First impressions

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As a spellsword you won't be flinging dangerous nukes all the time, so you can go with a melee follower.
Full-time ranged followers are great until you accidentally get into their line of fire, which happens more often when you melee. Of course if you're really good at remembering and mapping unit positions as you play you shouldn't have any problem with this. During your tests though if you suddenly find your hitpoints dropping for no apparent reason then its probably because your follower just hit you in the back with a crit.

Mages and other spellswords are a good alternative. Mages tend to keep their supportive spells to themselves though, I haven't met a mage follower who'll heal you. Unlike archers mages also seem to do a much better job at aiming their spells, and most of them can summon atronachs. BTW, you can also bring a war dog along with a follower.

 

Paracelsi,

So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that I can have a follower AND a war dog? And if my follower is a mage he/she can summon 1 (or more?) minions? And, I believe I read that as can summon up to 2 minions myself.

So if I got that right, I could have a "party" consisting of my mage, a mage follower, a dog, my 2 summons, and 1 or 2 summons of my follower. So, we're talking a group of up to 6 - 7 roaming the land together. Is that correct, or did I somehow completely misunderstand?

It would be cool to think that I could end up with a full party in this game, as party based games are by far my favorite.

 

Correct, although I think 6-8 would be the limit since AFAIK none of the mage followers are master conjurers (the perk that allows you to summon two minions is only available to master conjurers). You can get as many as 8 allies if both of your (necromantic) minions also happen to be capable of summoning minions of their own. I have personally never tried having more than 5 (me, war dog, follower, two minions). After I started playing on master difficulty the war dog, in particular, was dying too fast against higher level monsters. He was a great ally for most of early/mid game though.

There is a standing stone enchantment that allows you to revive all nearby dead corpses as skeletons I think (never tested it myself). The effect is temporary though, and can only be used once per day.

 

To avoid friendly fire, melee characters of any kind, with or without spells/ranged, are well advised to stick to mostly melee companions. Although definitions may vary, that's exactly what the game throws at you during the early levels unless you take a horse carriage to some far-off place and start exploring from there.

Although newcomers to the twitchy combat style may well end up landing their mace squarely at their companions (or even worse, at some innocent's) skull. *Guilty as charged, on many occasions*

 

Speaking of first impressions... this game world is expansive and filled with countless random encounters. How is it that Bethesda can create such a massive world that's so filled with variety, but Bioware's Dragon Age 2 seemed to struggle to deliver a world that is a fraction of the size, and even then was forced to reuse numerous maps all through the game? What am I missing?

Another observation... Skyrim does not pander. When your companions die, they don't pop back up 4 seconds after the fighting. They are... dead. As it should be.

 

Which is hilarious as Kev has equipped Lydia in full ebony armour and when she runs up to him after the fighting is finished he thinks she's another enemy and ends up killing her and having to reload

 

I finally reached lvl 50, right before I clocked in my 150th play hour.. I know, my pacing is below glacial speeds. And I still haven't even touched Solitude, Morthal, Markarth, Falkreath nor Riften.

It's becoming more and more obvious that translation team was given an impossible task - how to make ancient norse names sound reasonable for english-speaking voice actors. I can't claim I'd done any better job, just that I'm getting decent at guesstimating which name(s) they started up with in some cases. For example, my new follower, Jordis the Swordmaiden was most likely derived from Hjördis. In fact, I metagamed a bit - bad, bad me, I should've stayed away from FAQs for my first playthough - but I picked her as my future follower already around clvl 25 but had to get to clvl 50 first so that she'd spawn at max level. Nice to notice that the main reasons for picking just her were, in fact, her name, and to a lesser degree her.. eh.. formal qualifications rather than stats. RPG choices for a powergamer, GASP!

Speaking of powergaming, some apparent balance flaws have started to creep up from the bliss of ignorance of before. I can't fathom how Bethesda managed to get the whole armor rating/mitigation thing so upside down anno 2011 - yes, more SHOULD be better but by gods, not exponentially so. Also, percentual boosts to different things seem OK at first until you learn that pretty much anything combines multiplicatively. Didn't they get the memo from Blizzard's Diablo/WoW balance teams that such behaviour is a Bad Idea (tm)?

At least the Construction Kit is just around the corner so if nothing else, I can attack the most offending formulas directly and convert them into something my inner geek could live with. For now, I'll just have to live with being already at or fairly close to hard-capped in most things I care for until this first character's retirement looming on the horizon a few hundred hours later.

Other than that: My playcount all by itself and the sheer amount of awe-packed hours within them in particular ALREADY puts Skyrim squarely into the "you'd be a fool to pass this one out" category of awesome games.

 

It just dawned on me how you could use the overpowered crafting for actual RP purposes.

You could do an extreme longhaul playthrough by (for once!) accurately roleplaying a dual class character from D&D lore. Start as pretty much anything you like, put perks that benefit that particular playstyle etc just as normal, just do NOT raise Blacksmithing to 100 until you're nearing the switch over point. Just store away the ore "for the rainy day" as they say.

Once you switch over, you ought to be level 40+ if not 50+, depending on your main build. However, many of the skills you haven't used so far are rather low. Also, you NEED to advance in those mostly unused skills to be able to keep advancing in your levels. So, you "dual class" your character. Stop using whatever skills it was that you were using before and only use new ones.

Now for the actual trick: You've used most of your perk points into your previous career, so most of the stuff you're learning anew isn't going to be backed up by corresponding perks. But once you combine your newly minted 100 Blacksmithing (remember the stored ore?) with one or two other tradeskills, you don't even need to, as the items you create will be strong enough as they are.

This way you could, at least in theory, keep a meaningful progression curve for your character all the way to the upper 70s, without flatting out at 40-50, losing interest and rerolling your character.

 

150 hours is quite the feat Sir Rechet. Few games provide anywhere close to that much playtime these days.

I haven't managed to really get hooked on the game yet. I suppose this is mostly due to the fact that I've just been so busy lately, and even when I do have a few spare moments, I can't relax enough to sit down and game. It seems I'm getting too responsible for my own good in my "old age."

My character is currently level 7. I'm wondering if I should ditch the "spellsword" idea for my first playthrough and go straight mage -- seems like it might make for a more straightforward, focused first character. I've also been mostly wandering in the middle of nowhere, but am finding limited motivation to play in that way. It might be better if I do a few more of the main quests to get a better sense of what's going on in this world, and my place in it.

So far I really only know that there's a rebellion, I was about to be executed, and was saved (either by happy chance or divine providence) by a dragon. I've sort of been staying off the main path since then to lay low, but am finding that I lack any real direction at this point (RP wise, that is).

The axe and spell combo is okay, but I'm finding that I'm rather torn regarding what perks to take. I sort of am interested in conjuration so I can get a party. Destruction seems like a must for a mage. 1 handed fighting is also a must for a spellsword.

I'm not likely to invest in illusion. I'm torn regarding alteration as it seems so darn useful. Of course, restoration seems worthy of some attention. But then there's enchanting and armor-smithing that seem really worthwhile. And because I'm pretty new to Elder Scrolls, I'm really not certain if they perks that "seem" great will be as useful as they appear. So I'm rather second guessing myself on what the build plan should be for my character.

That's when I start thinking that a pure mage, which eliminates 1 handed perks and possibly even armor perks, might be a better choice overall. Decisions, decisions.

I'm also torn on armor type. Some say heavy is the way to go, others say light. I'm really not sure either way just yet.

On another note... where are the hot keys in this game? Where is the User Interface? It seems like I'm having to jump into menus every time I want to use a different spell. It's sort of cumbersome and anti-climatic. Can I not have at least like a 2 or 3 presets that I can hotkey? Something like pure mage (2 destruction spells - hotkey 1), spellsword (destruction spell and axe, hotkey 2), and utility mage (healing spell and crowd control, hotkey 3), etc. is something that I am very much missing right now. Is there a way to set this up in game? (I'm playing on the PC, if that wasn't obvious)

 

You need to Favorite the spells/weapons/items you want to hotkey (press 'F' when it's selected). Once back in the main game, press 'Q' to access the Favorites pop-up. As you press a number key between 1-8 in THAT list, you assign a hotkey and can fast switch between them with a single keypress from the main game screen.

The most specialization you pretty much EVER want to do is around three to five different skills at once. Also, Lockpicking and Speech are pretty much impossible to avoid, so you may end up with 7 without even trying. Just don't try like ten different skills at once just for the sake of leveling up "fast". Rather, make sure that you keep a decent [Main Skills] vs [Everything else] ratio so that you'll be able to actually kill the stuff the game throws at you. The only thing your LEVEL buys you is tougher opponents.

 

Thanks for the info. I will definitely play with the hotkeys! This is great to know.

As for number of "skills," I had thought that the number of skills you dip into was really secondary to picking the specific perks you are interested in. Or in other words, just because you are putting points into destruction, you might not necessarily want to choose every single perk within that family, as it might not be critically important to your play style, and therefore, putting points into other skills might be a better choice. Some of the builds I've looked at, which "seem" viable, have certain skill trees completely trained, while others only train the perks that will give a large bang for the buck.

Interesting that you are indicating that speech ends up being an important skill. I was sort of hoping that I could get through the game just by raising the base skill level, and not buying any perks. Yet another thing to consider. Similar thinking with lockpicking.

 

Speech is not an important skill, he just wrote that you end up using speech whether you plan to or not as you use it every time you buy or sell anything.

 

Oh, don't mix skills and perks.

What I'm saying that just because you CAN increase your level by dabbling in other than your main set of skills, it's not necessarily going to make things easier for you, quite the contrary in fact. Yes, you get a boost to your life/magicka/stamina, but you'll meet considerably harder opponents as well. If challenge (or loot) is what you want, by all means, go ahead.

Speech is rather unavoidable SKILL (as trading of any kind increases it), but IMHO its perks aren't all that important. So no matter how your designed perk build looks like, it pays to note that you'll end up with moderately high Speech skill and a few extra level-ups it brings anyway.

Likewise with Lockpicking, it's a rather sizeable source of early income even without going into burglary or theft, so many people get moderately decent skill level without even really trying.

 

Yep, your speech skill will slowly but steadily increase unless you make it a point never to visit merchants. BTW it helps if you don't sell relatively expensive items in bulk, as far as I can see your speech skill has a chance of leveling per transaction. By transaction I mean every time you click and sell an item. So if you have six expensive items (the option to sell in bulk appears when you have more then 5 copies of the same item) then there's a chance you'll get more than one speech skill increase if you sell each item separately.

 

I think it is affected by the value of your transactions. One big or many small ought to be the same but I am not sure.

I am on my way to start my stealth character now. I will do my utmost to avoid blacksmithing and enchanting, will try to actually get some use out of alchemy for once. Light armour, archery, one handed, alchemy, sneaking will be my main focus and if possible maybe put some perks in lock picking or speech just for funsies. I have one problem though, as a stealth character you use skills from two stones and the lover's stone is not an option as it makes it impossible to gain resting bonus. If I take the stealth stone my "non" combat skills will go up quicker than my combat ones which can be risky. What did all of you playing stealth characters end up doing?

 

Your backstab damage is based on your stealth score, so I think you should stick with the thief stone unless you decide to start using magic. You can use the surplus gold you get form raising alchemy to boost your one-handed/two-handed weapon skills and light armor skill. If you hire Faendal there's currently a bug that allows you to retrieve any gold you pay him to raise your archery skill (up to 50, iirc). Free skill ups.

Alchemy is best paired with speech, since unless you decide to visit a lot of the major holds early on then you won't find that many merchants interested in buying potions.
Alchemy's strength is based on two things: making gold, and making really powerful potions. The former is easier if you have the Haggling, Allure and Merchant perks, and much more convenient if you have the Investor and Master Trader perks (there's a total of around 7 or so merchants in the Whiterun/Riverwood area, which means you won't to visit 4 different holds repeatedly just to sell all your potions).
Alchemy is unmatched when it comes to boosting your abilities. The fact that the thief stone improves alchemy means that it also, indirectly, boosts your combat skills. You should be making potions that boost your weapon damage by more than 100% as early as level 20-ish, depending on perk investment. With all the gold you'll be making from alchemy/speech you won't even need enchanting/blacksmithing until you decide to start crafting end game items. You can simply buy whatever you need, and get a home/horse while you're at it.

 

Okay... I didn't realize that there was a sort of "level scaling" going on in this game. So... I guess the issue with dipping into a lot of skills then is that those other skills will have lower values, and therefore increase faster? Which means leveling faster, and the game becoming much more challenging very quickly?

If I'm understanding that correctly, what's to stop you from increasing those other skills once you hit max level (level 50, I believe)?

It seems like the mechanics of leveling up are very different from any game I've played before. It's probably best that I not worry about them too much at this point... as I could really get obsessive over a game system that I don't really understand yet. It's probably best to make a few mistakes, learn exactly how it all works, then start a new character.

But I'm rather trying to make as few mistakes as possible just the same.

 

My first impressions (5 hours of playtime):

I don't see any connection between my character and the "main quest". I'm told to go to places, speak to x and do y, but why, and why me, is completely obscure. There seems to be no important character. Not even me, I'm some random bloke accidentally sentenced to death for an unknown reason. I accidentally stumble into tasks that I may elect to do if I so feel like it; the main quest is just one of them.

It seems they purposefully made the "main quest" feel like something optional, entirely on the same level of urgency as climbing that mountain in the distance or setting that rabbit on fire, i.e. it doesn't matter.

As such Skyrim is true to Elder Scrolls tradition: very weak narrative, open world for you to explore and do whatever you like.

Except, after 5 hours of playtime, "whatever I like" seems to mainly consist in fetching that random priest's ring, that random mercenary's sword, and long trecks in the tundra. Quests are of the type you'd expect to find in an MMORPG, except this is single-player. They're all eminently unrelated to each other; they don't have any influence on the world, the "story". They're just... "there". Also, in my short playtime I encountered several bugs and weird things already*; if this is at all representative of the overall quality of the product, I say it's far from polished.

I could bear all that if character development was exciting; if there were exciting abilities or spells to unlock. So far though, each level is just added stat points and greater damage per second. Knowing that everything levels with me, these don't really mean anything, so the feeling of progression is just not there.

I can't say I'm disappointed, because having played Morrowind and Oblivion, this is exactly what I was expecting, but some part of me was still hoping for a pleasant surprise. I don't understand how anyone can like this. It fails at everything I look for in an RPG:
- narrative (characters, plot, dialogue)
- feeling of gaining in power
- exciting combat

The only thing it really has going for it is the soundtrack, which I often listen to while at work; Jeremy Soule has really outdone himself on this.

*
- the game just closed (not crashed, closed!) while I was fighting a troll.
- several bugs in the "Laid to Rest" quest, documented here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_talk:Laid_to_Rest

 

The game doesn't scale completely, it isn't like oblivion. The system is pretty complicated I at least felt a progression in power until I was way too powerful even on master for the game.

 

Both yes and no. Your character level rises as you reach a certain, ever increasing amount of "experience" from your skill-ups. However, gaining a skill-up in a low skill doesn't give much exp at all, while skill-ups in the 90+ range give a lot.

Generally, you get a level-up from about 10 level-appropriate skill-ups, but you might need as few as 4-5 (say, powerleveling Smithing to 100 at low level) or as many as 30, 40 or even more (boosting low, unused skills when you're already level 50+ due to your main set of maxed skills). Or looking it the other way around, going from 15 to 100 in Smithing can net upwards of 10-15 level-ups for a low-level character, while someone already in their 50s will only gain a few.

To answer your question: Don't fret about it, minor dabbling all across the board for the sake of testing isn't going to change much as you don't get to very high skill by just dabbling. EXCEPT for Speech and Lockpicking as you have to really go out of your way to avoid them, as noted above.

But just because you need exactly 100 skills in precisely everything to ultimately reach level 81 -- if you even WANT to play that long, mind you -- it's not necessarily a good idea to go out of your way to try to boost them all at once. Rather, concentrate on your main skills until you have your main skills at or nearing maximum.

If, and only if you feel like the game isn't challenging enough on Master level should you consider powerleveling your secondary skills for "free" level-ups. Quite the opposite from most other RPG leveling systems, eh?