The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[backstept]

if I ever anger them giants I just run and keep running, pop a stamina potion and keep running


Check out the Skyrim Nexus
without the nexus I wouldn't have spent over 300 hours in Skyrim.
There are several mods that add arrow crafting.

some favorites of mine:

A Quality World Map - adds roads to the map
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/4929

Alternate Start - Live Another Life - choose to skip the default opening and start the game almost anywhere
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9557

CLARALUX - adds lighting to roads and towns for better lighting at night
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/17605

IMAGINATOR - impressive control over the game's visuals
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/13049

Immersive Armors - giant collection of fantastic armors
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/19733

Inhabitants of Skyrim Character Presets - no more freaky presets in character creation
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/18820

Project Reality - Climates of Tamriel - best of the best weather and lighting mod
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/17802

Regent Armory - (Shameless Plug ) My pet project, somewhat realistic and historically accurate swords.
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/17250

W.A.T.E.R. - greatly increases the look of water and surrounding terrain
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/13268

 

[Mr Silver]

After a little experiment in sneak attack archery I think I've learned a valuable lesson today: don't f*ck with giants.

I've decided to give these guys a *WIDE* berth in future. Good thing I quick saved!

I've been able to kill Giants at level 5 by using the scenery to my advantage. Naturally, it's suicide to try and take on a Giant with anything other than an archer at this level.

For low level Giant kills, your best bet is to sneak attack from a rock formation that the Giant cannot access (well one that it cannot access easily at least, so you have enough time to take them out!) using either Orcish, Dwarven or Elven arrows (Steel arrows work too, but takes longer and will give a Giant the opportunity to gain on you).

It's almost necessary to slay Giants at early levels if you want to build up your Alchemy fast because Giant's Toes are rarely available in decent quantities via merchants.

 

[AlphaMan]

I haven't figured out what I'm suppose to do with firewood yet, but I'm sure an answer will present itself before too long.

You can sell it to the mill owners who will pay a fair price for each piece of firewood. Some merchants will also buy firewood, although for much less than a mill owner - still it's useful if you are looking to make a bit extra in a place like Windhelm.

It doesn't serve any purpose ATM and I doubt future DLC or updates will assign it any special purpose, although it would be cool to be able to make your own arrows.

I just started the Dawngaurd DLC and it seems that I can now craft arrows with firewood!! I don't know if this is tied to Dawngaurd or anither patch, but I wasn't able to before.

 

[Owain Taggart]

And meanwhile the PS3 version still hasn't gotten that last patch with the mounted combat. I figured It's got some things that are tied to Dawnguard and that they're waiting for Dawnguard to be released for the PS3 before they release the patch.

 

[Reverend]

^Near as I can tell, the steam version is still on 1.5 too. At least that's the last entry on the updates screen. I haven't bought a horse yet so I can't put it to the test.


BTW, last night, I saw a mammoth for the first time....and it was fighting a dragon. I love this game.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

I put roughly 250 hours into the Xbox 360 version of this game between last November and January. Finished all the main quests, but much of that play time was just soaking in the radiance of a beautiful game world. Skyrim absolutely excels at prettiness.

I'm now trying the game out on PC, as a friend of mine bought it for me during its 50% off time on the Steam Sale. I'm fiddling around with mods, but mostly just aesthetic-enhancing and highly-regarded game-balancing mods. I did add the famous MoMod, too, though, which adds a plethora of new monsters to the fields and dungeons. I also installed Civil War!, which adds Imperial/Stormcloak skirmishes all over Skyrim.

Good stuff; helps keep the game feeling truly alive after so much time spent with it in vanilla. Looking forward to Danwguard, too!

 

[Reverend]

Got myself a horse and I can indeed use my sword and bow while riding, so the steam version is up-to-date after all.

Incidentally, I'm just wondering what everyone's preferred character build is? I'm not into min-maxing, but at the same time I'd like to have an effective character that isn't totally gimped. What I've basically got is a female Nord, alternating between bows & great-swords and specialising in light armour and sneaking. A kind of barbarian hunter type. The light armour gives her a bit of a glass jaw, but I plan to focus on improving that next. I really don't want to go the heavy armour route. I like being able to sneak up on someone and shove a great-sword through their spine.

 

[Mr Silver]

^ I prefer long range orientated characters that focus on thief skills such as lockpicking, pickpocketing and sneaking. I like having the option of circumventing the need to hack and slash everything and rush in wielding great swords like a good Nord should.

The enchanting and smithing skills are obviously very important because once you reach a certain level, most of the Daedric artifacts become average at best against the higher level enemies. Therefore you need to craft and customise everything to make life easier since it's suicide to try and take on a Draugr Deathlord (the archer variants are in a whole league of their own in terms of being frustrating ) when you aren't protected by decent armour that boosts your health regen, fortifies combat skills and is sturdy enough to protect you from being flung across the room by the Deathlord's version of the unrelenting force shout.

 

[backstept]

I put roughly 250 hours into the Xbox 360 version of this game between last November and January. Finished all the main quests, but much of that play time was just soaking in the radiance of a beautiful game world. Skyrim absolutely excels at prettiness.

I'm now trying the game out on PC, as a friend of mine bought it for me during its 50% off time on the Steam Sale. I'm fiddling around with mods, but mostly just aesthetic-enhancing and highly-regarded game-balancing mods. I did add the famous MoMod, too, though, which adds a plethora of new monsters to the fields and dungeons. I also installed Civil War!, which adds Imperial/Stormcloak skirmishes all over Skyrim.

Good stuff; helps keep the game feeling truly alive after so much time spent with it in vanilla. Looking forward to Danwguard, too!

if you haven't tried these mods I suggest you check 'em out

CLARALUX - adds lighting to roads and towns for better lighting at night
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/17605

IMAGINATOR - impressive control over the game's visuals
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/13049

Project Reality - Climates of Tamriel - best of the best weather and lighting mod
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/17802

W.A.T.E.R. - greatly increases the look of water and surrounding terrain
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/13268

and also the official high res DLC, and I forgot to mention my favorite ENB

 

[Reverend]

^ I prefer long range orientated characters that focus on thief skills such as lockpicking, pickpocketing and sneaking. I like having the option of circumventing the need to hack and slash everything and rush in wielding great swords like a good Nord should.

I'm sort of going for both. A stealth long range sniper that can pull out a ridiculously huge sword and hack enemies to bits when they get too close.

Normally in these sorts of games I tend towards rogue type builds, usually focusing on stealth, lock-picking, speech etc. but this time I wanted to role play a character and have the skill set reflect that concept. Think Conan crossed with San from Princess Mononoke.

The enchanting and smithing skills are obviously very important because once you reach a certain level, most of the Daedric artifacts become average at best against the higher level enemies. Therefore you need to craft and customise everything to make life easier since it's suicide to try and take on a Draugr Deathlord (the archer variants are in a whole league of their own in terms of being frustrating ) when you aren't protected by decent armour that boosts your health regen, fortifies combat skills and is sturdy enough to protect you from being flung across the room by the Deathlord's version of the unrelenting force shout.

The problem with enchanting is that I can't figure out a good way to practice it and get the skill level up without being a magic oriented character. Unless I'm missing something, I'm assuming you need a certain level of magical proficiency in order to fill up soul gems. Indeed I can't figure out how to get the spell or whatever to drain souls.

I read in the help section (nice that they have one btw!) that there are special weapons that can do this, but I've yet to come across one. A bow would be preferable since it'd make the grind a lot easier if I could go hunting, take down a few elk, deer etc. and use their hides to make leather strips to make into iron daggers (just visited a mine, so iron ore isn't a problem.) That'd give me xp for sneaking, archery and smithing. If I then enchant the daggers and sell them on, I'd get enchanting and speech too. The only weak link as far as I can see is getting a decent supply of empty gems. Is there a reliable way to get those other than dungeon crawls and merchants? Can they be crafted in some way?

 

[backstept]

I think the easiest way to level up enchanting is to have a soul trap enchanted weapon, fill a bunch of soul gems in your travels and put a simple enchantment on a crap-ton of rings or iron daggers

or on PC, cheat and use the console to type in player.advskill enchanting 1000

 

[Winterwind]

And meanwhile the PS3 version still hasn't gotten that last patch with the mounted combat. I figured It's got some things that are tied to Dawnguard and that they're waiting for Dawnguard to be released for the PS3 before they release the patch.

And it seems PC and PS3 gamers will continue waiting. I just did a google search and even though the XBox exclusivity period has ended, according to all the little new blurbs, they've got no plans to release it for PC and PS3 anytime soon. No date at all in fact.

One more reason why Bethesda constantly fails to impress me.

 

[Chris3123]

Finally getting around to trying Skyrim, borrowing it (Xbox version) from my cousin.

It's awesome. As far as the main story goes, I'm still in Whiterun, having just been declared Thane by the Jarl. All those side quests though are keeping me busy.

Combat can be a bit awkward, especially when alternating between attack and block.

I'm having trouble with killing dragons, though. I got that first one, of course, but I've seen two random ones since and I can't hit them even once before they fly away. I guess I'll have to look up Dragon killing tips.

ETA: I'm an Imperial, BTW.

 

[Reverend]

The combat takes a bit of getting used to, but the general thing to do is to alternate between block and slash until they come at you with a power attack, then bash to interrupt it and follow up with a power attack. It can be hard on the lower levels until you get your stamina up, but stick with it. I'm at Level 30 and I've been two shoting giants since around level 23!

 

[Owain Taggart]

So, with all these delays with the PS3 version of the patch, it seems we'll be skipping 1.6 entirely for 1.7 which will finally add mounted combat for PS3 users.

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2012/07/26/skyrim-finally-receiving-new-patch-on-ps3

Oh and yes, Josan, I particularly love how Bethesda say they've never announced for any other platform after the fact when all along they'd said it very clearly that it was a 30 day exclusive. That kind of attitude between MS and Bethesda is deplorable. It's a multi-platform title, but they're acting as if Skyrim itself is an XBox exclusive. The last console exclusive Elder Scrolls (in the console arena) was Morrowind for the original XBox and that time has come and gone, so there's no excuse. Multi-platform titles should all equally get the same amount of support

 

[AlphaMan]

Yeah... Bethesda has to realize that they've alienated the majority of their fans with this. Dawngaurd should'nt have been released until the PS3 and PC versions were complete or very near completion. I really have no way of rationalizing this decision. I'm playing in Xbox and have completed it, but I really wish I could've played this on PS3 and gotten Bethesda's support. It was obvious from the start that Bethesda had no plans to support this game nearly as much on the PS3 and that's why I chose 360.

I won't forget this. I just might skip Dishonored for this.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, I think they really need to work on their PR. I'm not so much upset at the lack of availability of Dawnguard, but of the aweful communication from Bethesda.

"We have not announced Dawnguard for any other platform, nor given a timeline for any such news. If we have news, I promise I’d tell you."

I was simply stating that expecting/demanding something today is unfounded. Not that news is never coming.

I think in using of the term "30 Day Exclusive", people will automatically expect it to be available on other platforms when that exclusivity period ends. I could see this attitude if they had originally said "XBox Exclusive", but they didn't. I can understand it being a few days late, but a week or two weeks? What were doing when it was available on Xbox? Twiddling their thumbs? Is it my imagination that he sounds snippy?

They shouldn't say anything they don't mean, especially in a large marketing campaign. I think it only reflects badly on them if they can't offer what they've promised. Any other company would have had things ready for release soon after exclusivity ends instead of stating, "We never announced it for other platforms." Otherwise, why state it's a timed exclusive at all?

I hear it may be available next week, but the damage is already done.

 

[Jono]

^ Hines has twitted that info would come out later this week about the PC and PS3 versions. I'd be surprised if it is an immediate release announcement, but at least there will be certainty about when it's coming out.

 

[Jono]

Or I could be wrong. The PC version is available now, but the PS3 version is still to be finished.

 

[AlphaMan]

I've got some good news and some bad news.


Dawngaurd for the PC was released yesterday! Either all of our PC fans were unaware of this or we're too busy playing it to post it here.

The bad news is that Bethesda is not yet "satisfied with Dawnguard's performance on the PS3" and have not released it yet. I guess this is better than releasing a shitty DLC and taking heat for it.

http://m.ign.com/articles/2012/08/0...isfied-with-dawnguards-performance-on-the-ps3