TES V: Skyrim

[Dresden]

It's a little crazy how many hours I've out into this game. I just hit 550 the other night. Easily the most time I've spent on a single player game. The issues I was describing earlier seem to have been resolved with the latest nvidia drivers released yesterday. I don't get any more random chop, which is great. I also tooled with some more ENB mods and I have to say they're really unstable. I got a shit load of flashing colors this time I installed the two different mods. It's unfortunate. The DoF in these ENB mods is a major selling point. Bokeh DoF looks phenomenal and the improved shaders are sweet. But it seems my experience with these mods is usually the same every time.

Anyway, I'm about finished with Dawnguard. I got Auriel's bow last night and it seems the next and probably final phase if the quest line is to kill Harkon. Once I've finished that I should probably get around to beating the vanilla quest line, I'm yet to kill Aldiun (shocking considering how much time I've invested.) Once I've done that I'm going to start Dragonborn which a friend of mine gifted to me.

Out of curiosity, upon killing Alduin, do dragon encounters officially end?

 

[Albuquerque]

Out of curiosity, upon killing Alduin, do dragon encounters officially end?

I can now answer this, as I just finished off Alduin last weekend, around the 320hr mark for me. Guess I beat you j/k

The answer is no: killing Alduin doesn't stop the random dragon spawns, nor does it stop the radiant quests for killing dragons to claim a bounty placed by a Jarl. However, not sure if it's pure coincidence or not, I've had sporadic failures in absorbing dragon souls ever since I offed Alduin. Figure about 40% of the time now the dead dragon never burns up, and thus I never get the soul.

 

[Dresden]

I can now answer this, as I just finished off Alduin last weekend, around the 320hr mark for me. Guess I beat you j/k

The answer is no: killing Alduin doesn't stop the random dragon spawns, nor does it stop the radiant quests for killing dragons to claim a bounty placed by a Jarl. However, not sure if it's pure coincidence or not, I've had sporadic failures in absorbing dragon souls ever since I offed Alduin. Figure about 40% of the time now the dead dragon never burns up, and thus I never get the soul.

Oh, good. I was worried they would stop. 320 hours is still pretty damn impressive. I've been postponing the main quest all while Alduin turns the world upside down in his destructive wake. I'm like "cool, lemme just work on this companions quest."


As for your issue with harvesting souls, I think I've actually encountered that glitch myself. Are you sure you're not actually harvesting the souls after killing a dragon? There's been a few instances where I've killed one and the animation of it burning never appeared, but I still managed to collect their souls. Check your shouts window to see if you actually collected it. Also, try quick saving and quitting to the main menu after you encounter the bug and load the game back up. Once you load back up to your defeated dragon, the animation will occur and you'll absorb the soul. That's happened to me before.

 

[Grall]

I had the no-soul bug hit me before I killed Anduin (which I did like a year ago, if not more), so it's not tied to that. From what I've been able to glean, dragons spawned via a radiant quest (jarl kill bounties) do not seem to have a soul. This could be faulty info though, I'm actually not sure if this is really the case, but from casual recollection of past encounters with such dragons they don't seem to have souls.

Anyway, after a while you're swimming in dragon souls anyway, so it's not much of a problem.

(365 hours, btw... 99.9+ spent playing the same character; my new mage is only level 4 or thereabouts.)

 

[Albuquerque]

Yeah, I'm "swimming" in dragon souls (LOL Grall!) so I really didn't care. As long as I got my dragon bones and scales, that's all I needed.

I'm actually just starting the Companions quest

 

[Grall]

Anyone married in skyrim btw? Can you have your wife/hubby live in any of your houses, including the ones added in hearthfire? It'd be nice for the kids to have a proper loving parent raising them while I'm off adventuring... The housecarl is good as a governor/ness and the bard is good for company, but I'd want their emotional side to be looked after too. (No, I'm not mentioning that creepy cart driver who do nothing except sit on his cart aaaaaaaalllllllll day/year round...)

 

[KimB]

Anyone married in skyrim btw? Can you have your wife/hubby live in any of your houses, including the ones added in hearthfire? It'd be nice for the kids to have a proper loving parent raising them while I'm off adventuring... The housecarl is good as a governor/ness and the bard is good for company, but I'd want their emotional side to be looked after too. (No, I'm not mentioning that creepy cart driver who do nothing except sit on his cart aaaaaaaalllllllll day/year round...)

Haven't tried since the hearthfire, but one of the standard dialog options for spouses is to move to another place, so you can definitely do that at least. I'd be incredibly surprised if the option wasn't there for the hearthfire houses as well.

Edit: This confirms that you can have your spouse live in your Hearthfire home, though apparently the kinds frequently tend to hog the master bed, leaving your spouse to sleep in the kids' bed:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Hearthfire

 

[Grall]

Oh, tanx. That's good to know... Do I need to finish the entire quest chain from the temple in Riften before I get the option to buy amulets of mara? I know there's other ways to acquire said amulet, but I'm too lazy to go hunting for the place(s) where they lay out in the open, and relying on loot drops is...unreliable, heh.

 

[KimB]

Oh, tanx. That's good to know... Do I need to finish the entire quest chain from the temple in Riften before I get the option to buy amulets of mara? I know there's other ways to acquire said amulet, but I'm too lazy to go hunting for the place(s) where they lay out in the open, and relying on loot drops is...unreliable, heh.

I don't think Maramal is involved in any quests, is he? I just run into him either in the inn nearby or in the temple itself and buy the amulet after a short conversation.

 

[Grall]

Hurm, maybe I've talked to the wrong NPCs then (there were three in the temple that had conversation options, didn't think of the inn), but none of them have offered to sell me an amulet... I'll have to check again.

 

[KimB]

Hurm, maybe I've talked to the wrong NPCs then (there were three in the temple that had conversation options, didn't think of the inn), but none of them have offered to sell me an amulet... I'll have to check again.

The first time you go to the Bee and Barb, Maramal is standing in the center of the main floor giving a little speech. He frequently goes back there afterwards, but can also be found in the temple.

 

[Kaotik]

This game really knows how to say f#%k you.

Muffled-enchanted boots are extremely rare in the game - excluding the obvious thieves/nightingale stuff etc which can't be disenchanted for whatever stupid reason.
So, wanting to keep muffled but have different looking set, only option is to download add-on which allows you to disenchant those sets too.
Well, what happens next? 2 dungeons with brand-spanking new boots with brand-spanking new muffled enchant, the dungeon "reward chest" has muffled boots in it.

 

[KimB]

This game really knows how to say f#%k you.

Muffled-enchanted boots are extremely rare in the game - excluding the obvious thieves/nightingale stuff etc which can't be disenchanted for whatever stupid reason.
So, wanting to keep muffled but have different looking set, only option is to download add-on which allows you to disenchant those sets too.
Well, what happens next? 2 dungeons with brand-spanking new boots with brand-spanking new muffled enchant, the dungeon "reward chest" has muffled boots in it.

I've had that problem, but then I realized that the armor/weapon sellers typically have a couple of pieces of enchanted gear which rotate daily. If you keep your eyes open and visit them periodically, you should be able to get every piece of enchantment rather quickly (the one I look for the most is banishment: enchanted weapons with that enchantment sell for a crazy amount, making them great for getting cash in the mid game).

 

[Grall]

I never really had any problems getting gold after higher-than-steel stuff started dropping; especially glass, ebony regularly sells for hundreds of gold apiece, which regularly made it difficult if not downright impossible for me to actually be able to sell my dungeon loot in one hold... A good haul out of a good-sized barrow or castle ruin - which often meant filling not just my carrying capacity but also my companion's - forced me to either fast-travel between several holds or else buy junk from the vendors first to fill up their cash reserve before selling it back to them for less.

Inefficient... Sure. It does train speechcraft though, which is a bonus, and it's also faster to do it this way if one's too lazy to travel around a lot... Now my "main" has nearly 400k gold, making him the richest person in Skyrim by several dozen times over. There isn't anything to spend my gold on, I wasted a tiny fraction of my fortune on buying materials for my Hearthstone homes, but that was quickly earned back (and more) from doing the Dragonborn quest chain and a few others on Solstheim.

 

[KimB]

I never really had any problems getting gold after higher-than-steel stuff started dropping; especially glass, ebony regularly sells for hundreds of gold apiece, which regularly made it difficult if not downright impossible for me to actually be able to sell my dungeon loot in one hold... A good haul out of a good-sized barrow or castle ruin - which often meant filling not just my carrying capacity but also my companion's - forced me to either fast-travel between several holds or else buy junk from the vendors first to fill up their cash reserve before selling it back to them for less.

Inefficient... Sure. It does train speechcraft though, which is a bonus, and it's also faster to do it this way if one's too lazy to travel around a lot... Now my "main" has nearly 400k gold, making him the richest person in Skyrim by several dozen times over. There isn't anything to spend my gold on, I wasted a tiny fraction of my fortune on buying materials for my Hearthstone homes, but that was quickly earned back (and more) from doing the Dragonborn quest chain and a few others on Solstheim.

I primarily use gold for two things: buying soul gems to level up enchanting (as it's much faster if you buy instead of hunt for them), and training skills that are slow to level on my own. Skill training can get quite expensive at higher skill levels, and there are frequently times where I run out of funds in the mid game trying to do this.

I also often use the alchemy/enchanting exploit to train up my smithing, alchemy, and speechcraft skills super-fast.

Speechcraft goes up so fast because you gain skill increases from selling items based on their value, not on how much money you get, so I just make a few items worth hundreds of thousands of gold each, sell them for whatever money the merchant has, and bam, 100 speecraft.

Alchemy is increased to 100 automatically by the process of getting the super-powerful enchants.

Smithing goes up wicked-high after sharpening a few daggers with crazy stats (takes a little longer than the others, but not much).

I then throw away the products, because they're way, way over-powered for normal use.

One tip: in case you haven't noticed yet, once you get your speechcraft to 70 and get the perk that increases merchant gold, you can boost Lucan Valerius of the Riverwood Trader in Riverwood's gold to a bit over 10k. Makes selling lots of loot a heck of a lot more convenient.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Iron daggers with say a banish and a paralyze enchantment on them, even from just a petty soul gem are a license to print your own money in Skyrim.

 

[Malo]

Realistic Lighting Overhaul is a must have to combine with Climates of Tamriel. Add Enhanced Lights and FX with that and it's perfect.

 

[Kaotik]

I haven't found a single pre-made ENB version that I would be happy with, I'm not even sure what my ENB is nowadays based on, but it's quite heavily customized in the .ini department.

Yes, dungeons are dark without lighting, bring your torches.
Yes, it IS dark in the night, you better go sleep, get nightvision or be happy with the 1-2m your torch lights up.
Only thing I'm not happy about is how much rain/thunder darken the lighting, but haven't figured out yet which settings affect it

 

[orangpelupa]

me too. i have not found ENB setting for Skyrim that bring balance in darkness and brighness like what i get on Dragon's Dogma

 

[Kaotik]

It all depends what you call balance, mine goes from very bright (sun shining straight from the top with no clouds) to very dark (cloudy night in forest, dungeon).
The rainstorm just sucks.