smiling bandit, no points I really disagree with, so well summarized. I would like to add to the dragon section, though. Killing a dragon just isn’t epic enough, regardless of your level. This ties in with what you said about NPCs having a “run away”-script. When a dragon attacks a city, guards should cower in fear. I can accept the Mage’s College fighting it, but city guards? It just takes away from what should be the sheer, awe-inspiring might of the dragons. Maybe require a shout to stun a dragon, making it vulnerable?
Heh. I was attacked by a dragon at a lumber mill. The owners just went on strolling about as I was dodging dragon breath by hiding behind their house. I just figured people were adjusting to the ever present threat. 
One thing I can say, this game really seriously needs more voice actors. Having the same three or four folks do the voices for most of the merchants/soldiers/women in the game is just fucking odd. Although I am glad to see that Claudia Christan is getting work these days.
Here’s one big beef - followers. While most of the time they are all right, they are useless when it come to traps. They can’t avoid pressure traps or get out of fire gout and they get incapacitated. You heal them, and they repeat the same damn thing again.
I wish there is a mod that make followers undetected by traps..
A hilarious moment – I’m being escorted by the thief’s guild guildmaster on a mission in a dungeon. He warns me, quite condescendingly, to mind the traps – seconds later I hear a yelp behind me as he triggers a bear trap. :smack:
I’m going to leave the list up until later today if anyone cares to add anything. I’ll certainly try to address your comments, all, because they’re good points.
There’s a super-obnoxious point in that dungeon where he WILL trigger a really blatant trap. As you close in on one of the lower doors, there’re two chests in small alcoves on either side of the hallway. And obvious strings with bones to wake the draugr in the alcoves. It’s not that difficult to leap over the trap and open the chests, but the idiot insists on following you. So he’ll trigger one trap, and probably in the fight will trigger the other side.
I had to stop and pay a 40 gold fine because I must of accidentally hit someone during a dragon fight and during the mage’s guild quest, when all Oblivion is breaking out in the town, two people calmly carried on a little chit chat.
I don’t really like how each and every character you make must have smithing and enchanting as fairly leveled skills…just to get acceptable gear. By the time you are high enough level for enemies to start dropping gear that would benefit any given character who didn’t want to smith or enchant his own, well they’re kicking your lily ass because you don’t have the uber gear to kill the baddies with.
I guess I could just knock the difficulty down to easy for certain fights but that really kills it for me. Not that I don’t like smithing or enchanting. But some of my characters I’d rather not have to focus on that.
Overall though, definitely a good game. Really really needs some help from the modding community though and I hope to high heaven modding becomes more mainstreamed to the point where it doesn’t require any more computer knowledge than is required to install/play the game to begin with to install/apply a mod. That would really make it something more people got into. Hell I’d even pay for a mod that adjusted an aspect of the game more to my liking. Kinda like a custom expansion pack.
Ya hear me Bethesda? Get on that. Lickety split. 
And on reading some of this 25 page thread I realize that apparently mods will be available via steam?
Awesome!
Well, mages don’t really need any gear per se - robes of this and that are fairly commonly found in the inventory of court wizards and besides it’s a long while until you can enchant better.
Really though, I wonder if they’re *that *necessary. I know both are key to snap the game’s difficulty on your knee and so far it’s been a no-brainer that my characters would quickly master them both ; but I’ve been itching to make a pure, non-sneaky melee fighter without either to inject a bit of challenge into the proceedings. I’ll report on his success (or lack thereof) when I’m done with New Vegas.
My work on melee found it much tougher, and I needed stealth and magic just to keep up. I found it hard to play the barbarian warrior and nothing else. Basically, smithing adds about as much damage and protection as both your weapon and armor skills combined.
I agree, enemies don’t seem to be dropping anything particularly interesting or useful. In past TES games, you could find some really cool weapons or armor by defeating epic foes, but not so much in this one.
Afternoon, hope you don’t mind me crashing in without having read the whole thread - I don’t want any spoilers if I do end up playing the game!
I had a go on a PS3 copy of the game and really struggled with the controls. Is it possible to make the camera automatically follow behind you? I got really confused with having to use both sticks simultaneously (yes, I’m a bit of a gaming noob). If I could just use the left stick to move around in all directions, I would be a very happy bunny.
Not only that, but the game seems to push you towards crafting. No dungeon comes without its store of ingots, and killing a dragon yields scales and bones. Fair enough, realism-wise, but when the next epic enemy you can defeat are dragon priests for their masks and draugr overlords for unenchanted ebony weapons, it really feels like you have to work hard to find something useful. Or, you know, make it yourself.
Maybe commission something from uber-blacksmiths?
Yeah, crafting is fun on the first couple of play throughs, but I don’t want to have to level up any new characters in the same way. In order to make a super badass, you have to be 100 in smithing and enchanting. I like the idea of commissioning something, and it would be fine if the prices were crazy high to compensate for not having to level enchanting and smithing.
I decide to re-roll a new character, partly because the sword/shield combo is getting tiresome throughout combat. I may do a Spellsword character using light armor - at least I can use AoE when I want to.
Since I am restarting, are there any good tips for new characters? I somehow missed out the 3 Stones which is supposedly near Helegen. I probably will start the Mage’s Guild quest first. Are there any thing worth grabbing as a level 1 character?
You can get through pretty much the entire game without much problem if you train up to the destruction dual casting stagger perk, and then just use the basic firebolt spell for the rest of the game. Go for that, get the dragon priest mask that gives you 100% magika regen, get the archmage’s robes (I think that they’re leveled, so maybe wait a bit to get 'em), get a good ring of magicka regen (I think that there’s one, maybe leveled, at the frostflow lighthouse)… and you’re pretty much golden. Add in some dark brotherhood boots for sneaking and use your companion for tanking and everything becomes pretty much manageable.
/IMO
Without specific plot spoilers anyone have any suggestions where I can get some more Conjuration spells? I want to summon things to help me fight my battles for me but all I have is the familiar and the Flame guy you get early in the game. I assumed the applicable professor at the school of magic would have a bunch of ones to buy but no dice.
Go around and join all the factions. Each one will give you some gear, including full Dark Brotherhood gear, thieves’ guild armor, basic mage outfit, and a skyforge weapon. Pick what you want.
The game becomes truly obnoxious in its insistence that, well, spells are leveleld along with everything else. So you can have enough mana to choke a mammoth, but you’re not allowed to learn those spells until you level some more. It’s a long while before you can get the better summonings.
I activated the Steed stone that gives a +100 carry increase and worn armor doesn’t coun’t against your current weight carried. Makes it easier to carry loot from dungeons to vendors in one trip and avoids levelling up too fast (in my first experience) that came partly from activating the Warrior stone by Helegen.
Now that I can craft high-value potions and jewelry, I might activate a different stone, since I try to stay below 150 pounds and rarely need all that carry capacity.