Yeah, if only. Every so often I'll hear something I've never heard before, nothing quite as obivous as what Vivienne said to yours, but something that stands out. It's almost as if they're programmed to say the same things 98% of the time, but then there's that 2% that rarely makes it to the surface.

Would be nice if there was some sort of system of fame/infamy buried in the coding, though.



Aww shucks.

The other day Lord Haaf-Mersey and Mjoll were walking from Riverwood towards Falkreath. They decided to make a right at this one intersection, instead of making the usual left which would have taken them towards Helgen. They've been through Helgen so many times, they wanted to try something new.

So this road they're taking has them walking along the south side of the big lake, and it's night time. At some point, they spot what looks to be some sort of a manor house on the left. Place look HUGE, too. Hmm...wow, this could be somewhere new?

*facepalm*

oh duh...it's HIS OWN HOUSE! We've never walked up to Lakeview Manor from the lake side!

Aravi's likes the lake quite a bit so she's coming from that side more often than not.

Lord Haaf-Mersey has ditched Mjoll the Lioness. Took her home to Riften, and broke up with her. After this, she got kidnapped by some rather advanced bandits at Embershard Mine, and after LHM 'rescued' Mjoll, she seems to have gone missing from the game.

That's not the new thing I am reporting.

LHM met Ingjard in the Dawngaurd's castle. He liked the way she presented herself (a strong woman, but not overly annoying the way Mjoll was), and now these two are a pair, traveling all over Skyrim the way Mjoll and he used to.

Here is the New Thing. LHM and Ingjard took care of some bandits hiding out at Halted Stream Camp (the one with the giant mammoth on the floor). As Injard walked by the mammoth, she says something like My gosh, that thing stinks!

That is hilarious! New dialog is one of my very favorite things.

Mikke's first fire wyrm (from Dragonborn). Really neat!

Kayla adopted two kids, Lucia and Francois. Well, Kayla gave Francois a glass dagger of Draining. Just, you know. in case. She went to the basement to grab a weapon and she sees her son viciously attacking the practice dummy.

She nearly wept in pride. Kid wasn't messing around!!

I want to see the adoption mechanic sometime. I tried it once and it made the game crash every time Aravi tried to enter Breezehome.

That's beautiful. You know, after all this time, LHM still hasn't brought Lucia any weapons, like wooden swords and whatnot. But she doesn't seem to ask for stuff like this; all she ever asks for is a "pretty new dress" (she has like 20 pretty new dresses by now) or a treat. Or sometimes a bit of gold. Never a weapon, though.

The dagger makes a different sound on the dummy than the wooden sword does. I fear for Mikke's kid's mudcrab (Shelley).



Here's my addition:

Angeline Morrard: You wouldn’t attack an old woman again, would you?

Grits:

Lleduri (ex-Morag Tong): Well since the first time was an accident… maybe.

There was a glitched (non-aggressive) mage that said something like that to Aravi before.

"You aren't here to hurt me again are you?"

On xBox, with Dawnguard and Dragonborn DLC installed- suddenly a dead dragon seems to be following Trey around.

Tonight it kept "falling" into the market square at Whiterun every time he exited a store. It does not discorporate and can be walked through as if it wasn't there, even though hovering the cursor shows "Dead Dragon- Empty".

Jerric was talking to Elgrim in Riften. He mentioned painted troll fat when discussing ingredients.

I loved that little Easter egg

I heard a guard in Solitude said..

"Da road to Whiterun is not safe. Lots of travellers just disappear, south of Dragon Bridge. Can't find a trace of them."

Never heard that one before.

Ooh I did once! That one leads to a neat dungeon.

Really? Which one is this? .... (I don't mind if you spoil).

Chillwind Depths

A few days ago I heard Dorothe say: "I'm not allowed to stand on the furniture anymore." Of course she was hovering in mid-air above the rail around the smithy.

I just learned if you kill an NPC and they have a child, the kid ends up in Riften and becomes adoptable.

That is so cool, I didn't know that! Be careful sleeping if you adopt a child whose parents you killed? Urk.

*insert music from "Psycho" shower scene*

Holy you're kidding, right? That's amazing.

I'm totally serious!! I looked it up and it's legit!

On a similar note, UESP says that if a follower is killed, they get a spot in their town's hall of the dead and their belongings appear there. Isn't that cool?

No.

XD I'm kidding. I didn't know that, that's pretty neat! is it the town you hired them in, or what?

What about the Player's possesions that the follower was carrying?

I would assume that if you did not loot your follower's corpse that it would appear next to their tomb.

I don't know why I was thinking about those followers that disappear when the game gives you another follower - disappear carrying all that loot you "burdened" them with (AKA: Lydia) - and then when you find them again the loot is gone. Sorry about that, lol.

I did hear that any followers of yours that get killed still show up at your wedding as corpses, moving about on the floor. I was dying to try that out! (or rather, Lydia was dying so I could try it out...).

If it has a Hall of the Dead then yes, otherwise it is somewhere near where they came from.

I've never seen a hall of the dead, where are they (example: in Whiterun?)

I think every walled town has one.

But where are they in the town (because I've never seen one, or noticed them).

I'm not sure if Whiterun has one, but Markarth and Solitude for sure have one. All of the big cities do. They're one of the buildings that don't have signs but don't quite look like a house.

Whiterun hall of the dead

The breadcrumb link will take you back to the list of all six.

(and I don't even have the game - I just consult the wiki for lore I need for 4th era quests!)

Ooh, thank you for the link! I checked them all out, really nice - I like the idea of them too.




Thanks Liz!

I have been playing Neverwinter Nights lately, and I recognized one of the voice actors. The guy who does the snotty high elves in Skyrim did one of the parts in NWN. It made me laugh, and all I could think was "This guy's a Thalmor!"

Yeah, that's a pretty distinctive voice, that snotty Thalmor guy. I'd recognize that voice anywhere. Occasionally I'll be watching a movie, and I'll hear some sound effects (usually wind or wolves or just 'spooky' sounds) that sound pretty similar to sounds I've heard in either Oblivion or Skyrim. An eagle's cry also is frequently (over)used in commercials, shows, and movies, and whenever I hear it I can't help but think I've heard that very same cry before in the game. I believe that there is a stockade of sound-effects somewhere that gets used for videogames as well as TV shows, commercials, and movies.

I posted this in the vids thread, but it's also a new thing (for me) so I'm putting it here, too. Some of you may have seen it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmI799kEOSk

I find this interesting because I always assumed NPCs do not have locational body placements, since there is no locational damage. In other words, I've been assuming that all an NPC has to do is be facing is to 'see' us. Therefore, they'd be able to see us with their hands or feet. The fact that their head has to be covered shows that there is some sort of body-locational consideration.

Something new here. I've known for awhile that if we chop wood outside the Bannered Mare in Whiterun, and then sell this wood to Gerdur, that all a sudden it's as if we own the place. We can now pick up almost any food, items, even gold that we find in this inn, and nobody ever freaks.

Well, I finally managed to make the same situation happen in Windhelm's Candlehearth Hall. My newest character Orgnald (a Nord Fighter/Destruction magic-user who I feel is a Hell's Angel transported to Skyrim) got in a fightfight with the guy who says racist stuff against Dark Elves. "Every night I walk the streets and let dem greyskins know what I t'ink of dem". Orgnald beat the crap out of this guy, and I noticed after this happens that (all a sudden) a lot of stuff in Candlehearth go from Steal Item to Take Item.

It's as if they can't stand the racist guy, so they give us some leeway if we face up to him.

I learned Three-Dog took a dark turn in his life.

He joined the brotherhood.

Todd Howard talked about this video in an interview with Joystiq. Here is the excerpt:


"We thought it would do well," he said, "but it has gone above and beyond."

One of the surprising effects of that popularity is the many YouTube videos (and "arrow in the knee" references) out there, but Howard says one in particular stood out to Bethesda.

"I think our favorite really is putting the buckets on the heads," he laughed. "It was like day two, and we went, what? Do we fix that? Our lead programmer is pissed and wants to fix it, and I said I'm not sure we should. That's one of those where maybe we leave it in."

I love it!

Wyrd, that story is going to having me grinning for a while. Thanks for sharing it.

Bet ya didn't know that you can see the White Gold Tower.

I mean this is some pretty secret info,you're lucky I'm telling you this.

Well, I definitely didn't know that. Tourist-mode ACTIVATE!



In other news, I just learned that the Greybeards vastly overrate their powers. According to them, their voices are so epic that anyone who is not a Greybeard or Dragonborn is obliterated at their awesomeness. So naturally when they held their 'you are Dragonborn and do not die when we yell at you' speech was an important moment.


Turns out they didn't count on Derkeethus the humble miner from Darkwater. Derkeethus who just stood in the center next to his buddy and proceeded to shake off the Greybeard's yapping like it was nothing. There was a very awkward silence at the end.

If your game is unpatched, he "accidently" remains essential. Otherwise, the Greybeards are just braggarts, lol.

Official patches only, so Derkeethus is probably immortal or nearly so. Which is a good thing, considering how often he goes down on his knee.


That said, I doubt the Greybeard's 'attack' does any actual damage. The coders would otherwise have to put in an invisible immunity effect for the player and a separate (non-stagger) version for the Greybeards themselves. That's more work and time for no real reason.

I am glad they kept this in, then.

I found this on the WIKI:

They didn't though,it was fixed in a day 1 or day 2 patch.