Let's Play Elder Scrolls - Any Campaign

Taking a break from BG3? Maybe time to hit something old and comfy?

Since the Elder Scrolls series seems to be a popular choice among the members, thought we'd put up a thread covering anything you'd like to talk about on any of the campaigns. Heck, if you've got some fun news on TOS online, why not?

Here's a list of the main games in the series for anyone who's interested:

The Elder Scrolls: Arena
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

These all have expansion packs, plus there are side ventures full of midi-music and 16-bit goodness like Battlespire and Redguard.


Anyway, feel free to post whatever.

I never played the original 2 games. I came in far too late for those.

In my opinion, Morrowind is the best of the later three games. It's harder, but it forces you to really think about what you're doing and where you're going. I played it last year and was once again reminded of just how rewarding the exploration is. The lack of fast travel is part of the game's appeal for me. Even if you find all of the Propylon Stones you'll be doing a lot of walking, and that means discovery.

Oblivion is the silly little sibling but it's the game I play when I'm feeling a bit brain dead and want something I can play in my sleep. The Marksman/Sneak combo is deadly by level 30 and then I start levelling up my magic. I'd love to add add some mods this time, but it looks as though Vortex's downloads don't include Oblivion, at least not their automatic downloads. I'm leery of manual installs.

Do you find that you play a similar character build each time, or do you branch out?

"Oblivion is the silly little sibling .... "

Which is probably one of the reasons I play it. I don't much enjoy being stressed out all that much !!

Yeah, I was pretty much weened on Elder Scrolls through Morrowind. Played a ton of Oblivion, probably nearly as much as I did Skyrim, which if you 've seen my stats on Steam is saying that I basically don't have a life.

I tried, really hard to like Arena, but the controls gave be a backache. Daggerfall was an improvement, but got really campy in spots. I mean, no one looks good naked in 16 bit

I've heard Redguard is supposed to be pretty decent, but haven't got to that yet. May have to load it up and give it a try. It's in my GOG library, so should play fairly well on Win 10.

I think I may get Morrowind running again. I've given up on the Rebirth mod, so will probably just add some of the character/beast redone mods that are out there to update it a bit. I'm so spoiled by great graphics now.

Oblivion is definitely a fun game, sometimes unintentionally. The existing bugs and wonky quest glitches can be very entertaining. That Knights of the Thorn quest, where you have to travel to an Oblivion plain to find Farwil can definitely be good for a belly laugh. More than once, after convincing Farwil to do the right thing, he's all like, "Huzzah! Let us go..." and he runs right into the lava. End of quest

My biggest issue in my current game of Oblivion is that I know the game so well I plunge into quests way earlier than I should. Benarius Manor? No sweat at level 18. Until I get to that basement and get my behind handed to me over and over. Retreat! Retreat!

Springheel Jak and his haunts and Daedra were way too tough for me as a level 25 Thief/Assassin. I fled the crypt and the house and ended up running down the street trailing enemies while every guard in sight came roaring over to help while I cowered in the alley. They took him down, too. Quest done!

That's one of the other good things about Oblivion, getting the town guards involved to take care of the bad guys or beasties. If they happen to get taken down in the process, well, then looks like I've got a new silver sword.

Yeah, those ghosts in Benarius Manor and the boss can be super tough. Especially that fireball staff he sometimes carry. That's pretty much a one hit character kill at the early levels. It's a great character house, though, worth the effort. I've got a couple mods set up for houses, but none are really awesome. They are either overdone, or don't have what I like. I've been hoping that someone would build out a Jaxonz Positioner for Oblivion. It's a tool for repositioning and copying items (even landscapes and buildings) that let's you easily customize your surrounding really effectively. I use it, no I depend on it, in Skyrim. I should post up some before and after shots after using the Positioner. I go from a relatively sparse Dwemer home to one fit for the Dragonborn with dragon head throne and multitudes of customized containers.

It's one of the reasons that I have a level 3 starter game saved. I took around 2 weeks to build out a kick-butt home and character that I was really happy with, being careful not to let him level up. Then use that as my starter game whenever I want to play Skyrim. Would like to do the same with Oblivion, but that takes way more effort. I'm so lazy

I will keep reading with interest anything you two Masters say about Oblivion ( or Morrowind, come to that ) because although I have played several (mainly older) RPG's I doubt I have EVER played any of them as fully as either of you

I do have the very early Elder Scrolls (although I've not played either yet) and I also once had Skyrim, too, which I very much liked.

But my issues with Steam and their practices means I can no longer play Skyrim as I bought it via Steam it's still only usable through them.
However, I totally banished Steam from my machines many years ago ....

Mad, Morrowind and Oblivion are on GOG at a reasonable prices if you were interested in either of those.

So in this game of Oblivion I've found myself sneaking around tough enemies instead of taking them on. I'm after the shiny stuff anyway. I'm up in the mountains trying to find the Wizard Tower, since it's the best stronghold, and getting slowed down by a huge cavern full of goblins doesn't appeal. I took their things and moved on. I mostly sneaked through the Ultimate Heist, too, since I'm still only level 26.

"Mad, Morrowind and Oblivion are on GOG at a reasonable prices if you were interested in either of those."

Hi Hagatha

Sorry .... I mustn't have explained properly ....

I already HAVE Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion - with Morrowind and Oblivian currently installed and in some degree of "play"
[ It's just my Skyrim that's languishing and lost in in Steam ]

Ah. I see.

Too bad GOG can't get Skyrim. Seems odd, given how old the game is now. Not like it's a new, hot property.

Technically, using SKSE, the Skyrim Script Extender bypasses the Steam check because it has it's own launcher. The catch is that you need Steam in order to download the game to begin with.

My guess as to why Bethesda never released Skyrim has something to do with the control they have over the SE version. I think now that Bethesda is a Microsoft property, it might increase the possibility that it'll show up in a more accessible format sometime after Elder Scrolls 6 is released.

That said, at least prior to the Microsoft takeover, everyone's favorite Bethesda person, Pete Hines said that the Elder Scrolls 6 is still years away. We'll be seeing Starfield before that and we don't even know anything about that game yet (other than it may have Fallout tie-ins)

I'm assuming you already worked with the Glitches group to handle your previous Stream issue, so I won't make you go down that road again

I still have hope that we will eventually see Skyrim on GOG.

Yes. I take a look from time to time - but no sign of it yet at GOG

I'm at Level 31 now in Oblivion and am at that point you get to in every sandbox-type RPG where you remember that you were supposed to go and find your kidnapped baby about 30 levels back.

Yeah, the leveling in Oblivion is one of the first things I addressed when adding mods. Once you get your sneak, blade or archery up past 60, it almost gets too easy. It's kind of silly how they address that by equipping bandits with ridiculously expensive armor and increasing their aggro levels exponentially. There are a few mods that change up the appearance of armor, and make a number of adjustments to the leveling. I've never been a fan of the glass armor design in Oblivion either, so was glad to see one of the mods bring it back to the way it appeared in Morrowind as well. Unfortunately, irony being what it is, I'm having issues getting my version of Oblivion to run with the usual mods. Interestingly enough, it's the GOG, GOY version.

That said, I am running the community supported version of the Nexus mod manager, because I find Vortex clunky and unreliable. Up to this point, the "public" version of NMM has been working smoothly. As I type this, I realized I haven't updated my Oblivion Script Extender in awhile, that may be the crux of the biscuit as they say.

You know, as far as older RPG's go. I've also been getting a hankering to play Neverwinter Nights 2. That has some similarities to BG3 with the number of character types, races and such. I need to find those mods that shut down that stupid spirit meter in the Mask of the Betrayer expansion first though, because that was just a silly addition to extend game play and infinitely annoying. That and the Storm of Zahir were in my opinion disappointing additions to the original. After that, I sort of lost interest and then realized that I missed the last expansion, Mysteries of Westgate - Really need to give that a try. I used to run a modded coop server for the first NWN, which had some really great mods, but I never fully got into modding up NWN 2. I always through the Hold building aspect in NWN 2 could have been significantly expanded, it sort of felt like an after thought in preparation for the last battle.

I tried to play NWN2 very recently, having never finished it with all its mods, and the game is just not great on a modern computer. I stopped playing after a few hours. Too bad, because it really was a fine game. I don't know why I never finished it, either. I remember loving it.



So, in Oblivion I'm the Grey Fox and set to rule the mage Guild and the Dark Brotherhood soon. Then I'll go visit Sean Bean and set the main quest in motion.

Neverwinter Nights now has an Enhanced Edition for newer systems. Maybe the same thing will happen with NWN2.

Spoiler alert. Boromir dies.

So does Ned Stark.

Sean Bean always dies. Always. He's made a career out of it.


Also, I knew that was Patrick Stewart just from his voice in the opening scene of Oblivion. I thought, no way....and then looked it up. Such a distinctive voice he has, Sir Patrick.

Yeah, Bethesda was always good at getting famous voice talent in for their games. Problem is that they either run on a tight schedule, or they don't have the best directors, because so many of the NPC lines are delivered off time with mispronunciations and such. Especially the male Nord and Redguard voice actors in Oblivion. It's like someone put the wrong punctuation in their scripts or something. :-P

I'm finally in that very long Mage Guild quest where you go after Mannimarco the lich in the Ayleid ruins. It's tough because sneaking doesn't go very far. Most of the Troops seemingly have preternaturally good hearing and sight and keep catching me, which seems unfair since my Sneak is at 115 now. Good thing I have Invisibility potions and an enchanted sword that steals health.

Agreed, that particular quest seems specifically geared for a battlemage type character - Running in sword swinging fireballs a-blazing.

Even now I freak out on the zombies in Oblivion. Not only can they totally destroy your character at lower levels, they are just grotesques, which is kind of the point I guess. It's the ones that are missing a lower jaw and their greenish tongue is just flapping around as they run after you in that horrific gate they have. *shivers*

High-elves make ridiculously strong battlemages in Oblivion once you get beyond their weakness to elemental damage and lack of martial skills. It's a difficult tree to level on, but eventually they are huge fighters if you skip leveling magic at first, and go the hard route by making them develop their blade or blunt skills.

I chose a Redguard this time, just for something different. I'm starting to focus on magic now since my Blade is at 50 and Marksman at 75. Loads of conjuring, and casting baby fire spells, lots of low-level Detect Magiccasting, lots of casting Open Easy Lock at Hard locks.

In Sunderland commune and the caverns around, I've been able to pick off a few of them in key spots, so on my way back from dealing with Mannimarco I can take out the rest of the crew.

I released the Tong Assassin in the main village part of Sunderland and he keeps appearing down there randomly, helping quite a lot, actually.

The best thing about this quest is the insane amount of great loot. I have a box full of stuff right by the exit door, which I've periodically been hauling back to Imperial City. Nothing to spend it on now but spells and arrows and real estate. I like real estate. I won't buy all of the houses since I already have four or five strongholds so far, plus White Stallion Lodge and the now-empty Cheydinhal Dark Brotherhood sanctuary. But I can never resist the Skingrad house and I love Arborwatch in Chorrol. Maybe I'll grab the Bruma house, too. It's a cozy place for a winter's day.

In this game I've not been able to locate the "hidden" stronghold in the very south. I can't remember how that one comes about, but it is assassin-related, I believe, as the second half of the Dark Brotherhood. I'll have to keep doing underhanded things for the Brotherhood and see who comes for me.

I somehow always end up playing a Knight or similar in any RPG. Just can't ever bring myself to be a "baddie"

I don't want to be a bad guy either, though I know some people enjoy it.
My brother is the same -- doesn't want to be the bad guy.
Though even if you're the "good guy" you end up stealing stuff.

I know, right? Even a Paladin has to eat, and then there's all that good loot to be had. I suppose you can say it's for the greater good. After all, you ARE fighting to save humanity.

I always seem to be a combination of Thief/assassin/mageling. Not sure what that says about me

In all of the Elder Scroll games, I do try very hard to avoid having to kill doggies, wolves, bears, cougars, deer, and other wildlife. I'll sneak around them if at all possible. And I don't steal from poor people. Sometimes I leave extra things in their food bags (in Oblivion).

One of the character development aspects I miss in current day RPG's is Alignment, where you had Good, Evil and Neutral, with the modifiers Lawful and Chaotic from the older D&D rule sets. That really made it challenging because not only did that set your character's choice of deity, it also changed the point modifiers for your attacks, magic and encounters. The more you strayed from your alignment, the more your attributes or skills dropped. It also made playing a bad guy not so, er bad? Lawful Evil was always interesting if the game writers really put some thought into it. You were infernally evil, BUT you lived by a very specific set of rules that allowed you to help at times, as long as it served your interest that is.

I never played an evil character in BG because the merchants charged more. One of these days I should at least try making an evil-aligned character just for fun. Truth is, I wouldn't even know how to play one.

I was able to maintain a neutral disposition in one BG 2 game where I was trying to keep Anomen from killing Viconia. I do seem to remember being successful, though how I did it I can't say.

Well, I'm a happy camper for a number of reasons today *wink* , one of which is I got Oblivion working. Once again irony of ironies, it's the Steam GOY version that's working gangbusters with all my usual mods. I think there's something wonky (that's the technical term, I think) with the GOG version and the Oblivion Script Extender. There is a different launcher you have to use with the GOG version, where as with the Steam version you just start it normally. The GOG version was an "insta-crash" as soon as I tried starting the game. Steam on the other hand is running smoothly without any issue, *knocks on wood*.

Did they revamp some of the script in a later update to the GOY version? I noticed the parting dialogue with Uriel Septim in the last battle with the Mythic Dawn during the introduction sequence was way more heartfelt than the original version, with your character basically acknowledging Septim's sacrifice. I'll have to check my mods to see if one of them is doing a sort of "cutting room floor" thing like with Skyrim, but I don't recall that being a thing. Either way, it was a pleasant surprise to have an extended convo with Sir Patrick

How very odd. For me it was the opposite. Fortunately my game saves work on both platforms so it wasn't a game ender for me this time around.

When I get tired of Oblivion, which may be soon, I'm going to get back to BG3. I think there's still a lot of content there I haven't covered. Instead of staying quest focused I'm goin to go for a wander, level up some more. See the sights.

I gave up on Oblivion after all. Started hitting some odd glitches with a couple of my mods. The age of that game is starting to show, as not many of the early mods are being maintained any longer, so just too tedious to troubleshoot.

Tried BG3 shortly after getting a bunch of Win 10 updates and immediately got a CTD. So....

Decided to fire Skyrim back-up. The alternate start, NPC, expanded spells and and city mods I've got running make it tolerable for some decent re-playability. Plus they seem to still be on top of things in maintaining the Script Extender plugin.

Well, shoot. I never modded Oblivion, so I haven't had to subject myself to that and probably never will.

Skyrim, though, I had modded last time I played.

I rule the Mage's Guild now, as well as the Dark Brother hood and Thieves.

i guess it really is time for me to start the Main Quest. I'm getting high-level loot and the best armour and weapons drops now, to I could use some of those Oblivion Gate stones.

I've never applied MODS to any of my Elder Scroll games. Nor have I ever played any of those games to the same depths either of you two have

I just enjoy muddling my way through

But Morrowind is still my favourite and the one I return to the most

Oblivion has always been a little wonky when it comes to mods. A community group originally built an independent mod manager, aptly named OMOD. Then the Nexus incorporated it into their NMM, but several of the bigger mods require using Wyre Bash (another mod management tool) or manually inserting files. My mod group are a combination of all of the above, so it's a little on the yuck side to troubleshoot.

I enjoy Morrowind as well Mad. There's a couple of development groups that have been working to port the game to one of the newer graphics engines. It's sort of picky to install though, so not sure if you'd want to mess with it.

One of the early ones that was active back in 2014 and is still available is Morroblivion: http://morroblivion.com/forums/morroblivion/mods/753

For anyone who's interested, here's the installation instructions. You must own a legal copy of Morrowind and Oblivion though: http://morroblivion.com/forums/oblivion/morroblivion-mod-releases/8114


The other is Skywind: https://tesrskywind.com/

The Skywind group is working to build Morrowind in the Skyrim Special Edition engine. It's still a work in progress. The website has a spot to signup for notifications on their progress. I heard they had a few legal issues from Bethesda on this one, but worked it out. It looks like they are still making progress and there are updates as recent as July of this year.

Mods can be a lot of fun, though I haven't used many.
The people who make them can be very creative.

Mostly I use cheats or save game editors to get past what I consider excessive grinding, especially in the beginnings of the games, but that's not the same thing.

It DOES look a bit obsessive.

You should see my hours on Fallout 4, with about 100 mods. Now that's obsession!

EDIT: Incidentally, in about 8 or 9 games of Oblivion, not once -- no lie -- not ONCE has the Kvatch quest proceeded properly. I always have to use the console. Annoying. In the old days, I would simply write the console code down to advance the quest and put it in the game box for the next time, but I no longer have my original copy of the game.

Is that 100 mods at the same time?

I haven't counted them, and no, definitely not all at once. Most of them are settlement mods, with some music mods to add music to the radio station. Some of them alter game mechanics, like not adding experience for crafting. I basically like to build stuff and then rebuild it. The mods I activate for each game depend on mood as much as anything (Vortex makes this pretty easy). Sometimes I like to have a really modern looking settlement and sometimes I like to have a really scruffy post apocalyptic-looking world. Sometimes both.

Happily, the Steam version of Oblivion came through for me this time and got me past Kvatch (have to love those cloud saves).

Yup, I'm onboard with that. For Skyrim, I've got 110 mods running that are loaded from the Nexus, and another 5 from the Steam Workshop, because for whatever reason the developers never uploaded to Nexus. So 115 in total. The reason it's so stable is completely in thanks to several mod developers not the least of which goes by the avatar Arthmoor, who helped write the standards that modders should use in order to have all mods play nice together. When combined with "Loot", which is a Load Order sorting tool, you can run that many mods with few CTD's. I usually get a few CTD's in the first level, then it calms down a bit as the .ini gathers the setting it needs. He's also the one responsible for some fantastic mods like "Cutting Room Floor" that gathered tons of cut content from unused files in Skyrim, corrected them and added it all back into the game. The result is somewhat surprising, as it brings in quests that you hear about, but never show up. A ton of lost and pertinent dialogue and a fair number of NPC's. He's also a major contributor to several of the unofficial patches.

Unfortunately, Oblivion has not benefited from his skills

I ventured into mod territory on Skyrim during my last game. Up to that point it was Fallout 4 only, and that was out of frustration at the build limits for the enormous sites you can use (I got tired of endlessly storing and restoring weapons to create more build space), the non-removable junk all over the settlement sites, and the idiotic way the junk fences didn't click together. After that I really started to explore the mods available.

There are some great mods out there and I suppose I should explore them further next time I play Skyrim since the vanilla game is getting a bit tired for me.

Yeah, I highly recommend the following:

~SKSE: Skyrim Script Extender - It allows you to use the really good mods. Don't use a mod manager to install though, you just need to download the zip file from their website and unzip it into the Skyrim directory. Here's where you get it: https://skse.silverlock.org/ You might have to tweak the ini file to get things to run just right, but a download file called: "SKSE ini file for lazy users" takes care of that. Got to love the name https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/51038/

~The Tesseract: A player home that is absolutely amazing. It's basically a Dwemer TARDIS for Skyrim, because it appears as just an archway with a door. You can break it down, fully loaded with your stuff and reposition it anywhere in Skyrim. I'll post up a couple screen shots later.

~Jaxonz Positioner: Probably the best tool ever invented for those who like to customize their player home. You can copy objects, place them in your inventory and drop them anywhere you want. You can place almost any item on wall or floor display. You can move or even delete static items that are in your way. It's pretty awesome and quite user friendly.

~Cutting Room Floor: This is the one that I mentioned earlier. It adds so much little detail to the game. Here's an example: in the vanilla game the only way you come across the jester Cicero is by random chance on the road outside of that farm. After loading Cutting Room Floor, the first time you visit Whiterun, you'll stumble upon the stable owner and Uthgerd the Unbroken having a conversation about an "odd fellow" that Uthgerd ran into on her way back from adventuring. That results in a quest added to your Journal to find the odd jester. So, little things like that make the game feel more complete.

~Alternate Start -Live Another Life: With this one, your character wakes up in a prison and is given the choice by Mara to start your life over again. The choices include being caught in a shipwreck, being a Thalmor, being a bandit, captured by a necromancer and several others. My current character is a Thalmor.

~Interesting NPC's: This one gives the games all kinds of new and interesting people and encounters. Not all the NPC's are voiced, but most have dialogue and even add new radiant quests. When combined with the Better Cities mods, another group I recommend, it really gives the game a whole new feel.

That's just scratching the surface. One thing to add, I don't use the SE version of the game due to it not jiving well with some of my favorite mods.

Oh, and don't forget the best companion ever!

Dovachicken! https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/34005/

Thanks for those, Trail.

I'm now actively working with Martin to foil Dagon's cunning plan. Time to get me some of those Sigil stones!

I tried a new weapon enchantment this time. A decent sword can get up to about 75 points of Speed damage per hit. The Speed katana I made took out the entire Mythic Dawn and their summoned Deadric gear with little trouble even with my Blade skill only at about 60, so it seems pretty effective. I might try Strength damage on my next weapon.

Here's my last character sitting in the throne room I made up for him using that Jaxonz Positioner. I call it, "You may approach the Dragonborn"

You'll see the backer for his throne is a Dragon Wall. Using the Positioner I was able to copy it, bring it back to the player home, and reduce it in size. Pretty cool eh?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x0enzh5y0b1luab/Approach.png?dl=0

Yeah, that's a copy of Jarl Balgruuf's throne in Whiterun. Seemed appropriate since it has the stylized Nord dragon heads on it.

Cool. I like the arrogant slouch. He looks a little bit like Geralt.

So, now in Oblivion, my bounty keeps shooting up to 1000 for no reason. I paid it off with Skriiva in Bravil, but it just goes back on. Weird. Hopefully a game reload will stop it.

Stupid Guards don't seem to realize that I just saved Bruma. Idiots.

Yeah, the slouch seems to be built into those thrones. The Geralt appearance isn't an accident. The hair is from a mod called "Apache Hair" which adds a ton of new, more realistic looking hair styles to the game, one of which is Geralt's half-back pony tail. I choose that one, cuz it's the way I've warn my hair for years. Gives me a connection to the character.

I've had that bounty issue crop-up in Oblivion as well, usually because a guard jumped in the way of my arrows or sword during a particular intense battle and I didn't realize it. From what I understand there's an existing glitch that can happen when you kill a guard. Even after clearing the bounty, if your character hits the aggro level of guards in a certain city because your a member of the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood, the bounty might re-appear again.

...or maybe I forgot to take off Nocturnal's Hood.....

But I did manage to enrage a guard while I was clearing out the Bruma Gate and the ratbag chased me all over the place. I led him out into the wilderness to meet an unhappy fate at the hands of a Brown Bear.

Been there, done that!

One of the things that bugged me about Oblivion was that every once and awhile you would hit a totally psycho guard who would chase you forever. A couple of times, the pursuit music stopped, and I went on my merry way. Right in the middle of another quest, in another city, that pursuit music starts up again, and I don't see anything around.

Then it stops. I'm thinking this is some sort of bug, so I restart my game, exit the city gates and immediately an Imperial City guard just destroys my character because I wasn't expecting anything to happen walking out the gate. Quit the game, made myself a drink and figured it was a sign

Well, been playing a pure mage in Skyrim. Forgot how difficult that can be, I'm always going for a weapon. Decided that I'd only carry an a destruction or conjuration staff, so that's been really interesting. Have been doing a lot of running away at the early levels, especially against Ice Wraiths. Those slippery devils are hard to hit with Flames or Fire Bolt and they take so much health with each hit.

After the last set of Windows 10 updates started getting CTD's with a really weird after-effect. My cursor looks stretched and I've got a mini-screen with an image of static that follows it. Once I push it down to the taskbar it goes away. How weird is that? I'm guessing it's a combination of my vid card starting to go, and an HDMI hub I'm running the monitor through that's never been the most stable. Combine that with wonky updates and viola! Glitches. Ah well. I'll run a diagnostic tomorrow evening to see if I can track it down.

Still having fun as a conjuration mage though. There's a mod that introduces a ton of new spells that actually have some decent complexity to them. It's called "Apocalypse: Magic of Skyrim" https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/16225/?

It adds over 150 spells, like vengeful wraith that comes back with 150% power of the previous foe that bested it. Also has spells that drain your attributes as a cost for taking out your enemies. One of the other conjuration spells that's more in tune with other D&D games allows you to summon a Dremora Churl. If your foe kills it, while your still battling, he'll come back on the side of your enemy. Really cool spells that took some thought to put together as opposed to just setting stuff on fire, which as fun as that can be, gets a little boring after awhile.

I've never played a pure mage character and in my current game I'm wishing that I had done that. Because I thought this would be a quick game, I chose as my major skills all of the ones relevant to a thief/assassin/marksman, and I'm rapidly approaching that point where I'm going to have to go to jail a few times just to allow for a few more levels. I feel as though this game could go on for a while.

Oops. our power just started to flicker. We're having a massive wind storm right now on the eastern coast of Vancouver Island and I have a feeling we'll be eating cold cheese sandwiches for dinner.....

I wouldn't survive for more than a few minutes as a "Pure Mage" !! I only just make it when armed to the teeth as some kind of "Fighter"

[On my latest foray into Oblivion I manifested myself as a "Crusader" and quite enjoyed what I played.]

Being a squishy Archer can be challenging, too. I did get my Conjuration skill up to 71 and am now doing the Molag Bal quest so I can use the Conjuration trainer at the shrine.

I don't recall doing this quest before. It's pretty darned evil. And here's me doing, the Knights of the Nine, all righteous and stuff.

Yeah, that might have something to do with him being the Daedric Prince of domination and enslavement of mortals. Not exactly the kind of guy to invite to the potluck.

I always thought the guy who did Molag's voice in Skyrim was awesome. He's basically the Daedric equivalent of Satan considering the line, "Now if you'll excuse me, there's a soul I need to claim"

Well, you know, my character is willing to briefly stray off the path of the Knights for a shot at being able to cast level 100 Summonses, which I've not done before.

I usually train up my Alteration and Enchantment skills in Skyrim, then buy as many grand soul gems as I can afford and buff the heck out of my mage and the chosen specialty. That gives you a better fighting chance in the higher levels. In Oblivion, similar strategy, but I usually stick with a Destruction mage because the AI associated with your conjured beasties can be sort of wonky sometimes. They tend to hit my character as much as the enemy and sometimes delay before getting into battle. I also get my sneak fairly high, because getting through the Oblivion plains is nigh on to impossible for some early mage builds. Those darn Clanfear pack one heck of a punch.

I think the most ambitious attempt at a pure mage was by one of the writers over at the PC|Gamer website. She attempted a pure Illusion mage, reasoning that in real life magic is all illusions. https://www.pcgamer.com/an-illusionist-in-skyrim-part-1/ Her experience made for some pretty hilarious scenarios, the character's first encounter with a dragon being one of them.

Haha.

I've been giving the boots of Springheel Jack a good workout in this game. Bouncing around a group of enemies is ever so much fun.

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Right. Just rounding up the last of the Knights of the Nine and then finish the main ques, then I'll shut this game down since I've hit saturation point. I'll leave the game saves on my computer for a trip through Shivering Isles at some future date.

I might get to one of my new games next. And it's going to be a very heavy gaming winter since our provincial government just mandated some pretty strict COVID rules and we'll be staying at home all the time now.

I seem to remember some discussion about how the original code for NWN 2 got lost and so there is no way to make NWN EE. It might be one of those apocryphal tales, except I've seen in more than once. Too bad, because it really was a great game.

I remember reading that there would be no enhanced edition for Icewind Dale 2 for the reason you mentioned. Not sure about NWN2.

Ah. Maybe I got them mixed up, then. I was never a huge IWD 2 fan. I'd far prefer NWN 2 EE any day!

So, when I'm done with Bioshock Infinite I thought I'd fire up Skyrim and force myself to play something other than Thief-Assassin. I draw the line at Fighter, but perhaps it's time to play a Battlemage type

Yeah, I recall a dialogue in NWN2 where the the Kobold merchant/bard Deekin mentions that he hasn't heard much from Icewind Dale recently, that they were "probably on their last legs, good as dead."

He also mentions the plague-diamond encrusted compilation of the Tales of Undrentide in reference to all the different editions of NWN-1 that are available.



Battlemage is my usual go-to character type in most fantasy RPG's. I've been gritting my teeth during this Skyrim playthrough doing the pure mage thing. I keep wanting to put perk points into Smithing and One-Handed, but have been pushing Conjuration, Destruction, Alteration and Restoration instead, and building up my magicka. I haven't engaged the main quest yet by going to the Inn to pick up the Horn of Jurgenwind caller, so Dragons have been far and few between. That's a really good thing at this point, because the few I've battled with my mage have definitely not been a walk in the park at this level in my mage's development.

My very first Morrowind character was a mage. By the time I got to Balmoral I had started to use a sword and then about 2 levels later I decided to go all in for archery.

EDIT:

Taking a break from Bioshock Infinite because playing it for more than two hours makes me dizzy.

So, I've loaded up Skyrim ( I seem to have the SE edition) and a bunch of mods. Now I'm remembering that I had quite a few mods in my last game. I wish I could remember all of them. I know I had Inigo, and the Forgotten City, and The Stones of Barenziah. I know I had a really nice little player cottage somewhere, too. I'll spend some time cruising through the mods lists.

My new character had a couple of Destruction spells, so that's what I've been using and I'm now at level 5 and it's time to start using my Perk points. So far I'm not using weapons at all except for staffs. My character is using Sneak, though. I can't bring myself not to.

Got my "Foos."

I need to find someone who sells spells, though.

All the mages in the Arcane University except for the Enchanter and Orc who keeps the Arcaneum sell spells. So does Farangar, the court wizard in Whiterun, although his are a bit costly. If you want access to the University, but don't want to go down the path of that quest line, just take the test at the gate that Farelda will give you, she'll also sell you a spell for cheap from a random school. I usually save before talking with her, because if I don't like the spell she makes available I can reload the save and try for another. At level 5 though, the highest spells you'll probably see are "Healing Hands" or maybe Firebolt if you're lucky depending on your Destruction level. There is the random chance that you'll be asked to summon a Flame Atrinoch, which is a great spell, but most level 5's don't have enough Magicka to do it, so you'll need to find a way to buff yourself (unless you're an Altmer).

After passing the test, you don't need to talk to Mirabelle right away. You can if you want, then you'll get some sweet digs in the Hall of Attainment and some novice destruction robes. After that, again if you don't want to go further down that quest like you can avoid talking to the mage she mentions in the Hall of Elements and just talk to the other mages to buy spells, get training or buy other stuff.


Oh yeah, and you probably already know this. If you're using the Skyrim Special Edition, make sure the Mods you get are specifically for that, and that you've added the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch as well, otherwise you'll have issues.

All the links I've posted previously are mods for the standard edition, because most of the ones I enjoy have never been ported over to the Special Edition. Aside from that I've got an irk about the SE version, that relates to Bethesda's business model and how they "borrow" code from modders. They did the same thing with the DLC for Oblivion in their updated GOY version. Yeah, technically it's their platform, but give credit where credit is due. OK, I'm off my soapbox

Vortex sends you directly to the page for the SE game, so I'm pretty confident that the mods are working properly. No issues so far. I may start adding more as I go.

With respect to the mods I usually drop $5.00 in the donations for each mod I download. It's an easy way of thanking people for their time.

My biggest worry playing a mage is how to kill a dragon. It's dead easy when you're an Archer. Not so much as a mage, I'm guessing. I'll be finding out soon-ish.

Yeah, the dragon thing is hard as H...E...double hockey sticks

Lots of running, oh and make sure you have a ward spell. Even the lowest level one, I think it's Lesser Ward that Tolfdir teaches you will save your butt, you can also get them from the mage Colette Morance in the Hall of Countenance. Just remember to raise it well before getting hit by the Dragon's attack. They take a moment or two to come up to full power.


That's really nice of you to give that contribution to the modders.

Having JUST talked about dragons, I ran into one while I was on a quest out of Falkreath. I blasted it with a few Fireballs and it flew away. I chased it over hill and dale and finally it got cornered by a mammoth, so I slew the beast and stole its soul.

Piece of cake.

Must have been a lower level green dragon. There's that dragon not to far from Drelas' cottage near Whiterun that attacks you at the same time two beasties attack (either wolves, bears or saber cats depending on your level). Now that's a battle.

Wait until the game starts spawning Blood Dragons. They are the first real challenge depending on your skills. Alteration is a good one to level up on because of the mage armor and spell resistance perks you'll get for just wearing robes. Also, if you didn't already know this, Wards also help against Dragon Shouts/Thums by undead beasties like Dragon Priests and Drueger Wights. That way you won't get tossed through the air, "rag dolled" and pummeled by arrows.

One of the mods that I have revises Drelas, and as opposed to outright attacking you when you enter his cottage, he invites you to sit and tells you of a Mage movement that wants to recruit the Dragonborn called the "Radiant Dark". I think it maybe either "Cutting Room Floor" or "Interesting NPC's" because I think Drelas was always supposed to start another side quest, but it turned into one of those that were never finished so they just made him violent.

Playing as a pure mage is very different from my usual path, which is usually Thieves' Guild first, then Assassin, or vice-versa, Dawnguards and then I join the Mage Guild much later in the game to use magic as back-up. I'm often at Level 40 or so by that time, or I join early just because I've wandered up that way, and then forget about it for a long time. I've never had to rely on magic for physical protection at all. That's going to be interesting. At level 12 I've decided only using Destruction is a fool's path since almost everything can kill me pretty quickly if they get close. Lydia is only so useful; she dies a lot and I think I'll let the poor girl stay back and be a pack mule from now on.

I've run into a couple of other really easy dragons. Now I need to get me some shouts.

Yeah, it's a hard path in the first few levels. Gets a little easier around levels 10-25, then gets harder again especially if you engage the main quest by meeting at the inn and triggering more dragon attacks. The trick is to stay up to date on the leveled spells. Using the dual casting function helps too. Dual casting Lighting Bolt is great on more powerful mages since it knocks down their magicka reserves at the same time as hitting their health. You can always tell when their AI gets panicked because they'll pull a dagger instead of continuing to hit you with destruction spells. That's the time to pounce.

Mages can be really fun, that's why I got the mod that adds a bunch more spells. After awhile I wanted bigger and better spells, with bigger visual effects to match my ever growing ego

I've seen a mod that adds spells. Maybe I'll grab that one.

I do have Cutting Room Floor. So far I haven't noticed anything new, but it's early days.

Did a quick search and found that it's "Interesting NPC's". They do have a version for SSE too: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/29194/

It's a huge mod, adds a bunch of new characters. Sort of fills in the gaps.

I'm on it!


EDIT:

Shoot. I just went to use some of my dragon souls and I have none when I should have at least 6-7. And the last two dragons didn't produce one for sure. I guess my game is badly gimped and obviously has been right from pretty the start, since I started killing dragons ten levels ago.

I've used all of these mods before, except Cutting Room Floor and Interesting NPC's, but neither of those is the problem because this has obviously been going on for a long time.

Not sure what to do about this but it's impossible to play this game without the shouts.

I've had a similar issue that was caused by mod that allowed me to cash my Dragon Souls in for Perk points if I wanted to.

I think the same console commands should work for the Special Edition. So you can try opening the console (tilde/accent key) and type the following:

player.forceav dragonsouls # and then hit enter


[#] being the number of dragon souls you want to add.

I actually managed to fix the problem. Apparently it was some conflict between one of the DLC and the unofficial patch -- there were some very old threads about it on various boards. I disabled the patch and then re-enabled it, and my soul gems were there. So weird, but I'll take it.

I had that Dragon Soul mod last time. It's great later in the game when you have all the shouts you want, dragons are spawning like flies, and you really want to get to the top of that skill tree.

I will take note of your console code, too, as I'm going to go and grab that mod if it exists for SE.

OK, that does sort of sound familiar. I recall after the SSE unofficial patch was released, there was some issues because modders weren't adhering to a standard that the nexus was trying to establish. That could also be a load order issue. I'm not sure if Vortex has a load order tool built into it, but LOOT is a good tool for maintaining the mod load order of several games including SSE.

Vortex does indeed have a load order tool, and it's automatic. You can check the load order and I'm pretty sure you can change it, too, but I've never had to. With all of the mods I had on my Fallout games, I had no trouble. I really like it.

Vortex is pretty much Loot for Dummies.

I recently played Morrobliviion, which is a fan-made remake of Morrowind using Oblivion's game engine. Home page and download links are here. There is no automatic installation, so you need to know how mods work first. The modders did a great job, and I completed the main quest with only minor bugs. All the quests and dialog are faithfully re-created, but only minimal spoken dialog is used. You can fly, and you can actually meet a dwarf, just like in Morrowind -- two things you can't do in any other Elder Scroll games.

I once played a mage character in Skyrim, and I was able to boost my enchanting, alchemy, and smithing skills in a concerted fashion so that I could add 25% reduction of magicka used for destruction magic in four pieces of my armor, which gave me a total of 100% reduction of magicka for destruction magic! Plus, my armor was also a set of dragonbone armor boosted to the max with my smithing skills. Hence, I was practically an unstoppable mage, with magic attacks that cost nothing and with armor that was much higher than what a mage would typically have on.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Alchemy and Smithing in Skyrim. Alchemy is a great way to make money early on, and the potions become really useful late in the game. Enchanting is a given, since I like to make custom gear. I don't know how much smithing I'll do in this game; so far none, but there will be time as I'm only level 28 and have barely scratched the game.

My character is now enough of a mage (Destruction Restoration, Alteration) that I can begin to branch out. I'm thinking one-handed for daggers, mostly for the Soul Trap as a just reward for anything that dares approach me too closely. I also have a bow that steals Magika, and that might be pretty useful.

Yesterday I was wandering around Dragon Bridge and found myself in a cavern I could have sworn I'd never seen before. I was right. I stumbled into a big mod I forgot I'd installed, so I'm off on a new adventure -- hopefully a good one.

Yeah, the armor thing is one of the aspects of Skyrim that bugs me from a mage perspective. Due to the way the Elder Scrolls Skill and Advancement system is configured, you rely almost purely on your own personal strength at role playing for your character. As a result, I tend to fall back on the older D&D style rule sets, keeping them in the back of my mind when I take on the guise of a mage or warrior type. From the perspective a pure mage, the schools of Alteration and Restoration are severely gimped in Skyrim. Mage Armor should provide far more protection, and wards (at least protection wards, should be in the Alteration, not Restoration school) after a certain level should almost be either self-activated or utilize far less magic per second than they do even in the Master levels. If they did that, could add the D&D style spell/magicka penalties for wearing armor, which would make it feel more like a true mage. To me, using weapons and wearing buffed armor is more like being a "Battle or Warmage" rather than just a straight magic user. I don't mean that to come off as sounding pretentious, it's just what I'm used to from D&D oriented stuff. Plus since I'm such an old [blip] I'm even more rooted in the really old 2 and 2.5 rulesets, which are fairly strict. That said, I sure have enough mods to give my characters a god like advantage at times So yeah, I'm a hypocrite , but they sure are fun.

As a pure mage so far I'm fine as long as I'm at a distance but close up is a disaster. At some point I'll start wearing light armour but for the time being I'm dragging Lydia around in her Heavy gear so she can cart my stuff and tank the odd time I run into something that can live through a couple of dual-handed Fireballs.

Yeah, had a run in with that Drueger Deathlord in Volunruud. They equip him with an ebony bow and arrows, and it's basically a one hit kill on my character because I've been dumping all my perks into magicka. Magicka is up to 380, but health is only 170 so... This, is why I love the enhanced spell mods. My conjured Daedric Pit-Fighter softened him and his Wight buddy up enough that I could take them out with a few well placed spells while dancing in and out of the pillars. Still saw my mage drop dead more times than I would have liked...

I finally started putting points into Health, so I'm around 330 Magika and 200 Health. I got tired of one-shot death. If anything more serious than a Skeever catches up to me, I'm toast.

I might have to break down and get that spell mod -- I saw it or one like it on Nexus.

This is the one that I use, and it's available for the Special Edition - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1090

The conjuration spells alone are worth it. I'm at level 32, still running with only mages robes, no armor BUT I've got the ability to summon (at Expert Conjuration level) everything from a Daedric Honor Guard, to a Daedric Champion or a Daedric Mentor who can train you on the spot in the magic school of your choice. Still running with under 200 health too. Don't get me wrong, it's no walk in the park when a high level Bandit Chief flanks me with a battle axe, that's an instant kill. Give me a chance to conjure up a champion then engage a Greater Ward and they've got a fight on their hands

Oh, and there are some really cool Restoration spells too, that border on destruction. Ones that inflict disease, make corpses explode, plant enchanted seeds in your foe that drain their health and send it to you when you drop to less than 25%. Some really well thought out spells that actually allow you to strategize as a mage, something that was severely lacking in Skyrim.

Haha. I actually got killed by a mudcrab today. It backed me into a corner in a shipwreck and I ran out of magic potions. Better start investing some points into Health and maybe train up One-handed, I guess.

One thing that's different about playing a mage versus playing a Thief/Assassin -- it's a lot louder and a lot messier. I've joined both the Thieves and the Dark Brotherhood too, and murder is a lot more difficult with magic, I have to say. No silent arrows in the back from a discreet distance.

If you train up your Illusion skill, there's a perk that makes casting silent.

Yes, I suppose I better start training Illusion. I've been putting training points into Alchemy for the potion strength boost, but I'm at 65 now so I can afford to branch out a bit.

Even at Health 200 I'm vulnerable, and as soon as I cast my armour spell everybody knows I'm there. In a closed space Magic only really works if you take people by surprise.

So, just how much Magika is needed to cast the really high-level spells in Skyrim? I don't think I've ever reached that point, except maybe in Morrowind playing as a Battlemage. I got up to ridiculously high levels in my first few games; up in the high 80's at one point.

The higher the better. The Trainers/Teachers at the College of Winterhold's magic schools: Destruction (Farelda) , Restoration (Colette) and Alteration (Tolfdir) will make available quests, once you reach level 90 in their respective skills. The quests will eventually end up in you learning what are known as "Ritual Spells". The destruction ritual spells are insane. You don't want to use them if there's any friendlies around. The fire and lightning based ones chew up magic in a second.

There is also a mod that reduces the amount of magicka needed for both Alteration mage armor style spells and Restoration Wards. It used to be in the Steam Workshop, but got discontinued for some reason. I ended up extracting the files and making it a manual load, cuz I grew do accustomed to not having my Magicka drained to nothing by wards, which is silly in my opinion anyways. I'll look around and see if it might be on the Nexus now.

It's best to figure out how much Magicka you drain in a typical battle, then add whatever you need to maintain your Mage Armor. That way you can cast it often and not have to think about it so much when traveling.

There are also some spells in that other spell mod I mentioned earlier that take up to and over 1K magicka per casting. The Conjuration spells are especially draining as some of those will take every point of your Magicka to cast. Some even cause you damage to cast, or in the case of conjuring a Daedric Xivilai Wizard, drains up to 200 points from an enchanted weapon or staff that you have equipped. They go by the traditional alchemy rules, you don't get something for nothing.

I'm still not at level 200 with my health and am generally kicking butt except against some of the bandit hideouts where virtually everyone is leveled to a Thug or higher. Even my Daedric Champion has trouble when getting pelted by arrows from a high level bandit. He's especially fun, because foes that are lower than his level get launched in the air when he hits them with his war axe, leaving them vulnerable to Destruction attacks while they are busy getting up again.

Well, my magica is already at 400 but that's with the Arch-mage robes and a few trinkets.

Of course when an enemy gets too close, there's always the old Foos-Ro-Dah! That never gets old.

Yeah, the Force thuhm is definitely a useful one, and fun!

I don't want to jinx myself, but I think I may have solved my CTD issue. It seemed that the one, consistent sign indicating that a crash was going to happen, was spotting textures that weren't loading correctly. Could have been anything from jar lids, to the clothing my character was wearing. Shortly after that happening, even after reloading the save from the menu screen I'd get a crash. I'm guessing this is because of the ridiculous number of mods I'm running introducing new items into the game. So I tried a texture optimization stand-alone app from the Nexus that seems to be working so far. Apparently, Bethesda was inconsistent in how they built and registered textures in the game. I guess it's not uncommon for other game houses as well, since it works for several other games that use similar texture types. This stand-alone has a user interface that runs through every texture and location, updating the textures to make them load more consistently. I've also noticed that the graphics in general are much sharper than before as well. I don't know if anyone has tried it with the SSE version, it may not be needed due to the improvements that were done, but thought I'd post up the link for anyone having a similar issue on the standard version.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12801

It's not a mod, it's actually a stand alone app that you run, point at your texture folder and then kick off the optimization function. It has a bunch of other features, but I don't have the knowledge base to use them, so just stuck with the texture optimization. If you're mid game, it's best to save indoors to limit the number of initial texture the game will have to load when you go back in after running the app. Then delete all your Auto-saves, go to an outdoor location, save again, and reload that save. After that, Talos willing it should load much smoother and eliminate the obnoxious smooth, purple items that show up when texture fail to load.

My game seems incredibly stable. I'm having absolutely no crashes at the moment.

The only real annoyance is that my followers seem very fragile in this game, and they also don't follow very well. I think they keep dying because I'm scoring own-goals on them with my magic spells, though. I might have to confiscate their melee weapons, but then I'd have to carry all the loot.

Yeah, area of effect spells like fireball or Ice Storm can be a problem for friendly fire, cuz companions tend to go hell bent for leather and run right in front of you. There are a couple mods that eliminate the damage from friendly fire, and I think there's also a perk that reduces it. I use Immersive Amazing Follower Tweaks for the standard version. There's one for the SSE version here: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/14722

It let's you tweak your follower's stats, teach them spells and how to equip them and gives the option to make them Essential, so they can't be killed if that's an issue for certain followers.

I've started using a bow for when my companion rushes in. I have a nasty one with high damage that steal souls. I can get a few ranged spells in first, then switch over.

So, to give you an idea on how high you could raise your magicka from a vanilla game perspective - I just finished the School of Destruction, Ritual Spell quest given by Farelda after hitting 90 in Destruction. I'm currently at level 94 in destruction, so 4 points above Expert and my character is at level 35. The spell that you get on completion of the Quest is called Fire Storm (you'll also get access to two other Master level spells that can be purchased from Farelda) and at my level requires 678 magicka to cast. Even buffed up and an Altmer, I'm only around 500. I'm sure reaching Master level will bring the magicka cost down, but it's slow going from here since you can't train a skill beyond 90, have to raise it naturally after that.

Wow. Okay. Well, I have my Destruction at about 89 so I suppose I'll be finding out soon for myself.

I found out the hard way that a mage with loads of firepower is still no match for several Deathlords at once -- looking for Karliah with Mercer, we encountered one area that was just brutal. I had to retreat behind a gate and let him take most of the damage (serves him right anyway).

So far I've only found one mod that caused me grief. Everything else seems pretty seamless.

Deathlords are definitely a pain in the rear. I always seem to come across ones that must be maxed out in their Archery or Two-Handed levels and most of the perks, because I tend to be a one hit kill if they're equipped with either a supple ancient Nord, ebony bow or great sword. They must also have them secretly buffed somehow, because even with a health over 150+ I'll go down in one shot. After recovering their weapon and doing the math, it would take 10x the damage in many cases to make me a one hit kill. Just thought of this as I was typing, I bet they have them set up to hit a critical nearly every time they strike. That's the only way they could do so much damage in one shot.

I remember when I first started playing Skyrim. I was terrified of that first Restless Draugr you come across in Bleak Falls Barrow. I lost count the number of times he took my character down, until I realized I needed grind a bit before hitting the Barrow. Then I came across a Deathlord and tended to stay out of barrows after that, unless I had a tank companion. That wight you hit in Saarthal during that first University quest is no slouch either. Didn't take me long to figure out how to take advantage of that door lever near him. Most places with undead warriors seem to have a way to dodge and weave, or lure them into a trap. There is one big barrow though, and I can't think off hand which one it is, where you end up basically facing a phalanx of deathlords and high level draugr. It might be that Wolf Queen quest you get in Solitude...

Usually I travel in dungeons with my trusty companion Vorstag for that very reason. He complains a lot less than Lydia and he has that endearing lisp.

It's strange for me because I normally travel solo.

Well, being stealthy isn't working out for my mage build on this go-round. Sneak is over 60 and I'm using the illusion spell muffle, plus have buffed greaves that increase my sneak skill by 38% and I'm still finding it impossible to complete the Boethia's Calling quest. That said, I have not gotten my Illusion skill up sufficiently to get the "Silent Casting" perk, so that might help some. I thought I could do it with a combination of minor spells to get their attention and then conjure one of my high level Daedric minions. Unfortunately, now that I'm at level 40, all the bandits are Marauder level and above. Even my Daedric Honor Guard is finding it difficult to take down that level of bandit if they are equipped with a good two handed weapon, which they often are.

On the plus side, I did come across two cool spells in the Apocalypse collection. Horrid Wilting from the Restoration school can be used as both a ranged, and area of effect spell. It spreads out in about a 20 foot radius from whomever or where ever it hits and does 12 points disease damage for 10 seconds. It's cheaper to cast than some of the destruction spells and the effect stacks. If you are caught in a melee, you can cast it at an opponent or at the ground around you repeatedly and the attackers health will continue to drop. I haven't been running with a companion yet, so not sure about friendly fire, that could be a problem. It is a great spell for a mage build to soften up a group of attackers at distance before you or a companion charge in though.

The other is a passive Illusion school spell called Mind Vision. It allows you to see through the eyes of another being or creature for 10 seconds. You don't have much in the way of vision control, but it comes in handy when checking over a ridge or seeing how many foes you might face in a bandit camp. It was also fun seeing the point of view of a Mammoth fighting off two Sabre Cats.

My mage has turned into a Master Thief as well. I just find the Thieves Guild so lucrative I can't resist.

Since I also have high Alchemy I can make really strong Sneak potions, which help a lot, given that I'm not giving myself any Sneaking perks. Alchemy with minimal perks is pretty useful.

I'm almost at the highest level of Destruction, too, so I can take out most dragons with a few spells now.

Thank you for the reminder. I so often forget all about alchemy. Should really get that level up higher. I actually resorted to being a Battle Mage again training up my heavy armor, cuz I was getting tired of being a one hit kill for high level beasties. I'm at a Master Level in destruction, but the scene usually went like, "Behold, I am a master of lighting and fire. You will fall before my gahhhaghrrrrg." <---that's the sound my character makes after being one-hit killed.

Seriously, I need to see if there's a mod out there that better levels the Mage Armor perks. I'm not fond of traveling with a companion, and the difference between wearing armor, and using Mage Armor is ridiculous. The last time I played I did a little experiment. Saved a game, and went up against an Elder dragon with just Mage Armor and wards. When he landed and did the bite attack, my character took huge damage. Talking about a sliver of health left. Reloaded the game and did it this time with heavy armor and the bite attack only took about 25% of my health. Granted, having a ward raised, does give you an edge, but so often I end up panicking when I get backed into a corner by a high level bandit. I just ended up wasting my magicka throwing dual wielded destruction spells.

My Destruction is 92, and I'm dead if anything gets too close. I just did the Nightingale quest through a ruin full of high-level Falmer and it was brutal because Karliah and Bynjolf can't sneak as well as they need to, so we always ended up fighting. Though it must be said that I often took a Sneak potion and stayed close to the wall...in the dark...where nobody could see me....

I finally remembered to pick up Inigo, who is by far the best companion (mod). He's stealthy, and very entertaining and he can't get lost.

Well, I should take my own advice, because Silent Casting was a real boon during the Boethiah quest line. I was finally able to complete Boethia's Calling and obtain the "Ebony Mail", which is working out amazing with a higher sneak skill. Combining that Horrid Wilting spell and the poison damage created by that armor when foes engage you in melee makes close quarters combat much less stressful. The only beings I've come across that aren't impacted by the Horrid Wilting spell are Ash Spawn and related Ash beasties on the Isle of Solstheim. I haven't tried it on Vampires yet, but I'm thinking it might not work since they are immune to disease. Will give it a shot and report back as soon as I come across any of those fanged marauders.

Oh, and of the Daedric combat companions you can conjure with the Apocalypse spell sets, the Daedric Champion has proven to be the most useful. While there are more powerful Daedra you can summon, his battleaxe that throws attackers similar to the way the Foos Ro Da shout does, allows him to make short work of even the toughest foes. There are some that don't actually go airborne, but they are sufficiently staggered to allow him to get another good hit or two in before they recover. Before sending him in, I hit the foe(s) with that Horrid Wilting spell, which starts to eat their health. That way they are sufficiently softened up for a power hit from my Champion. Worked really good going up against a bunch of high level Foresworn with a really tough Briarheart. Those guys can be as bad as Deathlords sometimes.

Ebony armour? I'm sneaking around in the Arch-mage robes!


Somehow I've ended being as proficient in One-handed as I am in Destruction magic. I've been blasting off a few double-handers and moving in for the kill with the Deadric Dagger of Damnation, which traps souls.

I picked up Vigilance for the first time ever, and he's a Good Dog. Tough. Goes after Elder Dragons without thinking about it. Only thing is, he barks all the time, though I don't think he barks if I'm sneaking and there are enemies about.

Yeah, the Boethiah Daedric quest is sort of a contradiction. In one hand she wants you to be as stealthy as possible when killing the bandits and her soon to be ex-champion. Then on the other hand, at the end of the quest, the payout is a set of Heavy Armor. The cool thing is that it's more streamlined looking than the standard Ebony armor, and when you drop into a sneak crouch it shrouds you in darkness, obscuring your form to others. Also, when foes get too close while you're in sneak, they get slowly poisoned. So, if you're in a sufficiently dark area a potential attacker can actually die just while looking for you. It's a vanilla piece of armor that can be exploited heavily. The only issue is that it's basically a full time area of effect spell. If you're sneak isn't up to snuff, the poison effect will instantly give you away to an approaching foe. Since I'm sitting in the background sending in conjured beasties and warriors, I don't have to worry about that. Even though I switched to heavy armor, all my other martial skills are below level 20. I've been solely relying on spells. It's been uphill, but now it's paying off at level 42. Once I get my enchanting level up to 100%, and obtain the dual enchantment perk, my mage will be a force of nature.


Speaking of enchanting, I ended up engaging the Solestheim quests early just so I could contact the Telvanni wizard Neloth, to train me up to level 90. I hate grinding for enchanting. You can only look at so many iron daggers and lesser soul gems. I also really like Neloth, he's so savagely amoral, his sometimes shocking, offhand comments really crack me up. The voice actor doing that role obviously had fun with it. I also like Solestheim in general because of the Morrowind music and sound of the silt strider calling in the background. So nostalgic

You know, it's time I started upping my Enchanting skill. By virtue of refilling my enchanted gear I've got myself up to about level 45, but it's one of the skills I usually rely on a lot. I'll also give myself the two Perks in Smithing just so that I can improve my magical gear.

I'm very close to maxing out my Destruction, and my Alteration is up there, too, at Expert level. Alchemy is up there as well, simply because I spend time at the Alchemist table making potions until I run out of ingredients. That's a great way to make money, too.

Lockpicking is at level 98 even without any perks, and Sneak is similarly high without investing any perks.

That original Morrowind music does send me back. The only other time I got really nostalgic over a game's music was in Gothic 2, when you finally head over to the second part of the game, and the original Gothic theme starts to play. Almost like going home.

I might head on over to Solsthiem today -- I'd kind of forgotten about it! It's all lost in a sea of side quests. I do want to finish improving the Thieves' Guild, but I think I'll hang on to that lockpick for a while longer.

Once I get to 100% for Enchanting, I do the double enchantment on all my armor. Almost makes it too easy until the really high level dragons show up. Speaking of which, have you ever faced off against a Legendary Dragon? I've only encountered one once, right after my character turned level 70. It strafed my character and there was actually a cut scene of my guy getting flattened by the fly-by and then it was gone. I've heard they are the toughest boss in the game, and make Alduin look like a kitty cat.

The only weapon I'm carrying is a Thalmor dagger (mod). Looks just like a standard Elven dagger, except it's black, with gold edging. I was able to accomplish what turns out to be a quad spell-enchantment. I de-enchanted that Dragon Priest's battle axe that does fire damage and soul stealing, which the enchanting table considers a single enchantment. Then added shock, which does both shock/health damage and magicka damage. I call it "The Left Hand of Darkness". Kind of a homage to Ursula K. Le Guin It's only good for about 30 hits, but doesn't need much to decimate an opposing mage, even with my low one-handed skill level.

The most powerful I've found so far is an Ancient Dragon. Still not too hard with double Lightening and the Highborn perk. MostlyI just avoid getting chewed on.

Hey, in Morrowind I always used to enchant two Deadric daggers and call them the Left Hand of Darkness and the Right Hand of Darkness. One stole health and the other stole souls. Nasty, and very efficient. I switched them out as needed in combat.

I really have to get my Enchanting up. I'm at around 65 now.

Destruction magic is just about to hit 100. a few more Rieklings and it should be there.

If you haven't already, you can visit Farelda at the College of Winterhold. You'll have a new dialogue option that's something like, "Is there anything more to learn about Destruction magic?" She'll give you a new tome that requires finding certain landmarks around Skyrim and performing specific spells. Once completed, you'll get the first ritual spell and access to others to purchase through her.

I did discover that the mages at Winterhold will give you extra magic tomes if you do a special quest later in the game (or maybe it's when you reach a certain level) -- I just got an Alteration spell from Tolfgeir for using that dagger I've found in every single game but have never worked out what quest it's for. Darned thing has cluttered up my inventory for all 3,500 hours of Skyrim! I had to use it on a dragon and collect scales.

I'm now at 100 in Destruction, Enchanting, Lockpicking and Sneak (the latter two simply by using the skill). Alteration is close behind, as is Alchemy, with Conjuration closing in on level 75.

I finally ran into an Elder Dragon. My level 54 mage turned it into ashes.

Just about finished Dragonborn and now I remember just how good that particular DLC really is. I love those Black Books. I only wish the Stahlrim armour looked better. It's way too clunky to be light armour, and it's really ugly. Otherwise I'd enchant myself a set of mage-type gear with it. I guess I'll have to go with Elven Armour instead -- looks more magey and LOTR.

Eventually you'll hit a Revered Dragon. If you engage the Dawnguard DLC, you'll hit them at the lake in the Snow Elves sanctuary once you're over level 40. If not, you've got something like a 20-30% chance of coming on one. They're really colorful, have an usual flat-top, spiked cowl that joins a fluke looking tail, and use the Drain Vitality shout, which stacks. That's the same Shout attack that Legendary dragons use. So if you're not enchanted up or have a ward raised, they can hit you with that should more than once, and you'll see all your main attributes start to drain. Personally, I think they are the coolest looking dragons of the game. Their eyes are kind of creepy too, bulgy and iridescent blue.

Totally agree about the Stahlrim armour. It sort of reminds me of the glass armor in Oblivion. I always thought that was kind of dumb looking. One of the mods I've got, introduces a new crafting material called "Glacial Crystal" that allows you to craft Skyrim style glass armor, but with the same color texture as Stahlrim. Looks pretty cool. I'll have to track down which mod that is, too many to remember.

Dragons are starting to buzz around like flies now so I've been using the mod that turns Souls into Perk Points.

In my first game I had almost all of the Shouts and rarely used them. This time I'm being more choosey with the Shouts and only activating the ones that look really useful. I really would like to find the third level of Slow Time. I like that one -- use it a lot.

I've decided I really don't like the way the Shouts are accessed. In the heat of battle I know what spells I have in my quick slots, but you still have to go and look for the shouts in your Favourites menu. If they'd put them all in one place it would be a snap, but they're scattered through the Favourites with your spells, making it hard to distinguish them.

OK, so at level 49 and came across that Nordic Ruin with the legions of Deathlords, it's Forelhost. It's that one where the guy who's faking being either an Imperial officer or a Stormcloak, says he needs someone to retrieve the Dragon Priest's mask for the war effort. If you hit it at high levels it is freakin' challenging especially if you do it solo. On average I would say that 70% of the Draugrs are Deathlords, the rest are similar high-level undead. At one point, you hit a Draugr Overlord backed by two Deathlords, then deeper into the tomb, you'll hit a nasty trap that backs you up against a minimum of 6 Deathlords, about half of which are equipped with two-handed ebony weapons. The final boss fight has a Dragon Priest level foe, backed by 4 Deathlords, yay! If it wasn't for the potions I had, and my continual use of Greater Ward I never would have made it to the end. It's one of the few tombs that is really leveled for a super well equipped player.

Forelhost, huh? I don't know if I've done that quest. I'm at level 56 or something now. Might be worth checking it out., though I'm not sure about solo. I might take Inigo. I'm still using him. His carry limit seems to be pretty high, and his dialogue is really good, some it even situation-specific. He also hangs out with my kids and plays with them when I'm at home. All around, the best companion mod out there.

I just finished off Miraak. The first time I tried this fight years ago I struggled with that darned dragon flight for hours. Never really did get the hang of it and my dragon ended up dead anyway. This time I just hopped off and started shooting spells. It was still a tough go but I finally got his health down far enough to end it. Solstheim is now pretty much done so I'll start ferrying all my stuff back to the mainland.

I've got all the houses, just building the last one from Hearthfire now. It's the best way to build up up the Armourer skill. The building is the one place I'm willing to use cheats. I like the houses; I don't like going back and forth for crafting items. I just code them in, and hey presto: a house!

Now I'm working on making Light armour to enchant, since I've got my Enchanting skill up t o 100 and my Alchemy is high enough to give me a decent boost in Enchanting potions. Also made a very nasty bow that does three types of elemental damage and paralyzes the victim. It's horribly overpowered.

Got to love those one-hit kill bows when you're in sneak. I used to intentionally keep my bows vanilla except for improving their quality in Oblivion, because it cracked me up so hard when your sneak skill was super high, and you'd hit a bandit in the head and he's running around with the arrow sticking out of the back of his head saying, "Hmmm, must have been the wind"

Yes, this particular bow is pretty much one-hit, and if it doesn't kill immediately there's that green slow-mo fall to the ground.

I made the huge mistake of selecting the perk that makes your conjured bows steal souls, which means most of my Grand Soul gems end up with some pretty useless souls in them. Wish there was a way of un-selecting just one perk, but I've never found a mod that would do that.

Open the console with the tilde key [~] then type the following: player.removeperk d799e

That should removed the Soul Stealer perk.

Yay! Thanks!

So, I'm now level 65 and having a really hard time finding any new locations. I know there are some I haven't discovered because I don't have all the shouts, so it's time to do some research. I think there are a few places near Riften that are as yet undiscovered, and I haven't started Dawnguard.

I took the plunge and went Legendary on my Destruction skill a while back. It's already back up to 65. That's with training, though.

Still travelling with Inigo (absolutely the best companion mod, bar none!) and my dog Vigilance. Inigo interacts with the dog and the children and has situation-specific commentary, and it's not always the same conversation, by any stretch. I just overheard him having a long back-and-forth conversation with my daughter about her plans to become an adventurer. Last time we were out and about he told Vigilance to stop bothering him and go play with a mammoth.

Named dragons have started attacking me. I almost feel bad killing them; they talk, or I suppose I should say they're taunting me.

What difficulty level are you playing at? Once I get to around 50 or so I usually up my difficulty about every 5-10 levels, until I'm at Legendary. Mainly because I want to come across a Legendary dragon and you have a higher probability of hitting one at that difficulty level - plus the loot you get is awesome. I got the bug awhile ago when that one strafed a high level character sending him through the air in a cut scene that was somewhat embarrassing. The dragon didn't even stop to do battle, it just up-ended me with the turbulence from it's wings and flew away chortling, how rude! My understanding is that some named, legendary dragons have a wing beat that's equivalent to the Unrelenting Force shout, and the thu'um attack they use is a high caliber Drain Vitality shout. So basically the biggest boss of the game. It's better to ease into that difficulty level, because it's a bit disconcerting when you're used to dropping high-level bandits like they're nothing and then after upping the difficulty you watch your health get knocked in half by a battle axe swing from a Bandit Chief - Yipe, Yipe, Yipe, Yipe

I'm probably playing yer basic level.

Since Dragons are now as easy to kill as anything else, maybe I will up the difficulty level. Otherwise when dragons show up it's more of an annoyance than anything else, like especially large Cliff Racers.

EDIT: I was playing on Adept, and with companions. I thought I was on Expert. I suspect I lowered the difficulty to Adept for a tough quest and then forgot.

Anyway, I left my friends behind and cranked it up to Expert, went into a Dwarven ruin. Um, yeah, I'm gonna need some better armour. My mage has branched out a lot and is also a decent fighter as a last resort, but that Legendary Blackguard armour just won't cut it now. A Dwarven Sphere Master just took me out in three swipes. Too funny! I blasted it with Lightening a couple of times and took out my two deadly daggers for the kill but it got me first. No contest. Looks like I'm back to sneaking around a lot and sniping from any high place I can find. Conjured helpers will come in handy, too.

Fortunately I'm also well-stocked with high-level potions and can get past just about any fight if I prep properly.

I find it interesting that Bend Will works on the Dwarven automata, though. It makes things a lot easier because they freeze up. It's very effective on lower and mid-level dragons, of course, and even some of the harder ones as well. I might try Dragon Aspect for a change of pace.

WOW! That is interesting. I've never tried an attack like that on the automata. I wonder if any of the Illusion spells like Fury might work on them if your level is high enough? Hmmm, may have to give that a try.

Yeah, it's amazing how much difference one bump-up on the difficulty slider can make. When I first pushed it up to Legendary I was immediately beset upon by a group of 4 Bandit Chiefs, who were suddenly just casually walking down the road in front of me. Every one in heavy armor, every one carrying either a Daedric or Ebony two handed weapon. My dude lasted about 1/2 a second. I was like ooookaaaaay.... Time to rethink my strategy here.


Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention. I can't remember which dragon type it is, but one of them has some kind of pounce attack when you're at Legendary. It might be a Legendary, but I didn't get to see it cuz my character died too fast. There was a dragon shadow that flew over, then a BOOM! I saw claws and wings and the kill shot music came up and my previous save loaded. So, yeah - You get a little paranoid after awhile. It makes Alchemy a true requirement for buffing armor crafting and enchantments.

I always get my Alchemy, Enchanting and Smithing up to 100 as fast as I can. I don't necessarily use all the Perks, though.

Even on Adept I abandoned the Arch-Mage Robes a long time back in favour of more sneakage, but I have crafted some decent mage-based Armour and stashed it in one of my houses. I made the mistake of giving Inigo my Double-Enchanted Legendary Elven Breastplate that gives 68% faster Magic Regeneration for safekeeping. I might go back and nab it from him.

Looking forward to the next Dragon Attack.

EDIT: SO, much more fun on a higher level. I do remember having to be far more tactical earlier on in the game. Even so, that OP bow of mine is pretty deadly especially if the attacking dragon is also affected by Bend Will. I haven't run into any truly powerful ones yet, though.

So apologies, I need to correct a couple things I mentioned about Legendary Dragons. First is that they won't appear for actual combat unless your character is at level 78, but will make themselves known once you are in the 70's. They start at level 75, while this is slightly lower than your character when they first engage combat, a dragon's attributes and powers are proportionately higher than a mortals, so they have a natural advantage. Also, they aren't active unless you have the DLC Dawnguard loaded since that's where they were introduced to the game. You don't have to engage the quest, just have the DLC activated.

The two high-power dragons that could give you a strong battle are Black and Reds, Tan and Reds and Revered Dragons. The first two look a lot like Elder Dragons, except they can be 10-20 levels higher than the player. Revered Dragons are varied in their power, so you might hit one that goes down with some difficulty, and a little while later have one that decimates you because it's nearly 30 levels higher than your character. This is especially true between character levels 30-60. They tend to level off at level 60, but like Legendary Dragons, their powers are proportionately higher than mortals at the same level.

I restarted the game because I wasn't happy with my mage build. Now, with this newest build I sort of got lost on how I wanted to develop him so he's sort of a "jack of all trades, master of none", which is making most combat quite difficult. I started leveling up his magic skills, just cuz I was used to using it from the last build, then switched over to martial skills. As a result, I'm leveling kind of quickly, but none of my skills are equivalent to the foes I'm encountering. Says a lot about targeting a specific character build type for a successful protagonist.... I like stealth, but it can be fun charging in facing multiple foes.

I'm also getting the grey-head bug all of a sudden on a couple NPC's. Funny thing is that one of my mods that wasn't working is going great now. Moar Dragons, makes you encounter dragons right from the start of the game, prior to engaging the main quest. Prior to the start of this game I thought something was wrong with the mod, because it really wasn't producing dragons over my last few builds. Now all of a sudden I'm getting them pretty regularly. I have my mod manager set for auto-updates, I'm wondering if an update just came through that requires a load order adjustment that hasn't been caught yet. Well, just have to carry on....

I'm still soldiering on with my current character using a mixture of magic and weaponry. My levels in Conjuration, Alteration, Restoration and Destruction are pretty high, and I'm at Expert level in Archery and One-handed in the daggers branch. I'm finding that using double daggers, crafted and enchanted to maximum wickedness, are very handy for the close-up kill, though I have to be very careful if I have Vigilance with me because he can get in the way.

For some reason my rotten kids have not asked me if they can keep Vigilance, so I can't really stash him at my house. I keep refusing their requests to keep nasty little creatures like skeevers and foxes, smelly little things I don't want in my house, so you'd think they'd be all over a dog, but no. As my level gets higher I'm having to watch out for him too much and sometimes he ends up in a little dead heap, so maybe it's time he went back to the breeder in Markarth.

I have had a few Revered Dragons. I guess I haven't hit any really powerful ones yet but I've been hopping around cleaning up quests and haven't really run into any dragons at all lately. I'm running low on souls, so it's time to head out.

I've only hit one mod that really messed up, fortunately. I just finished Helgen Reborn, which was okay. I like the rebuilt town, anyway.

The one quest I can never, ever get to work properly is the Radiant quest lines that end up with the house purchase dialogue in Riften. I've never owned that house. Even with cheating and walkthroughs I have yet to get that dialogue. Weird.

That is sort of a weird one. The best way is to complete the skooma dealer quest that eventually comes up after you help the female Argonian in Riften overcome her addiction by giving her a health potion. If you ask her where she gets her Skooma a little later on, it will open up that quest line. Once you finish that quest, the dialogue option will open with the Jarl saying something like, "Is there anything else I can do my Jarl?" that will trigger the Thane option requiring you to help a certain number of people in Riften. After that, you should be able to purchase Honeyside from the Jarl's Wood Elf steward.

Some of the people who need help include the Nord Blacksmith who needs 10 "pinches" of fire salts for his forge, and the Dark Elf meat seller who needs 5 portions of Ice Wraith teeth for the preservative she makes to keep her meat fresh. Then there's the stable hand who needs you to talk Sapphire out of collecting an unfair debt from him. I think helping the Argonian counts for one as well. There's also the Dark Elf vendor who wants to know more about his background. He's the same guy that the Thieves guild makes you set-up for theft, so not really an option if you've already done that to him. Then of course there's Mjoll the Lioness and her lost sword.

Had to do a double post to separate this one out, as it is applicable to the Elder Scrolls and provides a great laugh:

The Bee Gees Staying Alive by Oblivion NPC's

I've helped everyone in Riften, including the Stable hand who wants to fight, but unfortunately the Skooma quest is impossible since the addict seems to be dead already. She's in the Crypt. That's the critical quest, it seems. Maybe I assassinated her? That doesn't make sense, though because I joined the Guild much later in the game.

Oh, well, Not really an issue. It's a lousy house anyway.


That Staying Alive video is hilarious. I was actually laughing out loud.

Imagine the amount of time it must have taken to put that together.

Hmmm, that's odd. I would think she'd be marked "essential" by the game and not able to be killed. Check who the Argonian is in the crypt, there are two females that engage quests with you. One is Wujeeta, she's the one that asks you for a health potion and that you can later ask where she gets her skooma. The other is From-Deepest-Fathoms, who is walking around talking to herself and eventually ask you to, "Take the Lexicon to Avanchnzel" I'm assuming she might be marked as essential up until the point she gives you the quest, or it might be assumed that she could be looted after death kicking off the quest that way. Not sure.

I did From Deepest Fathom's quest, but she was definitely dead because I found the Lexicon in the crypt, and I think she was a Guild target. Maybe that disqualifies her quest from counting.

As to the Skooma quest, I do vaguely remember doing that one one right at the start of the game. I'll check the name of the quest and see if I can find it in my completed quest list (wish there was a way of alphabetizing it).

The thing is, in all the times I've played this game I have never had Honeyside, so there's something very odd about it anyway. I've run out of people to help in Riften and even outside Riften, where there are a couple of quests.


Revered Dragons are still not too difficult on Expert so I guess I'll have to take the plunge and go Legendary just for a while to see how it is. The last Revered Dragon on Expert coughed up a full set of Deadric armour, which was pretty nice.

I did some checking and apparently Bethesda in their wisdom did not mark Wujeeta as essential, which is just silly. That skooma quest with her must be completed in order to trigger the potential to become Thane and purchase Honeyside. If you know where her body is, you can try the "resurrect" command on her through the console. Just open the console, click on her body which will populate her ID in the center top of the console area, type resurrect and hit enter. The console will fill with some odd phrases, but once you drop the console Wujeeta should be alive again and you can trigger the quest if you haven't done it already. If you have done the Skooma quest, and the Jarl's dialogue option "Is there anything else I can do my Jarl" doesn't come up, then you've got a bug. Could be caused by a mod...

If you can't locate Wujeeta in Rifton or sweeping the dock by the fishery, there is a way to determine if she is actually dead, resurrect her and engage the quest, but it's a long drawn out process. Here's the long and short of it in the first post of this forum page : https://forums.nexusmods.com/index....-is-deadcant-be-thanebuy-housefixfixfix/


Edit: Legendary can be fun and frustrating. I hit a cave that had an enumerable amount of Bandit Chiefs, it was ridiculous. After the battle I was thinking, "The executive bathroom must have gotten really crowded after lunchtime around here"

Yep. Wujeeta is dead. I can't find her body anywhere in the crypt, but there is a coffin with her name on it. I guess that's that. And I guess she always dies, since dragons attack Riften. I can't be bothered, but honestly, what a boneheaded move.

The other problem is Brand-Shei. Apparently, he is one of the people you have to help, but if you want to get into the Thieves' Guild, you have to send him to jail. Really, really dumb. I don't think he's essential, though.

You can try forcing the quest stage that gives you the journal entry to talk to the Jarl about Sarthis Idren. I can't guarantee it will work though. According to the previous walkthrough the console only allows the quest stage 200 to be forced, but that seems like it might cause an issue, because it triggers a secondary quest. I would try the following first just for grins.

Open the console and type the following: setstage FreeformRiften12 20 and hit enter.

Note that FreeformRiften12 is all one entry, but there is a space between that and 20, as 20 is the quest stage.

If that works, the entry, "Report Sarthis Idren to the Jarl of Riften" should appear in your Journal.

I'll give that a shot. I've tried a couple of other ones that didn't work, but we'll see.

I'm busy cleaning up my quest log now and trying to avoid getting any new ones, just for now. I haven't decided which faction to join. The Stormcloaks are all righteous and manly and sound like the Governator but I'm not keen on Ulfric's view of other races. Since I'm a High Elf perhaps I'll go Empire this time.

I'm a treehugger so I always stay neutral through the main quest (says the guy who pulls wings off butterflies and slaughters elderly orphanage managers )

It's really tough to be a good guy. I mean, just the basic thievery that takes place pretty much disqualifies you from sainthood right off the bat. I do feel a bit bad about those Monarch butterflies, though.


EDIT: You know, the one thing that really bugs me about this game is that all that food lying around makes me hungry all the time. Cheese, cake, bread, sweet rolls, taffy. It's the blue cheese rounds that really gets to me though. I have blocks of Stilton in my freezer and they're calling me.

It's the beef and venison steaks that always gets me. Makes me want to throw one on the BBQ

I ran into my first Serpentine Dragon (still on Expert, though). Nothing special about the loot.

I'm down in the Lost city at the moment. What a great mod it is.

EDIT: I mean The Forgotten City, of course. Lost, City, Forgotten City...whatever. It ain't lost no more.

Never had much trouble with Serpentine Dragons. They could really use an orthodontist though

Those always reminded me of the mounts used by the Nazgul in the Fellowship of the Ring movie.

They do look like Nazgul. The one I keep running into is on Solstheim, right bang smack in the midst of a nest of high-level undead. Chaos ensues, because everyone is fighting everyone else. If the dragon isn't trying to kill me with its magic, I'm getting tossed arse over teakettle by a Foos-roh-da attack.

Yeah, Solstheim is built for high-level characters that's for sure. That temple with the Serpentine Dragon is a big challenge even at higher levels. It's usually populated with Druegr Death Overlords, Death Lords and Wights with that Unrelenting Force shout. I used to dread facing Druegrs with that thu'um. Always seemed like they'd hit you with that, then all the others would unload arrows that drop your health down to just about nothing by the time your character gets their feet under them again.

Helps if you go in with a ward ready to go, that averts the shouts like a spell. Although, it's hard if you're relying on Bow for offense. Conjuration is a big help, even if it's just to distract the Death Lords. Personally, I think the best all around Conjuration spells from that Apocalypse Spell mod are Avenging Wraith and Dremora Champion. The Avenging Wraith is available at Novice level, and at first seems weak. Because it comes back with 125% of the attributes of the last foe that killed it (once you re-conjur it), they can eventually hold their own at higher levels. I wouldn't have been able to beat that undead Imperial commander at the fort on Solstheim if not for that spell. Dremora Champion isn't available until Expert level, but is totally worth it. He does really good damage with his axe, which also either staggers or sends the attacker air borne, giving you a chance to lay into them with spells or arrows.

I like getting to Solstheim early so I can do a couple errands for Neloth in Tel Mythrin, so I can train Enchantment up to 90 - although it's massively expensive. I usually sneak all the way to Tel Mythryn, grabbing a heart-stone on the way to give to him. Either that or just run like hell, because prior to level 25 or 30 everything on the island seems way powerful. Those stupid Ash beasties take forever to take down and always seem to run in threes.

I like to drop in on that temple unannounced, by quick travel. That seems to really stir things up. The dragon starts to attack the draughr, then they see me. Shadowmere gets into the act. Good times.

It's really hard to level up at this point. I've had to start using a shield just for the levels.

Yeah, that area can turn into a real ruckus. Skyrim's version of Shadowmere is cool, but the Oblivion version seemed more aggressive. I recall more than once, I'd leave Shadowmere outside the city gates, and he'd be no where to be found later. That is until I found the trail of dead bandit bodies - That's a good demon horsey

Shadowmere is a great companion, which is a good thing since she comes with you whether you want her to or not (obviously, Shadowmere is a mare in my game. )

I just had a crashing disappointment -- got my Conjuration up to 100, did the the quest for the special uber-spell, and it turns out I already had it. I guess I must have picked it up on Solstheim. I'm still looking for the pieces of the special Elemental spell but at this point I think cheating is in order.

This gives you the actual names of the locations. Then you can check them on the online Skyrim map.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Destruction_Ritual_Spell

http://www.gamemapscout.com/skyrim_interactive.html

Thanks. I'll get on that.

I obviously haven't played through Dawnguard in the last few years. What a great expansions it is. Some of the Forgotten Vale music is stunningly lovely. Wish I could find it on Spotify. They've got just about everything else Jeremy Soule, but not that.

EDIT: Okay, I'm now joining the Companions and about to become a wolfie. Looks like I'm going for the whole game this time. Every level gain is now a horrible slog that takes forever.

I thought I was more or less invincible but those darned Briarhearts seem to be leveling up ahead of me.

EDIT: I'm just about to finish the main Dragonborn quest, about to take on Alduin, and that should be about it now, with nothing left to do but endless radiant quests for the various factions, all of which I rule. Finally made it to level 72 by turning my mage into a one-handed/shield fighter, albeit one with a very low Health and Stamina. Nothing beats a heavily enchanted and upgraded dagger or two, though. Fast and deadly.

...Just noticed that the Wyrmstooth mod is available again. I haven't played it but might check it out.