The year is 2024. WoW recently released a new expansion. A new Bioware RPG recently launched. My steam library is filled to the brim with new and unplayed games.
What better time, then, to replay, for the 100th time, the hottest game of 2011? Yes, I am playing Skyrim again.
After all these years there’s still nothing that scratches the fantasy adventurer life sim sandbox itch that Morrowind and Skyrim do, so maybe I’ll never stop revisiting these crusty old games…
Please tell me about your experiences in the frosty lands of the Nords.
Were you a proud warrior, searching in vain for fighter’s guild where you wouldn’t have to turn into a wolf? A wise mage, crying behind a rock waiting for your magicka to recharge as a dragon breathes fire at you? Or the ever popular stealth archer, which I’ve been repeatedly assured is the best Skyrim build but which I have somehow never played (bows just aren’t as cool as magick and swords!)
Or are you a rare individual who hasn’t played this aged game? In which case I ask, what other pop culture phenomena have you avoided? Have you played Super Mario Bros? Have you seen Star Wars?
I played on 360 back in the day and got like 5 hours in before I just stopped lol. I plan on going thru all the Elder Scrolls games some day (put in like 3 hours into Arena)
I replayed it about a year or two ago, after getting the anniversary edition with all the DLC and junk it was fun to dive in since I never played some of the DLC. So it was fun to explore it all over again and experience something new. I like playing a stealthy illusionist/necromancer. I cause people to fight each other and then resurrect the bodies to pick off the survivors lmao. I also play a Khajit and marry Cosnach because it’s funny to beat the crap out of him and then he’s like, whoa you wanna get married and his spouse dialog is really cute tbh.
Also my current PC, I built it a year before Skyrim came out and future proof’d it to such an extent that I’m still using it. I have done various upgrades over the years but it’s held up great over the decade. It also helps that my gaming habits I tend to not play the most graphic intense games but it is funny when something causes it to grind and show its age. AKA Ardeanweald with all its sparkle and particle affects lmao.
I’m doing the exact same thing. There’s something about Skyrim that will always be magical for me, no matter how many times I’ve played it.
I’ve done a stealth archer the most. When going that route, I always level Conjuration to 50 and use the bound bow. Saves on weight, and no need to worry about arrows. If you unlock the perk Soul Stealer, where bound weapons cast soul trap on targets, you end up with a million filled gems which is handy too. Just a fun way to play an archer if anyone hasn’t tried it. Quiet casting in the Illusion tree is a must though if you’re doing this stealth.
A close second for me is dual-handed Destruction Mage. Blasting everything with Chain Lightning palpatine-style is incredible.
My latest time with Skyrim was through the mod Enderal, after I learned it could be played relatively independent from Skyrim itself. It was a pretty decent experience for the time I had it installed, though I found Arcane Fever to be a tad annoying.
On regular Skyrim, I tend to spend much of my time just travelling around and doing radiant quests or modded content on a bunch of different characters, with a few exceptions. Some of the game’s more relatively recent updates had noticeably stunted my experience, either causing certain mods to stop working due to the author’s unwillingness to update them, or otherwise making things a bit more annoying than they need to be. I understand there are ways to revert to previous versions but they’re too much of a pain for me to consider.
Fun fact, back in the day I somewhat overhyped myself about Skyrim by unwittingly making baseless assumptions about its magic system. When seeing how casting worked in that demo they would show around, I saw overcharging mechanic and came to the conclusion that it would be utilized, in addition making powered up versions of spells, to combine different spells and their effects together, a perhaps interesting and mostly satisfactory spellmaking replacement if it was true. In retrospect I had no reason to think this would be the case; it’s not like they said anything to that effect in any preview content. I still think it would’ve been cool, and very fitting considering the lackluster variety of spells in the vanilla game.
On a partially related note, I’ve been rewatching Skyrim for Pimps and watching their recent reactions. It’s hard to believe sometimes that show is over a decade old now.
Skyrim courtship is charming with how many ways you can win someone’s heart. Do a bear hunting job? They love you. Give a coin to a beggar? Beggar loves you. Punch someone repeatedly? Believe it or not they love you.
I think Arena is the one where everyone is OK with skipping it. I bumbled around the starting dungeon for like 15 minutes before I went “ok, now I can say I played it, now to never launch this game again”
Magic in skyrim is pretty fun, but nothing beats Morrowind’s spellmaking. The magic system seems to change a lot every game, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out in TES 6, in the year 2099 or whenever that game is scheduled to release.
Legacy of the Dragonborn is by far one of, if not the, best fan-made mod ever made. Its well worth it to play through an entire game using Legacy and all of the other mods that tie into it.
I quite like the way spells are cast in Skyrim, definitely my favorite among the three, especially in regard to how necromancy works, which is a big part of why I wish there was more options for magic to utilize it. I especially hate how magic doesn’t scale at all. It’s probably why so much of my mod list is dedicated to adding spells and rebalancing magic.
I’m playing with this as well and while I enjoy it, I do find the extent to which it makes me a hoarder slightly stressful. Rushing back to Solitude with hundreds of pounds of items is something I have to do constantly now! I know it has some system where you send shipments to the museum from other locations, maybe I need to figure that out so I’m not fast traveling to solitude every 15 minutes.
The lack of scaling is awful in vanilla, though like Yran recommended I use Ordinator which does enable scaling in most cases.
Vanilla skyrim magic is sort of goofy how it is simultaneously weak and kinda OP? Like, the “Impact” perk lets you stunlock everything with minimal effort, but you do so little damage that you need to throw like 200 firebolts at your stunlocked dragon to kill it. Ordinator removes Impact and just makes you do more damage, which is a lot more fun for me.
There is just nothing like it and I’m not sure there ever will be. First time I played, die hard sword and board warrior. That’s my first real love in any game that offers it. I’ve done the stealth archer and the rogue but never magic. I’ve never been a ‘spell player’. I find it boring beyond belief in any game.
Skyrim hit a nerve that no other game has and I’ve played a lot in all my years. There’s nothing like it. I actually installed about a week or so ago and have been playing again. Funny you posted this thread.
If anyone has yet to do so, I highly HIGHLY recommend the Quest Mod “Vigilant”.
It lets you become a Vigilant of Stendarr, which results in a sweeping narrative that sees you eventually have to fight your way out of Coldharbor (Molag Bal’s realm of Oblivion) and along the way face off against a cavalcade of Elder Scrolls figures from its mythic past.
It’s “Dark Souls inspired”, but based entirely within the established lore of Tamriel. The new voice actor for Molag Bal is also vastly superior to the vanilla and yes, for the sake of continuity, the mod does override the vanilla Molag Bal dialogue in his Artifact quest.
“I hope you keep this spirit, even when dying Mortal!”
Make sure you make use of the boxes that you can set up to appear by Travel carts, inns, and other landmarks! It makes it pretty easy to just drop stuff off to get transported back to Solitude. The way you set it up is one of the interactable bookstands that are in the display area. Also, the Curator’s Companion is -must- have, as it tracks what you have/haven’t collected, so you can more easily judge what you need to send back, and what you can sell.
Stealth, heavy plate, and two handed. Sure, stealth is hard until I hit sneak 70 and get silence. But it’s all the more rewarding when a bandit DOES detect me and I can only imagine the gut-wrenching fear they have when they realize it’s not a leather-armored padfoot with knives, but a hulk in armor with an ebony warmaul.
“I found you!” Yes, you found me. Most unfortunate.
I came in to Breezehome after a long day of adventuring and my adopted daughter Sofie asked me if I brought her any souvenirs. I had just sold all my loot and hadn’t thought to pick up a sweetroll so I didn’t really have anything, but I thoughtlessly chose the, “yes” option.
The kid gifting menu filters appropriate gift items (sweets, childrens clothes, dolls, wooden swords). I didn’t have anything appropriate but apparently the filter isn’t specific to wooden swords and will actually accept any one handed weapon, including the super powerful weapons I have for my own use.
So anyway I felt too bad to leave her empty handed after I said I had something, so I ended up giving her my daedric dagger with an absorb health and paralyze enchantment. She now spends the days attacking a practice dummy in her room with this terrifying otherworldly weapon. She’s gonna be a great murderhobo some day
our most serious Tyr devotee blew up with Dalaran thow and now we got a weird guy that thinks the ocean talks to him following us around, pretty sure nothing bad is going to happen with him around
