Skyrim, first impressions (limit spoilers, please!)

[Thalia]

About 15 hours into the game I think? Have barely done anything noteworthy in terms of advancing the main plot or the various guild questlines, just been screwing around exploring and crafting and READ ALL THE THINGSing every time I find a bookshelf. It is a blast, I doubt I'll be finished in another 50 hours of gameplay, and whenever I do finish I'm sure I'll jump right in with a different character. There are so many different ways to do things.

Same as me..

I have quite enjoyed reading the entire The Real Barenziah series.

[Gracerath]

I just have to say that a full dwarven heavy armor set is one of the coolest armor sets in any game I've ever seen.

[sahiel]

About 15 hours into the game I think? Have barely done anything noteworthy in terms of advancing the main plot or the various guild questlines, just been screwing around exploring and crafting and READ ALL THE THINGSing every time I find a bookshelf. It is a blast, I doubt I'll be finished in another 50 hours of gameplay, and whenever I do finish I'm sure I'll jump right in with a different character. There are so many different ways to do things.

Same as me..

I have quite enjoyed reading the entire The Real Barenziah series.

Big fan of the Wolf Queen books too.

Oh, and not sure about this but I think any weapons you upgrade at the Skyforge appear to get a free level of quality.

[Brutalicus]

Dear God I played a lot of Skyrim this weekend (I had Monday off too!). Loving it so far, about 30 hours in. I'm really enjoying how the perks/leveling allow you to smoothly feel your character improving as you play, and when you get a new armor set or one of the bigger perks or a new shout (or you master a shout you use often) you just feel badass. I think I just played Oblivion wrong, because leveling never felt natural and usually I'd pick my most useful abilities to use as core abilities and I'd end up with super-low stats getting fucked over by two imps at a time (because, y'know, I could handle one imp if I kited it). Amazing game. Can't wait to see what kinds of mods people come up with.

[Candiru]

How does leveling in Skyrim work? I never played Oblivion, but in Morrowind I know the leveling was rather counter-intutitive especially when combined with level-scalling enemies. To not have low stats you would need to level up non-character skills so when you gained a major/minor skill to level up you got a large stat multiplier.

You could complete Morrowind at level 1 though, so best not to level up at all!

[Fivelives]

There are no more major/minor skills. Get 10 skillups and you gain a level, period. Then you get to pick from a perk system for individual skills. You also level up wherever you are. I haven't tested whether or not it'll level you up AGAIN after that without going through the actual process of picking which of your only 3 stats to raise by 10 (health, magicka, and stamina) and selecting a perk, though.

So no more low level runs - it's like Bethesda wanted to slap us in the face and say "YOU'RE DOIN IT WRONG™" for going through Elder Scrolls games as a level 1.

[Aubade]

I just have to say that a full dwarven heavy armor set is one of the coolest armor sets in any game I've ever seen.

Daedric Armor, not only is it the best Heavy Armor in the game, It's the most bad-ass.

Oh, and not sure about this but I think any weapons you upgrade at the Skyforge appear to get a free level of quality.

Nope. It's dependent on your skill level , and whether or not you have any "Armor improves by XX% when you craft/upgrade it" Enchants on any of your gear, or the elixirs/draughts/philters for it.

That being said. YAYYY FINALLY GOT 100 SMITHING WOOOOOOO

[Levantine]

I'm le sad that Dragonscale looks so terrible. It just doesn't make sense for my character to be wearing heavy plate when she's hiding around the place flinging arrows and only resorting to close combat when absolutely necessary.

[Aubade]

I'm le sad that Dragonscale looks so terrible. It just doesn't make sense for my character to be wearing heavy plate when she's hiding around the place flinging arrows and only resorting to close combat when absolutely necessary.

Is dragonscale the best light armor?
Because Dragon-bone is not. Dragon bone just weighs less than the superior Daedric Armor.
And you should wear a loincloth and a bra, and just fight in that.

[cerwillis]

Today I loaded it up for a bit before I went to work, to try to reach a destination that I was travelling to last night. Long story short, there was a red fox that looked like he wanted me to follow him. Next thing I know, I'm late for work, and nowhere near the destination in game LOVE this game!!!

[Doz]

Loving loving loving this game. Finished up the thieves guild questline last night, epic. Will try to finish up the bard college next, unless i get distracted by something shiney. In no hurry to do the main questline, this game is too much fun!

[fafhrd]

Lelv/Aubade - I think Glass is the highest light armor. And as an archer you could actually fight in just a loincloth and bra, provided you pumped enough iterations of +enchanting gear>+blacksmithing gear>+enchanting gear>+blacksmithing gear to ridiculously trick out a legendary daedric bow, with all the archery perks.

I'm currently torn between whether I should just go out and play the game, or keep making iron daggers to powerlevel smithing and try to make a high level set and legendary weapon before I kill my 2nd dragon. Seems like it would be a bit dull if I have mostly irreplaceable items before killing much of anything. Even with just an exquisite elven bow and a little +% bow damage gear every normal enemy gets oneshot from sneak, although I guess if I finished powerlevelling the level scaling would help make up for some of that.

Leaning towards just playing for now, and doing the full crafting with amped up enchanting and alchemy for better crafting on a 2nd playthrough on max difficulty.

[fafhrd]

There are no more major/minor skills. Get 10 skillups and you gain a level, period. Then you get to pick from a perk system for individual skills. You also level up wherever you are. I haven't tested whether or not it'll level you up AGAIN after that without going through the actual process of picking which of your only 3 stats to raise by 10 (health, magicka, and stamina) and selecting a perk, though.

As I understand it, you do keep levelling up even if you don't pick what stat/perk you want, in the sense that the "XP" isn't being wasted. However I'm not sure the game considers you as gaving gained the levels till you make your selections. I say this because I had up to level 3's worth of perks and stat upgrades saved up by the time I first discovered the "Skills" menu - but I'm fairly sure the game still said I was level 1 until I'd opened up Skills and made stat selections. After I selected "Health" thrice, I was level 4.

I suspect if you never made those stat selections you'd stay at level 1 - however I don't think you can chose any perks without selecting stats.

[Fivelives]

Ironically, I think that the easy difficulty is probably harder than max difficulty. The only thing that gets tuned between difficulties is mob health/damage and how much "XP" you get per use of a skill.

I miss the Oblivion difficulty slider, though. Just having 5 difficulty levels doesn't quite hit the spot.

[Kelaan]

Can you actually easily complete major quests as a sneaky archer type character, though? I recall starting a character in Oblivion, archering the SHIT out of world mobs, and then going into an oblivion gate where the guards chase you to the door, never reset aggro, and are like "OHAI! /squish" as soon as you go back in (meaning it's impossible to get a sneak attack in, or kite them). Very frustrating.

Nice to hear that the leveling system doesn't penalize your [FOO] specialized character for not micromanaging gains in every single non-FOO skill in order to maximize stat gains.