The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Catch-All

I hope these don't bork my mods, because I still haven't installed that program that lets me deactivate them cleanly.

manta173 wrote:

Finished Dawngaurd and bought dragonborn... I have never completed the civil war questline... which do you guys recommend I do next?

I have about 200 hours ingame and have only skipped thieves guild/ dark brotherhood (don't like being bad) and the civil war.

Civil War isn't necessary for the Dragonborn questline. You only need to get to getting the Horn for the MQ for the Cultists to show up. There is an extra line or two of dialogue if you've beaten Alduin, but that's about it.

Scratched wrote:

I guess the other side of the equation is what challenges do you face beyond 81. If you're becoming stronger against a static challenge, then who cares?

Good point... there isn't really, I suspect Legendary skills were introduced specifically to allow those people who want to level to get to like the Legendary Dragons (killed 3 this weekend, even on master, not that much trouble) and the Ebony Warrior trophies without grinding to all get out, you can continue to level with your primary skills... though if the perks are reset, I could see that as being somewhat painful.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I hope these don't bork my mods, because I still haven't installed that program that lets me deactivate them cleanly.

I think you can run skyrim in another directory than the steam directory as long as steam is running to authenticate it. So you'd have c:\steam\steamapps\common\skyrim which you'd have as a up to date version, and another copy c:\somewhereelse\skyrim that you keep separate and just run tesv.exe or the SKSE loader. I haven't tested that though.

The things I'd expect to mess up are things that deal with scripts or modify things that the patch changes.

Scratched wrote:

I guess the other side of the equation is what challenges do you face beyond 81. If you're becoming stronger against a static challenge, then who cares?

It sort of sounds like "Prestige"-ing a skill (a la Call of Duty): if the skill becomes Legendary and goes back down to 15, then you're suddenly a lot weaker in that aspect: your weapons do less damage, or your armor protects less, or your spells cost more magicka, or you're easier to detect; and of course you lose all the skill's perks.

If I'm understanding it right, I can see it being a fun way to inject some life into an 81 character. You still get the tantalizing prospect of seeing a number go up—and what is an RPG without the ding of a level up?—and your health/stamina/magicka can increase, which is really the only way you get "stronger". In terms of your ability to affect the world, you're only building yourself back up to where you were before Legendary-izing a skill.

Plus there's the new Legendary difficult level.

(And I believe this is also a way to help players get to 78 easier so they can fight Legendary—there's the word again—dragons. In the long road from around level 65 onwards, I was hoping there could have been some kind of patch. Alas, too late for me! )

Edit: Tannhauser'ed by Demosthenes with that last point.

I do not really see the point of legendary skills. The game adjusts itself based upon your level, so if your level is artificially high, you are gimping yourself.

Demosthenes wrote:
Edit: Tannhauser'ed by Demosthenes with that last point.

I dunno if it's a great point though, well, it's a good point for both of us, bit I think I find Bethesda's solution somewhat lacking in execution... I mean, leveling like your primary combat skill, armor skill, and what not a second or third time to get enough skill points to hit those higher level bad guys would be a SLOG... I'd argue much more of a slog than just grinding out your other skills. Increasing past 100 would be good, starting over at 15 with no perks? Meh.

I would have done it. Increasing skills past 100 would make characters ridiculously overpowered. Resetting to 15 adds a bit of challenge to an already high-level character. Anyway it's the same slog as, say, sheathing your one-handed weapon to start using Destruction (at 15 with no perks); except you're already comfortable with one-handed weapons and have a good sword.

Plus Prestige-ing is pretty familiar to gamers, and CoD players give up way more than one skill to show off their 1337-ness.

Edit: Tannhauser'ed by Demosthenes with that last point.

I dunno if it's a great point though, well, it's a good point for both of us, bit I think I find Bethesda's solution somewhat lacking in execution... I mean, leveling like your primary combat skill, armor skill, and what not a second or third time to get enough skill points to hit those higher level bad guys would be a SLOG... I'd argue much more of a slog than just grinding out your other skills. Increasing past 100 would be good, starting over at 15 with no perks? Meh.

And really, getting more perk points or health/stamina/magicka is really pointless at level 81. I guess with enough perk points from legendarying your skills over and over and over, you could conceivably reach the point where you are a master of all trades with everything perked out... but that would be a RIDICULOUS number of levels you would need (something like 200ish?)... and those levels would be like orders of magnitude more to get each level than 78-81.

UESPWiki wrote:

XP required to level up your character = (Current level + 3) * 25

251 perk points total. So, to get that LAST perk point to max out everything (and this is one level only), you would need 6350 points... each skill increase gives you the new skill level number of points... so if you were leveling all of your skills from 99 to 100 (just that one skill level, not the full range from 15-100), you would need to do so 63.5 times. That's ridiculous. You could game it... why would you ever want to.

ZaneRockfist wrote:

I do not really see the point of legendary skills. The game adjusts itself based upon your level, so if your level is artificially high, you are gimping yourself.

Why do people keep asking for level cap increases in MMOs instead of just more late-game content? Some people just love the grind.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Why do people keep asking for level cap increases in MMOs instead of just more late-game content? Some people just love the grind.

That's true, but leveling up usually doesn't actually make you worse as it does in Skyrim.

ZaneRockfist wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

Why do people keep asking for level cap increases in MMOs instead of just more late-game content? Some people just love the grind.

That's true, but leveling up usually doesn't actually make you worse as it does in Skyrim.

Though I guess some of those grinds would cause the 251 perk points from Skyrim to pale in comparison (I'm thinking of the Bronze Dragonflight rep grind in vanilla WoW, had a guildmate who solo-ed it just for the heck of it, which was pretty crazy).

Gravey wrote:

Are you me? Am I you? That is a) the exact way I like to play, and b) my exact feelings about the high-end gear. I posted this the other day in the Dovahkiins thread:

Twins. Separated at birth. Like DeVito and Arnold. That's the only explanation I can think of.

Right now I'm rolling with a modded Ranger's armor, which is little more than a re-skinned hide armor, leather boots and gauntlets, and a neat looking hood. I do indulge myself a little with my weaponry; I have Sting and an elven bow from a Lord of the Rings weapons mod, and a skyforge light shield from another mod. None of it seems overpowered, and fits into the look and feel of the world quite well.

Still, straight-up leather (or scale) armor, a skyforge axe, a solid shield, and a decent bow is really all I need.

I finally found my first Legendary Dragon, and the stupid thing glitched out on me! First it started flying really strangely after I hit it with Dragonrend, and then when it died the body didn't burn up. I didn't get the achievement, so I guess it didn't count as a proper kill.

On the plus side, I am now in charge of all the guilds. If anyone needs anything beat up, murdered, robbed, or magically incinerated, they have to deal with me.

muttonchop wrote:

I finally found my first Legendary Dragon, and the stupid thing glitched out on me! First it started flying really strangely after I hit it with Dragonrend, and then when it died the body didn't burn up. I didn't get the achievement, so I guess it didn't count as a proper kill.

On the plus side, I am now in charge of all the guilds. If anyone needs anything beat up, murdered, robbed, or magically incinerated, they have to deal with me.

Set the game to Master, suddenly that's all I was seeing from dragons.

I've been on master for a long time now, I just haven't been seeing a lot of dragons because I've been fast-travelling between cities trying to finish all those stupid Thieves' Guild jobs. I tracked down and murdered another Legendary Dragon, and the achievement popped this time.

Now I'm building houses and adopting orphans. Does the fact that I'm a vampire make that creepy? It seems a little creepy.

I'm absolutely enthralled with the game, but I keep hitting difficulty or comfort-zone walls:

1. Deliver the Dragonstone? But I don't want to have dragons pop up every three minutes. Isn't that what starts happening?
--> Means I can't buy the house in Whiterun.

2. I'll go to Riften! That's the next cheapest house.
--> Except Riften is an awful, depressing, pitiless place (though I hear Markarth is even worse). And the one real good I can do there -- take out the Skooma ring -- is stymied by the sudden appearance of a very high-level bandit boss.

3. Ooooh, the 7000 steps. That's really neat. Let's climb!
--> Snowy Saber Cat. And another. And another. Also, Frost Troll. NO ENLIGHTENMENT FOR YOU.

4. Companions! Yay, the fighters guild equivalent. Awesome guys.
--> DO YOU WANT TO JOIN THE BLOOD OF THE CIRCLE. What? No! Holy crap, what the -- No! Gah!

And so I just wander around the other places helping people. It's a shame, because it's all Misc quests. I feel that I've priced myself out of all four faction quest lines: Companions, yikes; College, not a mage; Thieves Guild, ugh, no; Dark Brotherhood, ew ew ew.

So I can either run through the main quest alongside everything else (but, endless random dragons), or I can do everything else first and then do the main. It was the exact same with Oblivion: I didn't want those portals popping up every few minutes spewing out random damage, so I explored all over first. Guess I'll do the same thing, but it means I won't see the main quest stuff until I -- and the world -- are very high level.

I still have all of the other cities and a ton of settlements to visit, so there's lots of game to be played. I just wonder if I'm only playing the less-interesting half of the game. Although perhaps with a game this size, that's not a bad thing on the time-budget.

You... don't want dragons all up ins? >_O (J/k. FWIW, dragons won't be appearing that often; they don't always agro and when they do it could be on the wildlife; and if it is you, you can always run or kite them to other wildlife or guards.)

You can also do the Mages College without any more magic than it takes to satisfy the woman on the bridge to get into the college in the first place. After that, it's all dungeon delving undertaken as you see fit.

There's plenty to do otherwise: the civil war, Daedric artifacts, and many many miscellaneous quests. I would say there's no "less interesting" half of the game. To me, the main quest wasn't a big draw anyway, story wise. (The Companions and Dark Brotherhood had the most interesting stories to me.)

And I had the exact same problem with the 7000 steps and I was trying to do the main quest: stuck on a rock outcropping, laying bricks in my pantaloons while wondering how I can get past that persistent frost troll (I ran: his territory wasn't that big after all).

I know from experience that it's possible to sprint past the troll and outrun him all the way to High Hrothgar. If the troll follows you inside you can hide behind the Greybeards while they shout him to death.

Archangel wrote:

So I can either run through the main quest alongside everything else (but, endless random dragons), or I can do everything else first and then do the main. It was the exact same with Oblivion: I didn't want those portals popping up every few minutes spewing out random damage, so I explored all over first. Guess I'll do the same thing, but it means I won't see the main quest stuff until I -- and the world -- are very high level.

The dragons are millions of times less annoying than Oblivion gates.

Oh my god there are cthulhus everywhere. AAAAAAAAH

I've got just one thing to say, just one:

AWESOME!

Peace out.

I was getting tired of looking like an angry popsicle, so I ditched my stalhrim gear in favour of some carved nordic stuff. Then, I slapped on some Fortify Unarmed enchants and went on a wild punching spree. First I punched a bear to death, then this guy showed up:
IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/577857776257966339/DECDFA6349653432E116C57284A3BBEBFBD92955/)
Naturally, I punched him to death too. That big crowd of Stormcloaks probably contributed to the kill, but they were using weapons like a bunch of sissies so they don't deserve any credit.

There are Dragonborn, and then there are Dragonborn. That's Dragonborn. It's so face-punchingly epic that it's driving the right-most Stormcloak nuts. He doesn't even know what he's doing anymore, all just trying to hit anything he can. Yeaargh! indeed.

Ever thought that the problem with Skyrim was that it was just too darn cold looking?

Tropical Skyrim

IMAGE(http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/images/33017-3-1362914871.jpg)

IMAGE(http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/images/33017-2-1362912478.jpg)

IMAGE(http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/images/33017-1-1362912646.jpg)

IMAGE(http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/images/33017-3-1362912647.jpg)

It's Far Cryrim!

Now all I need is a wing suit to catch beat up dragons in the sky!

The first thing I thought when I saw that was how much I wanted to play Far Cry 2 again.

It also lead me to HiAlgoBoost. Anyone use this? It's a performance enhancer, and in the few minutes I've been experimenting with it, I've been quite impressed.

Farcry 3?

NathanialG wrote:

Farcry 3?

That's what I thought it was at first.

tboon wrote:
NathanialG wrote:

Farcry 3?

That's what I thought it was at first.

"I like this sword. This is a nice f*cking sword."

I suddenly occurred to me: for every single blacksmith's shingle in the game, and for every horse there is, and for all the miscellaneous objects, there aren't any horseshoes in Skyrim, let alone the ability to craft them.

I guess you nobody is sewing in Skyrim either, despite the clothier's shingles. But at least there are clothes aplenty. But not a single horseshoe to be found.