There’s no magic compasses, inventory screens, or dragons in real life either.
Leveling should get slower the higher up you go. Supposedly slows down noticeably once you hit 30… or so I hear, only 28 myself now.
Razgon
2783
Pfff, you’ve never been in Denmark, I can tell.
So do followers come pre-equiped with “base” armor and weapons, and how do you tell what they are? With Lydia for example, it appears (from looking at her) that she is using basic iron or steel armor and shield even when nothing appears in her inventory. I noticed that when I give her a steel helmet and Skyforged steel sword she’ll auto-equip it, replacing whatever she was using previously, so I assume they are better than her previous gear. I’d like to buy or craft her some upgraded equipment, just a little something nice to wear around while we’re out on the town since she’s sworn to carry my burdens and all. How do I know what is an upgrade for her though? Trial and error?
Observation and trial and error for me. Like you already said, she uses a heavy armor and two handed weapons, and occasionally switches to a bow. So I give her those things, and when they’re better than what she had before, she switches to them. I also give her extra stuff to carry when I’m out of room, which leads to interesting things like her using staffs in a fight where she comes in and fries/freezes/zaps some enemies while holding a two handed staff. I guess even stalves count as two handed weapons for her, which is kinda cool.
NPCs do have base equipment, and sometimes it does not show up in their inventory in-game at all. The best way to know what it is currently is to use the Skyrim NPC Editor. You can use the editor to make modifications to a particular NPC. You would have to remove the default armor entirely with the editor to make an NPC wear robes, for example, even if the NPC only has 0 armor clothes since robes have 0 armor and the game only looks at base armor value (or base damage for weapons) when deciding what the NPC will equip. A knife with great enchantments on it but a base damage of 5 will never be used in preference to a plain iron sword with better base damage and no enchantments. Same thing goes for armor. The only way around this in many cases is to remove all armor and weapons from a companion NPC (leaving them naked when not following you) and then adding only the armor and weapon you want them to have.
ElGuapo
2787
I have a slightly spoilery question about the Companions.
Companions questline spoilers
[spoiler]Is there really no way to continue the quest line without becoming a werewolf? Because that turns it from the Fighter’s Guild into the Werewolf guild, which I have little interest in for this character.
Is there a normal fighters guild? I had planned on playing my character as a melee focused fighter, but if the Companions is the only fighter’s guild questline, I won’t bother.[/spoiler]
Except, there can be this bug …
Guards still take an arrow to the knee …
Even after you turn back, guards won’t recognize that status. You will still get the random guard comments (like the “Is that fur coming out of your ears?”) as if you were still a werewolf.
JeffL
2791
So, I see these piles of hay in a dungeon and elsewhere, and they seem to be there for a purpose - I just KNOW there is something hidden in the pile of hay! But even with a pitchfork in my inventory, I don’t seem to have an option to search in the hay.
Is there anything ever hidden in hay piles, and if so, what do I need to search it?
Secondly - big move, sent Lydia home (had her from beginning to now, level 30) and have Mjoll as my current companion. She seems to be pretty tough and loves to fight, and get some new dialog. But it is a bittersweet move, as Lydia and I have such a history! It does seem like she should be marry-able (I’d read that she was intended to be marryable, but is not - on the 360 so console commands are of no help to me on issues like this.)
Juste
2792
I really noticed a slowdown when i hit 40 (52 now i think). But i did “cheat” in that i did every cheap leveling trick in the book (auto sneaking, casting muffle, smithing like mad, exploiting the speech bug etc) so i leveled crazy fast in the beginning. 'tis the life of the achievement whore.
z22
2793
Rockman, I also walk almost everywhere and only use Fast Travel when I need to go to places that are a royal pain to navigate (Greybeards, I’m looking right at your mountain ranch!).
I’m closing in on L45 and I’ve barely done any of the main quests. :|
I haven’t yet decided which “side” I want to ally with!! :(
This is incorrect, on two counts.
Lydia is a one-handed warrior, like all the housecarls. If you give her a two handed weapon, she might use it if it’s significantly better than any one-handed you give her, but she prefers one-handed and shield.
Every npc has “tagged” skills (to use a term from fallout 3). These are the ones which get better the higher level they are, and the skills which that npc will take perks in. Housecarls’ tagged skills are One-handed, Heavy Armor, Archery, and Block.
Jenassa, the Dunmer lady in the Whiterun archery shop, is good at Archery, Light Armor, One-Handed, Block, and Sneak, so at higher levels you might see her do that sneak roll, or you might see a mage with the perk that makes enemies stagger from spells.
The best way to find out what weapon/armor someone is good at (for some reason their default equipment isn’t always what they prefer) is to give them weapons/armor of around the same tier and see what they equip.
The second thing you got wrong is staffs. They don’t count as two-handed. An NPC will use them if they think it’ll do more damage than whatever weapon they have.
Yeah my followers equip one handed sword/staff all the time. They blast fireballs or whatever everywhere as they close and then use the sword when they’re in range.
Interesting. I’ve given Lydia all kinds of equipment that I find, including really good shields. But she’s always chosen to go with two handed weapons instead. I guess the two handed weapons I’m finding are way better than the one handed weapons. (I don’t use either one, so I give them all to Lydia to carry).
I had a great moment today when I slowly slid down a mountain and found a wrecked ship on the sea, and was suddenly beset by bandits. I thought it was going to be no problem at all, but then a lightning-using mage bandit starting kicking my ass and I was surely going to die when suddenly he was hit by an arrow and a phantom wolf came down and started attacking him along with my flame atronach. Hurrah! Lydia had made it the long way around down the mountain after me, and had used her bow and the two handed Summon Familiar staff I’d just given her in the last dungeon! Such a sweet rescue, just in the nick of time. It was action movie perfect timing.
Pogo
2797
Except you could have paused at any time to eat 18 bowls of soup and have enough health to finish the fight yourself.
Yeah, I try to pause the game as little as possible while in combat. Obviously it’s unavoidable for some things. Like I do start with the bow, then use the d-pad to switch to offensive spells, and healing spells, but I try to avoid using potions, just like I tried to avoid stimpacks during combat in Fallout 3. I do allow myself to use potions if I can duck behind cover somewhere during the fight. That makes it feel like a more realistic option even in the thick of combat, and doesn’t feel like cheating.
I must say, I really, really enjoy the mechanics of this game’s combat a lot. I could never go back to Morrowind after playing Oblivion because I enjoyed the moment to moment combat gameplay so much more in Oblivion, and the same is true now from the transition from Oblivion to Skyrim. The differences are subtle this time, not drastic (like they were in the transition between Morrowind and Oblivion), but they are just enough to really strike a nerve.
NPC followers equipe weapons with the highest base stats, and ignore any enchantments. All 2-h weapons have a higher base attack.
She is more proficient in 1h weapons, but due to base stats of 2h weapons, she will equipe it.
It gets annoying when I want her to be a mule for all my crap, but have haul any 2h weapons myself.
