Elder Scrolls : Skyrim

[Agamon]

Wow, I'm really enjoying this game. I'm playing a Nord...rouge, I guess. Not really an assassin, not really a thief. I like that the game is classless now, dabble in whatever you want. Got to L17, I've killed 4 dragons, and only one with any help. That frost resistance helps with the ice breathers.

I love that you can throw your own twists into the quests. I go along with some of the more unseemlies as they try to complete what turn out to be pretty awful missions and then turning on them when oportunity strikes. Worked well once, and I was rewarded for it even though the quest showed as uncompletable. Not so much the other time, though. I'll keep it nonspecific: dude had a lot tough friends that I had to escape by running through the city I was in at night. Pretty chaotic with the guards and my persuers and the very confusing streets of this city. I have a 1000 gp bounty on my head there now. Weeeeee!

 

[Janx]

Questions du jour:

does anybody know how to stack books in the book shelf?

I saw one reference elsewhere that a shelf on a bookshelf acts like a container and will auto-stack books. But it's not obvious how to get it to accept a book (you can't search a bookshelf)

Also, how do you get a weapon recharged? My wife has been running around trying to figure that out with a drained weapon.

has anybody noticed that quests are kind of long? I did the Companions trial quest and it felt like it took forever. Mainly, that the dungeon was just kind of long. it took about 4 hours on sneak, including 3 trips back to town to sell. I've no doubt somebody could race through it in far less time. i was more struck by how long of a walk it was in the dungeon. Which in turn taking a cautious approach made worse.

Its not the only dungeon quest I've seen like that. I guess I don't expect a simple fetch mission to require a long dungeon crawl.

 

[frankthedm]

Also, how do you get a weapon recharged? My wife has been running around trying to figure that out with a drained weapon.

There is a prompt for Recharge [RightBumper on the 360] on the weapon in the inventory screen. This lets you select a Soul Gem (Filled) to feed the item. I recommend using Gems filled with Lesser Souls & Common Souls because stronger ones are better for making items for yourself and IME the Petty Soul Gems still let you make High Damage, low Charge weapons to sell to venders. IF you have no filled Soul Gems you'll Need a Soul Trapping weapon or a Soul Trapping spell to fill your empty soul gems. When filling soul gems try to keep plenty of low power soul gems in your inventory or you will get a Petty Soul in a Greater or Grand soul gem.

Some more info here...
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Soul_Gem

 

[Agamon]

Just bought my house, so book stacking, I'm not sure.

I only know how to recharge weapons on XBox, select the weapon in the inventory and hit RB, then pick the filled soul gem you want to recharge with. The PC version should say what you press when you select the weapon.

I haven't thought the quests were overly long. Though if you stay in sneak mode, yeah that could get tedious. I've got around 15 main quests and 25 side quests done in 28 hours play time, and my PC is sneaky, so I'm not sure what to say. I learned in Fallout 3 that sneaking too much is a waste of time.

I'm starting to get a bit over my head with my jack-of-all-trades PC. Need to start focusing a bit, I met a leader last night that could 2-hit both me and my companion. That was a tough fight.

 

[Janx]

I'm starting to get a bit over my head with my jack-of-all-trades PC. Need to start focusing a bit, I met a leader last night that could 2-hit both me and my companion. That was a tough fight.

Yeah, it seems that unlike Oblivion, NPCs/monsters in various regions may be of significantly higher level than you. Such that you can get into dangerous territory. In Oblivion, you could pretty much handle any given threat because they all leveled with you.

 

[Agamon]

Yeah, it seems that unlike Oblivion, NPCs/monsters in various regions may be of significantly higher level than you. Such that you can get into dangerous territory. In Oblivion, you could pretty much handle any given threat because they all leveled with you.

I don't mind that at all. Just like I tell my pnp players, if a fight is too tough, maybe you should rethink it, I realize you need to do that in this game, too. I almost just left to come back later, but tried one more time with a different strategy and just got past him.

Fallout was built this way, too. You want to go downtown at Level 3, go right ahead. Have fun dying.

One nitpick I have so far, I cannot for the life of me hit a flying dragon with my bow. Damn things flutter around like butterflies. Last one I saw, it was night and heard the roar, so I sent a good 30 arrows into the night sky not hitting him once. And he never saw me, so I just carried on. lol

 

[Janx]

I don't mind that at all. Just like I tell my pnp players, if a fight is too tough, maybe you should rethink it, I realize you need to do that in this game, too. I almost just left to come back later, but tried one more time with a different strategy and just got past him.

Fallout was built this way, too. You want to go downtown at Level 3, go right ahead. Have fun dying.

One nitpick I have so far, I cannot for the life of me hit a flying dragon with my bow. Damn things flutter around like butterflies. Last one I saw, it was night and heard the roar, so I sent a good 30 arrows into the night sky not hitting him once. And he never saw me, so I just carried on. lol

In a CRPG, the handy thing is, if the monster is too tough, you can always reload and go do something else. In a PnP RPG,if you're dead, your dead, possibly with no way to come back.

The difference being, less foreshadowing is needed in a CRPG that certain things are more deadly than others. In a PnP, its almost critical that there be clues that downtown is very dangerous.

I always find things to think about from the Elder Scrolls game as applied to PnP RPGs.

 

[Felon]

I started playing for a few hours. After getting to a whopping level 3 (mostly just pickpocketing and sneaking around the starter town) I'm not sure I get the perk and leveling system.

So, if I raise a skill up, does the skill actually improve in any way, or does it just allow me to meet the prereqs for perks that improve the skill? Does a guy with 90 One-Handed Weapon skill attack more effectively than a guy with 20 if neither invested in the appropriate perks? Does 90 Sneak evade detection better than 20 Sneak without perks?

Also, I see that the perks can be taken multiple times. For instance, One-Handed has a perk that increases one-handed weapon damage by 20%, and it can apparently be taken five times. Now, do I get a 20% bonus every time I take the perk (ramping all the way up to +100%)), or does the perk not unlock at all until I take all five ranks?

Anyway, how is archery working out? I never got anywhere with it in Oblivion because it was so slow that it was only good for a single shot against an unaware target.

 

[MrMyth]

I started playing for a few hours. After getting to a whopping level 3 (mostly just pickpocketing and sneaking around the starter town) I'm not sure I get the perk and leveling system.

So, if I raise a skill up, does the skill actually improve in any way, or does it just allow me to meet the prereqs for perks that improve the skill? Does a guy with 90 One-Handed Weapon skill attack more effectively than a guy with 20 if neither invested in the appropriate perks? Does 90 Sneak evade detection better than 20 Sneak without perks?

I'm pretty sure high skill = higher benefits, but that's mainly an educated guess; I'm a newcomer to the Elder Scroll games, and the one thing the game could really use is a bit of transparency.

I've definitely seen a benefit in higher skill with crafting and with pick-pocketing. I would assume there are similar benefits with all skills, but I don't know for sure if that is so or what those benefits are. (Does higher weapon skills = more damage, more accuracy, etc? Higher magic skill = more damage? Or are they there, as you suggest, just to let you qualify for higher perks?)

Also, I see that the perks can be taken multiple times. For instance, One-Handed has a perk that increases one-handed weapon damage by 20%, and it can apparently be taken five times. Now, do I get a 20% bonus every time I take the perk (ramping all the way up to +100%)), or does the perk not unlock at all until I take all five ranks?

This I'm sure of - every rank boosts it by 20%, in cases like that.

 

[Janx]

Excellent questions. I will endeavor to answer:

I started playing for a few hours. After getting to a whopping level 3 (mostly just pickpocketing and sneaking around the starter town) I'm not sure I get the perk and leveling system.

In Oblivion, the "perks' unlocked automatically when your skill level reached the required level. So you got x6 backstab for free. In Skyrim, you can be really sneaky (hard to detect) and never spend the perk on backstab, and thus NOT get x6 damage.

So, if I raise a skill up, does the skill actually improve in any way, or does it just allow me to meet the prereqs for perks that improve the skill? Does a guy with 90 One-Handed Weapon skill attack more effectively than a guy with 20 if neither invested in the appropriate perks? Does 90 Sneak evade detection better than 20 Sneak without perks?

Spending points on skills, improves your chance of success. The perks usually don't impact the skill, but the skill level is required for the perk.

Sans perks, a guy with 90 on a skill is better than a guy with 20 on the same skill. It's kind of like there's a die-roll for each attempt to use the skill.

Case in point, Sneak. Sneak gives you skill/2 = % as your chance of detection (per time the computer checks). So, with 100 sneak being max, the best you can get with skills is 50%

Also, I see that the perks can be taken multiple times. For instance, One-Handed has a perk that increases one-handed weapon damage by 20%, and it can apparently be taken five times. Now, do I get a 20% bonus every time I take the perk (ramping all the way up to +100%)), or does the perk not unlock at all until I take all five ranks?

Continuing the example about Sneak, there's a Perk you can take 5 times to improve your sneak %. The first time improves it with 20%, the next time improves it to 25%. I don't know what the next bumps do, but if you had maxed your sneak points to 100, you'd have 50%. Buying the perk twice would add another 25% to get you 75%.

I suspect they did the math such that it is VERY hard to get 100% hidden, so as to avoid the invisibility problem Oblivion had (I could get 100% chameleon, and I had maxed Sneak, NPCs could be angry at me and never see me to attack).

Anyway, how is archery working out? I never got anywhere with it in Oblivion because it was so slow that it was only good for a single shot against an unaware target.

In Oblivion, higher levels of Archery would let you Zoom in (left trigger) while you've got an arrow drawn (right trigger). It was like running a sniper in Call of Duty.

I'm not certain of the other perks in the Archery chain.

I highly recommend the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Wiki for looking this stuff up.

If you plan on picking locks, the Lockpicking tree has perks to make Novice, Apprentice, etc level locks easier. This seems to mean that the vibrate lightly when you are about to break them, rather than vibrate hard and break easily.

For spells, the first perk makes novice spells use less magicka(the default spells you have being novice destruction and healing spells). It's a good buy if you cast any spells during combat (heal hand, sword hand strategy would be nice to use less mana while fighting)