Skyrim, or, How I Ruined My LifeFollow

Yeah I was working on enchanting to 100 on my thief yesterday. So I was just wandering the far out corners of the world for fun while filling soul gems. I found all kinds of neat stuff I had never seen. :)

My slow plan to inundate my roommate with Skyrim memes until he decided to buy the game since I'm too broke to do so has succeeded, and just in time for my vacation.

On my first character, I got jumped by a lone DB assassin very, very early in. I was actually on my way to Bleak Falls Barrow for the first time and he appeared out of nowhere and tried to do horrible things to me. I've seen console commands to adjust your notoriety but haven't really messed with any of that. I also came across a Bothiah (sp) zealot guy while doing a quest. He actually appeared near the entrance to the dungeon I was sent to and wound up fighting the NPCs there until he turned on me. I thought he was friendly because he was killing baddies until the baddies were dead and he ran up and started smacking me. The little details like that add a lot to the game.

Started a new character again today; redoing my thief character, making him a kitty with the conscience of a serial killer. If someone treats me with respect or gives a good quest, they live. If not, they die.

Early on I pickpocketed from Embry in Riverwood. An hour or so later, three hired thugs ganged up on me to take me out; their contract had his name on it. How does a drunk hire thugs? Beats me, but I murdered him for it. I also murdered Sven because I helped the elf and used him as a companion to distract the thugs; figured I should make sure that Sven never gets a chance to redeem himself for the girl they were fighting over. I also killed the lady who owns the mill, because ***** the Stormcloaks and their xenophobia. Killed a farmer on the way to dropping off a cow to a giant (killed the cow too). Now I'm thinking of killing every NPC in Winterhold... because there are only like 5.

It's pretty fun so far. And whoever told me that Sneak levels up insanely fast when you slaughter people was right. On early sneak attacks, I was getting 1-2 sneak levels each time I used it. Without really trying, I'm sitting around level 55 sneak already.

Generally speaking, those are only npcs central to main quests. Unfortunately, there are only two ways to find out without trying to kill them.

1. If on PC, use the isessential console command. A returned value of 1 means they are.

2. Apparently, if you have the master pickpocket perk "perfect touch," you still won't be able to steal their equipped gear (you'll get an alert to that affect, I think).

3. If you have completed a quest involving an npc, there's a decent chance you can kill them now. Essential status is usually removed when they are no longer needed to keep quest lines operational. At least, that's how it was in Oblivion--I imagine they would have kept it for Skyrim.

4. Look to see if they are on this list. Link contains spoilers.

Otherwise, I'm pretty sure essential npcs always accept a yield.

I believe that killing a guard automatically puts your bounty at 1000. Or, at least it's happened to me a few times (mostly by accident, but once when a guard gave me the sweetroll line and I just snapped).

I haven't found cause to do anything that would lead to an accidental guard slaughter yet. SpoilerWhile doing some of the Imperial quest fights involving friendly and enemy NPCs all over the place, I did on occasion splatter some of my allies, but that's because their uniforms look so damn similar from bow range. In those cases, nothing bad happened to me.

I've thought about shooting guards in the knee whenever they talk about getting shot in the knee, but that would just be mean...



I heard that transforming into a sweetroll will cause the guards to dogpile you. They've had that quest in their journal for ages, it would seem.

I'll just leave this here.

I'd assume it's for cases where you have a high intensity DoT effect?

The only use I have for that silly thing is distract dragons so can get all stabby with them. Horses are too damn slow and the controls are just odd. It's pretty much always a better idea to walk.

Agreed. Especially without being able to interact or fight from them...it's like being neutered when you ride. Add to that their wonky behavior, and I haven't bothered with one since I dismounted for the first time.

Check out armor and general store vendors if you need an enchantment. It seems their inventory is somewhat random and changes everyday, so I would warp around to all the different cities, talking to blacksmiths, looking to see who carried my enchantments.

I know I've seen muffle on boots before, not sure about other pieces.

Edited, Dec 5th 2011 11:41am by xypin