The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim post-release thread

The Game Room
1401

I bought my first horse in Solitude, and it was OK, but it bolted a few times in combat and at one point it stopped showing up when I fast-traveled places. It wasn’t dead, though, and in fact it had happily decided make its home at the stables in Riften. Its name had changed back to “Horse”, and while it was rideable without stealing, it would walk back to Riften like any other horse that you can ride but don’t own. Oddly enough, the two horses at the Riften stables and the one in Solitude without a saddle had also become rideable without stealing, but would also return to their normal places after dismounting.

I eventually talked to the stable master at Solitude and bought another horse, but no new horse appeared. Instead, my old horse that had quit on me and moved to Riften became “[My Character]'s Horse” again.

Once after this, when assaulting Fort Sungard, I mounted one of the brown Imperial horses during the battle, and my horse walked off again. This time I found it in Whiterun, and I still owned it.

When I finally got Shadowmere, my old horse walked off on its own, but after it was out if sight, I never saw it again. I’ve checked all of the stables and it’s not at any of them. Not that that’s a problem, now having Shadowmere and all, but still I wonder what became of it.

1402

It wandered off into the west, where it came upon two rival herds contesting for a pasture. It played the rivals against one another in a dangerous game that eventually crushed both, leaving it with all the clover. It became…

The Horse With No Name.

(Later in its travels, it carried a stoned, hallucinating twit through a desert, but it prefers not to dwell on that particular low point in its adventures.)

1403

Well it looks like we need a little life injected into this thread! Come on people, the Creation Kit should be released this week and the modders will go nuts!
What kind of mods are you using now that you like? Anything in particular that you’re waiting for or hoping someone makes?

I absolutely love the Enhanced Night Skyrim with the high density star fields. It looks amazing!

I also just picked up the Wars in Skyrim mod, which tweaks those random wilderness encounters that you have walking outside. Just last night I fast traveled to a mill and witnessed a rogue werewolf running up to the mill and start chewing up guards, right after I helped put it down I turned around I found a Dremora trying to slice through my horse, Frost. On top of all that (I’m not sure if was the mod or just pure luck), a Blood Dragon was circling overhead and decided to join in the fun.

1404

Stupid question: How do you load the mods? I tried to load one of the enhanced map mods. Roads would be nice to see, but I have no farging clue where Steam put my Skyrim data files.

1405

Depends. If the mod is just graphical changes, then you dump it into the \Data\ folder*, preserving directory structure. If it’s an actual mod, you do the same thing. Then, you run the loader from Steam, click “Data Files” and check the ones you want to use.
*Usually something like C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\Data
Haven’t tried any myself. Maybe the UI mod is first for me. Some of the stronger dragons ones look interesting, but I worry that just means every villager will die. Is there a “make all villagers flee to their/the nearest home while guards are the only ones fighting” mod?

1406

There is a Skyrim mod manager that you can find at Skyrim Nexus. Once installed, most mods have a install with download manager option on Skyrim Nexus that let’s you just double click to install.

The mods I like are the night sky one, the no more blocky faces, the map with roads and the invisible helmet mod. I need to download the additional hotkeys mod, I had it for Oblivion and if you’re a spellcaster it really helps out.

1407

I’ve got a couple smithing mods installed.

1408

Console here (PS3). I’m still slowly slogging my way through level 51 and currently over-burdening myself everywhere trying to liquidate a bunch of my hoard pile.

1409

Hey Pc gamers, the beta of the patch is out.

You might want to wait until it’s final, as Beth says run ti at your own risk, but I just wanted to point out that my FPS went up by like 30.

I think it’s the CPU enhancements they made.

Also the Thieve’s Guild’s quest is back!!! I has run into the bug where the quest line dies after “loud and clear”.

1410

Jeez, this game has become an obsession to the point that I sometimes wake up in the morning thinking about it.

I got an Orc to around level 25 with two hand/heavy armor but became dissatisfied with some of my perk choices, so I restarted last night. Going with Redguard one hand/heavy armor. I like the Orc berserk power and believe it’s stronger than the Redguard adrenaline rush, but wanted a change. Figure to work on heavy armor as it was slow to rise with the orc, so I let puny enemies get in a few hits. I haven’t found any trainers for that skill yet and don’t want to look them up.

A few things I’m doing to avoid burning out on the game:

Self-imposed limitations. Fighters don’t join the mage college, that sort of thing. Quests like that will wait until I do a mage. I think I actually may play it through with more than one character.

Turn up the difficulty. Adept was a little too simple… although expert has been simple so far with the new character, too. The old one ran into some rough patches on expert, more on that later.

Live with glitches. I got all annoyed when I couldn’t learn the final word from Wulfgar at High Hrothgar due to a bug and reloaded a bunch of times and tried a variety of fooling around. It doesn’t prevent moving on in the main quest, though, so why worry about it?

Let followers and NPCs die. Lydia kept dying, I kept reloading. Not a recipe for enjoying the game. I’m not about to go hardcore, though. Takes too long to get past the beginning, I dislike fleeing, and it can be hard to gauge threats.

By doing the above, I’m hoping I’ll keep from breaking the game so much that I get bored. It’s very amenable to grinding. I wish I was playing the PC version so I could, say, get a mod to toughen up dragons a little as they’re weak, at least against melee characters past the very early levels, at least in my experience.

I was wondering if anybody else noticed highly varying difficulties between locations? The orc character ran into some Falmer in a cave called the Sightless Pit that were much tougher than expectations based on previous encounters. I thought possibly that was due to the altitude, sort of a reverse from difficulty rising as you crawl deeper dungeon levels, but other encounters in that area weren’t especially hard. Another example are the Forsworn. I found a fort full of them and easily dispatched them, greedily collecting their light armor to sell. That led to a harsh wake up call when I charged into a mine they’d invaded where the boss was able to kill my guy with two shots. I’m not sure if the variation is a bug or a feature, though. Is there an explanation I’m missing? Maybe enemy types ramp up after you’ve killed X amount? But in that case, small groups of bandits and wolves should’ve been sacking strongholds for the lulz.

1411

Also, is there a way to tell what level enemies are? Scrolls often say “undead up to level X” are affected, but I don’t know how to tell.

1412

Lydia got killed in a dragon attack (she always was too brave for her own good).

Now I left Mjoll somewhere to wait for me, but I forgot where I left her! Will she eventually turn up somewhere? If so where?

Lydia was a bit of a sarcastic bitch sometimes, so I wasn’t too sorry to see her go. But I miss my simple, honest mule, I mean Mjoll!

1413

I imagine she will return to Riften. After a companion waits three days or so, you should get a message saying your companion has gotten tired of waiting for you. Give her a day’s worth of travel time thereafter.

1414

The normal way that followers die is when YOU kill them while they’re kneeling. I guess dragon breath could’ve done it here though.

After a few days of waiting, you will get a message along the lines of: “Mjoll the Lioness has returned home” and they will go to a place that’s hopefully obvious. Riften in her case.

1415

Thanks guys! I’ll check there tonight. I hope she’s there (I want to hear more about her childhood :p)

1416

Post #623 of this thread (page 16) might shed some light.

On the subject of of followers, I randomly picked up Aanika Crag Walker at Dark Water Mine as a follower. Turns out she’s got pretty good health stats and makes a good archer/one-handed compliment to my mage character. Best part is that her base equipment is only miner’s clothes and a pickaxe, so I can easily outfit her with whatever armor, weapons and enchanted jewelry I want with out worrying if she’ll equip her base equipment instead (I’m on XBox). She also has a good attitude, unlike Lydia who I had to fire(ball).

1417

Besides looking up the monster tables at UESPWiki, nope.

1418

A good way to tell is that if you’re a high enough level to be a badass, your spells probably won’t work on damn near anything if they’re “works on up to X level” spells. Pretty much just assume they’re all fucking worthless and get back to dual-casting firebolts.

1419

I wouldn’t be quite so categorical. My own breakdown would be:

  • if you don’t have any of the perks, go home.
  • if you have one perk, you’ll be able to hijack the lowest of minions
  • if you have all the perks, you’ll be able to hijack a mid-level threat, maybe even a lieutenant
  • you won’t be able to hijack a boss or anything that is a real threat to you, ever.

But if you’re clever about it, and the room is not some scripted event with new spawns coming in discrete waves, you might just clear out a boss’s whole entourage before switching over to dual-casting firebolts to finish him mago-a-mano.

1420

My personal “rules” to keep the game fresh and not get burned out by grinding and reloading…

I reload for dead companions or failed quests mostly just for total BS moments that are the fault of the game interface:

  • Companion dies getting stuck on scenery
  • Companion dies due to weird friendly-fire instances (running in front of a shout, being 20 feet away but still hit by my battleaxe swing, that sort of stuff.)
  • Fast-travel into two dragons fighting multiple giants and mammoths.

That said…Lydia died a legendary death worthy of the ballads when, far out on an ice floe, flaming gloriously in the night after charging bravely through a firestorm, she put the final killing blow into the two cave bears living out on the ice only to succumb to the raging flames, slip off the ice flow, and sink forever into the icy depths. I didn’t have the heart to reload after that majestic death.