Vatras

I would murder for an interface that is fit for the PC. The console port is terrible.

You can forge it up to snuff, if you have the smithing skill.

If you really need magic to back you up, illusion is the way to go. I am playing a sneak-archer (with a dagger as back-up and for the occasional tempting back-stab), and even rooms with 5+ enemies are not impossible to overcome, e.g. the final room in the Meridia quest, or one of the other halls with many undead. My power-boost comes from alchemy, when I need one, especially the poisons are handy (DoT while paralysed may be unfair, but works). It's not as powerful as the illusion school, but I wanted my perks elsewhere (bartering, pickpocket and lockpicking). I am happy you can play this game as archer-thief through to the end, without needing to wear heavy armor, wield magic or swing a 2H sword :)

I have not been disarmed by a draugr on my 2nd play-thorugh so far - something must be preventing it, as I saw it a few times on my 1st run. Might be armor or maybe weapon skill, but it is not magic or a shield, as I carry/use neither now.

I found the helm too, but no hidden weapons. I found several masks with magcal abilities, including a wooden one which has a magic aura, but does nothing when equipping it, usually on undead spellcasters. Some of those were on the main quest, others were not. I think there is some secret here, when I see the altar (?) with the 8 masks on the loading screen. (I have not yet googled for it, as I hope to solve this by myself.)

The bad points for me are: - no spellmaker (and magic effects since the days of Daggerfall have gone down with each game) - no attributes and their game influence (which allowed modification by spell or potion) - an interface that screams "I am a console game!" at me (major point here) - lesser number of equipment slots - graphics which are fine for a console, but not so fine with DX11 around on PCs - the teensy problem with 2 GB memory... - weak daedric artefacts - they used to be something special, but many are lackluster in Skyrim (any mastersmith can make a better mace than Molag-Bal); I would have preferred them to have some unique effects instead of being so close to common gear The good points are: - very immersive world - lots of not-so-generic locations - the whole surroundings feel appropriate for the scenario...the architecture, the scenery, the snow, etc.; they did a similar job on Morrowind, which felt alien for me, and not like the standard european fantasy world - great dragons (those combat animations and movement of them rock), the first in a game which look "real" - the shouts, which give the nord scenario a certain flair - maybe it was intended to have less magic and more primal supernatural effects? (my favorite for a norse scenario would have been rune magic as in Arx Fatalis) - the perk system, but then I am a huge Fallout fan (best remake/continuation of an older game I have seen), where perks are part and parcel - many nice stories to follow, and continuing some of the lore of previous games - you can actually play through as fighter, thief or mage, which is in most games impossible - a huge number of quests, varying from short to lengthy - the alchemy system was kept, although potions are very far from what they were in Morrowind *dreams about the 10.000 stat potions again*

If you wander from Azura's Shrine towards Saarthal, you can find a cave halfway along the path (the bottomless hole), which isn't a cave, but a direct drop into a destroyed dwemer ruin covered in ice and snow. Since you cannot get out the same way (high above you), you can do a nice walk across the falmer-infested tunnels back to Skyrim. Although nothing special by itself, I love that there are so many non-similar locations across the province, instead of the generic dungeons of Oblivion. (That tombs and dwemer ruins share a similar look and outlay is OK, we build places like that pretty similar too.)

Ways of protecting from magic: - don't be seen and shoot them from afar *ahem* - get Dawnbreaker, but maybe you don't like shields - you can get fire, shock, frost and magic resistance by enchanting armor or making potions (with enchanting perks/aids you get a huge bonus on a single item, even 100% are possible; making a set of tools for maximum enchanting is of course a task by itself) - use various poisons to weaken mages and curtail their spellcasting (it is a pity they did not include the opposite of "fortify" in this game)

I met their hit squad after the embassy quest, but mages mean little to a breton wearing Dawnbreaker :) With my sneaking sniper character I plan on shooting them undetected from far away, when I get to that point.

I have encountered people who are after me only two times so far. One was a Thalmor party (with a letter on them naming me as the target of revenge), after I ransacked their ambassy and left all guards dead, which is understandable. The other were a group of thugs with orders by the guard of Markarth to "teach me a lesson", but not to kill me. That happened after I started tangling with the murders there and the ongoing rebellion...knowing those guards are corrupt and who they work for, no big surprise really. I have not been accosted for having stolen things yet, and I am on my 2nd play-through. Did your attackers have any information on them, who sent them, or why? Or were they of a clearly identifiable faction you may have crossed swords with?

I don't like the forced 3rd person perspective (which ruins it completely for me in the first place), and the werewolf form is very weak, compared to my armored shape (got it at 20th level). I can win the various battles against 6+ enemies when myself, but the wolf is dead meat, and I don't even want to think about tough single opponents, who one-shot it. I am delighted at the vampires, though...I am missing the choke-to-death effect of potions containing garlic, though :)

After reading the posts above, I want to add my 2cp: - I don't need a grinding system as is common in MMORPGs, which takes me 100 hours to get to the max skill, for a solo game, which can be played in 40-60 hours. - Remember that the designers threw out a lot of things because they are un-fun - e.g. longer respawn and rarer resources are equal to grind (see above), which makes a game boring. The ideal solution would have been to have better loot around, which has abilities that cannot be duplicated by crafters, thereby removing the superiority of crafting over rewards/drops. (I am not bothered by the crafting ,btw, as it is the first time I can actually get some mileage out of the effort. In most games while crafting your way up you get little or nothing out of it, and when you are finally master, it has become unimportant that you are *sigh*).

I had 3 CTDs in about 40 hours without any message, the game simply went out; two times after hours of play, once after 10 minutes in. Still, that is not too bad. I found a few bugs, but not many: - part of the river below the two towers was missing - I got stuck in rocks once, when trying to ambush giants at one of their camps (had to reload an older save, as I could neither kill them, nor fast travel with the aggro) - I saw two places where the rocks have a gap between their lower border and the ground below, same as in Fallout in a few spots I did not find a quest bug yet, and those above may kill the immersion, but not the game.

I liked Morrowind best, as the TES games become dumbed down with each iteration: - Magic: the spellmaker was one of the highlights for me since Daggerfall, now it is completely gone, and we have a very limited set of spells without anything special in it (and I loved the fly spells...) - Skills: they become fewer each time - medium armor and repair are gone for example, all the 1H weapons now use a single skill instead of each having it's own - Stats: they allowed many effects, which are now gone completely...they determined mana, how much you could carry (fixed to 300 now :( ), your HP, and all kinds of stuff. - Equipment slots: there used to be a few more than what we get now Skyrim is a good game, but lacks much of the former variety of Morrowind for me. Oblivion was the worst of the series and if there had not been the many mods for it, which made it enjoyable (thanks, btw, to Oscuro for a great mod :) ), I would probably have left Skyrim alone. The horrible idea of all having your level was at least not (wholly) repeated, as it made levels superfluous and you did better to finish the main quest at level 3 (which I did). My main points of critique of Skyrim are 1) the horrible UI for the PC, 2) the dumbing down of the game mechanics, and 3) I would have liked better graphics (OK, I got used to Deus Ex and probably expect too much :) ).

I found the room you get in the mage guild to be safe to store the loot. Besides, the warning read that items may vanish from containers, but gave no details. Maybe a NPC has to be nearby who has legitimate access to the container, maybe it's a random chance per day or week (if it's 0,1-1% per interval items may stay around for a long time), or maybe containers respawn once per year in-game?