Skyrim, first impressions (limit spoilers, please!)

[Santcuff]

My companions keep disappearing so I'm usually solo. Level 36 right now and loving everything, just bought my second house in Windhelm and got married. I'm still a little freaked out about the house they gave me but no spoilers

[Gracerath]

How do you level alchemy man, I blasted through smithing in an hour, but everything I try for alchemy only makes the bar crawl ugh.

Good question. I remember reading some obscure remark about make a bunch of poisons to level alchemy but I dunno. How many is a "bunch"? It feels the same for me. I can craft 10 or so at a time and the bar hardly seemed to move. I have plenty of potions for healing and I'm not going to bother with the endless +skill potions for crafting so this skill will sadly be hovering around 20.

Has anyone really delved into using poisons? I'm sure at some point they become pretty awesome where a sneaky arrow hit or a backstab will become even more devastating. Seems like out of all my friends, I'm the only one not going for a stealthy play through. My dark brotherhood marks are not going to be subtle at all Seems a witnessed murder nets you a 1k bounty. I can pay that.

[sahiel]

How do you level alchemy man, I blasted through smithing in an hour, but everything I try for alchemy only makes the bar crawl ugh.

Good question. I remember reading some obscure remark about make a bunch of poisons to level alchemy but I dunno. How many is a "bunch"? It feels the same for me. I can craft 10 or so at a time and the bar hardly seemed to move. I have plenty of potions for healing and I'm not going to bother with the endless +skill potions for crafting so this skill will sadly be hovering around 20.

Has anyone really delved into using poisons? I'm sure at some point they become pretty awesome where a sneaky arrow hit or a backstab will become even more devastating. Seems like out of all my friends, I'm the only one not going for a stealthy play through. My dark brotherhood marks are not going to be subtle at all Seems a witnessed murder nets you a 1k bounty. I can pay that.

I don't think I used the stealth skill at all other than in the intro when it suggested you do, just to see how it worked.

A huge orc chick in dragonbone plate, dual wielding and going berserk isn't exactly the height of stealth Most of my friends do also seem to be going the stealth route though. Oh re: bounties, if you kill everyone and I mean EVERYONE who might have seen, you will be informed "Last witness killed, bounty removed." and the bounty will vanish, though you may be left with a lot of bodies >.>

[razul]

I seem to have the entire palace of Whiterun to want to kill me on sight....Guards are fine though.... Guess I've not been a good thane?

Or maybe the werewolf thing could be an issue..but how could they know? hmmm....

[Euphoria]

I "cheated" and went to the small cave southeast of Whiterun and snuck around behind the blind guy for a while. That boosted my sneak to 100 in a few hours.

Each time you level be sure to stop sneaking, and then travel to Windhelm. There's a pickpocketing trainer there that can train you. Train, pick her pocket to take your money back, rinse and repeat. The bonus of picking her pocket to take the money back (via save scumming obviously) is that you'll skill up each time you lift your money back. When you get sneak to max there's a trainer that can teach you speech up to 50 in Windhelm as well. I used the same strategy with him.

That got the two most odious skills out of the way fairly quickly. It does require a lot of fast travel but at the beginning of the game where money is tight you don't spend a dime (other than the cost of taking a carriage from Whiterun to Windhelm) to level your skills. If you get early access to the thieves guild in Riften and have a high pickpocketing skill, you can steal entire towns blind at night. The thieves guild has a lockpicking trainer as well, you can use the same train/pickpocket combo on him.

It's pretty important to note that eventually training becomes ridiculously expensive and this trick doesn't work for your high skills any longer. The max gold I can lift via pickpocketing is around 1,400 (no perks in picking pockets), training my pickpocketing is 1,600 a shot now. It's just a really easy way to get those bonus perks for heavy armor, two-handers, and smithing.

I can certainly see the appeal of running a stealth character though. Landing a sneak attack with a Legendary Daedric Greatsword is the coolest thing I think I've ever seen. Most of the time you skip the attack and go straight into the execution animation.

[Thalia]

I'm only level 37 and have had pickpocket at 100 for a bit. I just steal everyone's stuff, it's so much fun.

[Kelaan]

that eventually training becomes ridiculously expensive and this trick doesn't work for your high skills any longer. The max gold I can lift via pickpocketing is around 1,400 (no perks in picking pockets), training my pickpocketing is 1,600 a shot now. It's just a really easy way to get those bonus perks for heavy armor, two-handers, and smithing.

Is there anything preventing you from just robbing them a second time to get the rest of it back?

[Euphoria]

that eventually training becomes ridiculously expensive and this trick doesn't work for your high skills any longer. The max gold I can lift via pickpocketing is around 1,400 (no perks in picking pockets), training my pickpocketing is 1,600 a shot now. It's just a really easy way to get those bonus perks for heavy armor, two-handers, and smithing.

Is there anything preventing you from just robbing them a second time to get the rest of it back?

You steal all the gold they have on them in a single chunk sadly. When training cost outstrips your ability to pickpocket it back you're a little out of luck. Thankfully the amounts you can pickpocket seems to increase with skill level so your cap goes up as you perform the same trick with other skills. I know of at least one perk that directly benefits the ease with which you can pickpocket gold and that would help as well. I'm just not taking that route.

[Angelarc6570]

Level 27, also playing as a tank! Most epic moment I've encountered so far is as follows: traveling to Dragoncrater? To, Suprise, kill a dragon!! On my down to find said dragon, I encounter a random cave bear... Out of his cave. So, like any good adventurer would, I proceed to beat him in the face with my mace.

After valiantly defeating the cave bear, and searching its carcass, all of a sudden, my screen is engulfed by a bright orange, moving color. And, low and behold, apparently I pissed off the dragon by killing his pet bear. First thought that came along was "Oh god!", followed by "oh yay!"

So I'm beating this dragon on the head, slowly but surely, when all of a sudden he flys away.... AND ANOTHER ONE COMES ALONG TO AVENGE THE BEARS DEATH!!!!

The epic battle ensues, I chug a few... Potatoes and proceed to kill both dragons with Lydia's help of course, with the quest completed, me texting my girlfriend ferociously "OMG THERE WERE TWO DRAGONS" and it all started with a poor dead bearpet

[Passionario]

I decided to keep things simple and overpowered, so I went ahead and crafted/enchanted myself a full set of Glass Armor with total -100% Destruction and -100% Restoration magicka cost bonus.

Now I feel like a Space Marine, stranded on a barbaric feudal planet with nothing but my invulnerable power armor, my super-regenerative abilities, and my trusted master-crafted bolter that has infinite ammo.

[Fivelives]

More like mastercrafted flamer or plasma gun.

[sahiel]

I decided to keep things simple and overpowered, so I went ahead and crafted/enchanted myself a full set of Glass Armor with total -100% Destruction and -100% Restoration magicka cost bonus.

Now I feel like a Space Marine, stranded on a barbaric feudal planet with nothing but my invulnerable power armor, my super-regenerative abilities, and my trusted master-crafted bolter that has infinite ammo.

+1 Internet

[Fivelives]

If you DE the archmage's robes, can't you enchant -100% magicka cost to all schools?

[Candiru]

I remember in morrowind you could make a spell to debuff yourself minus 100 int for 1 sec. This would lower your maximum magicka to 0, so you were briefly 0/0. Then when it wore off and your normal maximum returned you kept the same %, which it decided was 100% from 0/0! Win! (Or maths fail)

I assume this doesn't happen in skyrim?

[Torakka]

Well, at higher levels you can find potions that restore 100% health or magicka, so that sort of debuff-"abuse" wouldn't be necessary even if it were possible, which I don't know if it is or not. Then again, this far I have seen those aforementioned potions only as loot, never sold by merchants and I haven't really trained alchemy to know if it's possible to make them, so might be that they are pretty rare.