Kobal2,
Tried that, the problem is that as far as I can tell his staff don’t sleep- his bed is in the kitchen, I’ve done a full 24-hour cycle of waits next to him, and for the entire time he sleeps his staff sit at a table across from his bed, one staring at him and the other staring at the area behind the first.
ARgggghh!
Warning for people wanting to try out alternative chars - it doesn’t appear to differentiate Quick and Auto saves between characters. I lost several hours of play on my main character because I wanted to try out a different char for a while. I just assumed it would somehow allow me to choose which one to play, but no, it just happily overwrites your last quick/auto save.
Blech. Luckily I had a “real” save that’s only a few hours old, but still, I’m gonna have to redo a couple quests. Not fun.
So the lesson is to do a real save before stopping play for the night? I’ve been thinking of playing alternate characters, but was unsure how the save files would work with multiple characters.
For Grelod, I was still “caught” even though I killed her in her sleep. But once I went away, the other lady was fine and forgot about it. No bounty, either way.
Always, always save. I don’t think I’ve played a non-profile based game that separated quick and auto saves between characters/playthroughs. I always force save before any major points (entering caves, etc) and before quitting the game. Corruption can potentially be an issue as in all games. I haven’t seen that yet, although the only rare time it crashes on me is with quicksaving. Thankfully it does it after saving.
Well, I can see two options then: Calm the witnesses so they don’t raise a fuss (with a spell, scroll or staff - it’s a lowbie spell, I’m pretty sure you can cast it even with 15 illusion). Or kill them before they can. Your bounty goes away if you kill all witnesses before they can get in touch with a guard. Also rabbits and chickens, 'cause they be snitching.
Out of the box? Badly. I’m surprised with every new Elder Scrolls game that they haven’t designed in a way to make multiple characters easier to play – for a game that’s basically a giant sandbox, they don’t seem to like you playing in it with more than one char at a time.
On the other hand, there are always profile mods that do the separate-games-by-char trick. The one for Skyrim at the moment seems to be a bit buggy, but it’ll come alone.
I just started playing yesterday, and I have a noob question. I have the heal spell, but when I click to activate it, I don’t see my health increase, and I don’t see a spell animation (just the same glow in my hand). What am I doing wrong?
Are you holding down the button?
“Healing” is one where you hold it, and it constantly drains magicka and restores health.
“Fast Healing” is a charged spell. You hold it down until fully charged, when your magicka is temporarily reduced but not going down further. When you release, it heals you and reduces magicka by the projected amount. Holding it down for longer has no added benefit, but “sheathing” restores the magicka. It is faster, but less efficient.
Yeah, all of the starter spells are actually channelled spells. As long as you’ve got the button held down, the spell is acting. Pro-tip: you can keep acting while casting channelled spells, such as beheading dudes while flamethrowering them at the same time, or beheading dudes while you’re healing yourself.
Thank you! I’m playing an archer, so he doesn’t get much magic practice.
Or if you need to kill people without getting the blame, turn into a werewolf out-out-sight and then rush in, kill your targets(s) and run for it until you change back.
Speaking of werewolves, I just discovered that “Cloak” spells still work after the change; running around as a werewolf covered in lightning is cool looking.
Question about Magicka regeneration: do those abilities stack? I have a mask and a Robes that give me 100% bonus to regeneration. Does that mean my rate is tripled?
Yup. There does seem to be a maximum you can boost things to, but it’s hard to tell exactly what it is. IIRC, it’s well above +200% for those.
Well, I ‘finished’ the game tonight (I think), and I have some questions and thoughts on the final bit. Will spoiler it, but if you don’t want to know what happens don’t open the spoiler box.
[spoiler]So, unlike in Fallout 3, it appears that doing the final quest doesn’t end the game. The final sequence seems to be that you trap a named dragon (sorry, don’t remember any of their names) and then coerce him into flying you to the base of the world destroying main dragon (again, don’t recall the name). You then traverse the base full of the nastiest undead mummies, then you jump into a large energy vortex thingy and are transported to the Nord equivalent of Valhalla, where you meet the great Nordic hero’s (including the guy who’s shield and axe you recovered if you did the werewolf quest line). Finally you fight the big bad dragon (who really wasn’t all that tough to kill, once I figured out you were supposed to hit him with the dragonrend shout first) and then…well, that seems to be it. You talk to one of the hero’s and he thanks you and transports you back to Skyrim where you can talk to the wise old Yoda dragon and the dragon who agreed to help you fly to the base. And you can talk to the graybeards and they will mouth stuff about how the world has changed.
That seems to be it…at least that’s as far as I got before I had to get to the air port for a short trip before the holiday. My questions are…is that it? All there is to the game? If so, it seemed a bit…anti-climatic. Also, one of the dragons, the one who helped fly me to the base has offered to come when I call…what does that mean exactly? Will he come to fight for me on call? Fly me places? Sing and dance? Lastly, I didn’t check, but I assume I can continue to explore and do the lesser quests I still had before I did this…yes? For one thing I would like to go back to the base and get the large stash of ebony and glass weapons and armor I left behind because I was getting overloaded. There is at least 10k worth of gold, if not more, in that stash, and while I don’t need the money…well, waste not want not, and there is just something about letting good loot go to waste that plays on the mind. ;)[/spoiler]
Non-spoilered, I switched up at the end to a pair of crafted daedric daggers that I created and enchanted, along with an alternative set of magical rings, necklace and armor (I just used one of the stealthy sets of light armor I had from one of the earlier quests) that I could switch back and forth between, so I could use daggers and sneak to kill some mobs instead of just crushing everything with a bow. I found that even though I had almost nothing towards one handed weapons, nothing towards dual wielding and nothing towards the stealth use of one handed dagger attacks my guy was still able to kill just about everything with the pair of daggers, even if it took longer and was a bit harder than smashing stuff down with the bow from range. And the daggers bit is a hell of a lot of fun…I love some of the critical hit motions especially.
Assuming I can play on I’m going to finish exploring and just wait for Steam to put in it’s modding add functionality and for Bethesda to start putting out DLCs. I’m toying with the idea of rolling up a new character as well…maybe an all magic using toon, though that’s going to be tough to play I expect.
ETA: I finished up at level 52. I could have done it about 10 levels or so sooner but I was having a lot of fun and didn’t feel the need to rush.
-XT
XT, I thought I’d be a warrior-mage this time, but just keep dumping all my level up points into Magic since I have spells for healing and armor, and I let my tank swing all the heavy weapons. So now I’m sitting at a base magic/health/stamina ratio of 300/100/100. I don’t know if it’s more difficult than a char with some combat skills (even a bow), but most of my attacks need careful planning to allow me to place my runes, conjure my atrinarchs, trigger the enemies to rush me and manage to get behind my tank before they get too close. It’s tough to do all that in narrow spaces while throwing a soul-capture spell in, but it makes even routine creature battles a fun challenge. I don’t wear any armor at all in order to take advantage of the “cast armor multiplier” perk. As a pure mage, I’m forced to use every tool in my combat kit to include potions and shouts and even the terrain to funnel enemies into my traps or into other characters like giants. It’s made me a more creative player, I think.
I find that will an all magic-user character, there is a steep entry curve, but then you suddenly become god-like. When you have enough mana, you don’t even need to sneak around, just make sure you have your mage armor spell cast because one lucky hit when it’s down and you are toast.
I think I’ve encountered a calculation bug (or at least I can’t imagine this is on-purpose):
Smithing skill 100. I enchant a ring, necklace, and outfit with Fortify Smithing 25%. I go to the forge wearing my normal gear (not +smithing) and I see that a crafted Daedric battleaxe would have a base damage of 90. After putting on my smithing gear, the same weapon if crafted would have a damage of 72. Using just one piece of +smithing gear gives the same result.
Perhaps it is a glitch affected by me already being at 100.
XBox, patch 1.3.
First off, do you have the perk for Daedric crafting?
[QUOTE=Pine Fresh Scent]
XT, I thought I’d be a warrior-mage this time, but just keep dumping all my level up points into Magic since I have spells for healing and armor, and I let my tank swing all the heavy weapons. So now I’m sitting at a base magic/health/stamina ratio of 300/100/100. I don’t know if it’s more difficult than a char with some combat skills (even a bow), but most of my attacks need careful planning to allow me to place my runes, conjure my atrinarchs, trigger the enemies to rush me and manage to get behind my tank before they get too close. It’s tough to do all that in narrow spaces while throwing a soul-capture spell in, but it makes even routine creature battles a fun challenge. I don’t wear any armor at all in order to take advantage of the “cast armor multiplier” perk. As a pure mage, I’m forced to use every tool in my combat kit to include potions and shouts and even the terrain to funnel enemies into my traps or into other characters like giants. It’s made me a more creative player, I think.
[/QUOTE]
That sounds pretty challenging, so maybe I will go that route. I’m supposed to be home Wednesday evening and I’m off until Tuesday, so it might be a perfect time to roll up a new character and play through the game again. I assume you don’t have to wear only clothe, but that it’s more a role playing choice? Though you could get the arch-mages robes fairly early on, and IIRC they are pretty good. You can’t craft clothe armor though, afaik…just find ‘fine’ clothing and such (plus those Emperor’s robes, which might be fun to put some enchants on).
-XT