TES V: Skyrim

[John Reynolds]

I'm probably at 150-180 hours with the game and traipsing is my favorite approach with these open world-style RPGs.

You probably shouldn't be surprised when rhetorical questions posted on public forums generate answers though.

 

[Albuquerque]

I did some traipsing as previously and rhetorically stated; bumped into a treasure quest, a "go kill everyone in the fort" quest, and built up some dual-enchanted dragonbone daggers. w00t!

Does anyone else simply enjoy (virtually) walking the countryside just listening to the music? I also loved Oblivion's music. Off topic, I also loved the music in Crysis 2, mostly because I'm an epic Hans Zimmer fanboy.

 

[Sxotty]

I did some traipsing as previously and rhetorically stated; bumped into a treasure quest, a "go kill everyone in the fort" quest, and built up some dual-enchanted dragonbone daggers. w00t!

Does anyone else simply enjoy (virtually) walking the countryside just listening to the music? I also loved Oblivion's music. Off topic, I also loved the music in Crysis 2, mostly because I'm an epic Hans Zimmer fanboy.

The only reason I even bought Skyrim was for traipsing around. I have been burned out on their silly quests since oblivion. There is just so much that is exactly the same. It is rare to have some quest with an interesting story/setting.

 

[Albuquerque]

At some point in the last few months I finally bumped into the "hangover" quest; that was a blast! I kept hearing about it but didn't want to spoil the fun by wiki'ing how to get it started...

 

[Sxotty]

That one was at least somewhat unique from a fetch quest and I was pleasantly surprised when I got it, but still the stories just don't carry the same value since they are just recited while someone sways to show they are alive...

 

[Grall]

Re-playing the game as a stealthy-sneaky archer wood elf again. Decided it was more fun than being a mage, although I will play mage as well and do all the evil quests and pick the evil choices when possible with that character. Also, join the stormcloaks too, rather than imperials.

I've forgotten over the last year and a half or so just how rough the difficulty curve is in this game. I'm level 14 now and still getting spanked by wispmothers. I can beat Old Orcs without too much trouble (he was majorly difficult at 10), but I barely scratch the wispmother, while in return I get my rear handed to me by her frost spells. Unfortunately ran into one as I was shortcutting over the mountain from whiterun towards that little town below the path up to the greybeards, whatsitscalled. Then I ran into one of those bigass kitties as I was fleeing from the wispmother (and her three summoned friends) lol, and the kitty whooped me up.

That's a hint that it's time to quit for the night, methinks! Next time I will sneak past her and be on my merry way. Kill that cat, if it spawns this time...

 

[Malo]

After experimenting with mods over several months and becoming much more familiar with a lot of them and how they are installed (in combination with others), I'm considering wiping Skyrim and saves clean and starting all again with Frostfall on Hardcore mode and see if I enjoy that. The concept of hypothermia, cold and wet, survival skills and trying not to freeze to death depending on the situation sounds like a really immersive experience. Hardcore mode also disables fast travel.

 

[Grall]

Cheated. Lowered the difficulty one notch and beat up the wispmother. Then ran into a brown troll instead of the kitty and offed it without too much difficulty, then realized I was still running around with the difficulty lowered. Raised it back up, but in return I dinged 15 so I could pick the 3x damage bonus on sneaky bow attacks... Means I now one-shot regular foes like bandits or draugr even with crappy iron arrows and a crappy falmer bow that I found in a cave to the east of whiterun.

Wish I could find a weapon with the soultrap enchant, so I could start filling some soulgems more easily. Alas... Bah. It's silly that I can know the regular spell, but still not be able to enchant items with it until I find another item that has it and disenchant it, and the finding of said items is totally random!

Casting soultrap manually sucks, because it almost totally drains my magicka. I'm raising it up a bit now after reaching 200 health, but it's still going to be rough. At this stage in the game I need lots of magicka for healing, and I don't have a lot of potions on-hand right now. I only pot if it's a real emergency; I hate alchemy in skyrim, making potions is such a crappy system.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Cheated. Lowered the difficulty one notch and beat up the wispmother.

Although my lvl 82 character can handle himself at the new Legendary difficulty settings (provided I use my best armour) I've actually perminenty dropped the difficulty back down to expert as things are so tough at legendary that I feel it's undone all the hard work it took to get my character up to god like proportions in the first place. I worked hard to become a god dammit!

 

[Malo]

So yesterday I completely wiped Skyrim and all mods and saves (well, backed them up). Re-downloaded fresh Skyrim and put in a new set of mods specifically for a Frostfall Hardcore realistic run through, including Realistic Needs and Diseases, true hunting, skinning, new Duel combat system, all the usual massive overhauls of flora, static objects, and all the graphics enhancements as well.

Now I need to keep myself from freezing to death, stave off thirst, keep myself fed and I have no fast travel ability at all. I'm also playing on Master difficult for the first time.

First thing I do of course is head up to the Barrow on the mountain above Riverwood which is guarded by bandits. Trying to kill them with new combat system and difficulty noticing that I'm also slowly freezing to death was intense. Thankfully a few were wearing big fur cloaks and hoods etc (Frostfall dynamically makes NPCs wear cold-weather gear depending on the temp, snow, rain etc.). Inside I had to use dungeon traps and be very careful fighting just to stay alive, especially against Draug Scourges at lvl 5 with this setup. The end guy was very difficult to take down.

All the while during the fairly lengthy dungeon I realize I have no water ( i had no bottles to fill up at Riverwood) and little food so various stats are slowly depleting making my time in there a real challenge. I'm dreading my first battle with a Dragon given I'm also using Enhanced Mighty Dragons mod.

This is going to be the most intense, raw and fun experience I've ever had in a CRPG.

 

[John Reynolds]

That does sound fun.

 

[Albuquerque]

I agree with John, that sounds pretty badass. I'm going through the DLC now, but when I finally get done being a God Among Men, I'll take off the training wheels and perhaps try your route.

I wager I will not last long

 

[Grall]

Ugh, I'm totally not nearly hardcore enough to last even 10 minutes with such a setup! I love being OP and facerolling enemies, and I'm wary of installing mods that alter the look of the game too - although I wouldn't mind knowing how to mod the config files to push back or turn off the terrible LOD system the game uses. It's really distracting seeing the game putting in basically dummy trees and scenery just a few hundred meters away (including rivers that don't flow, static waterfalls and so on.)

 

[Randell]

Is it wrong I stopped playing as I was fed up bumping into Dragons when I want to avoid the main quest and just traipse?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Is it wrong I stopped playing as I was fed up bumping into Dragons when I want to avoid the main quest and just traipse?

Killing dragons in random encounters won't advance the main quest, if that's what you feared.

 

[Kaotik]

Is it wrong I stopped playing as I was fed up bumping into Dragons when I want to avoid the main quest and just traipse?

Get the Live another Life mod and start somewhere else than the standard game > you don't need to start main quest before you decide to and dragons won't appear if some other mod won't make them to appear.

 

[Malo]

Ugh, I'm totally not nearly hardcore enough to last even 10 minutes with such a setup! I love being OP and facerolling enemies, and I'm wary of installing mods that alter the look of the game too - although I wouldn't mind knowing how to mod the config files to push back or turn off the terrible LOD system the game uses. It's really distracting seeing the game putting in basically dummy trees and scenery just a few hundred meters away (including rivers that don't flow, static waterfalls and so on.)

For that particular problems, Skyrim Flora Overhaul combined with uGrids 7 (maybe even 9 with a high end system) config change would make that better. Quite distant waterfalls/rivers will always be static though unless uGrids is possible changed to much higher like 13 or 15 however that will bring any system to it's knees afaik.

 

[Albuquerque]

I don't believe the uGrids drags particular machines into the dirt, rather I believe the engine itself can't deal with that kind of dataset without CTD'ing itself over and over. It depends though... If I play with uGrids=9, it goes stupid and CTD's all the time. If I go with uGrids=11, it works "fine" (doesn't crash any more than normal, heh).

I'll try some higher values tonight if I remember to, just to see. But I don't recall it ever being a machine resources issue, just an engine issue.

 

[orangpelupa]

when there are too many things being processed, sometime the game just crash in things that usually works fine.

see the papyrus error log. The crash usually happen on things that normally works fine. But before crash i get lots of warnings.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Bought it in the Steam sale...Can u guys tell me where I can get the ENB lighting mod in the Steam Workshop?