TES V: Skyrim

And if you want to go melee and dual-wield, you can get sneak attacks up to x30 for each dagger, or an equal progression as with the bow for each sword. And power attacks, of course.

Bows and melee weapons scale with your skill, have perks in other skills that benefit their damage or speed AND can be upgraded severely through smithing and enchanting.

With magic, you mostly get to reduce the mana cost.
 
I want a mod that reduces the weight of all alchemy and cooking ingredients/products to zero... :( Way way too much of my carrying capacity is taken up by ingredients.

That's my biggest wish. And, I want a portable alchemy lab too, but zero weight ingredients is more important. I picked some shrooms off a dead tree and that was literally the toadstools that broke the camel's back... I went over the weight limit (which doesn't seem to go up as I level... Go figure!)

I also don't understand why I can't search or arrange alchemy ingredients according to their properties. With SO MANY ingredients and properties it becomes very annoying to just scroll through them all to find the stuff I need for potions.
 
Frank said:
Well, the bow I'm currently using does 318 damage, without elemental damage enchantments and an archery of only 57. But with some enchantments that raise archery damage on my armour. With elemental damage enchantments or a higher archery, it would do even more damage. And I only invested a single perk in archery (but more in smithing and enchanting).

Sneak damage is x2 by default.

That's like ten-twenty castings to a single arrow :)
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Well, my mage is admittedly higher in level, but her sort of 'workhorse' spell is firebolt, which does 37 damage plus a little extra. The thing is, though, this is dual-casted. I don't know exactly how much damage dual casting does, but my guess is about 3x the damage of one casting. So that's around 100 damage per casting, give or take. And you can easily fire off 2-3 casts in the time it takes to fire one arrow, so that's getting into the range of your bow.

So yeah, if you're sneaking, the bow will do more. But then, I could also do three times that damage by just using the expert level spell instead, making them again roughly comparable.

So honestly, it sounds roughly comparable, except for the fact that with my mage I stagger my opponents with every hit, except for Alduin. The only time it gets remotely challenging is going up against other mages.
 
Weight limit does go up as you level as long as you choose to level stamina instead of magicka or health.
 
Frank said:
And if you want to go melee and dual-wield, you can get sneak attacks up to x30 for each dagger, or an equal progression as with the bow for each sword. And power attacks, of course.
Click to expand...
I believe it's x15 per dagger, x30 total. And yes, that was my first char, who, if I could get a sneak attack off, would kill basically anything in the game. But in practice this can't be used all that often against enemies for whom it really matters. Even with a very high sneak skill it can be difficult to sneak behind the higher-level enemies (though granted, I never did get the invisibility spell with my thief, and that might make it dramatically easier, I don't know).

Frank said:
Bows and melee weapons scale with your skill, have perks in other skills that benefit their damage or speed AND can be upgraded severely through smithing and enchanting.

With magic, you mostly get to reduce the mana cost.
Click to expand...
Well, you get extra damage from a couple of perks, plus the ability to stagger with every hit. That cannot be underestimated. It kills slower, sure, but not horribly so. And the enemy is incapacitated the entire time, if you're careful.
 
Chalnoth said:
Well, you get extra damage from a couple of perks, plus the ability to stagger with every hit. That cannot be underestimated. It kills slower, sure, but not horribly so. And the enemy is incapacitated the entire time, if you're careful.
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I did a test with some trolls. I use firebolt (37 damage, 25 nominal):

First normal strike (whether under sneak or not): ~58 damage
First dual cast (whether under sneak or not): ~130 damage
Normal strike (target not burning): ~33 damage
Normal strike (target burning): ~55 damage
Dual cast (target not burning): ~105 damage
Dual cast (target burning): ~130 damage

Then I use icy spear (90 damage, 60 nominal):

First normal strike: ~90 damage
First dual strike: ~190 damage
Normal strike: ~75 damage
Dual cast: ~190 damage

I didn't do much more tests, but it looks like a dual cast is more or less about 250% of normal damage. Fire damage when burning is around 40%~50% more.
 
72 hours in, about 16 hour of game play since I have been using the 4GB loader, and have not had one crash or any texture problems in that 16 hour time frame.
 
bigtabs said:
Weight limit does go up as you level as long as you choose to level stamina instead of magicka or health.
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VERY thank you! :)

I've been prioritizing health a lot since it's so damn easy to get killed in this game. I also put two or three levels' worth into magicka after I discovered the light spell. It's very useful when looting a dungeon after everything's been killed. I will definitely sink more into stamina now though!

If I use the light spell anywhere near enemies they seem to spot me instantly though, even if they don't actually see me casting it. It's enough for me to step inside the light radius. So I kill everything, and then clean up afterwards.

Chalnoth said:
Even with a very high sneak skill it can be difficult to sneak behind the higher-level enemies
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Heh, I wear light armor, I have the 50% muffled footsteps perk and close to 50 sneak skill and I can't for the life of me get anywhere NEAR monsters without them spotting me!

I never did get the invisibility spell with my thief, and that might make it dramatically easier, I don't know).
Click to expand...
Invisibility in Morrowind (called chameleon I believe) reportedly did an enormous difference. I never faffed much with it though since nothing in the normal game could kill me. I pwned Dagoth Ur so bad it wasn't even funny with a character far from max level. Spriggan and shit like that up in Solstice did provide a lot more challenge though, but since I could heal myself inbetween fights I still owned them. Took a long time to get anywhere though since enemies respawned constantly and needed many many hits to kill if my hammer got a bit dull(!) which happened pretty quickly.

Speaking of many, I'm encountering many enemies in Skyrim now that take ~10+ arrows to down, and that's with 300% sneak damage on the first hit! I have a (Fine) Dwarven Bow, haven't found anything better yet. Those goathead-hat guys are pretty nasty, specially the spell flingers. They slow me, damage my stamina, and seem to get random crits that take off half my health in one hit. I've had decent life and still died instantly several times to those guys. Very dangerous, especially since I've run into camps full of them where like 3-5 guys have aggrod on me at the same time.

Fun game. Played all evening and night. It's seven f'n thirty in the morning now. :(
 
I'm getting pretty frequent CTDs now, especially when fast travelling. Is there any way to make Skyrim LAA?
 
Grall said:
Heh, I wear light armor, I have the 50% muffled footsteps perk and close to 50 sneak skill and I can't for the life of me get anywhere NEAR monsters without them spotting me!
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Yes, I got my sneak up to 100 for my thief, with all the silence perks I could find, and most of the lower-level enemies would not see me until I was right in their faces. But the higher-level ones are a different story. Line of sight matters a lot in this game. You can sneak up behind most enemies, as long as you can get behind them. And that is sometimes a very difficult proposition. And there's also the difficulty that other enemies will notice when you've attacked somebody near them, so that usually if there's a group of enemies I could sneak up on one of them, and then would have to fight the rest (or run away and sneak back).

One thing I should mention is that successful sneak attacks increase your sneak skill dramatically, so that if you are careful and sneak attack as much as possible, your sneak skill will go up very, very quickly.

I'd also suggest using the "muffle" illusion spell to practice your illusion casting, as opposed to the light spell!

Grall said:
Invisibility in Morrowind (called chameleon I believe) reportedly did an enormous difference. I never faffed much with it though since nothing in the normal game could kill me. I pwned Dagoth Ur so bad it wasn't even funny with a character far from max level. Spriggan and shit like that up in Solstice did provide a lot more challenge though, but since I could heal myself inbetween fights I still owned them. Took a long time to get anywhere though since enemies respawned constantly and needed many many hits to kill if my hammer got a bit dull(!) which happened pretty quickly.
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Well, I've only tested invisibility so far with my mage, and in practice it helps somewhat, but her sneak skill is complete crap, so she's noisy as hell and people notice her whether or not she's invisible.

Grall said:
Speaking of many, I'm encountering many enemies in Skyrim now that take ~10+ arrows to down, and that's with 300% sneak damage on the first hit! I have a (Fine) Dwarven Bow, haven't found anything better yet. Those goathead-hat guys are pretty nasty, specially the spell flingers. They slow me, damage my stamina, and seem to get random crits that take off half my health in one hit. I've had decent life and still died instantly several times to those guys. Very dangerous, especially since I've run into camps full of them where like 3-5 guys have aggrod on me at the same time.
Click to expand...
I've found that the best way to get more powerful weapons, by far, is smithing. Take the time to get your smithing up. Cheapest is to make a combination of leather bracers and iron daggers...and you can press enter to smith the last thing you clicked on, so that you can move the mouse near "yes" and rapidly press "enter" and click "yes" rapidly enough to finish dozens of daggers or bracers in no time flat.

Perhaps more importantly, once you get the requisite perks in smithing and get it up to 100 so that you can improve items to "legendary" status, they are about twice as powerful as base. So not only will you have nice glass weaponry if you go the light armor route, but it'll be far better than normal daedric weaponry that you might find later in the game.

Enchanting is similar. Once you get enchanting up to 100 and can put two enchantments per item, you can make some crazy powerful stuff (my mage adds enchantments that are +62 to health, magicka, or stamina, for example).
 
Yesterday, I had my first quest bug:

I did the ritual conjuration spell quest...to get conjuration master spells. I summoned a Daedra and killed him, but the game did not register him as killed...I then learned that I have messed up my save games, and a re-load of an earlier savegame would have cost me about 4hours playtime...damn!

then I learned in the Skyrim wiki, that you can use the consol, to set the stage of certain quests...and with this, I could step to the next stage of the quest and then finish it the usual way...probably good to know if some of you guys encounter a quest bug!

I have the destruction master spells as well...but as I leveld up conjuration using my demora lord...I learned first that leveling up conujration is ultimate faster than leveling up destruction, and that second a demora lord is way more powerful than using my own destruction spells...I solved lots of quest by just summoning this demora lord...without getting my hands dirty, besides casting some magic armor stuff and leveling up other stuff...now I have those master spells...but they cost 605 mana :oops: to summon, I have only a total of 569 :mad:

I have to level up to get the master spell perk decreasing a summon down to half....until this, I am not able to cast those cool conjuration master spells :cry:
 
pcchen said:
I did a test with some trolls. I use firebolt (37 damage, 25 nominal):

First normal strike (whether under sneak or not): ~58 damage
First dual cast (whether under sneak or not): ~130 damage
Normal strike (target not burning): ~33 damage
Normal strike (target burning): ~55 damage
Dual cast (target not burning): ~105 damage
Dual cast (target burning): ~130 damage

Then I use icy spear (90 damage, 60 nominal):

First normal strike: ~90 damage
First dual strike: ~190 damage
Normal strike: ~75 damage
Dual cast: ~190 damage

I didn't do much more tests, but it looks like a dual cast is more or less about 250% of normal damage. Fire damage when burning is around 40%~50% more.
Click to expand...
Dual casting does 2.2 damage (10% more than just casting twice).


I have upgraded smiting, enchanting and alchemy to 100 and have spend 20 perks on them.
I have made potions of fortify enchanting and fortify smiting.
I have made 4 pieces of armour with fortify alchemy and 4 with fortify smiting.
The bow I'm using does 149 damage as upgraded through smiting and at 51 (not 57) archery with 1 perk.
With 2 enchantments of fortify archery it does 318 damage.

With 4 enchantments, it would do 487 damage.
At 100 archery, it would do 954 damage.
With 5 perks in archery, it would do 1591 damage.
With the perk that increases it's speed, it would do 2069 damage in the same time.

With default sneak, it would do 3183 damage.
With Deadly aim, that would be 4774 damage.


With dual-wielded daggers, you would do about 300 damage.
With a power attack, that would be 600 damage.
With the power attack perks, that would be 825 damage.
With a sneak attack, that would be 1650 damage.
With the x15 perk, that would be 12375 damage.
With the Shrouded Gloves (x2 sneak attack), that would be 24750 damage.


With dual-wielded swords,one-handed at 100, 4 enchantments and the one-handed perks, you would do about 3183 damage.
With a power attack, that would be 6366 damage.
With the power attack perks, that would be 8753 damage.
With sneak attack, that would be 17506 damage.
With the x6 sneak attack perk, that would be 52519 damage.


You could increase that damage about 30% with potions of fortify archery/one-handed, if you don't mind drinking one every minute. And you could add elemental damage to your liking (I prefer Soul Trap and Paralyse over elemental damage), which would increase the totals by about 50%, but it wouldn't be counted with the sneak attacks.

If you use this on dragons, they still fly in the air before landing dead (lol), and you don't get the soul.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Billy Idol said:
I have to level up to get the master spell perk decreasing a summon down to half....until this, I am not able to cast those cool conjuration master spells :cry:
Click to expand...
You can enchant items with fortify conjuration or destruction, it will reduce the amount of mana needed.

I have 3x 35% reduction on destruction, giving me free casting.
 
bigtabs said:
This surely only has an effect for 32 bit systems.
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Actually, the effect is primarily for 64-bit systems with 4GB of RAM or more. Without LAA, programs will only use 2GB of RAM.

With a 32-bit system, you will only see an effect if you have more than 2GB of RAM and have used the switch in the Windows kernel to use up to 3GB in user mode (by default, 32-bit Windows only allows programs to use 2GB of RAM).
 
Frank said:
How would you implement Role-Playing in Skyrim? I'm curious.
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Actually, I would like to have so many things that you as a programmer would feel overwhelmed if you worked for Bethesda. The game is fine as it is because a huge game like this needs lots of testing, and it's very prone to be bug-ridden.

Even a free-form RPG that could fit many people tastes, in almost every RPG there is the so called Game Master who makes up a situation for all the characters to be in and who also decides what everybody else -the AI in this case- besides the player characters does. Bethesda would be this GM in Skyrim.

Free-form allows you to be wherever you want, do almost whatever you want, but there are rules to to keep people from abusing this power; for example, usually you can't do anything really impossible like being in two different places at once, or injure another character in the game without their player's permission, etc.

Some things I would love to see in the next TES is (while I am fine with RPGs tending to focus more on stuff like solving mysteries, confronting monsters, and gaining cool powers than on realistic socialisation) an improvement on socialization.

I think it's actually more true earlier in the game. In the very beginning when you are an unknown random character it feels odd when people starts telling you about very personal matters out of the blue. For instance, Sven, when you arrive at Riverwood.

Later in the game it is more realistic because people know you or you have some fame. Also the way they assign you quests could be different in the beginning. More like: "we have this problem and we need some brave soul to....", "but we can't find him/her". "I've heard about someone somewhere who needs help with some bandits at...".

And then letting you choose if you are interested or not. When you are interested, you can complete more missions, etc, then people start asking for your help more or telling you about personal matters.

I would love to see more Roleplaying decisions when you complete every mission. I mean, your decision-making having an influence in the world or changing the outcome of some quests.

I liked how I completed
the Sven quest
, because I influenced the outcome of a love story. :smile:

But in
the dragon claw quest
I couldn't decide much, and I have a feeling that this early quest holds a LOT of secrets, btw.

I think Skyrim has great basic elements to become one of the best RPGs ever made. Even so, there is room for improvements.

Regarding the hero thing, well, you are like the rest most of the game. Without the other you don't have quests, you can't learn, etc. But I would also like to be a crusader, some average person who becomes important and vital in the end for the outcome of the story helping the main characters, guild, etc. -however, this might not appeal to everybody-

Anyways, my main petitions would be:

- More complex socialization, especially in the beginning. Like assigning you some missions, or telling you personal matters either if you become well known or you have many conversations with people, or settle.

- Being able to make decisions in every quest (very hard to implement, because of bugs, so I can understand to some extent)

- More options to have companions. I would love to train a bat or a bird -especially an eagle or a falcon-.

Finally, I love Skyrim and I don't have much to complain about.
 
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