Skyrim, or, How I Ruined My LifeFollow

I just started a new character to mess around a few days ago and have had a chance to figure out a few tidbits that are handy when playing a sneaky range build. For starters, you can "activate" torches on walls to put them out (you actually take them into your inventory but you can just drop them and they're no longer lit.) This can help with setting yourself up with a space with less light than normal since lighting influences how well enemies can detect you.

Also, if your sneak skill is high enough you don't have to LoS your firing spot...you just have to move far enough away from it that your enemies don't detect you when they run to where you were when you fired.

I mentioned this a bit earlier in the thread, but it bears repeating...you can distract enemies by firing at a spot behind them relative to where you're standing. They'll go to investigate where the arrow impacted which can help you create a larger gap and potentially get an extra shot in before you have to relocate.

Another sneaky trick that would classify more as an exploit than anything else is a way to level your archery to 50 fairly quickly/easily. In Riverwood is an elven dude named Laethal who is part of a quest. If you chose to finish the quest in a way that favors him, you can have him join you as a companion. Not only is this handy for early storage before you've picked up your first house, he's also an archery trainer. The trick lies in the fact that when he's your companion, you have direct access to his inventory. Pay him to train your archery and then tell him you want to store something with him. Take your gold back. Repeat. You can train 5 points to archery right away, and then every time you level up you can train 5 more points up to a maximum of 50.

I did like the Thieves Guild better in Oblivion. It had a much more Robin Hood feel to it, where we protected the poor beggars and fought back against corruption and cronyism. Now it's just "that guy has something nice and we want it, go beat the crap out of him".

Aurelius:

Breaking LOS was usually the simplest option because of several things:

- I'd fire from near a corner or stairs anyway.
- You can't remove some light sources.
- Gets you started on moving in case there was something else you didn't see that noticed as well. (I had that happen before...)

Yes, at higher skill ranks you don't need to break line of sight anymore...but it's still a good habit for survivability in case you missed something.
Archery was also ridiculously easy to skill up until around the 60s. No idea why.

Has anyone found a detect life spell? I'm thinking it'll be extremely useful for my thief/sniper, since getting too far into the light to try and find the enemies breaks stealth.

[EDIT]

And I get that they were going for a more visceral story. But it's absurd, to me, that the thieves guild is telling me to go commit murder and frame someone else for it.

Edited, Nov 26th 2011 11:28am by idiggory

I finished a quest last night that rewarded me with a detect life spell. I can't remember which one it was now though. I do wish you could bind spells to gear like Oblivion. A ring or something with detect life would be nice to wear if I were sneaking around.

Also their is a spoileriffic reason why when you first join the thieves guild things are running wrong.

You are using the PC. Isn't there a console command that let's you do it?

So, I accidentally just beat the game. Well, I guess "accidentally" isn't quite the correct term. Nor is "beating the game," as you can continue playing after. I knew I was on the main quest, but I expected it to last a bit longer. I had the same feeling in Oblivion, however, so I guess it makes sense. A lot is still unresolved, and I wonder how the course of events could have changed:

Spoiler1. I never started the Civil War stuff. Thus, I convened a peace council at High Hrothgar to keep Whiterun neutral until I could capture a dragon and fly to Svongard to stop Alduin. I figure this would be unnecessary if one side or the other had already won.

2. The Blades versus Greybeards thing kinda came out of nowhere. It was like "Oh, council is over. By the way, kill the leader of the Greybeards or we'll never talk to you again." What? I can't help but feel that the Greybeards are a lot cooler than the Blades. Either you get two middle-aged warriors with a cool (but ancient) secret base, or you get 4 priests whose very words shake their mountain base, headed up by a friendly dragon. Not to mention, the Greybeards keep telling me where to go to find Words of Power (perhaps Esbern does as well; I'd assume there's a Blades analog). But Delphine's insistence on killing the Greybeard dragon just goes a bit overboard for my tastes. I didn't do it; is there any penalty or reward for doing so?

3. In Svongard, I got to see Kodlak Whitemane from the Companions, and introduce myself as the leader of the Companions to Tsun. Do you get other options for completing other guilds' questlines? I was also a little disappointed that Kodlak didn't have any cues for me, nor did he seem to remember me. Bah!

4. Ending fight was ridiculously easy. Dragonrend, 5-6 power attacks, and game over. Helps to have amazing gear .

Finally, I think one of the best perks of enchanting is being able to rename items. All of mine have names I found humorous. A two-handed sword I enchanted is now "Overcompensation." The fine clothing I picked up from the Thalmor Embassy quest is renamed "Foppish Garb of the Nancies." I did give semi-serious names to my normal items though; my Daedric Sword with Fire and Fiery Soul Trap enchants is called "Dark Slayer."

My "completion" pretty much went the same- but I had done almost nothing else (no guilds, no civil war, etc) despite my 80+ hours of playing on this character... there are too many butterflies in this game. I've heard the Blades have a few extra quests if you join them, but I'm leaving that for my ******* character playthrough since the Blades are well... ****** Also, if the Blades serve the emperor, why can't I just royal-***** slap them into being good?

I've been a bit distracted with Star Wars this weekend, but Friday night I got pretty far. I finished the mage quest and enjoyed that quite a bit. Love the robes you get! I just wish they didn't have a hood so I could equip that scary looking mask you get as well. My mage is level 15, and I've gotten Enchanting up to level 45ish. I'm leveling it with smithing so I can make lots and lots of daggers for power leveling enchanting as I get more soul gems and enchants. I also got Impact and some new Destruction spells, and successfully killed two giants while kiting, which was a lot of fun. ^_^

Oh, and the dragon priest you have to kill for the mage college? Holy **** that was hard! I had to do the quicksave several times, and make lots of use of healing myself behind corners, and that spell that exchanges your health for mana. I normally use lightning spells, but it didn't seem to be doing much to her/him/it, so I switched to fire and that helped a lot. Still, I felt pretty damn good about myself when I finally got the ******* dead lol.

For some reason, I can't get the event to happen that starts the quest that lets me ultimately purchase the house in Windhelm. The dialogue option to purchase it from the Jarl's steward is available, but he keeps telling me that the house is unavailable.

Yeah, I've mostly played TOR this weekend too. Only really played Skyrim before I went to bed. Got an Inquisitor to 10 and my Trooper is at 13. Healing is quite fun in this game, since your resources are more dynamic than typical mana systems and you actually get to do damage as well.

Plus, being a healer as a trooper still means you carry around the massive autocannon.