Madrias

Yeah, not sure why they're that overpowered. I get that they're a DLC enemy, and that you're supposed to go to Solstheim when relatively high level, but they're a menace. Someone failed at balancing out their attack damage versus their health - It wouldn't be as bad if they hit like freight trains, but could be taken down about as fast as they can take you down, but instead, they're like tanky, hard-to-hit dragons. On the flipside, yeah, I remember that bit of "fun" from Immersive Creatures. "Let's dump enemies on the map with no care whatsoever about the actual level scaling of the world." I ended up ripping the mod out because, well, these tanky turds are put in places that they don't belong. Basically, only two creature mods I use these days are "Animals are not Monsters" which makes most wildlife less likely to attack (Which is a blessing and a half when you just want to make it to a city with a load of loot, and you know that all those bear, saber cat, and wolf pelts are going to overburden you), and "Werewolves Occurring Naturally" which puts werewolves in the predator spawn lists so you actually see some outside of the Companions Questline (which pairs well when dealing with Moonlight Tales, because getting beaten up by werewolves can lead to certain lunar afflictions if not treated quickly enough). Stuff like Immersive Creatures can be good, but... I'm wary of anything that puts DLC content on the mainland, because Bethesda has the balancing skill of a toddler standing on a ball. Which is to say - They don't know how to balance their DLC versus their base game.

A bit late to the party (Yes, I checked the date this time, I'm only raising the dead a little here), but, I've found a few occasions where upgrading out of enchanted gear makes some sense. In this case, with an iron cuirass with +20 health, that's a great find for a lower-level player. Generally, and this is just from my experience, you want to replace it if: You get a Steel Cuirass with +10 health or more (obvious - It's better armor with a similar enchant) You get a steel cuirass and have the smithing skill to upgrade it to at least Superior. (At this point, the armor's protection starts to loosely equal the health enchant.) You find another piece of gear (amulet, gloves, or shield) with a Fortify Health enchantment. (Use that gear for your active fortify health, disenchant the iron cuirass - it's heavy and not very protective - and use the best-rated armor you have in its place) You can enchant an item with Fortify Health to the strength of +10 or higher. (This assumes you've already learned Fortify Health from some other bit of gear. At this point, any armor can become Fortify Health armor.) You find Orcish, Dwarven, or Steel Plate on your adventures. (The armor-rating boost from these begins to offset the enchantment, especially if you find multiple pieces of a set.) You find Elven or Glass Light Armor and choose to do a light-armor build. (Not always the most obvious choice, sometimes characters hate light armor, but the movement speed penalty of heavy armor means you're going to get hit more, while light armor relies on not getting hit through agility.) You join the Dawnguard and get their Heavy Armor (Similarly to #5, it's the armor rating boost.) Spend two level ups on Health (+10 each time) and immediately afterward, disenchant the iron cuirass and put on any heavier-duty Heavy Armor cuirass. In the early game, this is easier to do, and by raising your native health by +20 early on, you avoid falling into a sunken cost fallacy of dragging the iron cuirass through far more than it should have gone because +20 health is good. If you're past about level 15 or 20, vendors will often have better armor with potentially higher enchantments. It may be worth doing the level up thing (+2 levels into Health and dumping the iron cuirass) and buying a better set of armor. I don't know the numerics of it, but from my experiences, Fortify Health is one of the weaker enchantments to carry forward for me. It's better in the late game if you're having survivability problems, and do a little bit of casual alchemy (not the alchemy, enchanting, smithing loop, but make some Fortify Enchanting potions, get the strongest enchantment out of Fortify Health that you can within reason, and apply it) to give you some extra health. Personally, the ones I always get into trouble with are items enchanted with Health Regeneration. At what point is it worth dropping an item that gives you faster health regen in favor of taking less damage overall? Basically the long-and-short of it is this: Skyrim is very casual-gamer-friendly. If at any time, you're worried that your current enchanted item is essential to survival, put two or three levels worth of points into your health and you'll probably be better off. What I generally do is, up to level 10 or 11, I dump points strictly into my health, no matter whether I'm a warrior, rogue, or mage. No matter what, you'll appreciate 100 extra hit-points, and while enemies start hitting harder by that point, well, any armor is good to protect that extra pool. Even if you just use the extra-fast-levels (up to Level 5) for health gains, that's still 50 points of extra health, and there's not much gear out there that'll give you +50 health for free.

Ah, missed that it was two years out of date. The thread, in my defense, was near the top of the Skyrim Spoilers thread grouping. Even with all I said, I don't hate Dawnguard. I dislike certain aspects of it, but at the same time, it did do good things. Just a lot of it does feel like an afterthought. I think most of Dawnguard's minor problems would be easily ignored if we didn't have to drag Serana around, though. I can certainly agree there. Part of it is the fact that she interacts with everything. You stop to talk to a quest NPC, she's going to find the nearest idle marker and make noise with it. Or she'll walk into your back, or walk between you and the NPC, or complain loudly about the weather or the sun while you're trying to get what little information Skyrim provides out of the NPC you're talking to. This, of course, can be disasterous with mods in place, because if the voice acting is quieter than normal, and more information is passed on by voice, and then Serana pipes up with one of her classic sun complaints, well, there's a good chance you've missed out on some information. Part of it is that she's a forced companion. She's the DLC-long escort quest who breaks your stealth at all times, resurrects your thralls as her zombies so they ash out later, when she's not resurrecting wildlife to annoy you with, and the few times I've made the mistake of dismissing her or making her stay somewhere (when possible) and going ahead on a Dawnguard quest, only to soft-lock and have to drag her along and do things the hard way, it's infuriating. I'm flat out honest when I say that, until Inigo (the mod) released and revived bringing a companion along, Serana was the reason I quit taking companions. Because I misremembered them as all being like Serana. And, I agree, the whole "Good guys who are worse than the bad guys" trope sucked with Dawnguard. As I said, that alone makes the whole Dawnguard-half of the questline feel like it was a panic-fix when some intern asked about players who don't want to be vampires. Bethesda has a few problems when it comes to fantasy. They shy away from common fantasy tropes that would be good. As said, the Dawnguard being a holy order of paladins here to cleanse Skyrim of the Vampire Menace would do a whole lot for combating Isran's rotten attitude. Their writers are following the worst possible strategy for writing fantasy or sci-fi. Don't "dumb it down" because then you just end up with "There's nothing interesting here." People still praise Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood questline because it was good. It combined story with fun game mechanics and some plot twists on the way. They jump feet-first into all the rotten fantasy tropes that should be avoided. Animals are not monsters. Wolves are smart - they'll run away from an armored warrior unless they're absolutely starving, and if you take one or two out, the pack will scatter. Bears are territorial, but you're not going to see seven of them between Windhelm and Riften on the road. Likewise, they reluctantly gave us dragons, and it took them 3 DLC to give us the ability to temporarily subjugate a dragon to ride it. Why can't we call down Odahviing any time we want to fly from Riften to Solitude? Or hitch a ride on Durnehviir to fly to Markarth?I will admit, the dungeons are great. I loved wandering through the Forgotten Vale. The Soul Cairn was incredible and spooky in all the right ways. I wish there was more of that and not "Abuse the Radiant Quest System" like we got for most of the side-quests in the DLC. The questline itself is decent. It just lacks replay value because the main quest doesn't change beyond a few words here-and-there if you join Harkon's or Isran's side. Fighting Harkon at the end is a good bit of fun. When it comes to comparing it with the other DLCs... Yeah, sadly, Dawnguard is the best of the 3. It did what it set out to do, giving us an "evil vampires want to black out the sun with an ancient artifact" questline, and its alternate "We're stopping the evil vampires" questline. We got a couple new locations, a few characters worth talking about, and one rotten forced follower. Dragonborn gets hyped up because of Morrowind/Bloodmoon nostalgia. While I generally like Dragonborn's story better, it has several fatal flaws. The first being when you go to the Temple of Miraak the first time and have to put up with Frea as a forced follower, though at least she doesn't forcibly dismiss your current follower to tag along. The second being that someone clearly overheard all the whining about "Skyrim is too easy" and decided to make everything a bloody tank. It's gotten to the point where if I have to go to Solstheim, I kick the difficulty back from Adept to Novice because I'm not putting up with that crap. The third fatal flaw of Dragonborn is two-halves-of-the-same-whole. The Miraak fight. The Last Dragonborn against the First Dragonborn has a lot of potential for excitement. Except he's just a bandit with really high health, three instant-heals, and the ability to use a few shouts. And the other half of it? We don't even get the satisfaction of killing him, that's stolen from us by Hermaeus Mora. Hearthfire, as much maligned as it is, gave a great deal for something so small. Three plots of land, upon which you can build your own home with items from the worldspace, in a few unique styles. The ability to adopt orphans to create a family. Planting rare/hard-to-find ingredients in order to have more of them for later. Essentially, if I had to rank the DLCs in how much I enjoy playing them, it's Dragonborn, Dawnguard, and Hearthfire. Because Dragonborn has a more complete story, and because Hearthfire isn't really played so much as it's a side mission to the side missions. If I had to rank them in how well I believe they did what was intended, it's Hearthfire, Dragonborn, and Dawnguard. Hearthfire nailed what was intended. Dragonborn feels complete. Dawnguard feels like they were in a rush, got caught by surprise, and shoved the DLC out the door without realizing there is no "patch it later" on DLC. If I rank them instead in their potential for story-telling, well... Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and then Dragonborn. Dawnguard may have dropped the ball several times regarding opportunities to bring in fantasy tropes, but it has potential. Mods can fix Dawnguard. Hearthfire is nothing but story-telling potential. It's a great Skyrim "rags-to-riches" goal. Save up enough gold to buy a plot of land. Build a house there. Make it the best house you can. Dragonborn has the best story, but inherently, a great story means it has no real flexibility to say that this was intended when it wasn't written that way. Am I disappointed with Dawnguard as a DLC? Yes. But it did a better job than the other two.

Sorry about the little bit of necromancy - I found this topic (and a scroll of Raise Zombie) and thought it was a bit interesting. --- I'm in agreement on quite a few points: Dawnguard (DLC) feels rushed/incomplete Dawnguard (Faction) feels underwhelming Isran is one of the most annoying characters. Serana is an annoyance Dawnguard's guild quests all suck. In fact, I'll go semi-controversial and say that Dawnguard kinda sucks.Let's start at the top with #1. As a whole, the Dawnguard DLC feels rushed and incomplete. The quests predominantly send you to locations that already existed, with the exception of Fort Dawnguard, Castle Volkihar, and the Forgotten Vale. Through all of it, 90% of the quests are a form of vaguely-radiant fetch quest. The "exciting thing," a new variant of vampirism, is so hyped up that it's sickening, and it's very clear that the werewolves and the Dawnguard were just an afterthought when some intern said, "But... What if someone doesn't want to be a vampire?" It's not even as if being a Vampire Lord is all that good, either - It's like a werewolf but with a button to push to do magic instead of melee. Everyone still hates you, you turn into this ugly half-bat-gargoyle creature that looks like an extra from a bad monster movie, and you still have to deal with the usual vampire suck-fest that is "I can't see crap because it's night, but I can't adventure by day because of the sun." (I know, mods fix this - I'm not counting mods because mods fix everything.) This leads right into #2. The Dawnguard Faction is so underwhelming in all aspects. Here we have an opportunity to have a diverse cast from all walks of life, a thriving collection of vampire hunters. They've been openly recruiting for long enough that the vampires found out about it... So why are the farm boy Agmaer and the Dragonborn the only two recruits? Seriously, they missed an opportunity, even if they were just side NPCs like Torvar from the Companions or the three novice students in the College of Winterhold, or all of the bloody Bard's College, to have characters with a bit of story to them. Let's face it, if your initial meeting was just outside the door to the fort and you met Agmaer the farm boy, a Vigilant of Stendarr seeking revenge for the destruction of the Hall of the Vigilant, a former Stormcloak and former Empire soldier who constantly bicker and fight until the last battle, some guy in torn and ragged clothing who says he's "just here to kill vampires," and a mercenary who figures "there's got to be coin in killing monsters," you'd feel like this was a start to a guild of vampire slayers. You could then have planned, dramatic moments for these characters during your various tasks to get the Dawnguard going. Small side-quests from each of them. The former Vigilant wants his Amulet of Stendarr from the Hall. After doing that favor, he'll pay you some gold for every Death Hound Collar you bring him. He'll also pay you for vampire robes.Agmaer's quest might be to help train him, where your skill with certain weapons (One-hand, two-hand, archery) guides him on a path for damage, and your choice of armor is reflected in what he chooses to wear. So my Agmaer might prefer two handed weapons and heavy armor, but your Agmaer might be using crossbows and light armor.The mercenary will follow you for 500 gold and acts as an additional companion, even while Serana is around.The ragged man wants unusual alchemy ingredients, silver ingots, and a lot of iron ingots. If you're a werewolf, he's up front and honest - he's one as well, and the ingredients let him control it, the iron ingots are to build a cage to keep his new friends safe from him, and silver ingots are so he can make silver chains to restrain him as an added precaution. If you're not a werewolf, he'll spill his secrets only once you've proven trustworthy - you returned from gathering Sorine and Gunmar and passed the sunlight trial.The Stormcloak and the Imperial eventually find something they can agree upon - They both hate the Thalmor. They'll pay good money for any Thalmor robes you find, money which they get by telling Isran that most of the Thalmor are vampires.As you progress through the quests and Fort Dawnguard gets built up, you see the changes caused by helping these new characters as well as Sorine, Gunmar, and Florentius. You see a trophy room with death hound collars and vampire robes presented in cases. A cage appears toward the back of the fort with shining chains inside it - If the player admits to being a werewolf, too, a second cage will be built "for my pack brother/sister, just in case he/she can't restrain the beast." Agmaer starts by training with the weapon type you use the most, then later is seen running laps around the fort in armor, and later is seen with his chosen type of weapon and armor, ready for battle. Potions appear near one bed in the barracks, courtesy of the werewolf, some of which do nothing (and with mods, could prevent a lunar transformation), and some which force an extra transformation at will, and others which make your werewolf form way more powerful, at the cost of needing to feed twice as much to maintain it. Thalmor robes start filling a chest hidden in the back, and eventually end up overflowing it. As you have clashes with the vampires, some of these new recruits are scripted to die. The mercenary gets fed on and cast aside early on, when we retrieve the Moth Priest. The soldiers die defending the fort from vampires after we get all the Elder Scrolls. Before we go to get Auriel's Bow, the werewolf gives us the special potion recipes now that he's perfected them - One lets you take on werewolf form at will, another gives your werewolf form an "aura of peace" so that people don't attack you, and the last one makes your werewolf form highly resistant to magic. If you're not yet a werewolf from the Companions, he'll offer to turn you. Unlike the Companions rampage, you're instead instructed to meet him at the cages, where he drinks one of his potions, wolf-changes, and bites you. You black out, time passes, and you wake up in the cage with him saying, "I was wondering if you were ever going to change back." When you return with Auriel's bow, we witness his death as he tears vampires apart, his form unusually large (1.2, maybe 1.3x scale) courtesy of an experimental potion. He wins the fight, but drops dead from exhaustion. This leaves us with Agmaer, who now has proper gear, the former Vigilant, and the two soldiers for additional crew leading into the final fight. But, let's sidestep from this "what it could have been if Bethesda had actual writers" and instead look at problem #3 on the list. Isran is an obnoxious character. I get it, he's the vampire slayer with a reason because vampires killed people close to him, blah blah blah. It's craptastic writing. This more than anything else, tells me we were never intended to join the Dawnguard faction. Isran hates vampires. When Serana double-crosses her father and shows up, risking her life, I can totally understand Isran at that moment having no trust in her. When we keep coming back together and making progress, however? The least I could expect from him is a comment of, "I guess we've finally found one good vampire." When we come back from the Soul Cairn, I'd rather see his outlook change a bit. I'm not saying he has to roll over and accept that you're a vampire now, but it'd be nice if he'd acknowledge this was probably a very hard decision you had to make. Perhaps a more sympathetic, "Hey, I don't know what happened out there, or why you're a vampire now, but, we do a lot of our work in the day because that's when vampires are at their weakest. Here, hand me your map. Go see my friend, Falion, out in Morthal. Take this, it's a filled black soul gem - you're going to need it. He has a cure for... This." The idea being he knows it's still you in there, even if you're a vampire at the moment. At the same time, let us walk around and talk to the other Dawnguard members (and the extended cast) and have them comment on it. The Vigilant might be disgusted that you "joined the very creatures we were destroyed by," and tells you, "go get a cure, you bloodsucking fool." The two soldiers might ask you a few questions regarding what it's like, with the options to answer with a few different responses, with some being disgusted with it ("I hate drinking blood, it's disgusting!"), some being in awe of it ("I can't believe how powerful I feel all the time!"), some being neutral about it ("I can't really say I like this, but I don't exactly hate it, either."), and some being regretful about it (either "I'd rather be mortal. I only did this because I had to," or "It wasn't worth giving up my gift from Hircine."). Talking to Agmaer might get you a pep talk with, "Well, a friend of Isran has to be good, right? He's a wizard. He'll fix this and get you back on this side of the living." Talking to the werewolf gets you a couple of options. If you were a werewolf before, he offers straight up, "I can give back what you lost. It'll hurt, but I can save you a trip to Morthal." If you weren't a werewolf before, he instead offers, "If you'd like, I can help you out. Trading, well, a curse for a curse. But, it's going to hurt a lot, and you'll be a werewolf afterward." Either way lets you choose to get a free change to werewolf right there, saving your one-time-return with Aela for any other occasions of "oops." Either way, you will have to shed your vampirism to proceed, but with Isran instead being somewhat sympathetic - he knows you probably didn't want this, but it was the best of two rotten options - it's less of a sting to go visit Falion / get bit by the Dawnguard werewolf / Go see Aela and reacquire the Gift of Hircine. Once you kill Harkon, I believe Isran should step back and say, "You killed a Vampire Lord. I've never done that. The Dawnguard should be led by someone who knows how to kill all types of vampires, so I leave you as its leader. Of course, while you're out hunting, I'll hold down the fort as your second-in-command." This would give us, as with all the other factions, access to a nice room to call our own, possibly a specialized weapon or shield or armor, and yet, unlike the other factions, it's not something where we can't justify being "leader" and still adventuring. That said, the College of Winterhold, we could assume Tolfdir handles things in our absence, when he's not losing his alembic. Companions claim the Harbinger isn't truly a leader, but it'd be nice if you could tell Aela, Farkas, and Vilkas, "I know the Harbinger is traditional, but, I'm not ready to settle down just yet. Can the Circle lead in my absence?" Thieves Guild, you become the leader, but Brynjolf is your Second-in-Command. Dark Brotherhood is a bad joke, however, as The Listener, Nazir, and Babette don't make for a much of a guild of assassins. The idea here is that Isran openly admits that you're the leader, but he's second-in-command and the leader when you're not there. The thing that really annoys me, though, is something that mods fixed. You'd think Isran would order a clean-up of Volkihar Castle, and then turn it into the Northern Dawnguard Outpost. So, a quick side-step to issue #4: Serana is an annoyance. Let's face it, she is. Sure, she's one of the best AI companions made by Bethesda, but... I'll just say it this way. I like the character. I hate dealing with the character. Our first meeting, we know she's a vampire. I get it, kill one vampire, or learn where the nest is to wipe them all out, but my issue here is, we get lumped with a vampire just after becoming vampire hunters. Want to know how I would have changed things up? Have Serana be out of that confinement capsule by the time we get down there. The vampires got there before us, after all. Have them get her free from the capsule, feed an innocent to her so she doesn't look like a vampire, bring her up to speed on the basic political nature of Skyrim right now. Then have us making noise get the attention of the other vampires, who go up to investigate, die to us, and let us find Serana. Serana's smart. "Help! Help! These awful beasts dragged me down here! Can you help me get back to my home?" She can tell at a glance, you're a heroic-type character. Best way to get you to help, play the damsel in distress. Let the player have a couple of options that alter how Serana initially sees you. If you go the mercenary route and ask for septims, she tells you "My family is rich. If a reward is what you're after, get me home and I promise you will be rewarded."If the player is a vampire, let you see through the veil and say, "I know what you are. Don't worry, I'm one, too."If the player is a werewolf, let you see through the veil and say, "You're a vampire. Why should I help you?" Serana would reply, in her usual sarcastic way, "Because you're not the big bad wolf. You wouldn't be here if you were."If you offer to help right away, she thanks you.If you tell her, "Not now, but I'll come back for you when it's safe," Serana tells you she's following you anyway because, "You heroes are so forgetful at times."If you try to tell her, "I'm not interested in helping you," she follows up with, "Well, I'll just follow where you're going. You'll find the way out eventually anyway."If you ask about the Elder Scroll, she offers up most of her usual dialog regarding it.Once outside, if she complains about the sun, it's because "It's so bright. I don't know how long I've been down there, but it was too long." Volkihar Castle could do with a bit of cleaning up before we meet Harkon. I know Serana's visit is somewhat unexpected, but I'd expect a "noble house of vampires" to have class. No cattle on the tables, no blood or meat all over the place. Instead, have bottles of wine and blood at the tables, have some vampires there drinking from mugs or glasses, a place that seems inviting. It makes Harkon's reveal that they're vampires that much more shocking, potentially more inviting. I'd change that butt-ugly Vampire Lord form to basically just being an enhanced natural form with the bat wings. Activate your Vamp-lord powers and float up a bit to access the blood magic, or drop to the ground and fight with claws or weapons. You still look like you, and not some monster movie stage prop. That way, when Harkon changes to Vamp-lord to convince us, it's more of a show of power that is far less likely to gross out characters. Likewise, while I know "Vampires and Werewolves hate each other" is a tired trope, as far as I know, Molag Bal and Hircine aren't enemies. I'd love if the Vampire questline could be seriously started without giving up my lycanthropy, do the first few fetch quests for the vampires, but like the Civil War, give us one last chance to change sides when we're retrieving the Moth Priest. If we bring him to Harkon, he puts Dexion under his spell, then tells us, "You can go no further with us as a wolf. Come, it's time you were rewarded properly for your service." If you accept, you wake as a vampire lord and do the tutorial you should've done before the questlines, then go listen to Dexion's scroll reading. If you refuse, Harkon makes a quip about, "The devout followers of Hircine are always the stubborn ones," then tells you, "I had hoped you would have accepted this as a gift, as payment for your service. Instead, it'll be as a warning to not defy me again." You're bitten, wake as a vamp-lord, and do the tutorial... Likewise, as a vampire-sided questline, it should be possible to bring Dexion to the Dawnguard instead, and tell Isran, "I know what I am. I know you would normally hunt down and kill me. What I want is a cure for this. I offer a trade - The vampires were very interested in this moth priest, and I will leave him in your care. I would like a cure for vampirism." Isran offers to send you to Falion, mentioning, "Don't come back until you've been cured." But, back on track, when we arrive at the castle, it shouldn't be immediately obvious that they're vampires. Harkon's reveal should be the dawning moment for us. We're presented our usual options - Leave and be prey, join and become a vampire - but for mortals, they get, "I'm not sure about the whole vampire thing yet. Can I stay in the castle, talk to people, and help out a bit before I decide?" which lets you do a few quests, like the above-mentioned werewolf path, before your turning, and for werewolves, it's "I'm a werewolf. I'd prefer to keep my gift, but I'm willing to help out around here." Given that the Dawnguard path feels like the stapled-on story, I'll follow the DG path. So we choose exile. We return to Isran, and get Sorine and Gunmar. By this time, Serana has come to the fort and risked her life to help us. Unlike before, I have little issue with how Serana acts here in the den of vampire-slayers while she's treated with open hostility. What I do have issue with is how often we have to drag Serana along to other locations. Especially considering in some cases, we might have a vanilla follower acting as our pack-mule, and now we have to sideline them for Serana. The big reason I have issues with Serana as a companion? She's a necromancer. See, I get it, she's raising the dead to do her bidding because vampire, so it's very classic on that. My dislike of it is that either she's raising the chicken, goat, or fox that I just killed for being in my way, raising the bandit I was two seconds away from looting, or raising a creature on the other side of the doorway I need to go through. This, combined with her absurdly-high use of AoE spells, means she's constantly raising garbage, and then picking fights with my mod-added followers. Which leads to me wanting to just get her part of the quests done so I can leave her behind. Likewise, while I understand Serana has a lot more voice-lines than most followers... It'd be nice to hear less whining about the weather. I'm not a vampire, I'm not traveling exclusively at night when you've proven you don't burn in the daylight, so get used to the sun. Same goes for her idle packages. While moving around is infinitely better than standing in place like a post, it would have been nice if she had exclusions in her sandbox routine. That way, I can use the smithing gear at Warmaidens without her banging on metal or shoveling charcoal into the smelter. Or bring her to Kodlak's funeral without her trying to use Eorlund's smithing gear... Or worrying about whether stopping to think about "Do we go this way or that way" in some locations will result in an "accidental" shove off of an edge. The end result is that Serana is, as created, a great character with simultaneously too much and not enough to say, she's way too eager to jump in and use various work-stations while we're doing some crafting, is often times the reason for many characters' deaths, and then as the cherry on top, she's blessed with some of the worst combat AI I've seen. There's a bandit chief with full Nordic Carved Armor and an Orcish Greatsword on the ground, and there's a chicken that can't attack? "I think I'll raise the chicken." Which then brings us to #5. Skyrim is no stranger to sucky quests. But Dawnguard's quests have more suck potential than an entire store full of vacuum cleaners. Between the main quest being a carbon copy of the Vampire side, just we face vampires and gargoyles instead of Dawnguard and armored trolls, the lack-luster fetch quests or "go here and stealth-archer this guy" quests, and the fact that at no point do we make an effort to gather up the vampire artifacts as a "screw you" to the vampires, it's just not that good. Let's start with that last point. I get it, it's "replay value" to make us play both halves to see the different minor quests. Except it isn't, because Skyrim's Radiant AI guarantees an infinite supply of fetch quests, and most of Dawnguard's quests are just fetch quests. Let's be honest, a few "after the main quest" missions for either side to get the items they're missing, along with some possible "purify/corrupt" quests to add depth to it, would be fun. Imagine as the vampires getting the Dawnguard Rune items and then getting quests to corrupt them by using Serana's blood under the effects of a blood-cursed arrow into the sun, changing them from doing extra damage to vampires into doing extra damage to non-vampires and healing the user. Imagine as the Dawnguard getting the amulets, rings, bloodstone chalice, and ancient vampire parts in various quests, and then purifying them in some way. The bloodstone chalice becoming a sunstone chalice instead, offering extra damage to vampires for 4 hours after drinking from it. Coating the ancient vampire bones in silver to prevent them ever being used in a ritual in the future. The amulets and rings are stored in a display case that we can't ever open, but that is mentioned by Florentius, "Anyone who opens it will feel the full wrath of Arkay... And the sun." Then there's the million radiant fetch quests both sides do. "Go find Sorine and Gunmar at "random Dwemer Ruin" and "random Bear Cave" to send them to Fort Dawnguard." "Find crossbow schematics in dwemer ruins" "Kill a vampire." "Find these rings." "Find vampire parts" "Find the amulets." It sucks. Quests that could have been genuinely interesting if someone cared enough to put the items around are instead just boring. Let's face it, I'd have been way more impressed if Gunmar had been assigned a random cave, but instead of killing a generic Cave Bear like I've done 500,000 times already, we go inside and there's a bloody pack of feral werewolves. Like 4 - 8 of them. My mods did that to me once and it was awesome. And to know it was sheer coincidence that Gunmar picked a cave to spawn his stupid bear inside, the mod that put werewolves into the predator list picked that moment to spawn multiple werewolves, and through it all, it spawned enough to be an actual threat at my level. But then again, the whole Dawnguard DLC is a bit of a wet fart. You can tell it's not great by the major location placements - One in the north-west corner of the map, one in the south-east corner of the map. The radiant AI is notorious for sending you all the way across the map to start with, so having both locations extra remote is just a pile of suck. There's the fact that the Forgotten Vale and the Soul Cairn don't have maps. Jiub's quest is good, but like the other infamous "no-markers-fetch-quest" called No Stone Unturned, it sucks to complete. It's painfully clear that the play-testers never tried to complete Dawnguard without fast-traveling. So, that controversial hot-take I mentioned, that Dawnguard kinda sucks? Here's my reasons why. The DLC begins very invasively without mods squelching it. I don't mind Isran recruiting. I do mind the random vampire attacks, because I'm sick of my towns looking like a group of average murderhobos marched through and killed all the non-quest-giving NPCs. The map layout was designed to pad out gameplay. I'm damn sure that it's not a coincidence that I always find Sorine Jurard out in the armpit of the Reach, complaining about mudcrabs and dwarven gyros. Someone clearly chose that spot because it's across the map. They used the same main quest with an enemy palette swap. While this was fine in the Civil War because the holds we were fighting over changed, here, it's the same quest. Which means there is zero replay value. Vampires get all the cool new stuff. "Oh, wait, people might not like vampires? Um... I guess we could toss together a werewolf skill tree and never test the balance, and we can turn the NPC faction of the Dawnguard into a playable one." Seriously, I don't think anyone tried the werewolf skill tree out after creating it, because the "armor" doesn't stack up anywhere near enough to be useful in surviving past level 20. For all of this hard work to beat the main quest, we get... One set of new armor, a shiny Aedric bow that's probably worse in stats than the one you're using now, and the ability to fire arrows at the sun to either get a massive bounty on your head, or kill everyone with vampires. Beyond the DLC quests, it added very little. Dragonbone weapons. A companion that shows what Bethesda could do. Tons of vampire stuff, but if you're not a vamp-lover, you get the short end of the stick, and there's still some dookie on it. A couple micro-worldspaces that you'll never go back to.In the end, Dawnguard was one of those DLCs that was loved because it did everything right... Compared in a vacuum to stock Skyrim.

I know there's some mods out there that allow this sort of thing to work to some degree on Skyrim SE/AE. Unfortunately, my laptop does not like SE - I have 8 GB of RAM and Intel Integrated Graphics. While I can run mods just fine on LE, I don't care about the extra graphical weight of SE, or the Creation Club, or the constant SKSE64 update mess that SE requires. Basically, the reason I want this is, well... A bit stupid. I want to have analog movement of my character, but also be able to aim with my trackball mouse. This mostly comes as a result of having tried numerous "Everyone moves at the same speed" mods and having no luck with them - either everyone still outpaces you while walking, but you catch up to them when jogging, or it's dependent on your character being 1.0 scale at all times, so a taller-than-standard character ends up in "stop-and-start-and-stutter-walk" motion. It's basically the ever-present split between control schemes that annoys me. You can either have precision movement by analog control, but reduced accuracy courtesy of the analog stick for aiming spells and bows, or you can have precision aim with the mouse, but you're limited to "your walk is outpaced by ants" and "your jog is outpacing your allies" for movement speeds with the keyboard. I have no clue about scripting, let alone scripting with SKSE, so I can't make this, but I can hope someone else can, or that they can get permission to back-port one that works on Skyrim SE back to Skyrim LE. Because I really don't know why Bethesda is so against mixed control layouts in their games.

In general, Silus Vesuius dies in every game of Skyrim I play. The reasons why often vary, admittedly, the the end result remains the same. Reason 1: "Mehrunes Dagon told me to." Quite simply put, a lot of my characters have something against deliberately angering the Daedra. Especially powerful Daedra who have powerful gifts they can give to you. Reason 2: "Your family is the reason the Empire is as weak as it is." Extending the cause of the Oblivion Crisis out to the natural conclusion an Empire-faithful character might come to makes sense to me. Not just did the Mythic Dawn kick off the Oblivion Crisis, giving the Thalmor a chance to gain power in the Summerset Isles, they also completely wiped out the Septim bloodline. A strong bloodline that might have weathered the last 200 years a bit better, rather than the Mede Dynasty that let the Thalmor wander all over Skyrim. For characters who are old Imperial Legion who fought in the Great War, or old characters who were alive during the Oblivion Crisis, this often is their chance to get revenge on the Mythic Dawn. Reason 3: "As pieces, it is but a worthless trinket of a forgotten age. Reforged in blood and agony, it returns to glory." For my Daedra-worshipping characters, gathering such an ancient and powerful, legendary dagger can be worth all of it. The cost is one pitiful life spent hoarding artifacts of a forgotten age? Sure, I'll spill his blood and place his head upon the altar as my offering. Reason 4: "I have a museum, you fool, and I'm going to show this weapon, intact, for all to see." Legacy of the Dragonborn! Divines, this mod has changed up how I play so much. Doing shady deals with Daedra? Well, of course I will, I've got a spot in the museum for one of those. Of course, there's no option in the museum to let Silus live, take the pieces from him, and display the shattered Razor in my museum, so... Death it is. Reason 5: "This weapon is dangerous, both whole or in pieces. It should be in no one's hands, but it will be safer in mine." Ah, the classic "I am saving the world by hoarding dangerous things" strategy. This one is usually reserved for characters taking a "Fall from Grace" strategy in questlines. How many dirty deeds can one do before reaching rock bottom? Well, quite a few. But, this one hinges on the thought that, if Silus keeps all of the pieces there together, in his "museum", how long would it take before some thief feigns interest, gets a quick tour, sees the shattered Razor, brings it up to Mehrunes' shrine to get it reforged, and is then ordered to kill Silus and my character for our treachery? Worse, how long after that would it take before someone with said dagger goes running around killing highly-important people with this weapon? Versus one quick death, one dagger added to my inventory, and one less dangerous artifact laying around. Reason 6: "I am one of the last of the Vigilants of Stendarr. It is my mission to track down, collect up, and neutralize any and all Daedric artifacts I find. Because you refuse to relinquish this weapon, I must slay you." The role-player's option. Actually quite a bit of fun to collect artifacts with an intention to keep them safe and/or destroy them.

Only one I've traveled with for any length of time has been Nick Valentine, and I just ended up giving him an Automatic Laser Pistol because, well, it was in my inventory, I was low on carrying capacity, and whatever it was he'd been using before that was completely ineffective. Now, as long as I keep him topped up on batteries, he routinely sprays down super mutants and raiders with relative ease. As for the weapon I've used alongside it, well, Danse gave me a nice laser rifle, I made it automatic and put a recoil-compensating stock on it, and it seems to do the job well enough. If it seems like Nick's having trouble, I'll pass it over to him when I find something new. Really wish I could find a good plasma shotgun...

Sadly, this conflict between 200 years and the amount of trash left around is present in all of the 3D Fallout games. Fallout 3, I could half forgive because it was the first, and because the D.C. Ruins were clearly nuked into oblivion, and there's too many raiders for anyone to be concerned with cleaning up. Fallout New Vegas manages to be a little better about cleaning up some of the mess, but it also feels a lot like 50 years after the bombs, not 200. Fallout 4 continues the trend of feeling like 40 or 50 years after the bombs fell, not 210. All they'd have to do in any one of those games is pick up the trash and remove the corpses from the places they eat, sleep, and work in. New Vegas and Fallout 4 both show communities rebuilding. I could forgive the lack of technological progress because of the lore behind the resource wars, but even still, I agree, there should be signs of people rebuilding more than just communities. Sure, the electronics might be fried, but surely someone can manage to get one of those pre-war vehicles to work. Clearly every raider is a fair hand at slapping together a pipe gun, so why aren't there more variations on crude weapons? Then, as already mentioned, you have the Institute, the pendulum swung too far the other way. It's like they continued with 2077 technology and advanced 200 more years, but with what bloody resources? Synths would be hunted down and destroyed, scavenged for parts. Then there's the endgame issues. If you nuke the Institute, you've just destroyed the most advanced stockpile of technology the world has seen since the great kaboom. It should be possible to tell every faction, "Hey, these guys might have the technology to rebuild the world. How about instead of just blowing it all up, we go through, clear the place out, and keep it for ourselves?" If you shoot down the Prydwen, there should be scavengers everywhere, dying by the dozens to the few Brotherhood survivors as they try to get close enough to pick through all that sweet loot that just fell from the sky. It's a disconnect between "Number of years" and "state of the world" that leads me to always believing the bombs fell 50 years ago, not 200+. I'd love to see a city in Fallout where the residents have gone around and cleaned up their trash, figured out a sustainable source of power, buried the long-dead skeletons and made a graveyard, and then managed to repair a few buildings beyond just "Well, it has four walls, mostly, and there's at least half of a roof, so it's good enough. Sure hope a radscorpion doesn't come through my wall again."

You'll need a tool to open .BSA files. I know it's a bit out of date, but I keep the Fallout Mod Manager (FOMM) around for that purpose. Here's the link: https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/36901 As I said, I use it because one of the tools it has inside it is a BSA extractor. With that, you can open up the Meshes archive for Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Skyrim (these are all the ones I've tried, at least, so I don't know if it works on any others), where you can extract their contents to a separate folder for experimentation. Never extract the BSA directly into your Data folder, you'll end up with loose files everywhere and it can cause mod conflicts. Once you've extracted an archive, you'll be faced with a massive collection of folders and .nif files hiding in them. Open one of those up and you'll be able to tinker a bit. I recommend weapons for learning, it's something easy to do, lets you mash bits of meshes together (Fallout New Vegas is great for having a lot of weapons that have multi-part meshes. Sometimes I spend more time making new guns for my FNV playthrough than I actually spend playing it...) and get a feel for the controls. Armors and clothing on the other hand, I have no clue how to deal with. I'd like to say that I know the basics of how to use NifSkope, but I feel I've barely scratched the surface.

When it comes to presidents, I have to admit, I treat them all like the politicians they really are. I don't like politicians. I believe that a politician is simply a lawyer who sucked at their job and decided making laws would be easier than arguing those laws in court. Yes, I know there are exceptions, I know that there can be occasional good ones, but for the most part, I paint all politicians with the same brush. I don't have, as a result, a problem with Biden, Trump, Obama, or Bush. I have a problem with the lack of positive action. Now, I'm not gathering data from sources, not seeking to prove a point, merely putting an opinion out there as someone who doesn't favor either side. I believe there are good points and bad points to both the Republicans and the Democrats, but in the last 20 years or so, they're doing more bad than good at the end of each 4 year term. Let's hit the major talking points, then, and get on with it. Climate Change. It's inevitable. History shows that the Earth's climate runs in cycles, hot, then cold, then hot, and cold again. We're in a hot phase. Do I believe we're contributing, as humanity, to the problem? Yes. What solutions would I propose? Well, we need clean power, and we need businesses, factories, etc. to be held accountable for their fair share of the pollution. Average Joe and his car isn't the enemy here. It's MegaCorp's office building with all of the office computers left on 24/7/365, even though they only run two 8-hour shifts five days a week. It's coal, oil, and gas being burned to generate power. It's the creation of solar panels and batteries tearing up the planet and creating massive amounts of pollution. It's the companies that promote the 'Disposable Society' instead of making products that last and that people want to keep for several years. So, how should we fix this? First, we need nuclear power. Yes, I know, it's not a perfect solution, it creates waste products that stay hazardous for thousands of years, but it's better than doing nothing. Plus, we've had at least 60 years of technological development on nuclear reactors that should, at least in theory, be able to make a reactor that can reuse a lot of its own waste. That gives everyone access to relatively clean power. As the mechanism of power generation is much the same (burn fuel, heat water, make steam, turn turbines, spin generators), it could even be possible to use smaller reactors to create that heat and thereby retrofit already-existing power-stations with a cleaner way to boil water. What do we do with the waste? Unfortunately, I don't really have an answer for that, but then again, I'm not a politician, a scientist, an engineer, I'm just someone with a head full of ideas who, occasionally, likes to write a little bit of sci-fi for fun. To solve the Disposable Society problem, however, we have to solve other deeper issues. Namely, cost of living. While Right-to-Repair is an excellent start, it's a band-aid on a bullet wound. Unfortunately, we were screwed from the start with the Dollar breaking away from a Gold Standard. Now, our Dollar is worthless. We have corporations who want more work from less people at lower pay, clashing with employees who want less work from more people at higher pay. Two ideologies that end up being polar opposites that will, unfortunately, have to compromise somewhere in the middle, and a perfect compromise has everyone walking away from the negotiating table feeling like they just got screwed. Tribalism (the Great Divide). Put any assorted, random group of humans into a room and wait a while, and you'll eventually see that they'll break up into groups with similar features, ideologies, etc. We are, by nature, a social species. We also have, to a certain degree, an expected level of intelligence, mixed with pattern recognition, memory, color vision, and personal bias. It's impossible for someone to not notice a difference between themselves and other people, nature programmed us that way. I guess, back in the cave-man days, being able to see these differences led to natural selection favoring those who could tell an outsider from their own tribe, those who could tell someone in their tribe looked sick, and as a result, we are biologically tuned to see anyone who doesn't resemble us as being different. This is not inherently a bad thing. The problem comes from the fact that society hasn't changed at its core. Whether it's 50, 100, 200, 500, 1,000, or 10,000 years ago, we still see 'Different' as 'Outsider' and thereby 'Dangerous.' Worse, society hasn't changed at its surface enough to have people accepting that sometimes 'Different' really is just superficial. It doesn't matter whether it's skin color, political preference, geographic location, favorite sports team, or choice of clothing, we still categorize people even when we don't really intend to do so. It's biologically hard-wired and hard-coded in how our brains work, because our genetic ancestors needed this to survive, just like the rest of our survival instincts. This is a "people problem" and unfortunately, both political parties are trying to keep the United States divided. Because they know, if we focus on each other and throw hate and vitriol among ourselves, we're not focusing on them. If we're not focusing on them, they can continue what they've been doing for the last 20, 30, 40+ years: Doing nothing for the People of the United States while lining their own pockets and telling us, "We are working on improving the quality of life for all people who live here." If we focus on the politicians, we would see that both the Democrats AND the Republicans have major problems. Neither side really fights for The People, they are merely in it for as much money as they can print for themselves. Just look at how little progress has been made in, say, 20 year time gaps. So, working backwards, 2020 to 2000, 2000 to 1980, 1980 to 1960, 1960 to 1940. Technology marched forward and evolved. Politics, however, remains the same. People remained the same, even though large leaps and strides were made for human rights. Women getting to vote, breaking up segregation and allowing those who were under it to vote as well, the 60's that were split between warmongers and hippies, the 70's through the 90's Computer Revolution, the 00's Internet Age, all the way up to today, people really haven't changed that much. We still see ourselves as different groups of people to be categorized, because that is what our parents taught us. Because their parents taught them. Because their parents taught them that way, too, and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, I don't see this changing for the better without a second Civil War, and that is something I hope I never see in my lifetime, though as I'm about half-a-year shy of 30, it might be within the years I have left. People are too keyed up on 'racial politics' to see the real threats that exist, and would rather see their black/white/brown/native neighbors as being 'the enemy' because "(Celebrity) said so, so it must be true." Education (or, the lack thereof). We have an education crisis here in the United States. We spend astronomical amounts on education, yet routinely score poorly when compared to other countries. Why? I believe there are a lot of parts to this problem. First, we have that ridiculous No Child Left Behind problem, the one that bumps kids forward a year even when they're failing their classes because it's a social stigma to fail. Second, we have teachers who don't care enough about teaching, they'll show up so long as they get paid. Third, we have 'historians' rewriting history to hide the bad things and the evils of our past, failing to realize that the only way to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past is to know your true history. Fourth, we have too many people trying to push their politics, religion, thoughts, and ideas upon other people's children, rather than teaching those children the real events of the past. How do we fix these issues, then? Instead of No Child Left Behind, which was a band-aid on an amputated leg, we need a different solution. Children should be able to fail and learn about consequences. Teachers should be trying to help the students who are struggling, not just praise those who do well and condemning the rest under the guise of "I don't know what I did wrong, these three passed just fine, and she aced her midterms. I don't know why these ten students failed." Teachers who no longer care about teaching, just their paycheck, create a lot of these problems. They're the ones who believe it's acceptable to give a student an hour of homework and expect them to find the time to get it all done. They're also the first ones to call a student lazy when that work doesn't get turned in. They don't care that the four other Lifers on the student's schedule also assigned an hour of work each, lumping some poor kid with five hours of make-work. These teachers also end up being responsible for a lot of the crippling social issues out there, because a child stuck at the kitchen table for several hours with their nose jammed in a text book and their hand cramped around a pencil isn't socializing with their friends. Friends who, also, are likely stuck doing homework. Children who sit around doing homework also don't get to be active, so they sit on their butt and scribble with a pen or pencil, then after 5 hours of tedious make-work, a brief dinner, now they get an hour or two, at best, of personal free time, and it's off to bed. When did it become socially acceptable for a child to wake up at 7 AM, sit in school from 8 AM to 3 PM, sit at a table at home from 3 PM to 8 PM? These kind of teachers make students who resent school, who hate it, and who then get in trouble for skipping it. (Source: I was one of those students once. My Sophomore year of High School, I had 5 "lifers" who believed the best way to teach was to drone on in a monotone voice for an hour, then assign an hour of homework. The only thing that made my day bearable at all was study hall and the fact that I could write fast, yet barely legible, so I could shave that time down. I also had the truancy officer on my butt for most of that year, and my Junior year, because I hated school so much that I'd rather play sick, lay in bed with nothing to do, and get chicken soup for dinner. Part of it was an overload of work, part of it was bullying, but that's a different story.) Rewriting our history to cover up the dark deeds of the past is an insult to everyone who suffered through that time. We should be teaching history so the latest generation can learn from the mistakes of those before them, not covering up the facts that neither side of any war has ever been the 'good guys.' We were terrible to the Natives who lived here in this country, and they, in turn, were terrible back to us. We were terrible when we dragged ships full of African slaves over here to put them to work, but we must not forget that often times, they were sold by their own people. We may have fought a war for our own independence from the British, but we must not forget that it was due to being taxed and not having a voice in the British Government. We must not forget that America, in both World Wars, tried to remain 'neutral' by supplying both sides on occasion, and that, in both cases, that bit us hard. We Must Not Forget, but so many people believe the best solution to these problems is to make them disappear, not realizing the rest of the world still remembers. Pushing one's personal ideology onto someone else's children is just wrong. It's okay if you're a Democrat or a Republican, if you're any of the various flavors of Religion or happen to not believe in any of them, if you believe that one person or another is a complete and total moron, or that I should rightfully take over the world because I'd make it a much worse place to live and yet we'd all remember happier times. On the other hand, it's not okay to push those things onto others. It's definitely not okay to inflict those beliefs on a captive audience who, by law, must attend your lessons. Why? Well, anyone who's ever accidentally let slip a bit of profanity around an impressionable young child, say around 3 to 6 years old, knows just how much fun you'll have trying to stop little John or Susan from running around belting out the unfortunate four-or-five letter word you invoked. Now, I'm going to go ridiculous here to avoid implicating either political party, because they are both guilty of this to a degree through teachers, but imagine this. If your child were to go to school and suddenly come home believing that the sky is green, that all women are aliens from Venus and men are aliens from Mars, that Pluto is the center of the Universe, and that Mathematics is a construct of the Devil designed to drive people insane, how quickly would you be pulling your child out of that school? I'm sure most of you would be furious at the bare minimum. Minimum Wage (Minimum Effort, Maximum Rage). I hear it said so often, "Raise the minimum wage, it'll make everything better," that I have to counter that, and counter it hard. All raising the minimum wage does is buy a year, at most, and raise the bottom level of the poverty scale another notch higher, while driving down everyone else's purchasing power. Why? Because raising the minimum wage doesn't raise the wages earned by people in other jobs. Now, that said, I believe the minimum wage should be a living wage, one high enough to support food, rent, utilities, etc. in the local area. Note the key-word, "Local." I also believe restaurants should be paying their waiters / waitresses / kitchen staff minimum wage, and tips go on top of that, untouched by those who did not earn them! That said, I also believe that raising wages isn't the answer. We need to fix the inflation problem, because as it is, things are getting out of hand. I can't get out of the damn grocery store with less than $50 and more often $100 in a basket for a week's worth of food for myself and my 63 year old father. I've already accepted that I will never own my own home, that I will never open my own business, and that the American Dream is more of an ongoing American Nightmare at this point. Unfortunately, some bright spark thought it was a great idea to unlink the Dollar from the Gold Standard and single-handedly flushed our economy down the toilet many decades later. We're the floaters circling around the toilet bowl, refusing to go down after a bad Taco Tuesday, wondering whether this is it and the bowl will rise (inflation falls, economy recovers, minimum wage = living wage) or whether the plunger comes out and we all go down (inflation rises, economy falls, living wage ends up exceeding minimum wage by a factor of 2 or more) and the country falls into chaos. Also unfortunately, there is no easy fix for this. As of this time, I am unaware of a single denomination of currency being used that is still backed by Gold, Silver, or Platinum. Would now be a good time to push for laws to make the Earth's united currency the Galactic Standard Credit? (Sorry, bad sci-fi writer's joke there.) The other half of the wage problem is the worker problem. Companies, for the last few decades at least, have been treating workers as disposable items. "You will do this or you will be fired" being a common favored threat in the Employer's Market. Unfortunately, the turns have tabled and we're now in an Employee's Market. COVID (and yes, I believe in how dangerous it is, Dad got it and nearly died, I had it and it was the most miserable week of my life) smacked the reset button for many of us in 2020. Suddenly finding ourselves let go for weeks, months on end, forced to go seek government assistance to keep a roof over our heads and the lights on, and food on the table, a lot of people suddenly were freed from their Wage-Slave job for several months. When jobs reopened, a lot of people evaluated their current conditions. For some, they returned to their old job, like my father did, because the pay was good enough to deal with the crap being thrown around. For some, they realized they could make it work with one income, and so someone became a stay at home parent while the other worked. For some, they used the time COVID provided to better themselves, and jumped into a newer, better, higher-paying job, or a lower paying job that they absolutely love. For others, they stayed on unemployment, occasionally throwing out a job application to places they know will never accept them in a desperate bid to keep money flowing in for free. Now? Companies are finding out that the 30 years of "We demand your total compliance and loyalty, while expecting you to know you are expendable and replaceable at any time" has now turned into, "If I'm going to work for you, you need to pay me what I'm worth. This is an insult." Terminating unemployment, while it sounds like it would fix the problem, will actually make it worse. The worst thing in the world is someone who is desperate. People who have gotten used to not working for a living will continue to find ways to maintain not working for a living. If that means they take to sawing catalytic converters off of "those moronic wage slaves'" cars, they'll do it. If it means going on daring daylight robberies to steal and pawn items from hard-working people's houses, they'll do it. If it means robbing convenience stores with a stolen handgun, they'll do it. So, how do we fix unemployment? We make it something you don't want to stay on for an extended period of time. How do we do this? Well, I'm not a lawyer or an accountant, but I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to have an "adjustment" after a reasonable period of time, like about 6 months, where after that time period, your unemployment drops to the state's minimum wage. If the above concept (living wage = minimum wage) is adopted, then you subtract, say, 15% from the minimum wage and use that for unemployment. You also make unemployment something that you need to work a minimum amount of time in between uses, so you don't get someone 'finding a job' every six months, working a week, and getting fired / let go / quitting in order to get full benefits back. Healthcare and Insurance. Would it surprise you to know that I hate "Obamacare" but like the idea of a proper Government-Provided Healthcare System? There's a few reasons, and I'll get to them in a bit, but "Obamacare" hurt everyone more than it helped. Firstly, everyone working full-time was supposed to be provided healthcare under the (Un)Affordable Care Act. What happened? A lot of people working 40 hours a week got cut back to 35-39 hours. No big deal for those making enough to afford a healthcare plan and insurance, not a huge deal for those who were already scraping by to lose a few hours a week. Someone saw that loophole and whacked it down to 25 hours = full time in the eyes of the law. People were laid off left and right, suddenly people who had been exempt from the ACA were suddenly under the gun and had to add another unaffordable bill to their pile. Businesses decided a flock of 20-hour-a-week people was better than a handful of well-trained full-time employees. Secondly, threatening people with fines for not having health insurance is not the right answer. If you can't afford the insurance, you can't afford the fine, after all. Not that the Government ever needs to make sense. Thirdly, it's just downright criminal and immoral to force people to buy a product from a private company under threat of the law. Especially when the plans created for people who can't afford healthcare and insurance are almost worse than not having insurance at all. So, how do we fix the current system? We keep the hospital system as it exists, because for the most part, it works. We keep the Private Health Insurance system as it exists, because for those who can afford it, it works. We add to it a Government Sponsored health-insurance system designed around those who work for a living, intended to be used by everyone, paid for out of your taxes (perhaps by diverting some of those military funds toward healthcare), used after any Private Insurance gets the bill, and does not bill the user in the end. How would this work in a theoretical situation? Let's say for an example that you get the Big Nasty and end up in the hospital with The Cough and some pneumonia as a result. You get a nice big hospital bill at the end of it all that, if you had no insurance, would cost you, say, $15,000. The bill, however, has been passed through your Primary Insurance, who decides to pay $12,000 and leave you with about $3,000 to pay on your own. This $3,000 bill gets sent to the Government Insurance, who decides to pay $2,000 out of it and sends it back to the hospital, leaving you with $1,000 left to cover. Now, let's say you get the same treatment, the same $15,000 "No Insurance" bill, but you don't have private insurance. The Government Insurance thereby gets that full $15,000, a note from the hospital that you have no other insurance company helping you out, they check your tax records from last year to get an idea of your income, and then send back the bill after paying a fair-and-reasonable amount, similar to what a Private Insurance Company would do. You get a bill around $3,000 and the hospital helps you set up a payment plan that you can afford. Closing Remarks. In the end, it's not really a battle to see who is the worst President. Both sides have had their problems, both sides have kicked far too many cans down the road for someone else to deal with, and both sides would much rather continue to play the game of "Hot Potato" with these issues in front of the public instead of knuckling down and doing something actually useful for the public good. Both sides target hot-button issues like the Second Amendment, Immigration, Wars, Climate Change, and the Great Human Divide, but without actual plans to do anything helpful. What are my beliefs on these five hot-button issues? The Second Amendment is there for a reason. While both sides routinely twist the words of the amendment to suit their needs, it is 200+ years out of date. It was created to keep a civilian militia armed in case of invasion, and in case of corruption. It was created in the wake of the blood-soaked American Revolution of 1776 when we were still feeling the wounds of British Occupation and reeling from British taxes. That said, I believe that guns are not the great evil the media tries to make them out to be. We only have to look outside of our country to see this: Where guns have been banned for long enough that they're inaccessible to the general population, the criminals use knives, tools, chemicals, and bombs instead. Gun Violence is a SOCIAL problem and needs to be fixed at the core. Less prisons, more mental-health facilities to find, diagnose, and treat the issues that cause people to pick up a gun and shoot other people. If you want to immigrate to the United States, I have no issues with that. Go to a border crossing with your passport, get your visa, pay your fees, apply for citizenship. Don't come over here illegally, take an under-the-table job, and use it to mail all of your earnings back home. Don't come over here and then start committing crimes. Don't be surprised if, after committing a crime, we decide not to throw you in one of our over-crowded prisons and instead ship you back home. Remember, you are a guest in our home. Treat our country like it's someone else's home, and treat it like you would want your home, your country to be treated. Don't throw trash everywhere, don't cause problems for those of us who live here. Please, try to pick up the English language while you're here, it'll make your life easier and the rest of us Americans will be less frustrated and more polite if we speak the same language. Yes, I know, we don't have a nation-wide defined language like everyone else, and I believe that was a mistake, we should have made our primary native language English. Why? Because if you go to France, you're expected to know French, if you go to Germany, you should know German, if you travel to Russia, you should be able to speak Russian, and if you go to Britain, you should know English. America is Great Britain's younger brother, and we had a fight a long time ago, but we're both over it now, and like any family, we should stick together. War is hell. I understand that humans are basically built for war, but at the same time, we should be civilized enough to settle our disagreements without requiring violence. Why is it that when two people disagree, fists get raised? Because that's how we're taught, unfortunately. We glorify war. We don't measure time by the lengths of peace, we count the wars. At our core, we are violent animals, but perhaps in the future, we could find a way to make peace between the countries. No more old men sending the young out to die for their country, for glory, for oil and land. No more holy wars, either, please. It's okay to believe a different sky-person put the world together, it's okay to believe that the universe was created in a massive explosion, and it's okay if you favor the old Greek or Roman or Egyptian gods instead. No, I won't tell you which I believe in. Climate Change is real, but we're looking at the wrong end of the problem. Volcanoes produce far more greenhouse gases than we do, businesses and factories create a lot more pollution and waste more resources, other countries need to get their act together, and we need nuclear power, not solar panels. We should focus on restoring and refreshing our aging power grid, and while they're at it, get the damn systems OFF of the INTERNET! Mission critical systems should not be easily accessible on the network! With nuclear power, we could then focus on things that make more sense to clean up and reduce pollution. Lay down new rail lines and hang up some electric cables to replace aging, highly-polluting diesel locomotives with electric ones that run off of the overhead lines. Electric buses with large batteries to overhaul mass transit, and make them something people want to use instead of trying to stuff everyone into a plastic electric shoebox. Look into alternative combustion fuels for cars, but do it seriously and not just 'how can we convert a gasoline engine to run on cow farts?' Humans have been making alcohol for millenia. We can't drink Methanol, but we can certainly make the stuff. Get emissions equipment set up to offset the byproducts of burning methanol as a fuel, and we might have an option for an alternative renewable fuel that doesn't compete with food crops, can be used as a long-term stop-gap during the long conversion towards electric vehicles, and will remain as a viable fuel source long into the future for people to enjoy older cars with a little modification. Quit throwing out electronics because they were 'so last year' and embrace using something until it no longer works. I have a hand-me-down Galaxy Note 8 that replaced a hand-me-down Galaxy S5. I see no need to upgrade any time soon. I'm using a laptop from 2015 because it's a design I always wanted, it was for sale used on Amazon, and so I'm the proud owner of a Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 (MK5). It's already survived coffee and being knocked off of the table twice. We need to build an alternative charging system, something that every manufacturer can agree on, that can charge non-Tesla electric cars quickly enough to compete with Teslas, because a monopoly on the electric car market is bad for everyone else. The Great Human Divide is something I would love to see be resolved in my lifespan. How hard is it to accept that men and women (and those somewhere in between) can be equals, even if there are physical limitations? How hard is it to accept that, no matter our skin color, we're all Homo sapiens at our core? How hard is it to accept that one person might believe in a different religion, might believe a different baseball / football / basketball / soccer team is the best, might think the color purple is nice, might be color-blind, might have a disability, and yet is still equal? How hard is it for us to be nice to one another? To accept one another for who we really are? To look past petty tribal garbage and realize that this person over there might be a potential new friend instead of instantly calling them an enemy? Either way, I've spent way too long writing this (we're going on about 2 hours or more at least), and it's a tiny bit off topic, but I believe it's more relevant to 'worst president' than all the monkey poo I could throw at the wall to carpet one president or another as being the worst. And, let's face it, I know I'd be the worst, so I'm never running for election. I mean, let's face it, who would want someone who's overweight and only claim to politics was winning the yearbook award for being "Most likely to take over the world" as their president? I sure as heck don't want the job.

Admittedly, I've played a lot of custom races since then, but I typically start any Elder Scrolls game as a Khajiit. For me, I play games to get away from the real world for a few hours. Being able to pick something not human just means I'm going to do it. Perhaps it's because I like creative writing, and have been working (incredibly slowly) on writing a story, but I find it easier to create a backstory around the beasts. Mostly because I don't find them boring, and I don't feel like I have to recreate myself as this character. I can be whoever I want to be, look however I want to look, and generally can get away with an easier background story for my characters. I'll be the first to admit that playing humans or elves in the Elder Scrolls has never appealed to me. As for Khajiit being my go-to, that comes from preferring my characters to have hair. Horns and feathers just didn't have the same draw. Now, if I could have gotten a head full of snakes, I'd have been impossible to convince away from the Argonians. So, I suppose for me, it comes down to appearances. I don't feel I have to try to make myself, or to try to uphold the standards of a "good looking" character, and it rarely has plot concerns being a non-human race.

I'm going to preface this by mentioning I've read about 90% of this thread in the past two hours (I skipped some of the more drama-laden posts) and that I typically don't get involved in threads like these. I have no desire to fling insults, threaten doom and gloom, or howl about how this isn't fair. I'm also going to give fair warnings on two points. The first is that I haven't downloaded anything in about 5 or 6 months, as a result of my desktop going up in smoke. The second is that I'm not going to hide my caustic personality if it happens to show up. I won't throw insults at people, so if it feels like I've insulted you, I probably wasn't intending on it. With that out of the way, I'll get to my points. While this thread seemed to me to have started out of some form of protest, it's spiraled out of control, and I haven't seen the community this vicious since the whole paid mods debacle. The important thing to remember is that within any group of people, there are nice people, and there are those who aren't so much. I'd say the word I'm thinking of, but it wouldn't get past the word filters, and I'm not about to try filter dodging from my phone. Now, we have an interesting split of the community. We have the Premium Members, whether monthly or permanent. Then we have the Supporters, who either paid for ad removal, or got dropped into it when their Premium expired. Then there are the Free Members, with a split sub-group based on whether they ad-block or not. So we have four groups, and each of those four can be roughly broken down into four groups: Nice, Evil, Calm, and Silent. The problem here is that those who have nothing good to say are belting out their thoughts, and instead of keeping it civil, they're targeting specific users, they're carpet-bombing entire groups, tarring and feathering everyone with the same brush. So, what group am I in? I'm one of those Free Members who uses an ad-blocker. Yeah, I'm one of those "filthy freeloaders" that some people have so "graciously" painted the whole group with. Now, I could give a long-winded spiel about my use of ad-block, but the short version is that I've had to reinstall Windows three times because of malicious ads getting past the antivirus, and each time, I was told I had to buy a new license key at the cost of $100. So, no, I don't let any ads in, not until the ad distribution companies can provide, to a reasonable degree, that the ads don't contain malicious code. So, why haven't I simply bought Premium or become a Supporter? Well, it wasn't from a lack of trying. I don't have credit cards, and I don't have a debit card, either. I buy my games on Steam using Visa Gift Cards. Now, maybe it was just the type of card I was using, but apparently, you can't make purchases outside of the United States with the ones I have used. Otherwise, I'd still be having this discussion, but carrying a different flag. Too many people here have forgotten one of the oldest guidelines for a conversation. "If you don't have anything nice to say, then say nothing at all." Instead, they point their internet hatred-cannons at everyone else who dares have a different opinion, a different title under their name, a different point to make, and they blast them. Do I consider myself a contributor to the site? Hell no. I have one not-very-good mod to my name that, last I checked, has maybe 30 downloads. I occasionally have advice, when it falls within something I've encountered before. I've downloaded a lot of mods in the past, and maybe endorsed a tenth of them at best. I had a mod in the pipeline, but it's stuck on a desktop that runs for 30 minutes at a time, so there it sits until I get back up and running with a bucket of new, expensive parts I can barely afford. Will I ever get Premium? Maybe. It depends on whether I get my hands on a gift card that works here, at a time when I have the money to spend. For the foreseeable future, though, I'm down and out for the next year. Maybe more. After all, I haven't done the math to know how many months it's going to take me to save up to fix it. So, with my howling over with, I'm going to call it a night.

Have you modified your .ini files by following someone's guide or downloading a pre-customized .ini file? Because that looks suspiciously like one of those 'ini tweaks' to the Papyrus memory limit, the kind of way-too-much that tends to cause more problems than it fixes. I'd recommend clearing your .ini files and reading up on some stability guides. As for .ini file tweaks that would be 'safe' to use, I don't know any. I'm running a relatively-stock .ini file with a full mod list.

Wasn't sure where to put this, honestly, but with a recent playthrough I'm doing, I've run into an interesting problem, one I created for myself. Simply put, I'm using Enhanced Camera to make my first-person view be the same height as my character. This particular character is, well, set to a scale of 2.0 (Yes, I know, lots of world clipping does occur, I'm able to put up with that.), and as a result, I've run into a small issue where a lot of activators are just out of reach when standing. Now, many of them are within reach when crouched, so this wouldn't normally be an issue. The issue comes in with a handful of doors that I can't open, even when using sneak to crouch, and talking with any NPC that decides to sit on the ground (like the Khajiit Merchants). For now, I've been 'solving' the problem by toggling clipping so I can get 'closer' to the NPC or object in question, but I'd rather solve the issue by enabling a longer activation range. The problem is, I'm not sure how to do that. I'm comfortable enough with the Creation Kit that I could make the change myself, but I'm not sure where exactly to look. And I'm also comfortable with editing .ini files if it's there instead, but again, I don't know what exactly I'd be putting in as a command. Yes, I know, I'm crazy for wanting to play a character that big in the first place. And I'm even crazier for wanting to adjust a core game mechanic for the sake of not having to reduce my character's height. As I said earlier, I'm not sure this is the right place to ask, but I also wasn't sure where to ask about this. EDIT: Nevermind, I found out how to do it. For anyone else looking for a similar solution to this perplexing problem, the answer is an .ini tweak. Open your Skyrim.ini file, head down to [interface] (or if it doesn't yet exist, make it), and add/change fActivatePickLength=180 (the Default value) to a higher number. As I'm playing a character twice as tall, I've doubled the value, and it seems to work just fine.

For me, the reason is simple: GTS 250 as Primary GPU. Even if I could get Skyrim SE to run, I'd have an experience that looks worse than what I'm used to, and with a ton of missing mods. I'd much rather play using LE, and anything I may make will probably also be for LE, because I can play-test, and thereby not release buggy crap. As for why I haven't upgraded the GPU in my system, it's simply a lack of funding.