The Elder Scrolls Series

[Rick Tyger]

There are some esoteric aspecsts of Skyrim that for one reason or another, you won't find much (if any) reference to online.

Here's one of my personal findings: If you shield-bash a Dead Thrall 4 times in a row, they will turn hostile, but won't be flagged as an enemy. This means that you can wait while they're attacking you, so long as they aren't doing elemental damage or bleeding damage (don't equip them with an axe). Thus, it's possible to grind your defensive skill levels effectively, while ensuring that you won't die in the process. This is best done on the novice game difficulty, to ensure that the thrall (or thralls if you have the Twin Souls perk and choose to get both to attack you) doesn't just kill you with a power-attack. If you're using an Argonian, you can wait for a full 24 hours and re-use Histskin to further minimize the chance of death. Otherwise, you simply need to wait an hour after taking some damage. When you've had enough of this, either kill the thralls, or use a different summoning spell to revoke their unlife. The latter option is preferred, if you want to use them again, since you can still decapitate them with your attacks.

Ever wonder how to get the most experience out of your destruction spells and thus avoid too much grinding with them? Set the skill difficulty to "adept". The destruction magic is a bit odd, in that it requires unmodified damage to be maximized for minimal magic cost. This is optimized in the "adept" setting, as the "novice" and "apprentice" settings boost your spell damage, actually making it take longer to raise the skill level.

Want to maximize alteration and restoration skills at the same time? Go through the Mages' Collage quest until you get to Labyrinthia and obtain the "equilibrium" spell. Then, equip equilibrium to one hand and healing to the other. Press and lock both triggers down (I've found a pair of safety pins will do the trick, if placed properly). Then, you just have to wait while the spells feed off of eachother and proceed to level up both skills at the same time. This is only doable properly on the Novice setting, since higher settings will make equilibrium consume more health, and healing to heal less per magic cost.

Money for nothing! Not just a good song with an awesome tune. You'll want to stop by Halted Stream Camp as soon as you can in the game. On your way there, you'll find a leveled sword at the southern end of stream that leads to the camp. Just look for the skeleton arm sticking up out of the water. If your level is high enough, you'll get a free ebony or daedric sword. The key to doing that is to beat the crap out of the soldier you followed into the Keep, before sneaking past or killing the bear (backtrack to a previous room after you're given the bow and they'll follow you. Attack them there. They won't fight back. [bonus trick: attack them as soon as they get up after falling to their knees and you can restore their health instead of waiting for it to regenerate {super extra bonus: if this causes them to stop taking damage, just talk to them until they respond, then attack them again}]) and get up to around level 80 or 100 before leaving the cave. This will take a lot of time, but will make your character way more badass and thus able to survive much better, unless you waste level points on stamina (don't do that). Anyhow... After you get your free sword, simply follow the stream north to the camp. Kill the mooks guarding it (beware of the sorcerer. There's always a sorcerer there), enter the mine, kill the mooks inside, and snag the Transmute spellbook (use it). Then, pick up a pick axe and mine ALL of the iron ore veins. Then, step outside and start casting Transmute. It will first transform iron ore into silver ore, and then silver ore into gold ore. Once you've got all your iron turned into gold, go to a Smelter (closest one is in Whiterun) , and convert your gold ores into gold ingots. Then, head over to a forge and forge the ingots into rings (or if you have the option, into valuable jeweled rings or jeweled amulets). Don't bother making golden amulets. You want the golden rings. They'll net you more money and making them jacks up your smithing skill faster (smithing anything expensive makes the skill progress faster, proportional to the net value of the items smithed/improved). From there, go and sell your rings to a general goods store, or a mage. If you want to maximize your speech skill, sell everything that you sell individually (no bulk selling at all). It will take forever to clear your inventory, but you'll be able to unlock better haggling prices, and the Alure (better prices from the opposite gender) and Merchant (sell any non-stolen item to anyone who buys/sells anything). One final trick in this whole thing: If your merchant runs out of money, save the game, then attack them, then reload the saved game. This will reset the merchant's inventory and gold. Just remember to save each time before attacking and to load right after attacking. Otherwise, you'll wind up with a dead merchant on your hands and bounty on your head.

[TheRedStranger]

Anyone have opinions on the Skyrim remake?

[F07E]

It should have been morrowind or oblivion, skyrim is still good now.

[Wulfsbane]

3 hours ago, F07E said:

It should have been morrowind or oblivion, skyrim is still good now.

Todd Howard wanted to do Oblivion as well but the assets needed to remaster Oblivion werent there and they would have to move everything onto the new engines and he wasnt sure how well everything would translate over. Plus they said they are working on 2-3 new projects as well so they were stretched thin. Reason why they are doing Skyrim was because it was used as a technical exercise they did to test out the X1 to see what the Next Gen consoles could do so it was essentially already ready to go.

And to be honest, I didnt like Oblivion. But I attribute that to the fact that Skyrim was my first Elder Scrolls game and I think that kinda ruined it for me

[F07E]

52 minutes ago, Wulfsbane said:

Todd Howard wanted to do Oblivion as well but the assets needed to remaster Oblivion werent there and they would have to move everything onto the new engines and he wasnt sure how well everything would translate over. Plus they said they are working on 2-3 new projects as well so they were stretched thin. Reason why they are doing Skyrim was because it was used as a technical exercise they did to test out the X1 to see what the Next Gen consoles could do so it was essentially already ready to go.

And to be honest, I didnt like Oblivion. But I attribute that to the fact that Skyrim was my first Elder Scrolls game and I think that kinda ruined it for me

Yeah, it's probably the easiest to do. A shame they couldn't go for remakes of the older ones though.

I liked oblivion, but it's gameplay is definitely inferior to skyrim.

[Rick Tyger]

I really haven't gotten very far into Oblivion. The "you can't move, because you picked up one too many items!" thing is a big turn-off for me, though. Too many bad memories from NetHack... I can handle moving at snail's pace, but not being immobile.

I don't have the money to get an X-Box One, so I can't test out Skyrmim: Special Edition.