3221

Also for smithing don’t forget to kill animals and grab their hides to make leather armor out of. If you have extra hides/leather, you can make some small leather armor items to skill up that take a small amount of leather I seem to recall.

Now that my wife picked this up during the holiday sale, I am back playing again and enjoying it quite a bit. Now I should probably finally finish this main quest after 180 hours on this one character, heh. I even just finished that Dawnbreaker quest myself and am using it :).

3222

This probably just a problem I have from playing first person shooters where every enemy is nicely defined by a red name floating over their head.

But is there any way (without using some mod that puts a red name floating above an NPC’s head) to better tell whether an NPC off in the distance is hostile (e.g. a bandit) or non-hostile (e.g. some farmer)?

I’m trying to play a stealthy archer type who strikes from a distance without warning. This is difficult to do when I have to get close enough to something to be detected to tell what it is, with the alternative being plunking someone from 60 yards away, and then finding out that he was a farmer (or City Guard, or something similar) when I get to his body.

3223

Heh, that Dawnbreaker quest was a toughie for me at level 18, must’ve been way easier for you.

3224

I play an archer also (level 53 right now) and no, the only way to tell an enemy is if you are close enough to zoom in and target someone and see their name on the bar above (who you are targeting.) The other way is to look at the red dots and see if they correspond to what you are seeing.

It normally isn’t a huge problem, but once I got into the civil war and was in the middle of big battles, it was REALLY hard to tell who was Imperial and who was Stormcloak. The armor is essentially the same color.

3225

That is about the level I was when I did it. I may have had Lydia with me but I don’t remember. I used her early on as back up and then to pack mule status. Now I do everything solo.

3226

Brian, if I had it to do over, I’d put all my perks into Smithing, Archery, Sneak, Lockpicking, Enchanting, and Smithing. I think I wasted a lot on things like Alchemy (I just buy and find potions.) Also I advanced my Magic skills just enough to be able to conjure up some healing and a flame atranoch (sp) - early on, the flame helper was a very nice aid in some battles. You advance to a point where you don’t really need him any more.

Also, I put almost all my level up points in Stamina, as that determines how much you can carry.

3227

Oh, I’m primarily a mage, so most of my perks are going to destruction, restoration and one-handed (hurrrrr). ;) Having a great time so far.

3228

Yeah, I’m mostly solo now too, don’t wanna lose another Lydia. LYDIAAAAAA! weeps

3229

Go to Solitude…there is another.

3230

Huh, I was just there for the main quest. I’ll head on back.

3231

A Mage! I will be fascinated to see how a mage makes his way through the game. If I ever “finish” and do a restart, it will be as a mage.

3232

Well, it’s more of a battlemage. Been playing a Breton battlemage in every ES game since Daggerfall. One hand to blow up baddies from far away, the other to slice and dice/pummel anyone else who gets close enough. I love how varied it can be.

3233

I also started off as a pure mage, but I loved sneaking around so much, I ended up filling my Sneak skill tree first, as well as my archery, which is also really high. I do use magic in every fight, it’s just that even with Mage Stone, which is making me level up my magic skills faster since the beginning of the game, I still haven’t reached high enough level in Destruction and Conjuration to be able to put any more points into those perks. So in the meantime, I’ve been putting it in Sneak (in which I’ve got every perk) and archery.

I wonder if the magic skills are so slow on purpose? Or is there a bug and the Mage stones I activated right at the beginning is slowing down my magic skills progress instead of speeding it up?

I guess it doesn’t help that I do end up killing a lot of things with the bow after I run out of Mana, er…, sorry, Magicka. (Such a stupid name).

I finally enchanted my latest (Ebony Superior) bow so that it steals mana now. So I switch to the bow after I run out of Mana, and then switch back to magic.

3234

Just a quick follow up post. One set of Stones that I was INCREDIBLY tempted by are the Steed Stones. Being able to carry around more weight? That sounds soooo awesome. But my magic skills go up so slowly even with the Mage Stones activated, I hated to think what would happen if I switched away from the Mage Stones to something else.

3235

BTW, has anyone changed their character’s name with the console’s showracemenu command? Is it pretty painless? I’d kind of like to change my Imperial character’s name from Johanna to something more Roman-sounding like most of the Imperial names I see in the game.

3236

My Nord Warrior is maxed out on single weapon and heavy armor. Those will pretty much max out themselves over time allowing you to start filling up the perks inside. I also have added to alchemy (although I am pretty much done there), archery and smithing.

Smithing to me is the oddity of the group. It has some definite benefits in that you can improve your armor, weapons and manufacture items for re-sale, but the leveling system begs for “cheating”. I have for the most part not done the dagger-dagger-dagger thing but without some sort of kiting you would never level up high enough or fast enough to enjoy its benefits. I don’t know whether the game designers imagine you should kill and skin every animal you see and mine every deposit you come across but that would be bad in so many ways.

3237

What you want is the Instinctive Exploration mod. A solid way to identify from a distance without spamming red names.
vid 1
vid 2

Test it before committing or wait for an updated release. Reports say with the current build if you save a game with the mod running and later load the save without the mod running it’ll crash. (The official word from Bethesda is that once you have a savegame with a mod .esp running you should always keep using that .esp with that save from then onwards. But most mods can uninstall with more grace.)

3238

So I just had an amazing experience. Earlier, I found a dude sitting next to a cavern (Mother Moss Cavern) who asked me to help kill the baddies inside (a bear and some of those green women buggy things I can’t recall the name of) so he could bury his friends in a proper burial. I helped him out and went on my way.

Well, after helping a dog reunite with his master tonight, I went to Falkreath to meet the Jarl since he sent me a letter. I went to the inn to get some sleep, and when I went out to the bar area, there was the dude from the cavern, and as he walked by, he said thanks again for helping him, and he’d never forget what I did for him.

I have never had that happen in a game. I was freaking floored, not only that an NPC remembered me from virtual weeks in the past, but that he remembered me well enough to hold me in high regard. Amazing shit.

3239

I seem to remember something like that happening in GTA IV (which was in no way as good a game IMHO as Skyrim).

3240

There is a lot of wonderful synergy between the various things happening all around Skyrim. It must have been a nightmare to make and keep track off.

The only thing I find a bit annoying, is that as savior of a town, holding back the enemy, driving off a Dragon from the town as well, the guards refer to me as “The new Companion, who fetches ale for the others”?

Other than that - despite having spent 130 hours on the pc in the game, I’ve spent 45 hours now on the Xbox with the game as well…such a brilliant game!