Well, today was fairly interesting. Endar Verano has endured many deaths on his trek to High Hrothgar, mostly courtesy of the mages in Fort Amol(I'm sure those mages were more powerful than Endar). He's not really much of a Battlemage in all honesty, either that or having a spell in one hand and a sword in the other isn't particularly effective. Either way at this point he's mostly summoning a flame atronach or blasting enemies with dual-cast firebolts. Having Lydia back him up helps, though she'd be more useful if she'd put down the bow.

The actual climb from Ivarstead was surprisingly easy, but the emblems along the way kept it from being boring. I'm getting the impression that Endar really isn't the Dragonborn, so it looks like I might not be seeing any more of the MQ with him.

The Greybeards were interesting, had some pretty funky robes too, and that new Shout is pretty amusing.

Wait till you can shout folks off mountains!

"Oh what's that Snow Bear? You're going to eat my face? FUS ROH DAH!"
*Snow bear is forced off the mountain and plummets to its death.

I think I saw a comic strip like that a while back lol.

Yes, it's quite the problem solver

Having scrapped my Dunmer Battlemage(Useless at melee combat, probably my fault) and created a Dunmer Shieldmage instead. His name is Arvyn Drenim, and I've been having some fun with him today.

Having reached Whiterun and spent all his money on spells, he set out on some bounty-hunting work, clearing out Redoran's Retreat, Silent Moon's Camp, and Halted Stream Camp in quick succession, each time making far more gold from the loot than from the meagre bounties offered.

He's now level 10 has gotten hold of some decent gear, as well as all the apprentice spells he needs, and is about to enter Bleak Falls Barrow.

What were the skills for Dunmer Battlemage again?

Alchemy, Alteration, Conjuration, Destruction, Heavy Armour, One Handed, and technically Enchanting(though it didn't really get used).

He was using bound blade as a weapon, with the mystic binding perk.

My Shieldmage swaps Alchemy and One Handed for Block and Restoration. He's ridiculously tough to kill. He's blitzed Bleak Falls Barrow, pausing to use a couple of restless draugr as training buddies to get his block, heavy armour, and restoration skills above 30, and has killed his first dragon.

Restoration was probably the key skill, as I find I need that with any build. The Skyrim regeneration of magicka means you can always self-heal, given a bit of time to recover, unlike earlier games where you needed to actually rest.

I've done the "bound weapon" thing with a few characters that also went unarmoured and looked totally defenceless. When attacked, they'd conjure helper + weapon and clean up. The shieldmage always shows a shield, which spoils the effect. Again, that's a change from Oblivion, where you'd only see a shield with an equipped weapon. Morrowind was a bit odd, in hiding the weapon when sheathed, but not the shield.

It's definitely restoration that's the key, it just makes him so absurdly sustainable. And once he gets the respite perk he'll be able to shield bash for days at a time

Arvyn Drenim has just completed his first Daedric quest. Seeing Sanguine turn up in Daedric armour made quite the impression. he now wants a set of his own

And you wanted to keep the goat, didn't you?

Khajiit doesn't really care for the look of Daedric armor in Skyrim. Of course, he doesn't think Oblivion did a good job with it either, preferring how it looked in Morrowind (Three different helmets! Also, it was a real accomplishment getting a full set of that if you didn't go the murder route).

Nope.

But I am kind of annoyed that Arvyn failed the speech check with Ysolda and had to pay up. Of course that meant I didn't even see the alleged bride, which I feel takes some of the amusement out of the whole premise.

He's getting some pretty weird goings on though when it comes to radiant quests. So far he's been told to deal with a Falmer problem in Falkreath by clearing out a cave up near Solitude, kill a dragon near Markarth that's to the south of Windhelm, and recover an item taken by the Forsworn that's close to the cave full of Falmer he's got to clear.

He's also visited Windhelm, and got a rather bad reception. He may never stay at the inn there again.

Edit, for TheCheshireKhajiit: Personally, I'm fairly indifferent on Daedric armour in Skyrim. Oblivion did a better job of it than Skyrim, but still can't match Morrowind. But courtesy of Divayth Fyr Daedric armour is the standard for all Dunmer Sorcerers, as far as I'm concerned.

Wait a moment, failing the speech test should have left you the options of pay up or fetch it from the hagraven (or try intimidation instead, but that usually fails if the speech one does). And the pay option can fail, too, not just for lack of funds.

I don't recall seeing an option to get the ring back, or I'd have taken that and used the 2k for training.

Well, been blasting my way through various dungeons and enemies with my Shieldmage, and in all honesty he's starting to get a little stale. He's certainly powerful, and tough to put down, but at level 25 he plays the same way he did at level 10. And when it comes to destruction he's still using the same spells.

Had the idea of bringing an old friend North, so I think I'll put my Shieldmage on hold for a bit and see how Sal handles Skyrim. An Argonian Nightblade should make for a fun change, if he have can nail down what skills he'll be using.

I'm having a major problem with my "Nijel the Destroyer" game. I'd intended that he'd remain a complete wimp, and let Conina do all the slaying, but he's becoming quite competent with his iron greatsword, and bow.

I decided that he'd need to advance smithing, so that he could maintain her steel greatsword, and keep her attack high, but that's letting him improve his own, and his hide armor, and he's using one of the Exquisite Dwarven Bows he's been making, which often one-shots the Forsworn before Conina reaches them. And after he blocks a couple of times, he may swing his sword if Conina's busy elsewhere. Had a few kill-cams from that.

Not using many skills has also left him with not many places to spend perk points, so his Marksman and Two-handed are better than I wanted.

So I've been playing Skyrim recently on my PS4 with Lissa. Where I must admit console gaming is not as moddable as PC, I am enjoying playing.

Lissa and I are currently going through the Dawnguard questline. Where as I enjoy Serana as a character I've come to realise she is not a suitable companion for Lissa. Lissa needs more of a damage dealer/absorber companion and she is mostly a range fighter (any suggestions?)

Here is PS4 Skyrim Lissa More updatea/screeniea to come.

It's Mara Jade!

I have been reading too much Star Wars lately. PS4 Lissa looks fantastic!

My latest character encountered the bandits posing as an Imperial Patrol. She whacked the leader hard with her two-hander, and he ran off around the nearest rock.

I saw him go flying up into the air, and a pair of Giants came around the rock to finish off the rest of the band for me.

It's a good thing those guys don't carry any decent loot. I still haven't found the bodies.

My current Skyrim character is travelling around with Meeko, and they have twice encountered the Carvains looking for Solitude. On each occasion, the bodyguard has attacked Meeko, who killed him in self-defence, resulting in the Carvains running off in terror.

Anyone have any idea why that would happen? Faction?

So the Beyond Skyrim - Bruma mod is out and I decided to take my old Dragonborn and play through it. And I actually mean my old Dragonborn. I still have his original 360 save. Here we go. I expect many crashes.
I also installed SPERG and I'm angry at myself for not trying it sooner. It's great.

Well, I'm back to playing Skyrim. It's not the TES game I want to be playing, in all honesty, but for a while now I've been having trouble sleeping so I really don't feel up to playing Oblivion. Skyrim just feels like it's easier to play.

And I'm reverting to type: A Dunmer. He's kind of a Sorcerous Battlemage and has headed to Skyrim for two reasons: The Civil War means opportunities for a mercenary, and he wants to try and learn from the Telvanni Magister said to be living on Solstheim.

Unfortunately not long after crossing into Skyrim he ran into a group of Stormcloaks accompanying their leader, shortly before they were ambushed by Imperial forces.

I was right. Gonna wait till the mod's more stable.

I was gonna try Beyond Reach instead, but a bit of research and looking at the mod's goddang page made me realize that it's one of the worst ideas I've had. I do not expect quality whatsoever, especially not from the writing or stability.

In it's current state, Beyond Reach is Not Good largely because it doesn't really feel like a TES lands mod. Sure, it's High Rock by name but in practice it feels like something from a different franchise. It's hard to explain. The writing probably isn't objectively bad, just really misses the mark in a way not even the spinoffs do it. Probably alright on its own, bad as a "DLC" style expansion for Skyrim. Didn't even touch the main quest, tbh. Also how in the hell do you mess up the orientation of the map that badly? It's rotated 180 degrees.

Beyond Skyrim: Bruma is good largely because it doesn't seem to have an overarching main quest. But in all seriousness, it actually DOES feel like a natural extension of the base game (bad voice acting/voice recording aside...) and I'm honestly considering using it for other characters, maybe even as an alternate start thing. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface but it's pretty decent.

=

Anyways, restarted one of my old characters, and right from character creation he found himself in Falkreath hold in the middle of a freaking downpour so bad that you could barely see in front of you. It lasted the entire day and he had to stay inside Pinewatch. At least he entertained himself by murdering the bandit inhabitants.

Haha, reminds me of my first playthrough. I was just out of Helgan, barely knew how to play. I got slaughtered. That wasn't before I found Falkreath , accidentally killed a goat and got arrested

Ree'shad , my new Khajit character , just escaped Helgan and went to Riverwood. There he befriended the archer , Faendal , only to use him to clear out a mine of bandits and kill him. He is using that mine as a basecamp currently.

Welcome, Cas! We've had quite a problem with spambots, so new members have to have each post approved by a mod until cleared by the admins. I'm requesting our admins clear your 'new member restrictions' so you will be able to post without delays. It can take some time before they come by to do that though so I appreciate your patience. Once cleared by the admins, that will also enable your PM/messaging functions here.

So I decided to give Legacy of the Dragonborn a try and started a new game for it.

I'm giving Aza-jo his "after" playthrough for this. Long story short, at this point he's seen and done the whole Last Dragonborn BS countless of times in-universe, and has had a VERY long time to think about it, having more or less waited since the beginning of time on Nirn to do it over again one last time.

In other words, it'll be meta as heck, but not so meta that he's a player avatar. Again, in-universe perspective from someone who's seen it all before. He might be hallucinating the museum part, though.

So I never really get past Diplomatic Immunity when I play the main quest in Skyrim these days, but it wasn't until I did it for the first time in a long time that I realized I've NEVER gotten past it on PC. The little achievement unlock message popped up to inform me of that. In other words I've hit a milestone? I'm going to finish the main quest on the PC for the first time ever? ??????

So I'm pretty far in my playthrough with a completely new character so I can experience Legacy of the Dragonborn to its full extent and I realized that tolerating certain not-so-great followers is easier when the character you're playing has a bond with them.

Having helped him out for the sake of putting a replica of his family shield in the museum, I took Roggi Knot-Beard with me on an adventure since he asked. He...fared poorly, to say the least. Instead I took him on a trip to Riften for mead and then left him in Kynesgrove, probably for the rest of the game. :T He's not really husband material for my current character, unlike the one that "kept" him. So, g'bye Nut Bread.

At first I thought I'd add him to my Safehouse group alongside Lydia, Erandur and Illia, but Roggi isn't great at combat, I forgot to pick up Erandur on the way out of Dawnstar, and I lost track of Illia. lol

Either way, I'm enjoying Skyrim for the first time in a long time. Legacy of the Dragonborn is great, even if it does a few things that irritate me when I see them in mods. Not gonna play it again after this, though.

tbh if Glover Mallory was a marriage candidate, I'd marry him on this character

Anyways, The Book of Love is kind of bad and even though the game's been out for nearly six years, I don't want to spoil why. Let's just say "fickle", "deceitful", and "dead" aren't very positive forms of love.

I guess religion in Skyrim really is bad.

So a bit of a warning: negativity ahead.



That aside, and on a more positive note, I DID notice that the game tries to tie everything together, DLC content included, with the series theme of "Stasis vs Change", specifically whether to keep up old traditions or discard them and try something new.

I really do wonder what the game would be like if they spent more time on it. This being Bethesda, it would most likely still be infuriating, but still.

I still have never completed the main quest in Skyrim. The farthest I have gotten is finding out Delphine is a Blade and going to kill the second dragon Sakhalin (or whatever its name is). I just cannot stay interested in it.

In Lucius Caro's game I made it to the point where he was asked to get both Tullius and Ulfric to High Hrothgar for negotiatons but that's when I lost interest in the MQ for good.

Yes indeed.

In my case, I've never been able to get very far into the MQ on Xbox, but this was mostly because I'm still a table-gamer at heart. Dragons in these games (DnD, Advanced Melee, etc.) are actually rare. They don't show up every 3 days or whatever the Skyrim vanilla counter uses. They are rare in the tablegames, meaning that when one actually showed up via dice rolls, it would be a rather special experience. Having dragons flying around pretty much everywhere, at any time quickly got old.

But I think I'll do okay on PC, where we can make the random draggies not show up nearly as often. I think I've got a mod which gives something like a 5% chance every 60 days or something such.

That seems to be the way I play the game. The MQ is an optional way to play for those who need a script for it. All the rest of us just wander around and do whatever comes up.

This weekend I took Rincewind and Conina for a walk around parts of the map they hadn't explored before and just did whatever anyone asked them to help with. Or took the fight to anyone who offered one, like that belligerent mage outside Fort Amol when they passed by. It's not very Rincewind to fight, rather than run away, but the game doesn't let Conina make those decisions for him, so I have to.

I also played a bit more of Cohen the Barbarian and his Temple Dancer companion, Fuzz. In that game, he's definitely doing whatever he wants, and she's just tagging along. They're currently waiting for a letter from Falk Firebeard to continue the Potema incident, but he's slow to raise levels. I gave him max stats for weapon skills at the expense of low health and stamina, and no magika (so no spells). That means he can't get levels from using his weapons, only from smithing, sneaking, trading, alchemy and enchanting and a miniscule amount from light armour.

He's just reached level 10 after 18 hours of play, and that didn't trigger a courier. I think he needs a level up after level 10 (i.e. becoming 11) to do so. 10 starts the quest, and then the next one sends the letter.

I find it interesting how relatively large a portion of the player base never finishes the main quest of a TES game, or at least takes a long time getting around to it. Personally, it's one of if not the first questlines I do in a TES game.

There are actually a bunch of faction quests I haven't done in the games, though. For Skyrim, I've never finished the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild questlines. Barely done any of those at all, actually.

I liked Skyrim very much but found it the worst offender regarding questlines the Buffy balked on. Despite 4000 hours in Skyrim, she never completed the MQ, Civil War, DB, TG or the Dragonborn DLC. She happily enjoyed all the misc quests, wonderful dungeons, Companions, College and Dawnguard.

My first character in each game might well do everything, starting with the MQ, but the rest don't. That char is usually also default race and uses a built-in class. So Dunmer in Morrowind, Imperial in Oblivion, Nord in Skyrim. All male by default.

I may be non-typical, as after that first play-through, I'm creating my own mods, and the subsequent characters are testing them, but after that, I'm still creating ones that "just wanna have fun!" They may be of custom race (Dremora, Smurf, whatever Diablita is) as well. In Daggerfall, I couldn't play an Orc, so I did.

Or I may adjust them off the usual scales. Genghiz Cohen is a good example. He's a Nord, but he's ancient, feeble, and insanely skilled. You don't get to be a Barbarian of his age without being very hard to kill. So he started with 50 Health, 50 Stamina, zero Magicka, together with 100 in each of the weapon skills, and all the (useful) perks. Buffy will see a fellow glass cannon in Cohen the Barbarian.

Half the fun is trying out those oddball builds, and in a game where the MQ isn't everything, it's more fun, because you can pick your path and challenges to suit the character. A fixed route railroads your choices, too.

ghastley: That's pretty cool, you have a no-magic character, and even have removed magicka entirely.
Admirable.


Wow. I guess because I've always been a "save the best for last" sort of person that I've always put the MQ off. Even in Arena, where there isn't much to do (side quests quickly become old) I spent a lot of time with her just randomly walking around the landscape, looking for random-generated dungeons to explore, so she could build her experience up.

I do see where you're coming from though. I bet the main plot gets tempting for you eh? Like a new novel you want to just dig into.

Honestly, it took my brother-in-law asking to borrow my Skyrim disk for me to actually finish the main quest. Up until recently I never even got past A Blade in the Dark, finishing Dragonborn instead and then losing interest every time. I guess I really take to the freedom the games give you because I always just do content as I run into it.

And with Skyrim I took to spreading around quests to other characters right away instead of doing it with a single character first like I did with Oblivion. (The TG and DB always were avoided or destroyed after the first time, though.)

It's even bled into ESO, where the MMO aspect encourages you to do the quests anyways yet I've only done the Mages/Fighters Guild questlines on one character each and one character alone (same with the DLC questlines). We'll see if that holds true ten years from now when TES VI is finally released. :V

I think at this point I know what to expect from Bethesda's main quests so I'm not particularly concerned with seeing them through to the end. I'm just here to get lost in the game world.

This. ^

Oblivion was the last game where I allowed the 'get my money's worth' mentality to kind of push me to complete all quests. I no longer feel obligated to push Buffy toward things that don't strike her fancy or suit her nature. Similar to your sentiment, she just wants to get lost and live her life in a nice big open world.

Someone asked about the possibility of an Altmer Hearthfires recentkly, so I rolled up a character - High Ho Sylvia - to go wander around and get ideas for me. She's doing pure mage right now, but has a bound sword as part of raising conjuration, and could easily end up raising one-handed as well.

Made her extra-tall, with big hair to exaggerate it, and minimum weight. That's about as far from my Smurfs as you can get!

I used Skyrim Unbound to start her in Solitude and haven't decided whether she's sympathetic to the Thalmor or against them, but she's not pro-Nord at all. She may be part of some other Altmer faction that rivals the Thalmor (but probably not Psijic).

Long post incoming:

So a couple nights ago I went to check out how long it has been since the TES games in my Steam catalogue had been played. And holy crap, with the exception of ESO it has been a long while. In Skyrim's case, I hadn't played it since last December. I had the urge to dust it off so I booted it up, although I had no clue where I would be.

This little story I am going to tell here is with my first ever character in Skyrim, and by extension my first ever character in a TES game (well, I had first played Skyrim on my friend's Xbox 360 in late 2013, but that doesn't count), my Dragonborn. Turns out I had been chilling at Breezehome with my lovely wife Lydia and my two adorable daughters Sissel and Sofie, and Serana had been hanging out with us.

My primary task (now complete as of yesterday) was to build the rest of Heljarchen Hall and Windstad Manor. Lakeview Manor was already finished quite a while ago. My Dragonborn wants to use them for housing to get people down on their luck back on their feet, as he is quite content with his family back in Whiterun. I am hoping to run into Taren Dreth soon, and I am likely not going to try to get to the Ebony Warrior. I might console command him in, although that would feel pretty cheap.

My character, whose name I am retconning to Cincinnatus (the name in-game that I actually have is a bit of a long story), has seen enough adventures for a score of mere mortals. And while he has amassed much wealth, renown, and had loads of fun he has grown weary of the life of adventuring. He's become highly proficient in a lot of skills (he decided to take up two-handed weaponry recently). But he also has a family to go home to. He is extremely close to finally calling it a career.

But Cincinnatus has decided to go on one last trek around the province on a personal farewell tour of sorts to adventuring. Part of it is, again, to try to get that Taren Dreth encounter to happen. But it is also to see just how far he has come since he almost got his head cut off by the Imperials.

The first destination of the tour was to revisit where this all began: Helgen. Serana and Cincinnatus dispatched some bandits there with ease, and had a look around. He had been back to Helgen several times, but this time in particular held deep meaning for him with his impending retirement. After killing the bandits, Tundra played in the background, a fitting tune.

Here's a few pictures of Cincinnatus checking the place out (It occurred to me that I never actually took screenshots before. What the hell is wrong with me? ):
Overlooking Helgen
Having flashback to the beginning of his escape from Helgen

And some other pictures:
Out for a stroll
Looking north across the Padomaic Ocean

After revisiting a couple smaller places on the map leaving Helgen, Cincinnatus made his way to Dawnstar. He is currently in Winterhold about to go to Windhelm.

Kind of bittersweet to be finally concluding the story of my first-ever TES character. It's cool looking back on how I first got into the series and after putting a huge portion of it under my belt, though.

Ha! I like that name--Cincinnatus. I also like that feeling you got...when you haven't touched this game for months, so you're not sure where you left off. This can be interesting to return to Skyrim (or any game) unknowing of where you were. Happens to me several times a year, for sure.

And that reminds me of the one thing I don't like about the Morrowind style of Journal. When you resume a character after a long time of not playing, you have no "to do" list of unfinished business. I picked up my Vampirella game and spent half an hour just figuring out what parts of the Main Quest she hadn't done. Skyrim's method is much better, but then again, I miss being able to review the past stuff that simply disappears. There has to be a middle ground somewhere.

What a lovely little review and tour you gave us!

I let the Tundra song play as I read this. Very nostalgic.

Oblivion's journal, imo. There's no distinction between main and misc objectives, but at the very least you're able to see both previous objectives of a quest (which are neatly placed inside the quest "topic" in descending order) and the in-game date you receive them in, something Skyrim sorely lacks. The last one in particular really bothered me in my recent run with Legacy of the Dragonborn.


Anyways, thanks for sharing the closing moments of your first ever character with us, Rader. Although I've since retconned my first TES character, there's something...deeply personal about seeing through a long-played character to the end, especially one's first.

You're probably right about that, but I tend to forget it's a journal, the way they buried it among all the other stuff.

Now I do like the "multiple active quests" addition in Skyrim. Seeing multiple quest markers on the map, so you can decide what to do on the way, is a plus. I also like having current and completed on the same list with a divider.

I'd like to see the cross-linking from the Morrowind Journal return. Especially if they insist on connecting quest-lines together. Being able to use a keyword as an index entry was nice.

Thanks. I picked Cincinnatus for several reasons. For one, it's a little homage to Arena since Argonians had naming conventions at that point. Second, the real Cincinnatus is a very interesting historical figure. Third, he is from Lilmoth, which had significant Imperial influences. Although that was a long time before Skyrim, so I haven't quite worked out the backstory for him yet.

It's also the (actual) name of my Vestige in ESO. I am retconning the names I had for my other Heroes too, but I don't want to name them all Cincinnatus.



Yeah, I found the journals from each of the games to have particular strengths and weaknesses.
-Morrowind was laid out more like an actual journal and you could look up keywords, but it becomes clunky and bloated to go through rather easily.
-Oblivion made it easy to look at the steps you took for a quest when you have it selected, but actually combing through the current quests on your plate was cumbersome.
-Skyrim makes it the nicest and cleanest to go through which quests you have and separates "real" and miscellaneous quests neatly, but you get comparatively scant details about what you are doing (e.g. no date in which you took on a quest or progressed to a certain point on it).



Glad you liked it. Kyne's Peace is actually my favorite TES tune of all, but Tundra is very close to it.



Glad you enjoyed it. It is also neat to look back at who I was in real life when I created him, and where I am at now with the impending conclusion to Cincinnatus's story.