Sky-rant

[Blue Hasia]

yes mages are strong... its like i cast my fire spell on you and i can drain all my mana burning you and you still live but a few secs of them burning me and im dead

[Dhalin]

Figured out part of the problem with mages: While holding your shield up to block, hitting the sword button causes you to smash the enemy with your shield (though it costs some fatigue).

This interrupts enemy spellcasting and usually knocks people back a step for a second.

As far as the Draugr, I ran into a Draugr Scourge... they are MUCH stronger than normal Draugr.

[AmonGwareth]

You can fast travel to cities. But you have to visit them first. Which seems reasonable to me.

One big change from Oblivion that perhaps you are running into is that the difficulty of monsters does NOT scale with you throughout the world. So you WILL run into mobs that are too tough for you and often if you just go wandering and aren't paying attention.

Another thing is that I think they assumed you might spend some time doing the sub-quests around towns before moving on. For example, I stayed in the Jarl's town for a bit and am level 10 before I headed east to the Graybeards. And I stick to the roads much of the time when I do travel.

Archery is pretty easy! You just have to take distance into account. And yes, use your shouts. I also use a bit of magic (potions and a healing spell) despite the fact that my primary weapon is a sword. If you watch Lydia even she uses magic as well as a sword.

[Dhalin]

You can fast travel to cities. But you have to visit them first. Which seems reasonable to me.

One big change from Oblivion that perhaps you are running into is that the difficulty of monsters does NOT scale with you throughout the world. So you WILL run into mobs that are too tough for you and often if you just go wandering and aren't paying attention.

That's what I was saying -- the *major* cities should have been fast-travel from the start just like in Oblivion, though everything else should require you to visit it first. In Oblivion, that'd save you from being in, say, Leyawiin and get a quest that takes you to, say, Bruma (or worse, Cheydinhal to Anvil) and it is "OMG... that's going to take hours to walk there!"

Another thing is that I think they assumed you might spend some time doing the sub-quests around towns before moving on. For example, I stayed in the Jarl's town for a bit and am level 10 before I headed east to the Graybeards. And I stick to the roads much of the time when I do travel.

That's a bit of a poor assumption to make, though I'll admit I was level 10 before going to the Greybeards without doing all that many quests. Still though, ice trolls along the road to the Graybeards? When you only have 1 shout power that doesn't even phase them? When you're likely wearing Fur/Leather/Iron or maybe Steel armor at best? That seems a bit over-the-top. Oh, and the quests AFTER the Graybeards? Did em last night... they were *Easier*. Nothing in those quests (I did up to the Infiltrate the Embassy quest) came close challenge-wise to those two trolls on the way to the Graybeards. Not even the guards at the Embassy, despite them wearing elven armor/weapons.

Archery is pretty easy! You just have to take distance into account. And yes, use your shouts. I also use a bit of magic (potions and a healing spell) despite the fact that my primary weapon is a sword. If you watch Lydia even she uses magic as well as a sword.

It is easy until you have a dragon circling you at a pretty high rate of speed... then it is "meh, why bother, just duck behind a stone until it lands". Thankfully, dragon breath seems a lot weaker than mages' spells; I've killed 2 dragons now (one with help, one without) and both of them were wimps, they just take a long time to kill. They give lots of Archery levelups though!

It is pretty sad when a dragon is weaker than a troll. Even the one I killed solo posed no threat to me whatsoever. Never dropped below 75% health, only had to heal once.

Oh, that reminds me:

Why can't I use the Ethereal Form shout?

It says "Dragon Souls are required to unlock shouts", yet I've killed 2 dragons (it says I have 2 souls) and I still can't use it.

And I stick to the roads much of the time when I do travel.

The two trolls -were- on the roads to the Graybeards, but the Sabercat and Bear in my earlier post were not, but then this place I was trying to get to, didn't have a road to it... and that's another mini-rant: They could have highlighted roads on the map or something. Nice hi-res map, but too bad you can't see anything like, you know, roads marked on it. And the clouds on the map obstruct the view of a lot of the map too.

[Dhalin]

GAH, the Edit button disappeared... that's kinda lame.

Another small tidbit:

Skyrim, Y U NO HAVE STRENGTH SCORE!?

I'd like to be able to increase my carry capacity, but... no strength score that I can see, nor anything that raises it. Meh, I guess the only way I can increase my carry capacity is to get the heavy armor perk that makes armor weightless if worn...

Also, absurd item weights have made a comeback. IRL, I have a steel longsword. It has a huge ornamental handguard (which makes the sword a very poor weapon, it is mostly for display) and it only weighs, at most, 5lbs. It is larger/longer than the one-handed swords I've seen thus far in Skyrim.

So why are one-handed swords in-game (including Steel) twice as heavy?

[Frith-Rae]

Jeez does noone read the manual... =D

STAMINA effects your weight limit. There are ONLY THREE stats in the game - Stam, Health, and Magick. Why you think there is strength when there is no str stat anywhere in game I have no clue. The first time you level up and get to spend points - you only get to pick from Stam, Health, and Magick.

Which I think is dumb for an RPG but I guess they wanted to bring in the "FPS-RPG" type players by dumbing down the RPG aspects such as actual equipment SLOTS being displayed and things like...more stats..LOL :/.

So no, when you level put points in Stamina and your weight limit will increase!

Also - if you dont want to walk everywhere (and cant fast travel yet) - buy a horse. You can buy a horse at the 2nd town you go to (the one with Jarls). Cost 1000 gold. Which doesnt have to be a big amount if you finish the quests in your fist town and grab EVERYTHIING you can to sell it.

I left first town with about 2500 gold - all made by clearing the Bleak Barrows den or whatever the town sends you to go kill the bandits in. Kill those bandits and then clear the dungeon. Pick up everything that has gold value - when you hit your weight limit start picking and choosing smartly (i.e. the stuff that sells for 10 gold and weighs 5 gets dropped before the stuff that sells for 100 gold and weighs 25). Everything else but what I wear and use got sold.

Bam pony by the time I hit the 2nd town (those whiterun stables - they sell a horse there) with gold to burn left over (bought all the spell books in town hehe).

Havent done the first dragon part yet - spent most of a day running around Jarls-town picking up all the side quests and doing the quests that could get done in the town done (I joined the Companions hehe). When I get more playtime I will be pursuing a few of those side dungeon quests as well as the first dragon-soul.

Controls still frustrating me and I dont like the fact that we are limited to the 3 stats and the dumb carsel-wheel mechanic and dont have classes (I loved my battlemages in all the other ES games!!).

However, interesting that you feel your spells dont do much damage. First dungeon I went into my spells were kiling things in like 2-3 hits at most; significantly faster than the 1-handers. Even know with points spent in 1-h they are still hitting harder (the spells are). Heck I can hit a skelly once with the fire-spell (first one you get) and the DOT from him burning kills him pretty fast - I dont even have to hit him if I dont want to.

But no havent battled a mage yet . Just skellies, zombies, humans, duagor thingies whatever...some wolves...uhh..thats it. heh.

And the first t hing I learned - just because you mouse over something and its NOT red does not mean that yoou can pick it up without being caught for stealing. It doesnt have to tell you "steal" for it to be stolen. I picked up some jewlery in line of sight of someone because I thought it would NOT be stealing because the mouse-over wasn't the "red/steal" indication/command. Just the normal "take" and I was immdiately busted for stealing.

:/

Btw - anyone spent any points in the carosel-of-skills that they found was totally pointless or didnt make any difference? Or spend any of your points into something that made a huge difference?? (Me Im going for the heavy-armor-weighs-nothing so I can fill my packs with loot to sell instead of weighing myself down with my heavy armor lol)

[Dhalin]

I bought it off steam, so no paper manual here lol.

But I'll have to remember that stam=carry capacity thing, lol.

Also... no STEAM CLOUD!?

Lame lame lame.

They KNEW they were releasing the game on Steam, why on earth would they NOT make use of one of Steam's coolest features?

GAH.

They even have it for Morrowind and Oblivion, but NOT Skyrim!?

[Shian]

It says "Dragon Souls are required to unlock shouts", yet I've killed 2 dragons (it says I have 2 souls) and I still can't use it.

You need two things for a shout- a dragon soul and a wall word or three.

I'm really missing the paper maunal. Why can steam not offer a pdf copy? I would lave loved to know hours ago that there was an auto run or that stamina increased weight capacity. I would have changed my stats around. To further compound the issue I ran across a skillbook that told me it increased my strength! Bugged book?

As far as fast traveling goes, if you're lucky you'll find a carrage parked outside that will take you to all the major cities so you can get the marker. Wheeeee!

[AmonGwareth]

I prefer to hoof it to the towns the first time. You find all kinds of great locations along the way, gain a level or two, raise your skills, and earn some gold.

There is a manual for Steam. Go to the Skyrim page in your library, click on the "Manual" link on the right. That'll open it up and you can save it to pdf from there.

[Dhalin]

You need two things for a shout- a dragon soul and a wall word or three.

I'm really missing the paper maunal. Why can steam not offer a pdf copy? I would lave loved to know hours ago that there was an auto run or that stamina increased weight capacity. I would have changed my stats around. To further compound the issue I ran across a skillbook that told me it increased my strength! Bugged book?

As far as fast traveling goes, if you're lucky you'll find a carrage parked outside that will take you to all the major cities so you can get the marker. Wheeeee!

I have like 4 shout words I can't use and I'm holding like 4-6 dragon souls on me, but yet the shouts are still grey and can't be used, so eh... not sure what's up with that.

[Shian]

I have like 4 shout words I can't use and I'm holding like 4-6 dragon souls on me, but yet the shouts are still grey and can't be used, so eh... not sure what's up with that.

Hit R on a grey shout to use a dragon soul and unlock it.