So I made the mistake of having a quick look at Markarth before passing out, so an hour later I leave the city with a load of new quests and decide to ride horseback all the way to Whiterun, I'm really tired now but the scenery was worth it

 

One thing that stuck me as cool was that I didn't pick up a single map marker while sticking to the road, there were loads of things popping up on my compass but none so close as to be discovered, it seems Bethesda really have learnt their lesson from Oblivion's endless, pointless claustrophobia.

 

 

This is precisely why sandboxes are the best games ever

Edited November 13, 201114 yr by WDeranged

I am extremely annoyed by the fact that nearly every quest is sending me far away from the quest origin. It feels like everyone in Skyrim can walk from left of the country to right of the country in one day and therefore everyone knows everything and everyone. I mean, how the **** can I do a drinking game in the bottom right corner of the map and after this, end up in a town in the top left corner of the map? It just makes no damn sense. Also other quests, which always send me to some place far outside the current town... it just sucks, is annoying as hell. It's such a Bethesda game.

 

I mean, if I want to explore, then I explore. I don't need quests that send me over the whole worldmap, just so I can "accidentally" stumble over dungeons to explore.

Edited November 13, 201114 yr by Lexx

Yeah, you are really really short on avialable keys surrounding WASD and then you aren't allowed to rebind 'f' to something useful. You can't bind a spell either, you have to drop it in the favorites pool first then hotgroup it with CTRL+number keys, meaning that the favorites pool becomes a junk drawer for all the things you want and wanted to bind, and so not very usable by itself at all. There is no quick spell pool, the quck spell shortcut takes you to your spell library, not to an instant listing of all your spells. You can't dual wield, although the animations looked pretty cool, you would have to manually equip with 3 or 4 mouse clicks every time you wanted to switch to a dagger and sword.

 

I could go on. It really is abysmal. Fortunately the game is good enough to put up with all that.

Edited November 13, 201114 yr by Gorgon

Kinda agree with what Lexx says. They really don't sell the illusion of Skyrim being a big place in terms of the quest content.

 

Which again, is also the reason I wish there was more actual city-gameplay, more varied in missions inside the actual cities. A lot of times it's like "oh hey, this city looks freaking AWESOME!". Then when you're inside, nearly all the non fed-ex quests are like "hey, get out of the goddamn city, walk across half the country and fetch me the holy thingamajig".

Edited November 13, 201114 yr by Starwars

A simple job of delivering some jewelery became an epic trip where I discovered 3 new towns. Not every quest is like this though, I have completed plenty that were close or just around the corner. It does feel like the AI quest thing robs a me a little of the joy of exploration. It's more fun to find something yourself than to be led to it.

 

I found the Shrine of Azura by accident, but there are loads of pilgrims who just happened to be on the way there in the game world. That kind of thing is fine, just not all the time.

Edited November 13, 201114 yr by Gorgon

I just killed my first dragon. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would have been.

Finished the College of Winterhold. I've only visited three cities so far, two of them holds, so that's really interesting. Unlike Oblivion, where you had to visit every city for the Mage's quest. Edit: Make that four cities, forgot Dawnstar.

 

And I apparently lost track of two hours on the final few missions. I looked at my clock expecting to see 2 am. It's 4:30.

Installed my first mod

Fingers crossed for a UI overhaul, can't come soon enough.

Does someone know how I find my companions again? Some quests are stripping you off of them and well... I have no clue where they are now. I miss an elf from Riverwood and some warrior woman from whatevertown. Walked around in Riverwood now for a while, but at least the elf is nowhere to be found.

Killed my trusty sidekick Sven, half by accident and half annoyance that he was constantly cramping my style, alerting the enemy and ruining my sneak crit shots. Now I have to sneak past most things.

Which again, is also the reason I wish there was more actual city-gameplay, more varied in missions inside the actual cities. A lot of times it's like "oh hey, this city looks freaking AWESOME!". Then when you're inside, nearly all the non fed-ex quests are like "hey, get out of the goddamn city, walk across half the country and fetch me the holy thingamajig".

Seems like you're visiting the wrong cities, or not looking around enough.

 

Definitely a bethesda game.

Are chests in houses with dead owners safe? I had to store hundreds of books in one house.

Beh, bought a house in Whiterun, because I've heard about some awesome bookshelf feature. But now I can't buy upgrades for the house. The dialogue option just doesn't show up.

 

/Edit: Oh well, I just heard that you must talk to the dude when he is at the Kings place and not outside. The dialogue option doesn't show up then...

Edited November 13, 201114 yr by Lexx

/Edit: Oh well, I just heard that you must talk to the dude when he is at the Kings place and not outside. The dialogue option doesn't show up then...

 

Yeah I noticed that, I think it's because he's essentially a vendor, just like the shop owners can't sell anything outside work hours, I also bought the Whiterun house though, it's very cozy once you buy all the upgrades, as a side note I found out a house in Solitude is 25000

 

Has anyone noticed if you can get faster horses? I've stolen a couple but they seem roughly the same.

 

*edit*

 

Ahh, apparently they all have the same stats, that's a shame

 

Oh, I found out something useful last night, I can't believe I didn't notice as I was having to reach over to the Enter key all the time, the E key does the same job, makes things so much easiler.

Edited November 13, 201114 yr by WDeranged

This looks pretty cool:

 

Oh, I am also posing for random romantic black metal cd cover:

 

 

Often the gameworld looks really great, but then again you find places which seem to be empty, unfinished and up to Oblivion-quality. Also the gameworld is totally not reacting on your actions, this is so annoying to me as well. Some important shizzle happens, but the NPCs just don't care. Nobody cares. Man, compared to New Vegas, quest- and (NPC) interactivity-wise, Skyrim is extremely weak.

Often the gameworld looks really great, but then again you find places which seem to be empty, unfinished and up to Oblivion-quality. Also the gameworld is totally not reacting on your actions, this is so annoying to me as well. Some important shizzle happens, but the NPCs just don't care. Nobody cares. Man, compared to New Vegas, quest- and (NPC) interactivity-wise, Skyrim is extremely weak.

Sounds like you're playing a different game than me.

Yeah, the world is reacting rather well so far, people commenting on things I've done, troops turning up in Riverwood, the tree in Whiterun has sprouted again etc.

 

I can't argue about the often Oblivion like graphics though, I've seen some abysmal LOD in the mid ground.

 

On the whole I've seen some staggeringly lovely scenes.

Edited November 13, 201114 yr by WDeranged

I think the reactions are also done pretty well so far, though I'm not too far into the main quest. The barks from guards commenting on you what you're wearing and such is pretty nice as well, though some comments tend to be a bit dumb.

 

Also, I'm really digging the random encounters this time. They really make the wilderness come alive at times. Like a thief ran out to mug me at some point and I was like "hey bro, I'm in the Thieves Guild as well!" and he's like "oh yeah, I think I've seen you hanging around." Stuff of small consequence of course but fits well into the sandbox nature of the game.

 

Given that TES game are different in nature, one shouldn't compare to the Fallout series, but what I mostly miss from New Vegas is the variety of "social gameplay" that game had and getting on a faction's good or bad side. The factions stuff as done in NV especially could fit very well into a TES game in my opinion and I would gladly welcome the social gameplay element as well, being able to solve more things through diplomacy or what have you.

Well, then I probably aren't far enough yet. I just know that I have done various quests, which had no influence on anything even though they should. Best example was some prison stuff with the Foresworn dudes. They run around in the city, kill everyone and nobody cares. The people who aren't involved into the fighting just act as if nothing happens, if I talk to anyone, nobody has anything to say about it, they don't even drop random lines about the events of this harsh city-slaughtering. On the other side- Damn, I helped these idiots, I got armor from them but in the wilderness they still attack me, they don't know me, everything like it was before.

 

Btw.:

Sounds like you're playing a different game than me.

 

I always love how much you throw around with examples to prove your point. Oh, wait...

Edited November 13, 201114 yr by Lexx

So far I been given a golden claw, a sapphire claw, a ruby claw, and a coral claw. Other than the golden one, I've forgotten what claw goes with what dungeon.

 

Also, Malphea ended up giving me an ebony katana that siphons my enemy's health to me. It starts out with 15 damage, but you can level it up by killing NPCs you've helped in the past. I might do that later on but for now, I'm using it to power level my two-handed. Between the weak damage and buffing my health, I can swipe at a cave bear dozens of times before it goes down without endangering myself.

Edited November 13, 201114 yr by Maria Caliban

Do the normal gems like Garnet have any use? Or should I be selling them off?

 

Level 14 and only visited Whiterun, Falkreath and Riverwood for towns, taking my time. There's a lot of crap so I might buy a home just to store. I'm still enjoying it and the feeling of Oblivion-Morrowind is keeping up, though:

-> The weird AI glitches where sometimes they never ever find you although you're shooting at them front & center, or just get stuck in block mode, carried over from Oblivion.

-> Killing attributes really was a stupid idea. Even as a 'broken' mechanic in Oblivion it was still a lot more fun than just taking it out - at least you had the satisfaction of character building. I also imagine the stupid, pointless, annoying UI they thought was "cool beans" for the skills will hinder efforts to introduce new skills, etc.

-> Alchemy experimentation is fun but I've found very few recipes, and none of them have ingredients I have at hand. Hrm.

 

In both Morrowind & Oblivion, the moment you can substantially enchant weapons with life-steal or paralysis is when the game breaks. I'm nowhere near that yet but we'll see.

I'm level 25 and I've only really checked out Markrath. I've learnt 5 power words or whatever they're called through random exploration, I think it's time to start the main quest so I can put that crap to use.

 

Some Orc gave me a sword to give to her daughter "somewhere out there"... for quests like this I almost wish I had quest markers enabled.

 

Also, Malphea ended up giving me an ebony katana that siphons my enemy's health to me. It starts out with 15 damage, but you can level it up by killing NPCs you've helped in the past. I might do that later on but for now, I'm using it to power level my two-handed. Between the weak damage and buffing my health, I can swipe at a cave bear dozens of times before it goes down without endangering myself.

Mephala?

 

I got the Mace of Molag Bal and the Ring of Namira. I had a funny moment when I met a NPC who had I had done a misc quest for in the Daedric coven, and I could call her out on it.

Edited November 13, 201114 yr by virumor

Mephala?

That's the ticket!

 

I got the Mace of Molag Bal and the Ring of Namira. I had a funny moment when I met a NPC who had I had done a misc quest for in the Daedric coven, and I could call her out on it.

Do you mostly use one-handed weapons?

Some Orc gave me a sword to give to her daughter "somewhere out there"... for quests like this I almost wish I had quest markers enabled.

 

I've decided to re-enable them as I noticed you can just disable it in the journal, quests still update as you progress through them and it doesn't re-enable unless you start a new questline.