TES V: Skyrim

Are you sure you can't kill em? You could kill the god in tribunal. I remember killing someone and getting this ridiculous ring that recharged like 1000 health every second from their corpse once as well, but that was a mod and the character was supposed to be invincible. I had corpus disease for so long my strength was like 1500 though or some other ridiculous number.

 

You can't kill critical quest NPC's.
Not sure what qualifies as critical though.
You really don't want to get to the penultimate quest in the main quest line and discover you can't complete it because you killed the Jarl earlier.
It can be irritating in some circumstances, at one point in the assassins guild quest line you have to kill someone who is in the same location as a critical character in the thieves guild quest line, you can't kill them and if they attack you they just keep hitting you with 1 hit point left until you run away. Seems like something of a design oversight to me.

 

On smithing:
Yes, dragonscale armor is the best light armor. Daedric armor is marginally better than dragonbone plate, though it's much easier to find the materials for dragonbone plate. I've found, however, that since daedric weapons are better than glass weapons, if you have a bit of patience it's better to go the heavy armor line even if you just want light armor: you'll still get the ultimate light armor, and you'll get better weapons.

 

Yeah, it's really too bad that they made this change since Oblivion. Though I think it largely has to do not so much with player actions, but with NPC actions. What you really don't want is a dragon attacking a town and killing some quest NPC. Making quest NPC's unkillable is, I think, a compromise between their radiant AI system (which, though limited, does make the world seem much more alive) and the demands of having completable quests.

Though it would be nice if the player could kill "unkillable" NPC's, but the game would just put up a message like it did in Morrowind where it said you may not be able to complete the game (or something to that effect).

 

So there aren't any dragonbone weapons? And I was so looking forward to that.

But I guess there's daedric weapons to be found as loot though? I'm certainly findng plenty glass weapons for sure at the level I am now (35, I think). Also all the other heavy sub-types; orcish, dwemer, ebony and so on. No daedric stuff at all yet though.

No glass armor found yet either, only weapons. Maybe too soon for that. Did find some random hostile mage packing ebony armor though. He was pretty tough! Especially since that idiot Fandral insisted on charging in hand-to-hand and getting right in my line-of-sight, only to take an inevitable 300% sneak-arrow in the back and die.

Btw, when I went berserk in Whiterun I offed a bunch of guards on the mid tier of the city, and then whacked the cow standing next to one of the houses out of pure spite. The game informed me the last witness to my murders was dead, and voided 5x 1000 gold bounties!

Whattafuck, Bethesda! Like the captain of the guards would go like, "Well, cow, what did you see last night? Was it that crazy elf?" The cow agrees: "yes, yes! He did it! Saw it with my own eyes I did. Lock him up!"

 

Daedric weapons are exceedingly rare as loot. And you can't improve them as much through smithing if you don't have the daedric perk (so glass will always be better if you have the glass perk but not the daedric).

Yeah, glass armor isn't horribly uncommon at higher levels. Daedric always is, though.

Hahaha, that's hilarious.

 

I guess you can't go past dragonsmithing over to daedric from the glass side of the tree? Not that I really care though, my character is a light armor/sneaky/bowy type character, I only intend to level heavy armor to squeeze a few extra character levels out of the game. Same with long weapons, destruction (and any of the other sub-classes of magic other than restoration.)

Speaking of magic by the way... Is there a resurrection spell that can reanimate my follower maybe? Cuz he seems to get killed an AWFUL lot, and if I can get my mule back without having to reload it would be rather convenient! Preferably without him drooling, starting to smell bad, attracting flies and repeatedly moaning "braaaaaaiinnss..." too, if possible.

 

Unfortunately, no. You have to sacrifice the low levels of light armor if you want dragon armor + daedric. This isn't so much of a problem, though, as it's pretty easy to max out smithing.

Haha, I haven't tried it, but maybe! One of the Master conjuration spells allows you to permanently resurrect a dead body. Though usually in the game if a character dies a second time, it turns to ash. So it would be best to avoid letting the zombie die!

 

I just sunk a couple perks into short weapons, and daggers suddenly became about 700% more effective. I can actually kill stuff with them now, omigosh. Skill level still sucks, though, and I can't for the life of me get the game to equip both daggers with one button press. Or even two presses; if I bind each dagger to a separate button it just toggles between the two in the right hand. Every fucking time I cast a spell or switch to my bow I have to manually re-equip the left-hand dagger and it's getting daaaaamn tedious.

Found two black soul gems too just now, in a necromancer base well up north. My first. Haven't killed any humies after finding them though, I stumbled upon them in the prison after clearing out the lot of those evil bastards. They kept resurrecting each other too, was hilarious to see them running around in the snow and cold attacking me after I'd already looted all of their clothes off of their bodies!

I noticed they sometimes turn to ash, but I hadn't figured out any sort of pattern for when it happens. If my helper will just turn to ash too if i resurrect him I don't think it's worth bothering. Coz her's undoubtedly just going to go charge a mammooth, or a giant, or a dragon, or whatever next big nasty thing I put an arrow into, and get stomped again.

So... Scratch that plan then, I guess. Suppose I just have to wait for the mod kit to be released so I can make some kind of uber tanky gear for him so he simply CAN'T die. Don't want anything like that for myself, I don't even want him killing stuff really (cuz he tends to get in the way all the time and eat MY attacks); I just want to be able to carry more loot out of the dungeons by loading it onto him.

 

lol, that's completely hilarious. I have a theory that 99% of people should keep their clothes on all the time, most of us aren't models. Nothing you can't fix in a game though....

So if you want your characters to look very cute and stylish, here is a perfect guide for you, written by a woman:

http://j-u-i-c-e.hubpages.com/hub/better-looking-characters

 

Not-so-blink-of-an-eye if you manage to hit 1 again when you tap 2, or the other way around. I don't know how many times I've started punching with an empty hand at enemies because the buttons act as toggles, and it's just so infuriating.

The interface is fundamentally fucked, but damn I love the game anyway. I'm having so much fun. If the interface was just as good as the rest, this game would cause the entire universe to implode.

 

One thing I should mention about dual-wielding is that it is somewhat tolerable as long as you have a different kind of weapon in your right and left hands, so that even though you can't use a hotkey for the offhand, you can still use the quickmenu. It also turns out that a sword and dagger attack tons faster than a pair of daggers, which is positively ridiculous. So I generally like to have an unenchanted sword and dagger, and use elemental fury when going up against tough opponents.

Anyway, I really hope they would fix the UI at some point, because it's just plain crappy at times.

 

Leveling from 48 onwards is REALLY slow. I'm level 51 now and I've done a lot to get there from 48.

Summoning Demora Lords is fun. They are basically meatheads on roid rage.

 

I smell weakness!

 

Speaking about weakness, I now 2-shot giants from stealth with my current bow (legendary glass) and perks.

The xxxxxxx

Spoiler

vampire

boss up in that swamp town whatsitscalled, the one with the old woman Jarl, he was damn tough by the way. First time I went up against him he owned me BAD. Second time I managed to elude him three times after nailing him with a stealth arrow; the fourth killed him because he apparantly couldn't heal himself. Was rather exciting when he and a follower(*see 2nd spoiler) came hunting for me as I stood up on the platform overlooking his dining table, and when he came running in under me and up the ramp to where I was I just hopped down off the ledge and snuck back the corridor where he had just been. By then, they had lost interest in me.

One funny thing though: first time I hit him, he ran off to the living quarters and murdered

Spoiler

the town woman whose journal you find

; I could hear the crackling of his lightning bolt spells and a death groan, then resurrected his target I suppose, because (**) turned to ash after I shot (**) dead all over again. ** =

Spoiler

she, her

Wonder what that was all about by the way. Bad blood between them somehow? Him suspecting (**) of treachery? I dunno. I couldn't hear any dialogue so it's hard to tell. It's a funny episode nevertheless.

Damn, that guy sure likes shoes by the way! He's got a bookcase stacked full of 'em!

 

Yeah, I remember that guy. Whooped my ass a few times. Then I remember I was carrying something: Scroll of Bane of Undead. Sets fire to all undead and causes them to flee for thirty seconds. A few more whacks with a mace and he was toast.

 

Alright! My game is still dead (posted it on Bethsoft's forum as per Chalnoth's advice) but I can't help but post this because it's pretty damn awesome.

SkyUI: http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3863

Video (skip to 1:45):

 

That guy simply loves the sound of his own voice I can tell, holy crap he talks a lot of shite! He HAS to tell that he's re-naming a bloody shortcut? Kee-RIST.

The UI looks interesting, but it's not really covering the most critical aspects yet, like switching skills and weapons in-combat, or tradeskills. If I want to make potions, I have to scroll through reams of ingredients, scanning the four possible effects of each of them for the desired ones I need. This is HELLA tedious and cumbersome. I should of course be able to search for effects directly, to make potion-making less of a giant PITA.

When leveling blacksmithing, I used lots of leather strips. That's cool, but when making leather strips I've no idea how many I already got. I have to try and count them manually, knowing how many I started with and then adding four at a time for each craft. Again, cumbersome and tedious.

Maybe this mod will fix these aspects one day; the guy on the video makes it sound like it will, but better if Bethsoft steps in and does it for us, so we don't have to fiddle with stuff like this. Is the steam version of the game even compatible with this mod if you have to run a special shortcut to enable it?

 

Oh, by the way... Finally completed the quest from the greybeards and

Spoiler

the dragon fight together with the Blades agent woman

at like level 43 or something (been too busy running around killing and maiming and looting and selling and smithing to have time to deal with the big bad dragons flying about... ), which makes me wonder exactly how much time has passed from the events of Morrowind. Hundreds of years by the looks of things, but maybe I'm wrong.

Oblivion seems to be a few decades off in comparison. I wish I'd finished it, seems some rather eventful things took place there, lore-wise.

Glad to be in business with

Spoiler

the blades again. I missed that ol' skooma-head Caius Cossades from TES4, he was a decent fella.