Skyrim Special Edition

I haven’t tried a mage in Skyrim, but magic was most definitely broken the other way in Morrowind and Oblivion. You could use spells in combination with weapons/enchantment to make every fight trivial in Morrowind around level 18 or 20. In Oblivion, it was the same, but you had to get to higher level first. Their limits on enchantment and destruction magic kind of put a lid on how easy it got. So it was challenging for longer before it became trivial. I didn’t try magic in Skyrim, but one of the things I loved about Skyrim is that it remained challenging (on the hardest difficulty, called “master” I believe) well into 100+ hours into the game. The other games got easy much much faster than that. They keep getting better with each iteration on how to balance the game so that it stays challenging for longer.

Of course, I didn’t play Skyrim for more than 120 hours or so, so I only got to see a tiny sliver of it. Whereas you say 600+ hours, so you saw a lot more. That’s about how long I spent in Oblivion I think, all told, if you count watching all my friend’s characters as we all played on the big TV. Oblivion on the 360 was an incredible communal experience.

DeepT is correct - offensive magic is underpowered in Skyrim. There are a few level points in the game where it is actually quite difficult to defeat the creatures you encounter with magic if that’s all you’ve developed, while that’s never an issue with weapons.

Rock8man,
I was talking about destruction magic specifically. Other kinds of magic were very good. Summons were quite good in spite of the horrid AI. Every cast frenzy on a room full of bad guys? It can be very effective. I also abused invisibility quite a bit. However, if you wanted to be tossing fireballs and lighting bolts as your main thing, then you were in for a very difficult time.

I also tried the nuker mage in Oblivion and it just didn’t work. I think I even came to the conclusion that if I had unlimited mana it still would not be viable.

Come to think of it, I guess I’ve never tried pure Destruction. I’ve played/watched bare-fisted characters, thief/stealth characters, sword/board characters, and mages that do a variety of magic, and other characters. I guess I always thought that if you’re a mage, you’d use all the different schools of magic, or at least several of them.

My main is a shock and block character. Heavy armor, shields and destruction magic. If it wasn’t for maximum enchantment ability, it would not be an easy fight

My first and favorite character was a dual wielding sword guy with some magic backing him up. Mostly I got super into the enchating/blacksmithing stuff - the combination of the two bore delicious fruit. It was amazing. I later tried a full on destruction mage and didn’t get very far, mostly for the reasons outlined above (no way to inherently improve the damage output of spells, makes it less effective than usting bow!).

I’m really excited to have a reason to play Skyrim again though - I haven’t touched it since the last expansion dropped, and I only played each of the (very cool, iirc) expansions once, so a reason to return is much appreciated. I tried modding the game several times over the years, but the list of mods has grown to a kind of stupid degree, and in every case by the time I get it looking good with no (or few) glitches or strange issues, I’m pretty well not into playing again. The idea I can get a really nice looking, modern Skyrim by clicking “play” is incredibly appealing.

Use the nexus mod manager, it makes modding super easy. If you want a real hardcore experience, try the Requiem mod. If you want a much more gentler experience try SPERG which is a talent tree replacement. Then there is, Enderall which is a total conversion. Also if you want to do a mage, I highly recommend the Apocalypse spells mod.

I wonder if existing mods will have problems with this new version of skyrim or if they will mostly work.

Its really disappointing that we won’t be seeing ES6 for at least 4 more years…

How long was the gap between Daggerfall and Morrowind? I’m fine with it. ;)

I hope its not that long, and if its, I sure hope some other good open world RPGs come out in the mean time.

Technomancer, Elex, Call of the Tenebrae & Two Worlds III… what else? Is there supposed to be yet another Dragon Age?

Cyberpunk 2077 from CDPR.

Two Worlds III is encouraging. I sure hope they keep their magic system and expand upon it. I am surprised that other games have not captured the mechanic.

6 year gap (i think) between Daggerfall and Morrowind. Next year it will be 6 years since Skyrim was released.

This Skyrim re-release will help me endure the wait but I just hope it’s not too long.

ES: Arena 1994
ES: Daggerfall 1996
ES: Battlespire 1997
ES: Redguard 1998
ES: Morrowind 2002
ES: Oblivion 2006
Fallout 3 2008
ES: Skyrim 2011
Fallout 4 2015

As the games get more graphically intense, I think it’s inevitable that there will be a larger gap between the games. Look at the 7 year gap between Fallout 3 and 4.

Plus there is also Elder Scrolls Online from a different developer in 2014 that’s still growing, that can theoretically have the entire world of Elder Scrolls in there eventually. When I played that during the free weekend, I had to admit, the combat felt more like Morrowind/Oblivion than it did an MMO. But it didn’t feel as good as Skyrim’s combat.

It doesn’t, sadly, but it’s still great, and having that much Tamriel to roam around in is so great.

You forgot the release of Fallout New Vegas which was in 2010.

That was done by Obsidian. When discussing the gap between games done by Bethesda Game Studios, it’s not really relevant, I don’t think. Though i guess it is relevant if you count Elder Scrolls Online, an ES game done by a different studio.

No no no. SkyrimLE:Mod Organizer - Step Mods | Change The Game is what you should use. Yes, it takes a little more work upfront. It pays off in spades.

The truth. This is it.