyrim 

Oh dear, it's 1.44am over here and I REALLY should go to bed now, you know.... 

[Sheepherder]

This is not going to be good for my health.

[Surlyboi]

Valve mods Skyrim 

[Lakov_Sanite]

Now imagine what you could do with a portal gun in skyrim.

[K9]

Oh, that's just an unholy thought.

[Lucas]

My personal wishlist for mods (beside a companion cube and the portal gun, of course. Most of the ones listed below are already implemented in Oblivion):

- Realistic Encumbrance and fatigue (when you reach max. weight, you can still run, but stamina will eventually get lower 'til you collapse to the floor). Also it's not recommended to fight while over max weight, stamina will drain MUCH quicker.

- Saddlebags on horses: so you can storage a limited amount of stuff in them;

- Banks of Skyrim;

- Realistic economy: shops change their prices based on supply and demand. Also, you may earn more money selling certain items in a town compared to another.