2661

You might already be aware of this but if you have a horse you can fast travel overburdened. There’s no way it would take me two hour to move all my stuff and I would not be fighting any dragons unless one attacked a city.

2662

I finished the main quest today, and got my character married straight afterwards.
Unfortunately the groom decided to run off halfway through the ceremony, and wasn’t anywhere to be found. In the end I reloaded and went through the ceremony again, and this time around Farkas didn’t suffer from cold feet.

I’m far from finished with the game, there is still so much to do. But I bought a bunch of shiney new (and some very old) games this sale from Steam and GOG, so I think I might take a bit of a break, let my character have a honeymoon, and go back later.
Still, what an amazing game. I can see myself going back to it often in years to come, just like Morrowind.

2663

Brian is not sane. Dude literally walked at a slow pace in realtime from Whiterun to Solitude, when moving via fast travel literally would have been trivial by comparison (either making multiple trips or just getting a horse!). Kudos for being hardcore though.

I didn’t realize he actually fought a dragon at walking pace. That is even funnier!

2664

Holy shit, that’s hilarious. Two hours, man. Brian, at no point did you just think “hang on, I’ll just take two fast-travel trips instead of walking the whole goddamn way”?

2665

The problem, of course, is that it would have been more like ten trips, with loading screens, plus all the time to run around the house and put things in the places the things go. Perhaps in my imagination I overestimated the loading time.

As for horses, I briefly considered it, but after the entire wagon man debacle, I made the apparently incorrect assumption that I would break the horse too.

And, just to clarify, it didn’t take me two hours. It was closer to three. It would have been two hours if I followed the best path, but I ended up walking up quite a few blind alleys on account of the geography of Skyrim being peppered with random impassable mountains. And the dragon doesn’t count because I didn’t get the soul. Though in all fairness I didn’t really deserve the soul because I outleveled him by, like, all the levels. I’m just sad that I didn’t get the chance to whack him with my soul stealing mace, though I’m starting to understand why necromancers do their thing in this game. It’s sure easier to get a grand soul that way than trying to hunt down whatever magical species of Rhinursacatagon carry those things around.

2666

What. The. Hell.

Seriously, Brian? Because… why?? Are you one of the hardcore “fast travel breaks immersion” folks who avoids it at all costs?

Because 2+ hours of walking at a snail’s pace from one capital to another would have me gouging my eyes out. NO loot is that important to keep.

2667

Brian, you are insane. That is something an insane person does.

2668

Is there any actual upper weight limit? Or can you carry what you like while walking?

2669

Pretty sure there’s no limit. Also you can have a companion carry unlimited stuff through an exploit mentioned earlier in this thread. Then you can still fast travel and they’ll come with you.

2670

Not at all. I just thought that the aggregate time, put together, that it would take for me to go through all my crap in my old house, walk out of the house, fast travel to Solitude, enter my new house, put the things where they go, walk out of my new house, fast travel to Whiterun, go into my old house, and then repeat until finished to move all of my stuff would be approximately equal to the time that it would take to just hit X at all my boxes and then walk there the slow way. What the fast travel would have cost me, then, is time in the game world, which is where the bulk of the stuff that even seems crazy to me comes in, because even though I really do suspect that it’s largely irrelevant to everything, it would just feel wrong for me to spend like a month of in-game time on that while my other quests were stalled. In practice, it didn’t take me more than one full dark-light-dark cycle to do it.

Also, I really, really thought (mostly wishful thinking) that I would be able to catch a ride from the wagon guy, and the wagon guy is way the hell down there away from Whiterun, so the cost to go back up the hill and start doing it the right way was definitely going to make it at least as expensive in real world time to do it the fast travel way, so at that point I decided I was pot committed and went through with it. And, hell, it makes a fun thing to laugh about.

2671

I have to comment on the ingame time. I too am mindful of it. I don’t know why. When I was doing the mage college quest, the NPCs had a sense of urgency I could not ignore, that I should not dilly-dally. There was a serious bad dude, at that very moment, about to destroy the entire college. Time was of the essence! When I was about to travel back to the college for the final confrontation from gaining the last item, I realized I was 298/300 of my carry weight. I could have traveled to my home in Whiterun, drop off my stuff, then go to the final battle, but that would seem like it would take days! What if he destroyed the college because of my lack of carry capacity?! So I walked back into the dungeon, found a random chest to unload my stuff, wrote it down on a piece of paper where I left everything so I won’t forget, and then fast-traveled to the college.

2672

Okay, fair enough. And you’re right that it makes for a great story. But I’m gonna go ahead and agree with the thread diagnosis: you are completely batshit insane. :)

I’ve moved my character only once, and made one fast-travel trip to do it. With Lydia in tow, I loaded up all the important stuff in my old house, stacked her full of excess crap so I wasn’t overburdened, left the house, and traveled. The rest of the stuff I couldn’t carry got left behind. It’s just pixel junk anyway - potions, ores, ingots, leather, ingredients, crap like that. Nothing I needed immediately and most of it stays in my old house to this day. If I’m desperately short on Iron Ingots, I can just go get them. I’m crazy like that. ;)

But again, kudos for being the hardest of hardcore. Overburdened dragon fighting… I don’t even want to imagine that.

RE: In-game time and NPCs rushing you - I can’t help but laugh that off. Typically I go and do sidequests and gratuitously “Wait” for 24-hour periods just to troll the quest-givers.

2673

omg, Thank you! I wanted to know this too, and I am 35 levels in!

2674

This isn’t me being leet, but just honest curiosity: how are you only level 28 after 120 hours? I’m about 100 hours into the game, and I’ve gotten two separate characters to level 35.

FWIW I find that archery really tails off in usefulness at higher levels. Guys have enough hit points that stealth arrow attacks aren’t doing more than maybe 1/3 their health bar, and normal arrow attacks are barely phasing them. For a light armor / light weapon type character at this level it’s basically 30x backstabs or nothing.

2675

In other news: I think I’m done with my sneaky character. I’ve done Dark Brotherhood and Thieve’s Guild, I really don’t feel like doing the main quest and I’m deliberately eschewing the Civil War on this character (he just doesn’t care!)

I want to play a mage for my third playthrough. I was originall thinking an Imperial Battle-Mage (Heavy Armor plus lots of offensive casting); is this viable? Or should I consider perhaps just going a more traditional mage route, using robes and whatnot?

2676

The question should be whether or not you want to roll another character; you’ve already completed the two meatiest quest lines outside of the MQ. If your sneaky PC isn’t maxed out I would just keep him and clean up the countryside. I mean, do you REALLY want to go through Helgen again?

2677

Shit, I didn’t know can fast travel while on a horse while overburdened!! Whenever I filled myself up in a cave I would get on my horse and make the long trek (not so long by horse-maybe 5 minutes) back to Whiterun.

Also, Skyrim is awesome. On the other hand, the combat in Skyrim is absolutely shit. It isn’t fun. I feel like I’m in a tank with a sword. I find myself playing in 3rd person view a lot (seems superior to me for everything except for archery and looting stuff) and I really wish they had a bit more agile combat system. I wouldnt mind if Elder Scrolls 6 was the exact same game, just with a decent combat system.

2678

Heavy armor, while not optimal, is totally viable. You’ll want to put some points into Stamina and Health that would normally be used for magicka in a mage, so your pool will be smaller. (My 1st character, pure mage, put nearly every point into magic, none at all in Stamina, and I was a glass cannon, wrecking enemies but dying fast if I screwed up.)

You’ll also have to spend perks on armor, which are perks a pure mage might use on another school of magic. And you’ll sacrifice double-strength stoneflesh-type spells, which make a cloth wearer extremely well armored for short timespans. (Of course, the best piece of gear for casting, the Dragon Priest Mask Morokei, is listed as armor, so I couldn’t make use of that perk on my pure mage anyway.)

From my experience, Destruction is quite strong enough to be your primary means of damage dealing, in spite of what others have said. My pure mage never touched a weapon (except when quest-required). It’s a bit tricky, definitely recommended for advanced players, but there was no time except the very early levels where I had much more trouble killing enemies than with my warrior. You have to use all the tools in the box, not just fling fireballs. Cloak spells, runes, and wall spells strategically placed are vital. For the later levels, it’s essential you do the quests to get the Master-level spells in the schools you use, but most essential for destruction. The knockback perk I highly recommend, too. Interrupting a great wopping dragon before he rains firey death can be the difference.

You won’t get the magic regen buffs of robes, so you’ll want to make that your primary enchantment or bring a lot of magic potions with you. Magic regeneration is, I think, the single most important factor for someone using Destruction as a focus.

tl;dr Yeah, go for it. It might be a bit more challenging, but that’s half the fun!

2679

My playing style in a game like this is a lot of just wandering around, exploring. I don’t fast travel anywhere, and I haven’t done much smithing/enchanting at all. I’ve only done about 4 or 5 of the Thieve’s Guild missions, and only enough Main Quest missions to get my Grey Beard’s full shout. So my leveling has come almost exclusively from archery, sneak, lockpicking. I have never stood in front of a forge and made 30 iron daggers just to level up (not saying that is wrong, just not my style of play.) I have enchanted some weapons, made a few items, just haven’t done any grinding at all.

I’m honestly surprised, though, that the game says I’ve played 120 hours, as I haven’t been to, guessing, over 30% of the map. I’ve never been to Solitude, for example (on my way for a Thieves Guild mission.)

On the archery - Are you using bows with fire and bows with frost enchantments? I use my fire bow and frost bows with 18 level arrows and do OK. Most things/people go down in one or two shots (most are sneak, my sneak is up to about 85 right now) though I’m now running into some bad guy bosses that take maybe 5 shots or so (and the key with them is staying out of their range, because they can kill me in two or three strikes.)

2680

Huh, I guess not fast traveling will do it. fwiw my second character didn’t do any grinding at all, it was all questing and normal traveling and I hit level 35 in about 50-60 hours. I tried doing the no fast travel thing, I even shut off the radar for a play session, but I just couldn’t handle it. There’s enough fedexing along the various quest lines that fast travel is IMO required.