Acadian: I have not played a two-handed weapon fighter in a long time. At one point I was really good at staying in that spot, even with a longsword. It is taking me some to get back into it though.


liliandra nadiar: Most of the mods I am working on now are just for myself. Most incorporate other mods, and I don't feel like hunting people down to get their permission to use their work. The Ayleid race mod I made was like that. It uses Natural Faces, and Corean and Ren's hair.

A really big mod I am working on called Attractive NPCs uses those mods, plus a bunch of other ones. To be honest, I am not sure of all the mods it incorporates! It changes almost every NPC in the game to make them easier on the eyes. It also adds racial diversity, by limiting hair and eye colors to specific races. For example, Imperials have black hair, Bretons have brown hair, etc... So aside from a few people who dye their hair, you can tell their race just by looking at them. I already have a mod like that which I did a few years back. But I was still learning to mod back then, and made a lot of wild edits. So I decided to start over from scratch, in the hopes that this one will be more stable, and give me better performance.

I also worked on the mod that Varla's armor comes from, created the claymore she is using and added it to it, made leveled versions of all the gear, and put it all for sale from a merchant. Plus I have been working on a house mod for Varla to live in. I started having CTDs last night, so I think I may have frelled something up in either the house mod, or the Better NPCs mod. Or maybe my computer was just tired after having been running for about 14 hours straight. I have to do some experimenting to find out what the issue is.


King Coin: Ah, the old weightless weapon and armor trick. Because you mentioned it, Varla did the same thing to get a weightless claymore. She does not use it. It is just a trophy to put in the collection.


********

Varla finally enchanted an amulet with night-eye, so I can now make videos that are not too dark to see.

Varla cuts some necromancers down to size in Silorn

Then it is time to have some fun in the water

You can see some of the mods I am using in the first. First there is one that adds extra damage to two-handed weapons when sneaking via a script. That is why Vara's sneak attacks with her sword are so devastating. I actually have the damage set to low for that. Another is The Vyper's Ayleid Power Stones. They act like sigil stones. Varla finds a button in the vid that has a circle of stones around it. That opens up one of them, and you will see it later in the big pool. He is having some issues with a missing mesh that you will notice (that is what the big yellow star is).

I like the color of her weapons. She looks very coordinated with all of her gear.

Whee, waterfall! Wow, Varla can really jump!

Invisibility + supersize the 2H sneak damage. What’s not to like? I’m gathering that Varla is rather tightly focused on 2H, Ayleid invisibility and a touch of bow for fun.

I see the gray night eye, magicka trap enchantment, new stones to find and some lovely armor and weapons!

Luved the waterfalls! Varla's hang time is so long, surely she could shuck off that armor while in mid air?

Grits: I went to a lot of trouble to color coordinate Varla's gear. The armor and bow are all from one set. But the sword is not. I had to retexture it and its icon to make them fit with the rest of her stuff.


Acadian: There are only 2 spells that Varla will use. Her racial invisibility, and the starting healing spell.



**************
Varla makes a long range bow shot (her target is a goblin just to the right of the rock in the center of the screen).

Nice shot, Varla!

Varla 2 & 3
She looks like she’s walking differently; did you install an animation replacer?

I like your invisibility trick. An invisible warrior with a massive sword is so much more scary than a visible warrior with the same sword. I laughed when that first necromancer walked into her and she cut them down!
What a fun jump at the end there!

Varla 4
That was an impressive shot. Those long range bow shots are so satisfying.

Nice shot! I miss the way archery works in Oblivion.

Acadian: That was actually my second time doing that shot. After the first time, I thought I would make a vid of it. So I reloaded my most recent save and Varla did it again for the camera.


King Coin: I have not changed her walk any. I love when they walk right up to Varla when she is invisible. I keep wondering if they see her, and are about to attack! It keeps me on my toes.


Grits: I don't miss it. Because I am still playing Oblivion of course! I thought you could fix that though?



**********
Varla vs. Unidentified Mutton

A tense fight! Nice job, Varla. I was hoping she would capture the grand essence of the Matron upon her death.

I presume Varla's claymore is enchanted with absorb health and saw that it ran out of charges on her. I became frustrated with absorb health on a claymore because dancing in the sweet spot always caused me to break the touch distance range lock before I could get full benefit of the effect. A sigil enchantment can make it on strike instead of over a second, but then you lose the benefit of adding additional effects. What is the full enchantment package on her claymore and how do you like it?

Much more of a challenge. Holy crap that was ballsy going in with a sliver of health. Then the thing got up your rock perch unexpectedly. That got a four letter word out of me. And then when you jumped off I was sure you were going to get some falling damage.

Jumping on the corpse.

Whoa, it jumped up onto the rock!! That was a surprise. It was nice to see Varla circle a little, I sort of wondered if she was going to back off of the cliff. Awesome victory stomp. I like her spirit!

Acadian: My characters gave up capturing souls, or magicka, a long time ago. Recharge mods make it superfluous. Varla's sword has a 10 point Absorb Health for 1 second. I never saw any problem with is not working even when she moved away. It always kept the visual effect no matter how far away she moved. But granted, this was only for one second, so it might vary with a longer effect. I found it worked very well for Varla. With her low health, the constant healing it gave her helped tremendously.


King Coin: That was a good fight. It was one of the reasons I took Varla there. I wanted a real challenge.


Grits: Jumping up and down on the corpse was Varla showing her enthusiasm! It was a really good fight, and a wonderful swan song for Varla.


************

Oblivion grew stale while playing Varla. So I decided to give the game a break for a while. I went back to playing Morrowind. It is fun to explore new lands again.

Artemis found a slaughterfish in an odd place, and put it out of its misery.

Night in Suran. I love the architecture in Morrowind.

Another pic of Suran in the day (lower left), with Vivec in the background.

Artemis meets Umbra, but turns down his offer to fight.

A video of Artemis and Azura's Quest.

I'm glad you and Artemis are enjoying Morrowind. Thanks for sharing! Artemis must be tired after all that running!

Oh my gosh, I would not be able to play that game without better running animations. Are there mods out for that? Other than that, it doesn’t look as bad as I was expecting. Are you using graphics mods?

Azura making a wager with Sheo? That’s so funny! Artemis seems pretty good with the bow. The Golden Saint took quite a few shots, but the other critters fell quickly.

Acadian: She is not tired at all. Look at her Fatigue bar!

King Coin: If you think the running animation is bad, wait until you see the one for swimming! Or just regular walking. All the animations in Morrowind are terrible, even for its day. At that point Artemis had a skill of 100 at Marksman, and an Agility of 104. Combined with her Daedric bow, she almost one-shot killed every wild animal she came upon. It was only the Daedra and NPCs who could survive beyond the first arrow.


**********

Artemis was the character I created to get to know Morrowind, and find out the ins and outs of how the game worked. Now that I have a better feel for the game, and have added or created mods to make it more playable, I have made a new character. A Dunmer sword fighter and destruction mage named Prytania. I am going to try doing the main quest with her, and probably take her through bloodmoon and tribunal afterward.

Prytania has just gotten a full set of bonemold armor

She looks wonderful! What a pretty face and beautiful ears!

So that's the face of Aravi's savior. Like Acadian said, she has a pretty face and ears.

I think she was from one of Emma's headpacks. She was originally going to be an Altmer, but the vanilla Altmer heads and hair were all too ugly. So I fell back to a Dunmer. I still need to look for some hair packs though.

Prytania has made it to Ald-Ruhn and joined up with House Redoran. The House smith Under-Skar sells some different styled bonemold helmets, so Prytania decided to get one. She does not normally wear one, but it is still part of the ensemble after all, and maybe once in a while it might help for dramatic effect.

However, she is having trouble choosing which one.

There is the Chuzei style

Or the Armun-An style

Right now I am kind of leaning toward the Chuzei style. The Hlaalu guards all wear the Armun-An, but so far I have not seen anyone in the Chuzei. It also looks a bit more feminine, as it is more slender. But it kind of makes her look like an Xenomorph though. I keep waiting for the second set of teeth to snap out. That would be handy in a melee fight...

I like the Armun-An style better because it looks like an assassin from Star Wars instead of The Predator. Lol. Seriously, it looks more like a helmet to me.

Hmm. . . if it is more commonly worn however, that is a drawback and I have no idea how you feel about Hlaalu guards.

They both look kind of bizarre. If the teeth don't pop out of Chuzei style then just headbutt them.

I found mods that port Rens and Corean hair to Morrowind. Since the game crashes whenever I try to use the racemenu to, I decided to restart Prytania so that I could use one of Ren's hairstyles.

Just off the boat at Seyda Neen, and she found some nice new duds on an Imperial Tax Collector's body

Rest assured, Prytania 2.0 has not forgotten to free Aravi from slavery

The slavers provided her with a hodgepodge of armor. It does not look like much, but it stops swords better then cotton.

She had a nice swim on the way back to Seyda Neen to report the tax collectors murder

Wonderful news on the hair mods. Ren & Corean are wonderful!

Yay!!! Free Aravi! *twirl*

I really like the new hair. She's very pretty with it.

Thanks for freeing Aravi! (again)

That mixed armor doesn't look bad. I liked mixing armor up in Oblivion. I understand there are more pieces to be collected in Morrowind than there was in Oblivion.

Morrowind can still look good, if you use enough mods with it! With Better Bodies, Better Clothes, the various headpacks by Emma and others, and now with Rens and Corean Hair, it really does surprise me. You would not think it was an 11 year old game (at least that is how old I think it is).

This is something I had to make a video of. It is sort of a Morrowind Rite of Passage.

You see him die trying it, so you figure, "hey let's give it a go."

I saw a video recently of a very heavily modded Morrowind that was quite pretty

That one is using MGE XE as its base, plus a bunch of other mods. Unfortunately XE requires Direct X 9, and will not work with the new versions of DX. So it will not work for me. (I have tried twice). The makers claim that you can install DX9 alongside a more current version of Direct X. But that strikes me as just playing with fire. I use the older MGE 3.8 instead. At least it works, and won't frell my system up.

You can use the Icarian scrolls and survive (video)

Prytania has once more acquired a suit of bonemold armor. She joined House Redoran afterward. (pic)

While traveling on her first mission she decided to investigate an old Dunmer fortress. She found a patrol of her Redoran brothers slaughtered inside. Bloody vengeance followed. (pic)

Her return to Ald' Ruhn (video)

Finally, I created a home for her there (video)

Heh, I'm glad to see you enjoying Morrowind!

The jump: you weren’t kidding about the swim animation! Now, can you get to many places by aiming for lakes? Or do you have to stick to the coast when using it?

Ald 'Ruhn: I didn’t think that was a building. And those people inside sound like robots. Is this Tatooine? (payback! )

Home: Nice house! I like the central stairs.

Acadian: It took me a long time to adjust to Morrowind after Oblivion, but now that I have either gotten used to things, or modded them out, I am having a good time with it.


King Coin: The only safe way to use those scrolls is to aim for the ocean, and hope you do not end up too far from shore. Unlike Oblivion, you cannot change your course when you jump. So once you go up that is it. So aiming for something like a river or lake is impossible. The view is fantastic though.

I really love the Redoran-style houses like Prytania's, with the stair in the middle that doubles as a stove in the back.


Prytania takes a Silt Strider Ride Normally when you do it is just like fast travel in Oblivion. You just teleport to the destination. But I found a mod that lets you ride along in real time, so you can see everything that you pass along the way. Prytania is taking a ride from Ald' Ruhn to Balmora. But for the some reason the driver goes way out of his way, and takes the long way around. The very long way around. But at least it lets you see a lot of Vvardenfell.

Heh, between the music, creature noises and visuals, that reminded me of a cross between ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ and Jurassic Park.

That's neat. Definitely reminds me of the SI.

Acadian: Walking with Silt Striders. They are one of the most interesting new creatures in Morrowind.


King Coin: There are even Golden Saints in this game. So you can see where they recycled things for Shivering Isles.


Prytania has been moving along the main quest, and met the last (barely) living Dwarf

From there she broke into Lubyanka The Ministry of Lies Truth to rescue one of the Dissident Priests who had helped her in the past. Here she has some new duds courtesy of the Indoril guards.

Prytania found herself a wanted woman afterward, so decided to lie low in Solstheim.

She found the natives to be friendly. At least the first one she met.

And she found herself a new hat in no time.

Holy crap that dwarf is just nasty. I hope he isn't a representation of his race.

The second picture is very nice. That armor looks neat and I like how she's holding her sword up.

The Argonain in the fourth screen looks very friendly.

That last living guy was Jabba the Hut Dwarf?
Nice new duds!
I don’t know as I’ve ever seen a MW Argonaut. They look pretty cool.
The new hat may not be the top of fashion, but it looks warm.

That's a neat pose with the sword in the tunnel. I love the colors on the Argonian. He looks very aquatic.

King Coin: He is not a normal Dwemer. The normal ones look like ancient Persians. There is a good article about all things Dwemer here. He has corprus disease, which kills most people, and turns the rest into zombies or worse. I guess you could say he is one of the lucky ones.


Acadian: That is the House Indoril armor. The only thing Prytania did not get was the helmet, which has a full-face mask and a big crest. It has some pretty good stats too. Try to imagine Tadrose wearing it, because she would have when she was still in Morrowind.


Grits: That is just the default pose. There are no pose mods for Morrowind, and no free camera either. So taking screenshots is pretty limited. The Argonian is Basks-In-The-Sun. He has a ship that will take you back to the mainland.


Prytania has a new outfit to go with her bear helmet. Much warmer than her old bonemold.

She has been getting acquainted with the locals.

Some of them have quite a stature in the community

Bandits, bandits never change though.

I thought the helmet looked funny, then I see the bear. I would have thought that the bear would take exception to seeing the severed head of another worn like that.

I like the default sword pose in Morrowind.

Love the new armor! Perhaps that helmet seems to help her get along with the wolves and bears? Ain't it the truth about those darn bandits?

I thank you for showing us some of Morrowind since I don't ever see getting there.

King Coin & Acadian: Perhaps the Bear armor makes the living bears think that Prytania is one of them? Playing Morrowind has helped me with the TF, since it really helps me visualize what Tadrose's early life was like - right down to the armor she wore as a member of House Indoril.

I am taking a break from Morrowind, and heading to Skyrim. I found a way to play it without Steam (except for the initial install), so decided to give it a try.

I created Scylla gra-Brimo (Scylla was a daughter of Hekate. Her name means "she who rends" in Greek. Brimo is one of Hekate's appellations, meaning "Terrifying".)

She is a heavy armor / battle axe wielding Orc.

Here are a few clips from Scylla's exploration of Shriekwind Bastion

I have been getting the hang of Skyrim's combat. I found the shield bash works with two handed weapons too. It costs a lot of stamina, but if you time it right, it will stagger your opponent, and then you can follow up with a power attack. I was not able to pull it off against the skeletons at the beginning, but did manage it against the human afterward.

A pic of her in the light of day

Yay, orcish splendor! Gotta love a woman with tusks.

Scylla gra-Brimo is a fierce warrior!

Aravi had a much tougher time with her first vampire master. I think Scylla gra-Brimo’s heavy armor was an asset in that fight.

Bashing also works with bows. It’s one of my favorite things. I’ve also seen Vorstag bash with his shield. Rowan tends to stop what she’s doing and just watch him fight sometimes.

Scylla looks great. I love how the steel armor looks on women. Not so much on the men.

Remember facing that Master with Chloe, light armor, bow and arrows, it was a long fight with a lot of giving of ground.

Scylla looks great and certainly knows how to make convincing argument.

Acadian: I mostly like the changes they made to the orcs, by getting rid of the pig-faces. The women look much better. The men all look like the Incredible Hulk now though...

King Coin: Scylla is made to be a pure melee fighter. Heavy armor, and the most powerful weapon available (i.e. two hander). She is not much good at other things though, like magic. She could use a follower who is either a magician or an archer.

Grits: I have to say, I really like the bashing as well. It is one of the improvements in Skyrim that is actually an improvement. It is hard for me to get in the hang of using the mouse key to block though. I used to have that mapped to the keyboard in Oblivion.

liliandra nadiar: So now Scylla is the Master? That was a very close fight even for a heavy armor bruiser like Scylla. Skyrim does not try to balance out your enemies to suit your level like Oblivion did. It is more like Morrowind, and is happy to throw something at you that you have no hope of killing (like 3 Spriggans at once).



Scylla had her first meeting with the Thalmor, when they came out of nowhere and tried to kill her. One of them was carrying her death warrant, although I have no idea what she did to cheese them off.

I saw a mudcrab the other day...

Scylla found a poor lost dog. Well, actually a Daedric Prince's sidekick

These cages remind me a lot of the raider cages in FO3

A short video of the best bard in Skyrim (he can play without a lute!)

Does anyone know what these odd circles are?

Scylla is hunting skeletons at Northwind Summit

She leaps into action.

A vid of Scylla facing her first (three) trolls

Thanks for the Scylla update. She is indeed much neater looking than a vanilla OB orc. Does Grits know that she borrowed Ulfe?

She's very good with that axe! Mudcrabs & trolls!

Odd circles? Yeah they are dragon tombs.

lol, eating all that food while in combat. I don't do that just because I don't like the idea. Aravi has to run away if something like that happens.

Acadian: I think the real question is whether Grits knows that Ulfe is a Daedra Lord's sidekick?


King Coin: Those are dragon tombs? Interesting. I am playing a dragon-free game, so I never would have guessed.

I have found that running away usually does no good, because everyone seems to run just as fast as you can. It is not like in Oblivion where you can actually be a speedster.


A vid of axe vs. axe in Cracked Tusk Keep

Scylla has teamed up with Illia, after helping her kill her mother

Illia is pretty handy in a fight

Scylla is a hottie!

Finishing off a Centurion

Scylla puts the arcane mysteries back where they belong

Even paranoid Baurus couldn't anticipate that one!!

Wow, Illia’s fire is amazing! I haven’t met her yet. That was a neat axe battle.

The battle between axes was neat. Loved Scylla teabagging dancing over the body of her slain foe.

Illia looks to me quite Cutteresque.

Finishing off the Centurion – looks like she’s going for the stones – good girl!

Holy crap he hit like a truck! If you have to chug potions like that, I think Aravi would have had to run away.

Like I said before, those two make quite a pair! I can’t wait for Aravi to meet her eventually.

Oh, she's wearing appropriate armor for an orc!