First impressions

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What mobs have the highest level souls? I got Azura's Star and am thinking about pimping up my gear a bit. Up to now I have only worn rewards and stuff I made mostly to level. I am lvl23 with 60 skill I think in enchanting is it worth it to start going for stuff to use or should I wait until I max enchanting and then go hunt the big souls? Is there any ranged soul trap spell? I am not comfortable in melee range of any mob whose soul is worth stealing which has led me to not steal as many as I should have. Will I ever be able to enchant my own stuff to be better than the robe and mask I got for finishing the college? The archmage robe is pretty bad ass and the mask with 100% mana regen is both good and looks awesome (even if it now and then is invisible and takes my head with it). I think this is one of the things I like the most with the ES games, your character actually looks cool. Not like in Dragon age where your character looks awful no matter what you do. My dream would be to enchant a simple black robe and hood with some kick ass chants cause honestly, what can beat a black robe and hood for a mage?

 

Mammuths have grand souls so they are, to my knowledge, the easiest to farm since there are so many around whiterun.

I don't think there are any ranged soul trap spells, but why not enchant a bow?

I dont think you can make a better robe than the archmage one. Iirc there's no enchant that decrease cost on all spells so at best you can make a robe that decrease cost on one school and increase mana regen. Not sure though as I've never played a mage so haven't bothered to check.

 

Was afraid of that, was afraid that I had gotten the best piece of mage gear at level 18 or so I was when I was made archmage. That is one disapointment, the college quests are short, few and not very satisfying but I guess it fits with the setting and with wizards being frowned upon.

 

Hotkeying 1-8

1: mark weapon or spell as favourite.

2: press in play q and label the favourites as 1-8

3 double tap to move weapons/spells to offhand.

 

I have a disk and it installed from the disk but Steam does activate and does an automatic update. Be careful as I understand there is a program that makes it possible to play without going to Steam. I understand that hte qutomatic patch contrevenes this and can cause problem.

My Impression of the game.
I started it on my desktop which has a Radeon Video Card and it was absolutely fantastic. However that machine is currently in the hospital and I am playing it on an inexpensive laptop. Graphics are not good and neither is sound quality. Otherwise I find it the best RPG game I have played in a long time. It rivals Baldur's Gate except in companions and their dialogue. No game I have played has reached BGs standard when it comes to dialogue.

The quests are interesting. Their are choices to be made in many of them. The Thieves Guild is greatly improved. True criminals. The campanions are not an off shoot of the Fighters Guild as some speculated but have an ancient history. I haven't joined the Legion or Stormcloaks yet so can't judge. Neither have I joned the Mage Guild. My character is a rogue. A female Khajiit.

I have not downloaded any mods and will not until I have played the game thoroughly and enjoyed what Bethesda as done. They have fixed almost all the things I didn't care for in Oblivion. The horses are great, have reins and are easy to manuver. I didn't care for the dog companion, the barking annoyed me and it kept getting in the way.

What I would like added: Pack animals, saddle bags. Fur clothes for people and a nice alpine meadow. I hope modders will remember that this Skyrim, not Cyrodill/Oblivion and not Fallout. There will also be an official patch out soon.

Skyrim is an unique place, reminds me of Alaska where I lived for a year and a half.

 

Nice to see you around Nakia! One thing people should pay attention which I didn't are the standing stones and their bonuses. I played up to level 23 without any bonus from them and there are some pretty sweet ones. Apparently you are supposed to find them right after you escape from Helgen but well, I didn't and was wondering when they would come into play. Could have been a bit more obvious in their implementation in my opinion.

 

If you follow the path from Helgen to Riverwood you will walk right past three stones standing together (warrior, mage and thief). If Raloff is with you he will comment on them and IIRC you'll also get a pop-up telling you about standing stones .

 

Nowai!

 

I've always hated the Elder Scrolls games and preferred party based RPGs ala Baldurs Gate/Dragon Age, but Skyrim... dayuuum this is easily the best RPG I've ever played. The game world is incredible, weather effects and all. This will also be the first RPG where I actually feel like I'm playing a proper rogue. I could spend hours picking locks and stealing other people's stuff!

 

Still having a blast and discovering more and more things I want to do. The more I finish the more things I discover. Other characters are put on hold indefinitely. I just spent a few hours walking around in the amazing, wonderful, beautiful, eerie underground zone of Blackreach looking for flowers and I have just entered the den of the Dark Brotherhood which seems to be a true gang of evil psychotic killers and not the "noble" cool guys assassins are often portrayed as.

 

That's sold me.

*gets out his wallet and heads to the car*

 

Well, I just thought I would continue to lavish praise upon this game. There are several things with this game that I find to be rather "meh" the entire shout thing which is pretty central is nothing gets me going at all. I am not very fond of the settting with snow and ice at all. I play with constant freeze lags as soon as I move around in the world and I have to constantly return to my base to unload my inventory. I find the levelling system to be a bit limited and simplistic and the fact that you gain levels from accidentally improving skills you do not really like is a bit annoying.

Despiteall this I am again constantly blown away by the level of detail and the amount of content in Skyrim. I just mastered the master level destruction spells and they are awesome. The variety of the quests and the sheer overwhelming abundance of quests means that there is always always something to do. The combat is fun and challenging, I love the fact that I as a pure mage can summon demons who will kill me with one blow if I piss them off. No weakling summons here but powerful entities that can stand toe to toe with your foes. I have purposefully put off finishing the main quest because I want to finish my character before and I am getting close but there is SO much more to do. This is by far the best singleplayer RPG since BG2 although the comparison is not really valid as they are very different games but it blows away everything Bioware has done and I really liked Mass Effect 1 and 2 but they were ultimately short games. If you just do the main quest in Skyrim you get as much playtime and as much roleplaying as one whole ME or DA game but add to that ten times more content, factions, caves, forts and thousand upon thousands of things to discover. I am in awe of what this already amazing game could have been if they had gotten everything right but even as it is you have an amazing time playing it.

Sorry for the rant but there are so many people on this board lamenting the lack of good games that I really do not think you can pass this one up. Bethesda has managed to make a deep, huge, intriguing role playing game while at the same time giving it mass market appeal. I was worried about that I thought the game would lose itself trying to please everyone but it hasn't. A complete "newbie" can play this just looking for the cheap, quick fixes they usually get from Modern Warfare or Call of Duty and have a good time but at the same time the hardcore rpg gamer looking for depth and story can spend countless hours in Skyrim and it works for both.

 

I honestly can't believe this forum isn't blowing up here.

Skyrim is the best RPG to come out in YEARS. It is better than either Dragon Age game - and you guys know how much I love Origins. Considering all the complaining we've seen around here the last few years, that there's no decent RPGs anymore, we get the motherload and this forum is essentially dead.

Why?

 

Because it's so good we're playing it instead of posting about it on a forum

 

Skyrim is easily the best game to come out this year. Arguably the best rpg to come out in the last 10 years too. Might be that the Witcher games are better. i wouldn`t know, since i haven`t played them yet. The fact that Skyrim is as good as it is, also fills me with a feeling of dread. I can not for the life of me see how the next Elder Scrolls game can top this.

 

I can, there are SO many things they could improve. The step from Oblivion to Skyrim was one where they took most of the best things from Oblivion and left the bad to make Skyrim but there still a few good concepts from the old ES games they could re-implement but as long as they give us a huge game world to explore I am happy. Make the same game but in a more interesting setting without to many boring draugrs and if they are going to jump several hundred years between each time maybe technology could move just a tiny bit.

Super-awesome as Skyrim is I think it is definitely toppable.

 

@ Tal,

That's not really what I meant. I was more referring to our existing community, including our dormant members. I wasn't really expecting an explosion in NEW traffic due to Skyrim.

The fact that the BG2 forum here has seen more action in the last month than the Skyrim forum is just downright odd to me. Such a great new game - after years of people here complaining about no great new games - and it feels like only about 6 of us are playing it. Where's Chandos? Nakia? Aldeth? I know Falstaff is a fan of the series, though he's been out of play here for some time.

 

I think there are a number of factors:

1. The one thing most of us at SP have in common is that we’re fans of ad&d games, so in that regard, SP is still largely a d&d site (as evidenced by your observation about the BG2 forums). Yes, there is cross-over to other RPG’s, but to a lesser extent.
2. Skyrim is still a new game, and I get the impression that SP’ers are generally content to wait awhile before picking up a new game (I certainly fall into that category).
3. If people are looking for information, they are likely going to go where they think they’ll get answers. For example, a few months ago, I asked about mods for Oblivion, and I got a grand total of 2 responses – one from you, and a belated one from Merlanni. Now it’s not that both answers weren’t good (they were), but with the number of mods out there, I was kind of expecting more responses, and when I didn’t get them, I was frankly a bit disappointed (whether that disappointment was justified or not is kind of beside the point). So I am not likely to look here for answers to questions on ES games. (I know that sounds kind of “pouty”, and that isn’t my intent, but the reality is that I’ll go to where the action is.)
4. Once (if) Aldeth starts posting, you’ll have analyses coming at you left right and centre.