Skyrim...

[Bradr]

Well...got Skyrim for my birthday from sister. Probably put in at least 6 hours in the last two days. I still feel kind of lost and like I don't know what I'm doing.

 

If you've never played Elder Scrolls, here's my 2¢.

 

1) Decide how you want to kill/defend against bad guys. While there are no "classes," deciding on a basic class gameplan isn't a bad idea. Your very most basic choices are defense, melee offense, and ranged offense. For defense you have heavy armor, light armor, hiding (through spell or sneaking), spell armor, shields, healing yourself, and conjuring meat shield monsters to occupy your enemies. For melee offense you have single handed weapons, two handed weapons, bare fists, single hand/shield, two handed, and conjuring monsters to fight for you. For ranged you have archery, spells that damage, and conjuring monsters for you. For a beginner, choose a defense, melee, and ranged, and stick with it. Sometimes, a couple of these might have synergies where you can choose several defenses or offenses. Also, the more you use you skills, the better you'll get - so stick with them so you get better (think of it like football offense - be good at one or two things - not all of them. Although with time you probably could in this game). And make sure when you level up, select perks that highlight the skills you are using.

 

I currently have two characters 1) Mage - Heavy emphasis on destruction, armor smithing, heavy armor, and conjuration magic. Summons monster to fight enemies while bombarding them with long range spells. Preferably spells that the summons are immune to. Creates and wears heavy armor for the occasional time when an enemy gets up close. 2) Assassin - Heavy emphasis on single handed weapons, sneaking, marksman, and alchemy. Enemies rarely even see this guy before he slits their throats. Sneaks up on everyone and kills them in a shot or two. Uses damaging and slowing poisons and invisibility potions for troublesome enemies.

 

2) Gamestyle. Some people like the giant sand box of the game world and will wander around and never even do the main quests. These people tend to enjoy exploring, collecting loot, and seeing how game mechanics effects their character development. Others get frustrated with the lack of direction. These people want a path to follow and feel like the game is just dumping them in the middle of nowhere. Sounds like this might be you, so you'll want to check the quest log first. There you can find any quests you've received. You can also highlight/unhighlight these quests. As you do this, you will receive a map marker on you main map telling you your next destination regarding your active quest. The main quest is already initiated from the prologue, so you will be able to dive right into the main quest. Otherwise, just talk to bartenders, leaders, and people generally in the largest buildings in each town. They'll give you additional quests.

 

Wow, I'm a geek...

 

Edit: If you have specific questions/want help/are stuck, I know the game pretty well, so fire away.

[Enhance]

Thanks for the tips Bradr. I played Oblivion extensively but that was 6 years ago, so I somewhat forgot a lot about Elder Scrolls games.

[huzkerbob]

Haven't read any of the thread, but I just bought the game last night so I'll be sure to return to the discussion once I've advanced above noob status a bit.

[Enhance]

Well two weeks later I feel like a pro now. Everything makes sense, it just took time to get back into the flow of things. I've been impressed with the few amount of glitches I've had, specifically. One that has been rather irksome is Vilkas from the Companions will chase me around with his sword drawn any time I enter the Companion home, as if he wants to attack me. The game freezes my motion, forces me to talk to him and then refuses to let me fast travel unless I leave the city and run away, because it says "I can't fast travel while guards are pursuing me. I have no bounty in Whiterun and I've never stolen anything from the Companion place - and, I'm Harbinger.

 

I also fell through the ground around the Warmaiden's one time - that sucked. But save, save, save is the best advice!

 

How many people find themselves getting way too distracted with side quests? I think I've maybe done three or four main story line missions, but I'm already level 37 and am dominating every quest or enemy I come across (fully upgraded Daedric armor, weapons, most of my basic warrior skills are fully upgraded, etc.).

[Moiraine]

How many people find themselves getting way too distracted with side quests? I think I've maybe done three or four main story line missions, but I'm already level 37 and am dominating every quest or enemy I come across (fully upgraded Daedric armor, weapons, most of my basic warrior skills are fully upgraded, etc.).

 

Me. I actually think I might do the main quests really late. I love the Riften stuff.

[strigori]

How many people find themselves getting way too distracted with side quests? I think I've maybe done three or four main story line missions, but I'm already level 37 and am dominating every quest or enemy I come across (fully upgraded Daedric armor, weapons, most of my basic warrior skills are fully upgraded, etc.).

 

Me. I actually think I might do the main quests really late. I love the Riften stuff.

I've spent most of the 160+ saved hours on my character os side quests. I'm lv 52 and the only quest line I've finished is the Thieves Guild.

[Enhance]

How many people find themselves getting way too distracted with side quests? I think I've maybe done three or four main story line missions, but I'm already level 37 and am dominating every quest or enemy I come across (fully upgraded Daedric armor, weapons, most of my basic warrior skills are fully upgraded, etc.).

 

Me. I actually think I might do the main quests really late. I love the Riften stuff.

I've spent most of the 160+ saved hours on my character os side quests. I'm lv 52 and the only quest line I've finished is the Thieves Guild.

I've done Assassin's, Thieves, Imperial, Companions and perhaps one other I might be forgetting, and I'm level 38 right now. The crazy thing is that there are a lot of side quests picked up via random strangers I haven't done yet, and I know that some (or maybe all) of the Jarls have quests you can do in order to become thane. There's also tons of caves I've come by and haven't explored.

 

I'm thinking I might finish out the main story line on this guy, though, and jump to a new style of play. My run and gun tank of a warrior has been fun, but sneaking around and archery are two things I'm really looking forward to doing on my thief.

[Bradr]

Beat the game last week, and let me say, I was kinda disappointed. I had a heck of a lot of more fun with the random side quests than the main quest line. It just felt sorta anti-climactic.

 

End game shouts are pretty great though. There were some pretty neat dungeons too. Anyone made it to Blackreach yet? Never even dreamed of seeing that until I got down there and promptly became totally lost.

[Enhance]

Which of you are playing as a warrior, and if so, how many of you find it interesting that the highest level armor in the game (Dragonbone/Dragonscale) is not as good as the second highest (Daedric)? Granted, Daedric is much more difficult to make given that you need at least five of the rare Daedric hearts to make the armor, before creating something like the sword which needs a sixth. I guess the Dragonbone/Dragonscale is kind of the ultimate dragon slayer look, but once fully upgraded, Daedric armor outdoes Dragonbone armor by at least 25 armor rating.

 

The materials for creating the highest level, but weaker armor, are also much easier to come by given the relative ease of which killing a dragon requires. Just somewhat interesting to me. If any of you need help finding Daedric hearts, I know where to come by some you might not easily find from a google search.

[strigori]

The dragon tier is the best smith made armor for the light armor though, in terms of armor rating anyhow. I spent much of my assassin's life not worrying about armor rating and focused on look and enchants on the gear however.

[Enhance]

Question for you, strigori. I was thinking about creating a new character and going with a thief, focusing on sneak and archery. As an assassin, and somebody who doesn't have a lot of armor, are you able to easily avoid large confrontations and how do you fare against dragons?

 

Furthermore, when you can't avoid large confrontations, how do you survive given your relatively weak defenses?

[strigori]

Question for you, strigori. I was thinking about creating a new character and going with a thief, focusing on sneak and archery. As an assassin, and somebody who doesn't have a lot of armor, are you able to easily avoid large confrontations and how do you fare against dragons?

 

Furthermore, when you can't avoid large confrontations, how do you survive given your relatively weak defenses?

Your sneak skill will go up pretty quick, and I would recommend investing in most of the perks in the tree, I only took one point in the Stealth perk though, I never felt I needed any more ranks there. And Shadow warrior was a situational skill, The Backstab arm should be your #1 priority, the damage bonuses from those perks make the whole build viable.

 

When you get close to a dungeon or fortress, you pretty much stay in sneak from there on out, and generally speaking, I ended up waiting til night to start my assault on most places with more than two enemies. By being careful and using Aura Whisper a lot I was able to control my confrontations most of the time. Often my approach to a room would be Aura Whisper to see where the targets were, snipe one with with my bow, and back up around a corner and wait for hidden to show back up, usually only takes a few seconds. If backs were turned to me, or I could get around behind someone, Backstab was my best friend, especially after getting the Assassin's Blade perk, with a good dagger most things go down with one hit. It gets even more powerful if you follow the Dark Brotherhood quest line too.

 

When I couldn't get into a sneak position, and many quests have spots like this, it became a damage sprint for me. I didn't worry about blocking and just dual wielded swords for those encounters, and made good use of the power attacks and poisons. Poisons and potions definitely help, even without spending perks in the tree. Some fights I ended up popping healing potions like candy. I liked having a paralyze poison or weapon with that enchanted on it for a helping hand in some really tough fights.

 

Dragons were not that big an issue, just using the bow, and a resist necklace of the right kind for them. Just don't let them get close to you, or you get to see the cool animations where they eat, or throw you.

[Enhance]

Well, I just beat the main story line on my first character because I felt weird jumping to my new character without at least beating the main story line once. I don't give away much other than my general thoughts, so if you've already beaten the story line or just don't care, click the show spoiler button.

 

 

I wasn't overly impressed, as I think another poster mentioned above. I had the same satisfaction with beating it that I did beating the smaller story lines like the Assassin's Guild or Thieves Guild.

 

For beginners, where's the impact on this story? Where's the angst? Where's the involvement by secondary protagonists or something to give the story more substance? A couple of different characters (be it dragon or human) tell you that Alduin will end the world, but for the most part Alduin and the dragons really have no impact on Skyrim other than people saying 'zomg dragons everywhere'.

 

The Blades play little to no entertaining role, the Greybeards are all of a sudden irrelevant, and then we are transported to Sovngarde where (without being told straight up) this is the utter end to Alduin.

 

Everything else about the game is interesting, but I just felt the main story line did not develop or create quite the world changing impact I was expecting it to, like what happened with Oblivion. Oblivion ended with a colossus battle and the player felt like they'd made a huge impact. The Skyrim main quest just felt lacking. I think this is best exemplified by the "epic" battle that ended Alduin's first rein - three people on a mountain. Really?

 

[308_Husker]

I'm getting this as a Christmas gift on Friday. Goodbye, life.

[VectorVictor]

Question for you, strigori. I was thinking about creating a new character and going with a thief, focusing on sneak and archery. As an assassin, and somebody who doesn't have a lot of armor, are you able to easily avoid large confrontations and how do you fare against dragons?

 

Furthermore, when you can't avoid large confrontations, how do you survive given your relatively weak defenses?

Your sneak skill will go up pretty quick, and I would recommend investing in most of the perks in the tree, I only took one point in the Stealth perk though, I never felt I needed any more ranks there. And Shadow warrior was a situational skill, The Backstab arm should be your #1 priority, the damage bonuses from those perks make the whole build viable.

 

When you get close to a dungeon or fortress, you pretty much stay in sneak from there on out, and generally speaking, I ended up waiting til night to start my assault on most places with more than two enemies. By being careful and using Aura Whisper a lot I was able to control my confrontations most of the time. Often my approach to a room would be Aura Whisper to see where the targets were, snipe one with with my bow, and back up around a corner and wait for hidden to show back up, usually only takes a few seconds. If backs were turned to me, or I could get around behind someone, Backstab was my best friend, especially after getting the Assassin's Blade perk, with a good dagger most things go down with one hit. It gets even more powerful if you follow the Dark Brotherhood quest line too.

 

When I couldn't get into a sneak position, and many quests have spots like this, it became a damage sprint for me. I didn't worry about blocking and just dual wielded swords for those encounters, and made good use of the power attacks and poisons. Poisons and potions definitely help, even without spending perks in the tree. Some fights I ended up popping healing potions like candy. I liked having a paralyze poison or weapon with that enchanted on it for a helping hand in some really tough fights.

 

Dragons were not that big an issue, just using the bow, and a resist necklace of the right kind for them. Just don't let them get close to you, or you get to see the cool animations where they eat, or throw you.

 

This, and Nightingale Armor set is a requisite for a thief playthrough. Start working out of Riften and help the Guild back on its feet...