Feanoro

Why would you do that? at higher levels enemies become ridiculously easy to kill even on Master...plus if you avoid levelling anything but a few critical skills you'll get stuck with only a few perks to use between those skills, which severely limits your gameplay later on.

I was so sad that they killed off Veezara. I loved his character so much even though I don't like Argonians in general. It makes no sense to kill him off given his survivor qualities (the last of his kind, with a newfound purpose, etc.)

To be honest if you watch how Ulfric talks with Galmar during the Stormcloak storyline and what decisions he makes during the campaigns there is no way he could be working with or for the Thalmor. What that dossier refers to are most likely Thalmor machinations to inflame Ulfric's passions against the Empire leading to the Markarth incident. After that, Ulfric's resolve to rid Skyrim of all external influences grew past anything the Thalmor could possibly control. As for the racism, there are many racist Nords in the game, but the Stormcloaks are a military faction aiming to liberate Skyrim of the Imperials and Aldmeri Dominion, NOT to persecute other races whose members just happen to live in Skyrim. You also have to keep in mind that Stormcloak cities are poor (Winterhold almost destroyed, Riften lead to thievery and crime by the Empire-loving Maven Black-Briar) so naturally they're resentful of ohter races doing so well in Imperial backed cities (whom we also are told receive quite a bit of coin from the Empire. Igmund, Jarl of Markarth even admits this at some point). Also, a great counterexample to Ulfric's racism is Niranye in Windhelm, an Altmer that's doing quite well for herself. Also Nurelion, the owner of the White Phial is an elf as well who owns his own shop in Windhelm. The problem, as Niranye puts it, is that you will find ignorant people everywhere, what's important is to be flexible and befriend good people, not be too proud and stuck in your own ways like many of the Dunmer in the Gray Quarter.

You can't "save" the Empire anymore, the Aldmeri Dominion managed to break it apart through its treaties that made the Empire turn on its own people. The moment the Empire accepted to undergo religious persecution OF ITS OWN PEOPLE was the moment it stopped being something worth fighting for. Just remember how "helpful" Tullius was when you asked him to sign an order freeing that Gray-Mane from the Thalmor prison (and I tried this with my first character at various moments during the Civil War while a member of the Legion). Not even after I won the Civil War for the Empire would he grant me that one favor. That's how much the Empire cares about the Nords... As far as the cities go, the ones controlled by the Empire generally look better because the Imperials pump gold into all the Jarls who openly support them. Don't forget, however, that on the Stormcloak side you have cities such as Winterhold, that has been almost destroyed by the Oblivion Crisis and Riften, in which Maven Black-Briar, a well known friend with great connections in the Empire, is helping the underworld of Riften to thrive. Also, you forget that the Jarl of Markarth, Igmund, openly supports the Empire despite essentially having Ulfric to thank for regaining control of the Reach. Under his supervision the Silver-Bloods are pumping Cidhna mine full of Forsworn and carting off the silver in the direction of the Empire. Thus, the Empire is no friend of the Forsworn either. Also, as other people have said, the Forsworn shouldn't be pitied that much. The Nords in the Reach vs the Forsworn is in many ways similar to the Jewish-Palestinian conflict. Both sides have claim on the land, and if you believe the Forsworn (similar to Palestinians) they've been there longer, but the truth is both are bloody. The Forsworn even more so, as they're not just building armies to attack Markarth and such, but have also taken to banditry and terrorist actions against civilians. As for racism you hear that from the Nords in general, because they feel the Elves are imposing their own beliefs and desires on them while using the Empire to exploit their land. The Stormcloaks, however, are focused on liberating Skyrim from the Empire and taking the fight to the Aldmer. Therefore when people say the Stormcloaks are racist it's really a stretch, as the Stormcloaks are a military faction with precise aims, none of which are racist in nature. All we can say, for certain, is that there are many racist Nords in Skyrim, some of which are random people all over Skyrim and some of which are also Stormcloak soldiers. It's also true that the Stormcloak cities, which are visibly impoverished have a greater concentration of disgruntled, racist Nords. But going from these facts to comparing the Stormcloaks to Nazis and other racist groups is really too much. Nowhere in Skyrim can you see a concentration camp or discussions about the systematic elimination of one race or another. The Stormcloaks just want control of their own home and the power to rule it free of external influences.

I have to agree with the dialogue options, it's really annoying/ immersion breaking to finish a major questline with some faction and not have much change. In terms of story, I think the best thing they could do would be to have the Aldmeri Dominion invade Cyrodiil (this would work for all version of the civil war storyline, as the Thalmor have no reason to invade Skyrim while it is under Imperial control). Then the Dragonborn can use his talents to beat them back and in the process secure his place as Emperor. Alternatively, if this is too big to make into just a DLC, you could have an Aldmeri invasion of Skyrim if you joined Ulfric Stormcloak. But I do agree with more quests for the guilds, it seems kinda easy that you became their leader after so few quests.

The OP's argument certainly holds but I would recommend looking towards unique effects that DON'T add power to the bow. Maybe a bow that's as powerful in base damage as a Daedric bow but is improved under the Glass Smithing perk instead. The infinite arrows is a good idea but I would do that in an upgradeable fashion: it starts with iron arrows and if you want to a better type of arrow you have to input 1k arrows of that type in it or something (say if you want it to have infinite dwarven arrows you have to "sacrifice" 1k dwarven arrows to it). That would also make daedric arrows more usable, cause let's face it who ever uses those except for boss battles? (i've barely collected 300 in 150 hours of play, and that includes all the dwarven centurions and like monsters I could find). Or what if the bow improved up to daedric base damage with some random skill?

I like how people keep calling the Nords racists and only have praise for the Empire. Do you know who the Empire behave as? Muslim fundamentalists. That's right: believe in this or we chop your head off. Or worse, we let the Thalmor torture you for a few weeks before they kill you. And the proof for this is the quest you get from Avulstein Gray-Mane to save his brother. Does Tullius sign an order to spring him out of Thalmor jail? No, not even if you're high up yourself in the Imperial ranks (I kept trying to do this in my first playthrough and eventually got bored of his refusals and just cleared Northwatch Keep). Furthermore, under the Empire's "loving" rule, you now have Thalmor prisons in Skyrim! To which random people get carted off without so much as a word of protest from your loving Imperials. Clearly the Empire is in no shape to fight the Thalmor anytime soon. How can you believe the Empire will fight back when all that's been happening since the Great War is the Thalmor getting them to back down and give out more and more, 1 province at a time? Heck, the Emperor is so weak he can't even keep his Elder Council in check (by the way, apparently Amaund Motierre's family is an ancient Breton family, that suggests High Rock isn't very happy with the Empire these days either...). Now the Stormcloaks and Ulfric have their faults, to be sure. Does Ulfric want power? Sure. Who doesn't, anyway? The question is will Skyrim be better off with him as High King instead of listening to the Empire? They definitely will: whatever else you say about Ulfric, he will NEVER bend to the will of the Thalmor. He knows what being tortured by them feels like, he knows it's way better to die for what you believe in than becoming a slave to the elves. Can Skyrim by itself defeat the Aldmeri Dominion? I don't know. Most people say there is no way they can, but let's not forget that Talos, a Nord, created the Empire in just this fashion. What I can tell you is that the Empire is completely unable to fend of the Thalmor anymore. Heck, it seems wrong calling it an Empire nowadays...they betrayed and abandoned Hammerfell, which now fights successfully alone against the Thalmor (in a way that Skyrim could very well do as well), they apparently were forced to drop Black Marsh and Elsweyr as well, of which the former has now turned to its own invasions and if the Amaund Motierre whispers are to be believed, High Rock isn't happy with the Imperials either. So really, who exactly is left? The way to fight the Thalmor, it seems, is as a coalition of provinces each with their own armies and rulers, more a kind of Federated State than an Empire. And as for Skyrim, if you look at what happens in TESV, it's not doing that badly: with the Civil War resolved, the Dragonborn seems to have found new allies for whoever his friends are. After all, I'm pretty sure the dragons wouldn't mind a little flyover to the Summerset Isles:D. As for the Stormcloaks being racists, that's not exactly true. What you actually SEE in the game are NORDS being racist. Oh yes, it's not like Stormcloak soldiers sit around a bonfire and plan to kill random Argonians/Dunmer/Khajiit/Bretons/Redguards. I know, cause I sat around that bonfire with my troops and listened to them. They just want to kick the Empire and the Thalmor out of Skyrim and govern themselves once more. And who can blame them for it? As for the Markarth incident, the Forsworn are CERTAINLY not a model to follow. First of all there's no right or wrong in who is supposed to rule the Reach. Both the Forsworn and the Nords have been living in that border area. Mostly the Nords have ruled in the Reach and the Forsword were very unhappy about that. So what did they do? When the Nords were giving their lives to fight off the Thalmor, opressors that deeply hate ALL the races of man, they attacked Markarth and took temporary control of it. Ulfric won it back from them in a straight up war so now the Forsworn have encamped themselves in Redoubts and are given to banditry and murder of the innocent. Are these the people you want to support?

Ewww. Uthgerd? I always sacrifice her to Boethia in every game...EEEEWWW. Honestly do NOT train primary skills at the trainer, it's the WORST thing you can do. Sure, it might be tougher in the beginning but it WILL make the game more enjoyable. At the same time, I fully encourage you to use the trainer as often as you can for skills you're NEVER going to use. For example, I decided I was never going to use or train alchemy because in my first run I overpowered my character too much so I simply trained alchemy at the trainer just for the levels. Don't worry about the money, after lvl 30ish and some quests there is no way you won't become rich. Plus everytime you're out of money just go and kill some things:). If you train skills you're likely to never train/use at the trainer then you'll gain levels faster in the long run, as you'll be advancing the lame skills while you're training combat skills in dungeons. This means more perks in the long run and THAT, way more than levels, is what you want:)

ZOMFG remember those VOODOO 1 cards? Anyways, in regards to the driver I have to say it really coms down to what card you have. If you have a relatively new and shiny GTX then sure, they'll help, but my Geforce 9700m went from acceptable fps to unplayable on the new drivers. I had to go back to 285.79 to play Skyrim again on my old machine.

Honestly poisons are pretty pointless. You're better off selling the ones you find to make money early on rather than wasting them for a few good hits with your weapon. By themselves, neither of the 3 is OP but when you start mixing them together you get some ridiculous effects that many people say make the game too easy (1-hitting everything even in Master mode and having gear that makes you pretty much invincible). To be honest I think Bethesda should've left these 3 skills separate: you shouldn't be able to enchant gear to fortify smithing/alchemy or make potions to fortify enchanting/smithing. Then you'd be left with weapons and armor at legendary and normal enchantments on them and without any overpowered potions.

Rats, don't have time to fully post this time around, gonna finish my reply later...but anyway... I have 2 characters and went through both options and I can say overall I definitely prefer the Stormcloaks.

MMM gotta get me some waterbreathing helm first:P And, being on my 2nd playthrough, I know just where to find that:D

Halo, you make some valid points to be sure but I think you're exaggerating a bit. First of all I don't believe that you fully explored everything in Skyrim in 60 hours. Even if you have a paper map with all the locations marked in front of you and fast travel from place to place (and to be honest I haven't actually found a complete one yet, I keep finding things not marked on any maps in the game, from small encampments to random stashes of stuff on top of various mountains) you can't fully explore all of them in 60 hours. In my first run in the game I put in 200 on my character, finished all the main storylines, etc. then decided to look at a map on the net and visit any locations I may have missed. To my surprise I barely had 60% percent explored. Now sure, at some point it all boils down to whether you like exploring and clearing dungeons/caves/camps/forts/etc. If you find doing this repetitive then inevitably at some point you'll get bored. As someone said, it's quite likely Morrowind seem much bigger because you were forced to do a lot of exploring in between quests, whereas in Skyrim you can just fast travel from place to place and finish these things quickly. As for the engine issues, I agree with you there, particularly with the rock/jumping/climbing thing. That, at least, they should have fixed, particularly since Skyrim has SO MANY mountains. Not to mention, what's even worse, you can get stuck so easily! So many times I managed to jump over a rock only to find myself in barely a foot long ditch out of which I couldn't get out of because the engine wouldn't allow me to jump:| What irks me most though is the limited dialogue options, particularly after you finished major questlines.

Oh yeah? What about them dwemer doors/gates/chests? Those won't break if you use brute force on them.

By the way, it's Namira who asks you to feed her family, not Vaermina. Personally I found that to be the most disturbing quest so far :D. Vaermina's Skull of Corruption can be obtained if you betray your companion priest of Mara and kill him, which is really evil. Another really evil Daedra quest is Boethiah's proving, which is to be expected since he's the lord of betrayal. Mephala's quest (The Whispering Door) is also quite evil so be sure to avoid that. I think you can safely do Malacath's quest in Largashbur without feeling like you've done something evil. No betrayals/unprovoked murders/etc. Just gotta kill some giants and then an Orc chieftain turns on you and tries to kill you. To be honest, though, if you won't defend yourself against people/creatures who attack you or feel bad about doing so then you should stick to chopping wood for a living:)

I love Kharjo so much, he's so fun to be around, most interesting dialogue from a follower with a voice and accent that don't make you want to bang your head against the wall. Also he's talented with sneakyness which is perfect for my current character. I do have some questions about him though: for some reason his level is very low in my game (he easily gets dropped by even normal bandits despite the ebony armor set I gave him). How can I increase his level artificially? Is there a console command to do this? ( I know it's cheating but I pretty much just want him for the pleasure of his company, not for his fighting skills and I don't want him to die all the time) I also heard he's a good archer so I gave him an ebony bow ( I actually tried quite a few variants of this, including smith improved ebony bows and normal ones found/bought) but when he uses a bow he still seems to use his default hunting bow. Why is that? Also is there any way to make him not rush to melee things when he's detected? Would giving him sneak-enchanted gear help with his sneaking? (when I first used him I was about 60 Sneak and now I'm almost 100 so I'd imagine he'll lag a lot in terms of this should I want to use him again).

Man I love underwater exploration! Where exactly can I find that ship graveyard? Have you found interesting things at the bottom of the Sea of Ghosts?

^You have a lot of patience, my friend. If a woman talked to me like that for a month or two I'd pack up and leave.

That's a new one. Let me start with the nooby question though: are you holding block (right mouse button, dunno what it is on consoles) pressed down? Cause it's not enough to just click it once, time will be slowed down while you hold it pressed down and it will slowly consume your stamina. The moment you release the button time returns to normal.

On my first character I was a traditional heavy armor hack and slash everything in sight warrior so this time around I went for the sneaky archer type. I'm currently using an Ebony(Legendary) bow with 30 shock damage which I've named Inquisition. I've also found a daedric bow but I'm not sure what to enchant it with yet (I only want one enchant on it anyway but I really don't know which of the elementals to choose. On the one hand frost is traditional, shock is useful against mages and dragons but fire is just loads of fun to use). For general melee purpose and particularly when facing white souled thingies I use a Daedric War-Axe with Soul Trap that I've called Soul Reaper. (usually wielded with some spell in the other hand, which varies from Fast Healing to several destruction spells). Against dragons I use Dragonbane (Legendary) which, found at lvl 46+, has the same base damage as a Daedric Sword and deals 40 extra damage to dragons in a combo with my glass shield that has 22% magic resistance (though I probably need an upgrade for that, might get Spellbreaker or something). However, I have to say I also love using Chillrend, which, (also found at lvl 46+) has the same base damage as my Daedric War-Axe and that sweet double-enchant (it's pretty much the best 1-handed weapon in the game).

So basically you're wondering why your bug abuse won't work properly anymore? Ever considered that it was partially fixed at some point? If you're willing to cheat like that why not just artificially beef up your stamina via console or something. Or learn to make a weight ring and necklace that you put on after you finish a dungeon to carry all the loot out to a city. And if that's not enough for you, then I'm sorry but you're completely bypassing an essential element of the game, which is you don't pick up all the junk you can carry, you do a little bit of selection.

You can just wait 2 days for respawn prices. Alternatively you can just visit places with fences (4k gold) after you finish upgrading the thieves guild. Money limits aren't so bad: Ragged Flagon in Riften has 4k from Tonilia another 3.3K on average from the other weapon/armor merchants and 800 or so from the alchemy merchant. Windhelm is also pretty good as you've got Niranye, the sexy high elf female fence that loves buying stuff from you (she keeps telling me to bring more stuff to her) to a limit of 4k, plus the Smith and the White Phial shop just next to her (with a 1k limit each). Though as a traditionalist I still love Whiterun with its 3 smith shops, archery shop, alchemy and belethor's. And you've got a house in the middle of all this to boot!

Thing is, though, with most Daedric quests you have a choice to be good or evil. Let me exemplify: In the Molag Bal quest you get attacked by a Vigilant of Stendarr who says "it's you or him". Would a hero just lay down his life for a coward? Would a hero not punish a follower of Boethia? If so, then isn't it better to get a mace in the process as well? For many quests such as for Vaermina, Namira, etc. you can choose what to do, whether to get the daedric artifact or to be on the side of the good guys and exterminate the daedric infestation. For other quests, even though you technically help Daedric Princes, you're not being asked to do something evil (you have to clean a shrine of draugr, repair an artifact, clear a dwemer ruin of a weird disease worshipping cult, kill a murdering werewolf, kill some vampires and reunite a daedric prince and his dog, etc.). There are some, of course, that are clear cut evil though but when it comes to it you can choose not to do them.

If, for example, you have a sword with a fire enchantment and you wave it about in a city the guards/people will keep telling you to be careful with those flames. Probably applies to whatever you have on you as well.

You can never go wrong with dungeon clearing. Makes you money, trains your combat skills, helps you develop a combat style (especially if you're new to the series). Don't rush with the big quests, take your time to explore the world ( you never know what you'll find in a cave or on top of some mountain).