Skyrim, or, How I Ruined My LifeFollow

To save time, the last time I created a character, I cheated my way to maxing out all the skills so I could just play however I wanted. Sometimes I'd sneak, other times I'd cast, a lot of the time I'd just smash things in the face with my dual swords, occasionally, I'd equip a crappy bow and see how many arrows I could put into a Draugr's knee before it would die. I was able to do all of the guild quests since I could do everything, and even spent a few hours on an alternate save as a vampire lord. I still spent over a hundred hours on that character, but I was finally able to stop playing the game, confident that I didn't miss out on too much.

Edited, Oct 31st 2013 6:36pm by Turin

Dragonborn is the by far the best of the DLC and easily worth the asking price. The other two I can see holding out on, there isn't much to them, but Dragonborn adds hours of game play, with a ton of new quests, and a massive new location to explore.

Edited, Oct 31st 2013 9:55pm by Turin

My friend loves sneaky mage; he got a mod that allows sneak attacks from magic, as well as conjured bows and arrows. I'm not a huge modder; some for better graphics, more dragons, dragon souls for perks, etc. I downloaded all the DLC several months ago, but still haven't gotten around to Dragonborn. Dawnguard was... well, ok. But really not great if you don't want to play as a vampire.

I usually play sword and board, though I do use arrows from time to time. Never liked magic much.

I played through pure Mage. Only weapon I ever touched was a dagger enchanted with the Soul Tap (or whatever the steal soul thingie is called) for stabbing goats. All cloth "armor" as well.

It was a change of pace from my usual "quasi-paladin" leaning (sword 'n board, some augmentative/healing magic) but the Elder Scrolls system doesn't really reward specialization like that and you never hit a big wizard power bump like in most games.

Yeah, spell crafting in Oblivion (and in conjunction with item enchantment) was ridiculously broken and overpowered.

Crazy this thread is almost 2 years old. Reading the first few pages again makes me want to start a new character.

I played my main guys all the way through all the DLC and have ungodly hours in the game already. I never have bothered to play with the mods much though. Guess that could be an excuse to play some more. I've done pretty good on making a dent on my back log lately.

Most stuff isn't so much of an issue really. I mean out of the 40-50ish mods I have installed at the moment, there can't be more than a couple that are essential to my current save. Of course I know that through the other downside of modding the stuff, being if there's an update and one breaks the only real way to figure out what broke seems to be to disable some and try to log in again and again and again...

But really most of the "graphics" ones are fairly safe, you're just swapping texture files and the like, or changing lighting conditions. Making Skyrim pretty seems to be a fairly robust undertaking for the most part, and some of the results are really nice. Adding a stand-alone giant sword of doom, or thong panties of indestructibility doesn't seem to make problems for me either. The biggest dependency I've run into is choosing a body type (since a lot of the smaller armor mods will only work with one or the other), or needing that custom hair mod for a new companion to load properly.

Things that really seem to cause problems for me are things like new races (which is usually a crash at loading screen thing), alternative starts, additional quest lines, etc. They tend to be buggy to begin with anyway.

After playing a dozen different characters and always seeming to be focus on wicked bow hunting skills, I just used the console codes (or w/e) and unlocked the entire skill tree. Since the I have played a variety of different things depending on my mood, without having to skill a whole new dude up. It is nice because each time I play I can be something else. The Heavy Armor battle mage is kind of fun, I use conjured weapons, or just spells. I also enjoy getting people into big brawls using harmony and fury taking folks from Riverwood over to Rorikstead and having the communities brawl each other until I get bored and kill them all.

Like you however I always seem to revert to being a stealthy @#%^, but having everything unlocked definitely has allowed me much more versatility, especially on the fly.

Edited, Nov 2nd 2013 1:28pm by rdmcandie

Most of my characters have been either stealthy or straight melee tank-type warrior (sword and board, heavy armour). So on my last playthrough of Skyrim, I decided to create a one-man party.

Started a mage, never using any Destruction magic. Actually, rarely if ever using any offense (although I did have to win the slug-fest with Uthgerd).

Specialized in Conjuration, Restoration, and Illusion (for the buffs). HP/courage buffs on Uthgerd, Healing Hands was always on one trigger. Summoned a flame atronach when the fighting got rough. Did pretty well up until I sold my XBox. Once I get it on Steam, I plan on picking back up with the build.

The ideal endgame for it would be a reanimated archer, reanimated mage, myself healing, and a strong tank-type follower. It ended up being a load of fun while it lasted, though. Bit of a challenge, too, when it came to dragon fights.

It was a blast. I also tried to do other off-the-wall stuff, like my "Eldritch Knight"-type character that used no armour, conjured dual-wielded weapons, and specialized in Alteration for the armour buffs. Much as I love getting ridiculous critical hits from stealth with a bow, there's something immensely satisfying about setting some rules for the character build and sticking with them.

I still haven't sunk the kind of hours I should have into skyrim. Wish I had remembered to put steam in offline mode before moving. Might be screwed for playing any steam games until the net comes back...

Oh well can always play kingdoms of amalur on my xbox - have barely started it.

NVM, I guess it 'says' it has male vanilla armors... but they suck.


Edited, Nov 4th 2013 4:03pm by Dyadem

I knew there was a thread I'd forgotten about!

All hail Sazya, the greatsword wielding battlemage of Daedric badassery! And she's a chick, which makes it more badass than if she wasn't (also hot...). Two-handers are kind of quirky with a "battlemage" build, but I find that it works better than magic off-hand + weapon main hand, because:

1. Two-handers are badass and the execution animations are sick with a greatsword.
2. Since she's a badass battlemage, she's usually using both hands for magic until she needs to pull out her sword.

Now, 1H+Magic definitely has its advantages over 2H/Magic - especially if you don't mod the sh*t out of your game - but with one mod for magic scaling and another mod for two-hander rebalancing, I find that always using two hands for magic or melee damage is more effective than using one hand for each at the same time. With two hands, I can push out more spell damage per time before stuff gets up close. I can also push out more healing per time. And once stuff gets in melee range, I can block and deal sick burst damage with a two-handed weapon (went greatsword because it's the fastest, and because giant sword + petite lady = win).

Now, I can't heal while I swing my sword, but I can easily switch to a heal + flames/sparks/frostbite setup if I need to deal damage while healing myself. More often, though, if I need healing, I need it FAST, so it's dual fast healing of some kind. Being able to cast two heals at once enables me to go back to casting spells or swinging swords faster.

Note: Because of how the dual-casting perk works, it is actually not beneficial to grab dual-casting, unless you find yourself in a situation where you need the 2.2x modifier from it. If not, the 2.8x cost modifier makes it less than desirable. Same goes for Destruction, unless you go Impact for the stagger.

Edited, Nov 5th 2013 12:06am by Mazra