[Gaming] Elder Scrolls 5 - Dawnguard is HERE!

My thief play style always has issues with rooms of 3 or more mobs. Especially if one is in steel or better armor. Except for the thief I created that used a two handed sword.
Added at: 20:58
It would also be nice to get one combat and one non-combat perk each time you level.
I felt my thief would benefit from some "fuck you up" magic, and still feel thief-y, so when encountering large mobs I cast Fury on them. They start whacking each other and I backpedal in circles until the numbers are a little more even.

That's really Plan B though. Plan A is to stick to the towns and swipe farmers' goods, and to kill before I'm seen.
 
My Thief had a pretty hard time in toe-to-toe combat until they started getting and improving the higher-level light armors, and also started putting more points into it. I'm tough now, but early on it's pretty rough IMO. I also went the Illusion route, and I'm pretty happy seeing groups of mobs killing each other. I only wish it was easier to get Illusion to 100 (wouldn't take so long I mean, I know it's easy to cast muffle over & over) so I can make all types of mobs (undead especially) kill each other, and not just humans/animals. I'll admit now that I'm pretty much a whirling spiral of death now with my legendary weapons & armor.

The only thing is though, I wish that you didn't practically NEED to take enchanting and smithing to be competitive. I wish you could pay smiths and enchanting trainers to improve your stuff. This is something I have some ideas on how to script (even have the different levels of trainers show the difference on the result), but waiting for the construction set to try it. I.E. If I'm paying the master-level trainer for smithing, he'll charge more, but his stuff improves like your skill is 100, not 75 for an expert-level smith. And if I find the master enchanter, he'll be able to double-enchant. Given how "good" the potions are you can buy, I doubt I'll make an interface to get a potion maker to make stuff for you, but you just can't buy the same things you can do with the smith & enchant skills.
 
After playing the heck out of my lvl 57 archer/all around bad ass, I tried to start a new character at lvl 1. Yeah, that was a no-go.
 
I still get perks after lvl 50. Not sure where that came from, tbh. It is definitely slower than 10 skill points to go up a level though.
 
I still get perks after lvl 50. Not sure where that came from, tbh. It is definitely slower than 10 skill points to go up a level though.
It's never been exactly that. If you're at 45, and taking two-handed from 15 to 25, I'll almost guarantee you that you won't get a level off of it. Whereas if you take destruction from 90 to 100, you'd probably get two levels.

Basically, it takes more "experience" behind-the-scenes to get a skill from 90 to 91 than it does from 20 to 21, and it requires more and more experience per level as you level up.

With console commands, try taking a new character's one-handed directly to 100 via the "incPCS" console comand. So type "player.incPCS onehanded" until it gets to 100. You'll notice due to the extreme low level of your character that you'll get a level every 4-5 skill increases (if not less) as the skill peaks with your character at a low-ish level.
 
I read that and then find it amusing that my wife has played Skyrim more than me and gotten much further in levels and content explored (though neither of us have really gotten anywhere with the main quest).
 
There is also no level cap but by theory you'll stop around the mid-70ies.

My character is LVL 57... leveling is very hard, especially for the magics.... where deathmaster mobs don't care about your flames.
 
So awhile back I created an Imperial woman that I was going to have be my rogueish character, but something about her didn't mesh with me. Maybe I played so much as a stealth guy on my Nord with the bow, so I decided to hold off, define my mods, and then start another new character before I got overly far.

Last night I started that character, decided to be a Dark Elf since the idea of being a refugee from Morrowind appealed to me. I am going to concentrate on magic, stealth, one-handed weapons, bows, and light armor/robes, leaning more on the magic side this time since I used so little on the other character. I don't plan to go full magic though, considering the horror stories I heard of a full mage character. So far it's going well, and I am going through the main dragon storyline up to the point I get the full force shout before I divert away to the Mages Guild, and later the Thieves Guild.

When it comes to mods, I got some pretty awesome ones. Right now my favorite is Midas Magic because it gives me so many new and fun spells to play with, like I now have Bound Dagger which I use instead of carrying around two daggers like I planned. I may switch that up with actual weapons later just because I like variety, but it really brings home the fact I am a magic-using rogue. I even have a bound pickaxe now, so no more carrying around that thing just for the times I come across a mineral.

P.S. For those that want a bit more realistic lighting and a whole new atmosphere, I highly recommend Realistic Lighting Without Post-Processing. It's an adjustment that does not require an external mod like many of the others, but changes the light setup so the dark areas are actually dark. It adds a whole new experience when going into a Nord ruin pretty much requires the usage of a torch or light spells, and man can those undead guys be scary when all you see half the time is the little glowing eyes they have as they run at you from the darker corners.

It also makes the nights extremely dark. Not so much that I can't function, but dark enough that it actually gives me a reason to sleep and wait till the morning to do things, since the night time feels so much more challenging when you can barely see the animals hiding around the corners.
 

Dave

Staff member
So I started a totally magic character with a conjuration . This person has NO weapons and the only armor is robes. This was a HUGE pain in the ass to play. Magic doesn't do enough damage to solo and it's really hard to find starting spells that work from a distance. I hadn't been able to afford the fear/illusion spells that I'd need for mass hysteria. So I immediately got Lydia and my tactics were as follows: sneak, cast Familiar and hide behind Lydia until the music stops.

I say it WAS hard. Once I got the bound weapon, I would keep casting it in combat situations, raising my Conjuration skill. When I got Expert everything changed. I got the spell Conjure Dremora Lord. Ho. Lee. Cow. From then on it was fairly easy. Sneak to an area and cast the Conjure spell, which aggros the bad guys. Then Lydia runs in and I wait.

Last night I hit two milestones. I hit level 25 and my Conjuration hit 100, which allows me to summon TWO Dremora Lords!! Now I'm on easy sauce. Cast two Lords and hide until all the little red dots disappear. I cast these into a room that had 2 Draugr Scourges and a Draugr Scourge Lord. When a Dremora went down I'd cast it again. Never got a scratch.

Next up for me is Alteration mage.
 
Lydia is SWORN to carry my burdens.

And thanks to Skyboost, what a burden.
Added at: 10:31
P.S. For those that want a bit more realistic lighting and a whole new atmosphere, I highly recommend Realistic Lighting Without Post-Processing. It's an adjustment that does not require an external mod like many of the others, but changes the light setup so the dark areas are actually dark. It adds a whole new experience when going into a Nord ruin pretty much requires the usage of a torch or light spells, and man can those undead guys be scary when all you see half the time is the little glowing eyes they have as they run at you from the darker corners.

It also makes the nights extremely dark. Not so much that I can't function, but dark enough that it actually gives me a reason to sleep and wait till the morning to do things, since the night time feels so much more challenging when you can barely see the animals hiding around the corners.
This mod is rad as hell. I always felt the game was way too bright.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I got irritated with the generation of games around the time of doom3 that overused and abused darkness (almost as irritated as I was with the subsequent generation that abused bloom)... but maybe I should give it a chance. The little woman pointed out how easy a time I seem to be having with the game... my second character (the stealth archer/unarmed khajit) is now 40 and I can't remember the last time I had to drink a potion.
 
Yeah, I'm thinking about wrapping things up soon, it's just so damn easy now that that I'm around 40. I mean, cmon, where are the hard bad guys?
 
I got irritated with the generation of games around the time of doom3 that overused and abused darkness (almost as irritated as I was with the subsequent generation that abused bloom)... but maybe I should give it a chance. The little woman pointed out how easy a time I seem to be having with the game... my second character (the stealth archer/unarmed khajit) is now 40 and I can't remember the last time I had to drink a potion.
I am the same, I actually dislike games that utilize darkness too much since I can't see anything. Skyrim though, it just feels right. I think it's better for me because I am using more spells these days, and so when I see something coming at me from the shadows I start shooting fire or lightening out of my hands and the whole area lights up in time for me to see three spiders running at me to get fried to a crisp. It gives me a decent fright but is not EVERYWHERE, as there are a lot of little natural light sources (example is that spider den in Bleak Falls Hallow, with the skylight illuminating pretty much the whole room enough for me to easily see the spider) Plus if you have a torch with you, it pretty much is as illuminated as it was before. There is even a mod that adjusts the torch light range to fill almost entire rooms if it becomes an issue.

I can't wait till I get Lydia though, she is so going to be my torch carrying bitch.
 
Alea's tendency to carry a torch ticks me off. She is supposed to be a stealthy hunter, but she alerts all the bandits at a campsite because she needs the torch to hunt...
 
If you can get her to carry a torch.
It's been awhile since I used Lydia, since I replaced her with Aela early on, but Aela always held a torch for me when either in a dark dungeon or at night. Does Lydia have a problem with it?

As for her sass about carrying my stuff, I did away with that crap.

Alea's tendency to carry a torch ticks me off. She is supposed to be a stealthy hunter, but she alerts all the bandits at a campsite because she needs the torch to hunt...
You could just take the torch away from her you know... ;)
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Heh, I never tried giving Lydia a torch, but getting Illia to wear any robes better than her regular old blue mage robes (+50% magicka regen) is a trial and a half. A good amount of the time, I found, she just decided to go naked.

But this is another example of a minor game annoyance easily fixed with console commands. Target Lydia or whoever, tilde, equipitem 0001d4ec.
 
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