RedRavyn

The problem with Guardian Stones Overhaul is that the bonuses the stones give with that mod make the game easier -- not harder. You give up one problem (fast leveling) and acquire another (easier game). If you're looking for a more challenging game it's best to ignore the Standing Stones (and the various Shrines to the Divines) completely. Anything which gives you a long-term bonus to anything will make the game easier. I figure potions don't fall into this category, since you can choose when to use them. I just started a new playthrough, deciding to stick with my own "recipe" (above) to the hilt, and that means avoiding the Guardian Stones and only making potions when I have need of them. My first perk point was put into Smithing so I could improve a steel war axe and an Imperial shield, and I crafted leather armor (I already found the other parts of the set), and improved all four parts. That's actually so that these items don't stack with other identical items in my inventory. There's a bug in the game in which the favorites feature chokes when you have multiple versions of something assigned, so doing this is mostly to keep "my" stuff distinct from stuff I'm going to sell. At a low level of Smithing the bonus you get doesn't really matter very much. I generally even improve my pickaxe and wood cutter's axe, just to keep them separate from any others I pick up. This is it for smithing for a long time.

Well, I've got another little problem. Not so little, actually. In the CK all the items in the cellar are properly marked as unowned. In testing this out in-game, though, everything still comes up as "steal" if I try to interact with them. The exterior part of the cabin is OK -- nothing would be stolen if you take it. I'm at a complete loss to understand what's going on here.

I've been experimenting with the "self-restraint technique", which has already been mentioned, although I haven't been religious about it. Here's my recipe: Beginning the Game: Use an alternate start that doesn't involve the Main Quest in any way. The Main Quest intersects with a lot of other quests, all of which will result in rapid leveling. You also get immediate access to Shouts, which can also be unbalancing. Training: Don't. Leveling is your enemy in this game. Minimize it. Smithing: Restrict yourself to only the first two Smithing perks, just up to allowing you to improve steel. I've concluded that anything above steel weapons and armor in this game is over-balancing. especially when they've been improved. I'll use anything the game drops, but I'm having second thoughts about my recently-acquired Ebony Bow, which seems to be over-powered, even for the enemies I'm seeing at level 30+. Basically, improve any steel armor/weapons, and any fur/leather armor you can find, but don't improve anything above those (Elven, Glass, Dwarven, Orcish, Ebony, or Daedric. In fact, don't use any armor above leather or any weapons above Elven or Dwarven. Do not craft or improve anything that you aren't going to use, yourself. Enchanting: No Enchanting. Period. This is probably the single most over-balancing feature in Skyrim. Alchemy: Create only potions that you're actually going to use. Grinding out potions will cause you to level up extremely rapidly. This is a Bad Thing if you're already finding the game too easy. This means, for instance, that you don't have to grab every single flower or butterfly that you see. After you've played the game you'll know what ingredients you need for the potions you require. It's fun just going on a personal quest to collect the ingredients to make up a batch of a particular type of potion/poison. Bartering/Persuasion: Don't boost them, either with potions or gear. You probably aren't going to need the extra money, anyway, and the more slowly you progress in Persuasion, the better off you'll be if you want the game to remain challenging. Hunting: Don't. Unless you need leather to craft or improve your own armor. Defend yourself from the local wildlife, but don't go looking for trouble that you don't need. Better yet, just buy whatever leather you need, or buy pelts and craft them into leather. Skill Books: Don't read them. I even installed a mod that gives me the option to either use or store away a skill book, so I don't automatically get a level-up with the skill just because I happen to click on the damned thing and don't recognize it for what it is. Primary Questlines: This refers to Daedric quests and "guild" factions. Be picky about Daedric quests. Choose one of the guild factions and stick with it. Refuse to do any of the others, however enticing they may be. OK, the Bard's College is pretty lame, so do it with any of the others, but decide on Mage, Companion, Thief, or Assassin, and just play that role. I don't see much of an issue with doing both the Thieves Guild and Dark Brother questlines with a single character, just as long as you remember not to use the magical gear you get with them. Or, better still, just wear ordinary leather armor and trade out ONE piece at a time for the other stuff as you need it. If you go with the Companions, keep the Werewolf form and use Skyforge steel. If you go with the College of Winterhold, then I think it's probably a good idea to wear whatever is the best gear you're offered at any point in the questline. When you do the Bards College don't do the side quests (collecting the flute, lute, and drum). Your reward for doing all these is to level up in every single one of your skills. This is what you should be trying to minimize. Loadout: I played my current game with no enchanted armor or weapons until I got my first set of Thieves Guild armor. That was around level 20. Even now, at level 30+ I still use non-enchanted weapons. I did install a mod that spawns dragons, even though I don't have the Main Quest engaged, just to throw in some additional challenges, and I killed my first Blood Dragon with no enchanted gear at all just a few days ago. Speak softly and carry a small stick -- just know how to use it. Skills and Perks: Concentrate. This is how you can stay competitive with the competition at higher levels, even with the above restrictions. I have perks for light armor, archery, and sneak, which defines the role I'm playing with this character, and my intent is to mostly fill-out those perk trees. I've put two skill points into Smithing and Alchemy, each. I'll probably boost Alchemy some more, since I concentrate on poisons, more than other kinds of potions. Mods: I'm guessing that if you install mods that increase the difficulty or number of your enemies you'll find yourself leveling up even faster. Since leveling is one of the main balance issues in Skyrim this would seem to be self-defeating. If there's a mod which actually properly balances enemies up to the vanilla level-cap, I'd personally like to know what it is. If it doesn't do anything else but that, I'd consider it a "keeper". The problem is that most game overhaul mods wind up changing a lot of things that I don't want changed, which is why I'm not using any of them. I probably left some things out. I'll add them in later if I think of any, but even that "recipe" should keep the game challenging into at least mid-levels.

I'll be sure to post it when it's finished, AstralFire. I have no experience with Morrowind or Fallout, although Fallout is on my "to get" list. Skyrim is no different from Oblivion in the choices of Player homes which are available. Basically, there's one in every major city, and you have to do something for the person in charge of that city to get the privilege of buying it. If you want good Player homes, though, you should look into the many mods that are available and even being created as I write this. It's one of the more popular sorts of mods for games like this one. I have big plans for Anise and her cabin, although my goal at the moment is to just make the cabin available to a beginning player without incurring a crime or getting a non-existent NPC to put a bounty on your head for taking anything in the home (Moire doesn't even exist in the game until you start one of the Daedric quests). Eventually, I'll add a complete AI package to Anise, so that she'll actually eat, sleep, wander around a bit, and even tend her garden. There'll be a series of quests you can do for her that will put you in her good favor, so that when she dies you'll inherit her cabin with no strings attached. Unless I can do a convincing old lady voice she won't be voice-acted any more, but there will at least be more ways to interact with her, and I'm planning on her being a low-level Alchemy and Enchanting instructor, as well. She'll make some basic potions if she had the ingredients for them, and you'll be able to earn these by doing little quests for her. Supply her with soul gems and items and she will be able to enchant some very basic armor, weapons, or jewelry for you. Again, nothing extravagant. This isn't intended to give the PC god-like abilities -- just to sort of increase the immersion and give the PC an early home as a live-in apprentice to an old lady. The cabin won't become an uber-mansion, as is popular with player home mods. It will just be cleaned up a bit and the exterior replaced with something a little less run-down if I can find something appropriate in the CK for that. I'll add a little bit of extra storage (nothing extravagant) and make all containers, both in the cellar and the exterior, non-respawning, so everything will be safe for storage. The basement will be expanded just a tiny bit to add enough space for a cot for her apprentice (i.e. the Player). After you acquire the shack for your own you'll be able to get your own Alchemy/Enchanter apprentice who will live in the basement and occasionally go out into the field to collect alchemical reagents. Like I said -- big plans, but my short-term goal is to just solve the issue of trespassing when you go to the cellar. Oh, I also removed the annoying fog from the basement. The developers seem to really like that sort of thing, but I find it less "ambiance" and more "immersion-breaking", since the game still doesn't, after all these years of developing ES installments, handle fog and mist well. That and it doesn't make sense to have a foggy basement. That's not the way physics works. The dripping water goes next if I can figure out how to do that.

I'm working on my first Skyrim mod, although it's not my first time modding for ES. I made a number of private mods for Oblivion, so I'm not entirely a newbie to the CK. The Skyrim version seems similar but I'm noticing some changes -- things I've never seen in the Oblivion version. The mod I'm making right now is a remake of Anise's Cabin to make it easier to use as an early-game Player home, once Anise has been eliminated. The main problem is that some of the items (not all of them!) are set to the Hagraven ownership faction, which is why Moire sends a bunch of thugs to kill you if you steal anything from the cabin -- even when Moire isn't even spawned into the game, yet. I found this so annoying that it was the inspiration for this mod. The main change will, therefore, be to remove all ownership from items within the cabin's exterior and cellar. I've already done this for every item but one -- tedious, but fairly easy. However, I'm not sure how to prevent every access to the cellar to be counted as a trespass. I suspect it might be linked to Hagraven ownership of the ladder, but ownership for that is ghosted out so I can't change it. A little insight into this issue would be appreciated. The associated quest, triggered (as nearly as I can tell from examining things) by entering the "defaultSetStageTRIG" box is "dunPOITundraWitchShackQST". This seems to cause Anise to go aggro on the Player when you enter the cellar, so I'd assume that I should leave this alone. It also seems to remove ownership from the bed so that the player can sleep there. Since I can't find anything within Anise's AI that indicates she ever enters the shack to do anything (including sleep), changing bed ownership to default "NONE" wouldn't seem to interfere with anything -- at least I don't think so. I'd like to extend things a bit and create a series of quests associated with Anise, although my knowledge of quest-making is pretty rudimentary at this point. I'd also like to script changes in ownership upon Anise's death, and arrange for her to come to an "untimely end" without the intervention of the Player, so that the Player can simply inherit the shack from her, but that's for the future. Right now I just want to make sure that after Anise is killed (by the Player) that no further crime will be committed in interacting with anything in the cabin's exterior or interior (cellar). I'm just about there for this first stage in this mod's evolution. I just can't insure that entering the cellar won't be counted as "trespassing". This probably isn't really a big deal, but I'm a purist when it comes to such things, and I'd like this mod to be as "clean" as possible, with no unforseen consequences (Half-Life 2 reference) to doing things in and around the shack.

Perraine, there are very few quests which I think Bethesda did "right" with this game. Most of them are pretty lackluster. Some are downright pathetic. However, I agree with you. Giving the Dovahkiin the need to choose between Parth and the Blades was well-done. It's one of the very few actual "role-playing" scenarios in this entire game, where the player is forced to consider the pros and cons of an ethical/moral dilemma. And, the decision has actual in-game consequences, which is also not something that is present in most other quests. My hat's off to the one good writer they have on their quest-development staff. I just wish they'd pay him/her more and get this person to write all the future questlines of the ES games.

Yes, this belongs in the Spoiler section, bpestilence, and for exactly the same reason that Frosty mentioned. My favorite (and only) companion/follower is Meeko, the poor mutt who used to live with his master in "Meeko's Shack" until his master died of a disease which isn't fatal (at least to the Dovahkiin). I have a soft spot for lost animals and Meeko really needs a home. Once you make him essential (with the console, of course), he's actually a very enjoyable follower. He doesn't seem to exhibit the annoying constant bumping that plagues so many other followers, and when I'm sneaking he generally keeps his distance -- totally unlike Barbas' obnoxious behavior. I think the next time I do that quest I'll kill that insufferable mutt, just to see what happens, even though I don't really want the hammer. Don't get me wrong. Barbas is a very valuable follower. He's invincible. Literally. He isn't even "essential", but is in godmode, and may be the only NPC in the game who is. Meeko, though, with a mod installed that makes him quiet, is a joy to have around. I like him so much, in fact, I'm considering making my first Skyrim mod a Meeko Make-Over, complete with a more effective AI and a user-friendly way to interact with him and give him commands.

@ StayFrosty05: A little update to your issue is in order, I think. I did a trial run into Sarthaal, using the console to unlock the place. Jyrik Gauldurson's fragment of the Gauldur Amulet cannot be obtained from his corpse, because his corpse doesn't exist. He's sitting on his throne, very much alive (undead ?) and you cannot interact with him in any way, including doing any damage to him at all, or even using the console to open his inventory. So, the only way to get this fragment is through the console "player.additem" command. @ Stemin: I get the impression from your comments that everything to you is black and white, all or nothing -- that you don't understand nuances of behavior or have the slightest clue what "role-playing" is. In spite of the fact that our respective thought processes are alien to each other, though, I'll attempt to address your issues with my issues. I'm here because I love Skyrim. I also hate Skyrim. I'm sure you can't understand that, and I'm sorry. I'm not going to take the time and space, here, to try to explain how some people can see the world in shades of grey. And how is forcing the Dovahkiin to become a mage when you might be role-playing a character with no magical aptitude at all "realistic" in any way? It's not. As I've mentioned, before, this is merely a ploy on the part of the developers of this game to completely entangle all their quests so you can't possibly NOT get involved in virtually every primary quest in the game. Bethesda advertised Skyrim as a role-playing game. Any such claim is a bare-faced lie. They took away any vestige of role-playing that still existed in Oblivion. Instead, the player is put into a single role -- basically an actor in a scripted play. It isn't as though I'm the only one pointing this out, either. It's one of the major complaints that players have with the core design philosophy of Skyrim. ES is becoming more and more of a linear Skinner Maze with every installment. So, no -- my need to "dodge quests" isn't OCD. It comes from the fact that I'm a role-player. My characters are not "me" and every single one of them is different from every single other one of them. Again, since you don't seem to understand the difference between role-playing and toon-pushing, I strongly suggest that we agree to disagree and get on with our respective lives. After all, this entire thread is about JUST what I've been talking about, and you don't seem to understand that. I certainly don't see you complaining to StayFrosty05, who started the thread, for not liking the fact that his "non-Mage Dovahkin" has to join the College of Winterhold to complete a quest that shouldn't intersect with it in the first place. This problem is endemic to the game of Skyrim. I don't know any other "role-playing" game where the developers have gone to such extreme measures to railroad the player into doing all their quests, and that includes previous ES games. I frankly don't care how much time and effort they put into the quests. They didn't structure many of them well at all, in the first place, so they certainly don't have enough respect on my part to put any effort into doing them all. If I were just playing "me" I'd do all them, anyway, because I like being a "completionist" (and that is much more OCD than "dodging quests", so you clearly don't understand what Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is, either). I've even played through the game like that once, with a character who had no goals, ambitions, dreams, likes, dislikes, or anything else that could get in the way of doing every little quest. It was fun, but it's not as fun as playing a character who restricts what you can do. The real role-players who are reading this thread know what I'm talking about.

Short answer ... yes. I don't play me, or I'd be playing the goody-two-shoes type all the time. I'm boring. My characters are not boring. They're full of lives. Note that I used the multiple of "life". I don't play one character. Each one is unique, with his/her own personality, background, dreams, aspirations, strengths, and weaknesses. So, sometimes I play a saint. Sometimes I play a sinner. Sometimes I play one and game events cause me to have to switch roles. Sometimes I play someone who is so totally screwed up in the head that s/he is completely unpredictable and even occasionally surprises me, the Player. Because of the answer to the first part of your question, I really can't answer the second, because no single city is going to fulfill all the needs of all the possible characters I could play. Currently I'm playing a thief on the run in an alternate start of my own making that doesn't even engage the main quest. I obviously headed straight for Riften, and that city has just about everything I need for this character. If Bethesda wanted to please me with a city-based DLC, then I would like them to expand upon Riften -- bigger (cities are tiny in Skyrim), more NPCs with more interesting quests that tie in with the Thieves Guild, and TG quests that aren't just more of the same "radiant" BS odd-jobs.

Thanks. That mod worked -- maybe a little too well. I met my first dragon only five minutes after getting to the outside environment! Needless to say, at level 1 and with my best weapon a bow (but with no arrows!) I hid. The mod claims to just set the variables that allow dragons to spawn. I guess this requires a little more research to find those variables and see if they can be set from within a .bat file, but this works for me so I can't complain.

Stemin, I think you're taking many of my comments out of context and attributing a worst-case scenario to all of them. Let me address your points, so we don't have any further misunderstandings, here. "I'm sensing a lot of hostility in your reply and I don't get it. You act like I'm calling you a liar. I didn't even address you with my quote." No hostility, here. I said the levels were capped at 50. In your post after that you said they weren't. Perhaps you believe in what you read, but I also believe what I read to be accurate, because it comes from several sources, and not just the uesp wiki. You even stated that we were using the same reference, so both of us couldn't be correct. I checked my facts before I posted. You didn't. I'm not saying you called me a liar -- only that you were mistaken, and I set things correct, lest other players who don't know how to look these things up for themselves assume you were right and I was wrong. "The enemies only level to 50, and you shouldn't expect the game to be challenging beyond that point for that very obvious reason." AND "... but don't criticize the game as being "broken" when it plays exactly as it was meant to." Actually I can expect the game to be challenging up to its intended player level cap. That's just good game design, although the people who think that Bethesda engages in this practice are few and far between. ES games are not well-designed. They will probably never be well designed. Why should the company worry about this detail when they know that the PC gamers will have the modding community to fix their game, and that they have a captive audience in the console gamers? And, yes, the game is broken. It was created in a broken state, and, again, I'm not talking about the plethora of bugs that were in it. I'm talking about basic game design philosophy. Do you realize how long it takes to get a character's level maxed out after the enemies quit leveling? I can't even imagine playing a character that long and having no challenge left. Perhaps you're happy with this. A lot of us aren't. "It's not easy to write a game that works and works well on all platforms and makes everyone happy." A truer statement has never been made. It's nice to know there's something, here, for which we don't have a disagreement. Seriously, though, this is the crux of many of Bethesda's problems with game releases. They are trying to maximize the audience for their games. This means bland, watered-down quests, graphics appropriate for five to ten year old technology, and a simplified gamesystem than can run on consoles and be ported over to the better quality PCs. When you have to make money you have to make some hard decisions. Sadly, Bethesda isn't making the right decisions, in my opinion. There are companies which write and target their games for the PC market. These are better games, in my opinion, than the ones which Bethesda writes and targets for consoles, and then makes poorly-ported versions for the PC. "You don't _have_ to install mods at all. That's YOUR style." An assumption on your part that this is my style of play. You're right, of course. People don't have to install mods. However, some of us install mods to fix bugs that Bethesda won't fix. The Unofficial Skyrim Patch is, after all, a "mod". We install mods to tweak parts of the game that were not well-done by the developers -- things that fix issues like the "follower bumping" that most of us find so annoying. We install mods to bring the graphics closer to what is capable on a PC, rather than settle for the relatively lame console-oriented graphics in the vanilla game. We install mods that improve the AI of actors (and I don't think anyone can argue that the vanilla AI is totally brain-dead). I don't have any mods installed that dramatically alter the behavior of the game, save for one crafting mod that makes it harder to grind smithing to gain levels. So, don't lump me into the same category as those gamers who install a ton of mods. That's not my style. And, I've played the game in its vanilla version (except for having the Unofficial Skyrim Patch and SkyUI, which is almost a requirement to correct the clunky, glitchy user interface for the PC). "That's pretty poor form to borderline call me a troll because I don't play the game the way you do or expect the same thing out of it that you do." I didn't call you a troll. In fact, this paragraph didn't address you in any way. "Nobody was talking about bugs, and I still don't understand how you can call it broken and then in the same paragraph say that it works exactly how the developers intended it." I said it wasn't about bugs, just to make sure that the playing field was narrowed to the specific issue, which was the game design philosophy and not the actual implemention of the game features. As I said, above, the game was designed in a broken state. The reason is that Bethesda developers are not thorough. They don't think things through. They do half-assed jobs of quest and even "level" design, and leave all their mistakes in to be fixed later. There's no way they could have paid any attention to their beta testers and then release Skyrim in the shambles that pretended to be a finished product. Indeed, many of the most glaring bugs could have been caught before individual developers ever saved their work to disk because they would have been blatently obvious from just looking at what they just created. This is the way the developers intended the game, I'm sad to say. They aren't interested in releasing a finished, polished product. That's why they always have a flurry of bug patches after an initial release. Other companies do much better. So could they. To sum up, we really don't have many disagreements, here. It's funny that this whole conversation regarding Dragon Priests got channeled into this totally off-topic issue, which is that we simply don't agree upon what "broken" means. Our disagreement is not one of substance and context, but of semantics. I hold that something can be working as intended and still be "broken" if it fails to live up to expectations. I suspect that to you "broken" means not working as intended. Both are valid uses of the term. Everyone to each his own.

@ Stemin: The only fact regarding your arrest at the beginning of the game is that you were arrested and there are no official charges against you. The Empire is a country run by Law. The Captain who decided that you are going to be executed, even though there is no evidence of any crime overstepped her bounds -- to the point at which, were I her superior, I would have had her stripped of rank and possibly kicked out of the Legion. So you can't really argue innocence or guilt for the starting character. There are no in-game facts to point to either. Therefore, I am quite justified in arguing that my position regarding this is absolutely correct. You can't claim Skyrim is a role-playing game (which Bethesda does) without leaving the role-playing up to the Player, and not to some set of non-existent facts that might contribute to an equally non-existent back-story. I've said it elsewhere, though. You're free to play the game however you wish. I'm free to play it however I wish. This isn't some game where you have to just push a toon around with no thought of your character's motivations, agenda, or history. Since the game, itself, gives you nothing to go on you have to make it up, and whatever you make up for your own character in your own game is a matter of fact within your game, and not a matter of conjecture for other people who might not agree with your decisions. Role-playing is a very personal thing. Some people don't do it at all. Some people do it all the time. Both approaches are valid, so, like I've said -- whatever floats your boat, but your water is not my water.

Actually, I agree with you fraquar. Nobody should be above the law -- not even the Jarl (hence why I have to agree that the Empire was justified in having Ulric arrested for killing the High King). However, I've personally found that being the Thane of a city carries with it no real benefits at all. I'm getting along quite nicely in my current playthrough (level 35+) without having ever set foot in a walled city, except for the minimum I needed to get the Bard's College quest line out of my Journal. I don't use followers (except Meeko in this playthrough), and I don't really need the facilities in a city to do what I want. I have access to all the tools I need to survive (including crafting) without ever speaking to a single Jarl or Steward. So I have to ask. What's the point of working your butt off for a city to made a Thane when it carries no benefit, short of being able to dodge a single imprisonment or fine? Sure, I know some people have a "thing" for Lydia, or one of the other housecarls, but you can get followers who are just as good without going through all that trouble. Homes? Yes, again, I know some players absolutely MUST have the latest, greatest (modded) version of every single home that can be purchased, but many of us get by quite well with much more modest housing arrangements. I usually grab Anise's cabin early in the game -- a little bit of safe storage, Alchemy station, Enchanting station, close proximity to Riverwood with all the crafting facilities except for a smelter. What more does an itinerant adventurer need? Do you absolutely have to be the Dovahkiin to have fun in the game (You WILL become Thane of Whiterun if you go that route)? I don't think so. Sure, I'm a bit out-matched by some of the Draugr who can shout at me and I can't shout back at them, but I'm having fun in a playthrough where the Main Quest hasn't even been started, yet. I actually like being part of the "common rabble". I just don't want city guards constantly reminding me that I am, seeing as how I can whip most of their butts from Riften to Markarth and back, again. Besides, the Jarls say "common rabble" as though that's a Bad Thing. Is it, now? Where would they be without us? I'm sure Balgruuf would be quite happy with only Nazeem and his palace residents to keep him company, yes? And if we all left for a different hold, where would he be, then? Who will grow the food that he needs to feed himself and his children? Who will do all the repairs around the city when things break? Basically, the common rabble is what gives the Jarl his/her job in the first place, so treat us with a little respect -- especially after one of us manages to become the Thane of a hold.

@ LuckyLucianoO: For the most part you're right. I oversimplified, but my point is still valid about the game not properly updating NPCs reactions to the Player based upon his accomplishments. It's not 100% broken in this sense, but it's definitely not updating itself across the board, either. Your only benefit as Thane in a hold, other than getting a housecarl in some of them, or the right to buy a house in others, is that you can have the guards ignore ONE of your crimes. One. Just a single, little, lousy, unitary one. After that, you're just part of the "common rabble", again. You're also assuming everyone plays into the developers wishes that you join every single guild. Not all of us do that. I've played a character that never once committed a single crime in the game -- all the way up around level 40, when I quit that playthrough because the game lost its challenge. I never joined the Thieves Guild, or the Dark Brotherhood. I never stole a single item. I never murdered anyone. The worst I did was to acquire assaults, but the game is severely broken in the way that it judges whether or not an attack is an assault -- at least in my opinion. So no guard, at least with that character, had any right at all to assume that I had criminal intentions. So, why is it that a guard will admonish me for my lockpicking skill? How the hell does he even know I have a high lockpicking skill, when nobody in Skyrim, save the Divines, have ever seen me pick a lock? And I'm sure that guard doesn't have a hot-line straight to the gods and that they get on it and gossip to him about every single little crime that everyone in the world commits. The problem is that, at least since Oblivion, Bethesda has had this odd notion that guards have to have an inborn access to the Karmic Record, just so they can comment upon a character's skill levels. They probably thought they were being clever. They weren't. Perraine, has it at least partially right, and I've commented upon this in this forum before. I guess the driving force behind Bethesda is its Marketing Department, because they dictated a hard-coded release date and the developers of the game simply didn't have time to finish it. I strongly suspect that the total lameness of the Bards College questline is the result of that policy of "needing" a dramatic release date. It's not like Bethesda to create a guild faction and then not have the Player become the leader of that guild. On the other hand, I seriously doubt that they would have finished scripting NPC dialog to make it more reasonable even had they been given the time to do so. They NEVER finish stuff like this, but simply leave it in a rudimentary state, knowing that most of their players aren't going to care -- or will, at least, continue buying their games in spite of it.

My bad, thompsonar. I probably shouldn't post when I've been up for 38 hours straight. You're right. The max level of a skill is 100. If you get all of them up to 100 you'll be at level 81½, so you can never quite get to 82. You can only get higher, without using console cheats, if you use a level uncapper. I fully understand where Stemin is coming from. He's a "power player" who wants a god-like character who can crush just about everything that stands in his way with nothing more than a flick of his wrist. I have a friend who is totally hooked on Oblivion. He'd play it 24/7 if he could, and has thousands of hours into the game. He has never played it without setting himself into godmode as the first thing he does after starting it up. Whatever floats his boat. Or your boat. Or my boat. Or Stemin's boat. Skyrim is a single-player game that you own (contrary to what the people who run Steam might think to the contrary). You can play it however you like, without consequences to anyone else, and you therefore have no right to criticize anyone elses playing style. They're all "good", but I see a lot of posts where people are putting down other people for the way they play the game. Sometimes its done in a very passive-aggressive way so that it can't really be classified as "trolling", but the attitude is still there. So, I never said that I don't understand or even agree with Stemin's points, except for his contention that Skyrim isn't "broken". It's probably the most broken game that Bethesda has ever put out. I won't even go into the bugs that still exist in the game even after the latest patch. This disagreement isn't about bugs and glitches, but about leveling. The leveling system sucks, even though it's precisely how the developers intended it. The challenge of this game evaporates when you get to around level 35 or so unless you take great pains to restrict yourself to what you can do, and the game, itself, does nothing at all to discourage such self-control. I've had characters in the 50s. They're boring! Or, at least to me they are. I play games to have fun, yes, but part of that "fun" comes in being challenged by at least the boss and mini-boss fights. The vanilla game should keep itself challenging all the way to the intended level cap. It doesn't. Skyrim actually isn't as bad as some other games, and I'll give it that. If you want to play a game that has a brain-dead player leveling system, try Borderlands. If you do every quest that it gives you then you'll be so totally over-leveled at the end of the game that you can probably kill the final boss in just a couple shots before it ever gets off an attack of its own.

Well, SeriousDogg, that one little issue (OK, very big issue) hardly makes Skyrim "cheap". In my opinion, it's far from cheap. I'm in a love-hate relationship with it, but I've gotten far more than my fifty bucks out of it. To address your specific issue, though, this is a matter of poor game planning by Bethesda developers. As I've said, elsewhere, these guys are starters and not finishers. They almost never follow through and properly clean up after a quest. This is why Kvatch and the Bruma Mage guild in Oblivion burn forever (and why the Temple district never gets rebuilt). It's why Whiterun is left in shambles after the Civil War questline in Skyrim. It's why they spawned the new Gildergreen sapling INSIDE the trunk of the old, dead tree, rather than removing the old tree, first. It's why very few people who should know better ever have a clue about your accomplishments. So get used to the guards treating you as if you were a common criminal (comments about pickpocketing and lock picking, for instance), even after you've been made Thane. Get used to the fact that Farengar never quite gets the fact that you're the Archmage, and that Lucan will still comment about having the Golden Claw back even after you've stolen it. Get used to the fact that the other members of the Thieves Guild will continue to treat you like the newcomer, even after you ostensibly run the organization. Get used to the fact that even after you become Listener of the Dark Brotherhood that you're still doing ALL the work out in the field, yourself (what the hell are the other assassins for, anyway?) I could go on and on, but it boils down to the fact that the developers failed to use features that are actually in the game to make NPCs properly respond to the player's character. It wasn't any better in Oblivion. Don't expect it to be any better in the next game, either.

@ Stemin: I completely agree with you on your points #2 and #3. Whether the Stormcloaks and roughly half of native Nords believe it or not, Skyrim is still part of the Empire and Imperial laws have to hold sway. Now, we don't know that dueling is illegal, although based upon my feelings about how the Empire might have evolved over the last 200 years since the Oblivion Crisis, I very much doubt that it would be. Who knows for sure, though? I'm not aware of any "lore" regarding this issue one way or the other. I think what is probably most likely, though, is that Imperial authorities took exception about the fact that Ulfric removed one of their puppets from power. Now that would hit more closely to "home" than just breaking some petty anti-dueling law. As for the veracity of written documents, most certainly. We can't trust any of the "published" references within the game. Anyone who reads most of the books we can find in-game is already aware that many of them contain conflicting information. This isn't an error on the part of the developers, either. It simply makes sense from an historical perspective. After all, it was Jorn of the Bard's College who said "We sing tales of kings, queens and their politics, 'tis true. But do you know who really makes history? The person who writes it." I think this pretty much underlines just how much stock we can place with an in-game book. I will have to disagree with you on your first point, though. The game leaves it up to the Player to decide why his character is in Skyrim. This is known as "role-playing". The developers didn't give us a back-story because they expected us to make up our own, so we do, indeed, know more about our character than what Ralof said. He was grasping at straws. Each and every Player who actually role-plays in this game, rather than just pushing a "toon" around with the keyboard and mouse (or controller) is in total charge of his character's back-story and agenda. So, yes, we CAN make assumptions, and those assumptions will be Truth because they are part and parcel of the role-playing aspect of this game. There's precious little else of it in the game. Don't try to pretend that this tiny bit doesn't exist.

@ Stemin: According to the uesp the named Dragon Priests are Krosis, Morokei, Nahkriin, Otar the Mad, Rahgot, Vokun, and Volsung. All of them are listed as Level 50. No range. No leveling with the player. They are level-locked at "50". I don't know where you read that they level with the player, but I can't find that reference on the uesp wiki. I don't pull numbers out of thin air. I do my research on things like this before I put my thoughts into writing. If those thoughts regarding Krosis are wrong, then blame the uesp wiki page on him. You can read it for yourself right here: http://www.uesp.net/..._%28creature%29 As for your opinion of what constitutes "broken", I'm afraid a lot of people disagree with you. The game is supposed to allow for player progression up to level 100. If, at level 50 it becomes so non-challenging that it loses its "fun" for a significant proportion of the players then the game is "broken" in the sense that it doesn't work like it should work. I don't care if you've gotten to level 100 or not. If you aren't challenged by the game, if you can one-shot every opponent you take on, and no opponent can inflict significant damage on you, then to most people the game isn't living up to its potential. Maybe you enjoy such play. From the comments I've read, though, you're in a minority. Most of us want to be challenged at all levels -- not just right out of Helgen. Bethesda has a reputation for not creating games that level in a consistent and robust manner. In Oblivion, for instance, you can easily outstrip the ability of the game to keep up with you. With the emphasis upon crafting and enchanting in Skyrim, the situation is even worse. I should not have to install mods to make a game challenging at levels that the developers intended for it to be functional. @ Any_ILL: Then we will have to agree to disagree. I don't mind getting my butt whipped on occasion. However, the game, itself, will assign you to do something as part of a questline that you are unable to complete because the opposition is too overwhelming. I'm not talking about things you choose to do. I'm talking about things you're told to do by whatever person is giving the orders (i.e. the Jarl in the cited case of a bounty that sends you somewhere). This is wrong. It's poor game design, plain and simple. Just stumbling upon Krosis at level 5, for instance, should be a challenge -- maybe even be impossible. However, for a "bounty quest" to send you there before you're capable of defeating Krosis is inane. For one thing, it means you can't complete that quest and that means you can't EVER get another bounty quest from that hold until such time as you level up enough to be able to complete it. Like I said. Bad game design.

Well, thanks for the try. I'm still looking for a way to remotely open a container, but I have another issue. It might not even possible with the console and, again, the research I've done has turned up dry. Is it possible to unlock dragon spawning without having the Main Quest started? This is in conjunction with my Alternate Start via. Console topic. Basically, that method gives you the ability to start the game without engaging the Main Quest. What if you then, later, want to fight dragons in the game (normal spawning -- not using "placeatme")? Can this be enabled in any way without actually starting up the Main Quest?

What do you mean "the PC's own jail cell"? The PC has no jail cell. You obviously have a mod installed that assigns you to one, so maybe you should list those you have so people can get some kind of idea what is going wrong, here.

Out of the box and without patches, Skyrim is one of the buggiest games that has ever been released for public consumption as a "finished" product. On either the PC or a console you'll get periodic patches from Bethesda to fix some of these bugs, but some of the patches have actually caused more problems than they've fixed. Eventually Bethesda will get it all sorted out. In this sense, it doesn't matter whether you choose a PC or a console. If you're not interested in modding your game, then the convenience of a console, plus the fact that Skyrim was created for consoles and very poorly ported over to the PC (very sloppy and glitchy user interface), may make the console a better choice. As as been mentioned, though, mods are what makes ES games re-playable. Indeed, for some people mods are what makes Skyrim playable at all. Something we discovered with Oblivion (perhaps with Morrowind, although I've never played it so I don't know), is that the "Unofficial Patch" people actually wind up fixing more bugs than Bethesda does. After awhile, Bethesda simply quits fixing bugs in the game. The Unofficial Patch for Skyrim will see periodic updates long after Bethesda has decided to quit supporting the game by releasing bug fixes. For this reason, alone, I think you should go with the PC. Console for graphics or PC for modding: I don't see the issue, here. The graphics on the PC is better than that for the console. At least I think that's the general perspective. On the PC you can tweak a lot of stuff that you can't touch with the console, to my knowledge. So this is a non-issue. Since the graphics isn't any better on the console, and if that's your only concern, then your logical choice, again, is the PC.

Me, the player: I'm totally divided on this issue, since I can see bad and good points with each faction. To be certain, a united Empire is good for everyone who is part of the Empire, but the Empire is weak. It completely caved in to the Dominion's demands in the White Gold Concordat, as nearly as I can tell. The Aldmeri got everything they had wanted and the Empire got only an enforced truce -- a truce enforced by the Dominion, since it could easily defeat the Empire at any time. It's why the Emperor conceded to their demands. He knew the Empire couldn't win against another Dominion invasion. It was a matter of becoming a pawn in the Dominion's ultimate goal to rule all of Tamriel, or to face oblivion (and not the Daedra's version of it). The Nords are possibly the strongest force to go against the Dominion, but I doubt that even they could, by themselves, stage a successful attack into Dominion territory. The logistics are just too stacked against them. They need allies, and where are they going to get them? As a general rule, Nords hate everything that isn't Nord. Sure, there are exceptions, but they are few and far between. They have only themselves to rely upon. Why go to arms for a people who don't even want you in their "country", anyway? They need all the help they can get, but their xenophobic attitude is a sure-fire way of insuring that they'll get very little. A free Skyrim is a stronger Skyrim. That much can't be denied. But a free Skyrim is only a festering sore, waiting for a stronger Dominion to heal it (which means enslaving it). My character(s): Like me, they tend to be divided. I don't play simplistic characters. They have complex personalities, all different from each other and all different from me, but none of them are blind to all the mixed messages they get from both sides in the war. Some tend toward the Empire. Some tend toward the Stormcloaks. None of them have chosen sides, which means I've never gotten involved in the Civil War questline, and probably never will. It's just too lame to bother with (from my perspective as a Player). Yes, you have a reason to hate the Empire right out of the starting block. Imperial officials were going to lop off your head, after all, and a simpleton could use that as a sole determinant in making a choice for one side or another. A thinker, though, will have seen that for what it is -- an Imperial Captain who couldn't be bothered with proper protocol and didn't want to take time to insure that the unknown prisoner (you) was justly dealt with. That's not the Empire's fault. It's that particular officer's fault.

@ sedax: You've pinpointed one of the main problems I see with the vanilla combat system. The reach of weapons is completely over-the-top. Just yesterday I was playing hide-and-shoot with an opponent who was wielding a greatsword. I was behind a thick pillar. By my best estimate I was standing another ten feet from him, in addition to the pillar, which was about three or four feet across. I ducked out to get an arrow off and he swung his sword and killed me with that one hit! This is ludicrous to the extreme. After reloading and finally killing him I actually paced out the distances involved. There's no way in hell he could have even stretched out on a lunge and hit me where I was standing (which was a good twelve to fourteen feet away), but he did, and you can't even lunge with a sword in Skyrim. All you can do is swing from the shoulder. I've seen this with just about every weapon, and with the natural weapons on a lot of animals. The same day a sabrecat got me, and I was standing well out of his reach, tucked back behind some rocks. He never came over the rocks to get me. He just lunged, and, somehow, managed to kill me without his teeth or claws ever getting to within five feet of where I was standing. The reach on weapons in this game is utter nonsense and is in need of a total revision. I don't remember it being this bad in Oblivion, although it was still over-extended there, too. I guess by the next game we'll be able to hit opponents in the next county with a dagger and in the next country with a greatsword. Maybe it's a combination of weapon reach and the collision boxes on actors. If that's the case then the collision boxes need to be revised, as well. I've noticed a lot of clear misses with arrows that still wind up, somehow, hitting the target. Is this just Bethesda trying to make the game easier for us (and our opponents)? If so, then they need to rethink their game development philosophy, because it seriously detracts from any illusion of "realism" in combat in Skyrim -- which isn't to say that any such realism isn't an illusory fantasy, because it is.

@ robanybody2000: If that "unlock" command was intended to answer my question, thanks, but that's not what I was looking for. I need to actually open the container (access its contents, rather than unlocking it), regardless of where that container is and where I am in the world, exactly as with the "openactorcontainer" command. Hence, my indication of a refID and the use of "openactorcontainer" as an example of what I want to do.

You might want to check my own alternate start here: http://forums.nexusm...rt-via-console/ Unlike this one, you don't get put into a faction. You start out in the Abandoned Prison, strip-stark naked and with only your wits and two default starting spells to get you started -- nothing handed to you free. Also, SubjectProphet, it's not entirely true that there are no interiors available in the non-destroyed version of Helgen. I've already documented that one of the homes can be entered and the Keep, itself, is unchanged from the "under-attack" version of the city. This version of a "manual" alternate start adds a bit of interest to the game in that you actually do start with gear that makes you more than a match for most of the early-level encounters and should (I haven't tested it, yet) put you on friendly terms with bandits. It's actually quite flexible, since you can tweak a lot things through the bat file used to initialize it (different starting locations, different faction alliances, different gear, etc.). Just remember to comment out the Skyrim.ini file addition after you have a save game or starting the game will make you start all over, again. If this happens all you have to do it quit to the main menu and you'll get the option to load up a previously saved game, but that gets to be a pain in the neck after awhile.