Hellshade

That is an awesome screenshot BH! It looks like there is definately fun to be had with a melee character and I can't wait to start one. For now though, I'm having too much fun raiding Imperial held forts with my Stormcloak brothers and calling in my pet Dragon for "Air Support". Check out a few random fortress siege clips I threw together and me and my dragon turning Imperials into burning pincushions! At about 1:55 in you can see the dragon pick up an Imperial, shake him like a rag doll and throw him against a castle wall. Just what the Talos denying little basterd deserved! I still can't wait for P4, but Skyrim is doing a fine job of keeping me otherwise occupied until it arrives. (don't forget to watch it in 1080HD!) Hellshade

It's all good SB. Not everyone likes the same type of games. Maybe as you start getting more perks and can do more things, it might start to grab you more later. The plots and storylines definately thicken as the game goes on and some of the moral questions it makes you choose between are 'interesting', to say the least. Minor Spoiler Ahead! So I'm about to attack a Giant camp when an Elder Dragon shows up and lands at mine and Jenassa's feet. I fire off some arrows and Jenassa bravely pulls out her blades and begins hacking away at the beast! We do some damage and then I use my Dragon Call shout to summon my dragon friend for aid. That's the spoiler. Later in the game you can learn a Dragon Shout that calls a Dragon to your aid. That was already made aware to the public by Todd Howard before the game released, but I call it a minor spoiler just in case you didn't know. Jenassa can't handle the onslaught and crumples at it's feet. The Elder Dragon takes off, circles around and comes back to focus it's attention on me. My Dragon flies up behind the Elder Dragon and covers in a gout of fire...which looks just awesome, I must say. I take a frost breath right to the face from the Elder and then let loose my Ebony arrow. It nearly kills the Dragon, leaving it with just a sliver of life left and I figure I have plenty of health to give me time to fire off another arrow to finish the job. Except that's not what happened. You might want to watch this in 1080HD to get the full effect. Me and My Dragon vs an Elder Dragon! (1:13) 1080HD

Naples, eh? Lehigh here, bud. Not far north of you at all. As far as the other three seasons are concerned, I don't mind spring or fall. In fact I'm very much enjoying the pleasantly cool weather we have been having lately, however if I have to give up spring and fall to get rid of winter - no problem! Actually come to think of it, winter is great as long as it stays in Skyrim! ha. Hellshade

Wow Mike, he looks fantastic. I'm not going to say the character face models are perfect, but they are one hell of an improvement over Oblivions. Keep us informed of how his travels go! Hellshade

That is soooo what I am going to do with my High Elf mage too. Great plan Mike! So, I'm walking along with Jenassa, my Dark Elf Thief companion and some NPC thief stops me on the road and threatens to kill me if I don't hand over my gold. I tell them to get lost and she attacks. Jenassa leaps to my defense and I figure I'll let the two thieves fight it out. What an awesome fight between two dual wielders! Blood spray everywhere. Short but brutal. Just how it should be. Jenassa rocked her world hard. Jenassa vs NPC Thief (0:40) 1080HD Hellshade

I think I'll be a werewolf with my mage. Perfect melee backup when the magic runs dry. Probably be a bit of suprise to the bad guys too! Hellshade

Despite being a Wood Elf, I'm with you BH. Yes, I should be on the imperialist side since they are basically the dogs of the Thalmor (elven) empire, but my character is more of an anarchist type. He doesn't want iron fisted rule by anyone, even his own kind. So stirring up rebellion of any kind helps keep things in a state of chaos, which means more freedom for him. I literally just joined the ranks of the Stormcloaks and haven't even gone through my initiation test yet (despite being level 31), but I've been wiping out Imperial camps wherever I find them in the wilderness and take great pleasure in killing Imperial dogs that are escorting Stormcloak prisoners about. And for whatever reason, I especially enjoy killing Thalmor. There's a particular quest where I had to try and negotiate the release of a Stormcloak NPC who was being held prisoner by the Thalmor. I negotiated his release by killing every last one of those snotty high born elves and walking out the front door, mission accomplished. In the majority of cases, I slaughtered entire rooms full of Thalmor by using surprise and supreme archery skills before a single one of them was able to close the distance to me. A few arrived nearly dead at my feet only to be thrown backwards by an arrow to the forehead (man is that ever satisfying!). My warrior type (whenever I get around to making him) will be a Nord so he'll Stormcloak too and I figure once I make a Mage, he'll be an Imperialist working for the Thalmor. Either way, sacking entire cities sounds fun as hell. God knows how many hours I have into this game and I don't feel like I've even scratched the surface of the potential. Hellshade

I know it's definately possible. I agree it wasn't any fun in Oblivion. Hopefully they took one of the many user created mods from Oblivion and modeled vampirisim after that. Hellshade

Mages sound damn fun BH. Im torn between a mage and a warrior type next...however long THAT might take considering how much fun I'm having with my sneaky archer. A few tips I've found that you might all know but I figured I'd just pass them along: 1. Recharging your magic items (weapons) with soul stones actually helps your Enchanting skill and can cause a skill up. 2. It seems if you want to use the grindstone on your weapons to improve them, you can only do it BEFORE they are enchanted, not after. I can make a sword "fine" and then Enchant it with Fire damage, but not the other way around UNLESS you choose the right Perks in Smithing. I think it requires a 60 skill in Smithing and the Perk to improve magical items. 3. If you see a whole bunch of books and wish you knew which ones were more likely to give you skill ups without reading every single book, just look at the value of the book as you move the cursor over the books themselves. If the book has a value of 50 gold or greater, it's highly likely to offer a skill up. 4. Not sure what the keyboard command is, but if using an xbox 360 controller and you have an arrow knocked in your bow, pressing X will deknock the arrow (and also put away charged spells that you haven't cast yet) so that you don't have to waste the ammo. 5. At the highest enchanting level (100) you can put two enchantment on every item. So if you're dual wielding 1 handed weapons, you could enchant each weapon to Absorb Stamina and Absorb Health, giving you back both every time you hit an opponent with either weapon. 6. You can raise your Illusion skill really fast by casting the low level Muffle spell repeatedly, which reduces the sound your armor makes when moving my 50%. However repeatedly casting Bound: sword doesn't have the same effect on Conjuration. Your conjured weapon or familiar seems to have to hit something for the chance to earn a skill up. Any tips you learn, pass em along. It's a big old world out the to explore! Hellshade

"What do you mean 500 gold isn't enough?!? Get back here!!!" It's so hard to find good help.

She is. She rocks as a tank but if you're a sneaky type like me, she blows your cover all the time by alerting mobs with her noisy armor and setting off traps. I'm having better luck with Jessana. She's a sneaky, dual wielding badass! A Dragon, a Troll and a Giant walk into a bar... Hopefully home insurance in this town covers Dragon attacks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE6wWSNkocQ Damn this crap is just neverending fun. Hellshade

I traded her in for Jenassa, who's a sneaky theif type like me. The monsters weren't noticing me, but Lydia made a lot of noise in Dwarven armor, so they noticed her pretty quick. Hard to get suprise. So anyways I enchanted a pair of one handed weapons with Life Drain ability and gave them to Jenassa, so each time she strikes an opponent, she gets 15 health back (with either weapon!). Then I made a necklace and ring that boosted her 1 hand weapon damage by 32% and 25%, respectively. Check out how she does alone against 3 Draugr in melee combat with a 4th shooting arrows at her from off screen. I use FRAPS to take screen shots. Not sure what they in game keyboard command is. Hellshade

Well for 500 gold you can hire a dark elf assassin type (the one I'm using right now) in Whiterun at the Drunken Hunter (?). Or if you want more of a fighter type companion, you can also do some quests for the Jarl of Whiterun, who is up in Dragon's Reach. That companions name is Lydia. There are plenty more but I'll let you find them. Hellshade

Welcome board the Skyrim train Shiloh. It's helping to pass the days and weeks (months?) until P4 ships! I traded in Lydia for a Thief type companion who dual wields weapons quite nicely. She isn't as sturdy as Lydia, obviously, but she's a bit like blender with a weapon in each hand, carving up the bad guys in no time at all. She also seems to set off a lot fewer traps than Lydia tended to, which is a big plus. Hellshade

Yes indeed WM. Happy Thanksgiving to all. I have many things to be thankful for, but not least among them is having found this fine forum. The OFF forum is all about laughs, knowledge and open minded discussions. A definate breath of fresh air compared to so many other forums, regardless of the topic, that exist out there. So thanks to you all for giving me a place to visit everyday that brings a smile to my face! Hellshade

A winning lotto ticket for the jackpot. Once I had that under my tree, I'm willing to waiting for everything else to show up in due time. Hellshade

I too am an old pen and paper D&D guy and having just turned 43 a few months ago, I was probably playing about the same time you were back in the day. I agree that this beautifully rendered, few restrictions, open world concept is exactly the type of fantasy RPG game I have been waiting for my whole life. Only now do they have the technology, skill and artistry to bring it to life like this! As for the game never being the same twice, it may be more true than you realize. I started a second character and made him a pure stealth / archer type. No magic at all other than alchemy potions to brew poisons with and enchanting to augment my gear. At any rate, when I went through some of the quests for the second time (such as to find a particular NPCs helmet), I went to where I found it the first time and it wasn't there. I thought "Must be a game glitch, oh well" and didn't think any more about it. Then a few hours later I found the helmet in an entirely different dungeon! The Radiant Story AI has the ability to change where quest items are for any of the non-main quests. It can change who gives you a quest, what they want and where it ends up being held at, so it's literally never the same game twice where you can memorize where all of the stuff always is. That surely adds greatly to the replayability since it keeps the "exploring" aspect of the game fresh. "Money well spent" would be an understatment, in my opinion. Let's just say it takes the edge off waiting for P4. Yes, I still want P4 like mad, but with Skyrim, the hours just tick by without me hardly noticing them. Hellshade

Crypt Shooting Gallery! Did I win a prize? Hellshade

Awesome video Mike! Thanks for sharing. :) Hellshade

I bought a house for my first character, however I decided to just travel light for my Wood Elf Archer. I'll probably get one eventually though. Have to settle down at some point, right? Well, I guess I failed my first real "escort" style quest. I got a quest to escort a pilgrim guy to the Evergleam. We made it almost all of the way there when the sound of the dragon roar filled the night sky. From out of nowhere it seemed the giant beast landed a scant few feet from me, kicking up a cloud of dust and shaking the very ground under my feet. Almost before I could react by getting my bearings and drawing the bowstring back, the pilgram charged the dragon bare handed! The mighty beast responded by unleashing a blizzard like spray of frost directly at the unarmed pilgram. Still the man did not let up, despite the withering frost, and continued his screaming charge - right into the dragons jaws. I reared it's head up high above us all, framed in the moonlight, then struck downward with open jaws and clenched firmly down on the head and upper torso of the pilgram. The was nothing I could do to save him, for even as I launched volley after volley of arrows into the great beast, it shook it's head relentlessly - no doubt tearing the man to shreds - and then flung him like a ragdoll at least a hundred feet away. Though in time we took down the dragon, the pilgram had met his end. Sadly, we were but 50 yards from the entrance to Evergleam. Faith is no substitute for common sense pilgrams! Hellshade

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

OCCUPY SKYRIM!!!!!!!! Who's With Me?!? None of these people look like they've showered in 2 months either.

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

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

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