4761

This is what made playing my dual wielder tiresome. The rest of my builds have been working fine with hotkeys since day one, but it was such a chore manually putting my weapon in my main hand (either through the favorites menu, or via inventory) every time I had to swap out for something else.

4762

I still do it in som situations, but I’m starting to swing my points back into the individual weapon type buffs, like the one for blades, instead of maxing flurry. I’m also going back to grabbing more Blocking skills since I’ve finished what I wanted out of Sneak after I got dagger backstab 15x critical. (And really, Sneaking while walking AND running for only one perk point? How can someone NOT feel like a complete asshole taking that? Not gonna break the game for myself, thanks).

Honestly at this point, dual-wielding is simply a way to quickly clear out an obviously lower-level quest/dungeon. Flurry simply fails to give you good DPS output, you don’t do enough damage quickly to compensate for how much damage you’ll be taking, and you also have no way (aside from Force Shout) to stagger an enemy’s attack or deal with shield wielders.

4763

Yea, I broke the game with that build on my Nord Thief/Assassin. One shotting… everying (with a Fine unimbued Glass Dagger)? Oookay. I decided to run through the main quest at least once, and then started my Orc.

4764

You mean the perma-sneak perk? I still love using crouch-sneak to get past a patrol or get into a position to one-shot someone, I don’t have a problem with one-shotting someone and then being in a situation where I’m exposed and still easy to discover.

I think tha’t swhat I’m going to do, get thorugh the main quest (I’ve already outleveled most of it feels like, but my defenses are so weak and I don’t have the overpowered archery perks to make up for it).

4765

I have everything in the Sneak tree except for Shadow Warrior, and only 1 train in the base sneak bonus thing at the bottom. I’m also heavily trained in light armor, so I can take a few hits, but nothing at all like my Orc (in flawless Orcish Armor and tons of block & heavy armor perks).

4766

Have you done the LAA patch? Otherwise it should be easy to find the old exe around.

4767

This is great! Thanks for the link Rei.

4768

I’d still recommend Morrowind to the more hardcore RPG players. Warts aside, that game was special to me. And the biggest compliment I can give Skyrim is that it gives me Morrowind vibes.

Morrowind had a more distinctive world, but I still think Oblivion was a better game, largely because of its vastly improved combat & dungeons. Yes, I said vastly improved dungeons. An Ayleid ruin was a waaaay better McDungeon Crawl than a two-room Telvanni tomb. I also enjoyed the quest writing in Oblivion more – getting lost in a painting, or the Ayleid Collector quest, were better than anything I remember from Morrowind, and I never even tried the much-vaunted Dark Brotherhood chain. Giant mushrooms and Vivec and Balmora in the rain were all pretty great, though. Too bad the immersion/atmosphere of Morrowind and the improved gameplay of Oblivion couldn’t have been squished into the same game.

I guess if you assume the gameplay is all a wash because it’s old, and are only looking for interesting lore/setting, then Morrowind is a better one to go back to. Just be prepared for agonizingly slow walk speeds. I assume there are mods to fix that…

4769

Interesting you say this. At level 38, I find completely otherwise. First, power attacks will stagger and break shield blocks (can hold both hands down to charge a dual wield power attack, or trigger each hand independently). And with respect to damage, I’ve found that with dual wield completely upgraded, including the +50% damage with dual wield power attacks, I find it brokenly powerful against even the most powerful enemies. For example, I kill even those named lich guys in about 2 hits (one power, which staggers them, and then one normal attack)…

As for the damage taking, I saw the loss of block as a potential problem, so I chose to wear heavy, smithed armor, and resist jewelry. My defense was fine (except ice mages are still a pain because they slow you), but I had to use potions to heal. Now I find that even defense isn’t much of an issue anymore, as the damage output means I just kill everything fast, as once I get within melee range, everything dies.

4770

Yep I agree, i’m dual wield at level 28 an dhave no issue, saying that i’m also heavy armour so can take a bit of a beating as well

4771

It was - welcome to Skyrim :)

And I do agree with you regarding the gameplay improvements in Oblivion, no argument there.

4772

Oblivion made definite gameplay improvements, but Skyrim is better on that front. I disagree about the dungeons, though, and while some of the quests were more interesting in their own right, I think the vastly less interesting setting drags them down. And I still miss plenty of stuff from Morrowind, like levitation, which seems to have been yanked so that they could wall off the cities into their own zones.

4773

I wonder when they will be able to drop the zoning for cities and interiors. That is probably the last issue preventing them from having full on flying in the game.

4774

holy moly after a long time I visited rpgcodex again (yes, that site) and what don’t I see? They are positive about Skyrim?!

4775

It does appear, so far, that Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in forcing you to take one route between many destinations. In Oblivion, I almost never took paths - I would once in a while since I knew that they would probably have “stuff” on them, but I often took my own way between locations.

In Skyrim it seems half the battle sometimes (oh - forgot to mention, I never fast-travel) is finding a way to get somewhere, as it appears most of the time there is one path, and that is the only approach that works.

4776

I’m not sure what you mean? I often go cross-country to get to somewhere? How else would you, eh…get somewhere than in a more or less direct line?

4777

I haven’t found that to be the case. There’s a ton of big open space for you to find your own way through.

4778

JeffL has experiences that are wholly different than my own, the only exception being very specific destinations at the very tops of certain mountains, of which there may only be one or two paths up, and of which said paths are specifically part of the experience for those particular encounters/stories/quests.

4779

Which actually forces you to explore more, though, right? I was trying to get to the top of a mountain for a quest and ended up walking all the way around it trying to find the path to the top. In the course of which I discovered four or five locations I may never have otherwise found. And in general there are usually quite a few ways to get places in the game. Your complaint is specific only to some of them, and those make some sense anyway as most mountains are not accessible from multiple directions in real life anyway.

4780

That’s good to hear - I am only at level 19 and most of my wandering has been around the mountainous region. Most places I have walked to were restricted by either rocks or mountains (and in the mountains I can’t seem to go anywhere unless I find a path.)

Glad to hear the rest of the world is not like this.