Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[sir stiff_one]

I'm about 115 hours in, level 47. I love exploring, going on 'walkabout' for a few days. So I probably have discovered well over 100 places. Then I end up spending like 2 hours in the towns just bumbling around doing blacksmithing (well, used to), enchanting, trading things etc. Then sometimes I'll specifically aim to finish some quests, whichever look interesting. Or go soul farming (don't need to do this any more though). Or just run around the map looking for giants. There are so many ways to play it, none of them wrong.

[Laine]

Quest items don't weigh anything though. The Bard quests are currently bugged and you cant hand over the items despite the quests completing, leaving them in your inventory. To prove this, just remove all your items and you'll be at 0/whatever your carrying weight is currently at.

I don't know if this has been posted before, but I was wandering around just south of Solitude just now, in the woods near the marsh area, and came across a dog who

led me to an abandoned cabin in the woods where his master had died of a disease.

He can also be your companion, much like in the Fallout games.

Some do. Those stones of Berenthingy are 0.5 each, and considering you collect 25 or so is quite a bit of weight. I pickpocketed a random horn of something from a Jarl ages before I needed it for a quest, that weighed 5... and I'm sure I have others. What annoys me is not being able to drop quest items I've used, that although don't weigh anything clog up my inventory.

[Hello Goaty ♥]

I'm nearing the very end of the main quest / and I'm level 11

By the Nines, I couldnt play Skyrim or Oblivion like this.

How long does it take you to make love and have a smoke?

[Cosmic_Guru]

JOY OF JOYS. I read that sometimes waiting for 24 hours can make Karliah appear in the Sepulchre and it WORKED. I can progress with my crafty plan to master every guild, have Ulfric lick my boots and fill my bathtub with gold coins (well perhaps after dlc adds bathing facilities).

Such a relief. As someone posted earlier, there is always a sense of trepidation, a feeling of walking on thin ice, that something you may have done 100 hours ago will come back to haunt you, or a dragon aggroing a settlement will cut off access to some interesting later on, but this just seemed to be an outright code failure.

So, on with the main quest which so far is

As for stats, something like level 62, 170 hours in now with sneak, lockpick, pickpocket maxed out.

Embarrassing confession - i have only just realied that the D pad lets you swap between 3 options, not 2 as I had previously thought eg a bow assigned to 1, a double handed sword assigned to 2, and a LH/RH combination such as candlelight and muffle or a spell and a IH dagger.

[NecroMorrius]

I don't know why PC gamers are having so many crashes. I've played 42 hours now, and I've had 1 crash to desktop in all that time.

120 hours before I decided to take a break for a couple of weeks. I got a few crashes but I reinstalled directx after each crash and I was good for another 25 hours or so.

[SaintM]

And the fact that different people in different parts of the world with different voices say the exact same phrases.

That does annoy me. If they went to the trouble of recording different voices, why not mix it up a bit? It's perplexing.

"Some people call them junk, I call them treasures"

Yeah, whatever.

[Jamin]

I must say, in one of few areas where Bethesda dropped the ball in this game is the lack of a variety of voice actors. Again. After this same problem in Oblivion as well. Surely it can't have been a lack of funds issue?

[Sng]

Love hearing Arnie in a whole town though.

[b00dles]

Use the sacrificial dagger you get given!

Apparently you don't need to according to the uesp wiki but I might just give it a go anyway, the problem is they don't seem to get 'trapped' by the altar. My DB initiate was generally being really difficult as well, wouldn't stay where I told her to. I might try a random merc, see if I have any more luck with them.

Plenty other stuff to be getting on with anyway!

[Girth Certificate]

How easy is it to aggro guards/companions etc. I seem to be setting my mates on fire a lot :/

[fasteasyfree]

How easy is it to aggro guards/companions etc. I seem to be setting my mates on fire a lot :/

Some don't seem to care, others you can look at the wrong way and they start attacking you.

[Padaxes]

Finally got to have a quick game again last night after a break for the patch....

[MrPogo]

Some don't seem to care, others you can look at the wrong way and they start attacking you.

Yeah. A dragon attacked a village, and some of the guards and locals got hit by one of my spells. Some didn't seem to care, others decided that meant trying to kill me was more important than seeing the dragon off.

[Argh]

Whilst the repetitious voice actors, again, is a small annoyance, overall I'm glad that one of my gripes from Oblivion has been reduced to "damned identikit inns!" from "damned identikit dungeons!"

Dungeons are a bit linear though....oh shut up moaning, or it's an arrow to the knee for you!

Level 45 - 130 hours - Two whole towns not even visited, yet.

[Padaxes]

I love the dungeons but agree with the linear thing. You go through them all then find a back way that takes you back to the start. every time Bit predictable.

[Argh]

Hey, who did you have turn up to your wedding?

I had, the bard from the inn in Whiterun (who I beat up), a miner, who's mine I mined out, and then sold all his ore back to him, a Jarl from the furthest away town on the map, and two other NPCs I'd never met. They must've been the wife's invitations. As amusing as it was odd.

Also, I do love the NPCs who's only comment to you after your initial meeting is, "You've been a really good friend to me, I appreciate it". Without fail, these are the NPCs I beat up in taverns for 100 gold and then have nothing further to do with. They must've been beaten by their parents, and it's the only kind of love they know.

[Strangelite]

Embarrassing confession - i have only just realied that the D pad lets you swap between 3 options, not 2 as I had previously thought eg a bow assigned to 1, a double handed sword assigned to 2, and a LH/RH combination such as candlelight and muffle or a spell and a IH dagger.

Can I ask how exactly you do that reliably?

I've set it up so that my sword is on 2, and I can't assign flames as 2 anymore (since the 1.3 patch) - and my bow as 1, and then another combo as "L and R" - and if I press my bow direction twice I get back to my default weapons, but when I switch to my sword it seems to 'forget' my default weapon set from then on...

[Argh]

The challenge from dragons sure seems to ramp up a bit. I had an Elder one who had me on the ropes the other night.

Not only had he made me use up all my healing potions, but I had to eat a load of food during the fight too. Yep, mid-battle I scoffed 37 red apples, 25 cabbages, 17 potatos, 20 salmon steaks, 2 horker stews, a load of raw dog meat, some clams, grilled leeks, chicken breasts etc, etc...

Basically I had a series of sit-down banquets whilst battling the very patient dragon. He even waited while I changed my armour twice, which was nice of him.

I finally got the better of the noble beast though. Both of us were on our last legs, but the dragon chose to turn and strafe a fucking bunny rabbit, rather than polish me off, which gave me time to insert just enough arrows up his dragony arsehole to bring him down.

[b00dles]

Some of the towns are a bit disappointing really, Dawnstar and Falkreath haven't really floated my boat at all. I should perhaps do another tour and speak to every last bugger in them to see if they give me any interesting missions but so far they've been a bit dull.

[BigShimmeryWall]

Did you speak to the guy with the lost dog in Falkreath?

[ilpostino]

Are they supposed to have fixed the key binding issues with the patch? I haven't played for a while and the game patched yesterday but it's still broken for me...

[Mr Ben]

Damnit, I got the bug with the Thieves guild where Brynjolf wont give me the quest to go speak to Maven. No matter what I try he wont give me the quest tag to speak to her to advance, so the Thieves guild questline is broken. Guess I'll have to do other stuff until its fixed....errr sometime next year

[Cosmic_Guru]

I love the dungeons but agree with the linear thing. You go through them all then find a back way that takes you back to the start. every time Bit predictable.

Yes, but it saves a lot of tedious backtracking. You know you have to find the exit and the big chest before you leave each time.

Some of the larger dwarven ruins though have multiple entrances / exits via lifts.

Can I ask how exactly you do that reliably?

I've set it up so that my sword is on 2, and I can't assign flames as 2 anymore (since the 1.3 patch) - and my bow as 1, and then another combo as "L and R" - and if I press my bow direction twice I get back to my default weapons, but when I switch to my sword it seems to 'forget' my default weapon set from then on...

It's weird, I just sort of stumbled on this last night - it's not a right or left selection on the D pad as I was thinking but up to 3 set ups which you can reach by pressing in one direction - R,R,R for instance. Possibly this has become more obvious to me now because I've only just started rolling with a 2H sword in place of a 1H sword, since with the 1H sword in my right hand I was always manually swapping around in the favourites menu between various spells and a shield for the left hand, so I was thinking I basically had only 2 options with variants on one of them. Also, removing "favourite status" won't affect any hotkeys you had earlier allocated until you override them. I was bitching and moaning here about glitches in this area before, whereas I think it was just my lack of understanding all along. I am not sure how it works the same way with magic spells though since you are suggesting you could set flames as 2. previously but not now.

It's still less than ideal and less than ideally explained IMO. You just get more comfortable with changing things up on the fly as you play more.

I still forget to change my shout / power though so use whirlwind when I wanted nighteye or something. Again, I feel this could have been handled differently control wise.

Some of the towns are a bit disappointing really, Dawnstar and Falkreath haven't really floated my boat at all. I should perhaps do another tour and speak to every last bugger in them to see if they give me any interesting missions but so far they've been a bit dull.

Falkreath has a couple of Daedric quests spinning off from it and Dawnstar is OK - the jarl there is a weird old coot and there is something dodgy about the Magic college exile, but they are small to be sure.

[Dandy_Sephy]

I must say, in one of few areas where Bethesda dropped the ball in this game is the lack of a variety of voice actors. Again. After this same problem in Oblivion as well. Surely it can't have been a lack of funds issue?

It's less the lack of voice actors and more that they only seem to put on one voice, rather than being asked to do several voices. Only having a few voice actors is fairly normal. For example if you have a budget for 10 actors, get each of them to do two different voices, presto double the variation. This seems to be how most VO directors get their non central cast voice work done.

[SpagMasterSwift]

SPAGGLEHORN now has the reusable gem stone thingy and has put a soul capture enchantment on a bow, its been great getting all this sorted out, but now walking around I'm getting deafened by that crackling sound as the bow sucks in the souls. Worse still, my reusable stone is still empty...anybody got any advice for what I should be doing with this set up? I was planning on just using souls as a way to keep my enchanted weapons powered up, but is there more to it?

[Fieldini]

SPAGGLEHORN now has the reusable gem stone thingy and has put a soul capture enchantment on a bow, its been great getting all this sorted out, but now walking around I'm getting deafened by that crackling sound as the bow sucks in the souls. Worse still, my reusable stone is still empty...anybody got any advice for what I should be doing with this set up? I was planning on just using souls as a way to keep my enchanted weapons powered up, but is there more to it?

Azura's star? you need to absorb a grand soul. Kill something big like a mammoth. Unless you got it through Nelacar making it the black star that will take human souls (much more useful)

[fasteasyfree]

It would be interesting to find out how many 'proper' quests I have uncompleted. I'm not really bothered about the misc. section, so long as most of the main ones are done.

[b00dles]

Did you speak to the guy with the lost dog in Falkreath?

Yeah that was actually quite a good quest and the one with Erandur in Dawnstar addmittedly wasn't that bad either but I suppose my main quibble as they're actually just quite small, as towns. I said it before but it's a bit of a shame that there is nothing on a par with the Imperial City (even though it did suffer from ludicrous loads between sections) for sheer size and scope. I sort of 'get' that everywhere in Skyrim is a bit harsher and they don't have the opulence of big cities but I reckon it could have done with some more in-city quests generally.

Some more missions using Speech would be good as well as there isn't that much point of it aside from a few things. I would quite like an erm... merchants guild or some sort of quest line which didn't involve any sort of killing at all, that's why I tried the bards college to mix it up but that still ended up in some dungeons.

I'm probably a bit weird in that respect but it would provide a nice little change of scenery.

[SpagMasterSwift]

Unless you got it through Nelacar making it the black star that will take human souls (much more useful)

Ah, that will be it then SPAGGLEHORN has been in a dungeon killing the undead...will head into a town later, thanks for the advice - so I should use human souls for higher level enchantment? Maybe I need to put some perks in too.

[fasteasyfree]

Funny bug if you manage to instakill a dragon when sneaking: It will fly away, circle a bit and then crash land. After doing that it will then do the death animation.

"Oh, you have murdered me!"