Sigh. May need to restart again. I never ever even thought about equipping my damn sidekick. I cry at the cool equipment I have sold to Tyros knows who.
Am I the only one who feels a strong need to restart if they find out they have missed an entire aspect of a game?
One odd thing I’ve noticed is that often the NPCs will chose unenchanted rings & necklaces over the enchanted versions. As for helmets, I just found on my pure mage that NPCs prefer the Masque of Clavicus Vile over the Dwarven Helmet.
Latest funny NPC moment: This orc I picked up in the stronghold Dushnikh Yal named Ghorbash the Iron Hand (pretty good so far) refused to follow me down a short slope in a dungeon; so I Shouted him down off it and across the room.
Maybe it’s because I was sick with flu last night, but I was in a really bitchy mood with my companions last night. First I accidentally set Lydia on fire near the end of a long cave where I hadn’t autosaved, so I just left her corpse there to rot after stealing everything I could carry from it.
Then I went to Darkwater Crossing, where I’d seen the Argonian Derkeethus who I’d earlier saved from a prison in Deepwater Cave, and he seemed pretty badass at the time hanging out after I’d turned down his services before. I’d been wearing the Amulet of Mara and Derkeethus was very interested. “Saaaayyyy…is that an Amulet of Mara?” Oops, the poor old lizard wanted to marry me, not be my companion. So I had to switch away from that amulet because every time I put it on he started making googly eyes at me and talking about marriage again. In short, I friend-zoned the lizard.
(About that last bit: it really would have been appropriate if I’d used my usual first name for an RPG character, which is indeed Fiona. But when I chose a Breton character, well, one has to go with a Gaelic name, right? A’Mhonadh it is.)
In general I never start new characters after I’ve invested a lot of time in. If I’m going to restart it’s in the first couple of levels. In Fallout 3/NV, for instance, I still have only the first character I started with in each game…and I probably have well over 400 hours in both characters. The only game where I’ll roll new tunes is an MMO.
What you are saying here is definitely correctable though. If you want your sidekick to have better armor then just give it to them as you find them. Almost every dungeon I go into these days has decent armor and weapons, and if you have any skill with enchanting then just take some plate or something like that to get them started and enchant it with what the NPC normally does. Or, just don’t run with an NPC…a lot of folks in this thread don’t.
-XT
Question…does anyone know if enchanted items can take your skill level over 100? I have 100 to archery, so is it worth while for me to use my various archery enhancing items anymore, or would it be better to use other enchanted stuff? Or, maybe a better example, assume I get to 100 Smithing…would it be worthwhile to still use my +30% gloves of Smithing, my +20% Smithing ring and +20% Smithing pendant?
-XT
That guy sounds awesome, and apparently he will act as a follower, too. Gay marriage is okay in Skyrim as I understand, so I’m gonna give it a shot. Hopefully he likes bearded, lumberjack-like Bretons.
Sing him the lumber jack song and you will win his heart for sure!
-XT
The short version is yes, they do that.
All modifiers stack from all active effects and items. There may be limits to some skills, but they do seem to work past 100%. it’s not clear exactly what effect they all have. I don’t understand what a “20%” lockpicking bonus actually does.
Check out www.uesp.net and their Skyrim section for more on this.
In theory, I think you want to have about +133% on your 100 skill. You can IIRC get another 100 points out of
Now, I think that at about 200% you can upgrade any weapon or armor to its maximum level, even if you don’t have the right perk, which may make a difference to some. It should affect Enchanting up to a point. IIRC, you can get +100 from items and +33 from potions, and it all stacks. You could also then have +133 from the same combo for weapon attacks, which will cause you to unleash absurd damage.
More Elizabethan, actually.
Bah. Number one, IRL the Breton language is Gaelic, and number two, most of the names on that linked page are either French or Romance language. Breton and French are about as much alike as, well, Welsh and English. I’m sticking with my interpretation.
Betons aren’t real-world Bretons. They’re explicitly more like the ethnic hash which is Britain, having a bunch of semi-related kingdoms and having ancestry which includes lots of hot elven chicks.
OK, in Tamriel, elves aren’t necessarily that attractive, either.
Memory did serve. Note that she will happily equip a better armor, but won’t use another steel armor, even when enchanted, IME.
Short rant : after having found out how to reliably play offline, for some reason I can’t fathom, I kept doing it for some days (I was on sick leave. And before you ask no, it’s wasn’t a Skyrim-born disease). Being now guilty of reckless computerslaughter, and having lost my saves as a consequence, I’ll have to go back to whatever point I was in the game last time I played online. 
I’m currently downloading again the game, this time the English version (I also found out how to pick the language), hoping that bards will sing better than in the French version, and that the English Lydia isn’t as irritating as you make her be when you give her stuff.
Thanks. I was wondering about the same thing, and had guessed wrong (it seems to me you couldn’t go past 100% in at least one of the previous games). I guess I’ll have to put back on those sneak boots.
I’m kicking myself over all the enchant items I sold off now. :smack: At least I kept the smithing stuff though. And thanks for the answer as well, SB…I would have also thought that once you got to 100% you didn’t get any additional bonus adds.
-XT
Frenchified often. But I’m pretty sure that the Reach natives/Forsworn are Bretons, and they seem to have Celtic names.
So I feel like the Reach people are based on the Gauls (get it? Celts from France?). Madanach really reminds me of Vercingetorix: captured in battle, secretly imprisoned for years for political reasons.
Guys: you’ll find all kinds of enchanted crap later. No need to restart for just that reason, unless your perks are messed up too.
My perks are fairly messed up, since I changed where I was going after about 10 levels…but no chance I’ll re-roll a new tune. I figure it’s all part of the learning process. Like I said, I’m not out to optimize my character to the nth degree. I figure I should be on track with the new way I’m going by, oh, say 55th level or so. Just in time for the DLCs to be rolling out. 
-XT
I think what lockpicking skill & bonuses do is increase the size of the “sweet spot” for your pick and decrease the chance of the pick breaking.
Btw, if like many you’re having trouble getting Jarl Maven Black-Briar to make you Thane of Riften, like I was (she just cut off halfway through the dialogue), open up that console and type:
player.setstage freeformriftenthane 200
Bingo. If you’re on 360 or PS3 you’re screwed unless you reload an earlier save.
Cool:
Bethesda will be releasing their developers kit for Skyrim for free in January (same thing their devs used to make the game) along with videos and a wiki to help teach people how to use it.
More, they are integrating Skyrim with Steam Workshop so you can download and install mods automatically from within Steam.
From their blog:
Kind of. Theyr’e Bretons by Blood, but bretons do have a wide array of cultures themselves, just as the Redguards are more than just “fantasy arabs”. That’s one thing I like about Elder Scrolls: the people in it vary widely from one region to another.
Plus, nobody bats an eye at a thousand year-old sorcerer because they’re perfectly normal, if rare. This is game where if you have a mystery, your best bet is to go find somebody who was there (living or dead) and just ask.
That makes sense, but I can’t actually tell in-game. And I checked the uesp enchanting section and had no idea what the math says there.
53 hours in an I’m afraid I may have just hit my first serious bug…
Spoilers (seriously) for The Thieves Guild questline below. I’d greatly appreciate any help as I’m not sure if I’m just missing something or not. I’ve googled around a bit, but I can’t find anyone else mentioning this particular occurrence.
[Spoiler] So I’ve hunted down Karliah and Mercer’s betrayed me, and apparently the entire guild. I’ve got Gallus’s journal translated and brought it back to the Ragged Flagon. After a short conversation myself, Karliah, Devlin and Vex walk over to the vault to investigate. Devlin uses his key on the vault door and then… nothing. He tells someone else, (Vex I’m assuming), to use their key on the door as well but no one moves to do anything. Everyone’s just standing around.
I go to click on the door and it tells me I need a key that I don’t have. I click on the other characters and I get the ‘this character is busy’ message. I’m not sure what’s supposed to happen at this point and I’m at a loss.[/Spoiler]
Anything like this happen to anyone else? I’m on the PC version and if there’s anyway to bypass the problem with the console I’m perfectly willing to do that.