No ones posted yet, so Skyrim.

Who's got it? Where are you? What do you think of it? And what's your character like?

I'm on my way to see the Greybeards. I'm currently a Dark Elf, who loves Sniping at a distance, then following up with spells if people start running towards me, and I finish up with a fine steel sword if they get too close.

I love the new Lockpicking system, and love the shout (Okay, I can say one word at the moment. But I've used it loads.)

Only few things I hate is unable to do Alchemy on the go, and when I hit a goat with a firebolt that sent it off a cliff.....actualy that was quite funny thinking about it.

And the main theme song, I can sit on the start menu forever. <3

Just bought it today. Mainly just fiddled with it a bit to get the hang of things, but haven't yet decided how to play. I've got down how to equip stuff and use the favorites menu, but for the life in me I can't make sense of the Quick Keys. They always just seem to make me dual wield whatever it was assigned to and then I can't get it back to normal without going into the menu and doing it manually.

I freakin Love skyrim man. I've gotten at least 4 different shouts and let me tell you. Dragons are hard to kill. I'm an imperial guy and I'm pretty much an magic arching heavy armored swordman I've been testing out all the clases but arching seems to be pretty useful. I bought Monday and im at least level 9 right now. TL;DR skyrim is freaking amazing go buy it.

Well, all I can tell that this game is my candidate for best game of 2011. There are too many positives to give, so I'll focus on the bad and the not-so-good things :


- dumbed-down stats and level system. Sure, it's easier and you don't spend that much time on focusing on strenght, endurance, etc., etc., but you still have to spend lot's of time on...

- ... messy inventory! Again, dumbed down for the needs of console players.

- lack of athletics/acrobatics. As a person who plays Khajit, I feel cheated. I loved the fact that with lot's of gameplay time and training, my Khajit was able to jump over buildings in Morrowind, without killing himself. It was toned down a bit in Oblivion, but now, in Skyrim, I feel like I've been cheated when I'm having problems with jumping on the smallest rock.

- no unarmed skill, no fighting without armor skill. Same as above, my Khajit in Morrowind fought mostly with his own bare hands and unarmed. What he gets now? Starter bonus +15 of attack for claws and no bonus for fighting without armor, except for additional whoopass for not having any.

- Horses. They defy gravity and that picture :

is oh-so-very true and that sight is a common one. Unless the game will glitch and shoot my horse(with me in the saddle) few kilometres back, which happened two times and resulted in - of course - death. Second thing, they tend to rush into battle which is for me - as I play the stealthy fellow - annoying. How can I backstab a guy when he's running around my horse like a madman? Third thing - they tend to get lost when I use fast travel, unless I'm in the saddle. Fourth thing - I never saw any difference between horses in one city or another besides fur patterns. Only Shadowmere had longer galloping time than others. Step back from Oblivion in this aspect.

- NPC's! Same as for horses, they rush into battle and when they do, the enemies won't kill them, just make them fall on their knees and crawl away. Unless I'd kill them, which I often do, being angry how intrusive and weak they are. To put it simply - they're stupid.

- bows. I love bows, I use them for about 75% of my gameplay, but they get too powerfull too soon. When I took the perk that makes opponent stagger for a bit mixed with a perk from sneak attack with a bow even the mightiest undead lords(like the one from mage guild quest) cannot reach me and are able to attack me once or twice. Same thing goes for...

- ... sneaking and stealing. Being a stealthy Khajit, sneaking almost all the time through the game, stealing whatever I'm able to steal and opening any locks I have to say that I have 98 of sneak skill, 81 of stealing and 78 of lockpicking. And it makes the game very easy even on the hardest level. But that's a problem that was visible since Morrowind. With Sneak of 98 and additional ring and amulet that boosts this skill I can stand one meter away from a bandit/guard/etc. and he won't see me. With stealing of 81 I can leave the guy virtually without pants(and there's a perk for that, at 100 skill level).

- kids. Same as in Fallout 3&NV - you can't steal from them or do any harm to them. And some really do deserve it. But, nevermind, there'll be mods for it for sure and then I'll bring stealthy terror to Whiterun like the same way I brought my Gatling Laser to Little Lamplight in Fallout 3...

- dragons. Easy, nuff said. And dumb. Snow sabre cats, giants and snow trolls - now that's a challenge.

... and many, many more that I can't think of, but that's just me being grumpy. The game, in general, is addicting as f***, the story, especially guild stories are ten times better than in older TES entries(Dark Brotherhood rocks!) and the world feels more alive.

BUT there's something strange I've noticed - I downloaded the game from torrent, since there was no demo, to chek it out. I loved it so I went to a store and bought the original. And I noticed that the original version crashes more frequently than a torrent copy. I have two versions installed, but I play the pirated one because it's more stable.
Pirates having more trusty and reliable releases than the official ones? I'd say I'm suprised, but that is quite common nowdays.

Sabre cat got the jump on me and mauled me, was prepared for him a second time.

Snow Trolls, now there's a challenge. (I ran from one after dying ten times)

Yet to take on a Giant....I'm not that brave.

Also I've ran from a Mammoth after throwing half a dozen firebolts, I decided it was best for a tactical run in the opposite direction

Anyway, on my game I'm currently level nine. While on my way to collect the horn of the Windcaller, I found a quest that has me dealing with Vampires....trying to beat the master vampire without contracting Vampirism......(on 5th attempt....)

The best tactic is to find some kind of rock and use bow/magic, since NPC's are still unable to jump... which haven't changed since TESIII. I'm level 41(and I don't play that much - I'm boosting it by creating random alchemical stuff, smithing and enchanting - the latter is the fastest way to level up) and Giants are a challenge - one, two hits and I'm done. But like I've wrote above - get on some rock, make sure that the enemy won't be able to climb it and shoot the bastard with your best bow&arrows. Which is also a quick way to level. The quick-leveling methods are also quite simmilar to TESIII.

And while we're at vampirism... I wasn't able to contract it even though I was hacked and slashed by vampires many, many times.
I'm a werewolf though but compared to werewolf from TESIII:Bloodmoon(add-on to Morrowind) it's very weak and unpractical. It cannot sneak, it isn't that strong, criticals are rarity and the only downside is the fact that you don't get bonuses from sleeping. What happened to nightly unwanted changes into wolfie from Bloodmoon? It added credibility to werewolf myth and made game more challenging.
Same thing for vampires - I saw few vampires roaming Skyrim forrests in broad daylight with no damage done to them. Oh well, at least they weren't sparkling...

I have to change my opinion about Dragons though. Around level 38-40 I was attacked few times by two dragons at the same time, one of which was a very powerful and durable Elder Dragon and weaker Blood Dragon. Now that provided me some challenge, especially since I've sold all of my potions done for exp. on alchemy table and I thought that it wouldn't hurt to sell magika/health/stamina potions either.
Well, I was wrong.

A thief tried to rob me of gold, and stuff on a cliff edge. Fus ro Dah! She goes flying off a cliff, and lands in the river below. I run along the cliff edge and the path eventually comes to the riverside. Look in the river to see ex-thief floating down the river....I rob her of everything, and now I have a nice looking, near full set of elven armour. Thank you random thief, your death shall not be in vain for this armour is divine and has saved me from two bear attacks, a dragon attack, and multiple wolves.

Well, I decided to try playing as a Heavy Orcish Berserker: Heavy armor, dual wielding war axes and smithing the highest quality gear for myself that I can, with a little archery thrown in to deal with dragons and such. No spell casting whatsoever, the only magic will be in making enchanted gear.

Unfortunately, the inability to block OR dodge is making things rather hard. So far I've had to turn the difficulty down to Apprentice to keep myself from dying. It seems like the developers intended this to be dealt with by means of regenerating health and your shout powers. Hirelings help out greatly as well, but it's kinda hard to tell the enemies from the allies.

All in all I can't help but feel that dual wielding is probably the weakest of the melee combat options due simply to the fact that you can't block. Why the crap aren't there any skills related to MOVEMENT? The only dodging you're capable of is simply trying to move backwards out of the enemies' reach, which is hard to do if they're using something like a greatsword. All you can really do is trade blows and hope they die before you do.

Cooking also seems like an underdeveloped aspect. You need piles of salt for just about everything, food items can weigh you down and they hardly heal you at all. Only the various stews seem worthwhile for their lengthy health regeneration boosts. Then again, once the enemies are all dead you may as well just stand around until your health is full from normal renegeration anyway.

I'm also a little bit worried that dungeons and such don't seem to be respawning like they did in Oblivion. If that's the case then the only reliable way to get the best gear seems to be smithing it yourself. Vendor inventory, such as different metal ingots you need, seems to reset regularly but the only unlimited source of gold I've found so far is splitting firewood, which is REALLY slow and boring.

I'm still enjoying playing and don't yet regret my decision to buy it, but how could Bethesda have worked on it as long as they did and STILL not properly balanced it?

I hate dual wielding because of two things - one, like Ganthan posted above - you can't block. And because you can't block with two weapons in your hands that also means you can't block while being unarmed. Yes, you can't block in a fist-fight while in previous games you could. And, like I've said - I liked and still like to fight unarmed.

Ganthan - you can dodge if you'll invest in sneak - it has a very usefull roll perk which often saved me from deadly swings or various Dwemer contraptions. But, it's very high on sneak skill tree and you have to crouch to do it so it kind of misses the point for an orcish bada$$ warior.

Still you have an orc and in previous TES entries, orcs had bonuses for smithing. Yes, the most powerful weapons & armor will be those that you'll smithe and enchant - I wasn't interested in those till level 30-32 but then I switched from light armour to heavy ones and toyed around with smithing. I found it fun and very, very usefull. Now, I can make ebony armor, make it exquisite, superior or - with my artifact orcish gloves of smithing - master level, enchant it with 50% boost to fire resistance or bonus for two-handed weapons. And I like that - I like the fact that you can make much more powerful weapons and armour than you can get from Deadra. I can't remember if there's any other game that don't boasts with unique artifacts and legendary weapons. Skyrim leaves power in the hand of player.

Earning money - fastest methods?
Dark Brotherhood missions, but they are limited. Still, there's about 30k+ money to gain from all of their missions which take about 4-8 hours to complete. And you need only one minute to spend it on the most expensive manor in the game in Solitude - 20k plus about 10-15k for additions.
Thieves guild. They pay lesser smaller prices but they have more side missions. And most of them are pretty easy.
Smithing & hunting. You can hunt animal furs, make leather out of them and sell them. You can grab a pickaxe and mine ore, use smelter to change it into various ignots and sell them. Or, you can combine those together and make armours, weapons and - if you have gold, silver and some gems - jewelery(which can be get high prices in stores).
Prowling the dungeons. The oldest method. Go into the dungeon, walk a bit, fight a bit, catch some loot till the point you're overloaded, sell that stuff.
Alchemy. There are weeds, flowers, shrooms and other stuff all around you. Just pick them up, find a table, experiment and sell potions for cash while earning exp. at the alchemist table.
Prowling the roads. Nothing feels better than slaughtering Legion patrol by backstabbing. Or shouting them off a cliff. Kill them, take off their armour and throw their bodies into the river. Watch them float with the current. Feelsgoodman.jpg.

There are tons of ways to earn cash in Skyrim. Many of those include training yourself in other areas than you originally wanted but that's the Elder Scroll series are all about - you can be Jack of All Trades and it won't make your character weak. It'll make it even stronger.

Through spamming iron daggers I got my smithing skill to 100. I don't think the complexity or difficulty of the item makes a difference in how much xp you gain and I was able to get the funds I needed for the iron and leather through firewood splitting. I've got a few legendary pieces of dragon armor now. Daedric armor would be better but dragon will suit me more than fine until I get the components for daedric. Where the hell do I get ebony ingots and daedric hearts? Also, why are orcish weapons weaker than dwarven weapons even though you can make dwarven earlier?

I find as I level up and get some kickawesome gear the game seems to be getting far easier. Maybe this is already known but I don't think enemies get stronger as you level up like in Oblivion. Not only did I turn the difficulty back to Adept, but I'm thinking I should push it up a little more.

I think I can confirm now that enemies, dungeons and such don't respawn. I keep coming across the same dead wolf on the path from Riverwood to Whiterun that I killed when I was level one, and every camp or dungeon I've cleared are still labeled as 'Cleared' on the map. What seems to compensate for this is that skills raise after a lot fewer uses than they used to. I guess less repetitive grind is a good thing, but I'm starting to think that if I don't make the most of every training opportunity I could exhaust them all before I have all the skills I want. Perhaps I'll break my 'No Magic' rule to conjure up some training dummies or something.

Enemies that don't respawn or scale to your level eliminates the overabundance of gold you could get in Oblivion by making regular dungeon raids and selling all the loot. All of this is making Skyrim into the kind of game that doesn't really let you specialize your character very much. It's kind of forcing you to learn just about everything. If you want the best weapons or potions, you can't buy them or raid for them, you HAVE to make them yourself. Everybody also starts with a magicka bar and basic spells, so why not use them? Indeed, why should you deliberately withhold training everything if it isn't going to scale the game?

The only specialization seems to come in how you raise your health, magicka or stamina and maybe you can't earn enough points to buy every perk. However, as far as skills go, not only are you able to max almost everything, it seems like you're expected to.

Yes, Skyrim as all of TES series don't even want you to specialize.
In my case, in Morrowind, you are more than welcome to specialize in the skills your race is good up to level 18-20. But after that - let your will roam free - you can specialize in anything you want because that's the spirit of TES games.
At the same time - you don't have to. You can beat the game at level 15-20 with your specialized skills. But you won't get past the limit, thus, you won't level up. It's always been like that, personally I can say - from Morrowind to Skyrim.

Scaling. Make a new character and go exploring Winterhold areas. I found few Ice Trolls, Sabre Cats & Ice Bears with levels much higher than lvl. 1. But there is a scaling. Undead & Forsworn for example. They level up with your character and respawn. Some are even resistant to my backstabbing Khajit at level 50 with 16x critical backstab hit. But still, there are some areas that are tought when you're a new character. I played through the game on Adept, now I'm playing at the hardest level to find out what it'll change.

Ebony ignots - that's tricky, I'm yet to find mining fields for it but many blacksmiths have them, even sometimes in Whiterun. Deadra hearts - the only place, besides inside Azura Star, is Mehrunes Dagon shrine - you have to do a quest started in Mythic Dawn "museum" in Dawnstar or Morthal(I don't remember it correctly) to repair Mehrunes Razor and then, after that, two deadras will spawn in his shrine every day.

Forgive me that I won't refer to other points of your post, Ganthan, but I drank few beers and my concentration skill is less than 100.

Okay, my mistake. Stuff does respawn, I'm just not sure on how long it takes. The fact that completed dungeons and such stay labeled as *Cleared* on the map had me believing that they didn't reset.

I returned to Bleak Falls Barrow and all the enemies were back. However, they're dying in a measly few hits and barely hurting me so either they aren't scaling to my level or I'm so awesomely blinged out in my legendary smithed gear that it just seems that way.

Funnily enough, the iron ore vein that I mined the first time around looks like it should be mineable again, but it's not letting me. Someone on Youtube said it takes ore veins a month to respawn and I'm not sure how much time has really passed. Sure seems like a month to me. Iron, steel, dwarven and orichalcum ingots are usually readily for sale from blacksmiths though. Only ebony seems to come up short in shops.

Speaking of ore veins, after a bit of online checking, I found a mine SE of Windhelm run by orcs and filled to the brim with ebony ore veins. Since I'm an orc myself they let me right in, though I'm not sure if they'd do the same for other races. Still no luck on Daedra hearts though. I've started the Mythic Dawn museum quest line so we'll see how that goes.

Honestly, grinding smithing to 100 with iron daggers is so cheap and easy anybody could do it without even clearing any dungeons. Heck, if you were really ambitious you could also buy petty soul gems and use some of the daggers to practice enchanting. Apparently multiple Fortify Smithing effects stack up, so even after mastering smithing you could still keep improving your stuff more and more. As Mythbusters say, "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing."

Ah, now there's that funny thing with scalling that most of the players won't notice. I found it after starting new gameplay and many players over the net confirmed that fact, even on Bethesda forums.

The caves and fortress seem to remember the first time you enter them and they scale their level only one time - and that is the first time you enter them. Thus, you may have found Bleak Falls Barrow easy for the second time because you probably entered it for the first time somwhere on the first hours of your gameplay. It's a suprising scaling that Bethesda didn't mention.

My example - with my first character, I joined Stormcloacks. Empire and them have simmilar missions, thus, I had something to compare to. My first character entered the designated tomb on level 48 which had the strongest Dragugrs(those with the black crowns) at the end of it.
Now, I'm playing as a Nord, he entered the same dungeon but on level 8. And there was only one strongest Draugr. Plus, I specially didn't enter Bleak Falls Barrow early, but on level 17. And it had much harder enemies than it has while I first played as a Khajiit and entered BFB on level 3 or 4.

Hope that clears up a few things for you.

I dindn't had problems with mining for the second time, but I can't say how much time passed since my first visit to the mine. Ebony wasn't so rare after I reached level 40 or so and after level 45 I often found it in barrels, chests in various dungeons - even those that I've already visited. Thus, it seems that objects not only respawn, but improve with time.

No, the orcs won't let non-orc without hearing a good thing about the non-orc. They won't chat, trade or join you without finishing a certain mine quest near Marakath.

Yep, smithing & enchanting especially with boosting potions & armor pieces is a big, big exploit. My second character, nord, had legendary weapons on level 11.
But you're playing as an orc, so you should be glad about it - smithing is, after all, an orc's proffession.

I should really have a testplay somewhere... I'm not sure if I like this game enough to play for extended amounts of time... I never was one for the singleplayer RPGs...

Is whiterun dragonian for "come and eat us"? I've just fast travelled there, and got attacked by a blood dragon. That's the second time I've had to fight a dragon in whiterun. :/ I killed it tho. So all's good.

Update on my story. Just done a misson called A daedra's best friend. I loved the Axe, but my promise to the dog was more important. I loved the item I got instead over that axe.
Still doing Diplomatic Immunity and should really carry on with that. But....you know.....Dark Brotherhood is calling me.....and I do looooove gold.

I got a good deal going on here. I can get Morrowind for 2 euros this afternoon (wich I'm going to do).

After playing that I'll think about getting skyrim sometime soon.

"Soon"

You're funny.

He did it again

not_сenaris wrote:"Soon"

You're funny.

Funny as in: Thinking that I can clear Morrowind soon and THEN buy skyrim?

Or just see if I like the genre for just 2 euros and then ask Skyrim for christmass?

Can I post my review of Skyrim here....well too late to reply here it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHurty_ZBq0 I get distracted by music way to easily.

The Doctor wrote:Can I post my review of Skyrim here....

At the game store where I buy my games, the most hillarious joke is this phrase : "The Elder Scrolls Game, played on a console".

I have to admit, it gets me every time.

Finished up the Main Quest. Decent story to it and didn't experience nearly the bugs other people have reported, though I have had the game freeze up on me from time to time.

I may have gone a bit too far with the whole, "Make the best possible gear for myself" approach. After raising both Smithing and Enchanting to 100 with relevant perks, upgrading daedric armor with a full set of Fortify Smithing gear, enchanting with grand soul gems and a Fortify Enchanting potion made with a full set of Fortify Alchemy gear... well, the game got PISS EASY.

I mean, armor rating just shy of 1000, 26% constant health and stamina regeneration boosts, 42% magic resistance, 39% elemental resistance, wielding a pair of war axes with around 130 damage each, and to top it all off, Elemental Fury shout that literally turns me into a dragon smoothie maker for several seconds.

Alduin was dead before I ran out of stamina. Afterwards I decided to try out the Civil War by siding with the Stormcloaks. Every single imperial I faced died in a single hit. I would think at that point that everybody would shit their pants at the mere sight of me.

Admittedly I kept the difficulty on Adept the whole time. I figured that after all that work getting myself to that point I had earned the right to have the game just yield to my prowess, but I hadn't realized that it would yield to that degree.

I thought about getting it. But then I got an arrow in the kneecap.

Markarth, epic game, can't say too much good things about those mother--------- got------- spiders, though. My character is a Breton who enjoys making Canine Barbecue. He also has a tendency to collect Daedric Artifacts.