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?

I hit 28 too now, and my skills are a little worse than yours...Heavy Armor 40 and 1H 50, but I am using epic ebony gear (smithing 100) - the better gear does even out some things after all :) I have stopped getting one-hit (mostly) since I wore improved armor, but I have started to encounter the opposite phenomenon now: I sometimes one-hit foes, which I should not be able to. For example I ran into a bandit leader, the type who has a ton of hp. I can usually beat them without too much trouble, but it takes some blows. Now the mob comes round a boulder and I hit him when we close and he takes like 5% of his hp in damage, and my next blow slays him instantly (showing the kill animation, which doesn't happen often). It made me wonder, if there are critical hits in the game or something like it? My handbook does not say anything about it, though.

I can think of three causes why it does not work: - What is the time of day? In Oblivion, you could reach Azura only in the hour of dawn and dusk. Maybe it is the same here? - Your level might be too low, if there are level requirements for daedric quests as in oblivion. - Have you gone to the mage who is the alternate NPC for this quest first and then changed your mind and went to Azura? I have not done this quest yet, so I have no other ideas at the moment.

When you hunt flying lizards whose main power is a ranged attack, yes, you need something ranged too, if you want to finish them without delay. They tend to land sooner or later though, if you provide them with enough flat ground. You can see that when city guards fight them in the open - the wyrm lands and stays down there as long as he has enemies within his reach. After seeing how a horse "leashed" the wyrm in position near the city gates, I wonder, if the "immortal" dog could tie them down too?

Level in Skyrim means really nothing as guideline on what you can take on. Let me explain: For example, I level up to level 20-25 by sneaking, stealing and smithing, put on heavy armor and wander into a cave with undead. Since all my relevant combat skills are like non-existent, I will get owned. It matters a lot what is your actual skill level, not your character level, which you can raise all too easily with skills that don't matter when the steel meets the meat. I got owned for that reason by many critters, since I didn't focus on a combat skill, but did some magic, some in melee, some with bows, and did too many levels on non-combat skills. Once I got heavy armor and 1H weapons to 50 (plus some perks there), things looked a lot better than with 25-30 skills. On the other hand, mobs get their skills according to their type. So a fighter type critter of level 25 has a skill set for that level which focuses on melee. If you have diversified and not focused like the NPC, he will appear to be way harder than his 10th level counterpart did in the past (who didnt have damage bonuses or defense features). Gear, perks, and routine can even or better that, of course. Therefore look to your combat skills and not to your level for what you can take toe-to-toe. (Mages are a different thing, and I have major troubles with casters sometimes, like the fireball casting daedras in the cleansing of Azura's Star.)

I am not using that many mods, and I can't claim to even know a 10th out there, but I use (or used) these - some were too powerful for my taste, others were replaced by the DLCs: Alsatian Rex (dog graphics for Rex), Advanced Recon Gear, AsukaHUD, Better Bottlecap Mines, Boosted Skills (skills go over 100), Caravan Cardfix, Chinese Stealth Armor, Darnified UI, Dragoon Armor, Energy Weapons Denerfed, Glowing Star Bottlecap, Homemade Grenades, Implant Delimiter, Inventory Sorter, Lucky Bastard Rifle, Moraelins Lightsabers, Mr. Moneybags, NV Map Markers, Nightsky Variants, Ninja Perk Fix, Nevada Skies, Nuka Grenades, NV Home, NV Bobbleheads, Oven Cooking, OWB Stealth Armor Overhaul, Plentiful Poison, Perk every level, Plasma Shields, Player Home, Powered Power Armor, pyRepair, RHINO 45-70 M1, Shiloh Color Maps, Silver Rush Inventory Expansion, Slayer, Slower Level rates, Solar Energy Collector, Stalker Armor, Timescale, Unified HUD Project, Veronica Scribe Robe, Weapons and Armor Repair, Weight Balance, Western Sky, Weapon Mod Expansion Plus of course the FOMM and NVSE. You do not *need* any mod, but the ones in green are my favorites. The others (and those I didnt list) were used in at least one play-through by me. The ones in red are basically gamebreakers. All of those above are good, end it is up to you to use those which can break the game for you - having every implant, 50 perks, and unlimited energy ammo of triple strength, while wearing stealthy PPA makes you invincible.

Christine's sniper rifle in the Big Empty and the Brush Gun are my favorite guns, and the futuristic axe from the Big Empty the choice for melee. If its mass slaughter, I like the laser MP and the shoulder gun from Lonesome Road best, if I cant use heavy explosives. From mods my favorites are Lucky Bastard (an very powerful varmint rifle with 30 damage vs 18), which can be scoped and silenced, and the RHINO .45-70 revolver (can be scoped, holds three slugs). I stopped using them when the expansions came out, as they make the game to easy for me, but they are both very well made (I love the look of the RHINO). And of course I love the mod which introduced a recipe to make nuka grenades :)

I happened to put the download-window behind my browser when looking up something while downloading, and when I tried to download another I only got a blank window. I finally noticed a second browser window being open in the taskbar and after I closed it, I could download again. Maybe you have the same problem?

Ah well, I solved the problem with the console command that allows me to walk through walls, and Veronica, who I ordered to follow closely. She opened the door when she tried to keep up with me, which solved the whole thing.

I have come across a problem with the BoS bunker for the first time (I did not have it the other times I played those quests). The door after the stairs down does not have any opr´tions when I mouse over it, and so I cannot enter the room where the BoS will meet me. Is there a way to work around, or has someone maybe done a fix for this? Since meeting the brohterhood is not optional for the wild card quest, I need to get inside at least once...

Depending on Speech skill you can get Cachino and Big Sal to "help" you...Cachino tries to kill both bosses, Big Sal will attack Nero, if you implicate him as conspirator.