Relativelybest

I say it's Calcemo. You buy a dwarven arrow in Riften. Less than a minute later a courier shows up with a letter from Calcemo, who wants you to come all the way to Markarth so he can look at the arrow you just bought. Obviously, the guy either has a one heck of an intelligence network, or is in posession of powerful clairvoyant powers. If anyone is capable of knowing your every move, it's him. And why would someone who owns a whole Dwemer museum be interested in a four septim arrow? It's obviously just an excuse for him to meet you in person. Other possibilities include the Psijics, who do appear to be keeping an eye on the Dragonborn without wanting to interfere directly. Note that the guards keep reporting sightings of Psijics monks appearing and vanishing in thin air, suggesting they're running some kind of Men in Black operation in the background. ...Actually, yeah, this is my new theory: Calcemo is the head of a group of undercover Psijic Monks in charge of monitoring and covertly helping the Dragonborn, and he occasionally sends anonymous letters to nudge the Dragonborn in the right direction.

Isn't that actually a problem, though? What if you want to play a High Elf? Between it being the seat of the Thalmor, making it kinda important, and the fact that the place is almost as large as Valenwood, I seriously doubt it's going to be a DLC. If we see Summertset Isles, I think it's going to be in its own game. Of course, my personal daydream is for an ES game set in both Valenwood and the Summerset Isles as one large region (not completely unrealistic since the total area is still about the same as Cyrodil) with sailable boats to let you cross the sea between. You could hang out in Valenwood with like Bosmer rebel guerillas and walking trees and stuff, or visit Alinor and get involved in Thalmor politics, or just sail around playing pirate and exploring all the smaller islands. We probably won't get that, but a man can dream. As with Summerset, I don't see them putting Hammerfell in a DLC. The place is larger than Skyrim.

Well, they're Empire, not the "Parliamentery Democracy." Of course they are going to be authoritarian, what do you expect? Just, you know, same goes for High King Ulfric. Yeah, but in every war you gamble with the possibility that you won't win. And you can't keep figting a war that's getting people killed simply because it has already gotten a ton of people killed. That's called the Sunk Cost Fallacy. It's a logical fallacy by which you convince yourself that you can "make up" for resources you have already wasted by expending even more resources - in this case your valuable tax-paying citizens. Sometimes you just have to stop being stubborn and know when to cut your losses. Look, if your character feels both sides have undesirable traits, isn't the sensible thing to not get involved in the civil war at all? Plenty of Nords in the game don't seem to actively participate in the conflict and several are actually outspoken against it. Now, my primary character started out joining the Stormcloaks since the Imperials tried to cut her head off, but then she switched sides for several reasons, mainly that she didn't like Ulfric as a person. But she's also a Nord who grew up in Cyrodil, so she has a more international view of things and believes a stable Empire is probably for the best. Besides, she worships Akatosh, so it doesn't matter much to her that Talos was banned. On the other hand, I have this other Nord character who is native to Skyrim, and who happens to be a fairly devout Talos worshipper. For her, it makes way more sense to join the Stormcloaks. And I have several characters who aren't interested in picking a side at all. See, I think most people overthink this issue - most characters wouldn't factor in stuff like "Ulfric is a racist" or "the Mede dynasty is weak", etc. They are going to make their decision based on what most immediately concern them. If they pick a side, they are going to have a good personal reason to pick that particular side. But if they are undecided and just keep weighing one against the other, chances are they don't care enough to risk their lives over it.

I can't even fight Miraak in his actual proper location without game-breaking bugs, so fighting him somewhere you aren't supposed to probably isn't even possible.

First of all, that's wrong. The only reason you face him is because you specifically seek him out. It's not like he can force you to read the black book, after all. You have to go to him, even though you don't really have much motivation for going through all that trouble. Second, he was putting his plan into motion way before he even knew you existed, so it's unlikely the Dragonborn was actually vital to his designs. There was like one line that kinda implied he wanted to eat your soul, somewhere at the end, but that's it. There's just not a lot to go on here. I'm not saying he wasn't potentially very dangerous. I'm saying that the threat he poses never comes through in the actual narrative of the story. The central conflict is only implied, and vaguely at that. I mean, establishing a clear conflict between your protagonist and antagonist is a pretty basic writing skill. We know Mario wants to beat King Koopa because he kidnapped the princess. We know Megaman wants to stop Dr Wily because he's trying to take over the world with an army of killer robots. It doesn't have to be a complicated conflict, but there has to be one. Dragonborn essentially just gives us a cocky dude in a shiny hat and informs us we should go beat him up just because he's there.

Question, mostly out of curiosity: How long does it normally take for a ban appeal to be evaluated?

I don't think Dragonborn is a bad DLC, but I do have two complaints, one minor and one major: 1: Apocrypha is too restrictive. It looks impressive and I liked the moving corridors and stuff, but since you can only move on a certain path, the place is basically just a large dungeon. I would have prefered it to be a true worldspace to explore the way the Forgotten Vale, Soul Cairn and even Solstheim was. Even the trips to Dagon's realm back in Oblivion gave you more freedom to move around. (Let's not even bring up Shivering Isles.) 2: We never got to know Miraak. By that I mean you get to meet him once for like two minutes, then a second time when you actually fight him. He has zero character development, to the point where I actually have no idea why I'm fighting him. His cult wants to kill me and... that's it. He has some vague plan to return to Solstheim and I guess maybe conquer the place? But his main motivation seems to be simply escaping Apocrypha and, hell, if I was stuck there for a thousand years with only Mora to talk to I'd brainwash a few people to get me out of there too. It's not like he uses them for blood sacrifices or feeds them to his dragons or something. Frankly, exploiting people for unpayed labour while they are sleeping (which they don't actually remember afterwards) and corrupting some magic stones in some vague way are the only remotely evil things he does. There's the cult attacking you, but when you meet him in Apocrypha he doesn't even know who you are or why you are there, which means his cultists probably acted on their own, having heard about you and thinking you were some kind of heretic. Note that when he has the chance to kill you, he just sends you back home. Like: "Whatever, I don't care." Basically, I'm not sure what makes him the bad guy here. Why do I want to kill this guy? For all I know he might actually have done a pretty decent job ruling Solstheim - dude could have kept the dragons in check and mess with the Thalmor and so on. I'm not sure he even said anything about taking over the world. Couldn't we at least have discussed the matter over a glass of wine like civilized people before busting out the Dragon Aspects and dueling to the death? At least Harkon explained what he planned to do and offered me to join him. I knew he was a dangerous lunatic. Miraak is just some guy who's trying to get home.

Personally, I'm not a fan of jump-scares. They're not actually scary, in the sense of establishing a true emotional response, but rather take advantage of your natural startle reflex for a momentary reaction. They are the horror equivalent of bad puns and popculture references - essentially cheap shots without lasting value. You mention Amnesia, a very scary game that actually doesn't have a lot of jump-scares. Quite the contrary, it's designed entirely around knowing that the monster is coming and the fact that your best survival strategy is hiding and avoiding to look at it. (Which is utterly brilliant, because things you don't see are always scarier than things you do see.) Horror, real horror, is all about establishing an atmosphere. I'm all in favour of that because so far, Skyrim has been somewhat lacking good atmospheric quest mods in general. Oblivion had a few - Dungeons of Ivellon was absolutely brilliant in terms of establishing a spooky atmosphere, using only lighting, sound, some creepy backstory and a few scripted enemies. Gates to Aesgard was another one, though I found it more disturbing than scary. (There are actually different types of horror.) Would love to see something like that for Skyrim, though I've heard making good quests for Skyrim is a lot harder for some reason. :confused:

...Er, it's sleeping. It's not exactly meant to be a great adventure. Unless you are one of the rare people capable of lucid dreaming and, you know, actually remembering your dreams, sleeping in real life really isn't much different. I dunno, it just seems impractical to end up in a lucid dream world for extended periods every time you go to sleep. Especially since sleeping in the game is just an alternative way to pass the time. This idea would probably work better as a specific quest, similar to Mind of Madness or Waking Nightmare - if you go to sleep in a certain location, you get to play a certain dream.

I support this suggestion. A New Game+ mod would be sweet. Just making assumptions here, but I would expect one would have to either find a way to port all your character data to a new game save, or reset every quest in the game at once and send your character back to Helgen. Either way, I'd expect this to be some pretty advanced stuff.

No, no. I pretty much ignored the dragons from the start. I was sorta focused on my epic duel with my ancient Dragonborn nemesis. If it means anything, Miraak has never stolen any dragon souls from me period, even back on Solstheim. Just, at the time I thought it was a glitch in my favor, not a game breaker. First he retreats to the center and kills the first dragon, but I get the soul and he stayes intangible. If I heal him he returns to the fight, then retreats to the center and kills the second dragon, same deal: I get the soul, he stays where he is until I console heal him. After that he just tries to kill the second dragon again, even though it's already dead. This causes the fight to loop forever. If I kill the dragons before fighting him, he goes to the center and apparently waits for Mora to kill him, but Mora never shows up. Pretty much. The best I can manage is disabling him, updating the quest manually and leaving through the final alter, but I'm very reluctant to do that since I don't consider it a real solution to the problem. Plus, it means I can't take his gear. Yeah, it's just... Having checked a lot of other Miraak bug discussions around the web, I'm not even sure that's going to work. And I don't think I can take playing through everything from Cleansing of the Stones all over again just to find I still have the same problem. So I'm going to have to take some time off Skyrim before trying it. Maybe in the meantime someone will come up with a fix for this goddamned bugged fight. From what I can gather, the safest bet is to actually reinstall Dragonborn and starting over from scratch. But I'm totally not doing that unless I've tried every other measure first. As far as I can understand, the problem is manegable as long as he does absorb the souls. If your character gets all the souls instead, like mine did, you may have a serious problem on your hands. Only the Dragonborn patch, and I did turn that off along with the other mods, with no change. If I replay the questline from an earlier save, I'll try turning it off to see if that helps. Though, I'm not terribly optimistic since I'm not sure the DB patch even does anything to my game.

Eh, giants are scary when you are low level, but eventually you can pretty much take them head on with little trouble. And even before then, it's just a matter of running under a bridge or climbing a cliff and then filling them with arrows. At least the dragons are scaled to your level. Well, that had a lot to do with the fact that Alduin has a special Storm Call shout that summons a meteor shower, which he always uses at the start of his attack on Helgen.

I prefer the Nord warrior type, and specialize in sword, shield and mixed armor. (Basically whatever I think looks good). High Block, high Single-hand but skipping the axe and mace perks, lots of crafting and enchanting. Usually a bit of archery and stealth on the side, but mostly powering on with pure melee. Frankly, I think one-handed and shield with high Block is the only way to make melee fighting remotely fun in Skyrim. Everything else comes down to staggering around like a drunk and wildly hacking away at your opponent.

Read it, doesn't provide much help. I can get him out of the pool but not stop him from looping, unless I kill all the dragons first, in which case he just freezes in the pool forever. I've read the bug list, but there doesn't seem to be any way to fix this problem. Either it's absolutely necessary for Miraak to absurd those dragon souls, or the final cutscene with Mora is simply broken. I've tried every concievable variation of difficulty and god moding. Nothing changes: I still get the dragon souls instead of Miraak and the battle never ends. I've tried advancing the quest with the console, but all it does is update my quest log and unlock the altar. It doesn't kill Miraak or end the battle. Yeah, I noticed. Thanks, that cheers me right up. :dry: Just to be clear: Were you at any point able to get him to absorb the dragon souls?

Doesn't work. He's apparently essential in some weird way that makes his scripted death the only way to kill him. So, yeah. I can't beat him even by cheating. How much earlier a save? The quicksave I made just before the battle yields the same result every single time. I have a save from after I learned the last Bend Will shout but before I went to Apocrypha, but if I have to go back to before I started the quest I'll need to redo a lot of tedious stuff. I found I could skip the whole dragon thing by killing all the dragons before actually hurting Miraak. Doing this makes him run to the center of the area, but then he just stands there - Mora never shows up, and he becomes impervious to anything I do to him. I'm not sure if he has to absorb those dragon souls in order for Mora to appear, or if I'm dealing with two separate glitches.

So, I can't kill the final boss of Dragonborn.Thanks, Bethesda. What happens is that when he goes etheral and starts offing his own dragons, I get the dragon soul instead, and he remains locked in his etheral state. Now, I figured out that resetting his health with the console snaps him out of it so we can keep fighting, so that part is manegable. The real problem is that he gets stuck trying to soul-steal the second dragon over and over and over and never kills Sahrotaar. No matter how many rounds I go against this guy he never dies. I've tried everything! Killing Sahrootar myself, damaging Miraak as slowly as possible, disabling and enabling him, exiting and reentering the cell, turning all my mods off. Nothing. The kill command does nothing. Trying to make him non-essential does nothing. I can force the quest to end but it won't actually kill him. I can make Hermaeus Mora appear but he just kinda floats there and doesn't do anything. I've spent the last four hours trying to get around this. It's maddening. Edit: And I probably should have put this in Technical Support, damn. If any mod sees this, feel free to move it.

Dude, that why they'll still be around. They've put the Empire in dark times because it's dramatic, and just writing it out between games would be kinda meaningless. It's standard storytelling.

I don't see any ninja... Oh, wait. o_O

Tough call. As big an anime nerd as I am, I have a hard time thinking of anything that wouldn't seem completely out of place. Anime tends to by highly stylized, after all. I guess you could work in something like say Sengoku Basara and claim it's all from Akavir. Some stuff from the Fate/ franchise might also be okay - I could see Fate/Zero berserker work as a kind of alternative ebony armor. (And his ability to turn anything he picks up into a magical weapon would be pretty rad.)

Mistwatch doesn't respawn after you cleared it, so if you want your own fortress ruin to safely store your stuff (without having to mod it) that would be the one. Also, IINM, interior cells that respawn do so after certain amount of time from the last point you enter it. (As opposed to exterior cells that always respawn after a certain time regardless.) Meaning you can technically keep any place from resetting itself by visiting it on a regular basis, though if you miss the deadline at any point, all your stuff is gone. I get the feeling, by the way. In Fallout 3 I would always end up living in the Machinist's Forge after talking the Machinist into leaving, because I liked the place way better than the official homes. I was disappointed I couldn't find anything similar in Skyrim.

Nitpick: The Thalmor isn't the secret police, it's their actual goverment. The word "Thalmor" is actually used pretty much the same way as "Nazi."

Unless I missed the part where Ulfric invaded High Rock and started building concentration camps for the dark elves, I think this comparisson is reaching for it somewhat. I'm sure that if you put your mind to it, you could just as well draw parallels to George Washington, and they would be just as meaningful. It's only false advertising if you don't deliver on it.

I'm a pretty casual player, not one of those Nintendo Hard type people. But reading all this, I kinda want to fight this guy. Too bad I've been stuck around mid-60 for a while. Should probably get around to maxing my my minor skills.

...I'm pretty sure this is already a feature in the vanilla game. You can't drop gold but you should be able to place it in containers just fine. You can find it among your misc items. really? Thats where I thought that would be. I'll look again lol! I think it only shows up when you actually open a container, but yeah, it should definitely be there.

...I'm pretty sure this is already a feature in the vanilla game. You can't drop gold but you should be able to place it in containers just fine. You can find it among your misc items.