Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Ruvaldt]

Pickpocketing is how my stealther has kept stocked on arrows.  I just take a tour through a major town pickpocketing arrows from all of the guards and the skill naturally keeps pace with my other skills.

[sinij]

Huh? My light armor assassin with dual swords could go toe to toe with most guys, without heavy armor or the ability to block. I don't get it? Have you not put level ups in to health?

I invested into health and stamina 50/50. My character dies _all the freaking time_. I can rip things apart fairly easy, I have enough firepower to kill giants and dragons, and all that kind of debauchery. Problem I have is that if I play it anything but perfect I get ripped apart and executed with finishers from half health to dead. Maybe I should be chain-chugging potions?

I didn't bother enchanting anything, collecting soul gems is not fun mechanic, but I did honed/improved all my stuff and picked up blacksmith for crafting skill. I also don't use companions, they get caught up on terrain and killed by random stuff too much, so I gave up on dragging one along almost right away.

I really wish my character wasn't that paper-thin.

Recent fight that was _really_ hard - random bandint fort, I go into main building and at the door is an orc guy with a 2 handed weapon and some armor. Almost right away naked trash bandit with 1 hander comes running. Then soon after bandit boss, dual-wielding magic axes in heavy plate. Room is fairly small and there is no place to retreat. 2-hander guy goes heavy into blocking mode until boss shows up and both of them take me down rather easily since there is no room to dodge power attacks. I had to do that fight at least 10 times before I got it. I needed to rush 2-hander guy and kill him before boss showed up (not easy with him blocking so much) then as soon as boss shows up use my fast swings shout and stagger-rush with power attacks. To pull it off I had to kill first 2, super fast without taking any damage and most of my stamina intact then dodge power-attacks from boss in tight quarters. Ugh Ugh Ugh.

[koro]

Do you have any points invested in Blocking perks? Two-handed weapons benefit from around half of all of the perks in the blocking tree, including Shield Wall and especially the Bash line.

Perks into your main weapon skill beyond the first 5/5 damage booster and maybe a specific weapon type are largely wasted, since I find bashing a far more effective use of precious Stamina than power attacks. Sweep for two-handed weapons may be worth looking at, though.

And have you done enough of the main quest to unlock Shouts at all? A lot of them, especially Elemental Fury, are invaluable to melee attackers. Even your default Unrelenting Force will save your life.

Lastly, what standing stone buff are you using? If you're still trucking along with the Warrior stone (or none at all), you may want to try something more defensive-oriented like the Lord stone or Atronach. The Lord stone's +50 armor gives you enough armor to make up for the lack of a shield and, as my Breton mage can attest to, 25% magic resistance is not something to sneeze at. If you end up not having much trouble with fighters after a while, try the Atronach stone instead. It's more geared toward mages, but the 50% spell absorb is incredible for anyone.

Even if you don't do any enchanting yourself, always take a quick look at vendors in towns whenever you stop by one, and keep a look out for +2h damage and +resist armor and jewelry. If you have the Arcane Blacksmith perk, any enchanted armor you find can be upgraded, and the effective Armor Rating cap is so low (587 according to UESP, which holds up with the armor calc formula) that you can reach it with any armor set by itself with just normal Smithing.

[Ceryse]

I've enjoyed the game thus far, excepting a few annoyances (my horses die all the god damn time.. I cannot keep them alive; dragons, giants in my game love horse-flesh, so I've stopped using them). Story wise I'm not that far into the main quest (just recently did a push to move it further along) and I've decided to retire my sword and board min/max character because the game was simply too easy regardless of difficulty setting (if I kept my ultra-upgraded Daedric sword fully charged I was five-shotting dragons, if I didn't crit, at worst, and with so much armor, +block, +magic resist I managed my most epic fight of two dragons and three magic casters without dropping below 75% and I was just about to unlock even more mitigation). Of course, it didn't help that I fell into sneak attacks with my overly powerful bow to start things before I'd wade into a room, even in heavy armour.

That's my main caveat thus far; the power curve of the player rises far too sharply if you decide to max enchanting and smithing and take advantage of the +smithing enchants and potions. The game went from borderline suicidal to cake-walk after I got both to 100. Won't be doing that again.

Figure I'll try a mage or a dual wielding thief/assassin type next.

Also; count me in as a sucker for Lydia. Sure I just tell her to wait at the start of most dungeons, but none of the other companions felt right to me compared to her 'what did I do to piss of my Jarl to get this assignment!?' disapproving glare and passive aggressive one liners.

Oh, and she constantly did the "Oh, look a cave!' bit every single time we exited it after clearing it out.

Speaking of which; the game drives me crazy with all its locations. I get so paranoid about screwing future quests I don't like going somewhere without a quest, but I can't stop myself from exploring. Bugged three quests for me, which just further made made hate doing it.. and still I kept doing it.

[koro]

What quests did you bug? More often than not, if a cave or other location is involved in a quest, I've noticed it'll usually be one of three things:

1.) The item you have to find for the quest is somewhere in the cave and you can pick it up at any time and turn it in later. These items usually have no weight, even if they say they do.
2.) The item or NPC/creature you have to find in the location simply doesn't spawn until you're on the relevant stage of the relevant quest and will be there if you come back later on, even if the rest of the place is still cleared.
3.) The area you have to go to or the item you have to find is either locked behind a door/chest you can't open without a key, or accessed via some other method related to the quest. I tended to notice this most often in the main quest and the Mage College stuff.

[lamaros]

Don't play a dual wield assassin, then you'll be one shotting dragons.

Maybe if you do it as an alchemy assassin and ignore smithing and enchanting you'll make it more fun.

I'm playing my elf as a murderous snob. Will kill anything if he can get away with and sees an advantage, but refuses to wear armor, use weapons, or join any groups. Also won't pick up items with less than a 100:1 gold to weight ratio, unless he is going to wear them straight away, for cosmetic purposes, or alchemy ingredients. Going to try destruction illusion with alchemy and try and use invisibility as much as possible.

[Engels]

You guys keep referencing the hit points of Lydia. How do you see the numerical value for that? I can't even see her HP bar, much less an actual number.

[CaptainNapkin]

You guys keep referencing the hit points of Lydia. How do you see the numerical value for that? I can't even see her HP bar, much less an actual number.

If you're on the PC, open the console and click her. If something other than A2C94 shows as the current console target, mousewheel a bit until it does. Then use "getav health" to find her health. Her other skill values can be found by replacing "health" with a skill, like "onehanded" or "heavyarmor".

Also made me realize that Lydia's heavy armor is at 50 and light at 30, 2hand at 31 and 1hand at 29... forgot to check her bow. Yah, I'll stick with her because I'd have to bump the difficulty to max I think if I had someone better as a companion.

I've got over 60 hours into this game and I am amazed that I still encounter new and different stuff and types of locations that I haven't yet encountered. I think what really nails it for me with this game is that just about every dungeon, location or POI has some story along with it, whether blatant or inferred. Even major quest locations often have a mini story line that tells or plays itself while your running through the quest area. Such a nice change from the typical 'clear the dungeon until we find the quest item / kill the boss'... often Skyrim is adding a layer of 'oh look what happened to these poor saps before me' or similar.

My only gripe is when I finally tire of Skyrim and head back to Dark Souls... well my ass already hurts thinking about it 

[Phred]

A couple of things I figured out late in the game that might help someone. Smithing really only needs 2 perks invested. Unless you want to power level it to get the powerful weapons super early. The arcane smithing perk lets you improve any weapon regardless of what it's made of. Armor too. You still need high skill to really improve the weapon but you can spend perks elsewhere unless you're dying to wear your own custom made dragon armor. Also, the blades sword hanging on the wall in the basement of the inn is one of the most powerful weapons in the game. Sharpened up to legendary it will 1 hit kill almost anything and it only needs one bar of steel to improve it. I never found any sword including daedra weapons that would do more damage than the blade sword.

Now a question/bug. Wtf is up with the ownership flag in this game. I cleared out a cave of vampires and all their shit was flagged as stealing? Or the Blades temple; noone's been there for thousands of years but my nice set of blade armor has the damn stolen flag.

[rk47]

Level 10 Werewolf. Fuck level ups. Too bad it's not usable at will, once a day power kinda thing. Grrrrrrrr....must...not..mod....

Memorable moment:
There was one dungeon where a bunch of guards are standing on a stone platform above a natural lake below. I dashed into a group of three, killing one instantly with a sprint power attack, power swipe another into the lake below, he flew a few metres upwards before plunging into the waters...still alive, but effectively out of the fight for half a minute he takes to swim and get back up. Enough time to tear the last one to death after triggering a brutal pinning move followed by a throat ripping animation. in slow mo.

I paused a moment after that and fought the urge to howl IRL. That was the most awesome gaming moment I had this year. Unfuckingtoppable.

[Engels]

You guys keep referencing the hit points of Lydia. How do you see the numerical value for that? I can't even see her HP bar, much less an actual number.

If you're on the PC, open the console and click her. If something other than A2C94 shows as the current console target, mousewheel a bit until it does. Then use "getav health" to find her health. Her other skill values can be found by replacing "health" with a skill, like "onehanded" or "heavyarmor".

Also made me realize that Lydia's heavy armor is at 50 and light at 30, 2hand at 31 and 1hand at 29... forgot to check her bow. Yah, I'll stick with her because I'd have to bump the difficulty to max I think if I had someone better as a companion.

Thanks for pointing out that I'd missed a post on the subject. Its a bit disappointing that one has to use the console to figure out stuff about your companion. I know, it was the same in Fallout 3 NV, but it just would be neat if they had a simple character sheet for your companion.

[tmp]

I paused a moment after that and fought the urge to howl IRL. That was the most awesome gaming moment I had this year. Unfuckingtoppable.

The werewolf has nothing on the werechair.

[Ironwood]

It turns out having a magically on-fire hand in the middle of a Dwemer gas main is a bad idea.

 

[Comstar]

Level 10 Werewolf. Fuck level ups. Too bad it's not usable at will, once a day power kinda thing. Grrrrrrrr....must...not..mod....

i think there's a Demon quest to fix that.

[slog]

Fast Travelled to the Forsworn on my Nightmare horse with the old dude and the chick looking for the wall.  Immediately attacked by a dragon. 10 minutes of hilarity followed as my horse tanked everything with no complaints.

[rk47]

Level 10 Werewolf. Fuck level ups. Too bad it's not usable at will, once a day power kinda thing. Grrrrrrrr....must...not..mod....

i think there's a Demon quest to fix that.

Oh tell me the town to start it, I really want it. :O
Also, wolf form is shit vs hags cause I got no health regen and can't drink pots. Stabby them with greatsword and save wolf form for other stuff. Probably same corcern with draughers.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Having just gotten 100 enchanting on a char, then doing nothing but health/reduce dest cost I can now say I am an unstoppable goddess of destruction.  Seriously, if unlimited fireballs wasn't enough, I now have so much health I just stand there and take it, well...if I'm not just chain stunning everything into oblivion(hah!) by rapid fire dual casting fiery death.

[rk47]

Werewolves are literally naked and has no gear equipped when transformed.

Also, I got over enthusiastic and killed my companion the Unbreakable slut. Funny thing is, they gave me inheritance letter upon returning to Whiterun...

Hummmm....companions seem bugged when tagging along with wolfy too, they stand there doing nothing most of the time until I turn back to human. So frustrating. But I guess they make great mules when told to wait outside while I go full wolf mode on the poor souls within the dungeon.

[Miasma]

Had to use my first console command, to fix a bug.  My Companions questline got stuck after I came back with the witch head preventing me from continuing because Viklas never gave me the follow up.  Worse yet one of my main merchants was stuck gawking at the event.  Sounds like a common bug, it's all good now though.

[sinij]

Level 10 Werewolf. Fuck level ups. Too bad it's not usable at will, once a day power kinda thing. Grrrrrrrr....must...not..mod....

Memorable moment:
There was one dungeon where a bunch of guards are standing on a stone platform above a natural lake below. I dashed into a group of three, killing one instantly with a sprint power attack, power swipe another into the lake below, he flew a few metres upwards before plunging into the waters...still alive, but effectively out of the fight for half a minute he takes to swim and get back up. Enough time to tear the last one to death after triggering a brutal pinning move followed by a throat ripping animation. in slow mo.

I paused a moment after that and fought the urge to howl IRL. That was the most awesome gaming moment I had this year. Unfuckingtoppable.

Have you seen werewolf decapitation animation? You lift your victim then bite his/her face off. Pure awesome.

Supposedly there is a ring out there than allows you to shapeshift twice a day. I yet to get it.

I got amazing quest in Markarth,

[sinij]

Also, wolf form is shit vs hags cause I got no health regen and can't drink pots. Stabby them with greatsword and save wolf form for other stuff. Probably same corcern with draughers.

Wolf form requires perfect execution, you can lock down anything with chain-staggers and take zero damage. Werewolf is all about power attacks. Kind of like 2-hander.

[rk47]

Level 10 Werewolf. Fuck level ups. Too bad it's not usable at will, once a day power kinda thing. Grrrrrrrr....must...not..mod....

Memorable moment:
There was one dungeon where a bunch of guards are standing on a stone platform above a natural lake below. I dashed into a group of three, killing one instantly with a sprint power attack, power swipe another into the lake below, he flew a few metres upwards before plunging into the waters...still alive, but effectively out of the fight for half a minute he takes to swim and get back up. Enough time to tear the last one to death after triggering a brutal pinning move followed by a throat ripping animation. in slow mo.

I paused a moment after that and fought the urge to howl IRL. That was the most awesome gaming moment I had this year. Unfuckingtoppable.

Have you seen werewolf decapitation animation? You lift your victim then bite his/her face off. Pure awesome.

Supposedly there is a ring out there than allows you to shapeshift twice a day. I yet to get it.

I got amazing quest in Markarth,

HAHAHAA. I know what you mean. I was a Conjurer then and lol'ed. But I decide to be a good inmate to get early release.

[rk47]

Also, wolf form is shit vs hags cause I got no health regen and can't drink pots. Stabby them with greatsword and save wolf form for other stuff. Probably same corcern with draughers.

Wolf form requires perfect execution, you can lock down anything with chain-staggers and take zero damage. Werewolf is all about power attacks. Kind of like 2-hander.

Well there was this cave with just 5 hags to kill. Optional to kill all of them but I felt confident. After killing three I had to abandon that idea. Because there is NOTHING to feed upon. Spiders, Skeevers and Hags don't qualify as dog food. Real sad. That's when I decide to punch the Unbreakable Fighter Girl and had her for dinner.

BWAH! I remember her crying 'Help! A werewolf! HALLLPP!' before I struck her dead and feasted on her iron-clad bodice. Yum. But the sweetest part was the inheritance letter with 300 gold, deducted by 30 by the Gubbament Tax...fuckers. Guess I can afford to buy some new fresh bodies to accompany me. Mwahaha.

[Tebonas]

I switched to Axe+Shield because 2 Axes was too ridiculously powerful, only switching back to fuck up Dragons once they land because I'm tired of always waiting till they get in melee range. One of these days I have to find out which quest line to follow for the forced landing shout.

[rk47]

the shout you need is dragonrend - i don't know where to get it but way i see it, archery is practical. But you definitely need cover to survive the breath attacks. The slow mo while zoom helps too.

For mages, conjure atronarchs as decoy.

[Rendakor]

Dragonrend is obtained by following the main story.

I got amazing quest in Markarth,

I saw this assassination I think, but didn't end up in jail (nor did I slaughter the whole city). Do you remember the questname by any chance? I'd like to check my journal because I'm curious.

[sinij]

It is called

[lamaros]

My elven mage is more fun to play though. More interesting when you commit to character rather than being awesome:


Which reminds me...


Lots of re-playability so far, there are so many areas and quests you can really do a lot of stuff without overlapping.

[sinij]

More on super annoying combat...

Random dungeon I found, think its called Liars Retreat,

[tmp]

Some basic conjuration spells can be big help with such fights, even if you don't put a single perk in them -- a wolf or atronarch can provide a nice distraction and allow you to land unblocked hits, and the spell to raise killed enemy as an ally is pretty valuable, too. Force shout too, obv.

[lamaros]

Umm potions aren't cheese.

Maybe you can back up into a corridor?

[Ingmar]

I do not understand the religious fixation some of you people have on never touching a ranged weapon.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Or shouts....the game is literally built around them.

[rk47]

Stuck at Azura quest...the finale is a little bit rough for no fire resist gear. Damn. I had to wait on it and maybe brew some pots since I'm a 2hander.

[lamaros]

Doing that quest at level 5 is really really easy.