Skyrim

[Allara]

Kind of surprised we don't have a Skyrim thread yet. I've been enjoying it a lot so far. Focusing primarily on the Thieves Guild quest lines at the moment. Anybody know how to see how long you've played the game?

[Phaera]

Raptr.com tracks it from the point you register with them onward. I'm up to 99 hours, apparently. WTF? Lots of idle time though because I'm too lazy to turn it off while I'm doing other stuff. Level 42 now and I still can't see the end coming soon. ;p

[Forty]

I'm only lvl 7. And decided to go into Shimmermist Grotto. Bad, bad mistake. Stupid Gloomlurker!!

[Zeyla]

I have had a lot of friends rave about this game. I should probably pick this one up!

[Aindayen]

http://www.elderscrolls.com/skyrim/

So it's basically a single player fantasy? How do the levels work?

[Phaera]

Experience is based off skill improvements.

[Allara]

I am really really enjoying it. It's surprisingly relaxing for a video game believe it or not. It's funny, I played Uncharted 3 and then immediately went into Skyrim, and it was a bit of a shock. Skyrim doesn't have anywhere near the level of polish. But it's a huuuuuuuuuge game and extremely flexible, which makes up for it.

SPOILER WARNING
I just killed Mercer and am about to become the new leader of the Thieves Guild supposedly. Drowned a couple of times trying to escape that encounter's room, heh. Kind of awesome that when you die, you're fucked. Hope you saved recently.

I'm an archer, of course, and as I followed Karliah around, I really wanted her bow. I was stoked when she gave it to me at the end of the boss fight. I'm a bit too predictable, lol.

[Allara]

Oh yeah, I'm level 13 lol. But I must have at least 20 hours in it. Playing PS3 version, so can't track my time I guess.

[Andaas]

Wow, I'm surprised PS3 doesn't have any playtime tracking mechanism, even Wii tells you how much time you've spent playing various games.

[Allara]

Only* Wii, and thank you parents :P Most games of this length include their own time tracking. (FF)

[Valdis]

Allara have you checked the save data on your PS3 save file it might get tracked there in the info.

[Allara]

Ah, when you go to load a game in Skyrim, it tells you how long you've played. I'm at 33 hours, level 14.

[Rennys]

Heh, I'm lv. 40 and totally power leveling the crap out of this game. The game becomes a bit broken when you can make your own crap. Finally maxed out Enchanting/Smithing along with working on maxing out sneak and archery.

I'm currently king of the dark brotherhood and the companions. Unfortunately, it's not quite as awesome as Oblivion was where I just collected money every so often as the head. For some reason, despite being the head of the guilds, they still send me out on shit duty.

[Allara]

Yeah, becoming head of the Thieves Guild was sort of...lackluster. Becoming a Nightingale in favor with Nocturnal granted me a stupid spell, so kind of worthless. Equiping and using spells and weapons is pretty cumbersome on a console, so I end up just using a bow and Healing as my two Favorites.

Archery and Sneak will definitely be my first two maxed at this rate. I'm inducted into the Dark Brotherhood but haven't had time to dig into their quests yet, doing the main storyline now for a bit. I must be really slow because I'm only 15 with 37 hours or so into it.

I also haven't touched crafting yet; alchemy was way too random for my taste and I haven't figured out the art of improving my bow yet. I never played any previous Elder Scrolls games longer than a few hours, so I'm learning all this as I go.

Also, enchanting seems needlessly complicated and too based on consumables, but I haven't actually tried it yet. Maybe I'm too quick to judge?

[Andaas]

Equiping and using spells and weapons is pretty cumbersome on a console, so I end up just using a bow and Healing as my two Favorites.

Sadly, equipping spells/items/weapons on the PC is just as (if not more) cumbersome. Yay for console UI on a PC game.

[Allara]

Sadly, equipping spells/items/weapons on the PC is just as (if not more) cumbersome. Yay for console UI on a PC game.

I for one do like the UI from a console perspective. I hear it SUCKS for PC players. I need to get out of my home office as much as possible, though.

[Zeyla]

I for one do like the UI from a console perspective. I hear it SUCKS for PC players. I need to get out of my home office as much as possible, though.

I heard that! The home office feels too much like work even when gaming.

I just heard from yet another friend about how awesome this game is, so I will probably be picking this one up today ;) My friend that I spoke with said sneak and archery skills were the bomb, so I'll probably go that route on my first playthrough.

[Rennys]

Yeah, sneaking and archery is pretty nice, but once you get certain "talents" sneak and backstab becomes wayyy better. You can pretty much 1-shot everything in the game. It's all about the multipliers. Dagger backstab gets up to a 30x multiplier, archery only gets a 3x.

[Allara]

Although sneaking up close enough to backstab is much more difficult.

[Rennys]

It's not so bad with the invisibility power from the Nightingale and high sneak. I'm at 100 sneak and unless I'm trying to sneak around in daylight, I can pretty much walk up to people and knife them down from their front.

[Phaera]

Meh, mages is where it's at. Screw subterfuge. Just fry the shit out of everything and loot up!

[Rennys]

Did you get your butt kicked the first time you saw a dragon priest?

[Phaera]

Nah. I did hide a lot though. ^^

[Kakeku]

I am thinking to get this game. Is the PC version better or Xbox?

[Phaera]

I've heard the PC one is worse, but I don't know. I got the 360 version and love it. There's still glitches and bugs, but not enough to ruin playing.

[boopie]

This game makes me motion sick. I don't suppose there's a sure fire cure for this?

[Rennys]

The first person view makes you sick? You can always play the game 3rd person view. That would probably reduce the motion sickness aspect since it would give a point of reference... ala WoW.

I like the PC version... probably because you can get past bugs by using the console (~). Not sure if you can do the same with the Xbox.

[Allara]

Got sucked into a bit of powerleveling myself, hehe. Starting to get a bit bored, trying to cruise through the storyline now.

[boopie]

Maybe if I played it instead of watching it :) but I haven't found that that typically helps other games where this is a problem. But then again, I would probably be like Jeremy and spend the whole time rubbing up against rocks trying to level my stealth. At least that's what I was told was happening...

Watch this!
Ok.
I'm going to kill that bear.
What bear?
The one in the middle.
That's a rock.
It's a bear. Watch this.
(equip bow, zing! grrrrrr! hack hack)
See! Dead bear. Wait, wait, wait, watch this.
(sigh) What are you doing? Is that a bear too?
I'm leveling my stealth!
(SNEAK INCREASED TO 2)
Hehe!
(leaves room)
But wait, you haven't seen... where are you going?

[Allara]

Nah, it's more fun to backstab a Greybeard over and over. :D

[Rennys]

Yeah, I'm cruising through the storyline right now. Everything is either 1-shotting me or dying to me in 1-2 shots. It's always fun to run up to a Drauger Deathlord and have him say "Ro Dah" and go flying across the room... dead. Full health to nothing in one shout. Yay me. Proves to me that shooting them from across the room is the correct move every time.

[boopie]

Proof that all game designers hate melee?

[Phaera]

Hubby says sword and board works incredibly well. I get hit a couple of times, and I'm damn near dead unless I get a quick heal off.

[Zeyla]

OK, This game is awesome. I picked it up last night and I'm loving it so far! I made a kitty-man sneaky bow-shooting-back-stabber. I'm going to stick with the bow and 1h weapon combo I think with lots of sneak! Not sure if I am going to go the thief route yet or not. Haven't stolen anything yet, just lots of sneaking and lock picking.

I learned one valuable lesson though, townsfolk frown on the slaughter of chickens ;)

[Allara]

Heh, once you start stealing shit, you never go back. I swipe stuff from pretty much everywhere now.

[Valdis]

Yea stealing is super easy in the elder scrolls. I used to break into stores at night steal everything and sell it back the next morning. Can't remember if that was Morrowind or Oblivion I did that in though. Either way I never finished any of them, they suffer from a lack of urgency keeping you to the main plot. By the time 40 hours had passed I was always strong enough to finish the game and only 2 hours into the main plot and I could never remember what I was needing to do or with whom and so now I just avoid them.

[Allara]

they suffer from a lack of urgency keeping you to the main plot

This, and the main plot in Skyrim is pretty yawn-inducing in my opinion.

[Zeyla]

Yea stealing is super easy in the elder scrolls. I used to break into stores at night steal everything and sell it back the next morning. Can't remember if that was Morrowind or Oblivion I did that in though. Either way I never finished any of them, they suffer from a lack of urgency keeping you to the main plot. By the time 40 hours had passed I was always strong enough to finish the game and only 2 hours into the main plot and I could never remember what I was needing to do or with whom and so now I just avoid them.

Oblivion had that, I remember doing the steal/resell thing a lot too. I ran in to the same thing with Oblivion, I had wandered off and done so much I forgot where/what I was supposed to do exactly for the main quest, and stopped playing. One of the downsides of such an open RPG I suppose.

[Allara]

I didn't play Oblivion much, but in Skyrim the quest objective tracking is pretty good. You might forget which quest is the main storyline, but other than that, you can't lose your place. At least not so far.

[Rennys]

I was thinking about doing that, but I'm sitting on 76k gold right now. Just kinda cruising through the game to the point I barely pick up anything anymore. I've been dropping daedric bows, ebony axes, basically a whole slew of nice gear since I can't be bothered running out of the instance and back to town to sell.

Gold definitely isn't an issue in the game any more.

[Valdis]

http://youtu.be/PGPsRp4xomE

[NormetheGnome]

So can I join the mages college and the dark brotherhood? i already joined the college..but ive been told the dark brotherhood has funniest/coolest quests...I dont think I have enough spare time this year to play through this big bastard twice ;P

[Allara]

I think you can join everything - I'm a Companion, Thief, Dark Brotherhood, and part of the college

[NormetheGnome]

This changes EVERYTHING!

[NormetheGnome]

How do I get approached to join the thiefs guild? I know I gotta assasinate the guy at the Orphanarium as part of the precurser to the Dark brotherhood (TY Game Informer Review) But i would assume the thieves guild is a secretive group as well..

[Rennys]

If you head to where the thieves guild is located (Riften), there's an encounter there that starts you on the path into the Thieves Guild.

[Lonskils]

http://christwire.org/wp-content/uploads/tumblr_lvm4c50Bgl1qhubufo1_1280.jpg

[Syana]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSDfxde8fSg

[Syana]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlC6Z0iRoOA

[Maegwin]

I'm playing through on the 360 as a Mage. I'm focused mainly in Destruction / Conjuration with some dabbling in Alteration and Enchanting. I've realized that getting enchanting up and taking those perks that increase your enchanting bonuses makes things like infinite mana possible - so I'm attempting to do that.

So far I've been focusing on joining the College of Winterhold (Mages), and doing the quests for the Eye and Staff of Magnus. I love the attention to detail they put in the game. Clean out a fort and the Stormcloaks move in, it doesn't just sit empty. Screw an NPC over? Get a warrant on your head for some payback.

I will say that being a Mage, the UI is very cumbersome for switching between all the different necessary spells. Buff, Shields, Nukes, situational...damn near everything is "favorited" so that list gets pretty big. With only two "quick" favorites it makes the whole thing kinda tedious. I can definitely see the appeal of playing as a Melee and just having a couple weapons to swing around, at least I think it would halt the gameplay a whole lot less.

I'm already planning on playing through a couple of times. Once as this Mage (Destruction/Conjuration/Enchanting), once as a true Thief/Assassin (Sneaking/Lockpicking/Pickpocketing), and one more as a straight up Warrior (1H/2H/Smithing). That's probably unrealistic but then again it's a lot of fun so who knows.

Oh yeah, buying a house is a MUST. It's basically a bank and lets you drop all that crafting/smithing/enchanting/alchemy stuff that bogs you down. Then you can carry more which earns your more money. I'm up to almost 10K, it's finally starting to feel like I can afford stuff.

[Berae]

47/50 achievements on Steam! Did what I usually do for Bethesda games, snuck around shooting arrows in faces. Plan on getting the last 3 eventually, but the daedra artifacts are a real hassle, and level 50 even moreso, forgot what the 3rd one was.

[Berae]

Yep. Oblivion was weird about that though. There was a thieves guild quest that could screw you over for joining the mages, so I did the mage stuff first, then as the mage guild leader, robbed myself (they didn't think that quest line through very well in Oblivion).

[Forty]

I'm at 46/50 and bugs prevent me from getting three of the four. The one chick you talk to at the Imperial camp never showed up (but the quest Icon was there pointing to nothing/the ground) meaning I couldn't progress any further.

I am missing the fourth (daedra artifacts) because I let the dude live on "Waking Nightmares" (I think that's the name of the quest) and missed out on the Skull.