Skyrim Special Edition

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Went to Tovald's cave, was doing alright until I made it to Tovald's Gap.

My companion Lydia got raped instantly and I had to retreat up a ramp and pick them off one by one with my archery. Pushed on a little bit and I get fucked whenever I go out of a little hut I decided to sleep in.

I just get gang raped by falmers and Chaurus pricks. My gear is shit as I'm only level 11 and just started binging on alchemy plus I have no food or health potions.

Not sure what to do.

Might look at the mods tomorrow and see if I can get like a cave portal or something. I can't be arsed attempting to push on or try to find my way back.

[Disco]

Just re-load.

[Raoul Duke]

Just maxed out alchemy. Now I am richer than god

Hey peasants, buy my magic cordial for eleventy billion Septims. Cheers

[Raoul Duke]

Been cracking through this over Xmas, although still not actually finished any of the major questlines/guilds. Maxed out alchemy, smithing and enchanting and have some phenomenal gear. Most things go down after a couple of swings now.

Been levelling up Pickpocket today, which is something I'd ignored previously. It's actually pretty neat and has some great perks in the tree. Being able to flog anything to anyone (via the Speech tree) is really handy for ransacking a town and making a shedload selling all my ill-gotten goods.

[Yevrah]

If you've maxed out alchemy presumably you're not short of a bob or two anyway?

[Raoul Duke]

Nah, I'm wedged. Just enjoying the thieving aspect of it really.

[Yevrah]

After burning out on Fallout 4 and its settlement management I decided to start a game of this.

I fancied playing (or at least starting with) the base game so no mods have been added and it's Legendary difficulty. I have decided to resurrect some of the mental self-imposed rules that I played to on the 360 version, which strangely came back to me quicker than trying to ride a bike. Namely:

• No fast travel
• Have to eat and drink at least once a day
• Need to sleep in a bed for at least 6 hours a day
• Need to be taught a few levels of a skill by an NPC before I can use it
• No alchemy until the mage's gild questline is finished
• No buying smithing ingredients
• No theft, which includes plants, barrels etc. that are clearly part of a town/someone's house, even if they're not marked as such

There are probably more as I get into it, but that's all I can recall for now. I've spent the first 4 days of the game scavenging around Riverwood and Whiterun, wearing a tattered tunic and footwraps whilst wielding an iron dagger, and am now chopping wood as I type this so Faendal can teach me 35 levels of archery.

It's quite fun.

[Raoul Duke]

What are you playing as?

I haven't played for a few days as I've been finishing up my season in FIFA. Been ploughing through Dawnguard when I was on this though, and also went to my first Dwemer ruin

[Yevrah]

I'm playing as a Nord with reasonably long (brown) hair and red face paint.

It's funny going back to this after Fallout 4, in that it's immediately apparent how right Bethesda got the living, breathing world in this and how much they muffed that for Fallout 4.

I've done a handful of quests so far (mostly misc ones in fairness) but haven't had to kill anyone yet and I can't recall ever doing two quests in a row in Fallout 4 without smearing someone's face all over the scenery.

[Raoul Duke]

Yeah - FO4 definitely suffered from the KILL EVERYONE vibe. Very few could be done peacefully, but I guess that's a reflection on the violent/harsh environment. Skyrim is kinda default nice and ok.

[CJay]

Not SE, but I've started playing this again. Currently playing a female sword and board Nord. I'm not perking heavy armor, however, so I'm relying pretty heavily on block to mitigate damage. Makes fights longer and more tactical. I often work to clear out the weakest enemies first so I can go one on one with the strongest one. Throwing in restoration spells for crowd control in draugr crypts and vampire lairs.

[Raoul Duke]

@Yevrah - you know there's a Survival Mode in Skyrim Creation Club? I just spotted it when I was loading up a save.

[Yevrah]

Yeah, I did. It’s not very good sadly.

[Yevrah]

Went back to this and had another go at the Survival mode and it's not that bad. Using the self imposed rules below and playing on Legendary:

Need to be taught a few levels of a skill by an NPC before I can use it
No buying smithing ingredients

Done the usual archery rinsing of Faendal and am now closing in on level 8 as a result.

[Disco]

I had the urge to play this just the other day after failing to get Oblivion working sensibly. I'll likely end up faffing about with mods for a couple of hours, play five minutes and give up.

[Ian]

Ah, my current Crusader Kings 2 playstyle.

[Yevrah]

Inspired by Many a True Nerd’s massive Skyrim Magicka based let’s play I started again as a High Elf who uses a sword when his Magicka bar runs dry.

Never relied this much on Magicka before and it’s great fun.

[Yevrah]

Zyliath the High Elf if anyone fancies it:

https://mixer.com/40575248

[Raoul Duke]

Missed it

I've still got to finish up my Khajit playthrough. I'd hit god tier by this point and was just wandering around splattering everyone with a giant hammer. Need to finish Dawnguard.

[Yevrah]

Back on again now.

[Raoul Duke]

Inspired by Many a True Nerd’s massive Skyrim Magicka based let’s play I started again as a High Elf who uses a sword when his Magicka bar runs dry.

Never relied this much on Magicka before and it’s great fun.

Definitely just saw you use a bow then

You should try Conjuration. You can get some awesome multiple-character fights going once you've got a sidekick and a familiar

[Yevrah]

Yeah, bizarrely I haven't found any conjuration spells yet. Which sucks a bit.

[Raoul Duke]

The Jarl's wizards normally have a bunch?

[Yevrah]

Holding fire on visiting him just yet. So maybe not so bizarrely then.

The game's so easy on any difficulty other than Legendary (which is just shit) I need to make my own pain.

[Yevrah]

Fuck this game still looks stunning at times.

[Raoul Duke]

What are you saving all these perks for?

[Yevrah]

Not sure yet. Still getting to grips with how Survival works (as you can see from me trying to get rid of fatigue by sleeping on a bed roll) so don't want to commit at this stage, albeit I might have to to beat this fucker in the mine.

[Yevrah]

Up to level 16 with my Elf mage and haven’t used a single perk point yet.

Fully immersed in the world again and can’t wait for TES6 as a result. If they sort the combat out it could be absolutely phenomenal.

[Yevrah]

My High Elf is coming on nicely, just shy of level 27 as I type.

Cleared out most of the Falkreath area but am yet to unleash the dragons by progressing the main quest. Got my house in Falkreath sorted and have set up a vegetable soup and Damage Magicka Regen production line.

One thing I did notice that was odd is that the soul trap enchantment works best when you max the charges and min the time to trap to 1 second. Which I can't recall doing before.

[phonics]

Did you ever play the MMO Yev? I've heard its quite good these days.

[Alex]

I had a bit of a phase of almost getting back into this a couple of months ago but I just kept getting several hours into a save and not being able to resist the nagging feeling that I should restart as a different kind of character (this happens to me annoyingly often whenever I'm playing an RPG) and in the end I decided to just leave it alone.

I was using the survival mode they've added in though (on console, I now you can get all kinds of mods that achieve this on PC) and it was quite good. I didn't seem as good as I remember Fallout 4's being, but it still added a nice extra dimension to things.

I might go back to it yet. Just typing the post it making me want to, actually. The closest I came to being happy with a build was a big, two-handed Orc warrior. They have the best racial ability by a mile with the "berserker rage" thing. Especially playing with the difficulty pushed up a notch or two. Activating that could really get you out of a tight spot.

[Yevrah]

I could have written that post myself Alex. Sounds remarkably similar.

I did a while back Phonics, and it was definitely shit then, but I too hear that it's got much better. That it has loads of Tamriel in it is really appealing.

[Yevrah]

Oh and I didn't think it was that great to start with but the Surival mod through the creation club is really quite good. The food and sleeping is pretty standard, but the cold aspect to it adds a great level of immersion and creates moments of jeopardy in the game that just wouldn't be there without it.

Thoroughly recommend.

[Alex]

The cold aspect of it is definitely the part I found the most challenging. Especially if you accidentally end up in the water in one of the colder areas of the map, it's brutal. Have you got the campfire add-on Yev? I found that to be a nice addition to it.

[Yevrah]

I haven't as I felt like it might make things too easy and bizarrely I don't think you can remove creation club content without uninstalling the game.

I do a lot of self imposed stuff like that to make the game harder. I normally play on Legendary, but dropped that down to Master on this run due to having survival enabled, but I've just hit level 30 and decided to whack it up again as it's too easy.

Other things I'm doing is not buying any Smithing, Alchemy or Enchanting (souls) materials and just relying on finding them instead. Adds a real sense of achievement when you finish building a house, enchant a weapon etc.

[Yevrah]

Just hit the 100,000 gold achievement.

[Yevrah]

Level 42 and the dragons are unleashed. Looking forward to using shouts more on this play through, not really bothered that much in the past.

[Yevrah]

Another bonus of not doing many quests to this point is that I’m only 4 levels off every levelled item in the game being available at its maximum.

Was heartbreaking when I first picked up Chillrend only to realise afterwards that if I’d waited until I was a higher level I’d have got a version that did more damage.

[Raoul Duke]

I always mod that out as it's annoying

[Yevrah]

I've started again.

It's a curse that plagues me. This time because I just can't seem to get the difficulty right.

[Alex]

I feel your pain Yev.

We need to start a support group. You going again with pretty much the same race/build?

[Yevrah]

I'm back.

[Yevrah]

Went for the following set up in the end:

Difficulty: Master
Race: Nord

Creation Club Add-Ons:

Adventurer's Backpack
Arcane Accessories
Arcane Archer
Camping
Myrwatch
Shadowfoot Sanctum
Survival Mode
Tundra Homestead

I think what killed the previous save was an endless Smithing, Alchemy, Enchanting and Selling loop. Much more missions this time.

[Yevrah]

And again.

The creation club stuff is so unbalanced and far too readily available.

[Yevrah]

Right, this is the one.

Nord, Survival Mode, Master, not allowed to buy anything (for at least a fair while). Game on.

[P_3]

Why Nord?

[Yevrah]

I find it really hard to enjoy being anything else. Guess it's down to the Nord setting of the game. That and Nords are cool.

[Yevrah]

This might be the one, finally.

Playing without buying anything really adds something.

[Disco]

No towns is good fun too, especially if you give yourself bounties everywhere.

[Ian]

How many hours have you put into Skyrim, Yev?