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On November 26 2011 18:26 Remb wrote:
I love the exploration, the graphics (except those stupid 2d foliage textures), and the quest lines. But I have one complaint:
I can make a potion worth 1200 septims from 50 septims. Crafting is super tedious, and only alchemy is worth leveling (which is by far the most tedious trade skill). Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Speechcraft and Smithing are definitely not worth putting skill points into. When you realize these skills might as well not exist, you see the skill selection for your character is actually rather hollow and straightforward. Enchanting is so expensive/tedious to level, I don't even bother with it, and Alchemy breaks the game so I only have it on my Thief character for poisons.
Eventually on master, the highest diff, you will 1-2 shot things that aren't bosses (my thief also 1 shots bosses with backstab haha).
I still love this game, even if this post is very negative. It's just that Bethesda is infamous for developing combat systems that fundamentally break down as the game progresses, and that is a huge turn off for me. They removed character stats from the game in order to resolve this problem, but that did absolutely nothing to fix it.
That's my only problem with Skyrim. And just like the previous Morrowind and Oblivion, sadly we have to rely on community mods instead of Bethesda to fix the gameplay problems.
I don't know if we're playing the same game if you think smithing and enchanting are worthless.
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On November 26 2011 19:50 Laconic wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2011 18:26 Remb wrote:I can make a potion worth 1200 septims from 50 septims. Crafting is super tedious, and only alchemy is worth leveling (which is by far the most tedious trade skill). Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Speechcraft and Smithing are definitely not worth putting skill points into. When you realize these skills might as well not exist, you see the skill selection for your character is actually rather hollow and straightforward. Enchanting is so expensive/tedious to level, I don't even bother with it, and Alchemy breaks the game so I only have it on my Thief character for poisons. Funny, I would have put the hierarchy the other way. Alchemy is good but not essential. Due to the way health and mana potions work you can make up for a lack of quality with volume. It's a bit pricy but whatever. Money is barely a factor in the game at level 40+. Smithing is almost useless if you're a Mage, but it's extremely important for Warriors, and still good for Thieves. Legendary-class weapons do literally twice as much damage as unupgraded ones, same for armor. Enchanting is, in my opinion, the most powerful skill in the game. Stacking multiple +damage or +sneak or whatever enchants on armor basically feels like you're cheating. And it's not that bad to level if you just clear out a Dwarf ruin for Soul Gems and then conscientiously Soul Trap random wolves/bears/elk/chickens (no seriously, chickens) when you're running around. Make 50 Bracers, enchant all of them with your crappy gems, easy ~40 levels of it. Buying empty Petty Soul Gems from vendors, filling them, and then making spurious enchants is slightly profitable, I'm pretty sure. Putting points into Pickpocketing is funny if you max it out, but otherwise yeah, I agree, useless. More or less same with Speech and Lockpick.
Alchemy is nice, but mostly for moneymaking and maxing out your smithing improvement and enchanting.
With 3-4 enchants (and you've got 12 available, 6 slots with double enchants) you can make a spell school completely free, so enchanting is pretty much needed for mages, you could even make a mage with most points into health and stamina with high enchanting.
I like pickpocketing, because it's an easy skill to level, and with 3 points into it I can carry 100 extra. With that and the Steed stone, I've got 160 stamina and a carrying capacity of 540, which definitely helped early in the game.
When it comes to moneymaking alchemy will beat enchanting in the long run, but enchanting fits very well with smithing. While leveling smithing I made probably 500 iron daggers, and most of them were enchanted with some Damage Stamina enchant at first (makes a 10g dagger into a 500g dagger), and later the Banish (daedra) enchant which turned the 10g daggers into 1600g daggers. Unless you're a pure mage that prefers cloth armor and spells, then smithing will be useful since it makes some of the best weapons and it improves them so much. With some halfway good smithing improvement (before I put points into alchemy) I got a Daedric Bow with 320 damage, and I almost oneshot a sleeping dragon by taking around 80% of the health with a 3x sneak crit.
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On November 26 2011 19:38 Probe1 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2011 19:32 Erasme wrote:God if this is true, i feel so stupid because i loaded an ancient save ... brb doing it right now. + Show Spoiler +It took me a while, at first it didn't seem to work but after aiming at the crystal and the apparatus it's placed in I eventually got it right and it moved. Then you rotate the mirrors to the beams.
Yeah.. I tried to just figure it out myself, spent five minutes hitting the mirrors and ground and bleh. Then I talked to the goon standing there. Use the stream spells on the table and aim at the crystal (fire and frost). Hope it works. darkscream I don't mean to be critical but you can finish the main quest line in Fallout 3 in about an hour. I grew up playing Fallout 1/2/BoS and lol the story. I suppose it's as I said- to each their own!
You could also, back then, finish FO1 and 2 in ridiculously short times, although it would ofc require you to know where to go first hand combined with some save / load if you get taken by a random encounter.
But the story was...so good compared to the crap games nowadays throw at you. Still think FO2 best game ever played.
edit: and as I said, alchemy is broken, but not nearly as broken as in Morrowind, where you could make the cyclic process of improving your potions just by itself. Make fort intellect / luck potions, drink a batch (they ALL stacked), make new batch, drink that, make next batch etc etc and soon you were doing potions worth million septims and increased your intellect by 200k.
I feel Skyrim is a lot better as a game when you cut out enchanting, alchemy and smithing completely. No more free spell casting, no more invulnerable armor. Have to actually scour some dungeons and quest lines for decent gear. Shame the dragon masks are all light/heavy armor though, so little reason to play a "cloth mage". Getting 1 hit by arrows a few levels high up bandits from distance game didn't draw yet gets old :\
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On November 26 2011 20:03 Probe1 wrote:
I don't rightly know and I'm poor at testing things out. I'd imagine I'd need to try to sell the same potion to a dozen or so different NPCs, Some will buy items for close to the exact price and some will stiff you for half the max price even with 5/5 speechcraft.
I just used a barter potion and it did not change the price, if that's an indication. I don't know if there is a fortify speechcraft but if there is I don't have it :S
You can get a item from the Thieves Guild which increases barter prices, but I couldn't disenchant it, and I haven't been able to DE Speechcraft either, even with several barter items in inventory.
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Well I think it's fair to say we both have heavily tinted nostalgia goggles. You could argue about Morrowind having immense depth and more intriguing quests or Fallout 2 being the end all to all that will be or Final Fantasy ## is better than ##
But
What's important to me is whether I enjoy the games. Yeah, I liked Fo3. A lot. It felt good to go back to that story- even if it was told much differently with less violence and way more flippant humor. It was a different kind of nice and I enjoyed it all the same, even if I understand the lore followed in Blizzards footsteps and just threw everything out the window for a punchline. That'd my personal opinion and other has to agree.
Skyrim, however (on topic), doesn't strike me as that empty of a world and the Dark Brotherhood quest line and the Thieves Guild quest line are very character driven and at times engaging. Sure, it's not how I have memorialized the unquestionably brilliant plots of games I grew up with but it's not bad at all.
curreh: You validated my obsession with gold and made me another 50k before I felt sloth replace greed. :D
On November 26 2011 20:15 Lobo2me wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2011 20:03 Probe1 wrote:
I don't rightly know and I'm poor at testing things out. I'd imagine I'd need to try to sell the same potion to a dozen or so different NPCs, Some will buy items for close to the exact price and some will stiff you for half the max price even with 5/5 speechcraft.
I just used a barter potion and it did not change the price, if that's an indication. I don't know if there is a fortify speechcraft but if there is I don't have it :S You can get a item from the Thieves Guild which increases barter prices, but I couldn't disenchant it, and I haven't been able to DE Speechcraft either, even with several barter items in inventory.
Fair point I could use that. I'll reload skyrim and check.
Edit:
1 Amulet of Articulation- no change
2 Amulet of Zenithar- no change
3 Potion of Fortify Barter- sells for full price
1. 5% speechcraft (at max already)
2. 10% better prices (5/5 in speechcraft perks)
3. 45% better prices for 30 seconds
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On November 26 2011 20:09 Lobo2me wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2011 19:50 Laconic wrote:On November 26 2011 18:26 Remb wrote:I can make a potion worth 1200 septims from 50 septims. Crafting is super tedious, and only alchemy is worth leveling (which is by far the most tedious trade skill). Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Speechcraft and Smithing are definitely not worth putting skill points into. When you realize these skills might as well not exist, you see the skill selection for your character is actually rather hollow and straightforward. Enchanting is so expensive/tedious to level, I don't even bother with it, and Alchemy breaks the game so I only have it on my Thief character for poisons. Funny, I would have put the hierarchy the other way. Alchemy is good but not essential. Due to the way health and mana potions work you can make up for a lack of quality with volume. It's a bit pricy but whatever. Money is barely a factor in the game at level 40+. Smithing is almost useless if you're a Mage, but it's extremely important for Warriors, and still good for Thieves. Legendary-class weapons do literally twice as much damage as unupgraded ones, same for armor. Enchanting is, in my opinion, the most powerful skill in the game. Stacking multiple +damage or +sneak or whatever enchants on armor basically feels like you're cheating. And it's not that bad to level if you just clear out a Dwarf ruin for Soul Gems and then conscientiously Soul Trap random wolves/bears/elk/chickens (no seriously, chickens) when you're running around. Make 50 Bracers, enchant all of them with your crappy gems, easy ~40 levels of it. Buying empty Petty Soul Gems from vendors, filling them, and then making spurious enchants is slightly profitable, I'm pretty sure. Putting points into Pickpocketing is funny if you max it out, but otherwise yeah, I agree, useless. More or less same with Speech and Lockpick. Alchemy is nice, but mostly for moneymaking and maxing out your smithing improvement and enchanting. With 3-4 enchants (and you've got 12 available, 6 slots with double enchants) you can make a spell school completely free, so enchanting is pretty much needed for mages, you could even make a mage with most points into health and stamina with high enchanting. I like pickpocketing, because it's an easy skill to level, and with 3 points into it I can carry 100 extra. With that and the Steed stone, I've got 160 stamina and a carrying capacity of 540, which definitely helped early in the game. When it comes to moneymaking alchemy will beat enchanting in the long run, but enchanting fits very well with smithing. While leveling smithing I made probably 500 iron daggers, and most of them were enchanted with some Damage Stamina enchant at first (makes a 10g dagger into a 500g dagger), and later the Banish (daedra) enchant which turned the 10g daggers into 1600g daggers. Unless you're a pure mage that prefers cloth armor and spells, then smithing will be useful since it makes some of the best weapons and it improves them so much. With some halfway good smithing improvement (before I put points into alchemy) I got a Daedric Bow with 320 damage, and I almost oneshot a sleeping dragon by taking around 80% of the health with a 3x sneak crit.
i just discarded enchanting completely, it feels like exploiting and making it too easy for me
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One thing about alchemy that is pretty weird, that I thought was set in stone:
Right now if I get a potion of fortify health that gives 60 points for 60 seconds, the value depends on if I use Giant's Toe or not. A potion with Blue Mountain Flower and Glowing Mushroom gives 226 gold, But if I take Giant's Toe with anything else with Fortify Health I get 1333 gold, without changing the potion at all. That's also the only place so far I've seen a single effect with two different prices when everything else is the same.
Giant's Toe and Wheat is a good place to start to make expensive potions, even better than Luna Moth Wing + Vampire Dust.
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Do you actually level up things like light armor and heavy armor quicker on higher in game difficulties? Because I just run around killing random stuff in the world at the moment and if it does I'll crank it up to master while doing so.
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That's a good way to start Lobo. Once you get past a few thousand septims though.. just clean out an alchemist, make potions and clean out the town, move to the next town and repeat 
Spuick it depends on how you want to play. You'll be struck more on Master and for more damage. But if you just want to.. power level, I imagine putting the difficulty on Novice, finding one or two bandits and just letting them hack and hem away on you for 20 minutes will improve your skill just as rapidly. I could be wrong.
Anyway enough skyrim I need to ladder
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On November 26 2011 20:36 Spuick wrote:
Do you actually level up things like light armor and heavy armor quicker on higher in game difficulties? Because I just run around killing random stuff in the world at the moment and if it does I'll crank it up to master while doing so.
It's not affected my difficulty, only by the severity of the hit (wolf attacks same on novice and master, low increase. giant attack high increase). I tried this with giants when I noticed blocking a stomp increased an entire level of blocking around 60 :D
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On November 26 2011 20:10 daemir wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2011 19:38 Probe1 wrote:On November 26 2011 19:32 Erasme wrote:God if this is true, i feel so stupid because i loaded an ancient save ... brb doing it right now. + Show Spoiler +It took me a while, at first it didn't seem to work but after aiming at the crystal and the apparatus it's placed in I eventually got it right and it moved. Then you rotate the mirrors to the beams.
Yeah.. I tried to just figure it out myself, spent five minutes hitting the mirrors and ground and bleh. Then I talked to the goon standing there. Use the stream spells on the table and aim at the crystal (fire and frost). Hope it works. darkscream I don't mean to be critical but you can finish the main quest line in Fallout 3 in about an hour. I grew up playing Fallout 1/2/BoS and lol the story. I suppose it's as I said- to each their own! You could also, back then, finish FO1 and 2 in ridiculously short times, although it would ofc require you to know where to go first hand combined with some save / load if you get taken by a random encounter. But the story was...so good compared to the crap games nowadays throw at you. Still think FO2 best game ever played. edit: and as I said, alchemy is broken, but not nearly as broken as in Morrowind, where you could make the cyclic process of improving your potions just by itself. Make fort intellect / luck potions, drink a batch (they ALL stacked), make new batch, drink that, make next batch etc etc and soon you were doing potions worth million septims and increased your intellect by 200k. I feel Skyrim is a lot better as a game when you cut out enchanting, alchemy and smithing completely. No more free spell casting, no more invulnerable armor. Have to actually scour some dungeons and quest lines for decent gear. Shame the dragon masks are all light/heavy armor though, so little reason to play a "cloth mage". Getting 1 hit by arrows a few levels high up bandits from distance game didn't draw yet gets old :\
In regards to story. I've always disliked TES games (and completely hated FO3) because I think storylines and characters have always been rather weak. Particularly in the characters department, they just fail to make a strong impression on me, when compared to characters like Jon Irenicus (Most badass villain in all of gaming clearly) and even FO1/2 Meatdog (I almost cried when he got killed, mostly meant massive reloads).
What I've done to play Skyrim without having this feeling (I really miss BG2 - SoA, FO 1/2, PS: Torment caliber storylines), is just change my mindset, expect nothing from the main story and characters, and focus on mechanics and exploration mostly. I find it nice that the world is so detailed and beautiful, that you can seemingly explore for like forever and keep finding random stuff. Thinking about these things instead of the story helps me enjoy this game a lot more. I always find it incredibly epic to find a new dragon word, if only because screaming walls are such a cool thing lol.
I do wish a game worthy of BG series and co. appeared. I spent over 200 hours easily on BG2, and then 100+ more hours with ToB, and god that game was good. Characters were awesome, story was incredible, battles were hard as fuck and to win sometimes I had to actually use every damn resource on the book. So good.
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On November 26 2011 20:56 Raekhor wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2011 20:36 Spuick wrote:
Do you actually level up things like light armor and heavy armor quicker on higher in game difficulties? Because I just run around killing random stuff in the world at the moment and if it does I'll crank it up to master while doing so. It's not affected my difficulty, only by the severity of the hit (wolf attacks same on novice and master, low increase. giant attack high increase). I tried this with giants when I noticed blocking a stomp increased an entire level of blocking around 60 :D
I think it works like this:
Having a higher difficulty will not make you level up faster in itself, however since the enemies are stronger, you'll get hit more by them (more defensive training) and you have to hit them more (more offensive training), thus indirectly equaling a faster leveling/enemy, not necessarily a much faster leveling overall though, since it will take longer time to clear out dungeons etc. Think you'll gain a little by cranking up the difficulty in the long run though, but it aint severe.
Now for a something interesting that I found, in an encampment named Silent Moons Camp northwest of Whiterun, which looks like a barrow on the minimap but it's really just a bandit camp in a ruin, there is something called "The Lunar Forge" on the top of it. In a book beside it, you can read about it, and it says that if you craft something at the forge during nighttime when there is a fullmoon out, your weapons will gain something called "Lunar Properties", which gives them a green glow, and a natural "Absorb Health - Enchantment".
How's that for an easter egg :o
(Sort of pointless though, since if you want enchanted weapons you can get way stronger, but I thought it was pretty interesting)
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Guess what alcoholic drink I'm drinking right now?
Damn product placement got me again >.<
(it's quite nice, like a sweet desert wine without a lingering aftertaste)
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I have a question, does your 'garden' when you're archmage is endless ?
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On November 26 2011 21:52 Erasme wrote:
I have a question, does your 'garden' when you're archmage is endless ?
I don't know about that garden, but I remember reading on UESP that the garden of the Riften house regenerates after 30 days: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Honeyside
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On November 26 2011 21:52 Erasme wrote:
I have a question, does your 'garden' when you're archmage is endless ?
I went there twice and they refilled
I would say it is one of the best place to gather some resources
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Activison should buy Bethesda... I want to see new Elder Scrolls every year XD
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On November 26 2011 22:56 Bulkers wrote:
Activison should buy Bethesda... I want to see new Elder Scrolls every year XD
Oh god no, i don't want Skyrim repackaged over and over...
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On November 26 2011 23:13 nanospartan wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2011 22:56 Bulkers wrote:
Activison should buy Bethesda... I want to see new Elder Scrolls every year XD Oh god no, i don't want Skyrim repackaged over and over...
So you're saying that the same amount of change that there was between MW2 & MW3 is something you'd like to see between TES V & TES VI? >.<
Worst idea everr...
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On November 26 2011 23:13 nanospartan wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2011 22:56 Bulkers wrote:
Activison should buy Bethesda... I want to see new Elder Scrolls every year XD Oh god no, i don't want Skyrim repackaged over and over...
Call of Skyrim: Modern Dragons 3, featuring several hours of single-player gameplay and addictive online multiplayer in which achieving a twenty-kill killstreak allows you to ride on the back of a dragon and fire explosive arrows down upon your enemies.
I don't know, could make for a fun mod :-p
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EPT
