Skyrim, or, How I Ruined My LifeFollow

It's so easy to get distracted. I've been trying to focus on leveling enchanting which involves fast traveling around and buying up all the empty petty/lesser soul gems I can get my hands on and then cruising the wilds splattering critters to fill them up but then I see a cave or a fortress or something marked on my compass that I want to "discover" so I can fast travel back to it later and clear it and zoom...half an hour goes by chasing after stuff to discover.

Shadowmere is a ******* horse.

Exactly! They were aiming for something else. Alderaan got in the way.

Someone sneezed on the Mr. Radar and they mistook the snot as a giant enemy vessel.

I'm on the verge of completing the quests necessary to buy a house in Markarth, and am wondering if it is worth it or should I just save my money for a better house. If so, which house should I be aiming at in regards to storage and crafting points.

You shouldn't, they're cannon fodder. They drop quite a bit of gold, too. They're blind, but apparently being unable to see didn't cause an uptick in their other senses, because they just can't seem to detect you at all. I'm thief spec'd, so your mileage may vary, but I was able to sneak around directly in front of them without being spotted.

You can snipe them to your hearts content, pretty much. They aren't fast, and you should be able to drop them all long before they even get an inkling of where you might be. If they get on you, they still shouldn't be much worry; my thief held his own against 2 at a time. Any more than that and they might be a danger to you, but that's a relatively easy situation to avoid. They're good money, and I built up a lot of sneak skill around them. I wasn't nearly as thief-y when I first started dealing with them.

As part of the thief quest you run into stronger versions of them in large groups, and those are parts when I'd say it's advisable (and pretty darn easy) to sneak past them.

Edited, Nov 28th 2011 10:40am by Eske

The falmer aren't bad- they are creepy, but easy... it's the chaurgus creatures that you should be afraid of.

I'm beginning to suspect that I'm relatively gimped for not powering through smithing and enchanting. 40 damage would be a lot for one of my weapons.

At level 30, I'm rocking a 36 +10 magic damage bow. Honestly though, it's been performing just fine for me. I wonder if things would be too easy with anything stronger.

Edited, Nov 28th 2011 1:24pm by Eske

It has a lot to do with how you spend your perks and what enchants are on your gear. Like if you put points into the bottom of the archery tree and have a helm with +30% bow damage your base damage on that bow will show higher. But yes you can easily break the game on normal difficulty by stacking that kind boost. I'm having more fun doing it pretty organically on my thief. I'm letting skills rise by gameplay and not power leveling anything.

I'm wearing mostly Nightingale but using the Broho hood + gloves for the bow damage/backstab boost. I did take smithing just high enough to improve magic items and my nightgale bow base is like 50 ish. Which is just about right for me at my current mid 30's level. I have an Ebony bow I picked up that is a couple points higher but I just use it for soul trapping becuase I like the Nightgale bow.

As for Falmer. I have a tendency to read some of the books. Pretty interesting lore on the Falmer and Dwemer. SpoilerI thought they were just goblins but turns out they are elves that once ruled Skyrim until the nords drove them underground and they made an alliance with the Dwemer. Then the Dwemer screwed them. Man getting way down into the underdark past the Dwemer architecture some of those area's are HUGE. Reminds me a bit of the deep roads but still very cool.

Oh and another book I found really interesting was on the subject of Alduin and Akatosh. Potentially big spoiler alert: SpoilerThe theory is that Aldiun is Akatosh! But the debate on the history and use of the words leaves some room for interpretation. Some think Alduin is a counter to Akatosh like the devil but the author of the book believes they are actually one in the same great dragon. I have nto finished the main quest past my first fight with the big guy though so I am looking forward to see if anymore of that is revealed.

Yup.

I'm level 48 so powerleveling ench/smith/alch is just another thing to do. I'm thinking though that I might bump up to a higher difficulty when I'm finally finished with all of them just because the damage output I have is going to be near insanity.

Man I can't even imagine having 5/5 one handed damage perk, plus full +one handed damage on your gear and a dagger at legendary status with the 15x perk as well as the double backstab gloves. Even now I'm doing like 1500 a backstab, with all of that it would easily breach the 4k damage range.

EDIT: The theives guild has a quest where you get some pretty interesting info on the falmer. Won't say which one but it's relatively early.

Edited, Nov 28th 2011 1:33pm by ArexLovesPie

I didn't even get to play today.

My base sword damage is like 93. With my armor and perks, it's around 237. And that's not even cheesing the enchants to get them stronger than 40% to one-hand on all available pieces. It was still enough to 2-shot every non-dragon, non-boss enemy in the game (dragons and bosses took 3-4; final boss took 6).

If you want a good enchant for weapons, by the way, find the fiery soul trap enchant. It deals 10 fire damage and puts the soul trap effect on for X seconds... but decreasing the power of the enchant only decreases how long soul trap lasts, not the damage. That means you get a few hundred uses at the "weakest" level, and they all still do 10 fire damage. Totally awesome. Plus, makes it very easy to fill soul gems.