Orchomene

I'm playing Grotesque Tactics 2. That's fun. I like turn based combat.

I've stopped. I may be interested in another playthrough, but not before some weeks.

TES V is about 200 years after TES IV. In the mean time, the empire suffered from oblivion gates and the Thalmor was created (or recreated) by high elves to "unit" the elven nations. They made an Anschluss of the Bosmer country and annexed Elsweyr (certainly advocating there were Altmer minorities in Elsweyr) and attacked the falling empire. After a a war, there has been a ceased fire between the empire and the Thalmor and the Thalmor imposed their conditions (theological and strategical) : the empire would no more consider Talos as a god (a human god is not consdered respectful of the Thalmer superiority ideology) and the Thalmor would install military bases in the empire. Thalmor are racists in essence (they consider it's the right and responsability of meres to rule the other races), considering humans are like savages and meres beeing superior to humans (with of course altmers being above all other meres).

You can smith higher quality items than legendary? Since that is what I am doing right now. Even so, capped in that regard just meant skill @ 100. It's still called legendary but the bonus goes on without limit (well, at least as far as I have seen, that is, with around 150% efficiency bonus above a smithing skill at 100). It's difficiult to give numbers since the melee skills give also bonuses, but in the end, I had a 176 damage daedric sword.

Smithing is not caped : using enchanted rings/amulets and potions can enhance effectiveness of smithing greatly. You can easily doubled the effectiveness. For alchemy, if you want to increase your level you need to brew potions that have a high cost, like skill enhancement and invisibility. For invisibility, I used a lot of vampire dust and nirnroots. In the end, I don't find alchemy very useful for magic/health stamina potions. More for skill and invisibility potions, with some circumstantial ones like water breathing (but rarely useful, I agree). I'm also not a fan of destruction spells. I used a bit of restoration, but as you say, it costs a lot when you don't have perks and equipment specialized in magic use. I have the same lack of success with this shout. All in all, I don't find a lot of shouts useful. The whirlwind sprint and slow time, a bit of dragonrend in the end of the main quest. By the way, using shouts in cities attracts the attention of 'friends' that give you locations of wall of words. Pretty useful. I also think that using shout in wilderness attracts the attention of dragons. But it may be some coincidence only. All in all, there is not a lot of incentives to level up more when you have all your 'useful' skills at top. You only gain a bit of health/stamina/magicka and the quality of the loot increases also a bit. But, if you want to still level up, stealth and the complementary armor skills are your friends. Stealth will change a bit your playstyle if you don't use it always. But the armor skill won't change many things. To level up without too much pain at the begining, you can use mudcrabs and brawl fights. @Tigranes : I never used archery, I used mostly stealth and melee : Ebony mail and Mehrunes razor are a good combination for assassins. Even without a lot of skill perks, if you use some stealth equipment, you are almost invisible to enemies if you take care of avoiding light. If there is some light, you can use an invisibility potion (or power if you've got the Thieves guild quest power). From all the guilds quest lines, I found the dark brotherhood one the most interesting. Maybe because it suited well with my character. The stormcloaks one is very boring when you are at the point of conquering. The main quest is not at the level of the Morrowind one (to my taste), too predictable I liked and disliked at the same time the dungeons. Each dungeon has some uniqueness (more or less, some are very close to each other, but there is a sufficient number of 'templates' to avoid repetition feelings), which is good. But they are too linear. When you understand how each dungeon is linear, you don't even think about which way to take or hat you may have missed, you just go on from beginning to end and thus lose all feeling of being a bit lost.

Well, a bit less and I was on vacation. Nonetheless, I agree it was pretty intensive. (None of my friends were in vacation).

Sure, I didn't want to imply I wasn't satisfied with the game. 40 cents of euro an hour of playing is pretty cheap those days.

My first play through finished yesterday evening at level 47 and more than 80% (rough estimation based on a subjective feeling) of the world/quests discovered/done. It took me more or less 120 hours. I've just began a new character but doesn't feel a lot inspired. There is not a lot of replayability value as far as I can imagine. Only difference could be in choosing between imperial legion and stormcloaks. Otherwise, one could also restrict itself to only part of the guilds.

Yes, more dragons spawn. I've already killed around two dozens of dragons. Biggest one were two ancient dragons. Also, you can get back to previous draagon markers on the map, the dragon there respawn frequently (which is kinda weird since the main idea behind the dragon born is that they give the final death).

That's a reason all my melee characters in TES are Bretons. Magic resistance rocks. Also, doing the Peryite daedric quest helps a lot in those fights : spellbreaker is a shield that allows you to block part of the spell damages you receive.

I've stopped the main quest just after meeting the grey beard (or something like that) so I can't say. After level 30 something, you can see ancient dragons that are not that hard but at about the same difficulty of a level 20 against blood dragons. With a melee character, the tactic against dragon to avoid too many air attacks seems to flee from combat up to going to a point sufficiently large to allow a dragon to land on. Then, the fight becomes very easy.

At level 38, I feel really powerful, even without a not so powergamer build (heavy armor, smithing, one hand weapon, enchant, stealth). Well, of course, at this level, I have the equipment associated with it and it's pretty efficient (ebony mail and mace of molag bal, enchanted dragon armor parts). But, yeah, even with this power, at some moment I still need to be a bit careful.

If you won't have time to play it, why don't you wait for a lower price ?

I've just received a key and won't use it. So if anyone wants it, PM me (before tomorrow evening).

Also works for potion creation and enchant (and maybe smithing, don't remeber) : confirmation action.

You may want to check this : http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/show...d.php?t=2232119

Hmm... never thought about that. I even have a backpack full of different batteries for my toys. I remembered the souped up med-x and turbo and what have you, but forgot about different ammo types. Took me forever too to figure out how to change ammo Yeah, same thing during my first playthrough. Then I figured how to change the amunitions and was delighted to see how energy weapon became really more efficient if one changes amunitions depending of the target.

If you use energy weapons in FONV, think about over charged ammunitions. It is really efficient against deathclaws.

Should be something like : 000A2C94.resurrect 1 Or maybe : prid 000A2C94 resurrect 1

Level 24 and in full draconic armor. Well, I've not much else than 100 in smithing, but the armor is very powerful. I had to kill three dragons to get the ingredients for the full suit (well, except the boots that are still ebony). I've not explored a lot of cities (just Whiterun and Windhelm), mostly outside : mines and animals for smithing components. I'm now in the Stormguards quests.

I've taken from Steam the Geneforge series. Pretty cheap for five games.

I'm still not sure I "get" the new mechanics but I'll figure it out eventually. Haven't noticed a crouching-specific option but maybe it's built in or has weird wording. It was a bit too overpowered before...altho in the SP game at least, eventually I hardly have to ever fight myself to doesn't matter too much. Do you know if having a high Persuasion will prevent the bickering Heroes from actually leaving, like before? In the 1st game they'd still complain periodically but they'd never actually leave. Or at least, they never did when I played. I don't know really. I tried to completly avoid combinations where some complain to each other presence. Also, if you run your own kingdom, you can appoint then as leaders and give them castles and villages thus avoiding the bickering.

Yep. They changed the mechanic behind crouching to avoid long crouching (so there is a time limit) and automatic crouching (so there is a manual trigger). This is mostly for MP where they wanted to avoid a unique tactic in duel. Now, crouching remains as deadly as before, just a bit less comfortable and may require some practice. After a patch they added the option to have crouching triggered a bit friendlier (like it remains more or less automatic) for SP games (I think).

Homm 6 is not that bad, but a bit too simplified for a strategic game. Managing a kingdom is pretty easy with the Town portals incorporated inside each city for all leaders (like the infernal portals in Homm 3). Only three resources instead of the eight (I think) before. But it remains fun. Only thing that is bothering me is the 'online' mod with benefits that, when you play offline as I do, are a reminder of the condition of being a 'bad person'by playing offline : you don't have weapon evolving, nor gaining free traits for leaders. But I had not the choice, with my erratic connexion to internet, the game stopped every two minutes. Yes, you heard me : if you don't play offline, the game shuts down at every connexion failure.

I've just finished the campaign of Disciples 3 Resurrection. Fun with a not so predictable ending. I still think that it's too expensive for such an expansion. Now, I'm ready for homm 6.