5punk

Less than 25 hours for me, says Steam, so not so bad. Although if you hadn't said anything ...

Strangely i found the sprint button almost immediately after i was given full rein of the controlls, but i think it was just where i found the running a bit slow and thought it was walking speed and looked through the controlls to find the run button to then find the sprint button.

Im not sure if i like the addition of sprinting and the removal of athletics and acrobatics but i can see why they ditched them, but they could of clumped the bonuses into another skill tree as there is no way to improve your base movement speed as far as i can tell.

54 hours in so far according to steam, id probably have finished the main quest where it not for me making new characters every few days, but im probably going to wait untill i have a bit more free time and remake my nordic colin macleod mel gibson lookalike character (which is the first one i made as soon as i found the matching warpaint and hairstyle) to plow through the story as its alot more gripping than oblivions and i actually want to see this one through.

I found it when I first got a horse and thought "this horse is a bit slow". Though not before I loaded up a pre-horse savegame and travelled to every other stable in the game to see if the other horses were any faster.

On Friday I decided to make a new sneaky wood elf rather than a hack'n'slash Redguard, and I'm really enjoying it so far. However, I decided to go to Riften to join the Thieve's Guild, and I swear it took me about 5 hours to get there. I have a massive inability to stay focused on any one task in this game.

I'm sure buying a horse would make it far quicker getting around because I'd be less inclined to explore so much, but frankly I don't think I want to.

I've not found myself too concerned about doing side quests, or even the major ones. They'll give me something to do on later play throughs (I'm planning a thief and a paladin later).

The "other character" thing is something I'm worried about. Given that you can level any skill and they all level you, is there any need/point in creating another class of character? I've always enjoyed playing these games through again in a different manner, but I'm not sure it would be hugely different in this.

Well, it's more about a theme for me. I probably could try to be good at everything, but certain quests I can only do the good way or the evil way. This play through I'm doing them the evil way, as a Paladin I'll do them the good way. The character points are finite too, so if you want to specialise you can only afford to be putting your points into half a dozen or so talent trees. What's more, as I mentioned, I'm purposely ignoring quests that aren't relevant to the character so I can do them as another. My demonic-pact making destructo-necromancer isn't the sort to go helping someone find their lost sheep, and doesn't give a fuck about the Thieves guild. I think if I did try to do everything I'd have got bored already like I did with Oblivion and Fallout 3.

Roman Totale wrote:The "other character" thing is something I'm worried about. Given that you can level any skill and they all level you, is there any need/point in creating another class of character? I've always enjoyed playing these games through again in a different manner, but I'm not sure it would be hugely different in this.

I'm worried a bit about that too, but like DP says it'll be more about the character's attitude than their skills. My current character is a bit more of a mix that I had planned - I wasn't going to do magic, but you get given the dragon shouts regardless - plus I wanted to see what the Mages College looked like. I've spread the skills aroung quite a bit in things like enchanting as I want to take the unarmed bonus off my gloves and apply it to better ones.

Future characters will probably be more one-dimensional, like my Dragon Age characters were, swapping my naked Dwarf for a naked Orc with a big axe perhaps and maybe trying to recreate Yourmum as a hideously ugly magic-only character.

Because your low-level skills are going to do less damage to the creatures that are aimed at your higher-level self, so you're going to be stabbing away with a small dagger for ages if you've been magicking for the whole game. I guess?

The level of a skill is only one aspect, you still need the perks associated with that skill for it to be of any use.

I've up to about level 20 now. I've not read into the levelling system in any way and certainly not put any effort into optimising or min/maxing. I'm determined to have at least one play through just taking it as it comes and see how 'life' shapes my character. So far I've been massively impressed how the game lets you do this. Apart from choosing a starting race and a vague direction (those skill bonus things at the start), the skills and level ups seem to be almost entirely based on how much I use a thing, which is exactly how I've always wanted it to be. Hit things with big sticks = get better at hitting things with big sticks. Oddly, this simplified method also reduces the 'afk training' that used to happen in Oblivion as every skill will contribute to an eventual level up (and hence tougher enemies). This encourages you to specialise, but without forcing you to.

I just built a full set of Orcish armour and gave my old dwarven stuff to housecarl bitch. We looks a pretty awesome trio right now (if you include Womble when he's not wandering off and hiding behind a rock).

I'm still devoid of companions so far, but I believe that I can permanently bind a zombie at max conjuring. I'll have to pick a good one. Actually, I find critters like spiders and those big beetle things to be pretty good. Giant zombie spiders anyone?

I'm starting to get a little circular in my crafting now;

1. Brew potions of Fortify Enchantment
2. Quaff potion
3. Enchant chef's hat and oven gloves with Fortify Alchemy
4. Put on hat and gloves
5. Brew more potions of Fortify Enchantment
6. Quaff potion
7. Enchant stuff with Fortify Enchantment
8. Quaff potion
9. Finally enchant my Elven armour

I could keep repeating steps 1-5, but I don't know if there's an upper limit somewhere.

I can't really get the hang of enchantments, probably because I just figured out you have to destroy an item to learn it's enchantment. My skill is a bit too low to start enchanting things now though.

Enchanting, a bit like its equivalent in WoW, is tricky to level and pretty fiddly to do.

Destroying an item to learn its secrets is a nice idea, but not when you only have one of them only to discover that as a novice when you apply that effect to a new item it is far punier than the original effect. At least you keep the knowledge of the effect to try again later when you're better.

The perk (hello Fallout) to put more than one enchantment or enchant an already-improved (grindstone) item is way up the tree, so there's little you can do that's better than stuff you pick up - particularly if you join factions, whose items often have multiple benefits.

It's fiddly because it doesn't show the correct increase unless you select the soul gem before the enchantment, showing instead the max increase possible from your knowledge. Tiny soul gems produce crappy boosts.

Soul gems aren't that plentiful unless you're light-fingered, and you'll have to fill most of them yourself. Thankfully black soul gems aren't quite so ultra-rare as they were in Oblvion (or as frowned-upon). Since you have to use them to recharge as well as enchant items, you can get through them pretty quickly if you're trying to level up your enchanting to something more useful.

Apparently though, soul gems can be mined from geode veins, such as in Blackreach - which is welcome news.

Most general goods / mage supplies merchants have a decent supply of soul gems. Multiply this with cheap smithing stuff like leather and iron armour and iron weapons and you can mass produce magic-embued stuffs which can cover the cost of the soul gems.

Doing the Daedric quest for Azura gives you Azura's Star - a reusable grand soul gem.

I've not had any trouble levelling enchanting and smithing - petty soul gems are in plentiful supply, ore is fairly easy to come by (I've got stacks of Dorf ore from wandering around the Dorf Shwarma underground city place), and churning out a bunch of enchanted daggers quickly got both up to 60+. I'm having far more trouble with alchemy though, possibly cos I can't be arsed to go flower picking and only grab stuff that's close to hand. This is awkward, cos as I regular sword and board fighter type (the magi bit of my battle mage got left behind long ago), I rely exclusively on bottle of foul smelling goo to stay alive.

I've found a couple of perks in Restoration and the default "HEAL ME" spell works well in a pinch. It's saved my hide several times when I've ran out of healing potions and frost trolls want to nom my face off.

Grimmie wrote:I've found a couple of perks in Restoration and the default "HEAL ME" spell works well in a pinch. It's saved my hide several times when I've ran out of healing potions and frost trolls want to nom my face off.

I'm using the cantrip heal with no perks and have never taken a potion on purpose. I get by by being sneaky enough to hide until the regen kicks in.

If I'm honest that's more to do with laziness than a character choice, as I cba to make sure I carry enough potions to shortcut so I don't find I've run out when I really need it.

The UI is a little frustrating though as there is no way to shortcut fists, so while I can switch 2-handed items like my bow in and out, if I switch in anything 1 handed like my healing spell, I'm left with only one fist until I open the favourites menu. Pressing the heal shortcut again gives me healing in both hands and gets stuck there. 1-handed weapons shortcuts just cycle the opposite hand to the default spell hand and a shortcut to my gloves just removes/adds them. I understand dual-wielding characters have the same problem. The only way around it is to constantly carry a shield and equip/unequip it to clear the spell from the off hand.

Since I don't use magic for anything else though, I can hold down the heal spell while I run away and even my meagre pool of magicka is enough to mostly heal me.