The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Started by Inkidu, January 11, 2011, 09:06:12 PM

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Shjade

So, uh...just a caution to any of you mages out there: it turns out that one Fire Storm blast will kill Lydia. As in flat-out kill her, from full health to not-coming-back dead.

So...yeah, don't use Fire Storm if you have a companion with you. It's extremely unfriendly fire. >.>

In related news, Master-level destruction spells are pretty amusing. I'm particularly a fan of the FINGER OF GOD lightning beam, with which I can kill dragons before they reach the ground. Yeah, they crash-land and just die. It's nice.
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Cold Heritage

#351
Ulfric won't let me be Jarl :'(

Feels good, man.

Quote from: Samael on November 24, 2011, 04:13:11 AM
Considering I've spent about 95% of my time so far doing everything -but- the main story, I disagree, but, like always, different tastes and all.

Yeah. But I think that given how much content is in the game, that what's there could have been better if the developers were not spread as thin as they were. I mean, how great would it have been if during the civil war missions you could have used diplomacy to sway the jarls who aren't on your side to switch? Maybe there is and I haven't found it, but nothing came of blackmailing Riften's steward really and I still won that place by attacking some fort.

Quote from: Samael on November 24, 2011, 04:13:11 AMI didn't know there was a male housecarl. I just bought the house in solitude (jesus, 25k gold...), but I guess I'll need to save up for this house now as well. Ah well, I plan to have a house in each city eventually anyway.

There's two that I know of. Calder in Windhelm (or Eastmarch, as the game seems to be calling it some times), and a dude in Markath.

Quote from: Samael on November 24, 2011, 04:13:11 AMOh, and Iona (or whatever her name, you get her in the house in the thieves city) >>> Lydia.
I got her in full Ebony armor, and she rocks house.

I like Mjoll, too. She's not a housecarl, granted, but you can get her to be a follower too.
Thank you, fellow Elliquiyan, and have a wonderful day.

mannik

Quote from: Cold Heritage on November 24, 2011, 01:46:52 PM
I like Mjoll, too. She's not a housecarl, granted, but you can get her to be a follower too.


I actually married Mjoll in my first game. I use her as a companion far more than my house carls, if only because she's now completely unkillable. Currently got her decked out in full ebony (ebony mail for the armor to help her be as sneaky as me >.>)

Shjade

For the record, unarmored 2h-weapon specialization without using sneak on Master difficulty is challenging, but pretty dang fun. If it doesn't frustrate you (you WILL die a lot, especially early on).
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mannik

with all the cool armors out there, why would you want to go unarmored at all? Even my mage character is using light armor.

Shjade

#355
Two reasons:

One, because pervy thoughts.

Two, for the hell of it. This is my...seventh? Eighth? Character concept. I've done three mages, three sneaky thief types, one heavy armor, and sort of a hybrid battlemage type person heavy on conjured weapons. They all end up feeling sorta...easy after about level 20. Felt like trying something with a high risk high reward core: massive damage, zero defense. Glass cannon berserker, hoooooo~

Sidenote, it's refreshing not worrying about stealth at all. Stealth and sneak attacks are an awesome tool, but they really slow down the game compared to just running into a room and shouting ALLO, WHO'S HERE THEN? and seeing who objects.
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Inkidu

I got married too. In my ranger game I married Ysolda (the wannabe trader from Whiterun). I married her and went off to do some quests. I expected to see her back at Breezehome (my only house that I owned) but when I got back I never saw her again, anywhere.

I can't even get a girlfriend virtually! D':

I figured she just died on the way back home (she wasn't a traveling companion or anything just a wife) from Riften. Just my luck.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Hemingway

I also married Ysola. I figured the Dragonborn deserved some peace and quiet after dealing with all that stuff, so... the simple life, and all that.

Samael

I caved in and cheated.
Got the last 10 points in Enchanting/Smiting via console commands, then put the maximum of weight I can have with me to 1000.
Absorb health is a seriously annoying ability, in that it flashes your screen red when you do it. Need to exchange my bow again for one without that.
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Et comme des fleurs de glace, on grandit dans la nuit
La lumière nous efface, dans la noirceur on vit
Comme des fleurs de glace, on rêve et on reste unis
Des fleurs au cœur de l'insomnie

"Eisblume - Fleurs De Glace"

Cold Heritage

The special kill animations for unarmed are pretty cool. There's one where you left jab someone, then grab them with your right and chokeslam them. It was nice. One time I did it to a wizard I came up behind while they were working on an enchanter, and so it looked like I smashed the back of their head on the enchanter. There was another where my guy just wailed on the enemy a couple times and let them drop. It was sweet.

I married Muiri. I put her in my home in Windhelm. It's nice to come in there and find her working away at my alchemist lab. :)
Thank you, fellow Elliquiyan, and have a wonderful day.

Shjade

Quote from: Samael on November 25, 2011, 08:07:10 PM
I caved in and cheated.
Got the last 10 points in Enchanting/Smiting via console commands, then put the maximum of weight I can have with me to 1000.
Absorb health is a seriously annoying ability, in that it flashes your screen red when you do it. Need to exchange my bow again for one without that.

If you just got absorb health to heal yourself without needing to cast a heal spell or drink potions, try enchanting some of your jewelry with high-powered Health Regen enchants. It helps.

@Inkidu: it's possible your wedding glitched. Did Ysolda leave the chapel before you could talk to her after the ceremony? If so, that's your problem: you have to catch your bride/groom and talk to them about where the two of you will live before they leave the building, otherwise it bugs out.

Failing that, try checking Ysolda's house in Whiterun and see if she's in there. It's behind your house.
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Inkidu

I don't remember. Anyway, that game is over. Though I don't think my squishy Breton wizardess is going to marry. She's kind of married to the scholarly. In fact, if she didn't spend every last septim on spell books she'd be in Winterhold right now. XD

Seriously, I've dropped at least five thousand so far, and I think I'm going to drop illusion for speech, and maybe alteration. Still nothing beats throwing up a ward against dragon fire breath and watching the scaly bastard fail miserably.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Slywyn

Arrows and sneaking can be great fun.

*thock*

OMG! Jim just died! Let's all cluster around him!

*thock!*

No! Bob!

*thock*

*sneaks into room*

*steals things*

*leaves*
What Makes A Shark Tick ( o/o's )

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I'm just the silliest, friendliest little shark that ever did. Sure, I have all these teeth but I don't bite... much.

Inkidu

Skyrim is so fantastic. I mean where else can you fight a horde of bandits on a bridge spanning a rapid river, with no magicka, no scrolls, and you only option is to dive into the water below? I love this game!

The Hemingway method: Water? Below me? I'd rather die. XD
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Shjade

That...that sounds less like "fighting" a horde of bandits and more like "fleeing from." >.>
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Samael

Semantics.
Amusedly I think I know the spot he means, and I think I had to do the same.
Inevitably I thought about "what if sharks are in this water" on my way down.
On & Offs | My Games | Apologies & Absences | Tumblr
Et comme des fleurs de glace, on grandit dans la nuit
La lumière nous efface, dans la noirceur on vit
Comme des fleurs de glace, on rêve et on reste unis
Des fleurs au cœur de l'insomnie

"Eisblume - Fleurs De Glace"

Inkidu

Quote from: Shjade on November 26, 2011, 09:02:40 PM
That...that sounds less like "fighting" a horde of bandits and more like "fleeing from." >.>
I prefer to think of it as tactical repositioning. Plus nothing beats having them run back down the tower into a fire rune.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Shjade

It's mildly frustrating how much this game makes me want to dive into some adventure-style RP paired with how little RP is in the game itself. >.<
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Inkidu

Quote from: Shjade on November 27, 2011, 01:28:53 AM
It's mildly frustrating how much this game makes me want to dive into some adventure-style RP paired with how little RP is in the game itself. >.<
I treat it like a journal kind of thing, like I'm narrating it in my own mind. You've kind of got to look toward yourself to provide the RP outside of the perks and stuff. Still, very fun and very enjoyable.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Shjade

That's easy to do out in the world, but the quests are so rigidly constructed.

The obvious example: the first real Thieves' Guild quest where you shakedown shopkeepers for "insurance" payoffs. Why is there no option to just pay their "debt" to Brynjolf yourself and lie to him that the money was from the shopkeepers? I had plenty of gold, I could easily afford to do it, it suits my vision of my character's personality better than beating people up for their cash, so...why can't I do it?

If I want to play the character I want to play, I basically have to avoid the quests in the game because they basically tell you who your character is at that point, regardless of whether you agree with the game. Annoying.
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Inkidu

Well it's not perfect, but if your speech was high enough you could sweet-talk them into paying up.
It's a definite exercise in the willful suspension of disbelief.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

consortium11

Quote from: Shjade on November 27, 2011, 04:39:27 PM
That's easy to do out in the world, but the quests are so rigidly constructed.

The obvious example: the first real Thieves' Guild quest where you shakedown shopkeepers for "insurance" payoffs. Why is there no option to just pay their "debt" to Brynjolf yourself and lie to him that the money was from the shopkeepers? I had plenty of gold, I could easily afford to do it, it suits my vision of my character's personality better than beating people up for their cash, so...why can't I do it?

If I want to play the character I want to play, I basically have to avoid the quests in the game because they basically tell you who your character is at that point, regardless of whether you agree with the game. Annoying.

It's one of my great frustrations with Bethesda games.

Much of the attraction of the sandbox style world they generally create is the "go anywhere, do anything" aspect. Feel like flying over Morrowind carpet bombing with fireballs? You can. Feel like hunting down a doe in the lush forests of Cyrodill? You can. Feel like just going for a walk between two towns in Skyrim and seeing what happens? You can. There are many different ways to build a character with seemingly vast amounts of options and playstyles. Brutish warrior wielding a massive sword, long range archer, sneaky backstabber, grand illusionist, a summoner... it seems near endless.

Then you get to a quest and suddenly you realise that for all the different play styles it generally ends up being a fetch/escort/find which involves killing a lot of people in the middle. How you kill them is often up to you but everything else is incredibly linear. It's not that bad, especially when you're used to it (I generally play the games with an Outcast style adventure game mindset rather than a fuller RPG one which helps), but the extreme hand holding is pretty jarring at times.

Worse, the game either punishes you for going off on your own or simply prevents you from doing anything.

A couple of quick examples from previous games:

1) Oblivion, Dark Brotherhood questline.

Late in the questline it is apparent that there's a traitor in the Brotherhood, who's been setting up the assassination of senior members. You investigate this and find an item that would have deep personal value to the traitor. When all the major players are assembled you can drop this item which gets a pretty obvious reaction from one of the characters. Yet you can't do anything, you can't follow up on it, you can't point it out, no-one else reacts. Instead you're stuck in a linear quest where a few actions later the traitor you could have exposed previously "reveals" himself and starts his grand betrayal.

While you gnaw your teeth.

Most frustrating is that by building his reaction in the designers obviously thought that it was somewhat logical to drop that item. They went halfway... and then for some reason they pulled back.

2) Fallout 3.

During a sidequest it is revealed that one group ask you to become a messenger in what could be interpreted as a protection racket on a small town. Yet if you disagree with that and end up killing them not only does you karma go down but due to a sloppy faction set up you'll suddenly find the town hostile to you.

3) Fallout 3 again.

In a sidequest you can make the choice to join one of two sides in a conflict. If you join the side that is generally presented as good then they act reasonably and on the whole pretty fairly. You come back two days later and suddenly they've turned into mass murderers. If you decide to go against them your karma once again drops as it's seen as a "bad" action.

So far Skyrim has been a distinct improvement on that aspect, although I haven't done a huge amount of questing yet and I've managed to break one pretty intriguing quest by thinking ahead (which according to the various wiki's and guides I now can't complete but at least that seems to be a bug which... hopefully... will eventually be fixed). There's still some frustration that I feel like a passenger in most of the set pieces (and a few spoilerrific youtube videos indicates that continues) but again, I'm used to that. Likewise there seems to be a failure to fulfil potential in the Forsworn/Silverblood conflict but again, things like the (lack of) conflict between the supposedly competing bars in Megaton has made me somewhat immune to that disappointment.

Shjade

The Forsworn/Silver-Blood thing was another big one, yeah. When I was chatting with a key figure in their organization and he was like, My dear girl, I can tell you all this because you're not leaving here alive, my response was, roughly, "What are you talking about? This stuff you're telling me is evidence of terrible corruption in the city and the Nords sound like dicks in this situation anyway. I'll totally help you guys out!" But no, of course you can't side with the Forsworn and attempt to take over Markarth. Sigh.
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Cold Heritage

I wish I had more options to be more violent to people. There aren't enough options where I get to get my way by punching people in the face, or stomping a mudhole in their ass and walking it dry.

This is basically what I meant when I said the game suffered for being sandbox-y. There's so much stuff they crammed into the game that it's all pretty shallow.

The Forsworn worship the Daedra. They also hang out with hagravens and get their hearts replaced with briars. It is mildly interesting given who was involved in driving the Forsworn out of Markarth and why after the Great War, though. That's the best part of the Forsworn quest for me: how it sheds light on the civil war storyline.
Thank you, fellow Elliquiyan, and have a wonderful day.

Nadir

I'm annoyed I can't become a spy, and join both sides of the fight. How do the Imperials know I've joined the Stormcloaks when even neighbouring holds don't share info about wanted criminals?