Read The Great War. The Empire was more exhausted than the Dominion at the end, losing entire legions to keep the Aldmeri at bay - not even going on the attack themselves, simply halting their advance. The Dominion is also in solid possession of Valenwood (Bosmer and Altmer are traditional allies) and Elsweyr (the Void Nights make the Khajiit kingdoms very loyal to the Thalmor), which is hardly wiped off the face of the continent. In Dawnguard we learn that The Imperial Palace itself is still in disrepair. Morrowind is a smoking ruin, Black Marsh and the Argonians are a separate state entirely, Skyrim is in a state of civil war and Hammerfell has seceeded and fights against Thalmor occupation. Cyrodiil still feels the effects of the war - only High Rock seems relatively stable. The Empire of the Septims seen in Morrowind and Oblivion had huge problems and the Empire of the Medes is far, far weaker than that.
The White Gold Concordat is acknowledged by both sides not as a permanent situation (which is arguably why the Stormcloaks are foolish to make WGC a point of rebellion and why the Thalmor watch the rebellion with glee). The head of the Thalmor Judiciars says that it is not a peace between two equals, but rather the calm before the storm - and the next storm will be far more deadly than the first. General Tullius too says that the real business of the Imperial Legion is getting on with preparing for a rematch with the Thalmor.
Btw; the reason the Thalmor hate Talos has less to do with him being a human god and more to do with him being a stabilising influence in Mundus. Merfolk revile Lorkhan, who tricked the et’Ada into creating the mortal plane, as he forever severed their link with the divine (their original state being revered as Aldmeris, or Old Elfoney). Reducing the influence of Talos takes them closer to their mythic state.
The Elder Scrolls Online is set in the Second Era, IIRC 500 years or so before Skyrim. If you mean the original Aldmeri Dominion, Tiber Septim needed a colossal Dwemer mech to bring them into the Empire originally.
Bows you “charge up,” and then attack, and have a delay before each attack. Crossbows are near-instantaneous, but have the delay afterwards.
Dwarven crossbow/enhanced crossbow (only difference is 1 “weight,” price, and enhanced has ignore 50% of armor enhancement): damage and critical damage are a little bit higher than Dragonbone bow. “Speed” of the bow is 3/4 of the crossbow, although I need to research exactly what that translates to. I think that Dragonbone is actually faster, but Daedric is slower. Bolts are faster, but don’t arc as much. Practically, I think this would mean that you’d need to be more careful with aiming in a heavy firefight if you’re using a bow, but if stealthed it might not matter.
And because the bolt is already drawn, you can move with a crossbow ready without being slowed down anymore. The two wikis of course contradict each other in a lot of these things. I think, for example, the damage listed here is wrong.
Bolts and upgraded crossbows are much easier to get if you join the Dawnguard instead of vampires. Note: you can still become a vampire if you side with the Dawnguard and beat the MQ. It seems to me that the material gain is better for the Dawnguard compared to the Volkihar vampires in some ways. Arrows in general are easier to find. Bolts can be made with elemental enchantments.
Man, I was loving Unbleak, but had to change to The Wilds v2.0 because with Climates of Tamriel it was just too damn dark at night. It was literally impossible to see more than two feet. This is somewhat of a problem if I’m planning on being a (Dawnguard-aligned) Vampire*.
Apparently this is possible because Serena will turn you if you ask and is DG aligned. Not sure if it’s possible to complete the DG-quests as a vampire, I might have to wait until after the quest-line is over to turn.
Wait until it’s over to turn. And finish the side quests. I believe you can do some of the Dawnguard stuff, but Isran at least will not speak to you until you’re cured, and you need him to progress. At the end, you can be turned. Just don’t get Serana cured.
There could be a mod that allows both, I don’t know.
Dwarven spheres should carry dwarven bolts. Other than that, you learn recipes from sidequests–you have to be somewhere along the Dawnguard questline to get them, but I’m not sure exactly how far.
Recruit Sorine Jurard, at least. Then it’s a frustrating time as you try to get her to point you towards new recipes, all while she sends you to one of the other guys to kill some random vampire or save someone, and get crappy gold for your efforts.
I’ve had no problem making bolts in the basement of my Hearthfire house. I’ve only created the standard steel/dwarven bolts, haven’t bothered to check if the more advanced bolts or the crossbows themselves can be made there.
You know, playing again with my new character to experience the DLC reminded me of what’s so special about this game.
My bad ass chick Jadxia the wanderer was, as her name suggests, a bit of a vagabond. In search of… nothing in particular. Well, maybe shiny treasures to plunder. When she hears about vampires stirring up trouble she sets off to investigate, more out of pure boredom than out of some desire to right wrongs or protect the innocent. So, she heads off and things happen, and she figures she’s going to be presented with a choice in the near future. Does she side with the vampires or the vampire hunters?
She might as well flip a coin, really. Ambivalence and Jadxia go hand in hand. But then, on her meandering trek toward the vampire stronghold, she stumbles onto an artifact of the Daedric Prince Meridia who asks her to be her champion and bring forth her cleansing light into her temple by slaying the foul necromancer corrupting it.
Whatev. Shinies are likely to be involved, so why not? Little did she know that as events unfolded, culminating in the final battle against a formidable necromancer and his ghastly shades and which ends up costing her companion, Janessa, the dark elf sell-sword, her life, Jadxia’s outlook changes considerably. Her resolve is cemented and she is given purpose - the thing, she realizes, that she had been looking for all this time.
She is now Jadxia, Dawn Bringer, Destroyer of Undead, Vampire Slayer, and Champion of Meridia. And she now knows just what to say to any vampires offering her “eternal life”.
My character is a Breton in the imperial army who felt betrayed by the empire after the WGC. He became a thief until he realized he was the dragonborn. Then he took joined the mages’ college and vowed to not carry a sword again until he was enlightened (actually, he got too powerful to play, so I joined the mages’ college and started leveling as a mage).
I didn’t think much of Hearthfire when I first heard about it but it’s actually kind of fun. Your basic little shack-house is free to start with and to build the big one you just have to do a small amount of resource grinding. Bring a follower with you and they’ll volunteer to be steward. At that point it’s simple. As long as you have the cash they’ll gather the materials, build the structures and furnish stuff as you command. They’ll even head on inside and start baking pies for you if you have a kitchen!
I had the strangest random occurrence. A courier came up to me outside of Lakeview Manor to give me a shout quest. I read the letter and get ready to head off when I notice the courier has stopped beside my house and is tanning some hides on the outdoor rack!
Any ideas for what I can do with +40,000 gold? I already have houses in Whiterun, Markarth and the expensive one in Solitude. I’ve built Lakeview Manor up to be huge and I have filled it with loot. I’m questing for Daedric items now but they’re hard to find and I still have a long way to go before I can get smithing up to 90. I’ve done the Dark Brotherhood questline to the end, I’m Arch Mage at the College of Winterhold, I’m pretty much in charge of the Thieves Guild (haven’t returned the Skeleton Key yet), I got the Bard’s College back on its feet, joined the Companions but haven’t become a werewolf yet and haven’t taken a side in the civil war yet. I just finished Alduin’s Wall for the main quest. Dawnguard and Dragonborn don’t interest me yet although it would be nice to stop the random vampire and cultist attacks. Goddamn vampires killed Adrienne Avenicci one night while she was working late. I’m still mad about that. She was my favorite merchant!
BTW, if you want more loot than you know what to do with, go up the lockpicking tree to the perks that make you find more gold and rare loot in chests. Those pay off very quickly.
I quite like the house-building/home-furnishing bit, but wish it was a bit more flexible so you could really design your own place. I’d have liked the option to make a sprawling cellar complex for a more unpleasant character, or a teetering Rapunzel tower - but it even insists on you building the honking great banquet hall structure before you can add a trophy room or whatever.
Could you spend your riches on building the other house? I haven’t tried building both (assuming there are only two building sites).
Skyrim really needs some high-stakes rune or dice games you can blow your gold on, while your wife, steward and adopted children stay at home making vegetable stew and fending off dragons.
There are 3 plots. And as you can add 3 wings to each and there are 9 wing types, so you can have everything. I kinda sorta planned out which wings I wanted to put in each place, and it turned out perfect, accidentally. One house has the 3 towers, one has the 3 larger rooms, and the other has the wings with patios.
Oblivion had more variety in houses (Mage Tower! Fighter’s Den! Dark Brotherhood… place…). But there was much less to do regarding upgrading them and such. The base houses in Skyrim are… okay. I actually like the overly expensive and smaller Solitude house over the cheaper and bigger/more storage Hjerim. I’m not much of a roleplayer, but I still remember it being a murder house. Must be why it’s so cheap.
The garden plots are cool but maybe too much. You end up rapidly multiplying your ingredients. I cannot figure out how to make the fishing pond actually spawn anything. I put stuff in and only one type of fish spawns, and I don’t believe it was anything that I actually seeded.
I loaded up a saved game i hadn’t touched since before I bought any of the expansions. I head to town, and there’s a literal queue of people waiting to talk to me. First a pair of vampire hunters looking to recruit me. Behind them, a courier with several messages for me. And behind him, waiting patiently for their turn, a trio of cultists who want to kill me.
I just started. Oddly enough it is up and running on my Toshiba Satellite L775 laptop, though I am only in the intro area. I don’t know if it will run once I am on the world map.
I installed SkyUI mod to fix the terrible inventory management. Is there anyway to “de-console” this bad-boy further? I’ve been playing Fallout 3 and finished Elder Scrolls IV last year and greatly prefer those controls.
I’m obviously playing on the PC and want to mod it further. I can’t do anything to increase the visuals, though; it’s running on low right now as is.
Uh, here is one thing I want to fix. My laptop doesn’t have a scroll wheel and I want to zoom on the map. Well, it has a scroll wheel kind of, but it is terrible. Can I map the zooming in and out to PageUp and PageDown?
Steam has the “Legendary Edition” up. $60 for the main game + 3 add-ons. It would probably go down in price at some point if you were still holding out. Dragonborn still the max price.
Mahaloth: waitaminute. You think Skyrim is console-y, but Fallout 3 is not? Was it FO3 or the GFWL which was too lazy to change the UI, so it was asking you to push “A”? :smack: What parts are bothering you, which might affect how to change them.
Presumably to zoom, he downloaded AutoHotKEy. You can also use any of the numerous keyboard remapping programs, providing they implement MouseWheel events.
For Tweaking your graphics, there are two files, Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini, in Username\Documents\My Games\Skyrim. If it ends up running slowly, you could do things like tweak the draw distances. Google around for tweaks.
So the middle part of the game is a total grind but once you get high up in the skills you can have all kinds of fun.
The easiest way to explore hidden talents is with the Legendary skills refund. Once you’ve got a skill up to 100, you can make it “Legendary” which just resets it to 15… and gives you all the perk points back out of that tree. Meanwhile, because it wasn’t beta tested all that great, it lets you keep some of the perks from that tree. And if your character is pretty boss at this point anyhow, you can level your skill right back up again. Archery is the best one to do because shooting a stock arrow at a Mudcrab seems to take you up a level if you score a hit. Don’t do lockpicking as it’s a terrible grind to get it to 100 to begin with and you’ll never get it back to 100 because there just aren’t that many locks in the game.
And as for those refunded perk points… I went all the way up to the top of the Sneak tree and grabbed Shadow Warrior. Wow, if you ever wanted to confound your enemies! When you duck down you get this whooshing effect and a little black cloud around you… and you disappear from battle! Enemies who are standing right in front of you can reacquire you quickly but enemies who aren’t looking right at you lose complete track of where you were.
I’ve also finally finally managed to grind Smithing to 90 (did some training with Eorlund Gray-Mane to get it done faster, since I had all that gold I couldn’t figure out how to spend) and guess what? Daedric Armor time! A full set of Daedric gives me 600 armor! I got into a brawl in Morthal and the guy couldn’t even make my health bar twitch, whacking me with lefts and rights while I just stood there and laughed at how he was the town tough guy.
Also, Daedric anything fetches prices in the grands. An enchanted set of armor showed me a value of 8800 Septims! At that rate I was selling it as fast as I could make it, buying merchants out of Daedra hearts and ebony ingots.
I joined the Stormcloaks just to mix things up. I was tired of listening to Jarl Ball-Grief bitch about his miserable existence so he now dwells in the basement of the Blue Palace. I actually kind of like the Stormcloaks. Stone-Fist described them as " the meanest, toughest sons of bitches Skyrim has to offer". I like his style.