Feanoro

But what if... the DLC sent the Dragonborn back in time to slightly before the dwemer disappeared, in a timely enough fashion so that we could experience in full detail how their civilization went from wanting to live forever to actually deciding to go forward with the Numidium thing and their actual disappearance. Cause reading about it is fun, but experiencing it is even more so:)

player.additem staffcode 1 where staffcode is the 9 digit code you can search for on skyrim wiki or whatever.

Oh noes, you went and soul trapped yourself?:(

I was honestly thinking about that video today and honestly the only thing I think should have been originally in the game (and at the same time the only one of those things they SHOULD actually release in a dlc imo) is horse combat. I mean...as far as horses go, they took the trouble to design them, put them in the game, make quests involving them or even about them (Frost) but their use is severely handicapped by the fact that you can't hit anything from horseback. Every time I get attacked I have dismount, wait for a dismounting animation that's considerably too long, and then frantically try to save my horse from death (pre-Shadowmere at least I mean). And you get attacked ALL the time when you're running around. That's it though. Spears? might be fun to look at but they won't seriously impact combat in any way and it's not like we don't have enough weapon styles or power atm. Giant mudcrab/vampires and other bosses? I'm happy with the amount of different monsters we have now, it's not that huge of a deal. Dragon mounts would be a significant change, but considering how late in the main story you get Odahviing and how easy it is to survive on the surface most of the time, I think it would be overpowered. Also if you could fly around from place to place instead of walking and exploring the old fashioned way, you might not find as many things (which would be a good reason NOT to put this in from the start). Not to mention the difficulties with physics that all of this would entail. Certainly not easily doable. I mean heck, as far as physics goes, they've had trouble even with implementing a bug-free jumping function, nevermind flying around and possibly aerial combat. What I would personally like to see in a future DLC is a considerable improvement of NPC AI and dialogue along with more complicated quests. That's what kills the mood for me, tbh. When NPCs fail to react to the progress I've made in the game and still give me the same tired old lines or when most quests are something like "go there, kill everybody, loot everything, come back with item x" with no dialogue, cutscenes, special bosses to fight or any changes in the environment around me, that's when I don't feel the fun anymore:(

The whole World Gorger/Devourer part seems to be an unknown still. As Paarthurnax says, maybe Alduin is really gone or maybe he'll be allowed to return one day just to swallow the world. However, it didn't seem like Alduin had the whole world destruction part completely figured out. As for building the ruins part, the only thing dragons did was sit on those ruins. What's the point of enslaving mankind if you don't put them to work, eh?:) As for elves and dragons, between my 2nd and 3rd playthrough of Skyrim I had a dream one night that after I helped Ulfric rebuild Skyrim, we were attacked by the Dominion. I dreamt of the start of the main battle between the Nords and the Elves. I was leading the charge from Odahviing's back instructing the rest of the dragons to burn the s**t out of every elf in sight.

The Forsworn are 100% terrorists and cowards and to my mind the most contemptible people in Skyrim. The whole "who was here first" argument has little merit to it in the first place because everyone's got a different opinion if you ask them. The Forsworn say they were here before the Nords, The Nords believe they originated in Skyrim along with all of mankind, hence they were the first, however many lore sources say (correct me if I'm wrong) that the elves were there before men anyway. Secondly, the forsworn are the epitomy of cowardice. They knew they couldn't fight the Empire, so they attacked like cowards when the Empire was away fighting the Thalmor. Then the Stormcloaks got called in to help reclaim the Reach, which they did by military action, scattering all the Forsworn to the winds. So what do the Forsworn do now? They occupy various camps in the Reach terrorizing innocent civillians. I find them so disgusting I have a hard time even feeling bad for the guy who was put in prison just because he associated with them. He should've ratted those bastards out to the authorities!

What I don't get is why on earth did they allow people to actually DO the main quest before everything else. I mean they should've just imposed some restrictions on the thing. As in you can only advance the main story after a certain level or after you've mastered a certain number of shouts, etc. Or even a certain percentage of locations explored. Either of these things would encourage people to go out and explore the map fully before they do the main quests. I promise you, if you could only advance the main quest little by little after you made considerable progresses along the way with your character, nobody would consider it short or anticlimactic. Unfortunately, a lot of people play like they were game reviewers with a deadline, instead of just out to enjoy themselves.

One of my main missions in Skyrim is the consistent extermination of all Forsworn. Killing innocent people => no sympathy, they gots to go. As for the Silverbloods, sadly they're a fact of life. Markarth can't function properly without Cidhna mine and if someone has to work it, why not prisoners? I don't think the system is bad, the problem is everyone is so corrupt that innocent people are being jailed.

Lol I was tired when I wrote my post as well, it was intended more as a question than an accusation actually. I think my real point is this: after I played Skyrim with my first character (it also being my first TES game ever, oddly enough I also have Morrowind and Oblivion on discs next to my laptop, bought when they came out but I never had the time to play them) I tried playing other games. I first tried going back to my old MMO, then some other RPG games but really they all seemed so boring and/or poorly designed in comparison that I just didn't want to play them anymore. Amalur is a completely different story altogether, couldn't stop playing it at all. P.S.: Btw, lockpicking is implemented identically to Skyrim as well, you move the mouse to a spot then the keys to move/force the lock. Is that a popular way to implement lockpicking as well? Also can pickpocket people but only if you're crouched in a stealth position, like in Skyrim (and presumably other TES games) and when you try to do it, a menu pops up giving you the odds of being caught. It's not that these things bother me, on the contrary I like it, the learning curve for Amalur is more or less zero, it's just I find it strange that things are done in such a similar way, particularly when many other games seem so different. But you guys are probably right, I haven't been much of a gamer to notice this as an evolution of a style. Anyway, back to Amalur:) Hope to see some epic quest mods for Skyrim soon, got 3 builds to play them with:)

So after my 3rd Skyrim playthrough I decided to try Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning, as I like R.A. Salvatore's work and if you add the people who've worked on Oblivion/Morrowind to that list, how can it not be enjoyable? And I was right, it's a lot of fun to play and I'm glad I started playing it. However... First thing I notice is the TES style beginning...you're (almost) dead, you have to go through a dungeon to exit, and among the first monsters you encounter are a variation of rats and spiders. Ok, fine, not that big a deal, many games use similar tutorials. Then the 2nd thing I notice is that Stealth mode is pretty much identical to Skyrim, except instead of the detection eye being on your crosshair, it's on top of your target's head. Ook...fine, not that big a deal, still. However, I then get to move outside the dungeon and look around. Guess what, the open world has some similarities with TES worlds as well. It's structured on levels just like in TES, at least for most things. It looks like they managed to make small villages open-world (kinda like they are in Skyrim, eg Riverwood, Falkreath, etc.) but everything bigger still requires loading of a new level. However, the apex of the plagiarism is attained by the map. Guess what, it has a similar structure to Oblivion's map (guess they couldn't figure out how to make it 3d, Skyrim style). Guess what, it has a local map function that works EXACTLY like in Skyrim. Guess what, you can FAST TRAVEL to each discovered location, be it a town or a dungeon of some sort. And it goes on: there's a quest menu that works pretty similarly to skyrim's, including having a pointer to whatever quest thing you need to do on the map. The only difference is the quests are partitioned by type. Anyway, I'm pretty sure there are a lot MORE similarities to find (ex: armor degrades and needs to be repaired just like in Oblivion, you have alchemy, blacksmithing, mercantile and other familiar names as skills), etc. So what's different about Amalur? First of all the graphics, they clearly tend towards anime more, the degree of realism present in TES environments cannot be found here. Secondly, the open world is there, but it's considerably more limited than in a TES game: First of all there is no jumping in Amalur as far as I can tell. Actually they pretty much tried their utmost to ignore the vertical axis as much as possible, and so far I haven't been able to succesfully do battle from height with my enemies (even though there is archery, for example, it seems you can't shoot people from above or below. This limitation makes the map feel like there's a network of roads from which you can stray left and right a bit but never too much and never over or under things. The biggest difference, however, lies in combat. Clearly this is the part that's been most worked on as you have the ability to instantly switch between primary and a secondary weapon, your magic abilities are easily selectable through number keys and right click shoots them and there's been a LOT of work put into special finishing moves that you actually DO yourself instead of watching a cutscene when your enemy dies the way it happens in Skyrim. However, from what I can tell, magic seems to be strictly combat related so far (think Destruction school on steroids) with a few exceptions in the form of abilities I'd imagine. At the same time, the archery system is a bit...weird. At first glance it looks like there's an autoaim on it, but then I tried it outside of the tutorial and people dodged my arrows even at close range soo...idk what's going on there. In terms of skills, some are identical to Skyrim (take Alchemy for example: you harvest ingredients in the field, you experiment with them to learn "Recipes" just like in Skyrim and then once learned you can make the desired potion; At higher levels you get to harvest more ingredients from a single plant, to use more than 2 items for a potion, etc.). Blacksmithing, however, is completely different: You can't improve items anymore. Once they're made you can either keep them, sell them, or salvage them for parts (of which you only get a small portion back every time), etc. In conclusion (I could go on for ages drawing parallels between these 2 games) I think Amalur is a great game to play between Skyrim vanilla and heavily modded Skyrim, as you'll have many of your TES features, with a few losses and a few improvements, a more or less open world (not as much as Skyrim but still) and an interesting story with tons of sidequests. However, the plagiarism will smack you in the face so hard you'll be wondering how this anime-style TES ripoff could possibly be legal. But still, it's fun to play:)

We're told Mercer didn't live in Riftweald Manor by members of the Thieves Guild, but on the other hand only Brynjolf's been there (and that was only once if I recall correctly). At the same time there's a passageway from his house to just behind the Thieves Guild hideout. I doubt that's a coincidence tbh...Also he had some nice things in his basement so it seems he used that place somewhat. While Roggvir can be argued to be a traitor/accomplice in a murder/etc he doesn't seem to exhibit any interest in thieving, nor does anyone else suggest anything of the sort. A likely possibility for the author of the message would be Ri'Saad. As we know, his caravan travels between cities and he doesn't mind dealing in stolen goods. I think as a fence and trader and owner of a network of traders who hear all sorts of rumours he's ideally suited to place in a call to Mercer Frey to act upon news of an interesting item being moved around. Khajiit gives you good advice for a modest fee, yes?

I would appreciate a DLC that gives us considerably more context on this (perhaps using the Elder Scroll to go back in time and witness how things happened between the Dwemer and the Snow Elves, thus also giving us a chance of seeing both races in their full glory). What I don't understand is WHY did the Dwemer do this to the Snow Elves? I mean think about it, the Snow Elves were beaten by the Nords, driven from their homes into the arms of the Dwemer. How much of a threat could they be to the Dwemer then? I find it unnecessary for the Dwemer to have done this, considering the amount of power their civilization had I would imagine they could have enslaved the Snow Elves without something like this and let's be honest, who wants those Falmer monstrosities around anyway? Maybe the Dwemer did NOT have an advanced civilization at that time though. Maybe the Snow Elves were considerably stronger or were imposing their own culture/beliefs upon the Dwemer or were a threat in some way. Who knows, maybe we could find out in a DLC that the Dwemer actually started becoming the power they ultimately were by learning FROM the Snow Elves? In any case, one thing is clear from the Falmer history: DON'T MESS WITH THE NORDS! Hence I voted SKYRIM FOR THE NORDS! (awesome voting option, ty for that)

I keep seeing these threads but I don't understand 2 things about these complaints: 1. I personally find it normal for your character to improve as you are leveling overall. I mean what's the point of even having levels if you're going to get murdered by every troll that crosses your path? However, on Master difficulty I find many dungeons challenging even at high levels. Take vampires for example, they start using glass armor and elven swords and such, whose power attacks kinda rip through my hp even at way higher than armor cap. Not to mention all the various mages spamming destruction spells like there's no tomorrow (well I guess they don't have a tomorrow hehehe). Also I've been trying to play a battlemage lately on my lvl 68 Khajiit and even though I have max reduction, double enchants on armor with a high mage reduction, etc. I still get hit hard by many enemies because it takes time to kill them. 2. Why do you max out Smithing, Enchanting, and Alchemy at the same time? Personally I never put any perks in Alchemy because I know it makes game breaking potions. If you watch out for and collect Blacksmith/Enchanting elixirs you'll have enough to enchant everything you need by the time you get max smithing without completely destroying the game. You could leave out any of these 3 skills undeveloped and you will not break the game. I prefer leaving out Alchemy because I love Smithing and like to have useful enchants on my armor (Soul Trap only on axe, magicka damage on bow, etc.). An interesting thing I've found out as well is that if you don't abuse all 3 skills at the same time, at high levels you'll get to find better equipment than you can make (for example with undeveloped Alchemy I can enchant my bow to do a max of 42 Magicka Damage, whereas I found a Daedric Bow of Annihilating that does 60 points of Magicka Damage. Also I can enchant an item to reduce frost damage by a max of around 50% and I just found a Necklace of Warmth that reduces Frost by 70%, etc). Also if you leave out one of the 3 skills undeveloped, you get 5+ perk points to invest in other secondary stuff.

Well first of all apparently the damage reduction from armor is capped and you can reach the max at about 580 armor rating or so. Secondly the perk system is such that it can let you achieve this both with light and heavy armor easily if you invest perks in the respective skills. Thus if you have points in Light Armor as well as Heavy Armor you'll notice there won't be much of a difference. What you should do, to optimize your build, is focus either on Heavy OR on Light armor and not use the other type at all. The difference between the 2 is that Heavy Armor starts off being better to use than Light Armor, but is obviously heavier. However, if you manage to focus on Light Armor instead you'll have considerably more carrying power in the beginning. At higher levels, though, you can basically achieve the same thing with both types of armor through perks (each has a perk that makes the armor weightless and Light Armor becomes as powerful as heavy armor once all perks are invested). Personally I prefer Light Armor, it's harder to use at the start of a new game but you have the DB armor early on to help you and the added carrying power more than makes up for the added difficulty.

Obviously you decide the order. I'm on my 3rd playthrough atm though, and I'll just tell you what MY personal preference is (what I find most enjoyable). I would start with the Riverwood quests, then do some Whiterun quests and try to save up for a house ASAP. After that I recommend you join the DB early on because that way you get to actuallly USE their armor when you're a low level, as opposed to later on when it becomes obsolete. I would also do as many side contracts from Nazir as possible to get some cash early on. After that you've pretty much got a starting point and I would EXPLORE for ages. On my current playthrough I was lvl 55 before I did any of the longer quests and they seemed WAY more entertaining later on. For roleplaying value I would avoid starting Thieves Guild till you're pretty high in Sneak/Lockpicking/Pickpocketing, and also I'd avoid the later quests until you're at least 46+ (can't beat that maxed Chillrend:P). I recommend doing Daedric quests earlier if you can manage it, as the items you get usually become obsolete when you're 90+ smithing. Again, for roleplaying value I wouldn't do Mages guild till I was somewhat decent at magic and I'd try to do it USING magic. Finally, I would STRONGLY recommend leaving the Civil War and main quests untouched till you've exhausted pretty much everything else and have explored a high percentage of the map. I say this because if you do Civil War early on you'll lose the opportunity to clear quite a few fun forts (the initial npcs get replaced by either Stormcloaks or Imperial soldiers). Doing the Main Quest early on also leaves everything else in a bit of anticlimax as someone else said. Also if you learn your way around the game you'll find that by doing tons of quests early on you'll lose many fun things in the game (to give you a couple of examples, on my first playthrough I powered through quests and did the Hircine quest before I had explored that cave which made me not be able to get Bolar's Oathblade, I also got a Helm of Winterhold quest in Yngol Barrow which made me not be able to get Yngol's Helm, doing Civil War early on made me not able to explore the best forst the way they were meant to be explored, with large variations of monsters instead of a constant stream of low level soldiers, etc.)

Hmm...interesting, particularly since the item in the note was being stolen FROM castle dour..

Honestly I'm on my 3rd character and it seems every time I start a new one I'm happier with it than the last one. Basically you could say I'm refining my build every time more or less:). Both my first 2 finished every quest and discovered at least 90% of all possible things on the map but somehow I felt the need to start a 3rd. Somehow every time it's a different experience. First playthrough I was a pure warrior Breton that ONLY did quests and pretty much didn't move out of Whiterun till the latter part of the game. I wore Heavy Armor and pretty much grew up as a character doing the Empire side of the Civil War and running around not knowing what I was supposed to do. 2nd playthrough was a Nord warrior using light armor this time and somewhat more of an archer. I joined the Stormcloaks pretty early on and enjoyed that side of things too. 3d playthrough I'm doing a Khajiit stealthy character. I've also played from start to now on Master (first playthrough was Adept early on then expert, 2nd was expert then later on turned on Master, now I did it all MAster from the beginning, which was considerably more challenging). I'm basically an expert at Sneaking, Archery and One-Handed, but this time instead of shooting straight through all the quests I started exploring. The only thing I did early on was join the Dark Brotherhood to get and use the armor early on (because if I leave it till later it becomes useless compared to my enchanting capabilities). I'm now at lvl 68 and haven't joined a Civil War side or done Horn of Jurgen Windcaller yet, but I just used mage for the first time and just got 100 destruction :) Thing is, every time I play I do things differently and the type of race you choose to play DOES affect your gaming style. For instance while playing a Breton in heavy armor I basically just ran into stuff in tank mode and clobbered everything to death, not worrying about taking damage because of the heavy armor and the mage resistance. With the Nord I had to adapt to using Light Armor and Ranging. With the Khajiit I used a lot of stealth, had to worry a lot about magic damage as I had no resistance to it whatsoever and have started to use magic myself now.

lol I recently got pwnzored by a volkihar vampire last night. First we traded off spells and I had to heal myself a few times (I'm lvl 66 on master, playing a khajiit but I have a pretty high magic resistance both from enchants and alteration perks). Despite my constant spams of dual-casted Thunderbolts he didn't seem to run out of Mana, but at some point he decided to bring out his steel sword and charge me with it in a power attack. Since I was 2/3 health and had armor well in excess of the armor cap and max stats and everything I though "oh yay now I get to kill him". But guess what? That sumbitch pwnzored me harder than a Draugr Deathlord's Ebony Warhammer power attack. What's up with that lol... Anyway, I'm new to magic, my build is stealthy archer mostly but yeah, mages can be an arrow to the knee sometimes. And speaking of arrows, I still find the ranging fus ro dahing Deathlords with ebony arrows the most annoying:)

So when you get Chillrend, in Riftweald Manor, there's a note on the table: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Many_Thanks Who do you guys think is the author of this note? I'm kinda curious to know who Mercer Frey's customers were.

Hope you killed Amaund Motierre too, cause what he was planning seemed to include the THalmor as trading partners if I'm not mistaken...

Check the temps, but I doubt it has anything to do with them. If it happens from time to time in various situations it's probably the monitor, but if it only happens on wakeup then it might just be some shitty windows bug. For example sometimes when I wakeup my computer from sleep i sometimes get a pink screen for a second instead of the blue win 7 colors.

HMM...would the high res texture pack be usable with an older video card? What resources would it stress harder than a normal texture pack?

Can't say I've noticed any difference, although I never tried to abuse the sneaking, I like archery+sneaking:)

1. Graphics don't make a game. If that's your main concern go take your overpriced computer somewhere else and let us enjoy our "poor" skyrim graphics. 2. In terms of combat, I agree some things could have been done better, but here there will ALWAYS be room for improvement. I don't know how you have "auto-aim" while shooting a bow, I personally have NOT experienced anything like this, on the contrary, I'll shoot at a moving target and it'll veer out of the way quickly sometimes. Long distance shots take some care to aim properly and as for short distance I've had quite a few arrows miss the mark (as in flying between the arm and torso of the person for example). I don't know what you're playing but my experience on master difficulty gives me varying degrees of difficulty in combat. Ancient dragons still destroy the hell out of me despite all my efforts to reduce magic and/or elemental damage. At level 60 and with full smith/enchant/armor perks I still sometimes get destroyed by some enemies (ex: Forsworn Ravager, Briarheart, some Falmers, Draugr Deathlord rangers with their ebony bows and arrows and shouts, etc.). In terms of weapons I agree with what you said with a few exceptions. Daedric artifacts are indeed extremely weak and I have no idea why. For some reason they don't benefit from the daedric smithing perk (or any other smithing perk) and thus become weak when you're a higher level. On the other hand, there are SOME unique items that are top of the line (so to speak). For example: Chillrend and Dragonbane after level 46+. The former is arguably the best sword in the game, has a nice double enchant and the damage of a daedric waraxe at the speed of a sword. The latter is as powerful as a daedric sword but has the nice +40 damage against dragons. Also Spellbreaker is a unique artifact with nice properties and so on. As far as the skill trees and perks go, I really don't agree with the way things used to be. I think having an agility skill and having weapons break down is annoying and adds nothing to the game. Same with having blade and blunt in different skill trees. The fast travel option is there for your convenience, there's no point in having to retrace your steps manually to your favorite city every time. Also it allows you to stop in the middle of a dungeon, sell your loot and then come back, which is something I like. OR if you've done a dungeon and later in the game need to go through it again for a quest you can just quickly fast travel there instead of following the same route you did the first time. The game doesn't need to FORCE you to explore, it's supposed to give you the option to choose your own style of playing. Same goes with the new style of perks and skills and not having primary and secondary skills, etc.

Personally I liked the Thieves Guild questline perhaps the most, with the only criticism that it was too short (but then again this seems to hold true for pretty much all the questlines in Skyrim). What I don't understand is why they don't make requirements for most things like they started to do with the College (although you can bypass the entry requirement if you're Dragonborn sadly). You shouldn't be allowed to join a guild straight away, you should be able to choose from a ton of sidequests available designed to train specific skills and ONLY THEN, if you've gotten a certain level, are you allowed to join the guild and go on with the main questline. As for the Mages Guild, I agree with the OP, they should make it focus more on learning: personally I'd make key spells obtainable at level 50, 75, 90 and 100 obtainable ONLY through quests involving learning and such. As for the Harry Potter games, they might not have been good RPGs but some of them did capture quite a bit of learning (I liked the 3rd one and the 6th one from this perspective, you really had achievements you had to keep trying for with rewards if you managed to get them, particularly on the 3rd one). Haven't played the newer ones, although I'd imagine it makes the same mistake as all the HP games: it focuses too much on the main story and too little on the in-between, the life @Hogwarts and such. It's been quite a long time since I read a HP book but what I remember enjoying from them was not so much the main story but all the experiences of 3 friends trying to figure out their place in a magical world.