What are you playing?

GasBandit · Jul 22, 2014

Raising armor skill in skyrim is always such a pain. "Hey, I'm level 45 and I want to raise armor, so I need to go find a draugr deathlord and let him wail on me for a few dozen minutes, so I better get some potions. Like, all the potions I can carry."

Not to mention, raising LIGHT armor is even more of a pain, because if you're getting hit while wearing light armor, you're doing it wrong.

Bowielee · Jul 22, 2014

AshburnerX said:
I don't think he was talking abut OBfuscate. but just the stealth skill.

I'm saying that unlike most games, you can at least find a lore reason for the stealth to work the way it works.

Frank · Jul 22, 2014

So, I normally don't bother with magic mods (since my initial playthrough of Skyrim I don't normally bother with magic) but this time around I installed the Apocalypse spell mod. I don't use 99% of the new spells except for the run real fast spell and the most fun spell ever, the ghost walk spell. Since getting that one my little breton mage has become a total throat slitting monster. Daggers and ghost walk, so fun.

AshburnerX · Jul 22, 2014

GasBandit said:
Raising armor skill in skyrim is always such a pain. "Hey, I'm level 45 and I want to raise armor, so I need to go find a draugr deathlord and let him wail on me for a few dozen minutes, so I better get some potions. Like, all the potions I can carry."

Not to mention, raising LIGHT armor is even more of a pain, because if you're getting hit while wearing light armor, you're doing it wrong.

Yeah... raising armor skill is one of those things I use trainers for, as well as some schools of magic.

GasBandit · Jul 22, 2014

AshburnerX said:
Yeah... raising armor skill is one of those things I use trainers for, as well as some schools of magic.

Only 5 precious and rare times per level you can do that though... and it's easy to blow past a level without training when you're little and can't afford it much.

AshburnerX · Jul 22, 2014

GasBandit said:
Only 5 precious and rare times per level you can do that though... and it's easy to blow past a level without training when you're little and can't afford it much.

Money actually isn't that hard to come by. My first stop after getting to Whiterun is to go to Riften, join the Thieves Guild, and then head back to Whiterun... where I proceed to steal all the silver and valuables I can. It's a good way to make some starting cash.

bhamv3 · Jul 22, 2014

Frank said:
So, I normally don't bother with magic mods (since my initial playthrough of Skyrim I don't normally bother with magic) but this time around I installed the Apocalypse spell mod. I don't use 99% of the new spells except for the run real fast spell and the most fun spell ever, the ghost walk spell. Since getting that one my little breton mage has become a total throat slitting monster. Daggers and ghost walk, so fun.

Ocato's Recital is handy too. Automatically cast up to three alteration or conjuration spells when you enter combat. I have Stoneskin, Conjure Wrathman, and Cloak of Souls.

Oh, and doesn't cost magicka either.

fade · Jul 23, 2014

I think I might start a new one. I was a stealthy conjuration mage, and that kind of broke the game. All you have to do is hide, summon a dremora lord and a bound bow, and nothing can survive you. Maybe I'll try something more direct.

GasBandit · Jul 23, 2014

fade said:
I think I might start a new one. I was a stealthy conjuration mage, and that kind of broke the game. All you have to do is hide, summon a dremora lord and a bound bow, and nothing can survive you. Maybe I'll try something more direct.

If you go sword/shield/heavy armor, by around level 30 or so you just casually walk through a dungeon killing everything in front of you.
If you go stealth/bow/dagger, by around level 30 or so you just casually crawl through a dungeon killing everything in front of you.
If you go destruction mage, by around level 30 you get some mods to make it a viable line or you quit in frustration, or so I've heard.

Ravenpoe · Jul 23, 2014

GasBandit said:
If you go sword/shield/heavy armor, by around level 30 or so you just casually walk through a dungeon killing everything in front of you.
If you go stealth/bow/dagger, by around level 30 or so you just casually crawl through a dungeon killing everything in front of you.
If you go destruction mage, by around level 30 you get some mods to make it a viable line or you quit in frustration, or so I've heard.

You can do destruction in the vanilla game, it just takes longer. Impact means that you just stunlock everything with dual-casted fireballs or lightning, the only thing that falls behind is your damage, meaning it just takes longer to kill things.

But destruction (in vanilla) is the weakest of the magics. Conjuration and Illusion are where it's at!

My favorite character was an assassin based around illusion and a dagger. I purposefully did not use a bow, because I wanted to use a dagger, and once you pick up a bow that dagger isn't getting leveled.

It's a ton of fun to walk around invisible, slitting throats and bewitching the minds of your enemies to make them fight each other.

Alternatively, go dual wield, get the elemental fury shout that enchants your weapons with super speed, and make a ton of vegetable soup. The soup gives you constant stamina regen, allowing for infinite power attacks. You turn into a walking blender. Nothing but a whirling dervish of death.

Frank · Jul 23, 2014

That's how I'm playing, a deadly illusion dagger assassin. If you get caught while murdering it can get pretty harry since I'm unarmored, it doesn't take much to kill me. Luckily my alchemy is nearly maxed and I have, oh, 100 pounds of potions and poisons at any given time.

Ravenpoe · Jul 23, 2014

Frank said:
That's how I'm playing, a deadly illusion dagger assassin. If you get caught while murdering it can get pretty harry since I'm unarmored, it doesn't take much to kill me. Luckily my alchemy is nearly maxed and I have, oh, 100 pounds of potions and poisons at any given time.

"Die, intruder!"

*CALM SPELL*

"Greetings, friend"

*STABBITY STAB!*[DOUBLEPOST=1406135161,1406135030][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, my character wore clothing (no armor) and carried no weapon, relying on bound dagger (and of course, the unofficial patch that fixes the stealth detection on bound dagger.) I liked the idea of an assassin that just wore normal clothes and carried no weapons.

Frank · Jul 23, 2014

I like having a real dagger with the XP32 skeleton that hangs daggers horizontally off the butt.

GasBandit · Jul 23, 2014

I had a fun time with the last bandit in a cave once.. Calm spell, pickpocketed her weapon (100 pickpocket ftw), threw it in the water, calm spell runs out, she tries briefly to punch my ebony-armored self, realizes the futility, runs to jump into the water to retrieve her weapon, climbs back out, comes at me, DISARM SHOUT. Picked up weapon. Now what, lady? She goes running away into the tunnels.. comes back 45 seconds later with another weapon. Calm, pickpocket, slap. She runs off... comes back with another weapon... She's hacking away at me as I shoulder my way past her to find where she's getting all these weapons.. DUH. All the dead bandits I'd left in my wake were carrying crap weapons I didn't bother taking, so she kept going back and digging through the piles of bodies for another iron whatever to attack me with.

So I amuse myself for another ten minutes punching the bandit into near-death, then as she tried to crawl away from me, heal her back up to full. Ooh, restoration increase! Let's keep doing that! Matter of fact, let's get some destruction increases. Burn burn burn heal heal heal burn burn burn heal heal heal...

Eventually I just got tired of her and cut her head off with a dagger.

Null · Jul 23, 2014

So I've managed to find a pretty decent money treadmill in Gran Turismo 4: the Japanese Championship. $7,500 per race, plus $35,000 for winning the championship, plus winning a Nissan 350Z LM race car, which you can sell for $318,000. So, for maybe 30 minutes of play, about $390,000. And you can do it over and over.

The car I'm using (which can win the entire championship on B-Spec, set to Steady/Overtake) is my heavily upgraded 1995 Mazda RX-7, Type R-S (FD, J) which produces a formidable 445 hp.
Installed upgrades: Oil Change, Racing Exhaust, Racing Brakes, Port Polish, Engine Balancing, Sports Computer Chip, Fully Customizable Transmission, Triple Plate Clutch, Racing Flywheel, Fully Customizable Limited Slip Differential, Carbon Driveshaft, Stage 1 & 2 Turbo, Racing Intercooler, Fully Customizable Suspension, Sports Medium Tires, Weight Reduction 1, 2, 3. Cost of used RX-7, Type R-S (FD,J) '95: 16,574. Total investment: $137,474. So just doing it once made back almost 300%.

AshburnerX · Jul 23, 2014

GasBandit said:
If you go sword/shield/heavy armor, by around level 30 or so you just casually walk through a dungeon killing everything in front of you.
If you go stealth/bow/dagger, by around level 30 or so you just casually crawl through a dungeon killing everything in front of you.
If you go destruction mage, by around level 30 you get some mods to make it a viable line or you quit in frustration, or so I've heard.

The main problems with destruction are...

- it's stun ability doesn't work on all monster. Unfortunately, make stun work on everything but dragons and destruction becomes too good.
- the best way to play pure destruction (enchant your armor with -destruction spell costs until fireballs are free) requires you to max enchanting and to find some certain enchantments.
- You can't make spells like in Oblivion or Morrowind so it's impossible to keep up with the damage changes.
- Two handing spells is often cost inefficient for what you get.

All of that can be fixed with mods, but most of it could have been fixed if the devs had thought about it for 10 seconds.

Bowielee · Jul 23, 2014

I have a destruction mage that I pretty much let languish in a save game file because the tree is so inconsistent.

PatrThom · Jul 23, 2014

GasBandit said:
I amuse myself for another ten minutes punching the bandit into near-death, then as she tried to crawl away from me, heal her back up to full. Ooh, restoration increase! Let's keep doing that! Matter of fact, let's get some destruction increases. Burn burn burn heal heal heal burn burn burn heal heal heal...

We're skipping you when it comes your turn to be head of the Mages' guild. Just sayin'.

--Patrick

GasBandit · Jul 23, 2014

PatrThom said:
We're skipping you when it comes your turn to be head of the Mages' guild. Just sayin'.

--Patrick

Funnily enough I managed to finish the Mage College quest line and become Archmage without ever getting above, I think it was 30, in any spell discipline.

Bowielee · Jul 23, 2014

GasBandit said:
Funnily enough I managed to finish the Mage College quest line and become Archmage without ever getting above, I think it was 30, in any spell discipline.

I'm pretty sure he's referring to the fact that you sound like a comic book villain in that scenario.

GasBandit · Jul 23, 2014

Bowielee said:
I'm pretty sure he's referring to the fact that you sound like a comic book villain in that scenario.

Oh. Man, it's the "he keeps human teeth in his desk drawer" thing all over again.

PatrThom · Jul 23, 2014

Bowielee said:
I'm pretty sure he's referring to the fact that you sound like a comic book villain in that scenario.

More the callous disregard for human life, or the idea of treating another humanoid character as nothing more than a hand-cranked machine that spits out experience*.

GasBandit said:
Oh. Man, it's the "he keeps human teeth in his desk drawer" thing all over again.

It's not that. Trust me on this one, @GasBandit ... I have no standing to criticize you for keeping teeth in a drawer.

--Patrick
*We had a running gag in college RPGs about how the Wizards' college must be rough, what with the absolute disregard for human life. When the school nurse can just rez you, that leads to situations where the school bullies will just fry you with a fireball because they like the way you scream, and then rez you just to point and laugh in your face. That sort of cruelty is exactly what I would expect of people who are 100% pure academics with all brain and no heart, i.e., quintessential Mages.

bhamv3 · Jul 23, 2014

AshburnerX said:
The main problems with destruction are...

- it's stun ability doesn't work on all monster. Unfortunately, make stun work on everything but dragons and destruction becomes too good.
- the best way to play pure destruction (enchant your armor with -destruction spell costs until fireballs are free) requires you to max enchanting and to find some certain enchantments.
- You can't make spells like in Oblivion or Morrowind so it's impossible to keep up with the damage changes.
- Two handing spells is often cost inefficient for what you get.

All of that can be fixed with mods, but most of it could have been fixed if the devs had thought about it for 10 seconds.

I haven't found a monster that can't be stunned with Impact. Everything up to dragons, Draugr Overlords, Dragon Priests, etc can be stunlocked.

As for having to max Enchanting, admittedly that can be a bit grindy, but I don't see it as very different from grinding Smithing for melee characters.

I dunno, I found my Destruction mage to be devastatingly effective. I can understand why people might find the playstyle to be underpowered or boring, but honestly I didn't feel it's as bad as people say.

Bowielee · Jul 23, 2014

I feel like my mage went from being ungodly powerful one minute to being useless the next. Stunlock is great and all, but that only helps when you're not getting mobbed. Maybe I didn't work on my armor enough or something, but in anything other than a 1v1 with a powerful character, I felt like I was constantly getting my ass handed to me.

Ravenpoe · Jul 23, 2014

Bowielee said:
I feel like my mage went from being ungodly powerful one minute to being useless the next. Stunlock is great and all, but that only helps when you're not getting mobbed. Maybe I didn't work on my armor enough or something, but in anything other than a 1v1 with a powerful character, I felt like I was constantly getting my ass handed to me.

*casts mass confusion*

*sits back while the angry mob that was trying to kill me tear each other apart*

Yep... illusion is still where it's at.

bhamv3 · Jul 23, 2014

Ravenpoe said:
*casts mass confusion*

*sits back while the angry mob that was trying to kill me tear each other apart*

Yep... illusion is still where it's at.

Out of curiosity, how do you grind your way up to the Illusion levels necessary to get those spells? In my current playthrough, in which I'm playing a stealthy spellsword, Destruction, Conjuration, and Alteration are all easy to level. Illusion? Still stuck at 15.

Ravenpoe · Jul 23, 2014

bhamv3 said:
Out of curiosity, how do you grind your way up to the Illusion levels necessary to get those spells? In my current playthrough, in which I'm playing a stealthy spellsword, Destruction, Conjuration, and Alteration are all easy to level. Illusion? Still stuck at 15.

Buy muffle. Cast muffle. Now cast muffle again.

Seriously, it's stupid easy to level.

bhamv3 · Jul 23, 2014

Ravenpoe said:
Buy muffle. Cast muffle. Now cast muffle again.

Seriously, it's stupid easy to level.

Ah, Muffle. Sneaking in Skyrim is so easy it never occurred to me to cast Muffle.

Frank · Jul 24, 2014

bhamv3 said:
Out of curiosity, how do you grind your way up to the Illusion levels necessary to get those spells? In my current playthrough, in which I'm playing a stealthy spellsword, Destruction, Conjuration, and Alteration are all easy to level. Illusion? Still stuck at 15.

Muffle once you hit around 35 skill. Muffle is awesome for leveling illusion.

Doh, stupid new page with more posts.

Espy · Jul 24, 2014

I loved Skyrims skill level system with the exception of Armor. It all made sense except for that.

AshburnerX · Jul 24, 2014

Espy said:
I loved Skyrims skill level system with the exception of Armor. It all made sense except for that.

Yeah... I always felt that you should have gotten points for armor not just by getting hit while wearing it, but by simply moving around in it. It would have made leveling it so much easier.

Espy · Jul 24, 2014

AshburnerX said:
Yeah... I always felt that you should have gotten points for armor not just by getting hit while wearing it, but by simply moving around in it. It would have made leveling it so much easier.

Yeah, I'd be cool with a slow trickle of points just for wearing it and a bigger amount of points when you get hit. At least that would make more sense anyway.

LordRendar · Jul 25, 2014

I am playing Heroes and Generals at the moment. It is capture the flag in an Allies vs. Nazi setting.
And boy, are the Nazies OP. Their guns do more damage and are more accurate. Their grenades have a large damage radius.
It is soooo frustrating. And allied teammates are mostly idiots who run headlong into enemy armor without anti-tank weapons. Happens quite often that on a team of 20, that I am the only one who has a bazooka in his loadout.
Still a lot of fun.

bhamv3 · Jul 27, 2014

So, weird thing happened in Skyrim.

I have the Apachii Sky Hair mod. I had also previously downloaded a mod to give the new hairs to NPCs in the game. I disabled it five minutes afterwards, because quite frankly the NPCs look ridiculous with long lustrous locks of hair.

Yesterday, the Apachii-hair-for-NPCs mod re-activated itself, giving NPCs ridiculous long lustrous locks of hair again. And there's nothing I can do to remove them, because the mod's ESP file literally does not exist in my load order any more. I have no idea why this is happening.

So now I'm going to restart another Skyrim playthrough, so I don't have to deal with a province full of shampoo commercials. Going to add a few more mods this time. I'm thinking Immersive Weapons, Alternate Start, maybe the lighting mod Bowie mentioned...

Bowielee · Jul 27, 2014

The "Live Another Life" mod is insanely great. Screw that entire intro scene. Just pick a starting scenario and go.