ELDER SCROLLS OMNIBUS THREAD

[RIPPA]

I used the hired hands in my first playthrough - this time I just using my housecarls to make my life easier.

Oh and I am also smithing and enchanting shit. I really need to get the perk to invest in shops because I need these fuckers to carry more gold so they can buy my 1000 piece rings

[J.T.]

20 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Oh and I am also smithing and enchanting shit. I really need to get the perk to invest in shops because I need these fuckers to carry more gold so they can buy my 1000 piece rings

Yeah.  Fast Travelling in between major cities and bankrupting the local merchants and armorers after a fit of jewelrycrafting and smithing gets old after a while. 

[J.T.]

I hate arrow collision placement in this game.  I messed around with my 360 copy yesterday and my killshot on a deer I was stalking was directly into its rump.

I looted antlers and venison from the corpse and couldn't retrieve my arrow, so the deer corpse just sat there on the ground with an arrow sticking out of its butt.

Now I remember why my favorite Morrowind mod was "decaying corpses" so that dead shit disappeared after a game day.

If I weaken because of everyone else's and start a sympathy campaign on my 360, I am going to have to start from scratch because I have no idea what Ra'Viir The Ghostclaw was doing before I tapped out and played something else. 

I know that for some reason I am in Riften near the Black-Briar Meadery.

[JLSigman]

I'm getting a copy of the PS4 version so get ready to fire up your game, JT ;-)

[J.T.]

28 minutes ago, JLSigman said:

I'm getting a copy of the PS4 version so get ready to fire up your game, JT ;-)

Funny you should mention that.

I started a temporary sympathy game from scratch last night (RA'VIIR THE GHOSTCLAW LIVES AGAIN~!!!) to take part in the discussion and it didn't take long for the game to remind me why it totally infuriates me or rather why I infuriate myself by being so easily sidetracked.

Once again I am futzing around Whiterun doing side quests so that once the Whiterun militia and I kill the first dragon, I can waltz in and pay for Breezehome and upgrade it immediately so that I don't have to carry around ten thousand pounds of dragon bones with me everywhere I go.

I have stolen Arcadia's Alchemy book from her shop, gotten the Mammoth Tusk for Isolde by murdering the bandits at the nearby iron mine, killed the leader of the Silent Moon bandits for the bounty, and am now off to get Amren's sword back from even more bandits.

I sense a theme.

The highlight of the evening was sneaking up behind a bandit, stealing the key to a locked gate out of his pocket while he was mining iron, and then stabbing him in the back.

The lady at Warmaiden's must be tired of me smelting ore, smithing armor, and selling it to her to her instead of buying anything.

For Nords and Imperials to be so distrustful of Khajiit, Ysolde and Camilla Valerius love the crap out of me.  Too bad for Camilla that I have watched the YouTubes and know that even though marrying her earns you a daily stipend of 100 Gold / Day from her shop, she secretly has affairs with both Sven and Faendal while you are away doing hero shit.

I think I avoided the Marriage quest like the plague during my first attempt at a playthrough.  Getting my Khajiit alley killer hitched to a non-Khajiit or a non-Elf just didn't seem right.

 

 

[RIPPA]

Thanks for killing the dragon attack Winterhold but you totally hit a guard one time while doing it so your ass is coming to jail!

Yeah - see if i kill the Blood dragon the next fucking time

Grr...

[J.T.]

On ‎12‎/‎22‎/‎2016 at 9:00 AM, RIPPA said:

Thanks for killing the dragon attack Winterhold but you totally hit a guard one time while doing it so your ass is coming to jail!

Yeah - see if i kill the Blood dragon the next fucking time

Grr...

I try to get at least two or three Whiterun guards killed during the first dragon attack to score on their Steel Arrows and some of the Whiterun armor which is some of the better Light Armor available early in the game.  I also try to get one of those Horned Helmets.

The shields they use are Heavy Shields though.

[supremebve]

On 12/21/2016 at 9:33 AM, RIPPA said:

I used the hired hands in my first playthrough - this time I just using my housecarls to make my life easier.

Oh and I am also smithing and enchanting shit. I really need to get the perk to invest in shops because I need these fuckers to carry more gold so they can buy my 1000 piece rings

There is a wealthy merchants mod that makes the game so much better.  That and the ring of infinite carrying are probably the 2 mods that increased the playability of the game the most for me.  

[J.T.]

There was a similar wealthy merchant mod for Morrowind that made life a lot easier.

[RIPPA]

If only having mods on allowed you to get achievements 

[supremebve]

2 minutes ago, J.T. said:

There was a similar wealthy merchant mod for Morrowind that made life a lot easier.

On previous play throughs I would have a house full of expensive shit, because no one could afford to buy any of it.  I spent so much time wandering around Skyrim getting into adventures and collecting all kinds of great loot only to get back to a town and realize that the magic staff worth a few grand was too valuable for me to actually sell. It's a roleplaying game, if you are playing as a warrior you don't need a magic staff.  You should be able to sell the weapons that aren't compatible with your character.  

[J.T.]

1 hour ago, supremebve said:

On previous play throughs I would have a house full of expensive shit, because no one could afford to buy any of it.  I spent so much time wandering around Skyrim getting into adventures and collecting all kinds of great loot only to get back to a town and realize that the magic staff worth a few grand was too valuable for me to actually sell. It's a roleplaying game, if you are playing as a warrior you don't need a magic staff.  You should be able to sell the weapons that aren't compatible with your character.  

Yeah, when I played Morrowind, I took over some abandoned apartment in Vivec and turned it into my base of operations.  I put all of the high priced artifact gear I found on display on some shelves and had my books tucked away in the chests in the sleeping area.

For some reason, I was dumb and sold my copy of The Lusty Argonian Maid.

I also commandeered the Morag Tong guildmaster's quarters once I kacked him and took over leadership after finishing all of the assassination missions and completing the Black Hands Dagger quest..  I'd have let him retire if I hadn't seen that he takes all of the Sanguine items with him out of the game if you allow him to live.

Speaking of Dunmer and Morrowind, thank the Eight for Nords being fairly shit as an race when it comes to magic so their architecture is pretty simple. 

One thing that I do not miss about Morrowind while playing Skyrim is the lack of accessibility to some sections of buildings because I wasn't playing a mage at the time and could not cast levitation spells on a whim. 

Fucking House Telvanni and their gigantic mushroom houses.

[Robert C]

I'll just get this out of the way, since somebody had to post it eventually

I always ended up buying a shit ton of ingots to allow merchants to afford the expensive stuff I didn't want. Dunno what I'm gonna do with all that ebony, though.

 

[J.T.]

Yeah, my usual strategy is to sell my loot and when I am close to bankrupting the merchant, I buy up crafting items and either do a bit of smithing / jewelry crafting or Alchemy to raise up my skills and then sell the dross back to the merchant to recoup my money.

I hate the housing system in Skyrim because it is just a money sink and a time sink in a game that already has a crazy economy and plenty of distractions.

[RIPPA]

Wait till you get the Definitive Edition that comes with all the DLC

I literally built my own house yesterday just to get an achievement

I really wish the buying and selling worked like Fallout where you can just have a grand total instead of moving back and forth between buying and selling

[J.T.]

6 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Wait till you get the Definitive Edition that comes with all the DLC

I literally built my own house yesterday just to get an achievement

I really wish the buying and selling worked like Fallout where you can just have a grand total instead of moving back and forth between buying and selling

Oh, that game can eat a bag of dicks.  It's bad enough I am sympathy gaming on 360 with bare bones Skyrim and engaging in hours of self loathing. 

I don't need to buy the DE and take days to earn a mountain of septims and then spend hours building a fucking house. 

If I bought that game today and started playing, I would get so lost in the weeds that Andromeda would be out before I learned my first shout. I would always find an excuse to do something other than go and find the Greybeards.

[RIPPA]

I said a week ago that at level 20 I would finally go visit the Greybeards

I hit 35 about 30 minutes ago and am now panicking that quests are timing out on me (I got a failure notice out of the blue on releasing that one like Grey-Mane dude everyone thought was dead)

[J.T.]

So, I am experiencing The Breezehome Effect. 

The feeling you get when you get your first home set up and everything is nice and you really don't feel like fucking around with dragons or building up your quest queue anymore.

I'm clearly not committed enough to continue this playthrough.

I think that part of the Breezhome Effect comes from me doing that dumb Kematu vs. Saadia quest and having the sinking feeling that I still got played for a chump even though the party I help (usually Saadia) is very grateful.

It took two tries to get past the first dragon fight.  Fucker has never been that hard to beat before..

[JLSigman]

I have rolled my usual Dunmer lady archer thief with a side of destruction magic toon, since I want at least one go without any mods (stupid PlayStation and stupid trophies) and with Alchemy I can make all the money to sink into Enchanting. Since there's no command console to give me stuff and perks, I'll really have to take it slow and try to remember where stuff is. :-p

[J.T.]

2 hours ago, JLSigman said:

I have rolled my usual Dunmer lady archer thief with a side of destruction magic toon, since I want at least one go without any mods (stupid PlayStation and stupid trophies) and with Alchemy I can make all the money to sink into Enchanting. Since there's no command console to give me stuff and perks, I'll really have to take it slow and try to remember where stuff is. :-p

Odd. In D&D, the Dark Elves (Drow) are villains but in this game, the Dark Elves (Dunmer) are pretty decent and the High Elves (Aldmer) are the assholes of the planet.

I cannot stand the Thalmor and this is what makes the Saadia vs. Kematu quest harder to deal with.  If Saadia is lying, I just helped an Aldmeri Dominion supporter and Redguard traitor evade capture. 

I tend to side with Saadia for meta reasons because I need the fight to boost my skills and Scimitar damage is fucking awesome, but the number of Alik'r that are with Kematu tends to strengthen his argument that he is there to bring Saadia in alive and that she is a fugitive.. 

If assassination was the goal, it could be done with one or two operatives and part of my clandestine strategy definitely would not be wandering around a foreign city dressed in native Hammerfall garb and announcing to the world that I am an Alik'r.

Kematu's choice for a hiding place, unsavory though it may be, also makes sense if you believe his version of the story given that even the most amicable Nord is still a closet xenophobe and would really be suspicious of armed Redguards traveling in large groups, so it's not like they'd be able to travel en masse without announcing their presence to the person they're trying to capture..

[JLSigman]

8 minutes ago, J.T. said:

I cannot stand the Thalmor and this is what makes the Saadia vs. Kematu quest harder to deal with.  If Saadia is lying, I just helped an Aldmeri Dominion supporter and Redguard traitor evade capture.

Yeah, not knowing who is truthing and who is lying is why I usually ignore the quest. I may have to because, as you point out, their gear is great and pretty easy to get early on.

[RIPPA]

Or you side with Saadia because she called you handsome 

[J.T.]

57 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Or you side with Saadia because she called you handsome 

From one metadata angst grief monger to another, there's no way I'd make a decision based on that.

Flattery would just be the warning flag that she really is up to no good.

 

[BobbyWhioux]

45 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Or you side with Saadia because she called you handsome 

 

38 minutes ago, J.T. said:

From one metadata angst grief monger to another, there's no way I'd make a decision based on that.

Flattery would just be the warning flag that she really is up to no good.

Sharing dialogue and a voice actor with the Totally-Not-Suspicious-As-Soon-As-You-Meet-Her-At-All Alva Of Morthal is not the way to earn my trust.  Hearing "What do you need, handsome?" once again quickly sealed Saadia's fate.

[J.T.]

The argument for taking Saadia's side is very meta, but it is still there.

When you make the deal with Kematu, he says that he's there capture Saadia alive and the Alik'r do indeed incapacitate her via use of a paralytic poison rather than kill her if you lure Saadia out to the stables in accordance with Kematu's plan.

However, if you check the Whiterun Hall of the Dead a couple of game days after you complete the quest, you will find Saadia's burial urn inside the crypt. 

Either this is an unpatched bug, or Kematu broke his word, killed Saadia, and dumped her body before returning to Hammerfall.

Like I said before, I tend to take Saadia's side when I am just messing around because,

1) Boobs.... er... Chivalry

2) All important combat skill increases for killing the Alik'r, especially Light Armor proficiency if you have enough healing potions to survive being nearly cut to ribbons.

3) Having a scimitar is fucking awesome.

4) Yet another bandit cave cleared.

5) Revenue generation from the sale of dead people's weapons to Warmaiden's.  Breezehome won't decorate itself, you know.