OT: Attention Fantasy RPG Fans

[Hellshade 110]

You knew it had to happen eventually...

 

Here's a few random cool scenes of my Dark Elf Archer and his loyal tank companion, Lydia. Might I add that there is a perk in the Archery skill tree that slows time by 50% whenever you zoom in with your bow. It can make for some truly epic feeling moments even in trash monster fights.

 

 

Hellshade

Edited November 15, 2011 by Hellshade

[Shiloh 12]

Very nice Hellshade. That Lydia is a keeper! She goes in there and engages and then you can do damage from distance. It reminds me of when my wife and I play Halo. She runs into combat like a banshee and I hang back and we're the perfect team. That scene on the snowy mountain around 4:40 was epic including the sound effects of walking in the snow. You guys are slowly making me realize this game is a must have. I'm not sure when but at some point I'll definitely take the plunge. Right now I'm playing some Batman: Arkham Asylum to fill the void as I never really got started with it way back when.

Edited November 15, 2011 by Shiloh

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

BASTARDS!!!!!!!.....They've Killed Swift..My Horse!!.....they are SO Gonna feel my wrath!!!!

[Hellshade 110]

Who would do such a thing WM??? Is there no bottom to their depravity?

 

Get a bow and learn the Steady Hands Perk for some truly awesome slow motion slaughtering that lets you enjoy every moment of the kills! Then you'll really enjoy your revenge!

 

PS. Don't forget to enchant your bows with Soul Absorption, so when you kill them, you don't just get to watch them die in slow motion, you suck their out of them and store it in a Soul Gem for later use too. Great combo.

 

Slow Motion Killing (1:16) 1080HD

Edited November 15, 2011 by Hellshade

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Muhahahahaha...that sounds great!...their souls can be tortured for all eternity...a fitting revenge for my poor Swift!

[Bullethead 12]

Muhahahahaha...that sounds great!...their souls can be tortured for all eternity...a fitting revenge for my poor Swift!

 

Naw, you use the souls to refuel your magic itens

[MikeDixonUK 5]

Here's my bloke, Mikkel of Daggerfall, a Breton Archer - off to join the Legion:

 

 

And with required Archer / suspicious youth Hood:

 

[Shiloh 12]

Nice MikeDixon. I've always preferred a human-looking character to one that is not as I feel it's easier to envision that it might be me out there causing mischief.

[Bullethead 12]

Hey Mike, good-looking character. Too bad he's one of those scumbags trying to reimpose foreigh rule over my homeland, so I guess I'll have to kill him

 

BTW, here's something that will pucker your butt when you're off in the middle of nowhere all alone.... I don't like tangling with a dragon unless it's got other things to get mad at besides me. But at this point, there was absolutely nothing for miles, not even a bunch of bandits (because I'd just killed them all).

 

Fortunately, my guy is sneaky enough that the dragon couldn't see him unless he was moving, at least at night. So the dragon was circling overhead and each time it was facing away from me, I ran for it then stopped as it come back over, repeat. All the while looking for something, anything, to train it into as a distraction--a giant herd would have been nice--but nother. It took me about 3 game hours to go a mile and all the while that dragon was overhead, but eventually it lost interest and I made it back to Whiterun.

[Hellshade 110]

Nice looking archer Mike! A man after my own heart. Here's a montage of bloody fights and kills with my archer. Damn this game is waaaay too much fun. The first guy gets an arrow stuck through the side of his skull but keeps on fighting...for a moment I try to time the arrow shots so they zip past my armored companion who "tanks" for me and strikes the bad guy in a vulnerable spot. The slow mo lets you see the blood splatter and gore quite nicely too.

 

 

Hellshade

Edited November 16, 2011 by Hellshade

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Made this for my Son..who is rapidly becoming a Skyrim fanatic

 

[Shiloh 12]

Very nice Widow. It must be cool to share things like this with your son. Was that you're trusted steed Swift?

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Very nice Widow. It must be cool to share things like this with your son. Was that you're trusted steed Swift?

 

Thanks m8.... yes it was before those BASTARDS killed her!...but, as you can see in the video..I took a terrible revenge!!! (and I brought her back to life, thanks to an earlier savegame)...so they died...and achieved NOTHING!!!...hahahahahahaha

[Hellshade 110]

However there are from time to time a few exceptions. Maybe I'm wrong and Skyrim turns out to be a new "Apocalypse Now" instead of a new "Avatar".

 

VP, now that I assume you've had a chance to play it - is Skyrim a new Apocalypse Now or just another Avatar for you personally?

 

Hellshade

[Von Paulus 8]

VP, now that I assume you've had a chance to play it - is Skyrim a new Apocalypse Now or just another Avatar for you personally?

 

Hellshade

Ahah. Hellshade, I received the copy only today. I've only opened a few minutes ago. It brings a map. Nice.

I'm in no hurry. I've to finish my Panzer Corps mod first.

But I'll promise you'll be the first to know.

[smilingmonkey 1]

Hello lads.

 

I have been enjoying this beautiful game myself over the past couple of days. I have it for the PS3 though, so no screenies. Which is a damned shame I might add.

 

I had a random dragon encounter the other evening. The whole epic battle took place at the foot of Azura's shrine on the mountaintops, above us the aurora was in full swing. It was just such an amazing and beautiful scene.

 

I was thinking to myself, that this would most likely be the scripted final event in almost any other game, but here in Skyrim. It just happened.

 

That pretty much sums up the whole experience for me thus far. Everything is so epic. Just stopping to take in the views as I am hunting Elk in the valleys is worth the admission price for me.

 

To all of you who have posted videos or screenies of your games, thank you. It is great to see so many people enjoying this.

[Bullethead 12]

but I'll promise you'll be the first to know.

 

Well, I wasn't asked, but I'll chip in my $0.02 review and opinion....

 

I can't say "Apocalypse Now" vs. "Avatar" because I didn't like the former and never saw the latter. What makes more sense to me is analogizing to aqua vitae. This scale runs from Lagavulin 16 at the top end to Old Forester on the bottom. There are worse whiskeys than Old Forester but I won't mention them in polite company and do my best to forget my experiences with them. On this scale, I rank Skyrim as Maker's Mark: very good but not an all-time classic.

 

Why don't I think Skyrim is an all-time classic? Because Bethesda will out-do it incrementally with its next release, as it has its previous would-be all-time great games. Skyrim is better than Fallout 3, which was better than Oblivion, which was better than Morrowwind, etc. IOW, Skyrim doesn't break new ground, it just incrementally enhances what's been done before, and the next incremental improvement will eclipse it. Now, the basic formula is EXCELLENT, so I'm not complaining about incremental improvements. In the case of games like this, I LOVE more-of-the-same. It's why I buy the damn things. BTW, I like FONV also, but not as much as FO3 because FO3 was much more twisted than FONV, so I don't see FONV as an incremental improvement on FO3.

 

Does Skyrim draw me into immersion? Absolutely. Can I waste entire days doing nothing else? Already have. Measured by all that sort of thing, plus general lack of bugs and overall stability, Skyrim is excellent. It's exactly what I expected it to be, given where it came from. Perhaps even better, because it has noticeably fewer bugs at this early stage than previous Bethesda games. The only one I've really noticed is the way dragon skeletons bounce around each time you revist the kill site.

 

My main gripe with Skyrim is the new character stats/leveling system. I REALLY like it in general--the basic concept is a vast improvement over the traditional attribute system. However, in this, its original form, it might could use some tweaking. Or maybe as players we just need to get used to it. The system contains a very dangerous trap for the unwary, and on everybody's 1st time through, we're all unwary so heed this warning... BEWARE of grinding up non-combat crafting skills. Grinding them is very easy to do in perfect safety--you just need money, tools, and materials. OTOH, combat skills only increase in actual combat or expensive training from NPCs. The trap here is that each crafting skill increase moves you closer to the next overall character level just as much as combat skill increases do, and are much easier to get. Thus, if you grind crafting, you can find yourself with a relatively high overall character level but relatively low combat skill levels. And it's your overall character level that determines the strength of the enemies you meet, and also what's available in stores and as loot. This means grinding on crafting is a great way to find yourself badly outclassed in combat.

 

Here's what happened to me... My guy likes light armor. I've put a lot of perks into getting better at using it. But Skyrim has much more heavy armor generally available in stores and as loot than light armor and after a while, I decided the only way I could get better light armor than leather was to grind my smithing up until I could do elvin. So I did, and found myself rather outclassed in combat. But because my overal level went up in the process, the enemies started wearing elvin armor instead of fur armor. Thus, the very 1st guy I killed after learning to smith elvin armor was wearing a complete set of the stuff. I could have saved myself a lot of effort and made the fight easier if I'd just concentrated on combat skills and taken his stuff as loot. The ONLY advantage of being able to make the stuff myself is that I can get a couple extra armor rating points out of stuff I make and temper myself compared to what's found out in the world. Not a good trade IMHO when my relative weakness in sword skills for my overall level makes fights much more problematic.

 

So at present, IMHO crafting is not really a good idea for a successful character. Which is too bad because it's fun to make your own stuff. But in the long run, it seems better to concentrate entirely on skills with direct combat relevance like weapons, armor, destruction, and conjuration. Everything else is best left to the REMFs safe back in town. Sure, sharpen your new sword and mix the odd potion, but don't even think about becoming self-sufficient because your combat skills can't stay abreast of your overall level. It might help if non-combat skill increases weren't counted as heavily toward character level as combat skills, but if that changes it'll be a while before we see it.

 

 

[Bullethead 12]

So at present, IMHO crafting is not really a good idea for a successful character. Which is too bad because it's fun to make your own stuff. But in the long run, it seems better to concentrate entirely on skills with direct combat relevance like weapons, armor, destruction, and conjuration. Everything else is best left to the REMFs safe back in town. Sure, sharpen your new sword and mix the odd potion, but don't even think about becoming self-sufficient because your combat skills can't stay abreast of your overall level. It might help if non-combat skill increases weren't counted as heavily toward character level as combat skills, but if that changes it'll be a while before we see it.

 

Upon further review, the above is a bit harsh. It is possible to catch your combat skills up more or less with your overall level if you fall into the trap of craft-grinding early on. But it requires a lot of time combat-grinding, the 1st 1/2 of which will tend to suck because you're starting at a significant disadvantage. In my case, I reached smithing 30 at 6th or 7th level, at which point my armor and 1-handed weapons skills were still about their starting position of 25 or so. Since then, I've abandoned smithing completely except to temper and sharpen new gear I've found, not made--all the rest of my time has been hacking and slashing. I'm now 15th overall level and am just starting to feel fairly confident facing the critters I'm meeting toe-to-toe.

 

So at the bottom line, it's best to view craft skills as constituting a full-blown character class. IOW, being a warrior-smith takes as much away from your warrior skills as being a warrior-wizard, and is not as effective in combat. Compared to a plain warrior of wizard, the warrior-wizard of the same character level isn't as good at either type of combat, but the flexibility of tactics often makes up for this. A warrior-smith, OTOH, just has better warrior gear, but lacks the warrior skills (and therefore warrior perks) to use it to best advantage, so is much more likely to get pwned by some bandit leader, let alone a frost troll.

 

Thus, it seems to me that the best strategy for crafting is to NOT treat it as your multi-class. Instead, treat it as a hobby. And only have 1 hobby. Either be a smith, an enchanter, or an alchemist, but not more than 1 of these. And ration out your crafting skill increases to no more than 1 per overall character level. Try to stay being able to make the same sort of stuff you commonly find as loot and content yourself with just improving it slightly. This is because you can't help but increase at least 1 other non-combat skill per overall character level, such as speech just from buying and selling loot. It's very important not to detract any more than absolutely necessary from your combat skill increases per character level if you wish to remain competitive with the increasingly difficult enemies your character level entails. You can, to a very limited extent, make up for this with shouts, but any more than the Greybeards teach you requires killing dragons, and that again brings up the relative weakness of your warrior skills.

 

But all this might sound like I don't like Skyrim. Far from it. I'm enjoying it immensely. I do wish I'd made different choice early on, but I hold no grudge against the game because it's my 1st character still. For instance, I'm currently exploring Shroud Hearth Barrow, which has quite a few cool traps and puzzles to figure out and just looks cool besides. I recommend it as a travel destination for those who haven't seen it.

[smilingmonkey 1]

All good thoughts there Bullethead. I have been hobbying up the smithing and enchanting skills, but not really spending perks on them.

 

I have been getting a few level increases whilst doing this, and other things like the ressurection of chickens etc. But I have utilised the Warrior Stone in an attempt to balance things out a bit.

I dont do a lot of hand to hand combat, being more of an archer. But I have found that I can keep up with most of the current enemies, ( I am lvl 28), with the use of tooled up companions, a staff that summons an atronach, a few wards and traps, and generally being a sneaky bastard.

 

I think it is important to throw perks at your hand to hand skills, at least if you are going to use them, just the basic damage increases when they become available if nothing else. You are missing out if you dont get the decapitation one though, bit later on but so worth it, especially if you are weilding dual bound blades.

 

Having said all of that. This is my very first character build, of many I am sure, so I might completely change my opinion in time.

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

All good thoughts there Bullethead. I have been hobbying up the smithing and enchanting skills, but not really spending perks on them.

 

I have been getting a few level increases whilst doing this, and other things like the ressurection of chickens etc. But I have utilised the Warrior Stone in an attempt to balance things out a bit.

I dont do a lot of hand to hand combat, being more of an archer. But I have found that I can keep up with most of the current enemies, ( I am lvl 28), with the use of tooled up companions, a staff that summons an atronach, a few wards and traps, and generally being a sneaky bastard.

 

I think it is important to throw perks at your hand to hand skills, at least if you are going to use them, just the basic damage increases when they become available if nothing else. You are missing out if you dont get the decapitation one though, bit later on but so worth it, especially if you are weilding dual bound blades.

 

Having said all of that. This is my very first character build, of many I am sure, so I might completely change my opinion in time.

 

Thats the sheer beauty of this franchise...open-ended...no rules...love it

[Olham 164]

A very intriguing choice of music with your video, Widow - fits well to all the northern myth hardrock phantasies!

[Bullethead 12]

I have been getting a few level increases whilst doing this, and other things like the ressurection of chickens etc. But I have utilised the Warrior Stone in an attempt to balance things out a bit.

 

Thanks for the tip. I hadn't thought about changing my stone.

 

I dont do a lot of hand to hand combat, being more of an archer. But I have found that I can keep up with most of the current enemies, ( I am lvl 28), with the use of tooled up companions, a staff that summons an atronach, a few wards and traps, and generally being a sneaky bastard.

 

Sounds like a good strategy. I'll have to try something more magical my next go-round.

 

BTW, I found out how companions die permanently. It's when your "friendly fire" drops them below 0 health. If the enemy does that to them, they lie there licking their wounds for a while then get back up. But if it's your hit that puts them down, then they stay down.

 

I think it is important to throw perks at your hand to hand skills, at least if you are going to use them, just the basic damage increases when they become available if nothing else. You are missing out if you dont get the decapitation one though, bit later on but so worth it, especially if you are weilding dual bound blades.

 

Absolutely. Weapons (including any combat-related magic you use in most fights) and armor are the places to put the vast bulk of your perks. You can never be too good at fighting. And while the combat perk "constellations" might have the same number of stars as some of the others, many of those stars can be taken multiple times, so you can end up with 100% above the base level in both offense and defense, besides any special things like decapitation :).

 

I see no point at all in perking lockpicking, for example. I'm only about 20 in that but I can pick any lock in the game because I'm used to how that works from FO3 and FONV. Same exact thing in Skyrim. Picking a master lock might cost me 8-10 picks but never more than that. Expert locks might use 3-4 and I only break picks on adept and novice locks when they've already seen a lot of use on previous locks.

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

A very intriguing choice of music with your video, Widow - fits well to all the northern myth hardrock phantasies!

 

Thanks Olham (It's a little bit too gung-ho for my tastes)...but I just made it for the young 'un as he likes it

[Hellshade 110]

This damn dragon flew all over the place. My heart goes out to the patrol guards who fell to it's wrath.

 

 

Hellshade

[smilingmonkey 1]

BTW, I found out how companions die permanently. It's when your "friendly fire" drops them below 0 health. If the enemy does that to them, they lie there licking their wounds for a while then get back up. But if it's your hit that puts them down, then they stay down.

I see no point at all in perking lockpicking, for example. I'm only about 20 in that but I can pick any lock in the game because I'm used to how that works from FO3 and FONV. Same exact thing in Skyrim. Picking a master lock might cost me 8-10 picks but never more than that. Expert locks might use 3-4 and I only break picks on adept and novice locks when they've already seen a lot of use on previous locks.

 

I did not know that about the companions. That is a damn shame.

 

It means that I killed Lydia in that dark and haunted place after she had saved my life several times. Such a waste. I will have to go off to temple and donate a heap of gold in her honour.

 

Agreed on the lockpicks, I have been unlocking the big ones with the skills brought over from fallout. I suppose I would perk them up if I was running a pure thief and needed to be really quick and invisible whilst doing it, but I generally just use the skills to get into chests, disarm those tricksy chest and door traps and suchlike.