Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim announced

[Soapyfrog]

My 2H plate wearing orc pretty much never used sneak at all. I’ll tell you, just wading into a crazy melee is a good deal of fun.

[walTer]

I just gave Lydia a glass bow I enchanted with a 3 second paralyze. She shoots, I rush in with my orc armor and my stamina sucking War Hammer…we are a force to be reckoned with…except for those effing frost mages! I HATE them.

[Universal_Leader]

When people who are not using bows are in dungeons, do you not stealth at all? Do you just rumble through and kill what’s in your way? I guess maybe I’ve been too focused on caution perhaps.

I’m playing a pure mage and I’ve never used a bow or stealth. Any bows I find go to my companions.

[ShivaX]

Okay, thanks guys! With a game this massive I wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing something terribly obvious. I thought about making some light armor but I was looking forward to playing a glass cannon with no armor whatsoever (I’m a little weird).

You can certainly do that, just bear in mind you’ll have to find/buy your chest armor if you don’t want it to be terrible. You can easily get good chest armor from the Mages College vendors or quest line, so its not a huge deal unless you obsess about how your character looks and want something specific or whatever.

When people who are not using bows are in dungeons, do you not stealth at all? Do you just rumble through and kill what’s in your way? I guess maybe I’ve been too focused on caution perhaps.

Don’t really need to sneak around much unless you’re playing on Master really and thats often more about seeing what you’re up against so you can prepare for it since your lackluster bow skills aren’t going to do that much most of the time anyway.

[MrPerson]

You only have to buy a robe to get the “best” if you regard “best” as just being the highest magic regen which, quite frankly, is pretty far from what’s “best.” Enchanting to lower the costs of your spells is far more potent.

The mage’s college reward robe is a very strong all around robe, but you can easily enchant a robe for your own playstyle that will not be a liability at all, and will probably be better if you’re focused on optimizing.

There are a ton of posts in the various skyrim threads covering builds and enchants for mages. Check out some of Aeon’s stuff.

[Pogo]

and from early to mid game to one-shot most enemies, even with no perks in Archery.

I stopped reading your post right here because uhhh… yeah that’s in no way correct.

[Aeon221]

I’m playing a pure mage and I’ve never used a bow or stealth. Any bows I find go to my companions.

You can use quiet casting and sneak to cause some hilarious shit to happen. Suddenly atronachs! Enemies who can’t figure out where you are while you melt them!

[RepoMan]

My dual wielder has no ranged ability AT ALL. When going up against a roomful of frost mages, I generally do stealth, since it lets me get significantly closer before they aggro, which reduces the distance I have to sprint to bury my axes in their face. If it’s especially hairy I will pop a flame atronach first. Lydia also is very effective at distracting the offending icicle addicts.

Basically, get their attention off me so I can race up there and chop their fucking heads off before they can react.

[MrPerson]

I stopped reading your post right here because uhhh… yeah that’s in no way correct.

Maybe they’re abusing smithing ;)

But yeah, more reasonably, just no.

[Chris_Nahr]

I just met a random dragon who dueled a random bear.

A FUCKING DRAGON. DUELING. A BEAR.

This game is awesome.

I think the bear might even have won, but can’t be sure because we helped him a bit.

Also, I barely managed to cheese my way through a fight with a giant who was way tougher than the dragon and bear combined. Lydia kept auto-resurrecting to pull the giant into range of my bow why I perched on a cliff. Nearby was an entire hut of orcs but they were miserable cowards and wouldn’t come out to fight!

[DeepT]

I am playing a stealth mage. In the early game I did what Aeon did. I stealth summoned artronarchs over and over to deal with enemies. Now that my enchanting is up, I just fireball things to death from steatlh. You would think that people could easily spot the source of said fireballs, but they usually do not detect me before they are dead.

I think playing a mage is the most challenging mode of play since your DPS is the lowest of all combat forms. It is why I am going to go through the most through run through as a mage with no armor. Every other combat form, be it heavy vs light armor or 2H, 1H, Duel Wield or Bows trivializes almost every encounter once you get smithing up and decent skills.

[Volbard]

I played a mage into the twenties, and now I’m at the same place with a sneaky archer. The archer feels less powerful, even though I’ve gotten as many archery perks as I can and I wear gear that gives bonuses to archery. I ran into a dragon priest last night that I just couldn’t kill, even though my mage killed the guy at a much lower level. Of course, he could be scaling.

In general it seems like the bow is great as long as I can sneak up on things and initiate combat, but it’s not so great when enemies burst out on top of me and there’s no where to hide. You can’t move quickly with the bow drawn, and I often end up slowly drawing my arrows back to shoot something point blank in the face while it’s already chewing on my juicy innards.

I’m not complaining, it works fine, but I don’t feel in any way overpowered.

[Calistas]

You should have helped the dragon! Bears are lethal!

[RepoMan]

I feel totally overpowered with my dual wielder at level 34, and I LOVE IT. I am going to see exactly how overpowered I can get. Dual enchanting, here I come! Two axes, one with stamina absorb and flame (e.g. health drain), the other with stamina absorb and shock (e.g. magicka drain), should just about do it. Oh yeah, and the magic resist / stamina regen armor suit, don’t forget that!

I like being able to take down anything with a quintuple time-slowed dual power attack. Lets me see more stuff, quicker. Going to find out exactly how fast one can complete the whole map on a single character.

[Walter_Yarbrough]

My 2H plate wearing orc pretty much never used sneak at all. I’ll tell you, just wading into a crazy melee is a good deal of fun.

I’m the same way. And I haven’t min-maxed, but I am about to make my first set of Dragon armor, and the hoarder in me wants to min max this a little bit.

So, here’s where I am.

100 skill in smithing - 70 or so enchanter - low 20’s Alchemy

I have a set of ‘smithing’ gear that gives me +37% total in Smithing - enchanted myself.

And smithing potions at 40,30,20, and 18% (The 18% I can make myself).

Is improving the dragon armor with the 37 +18% going to be noticeably different than doing the same with the 40% potion? Or waiting until I can enchant a better set of smithing gear?

My personal feeling is that +55% is more than good enough, but who knows, there may be something to be said for getting more ridiculous.

Also, I have no idea what to enchant on my armor - None of the current enchantments I have really grab me. Suggestions welcome.

[walTer]

So what happens to Lydia if you dismiss her. I want to give my lovely wife Aela some time away from her kitchen duties but if I ask her to help, she says that I already have someone. (I swear she has a tone when she says that and mouths “bitch” at Lydia-who is never far from my side).

Anyway I have so much time invested in Lydia I would like to keep her but I would like to give Aela a try too.

[Calistas]

Safty tip: don’t suggest that to your wife in the real world.

[Sarkus]

So what happens to Lydia if you dismiss her. I want to give my lovely wife Aela some time away from her kitchen duties but if I ask her to help, she says that I already have someone. (I swear she has a tone when she says that and mouths “bitch” at Lydia-who is never far from my side).

Anyway I have so much time invested in Lydia I would like to keep her but I would like to give Aela a try too.

When dismissed all companions simply go “home,” whereever that is. So since Lydia is your housecarl, she will just hang out at your house in Whiterun until you need her again. The other companions just go back to wherever you found them.

I’ve tried quite a few companions at this point. You can safely leave whatever gear on them as well. They will still have it later. There has also been some unconfirmed talk that companions don’t level as you adventure with them, but that they “reset” to an appropriate level when you invite them to join. If that is the case then it would make sense to switch them up once in awhile.

[walTer]

Calistas…point taken.

Thanks for that Sarkus- and plus if that is really how “leveling” works for them, I will definitely be switching up every level or so.

[Brian_Seiler]

Bethesda actually put a justification for why you can’t block with dual weapons in a textbook on combat that you find quite early in the game: your grasp isn’t strong and secure enough for blocking unless you hold a weapon with both hands!

They did better.

Don’t try blocking if you have two weapons. You will only get confused. Much better to hit twice anyway