Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Sng]

I'm level 8 and still get owned by dragons within a few minutes of them seeing me. Only way I killed the first was by hiding behind a wall and taking pot-shots.

Tempted to restart focusing on bad magic as I'm pretty sure the route I'm going is the toughest Maybe I'm just tired! Have been on for 5.5hrs straight now.

[BoggyB]

I'm flat out refusing to use magic in this. I don't mind playing in a world where that sort of thing goes on but I've never been one for waving my hands around and glowing.

Dragonborn? Nah. Just a dude with a sharp blade and a sturdy shield.

[Guest]

Some people earlier mentioned characters getting catapulted across the map - this has happened to me a few times, the most memorable was up in the mountains where I bumped into a guy and I paused it mid or at the end of the conversation. When I unpaused it, the guy shot backwards like he was on a giant bungie cord - it must have been at least 500 in game metres into the distance. I started sprinting after him and came across his corpse and after taking anything of value I wondered if this is going to have repercussions later? (not the theft, the guy dying)

Pausing the game does seem to do some such - at one point I saw a mammoth off in the distance and happened to pause the game at that moment. When I unpaused the Mammoth fell from the sky next to his Giant herder and crumpled like a paper cup.

[JoeK]

Just like to say that climbing those 7000 steps is proving to be one of this gen's highlights for me. Absolutely wonderful. I've taken a break half-way up to savour things. I have however taken a snap of myself and did my usual faffing around with it

[jonamok]

Just like to say that climbing those 7000 steps is proving to be one of this gen's highlights for me. Absolutely wonderful. I've taken a break half-way up to savour things. I have however taken a snap of myself and did my usual faffing around with it

Nice! When I did the 7K steps the visibility in the blizzard was about 10 feet. Not quite enough to avoid the old Ice Troll necklace.

[JoeK]

At the start, the weather was pretty ropey, but it turned out nice again . I just love the wind effect...that snow blowing over the cliffs is awesome!

[Jamin]

The books in this are fantastic. Some are really useful, such as the Troll one and some of the potion mixtures. And the one which basically rounds up the plot from Oblivion in a handy succinct manner is a nice touch.

[snowbind]

Well, Smiithing and Alchemy are quite heavily perk-reliant. With alchemy, combining two ingredients that have the same effect will create a potion or poison with that effect. Trouble is, you can only find out what effects ingredients have by tasting them or fluke-creating a working potion. Perks help this.

Smithing tells you what you need if you go to a forge. All items you can see can be created if you have the materials. You usually need some metal and leather. Leather can be made from any animal pelt at the tanning rack at most blacksmiths. Metals can be obtained through mining ores and smelting them, or just buying them.

For enchanting you need an object to enchant, a filled soul gem, and you need to know an enchantment. You can learn an enchantment by disenchanting an enchanted object you've found. The higher your skill and the stronger the soul gem, the better the result.

Thanks!

[hoot]

I need to get this off my chest.

I spotted an orc on my way back to town, he was standing over two dead sabre tooth tigers or something equally impressive. He told me he wanted to die an honourable death, it takes all sorts I guess? Anyway, I said I'd oblige him and the fight started, except some how I ended up dying instead of him. Queue reload. This time I don't bother triggering the conversation and instead hid behind a rock and picked him off with ease with my bow. He didn't even know it was me. I loot his corpse and continue on my way back to town. Now I'm not joking when I say this, I felt SO guilty, honestly, it felt like I had cheated him out of his last wish. So I reloaded my save, this time I snuck up on the two mammoths that reside outside town, notched an arrow and sent it on its way. It barely tickled it, but it had the desired effect and soon enough it's giving chase to me. I leg it back to the old orc, putting him in between me and the pissed off mammoth, the ensuing fight was brief, admittedly, not quite the blaze of glory he probably had pictured, but certainly better than a lame arrow in his back.

Amazing what this game can make you feel and do.

In other news, I got my first house tonight, it's rather.. sparse, to say the least. I was just about to turn in for the night, surrounded by cob webs when I spotted a door at the top of the ladder I had somehow missed. I was expecting a closet or something, instead there's Lydia with a pretty damn sweet furnished room. I'm not even charging her rent. I figure for this arrangement to work, there's got to be a bit of give and take, so I invited her in to my quarters and instructed her to get in to bed, but sadly she refused. Hopefully she's just playing hard to get, I was getting all ready for some sexy QTE to trigger but alas, it wasn't to be. Tough times. Perhaps she doesn't like cats?

Is there a way to actually pause the game so the time on the save game is accurate? I'm sitting on about 20 hours, but it looks like if you leave the game open on your inventory, for example, the clock keeps on ticking. It doesn't really matter, but I am kind of curious to see just how much time I do end up sinking it to it.

[Soo Denim]

I don't want to ruin anything and I can't spoiler on this,

So let's put it this way

Dark brotherhood is AMAZING

[MrPogo]

I'd been to my house two or three times before I entered one day and saw Lydia sneaking a out upstairs. Except I assumed it was a burglar and stuck a couple of arrows in her before realising shed moved herself in.

[jonamok]

I'd been to my house two or three times before I entered one day and saw Lydia sneaking a out upstairs. Except I assumed it was a burglar and stuck a couple of arrows in her before realising shed moved herself in.

I'm quite tempted to stick my sword in her.

[NecroMorrius]

I did the College earlier today. The fight with

the undead guy to get the Staff of Magnus

was fucking hard. I had to slow time, slash him up, run away and hide, and repeat. His lightning attacks killed me in two hits.

Two hits? Lucky sod. I gave everything I had to Lydia, chucked gallons of potions down my neck and occasionally popped up with a lightning bolt while she went hammer and tongs with two staffs and a bunch of scrolls

More annoying than anything, I did it and then died on the next fight without saving, and got stuck trying to do it again for an hour

Well worth it though!

[Mallet]

Does anyone else spend ages agonising over which perks to take? so many good ones!

[Takizawa]

Had another cracking evening on this, finished off the College quests which was superb all the way through. As someone mentioned earlier, they could package that up as a standalone game, it's that good.

Finished off a few side quests (and picked up twice as many more) but unfortunately the night ended on a sad note... Brelyna, my companion from the College, was finally bested I think of the 40 hours i've been playing she's been with me for 25, so i'm feeling the loss. After being jumped and downed by three Forsworn, there was just not enough time for me to save her, even my war dog Vigilance looked on hopelessy as she fell.

R.I.P Brelyna.

[Takizawa]

Does anyone else spend ages agonising over which perks to take? so many good ones!

My main dilemna has been robes + mage armour, or light armour + light armour perks. Both options seem to get some very hefty bonuses, but for the time being as a hybrid I prefer light armour.

[csuzw]

Destruction magic:

Something seems a bit messed up with it to me. For a long time I've been happily killing things with Firebolt (or Frost/Lightning equivalent). Even when I got Fireball I continued to use it because the mana cost was close to prohibitive and the damage was often overkill. Recently Firebolt has started to feel long in the tooth but I just hit 75 skill so I now could get 50% mana cost Incinerate so I thought it would be ok. Then I realised I could cast a grand total 2 dualcasted Incinerates (with 90+% of my skill ups going to Magicka and wearing mostly +Magicka or -Destruction mana % items). So I looked at mana cost and damage of the spells and this is what I found:

Flames (Novice): 12 damage for 3 mana

Firebolt (Apprentice): 37 damage for 10 mana

Fireball (Adept): 60 damage for 35 mana

Incinerate (Expert): 90 damage for 79 mana

The damage per mana difference between Flames and Firebolt is minimal but Fireball is less than half as good and Incinerate is even worse. Fireball is understandable given that it causes an explosion that can damage whole groups, but as far as I'm aware Incinerate is just a powered up Firebolt. While Incinerate might be ok for single big bad bosses you want to take down quick, they often cast shields or wards and the cost of it being resisted or missing would be disastrous. Does anyone know why Incinerate might cost so much mana? I'm not particularly looking forward to spending the rest of the game still casting Firebolt!

edit: or maybe I put some serious effort into enchanting and get all -Destruction mana % items until I have 0 cost spells.

[Jarik]

After joining the Companions & having a chat with their leader about what it means to be one, I was guilted into abandoning my usual stealthy-sneaky approach while raiding a bandit lair & charged in waving my sword. Cue a desparate running battle through the whole area with me being set upon by what looked like everyone in the place & only barely surviving. Great fun though.

Also, talking about the atmosphere & immersiveness of the game, one of my favorite things to do is after a hard days adventuring, is to join all the townsfolk in the local tavern as they all sit together & drink, eat & chat in the firelight before retiring for the night.

[Guest]

Tip! Rocked up to Fort Greymore and you can take a horse!

Can't seem to find a way to get Lydia to ride one though the daft cow.

[deerokus]

Me + Uthgerd in an ultra-narrow corridor fighting 6 or so bandits at close quarters = dead uthgerd.

Looted her sweet armour to sell, though.

[Space Gibbon]

Two hits? Lucky sod. I gave everything I had to Lydia, chucked gallons of potions down my neck and occasionally popped up with a lightning bolt while she went hammer and tongs with two staffs and a bunch of scrolls

More annoying than anything, I did it and then died on the next fight without saving, and got stuck trying to do it again for an hour

Well worth it though!

I thought maybe as a fancy all-magic type you might have been using those warding spells and doing it all proper mage-like. I'm beginning to realise that, as a jack-of-several-trades, I'm often best off using combat against mages, and magic against warriors.

I got near-pwned by the Challenger (met him yet?) but managed to beat him with the same tactic. When am I going to get my Storm Atronach, that's what I want to know.

[snowbind]

Does leveling a particular trait increase your skill with that or does it simply unlock the ability to unlock the associated perks?

[Solid SOAP]

Picked this up the other morning, absolutely loving it. It's rich with atmosphere and seems much more varied and interesting than the locales Oblivion had to offer, and I LOVED Oblivion. Dungeons all seem relatively unique, the combat is much more fun than past Elder Scrolls games (Magic kind of reminds me of using the plasmids in Bioshock), and it's just really great so far. The best part is I know I haven't even begun to scratch the surface, I've only discovered like, not even 15-20 different areas total, only really hung out in a few cities for a little bit, and I'm just a level 6 right now. I'm definitely feeling that the overall package of this game is going to be a lot more satisfying than Oblivion, I'm really happy with it right now.

Also, I was happy to find myself running into M'aiq the Liar just a few minutes ago! Very nice surprise.

[alxbly]

I love this game so much. I've been exploring the north of the map on route to Winterhold, which seems to be seriously fierce territory for a level 14 character. I'm having particular trouble with the wildlife, namely the

snow sabres, snow bears and frost trolls.

Any advice on these would be great! Fireballs and axes don't seem to do much, even although my destruction is at 32 and one handed is at 45. My character is a bit of a mess though; light armour with axes is not a good combo (I like a bit of sneaky archery too though) so I probably need to move back to heavy armour. Or maybe I'm just too low a level to be sneaking round here?

My strategy to date for big bastard enemies who one hit kill me is to try and get some cover to circle round and pop out for occasional arrows/fireballs/slashes from my axe. So far it's worked on everything, even the dragons. However, if I'm out in the open I'm basically fucked. My character can carve through goons with ease, but anything bigger than me still seems to one/two hit kill me.

[Guest]

Was off on a quest tonight and got smashed so I decided to have a wander. Ended up all over the place then fast travelled to Helgen. Not too much there really...

Decided to pop via Riverwood and as I do a dragon roars into life overhead! It's night time and hard to get a hold on him; he smashes my energy down low as I run between houses/cower behind the outer wall. I barely survive as I heal myself with magic. My flame antroch chap does some damage and I feebly sit back until he's brought down mostly by guards...and I step up to apply the final few whacks with my double hander.

Glory stealing goal hanger

What this does result in, however, is a bit of an obstruction for the main street through the village...

Edit - just noticed the dog in the last pic! He's loving it

[Space Gibbon]

I've just taken a look at my quest stats.

Quests completed 25

Misc Objectives Completed 90

Main Quests Completed 5

Side Quests Completed 5

Despite the time I've pumped into this I've not done that many quests. Lots of miscellaneous stuff, though.

[Flub]

I started my new character last night. Stealthy Mc Catbow. It's not a playstyle I normally choose but dammit putting an arrow in someone for a one shot kill from stealth is bloody satisfying. I also got very lucky in that the first weapon reward I got from the Jarl of Whiterun was an axe of binding so that got disenchanted and got put straight on my bow. I finished the night by making the treck up to the Greybeards. The innkeeper in Whiterun told me about a specific daedra quest I was hoping to get that will prove very useful indeed for my enchanting so I think I'll do that tonight.

Pickpocketing might be a bit costly to raise though. I keep getting caught How quickly do you get access to a fence when you start the thieves guild quests?

[AlwaysBeClosing]

Ah man this looks incredible! How many discs is it? I have to get a pirate copy because there's no way to buy original stuff here sadly - which means I have to wait until they have it on the shelves to buy as they haven't got it here yet! Does it need a hard drive to play it?

[moosegrinder]

1 disc, no, where the hell are you? The moon?

[macosx]

Prison