Elder Scrolls V "Skyrim" (and a discussion about E.S. IV, Oblivion)

[Fiach]

Yes you can make poisons and enchant gear too mate :)

I was looking at some fatalities and they are very reminsicent of the slo mo kills in Fallout, the game is better looking than FO though.

[spaceboy]

Fiach - do you play in 1st or 3rd person?  I am using 3rd person.  It helps so much for field of vision and also in combat to see what's going on.  Plus I like to see my character I worked so hard to create!

In this dungeon/cave I encountered were these swinging blades.  Well I was getting killed pretty badly by 3 skeletons so I backtracked through the swinging blades, then watched as all three got cut down trying to make it through    silly undead warriors - don't they know you have to run through the swinging blades?

[Fiach]

When running around I use FPS, in combat I use TPS, to me its the only viable way to see whats going on, I havent tried bows too much I find them a pita, but I would use FPS for them.

In casting you can use eg. a spell in one hand and a sword in the other, or a staff with a different spell, or a different spell in each hand (or the same spell if you have dual cast ability, which more than doubles the spells power). For that I would also use FPS, its not as slow as bows, so its a pretty viable form of combat if you have a decent melee companion.

Those blades, you probably saw the activation chain on the other side to turn them off, its handy if you have a companion behind you, but yeah its cool, there are also spiked doors, some you can slip through the hinge area and the enemies walk straight into the doors :)

As regards the blades, you will get a dragon spell (windsprint iirc), it will allow you to run through thngs like that, also jump across some pretty wide gaps (you dont need to "jump", just activate the shout and it will propel you through/across).

Hope you are still having fun. :)

One thing I like is when you do something, people comment on it when you pass, eg. if you become a werewolf, people will say things like..."is that hair growing out of your ears?" or ..."anyone get a smell of wet dog here?" Or if you go to the Mage College and learn a spell, they will say...."so, you learned a spell, is that meant to impress me?" :)

[spaceboy]

Oh yeah the fun has just started!  I'm only level 3 and just starting to make Skyrim my primary game for a spell (no pun intended).

I hadn't noticed the chain to stop the blades until after this incident.  If I had known I could have drawn them through then back again turning the blades back on - would have been a bit more suave.  I just liked how they followed me instead of old school enemies that stayed in their areas.

I was told about the college, I'll have to go there.  I like that I "read" a book I found in the cave about thieving which apparently increased my thieving skills.  I haven't even tried to learn or do magic.  Still having fun going medievel with my axes and warhammers  :)

I need a place to sell my loot so I can have more money and inventory space.  I assume White Run or Riverwoods has shops for this but I haven't looked that closely.

Oh - I also spent a moment at the Warmaiden's shop and she taught me to use the forge etc. and make a helmet.  She said I did a good job - I think she likes me...  8)

[Fiach]

LOL, well as you are so suave, I'm sure she does :)

If you melee you will use heavy armour I guess, so that will be heavy in your inv.

Only storage is to buy a house there will be a chest upstairs.

You can sell your stuff in both places, in White run there are two shops, on an apothacary the other for general goods, by and large shops will only buy what they stock, so an apothacary will not buy Heavy Armour.

A house costs 5k, but you will only need to buy potions/ingredients so you should accumulate it pretty quickly :)

[spaceboy]

Cool, thanks.  Can I sell weapons and armour at the Warmaiden's?  Sorry, I should probably know that.  I know I don't have enough for a house yet, but once I get into a habit of selling my extra loot it'll add up.  I do need to buy some potions if I make it out of the cave I'm in.  I have no potions left so here on out it may be a bit tough.  I think I'm near the end...hopefully.  If I can get out and back to White Run I'll be ok.

[Fiach]

I never tried to sell anything other than to traders, so I dont know mate sorry.

One thing thats annoying is you pick up a cool looking weapon, it will have a value of 400g, but when you get to the shop, the trader will only give you a pittance for it, which is annoying, when you expected more.

Potions, well I make them myself I always have about 20+ of each if possible. Look at your skills/powers, see if you have a heal power, I saw one in my list, I never used it though, so I'm not sure how it works, maybe you picked up a heal spell book or scroll, see if you have, maybe you could use them, you dont have to be a mage to cast a spell.

Any cave I have been in so far, I didnt have much trouble, but there was one cave, I forget the name, but if you do go in to one with a creature (humanoid) called a Falmer, just leave and save your self a world of hurt, I managed to kill three and gave up. The game is supposed to scale to your level, so far its been great, but that one cave has me beat, Ill go back when Im a bit higher (16 currently).

I have a bunch of perks skills I havent used (maybe 8/9), but the warrior skill tree is a bit crap and I dont see anything I really fancy, I'll probably dump them into magic, I'm not that pushed about crafting etc.

[spaceboy]

I haven't spent much time in the menus of skills etc. I've upped my health and stamina with my 2 points so far, and increased 2 handed weaponry and blocking for the perks. 

What you mentioned before about the NPC comments and such, from their talking and what all they're doing really makes this world come to life and makes it seem to be persistent with or without you around.

I have found fire scrolls, maybe I need to "use" them or read them.  I'm coming into this game with very little knowledge of it's specifics or detailed RPGs at all for that matter.  It's selling me on them though  :-X

[Fiach]

I haven't spent much time in the menus of skills etc. I've upped my health and stamina with my 2 points so far, and increased 2 handed weaponry and blocking for the perks. 

I have found fire scrolls, maybe I need to "use" them or read them.  I'm coming into this game with very little knowledge of it's specifics or detailed RPGs at all for that matter.  It's selling me on them though  :-X

Its in Restoration Magic (Heal) if you have it. Check your books, see if you have  a book of healing. Scrolls are a one use item afaik, books are permenant, I'm not sure how you use a scroll, I guess you equip it to a trigger, then activate it, but I'm just guessing :)

I went with one hand and shield (Sword and Board in RPG terms :)), the reasons being :

Extra Armour, Shield Bash (a skill) stuns enemies, it blocks better than a weapon, also I can be a battle mage, use the shield for protection and still fire spells.

BTW if you pick up staffs, you can use them in one hand and a shield/sword in the other, staffs run out of charge after awhile, so you will need to recharge them with a soul gem at an enchantment table. Fire Staff seems to be the more damaging so far.

[Art Blade]

In Oblivion scrolls were use-once/disposable spells. You equip it when you want to use it and pop there goes your scroll and its spell. :)

[Fiach]

I'm nearing lv 17 and the last couple of missions have got really hard, really fast. I have even had to get my AI companion to stay back, to stop her getting killed (not KO'd actually killed).

I guess the game kinda hand holds you for a period then drops the hammer.

I met a few guys and for no reason the attacked me with extreme prejudice, but were so spread out, I couldnt get to the mage without being killed, so in the end, I ran away, but they still chased me, luckily, the terrain changed and the mage had no line of sight, so I was able to kill the melee guys, then flanked the mage and killed him, it was pretty annoying, but, interestingly he had a letter, basically there was a contract out on me, so I guess this ambush crap is going to be an ongoing thing like in Morrowind.

Another tough-ish place was Swindlers Cave. After you kill your first dragon, you are accosted by people looking for a Redguard girl, she is in the Tavern near the Apothacary, she will tell you to go to the jail (its up in the Jarls building), there you can talk to a prisoner for directions to the cave. Not many enemies there, but placement was awkward for the companion AI so I had to dump her and do it alone, but at the end I spoke to the boss. There were two sides to the story.

Spoiler

Basically the girl sold another city out.... to the buggers that took the contract out on me, so I set her up to be taken by the other crew.

[Fiach]

In Oblivion scrolls were use-once/disposable spells. You equip it when you want to use it and pop there goes your scroll and its spell. :)

Thanks for that Art :)

[Art Blade]

Welcome. I just remembered that scrolls basically were useless unless you got extremely potent spells you couldn't produce yourself (yet). Scrolls with self-healing spells are good because you can't miss yourself as a target but different scrolls with something that needs aiming at enemies.. better don't even think about buying that kind of shite. If you find them (scrolls), sell them. Good money for otherwise crap inventory fillers  :-D

[Fiach]

Yeah aiming is crap, even with staffs, if they are not in your face and moving across your line of sight, you have to basically hose them with a stream of magic from the staff.

Heres something I didnt know (shoulda read the loser manual :)), trainers will only train you for 5 points per level, I was getting freebie archery levels like I mentioned earlier, but if you get 5 archery levels, you cannot train any other skills until you level up again, you gould get 3 archer and 2 one hand, or 1 Enchanting and 4 Smithing, so basically I was training up archery to the detriment of skills I would actually use.

Now as I am high-ish, it takes longer to level up, so longer to train skills, So seeing as you are pretty low spaceboy, it might be prudent to start training those skills earlier, rather than later.

[Fiach]

I rolled an elf pure mage, only level 2, but she is ripping stuff up, only problem is ranged attackers, but I have the ranger guy from riverwood to take care of them, only spells so far are not long distance, they kinda shoot from the mages hand like a hose for about 2 metres, vs my melee guy (so far) she can incinerate more people faster than he can kill with sword.

Its only early stages and that may change as she can only wear cloth armour (well she can wear heavy, but mana takes longer to regenerate) and as enemies become stronger.

One annoying thing is that all the save files for each character are kept in the same folder, so it would be easy to over write a differnt characters save file, on the 360, each character would have its own save files.

[Art Blade]

That's something I do early in a game: analyse the save game rules and structures. A shame that we need to, really.

[spaceboy]

I got  a little too overzealous selling stuff to the Riverwood's trader, Lucan, and accidentally sold the clothes off my back!  So dang funny, my son and I couldn't stop laughing seeing my character in his loin cloth.  Of course it was no problem buying them back, but it was funny since I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing.  He gives a good price for buying stuff, I think it was "list" price of what I had in my inventory.

[fragger]

That is funny

Just as well you could buy your clothes back. It'd be a tad embarrassing setting out on a mission in your undies :-[

[Art Blade]

Heh, I can almost still hear that "OOPS! ??? " -- 

And I can also imagine those silent thoughts to himself, "ohmyfuckingodwhattheFUCKamIdoing.."  :-D

[spaceboy]

yeah, we did start walking around the shop and other customers were looking at my character, probably in the same way they always do, but in our minds they were looking at me like I was some lunatic.  Then we stepped outside and finally put the clothes back on.

Immediately afterwards 3 thugs came up and said they were there to teach me some manners!  I thought - what are they part of the decency police, but after I smote them down I found one was carrying a contract out on me.  Some SOB up in White Run wanted me dead!  I didn't know who it was at first but we just happened to bump into his wife later on in White Run and she mentioned her husband's name.

Man, the level of NPC interaction is awesome in this game!

[Art Blade]

Hehe yes :)

I remember something similar happened to me in FO3. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I found a contract with my name on it someone I just killed had been carrying around. He and his mates were members of some special forces. I don't think I ever had a similarly deep shock in any other game because it is quite something to be attacked by some guys whom you noticed sneaking up on you, kill them, search them, find a contract with your name on it (it did read "Art Blade") and learn they wanted you dead.  :o

[Fiach]

Spaceboy have you made any decision on which side to join (Imperial or Stormcloaks), My first character escaped with an Imperial Guard, the second escaped with a Stormcloak, both wound up in Riverwood though, I thought the Stormcloak would have brought me to the camp near the witches that have nettlebane, so I thought I would have found a different story arc, but that didnt happen.

I imagine the factions are only seperated by which one is the lesser of two evils, similar to the Fallout games.

[Fiach]

I just did the quest to retrieve the dragonstone, the final boss was a pita with melee, but with the mage, she just turned him crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside in a couple of seconds, definately having a more fun game with her, it seems less of a chore.

Sometimes you will see pink liquid on floors, this is flammable, so its cool to just wait until the enemies walk into the pool and chuck a firebolt at it :)

Ranged is still annoying vs a moving target, but as opposed to arrow, when a firebolt does hit, the enemy knows all about it :)

[spaceboy]

Well I've been hanging out with the Imperials in White Run (Jarl) and haven't interacted with the Stormcloaks.  Jarl even made me Thane of White Run for downing that first dragon - of course he wants a Dragonborn on his side lol.

But then, with the joint decision of my son who was watching me play, I decided to join the Companions.  I'm not sure that affects joining Imperials or Stormcloaks too.  But they've got nice quarters there in White Run, plus lots of hot warrior babes are Companions.  And my new guard that Jarl assigned to me, Lydia, is quite a looker and didn't seem to mind me joining the Companions.

Not sure if I'll go this route, but you can apparently get married in Skyrim.  :o
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2011/11/11/how-to-get-married-in-skyrim.aspx

My son joined the Stormcloaks on his playthrough.

Art - this game is full of cool surprises for me!  My son has even played tag and hide and seek with the kids in a couple towns.  Hilarious!

[Fiach]

Yeah I joined the companions with my first character, they are cool with a couple of nice surprises :)

They have trainers there too for most skills, so its a handy one stop shop.

BTW, if a chick asks you to get here a mammoth tusk, there is one in the companion, in a room just off the main room, I just closed the door and stole it, killing mammoths kinda suck ALOT :)

I dont think it has any bearing on whether you go imp or SC, but I didnt progress past doing the companion questline, which was cool, then I made a new character.