Skyrim

Icalasari

Lydia got killed by a Draugr Scourge Lord

Should I restart the save to the last spot I saved at, or should I just accept her death?

EDIT: Decided to redo that battle, and this time I slaughtered it using my Sanguine Rose's summon

So what to do... Keep the file where the battle was hard fought with a death, or keep the cheap victory and my housecarl?

Crimson

So Conjuration is pretty boss, but is there any point where Bound weapons become less useful?

Also, Lydia disappeared after I did a quest that forcibly changed your companion. Can I find her again?

Nyktos

Her "home" is in Breezehome if you've bought it, or in Dragonsreach otherwise. If she's not there, try waiting for a couple of in-game days and checking again. If she still isn't, she's probably gone.

Bound weapons become less useful when you can get real weapons that do more damage, I guess. When that is depends on how much Smithing you have, as the main downside to bound weapons is that they can't be upgraded. (Well, there's a perk that makes them do more, but even then they get outdamaged by real weapons eventually.)

Icalasari

Alright, so I'm playing as my mage for a while

I plan to have a bit in Destruction magic just so that I can defend myself. What should my main magic classes be, though? Not Restoration - I plan to do that with a priest character

Nyktos

Well, if you want to kill people with magic, you need to focus on Destruction or Conjuration as those are for damage dealing. Destruction is pretty broken if you take the Impact perk as you can basically stunlock anything. I haven't tried Conjuration myself.

Waltzy

Hnngh~! I was wandering west over the mountains near Winterhold and found a stray dog, he's so cute and follows me~! <3 I love this little guy~.

Iaculus

Destruction and Conjuration are both pretty badass, and serve as Caradryel's two main tools. In particular, Conjuration is useful for diverting aggro from yourself and scouting out dangerous areas, since wizards tend to be a bit on the squishy side. Especially if you get to the point where you can use the 'Conjure Dremora Lord' spell, which is absolutely beastly (and lots of fun).

For defence, I find Alteration's armour buffs to be better than Restoration's Wards. They don't drain magicka or prevent you from attacking whilst you're using them, which is a big plus. You will be using Restoration for healing, though (obviously).

Haven't made much use of Illusion, but from what I've seen, Frenzy should make for a great bounty-free assassination tool if you invest enough in the discipline. Sure did a number on Grelod the Kind. Plus, easy access to Invisibility is always nice.

Nyktos

Killing Grelod the Kind doesn't get you a bounty anyway.

Alteration is quite useful, yeah. I mostly only use the armour spells, but the Magic Resistance perk is also great as a passive effect, and Paralyze can be randomly useful. It's also super-easy to level up; my main combat strategy is spamming Destruction spells, but my Alteration is higher than my Destruction simply by keeping armour up more or less always. (And that's without using Detect Life in the Riften markets, even once.)

My brother loves Illusion, but he plays a stealthy type character. Illusion is quite useful for that, with Muffle making sneaking easier, Frenzy useful for killing things without fighting them, and Calm having a stupid interaction with sneak where you can sneak-attack someone, Calm them, and sneak again, and you'll count as undetected to sneak-attack the now-non-hostile foe a second time.

DYRE

The armor buffs you get from Alteration spells seem pointless considering how easy it is to get good actual armor in this game, even without investing many perks in your heavy or light armor skill.  Passive 30% magic resistance seems nice though.

Nyktos

Yeah, but the enchantments that fortify a school of magic and also increase Magicka regeneration are only available on clothing, and are bugged so that when you try to enchant something with them yourself, you never get more than a 10% regeneration increase. So that's a pretty strong incentive to use clothing if you're a mage.

Iaculus

Plus, wearing clothing keeps your carried weight low, which is useful for a 'pure' mage like Caradryel who can't afford to blow much level advancement on stamina or armour perks.

DYRE

Of course, 3 perks in light armor or 4 in heavy armor makes it weightless, compared to the 6+ that you need in alteration to make the armor spells worthwhile.

As for the fortify magic skill + magicka regeneration robes, I dunno.  22% cheaper spells in one school + 150 magicka regeneration certainly is better than armor you're likely to enchant yourself, but if you're primarily going to be using spells of just one school, the magicka regeneration barely matters since your spells will be so cheap (or even free) anyway if your other equipment is decent, even without having to enchant your own equipment.  And of course, if you're willing to do that then you could potentially have free spells in two different schools.

Not that I'm really saying you shouldn't wear clothing and use armor spells, but just that doing so is always going to end up just being a self-imposed challenge.  Which, realistically, you need to do anyway because otherwise the game is too easy.

Iaculus

The difference is, though, that you're not just investing in Alteration for the armour buffs, but also neat stuff like Detect Life, Paralysis, and so on. Those six perks are multi-purpose.

DYRE

3 of the perks for Alteration do nothing but make the armor spells better if you aren't wearing any armor.  Without them, the most armor rating you'll get from the spells is 110, which is so low that there's barely any point in using it, so you need those perks.  With those perks the highest armor rating you can get is 330.  With those perks instead spent on light armor so that it becomes weightless, you will be able to smith armor that has a better armor rating than that even if you don't put any other perks into light armor, smithing, enchanting, or alchemy.

EDIT: Hm... actually, now that I look at it, there's an armor spell that gives you the maximum armor rating, albeit for only half the duration of the usual armor spells.  Still doubtful that it's really worth it, but I guess it is a bit better than I thought.  If it was me, I'd probably just enchant a set of armor for casting free or nearly-free alteration spells and just use that when I want to use the mass paralysis spell, so I don't have to bother with putting any perks into alteration (because really, I don't think I'd ever need an AoE paralyze spell that lasts longer than 15 seconds, since that's fairly ridiculous already).

Crimson

Note to self: Unique enemies with big fuck-off two handers are best taken down by kiting like a bitch.

All Nines

Ain't that the truth?

All ^^^^^^etc this talk of the schools of magic, and I'm like "am I the only sonuvabitch who hasn't bothered with magic?"

Icalasari

Wait, you can't enchant armour with enchantments that boost how fast you regenerate magic?

DYRE

You can.  What Nyktos is talking about is the enchantments that do that and also fortify a magic skill.  If you enchant armor with that enchantment, only the fortify skill part is affected by your enchanting skill and perks, which makes that particular effect kind of pointless.  There's also an effect that is just magicka regeneration rate, and that works perfectly fine, but of course doesn't include the spell cost reduction that a lot of robes have.  And there's not much of a point, since the magicka restoration enchantment of already-existing equipment will be better than whatever you could enchant yourself unless you seriously abuse alchemy.

Icalasari

^ And you think I'm above abusing Alchemy?

All Nines

I have to say, it's a lot of fun jumping from the highest heights discovered and watching my character die and tumble down whatever rocky cliffs she's near.

I love video game physics.

Crimson

^Speaking of that.

>Get casually thumped by a dragon's wing.
>Insta-killed and tossed 30 feet into the air.
>FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUCCCCKING page toppers.

Wicked223

Question: How's the PS3 version of this game? It's apparently indistinguishable from the other platforms, but I'd like to get a second opinion.

All Nines

It's running fine so far.

ClockworkUniverse

Who told you that? The PS3 is the one with the problem where if you play long enough, you get massive framerate drops.

All Nines

Oh. Well, I've only played up to level 17 (18 soon). I don't pay attention to which version glitches.

EDIT: Hopefully I don't get caught for killing Grelod the Kind. That was too satisfying. Well, that was only too easy. Just a punch to the back of the head, and she dropped.

Wicked223

bethesda needs better QA, seriously

DYRE

At least the bugs on the PC version will eventually get fixed by modders.

Doesn't really help when it comes to the console versions though, unless Bethesda puts a lot more effort into patching the game than they did for Oblivion.

Nyktos

@Everest:

All ^^^^^^etc this talk of the schools of magic, and I'm like "am I the only sonuvabitch who hasn't bothered with magic?"

I never touched a spell other than Healing on my first playthrough.

ClockworkUniverse

I wasn't going to use magic on my first character, then I got that book in the cells in the tutorial, used it, tried the spell and went "holy shit I just shot lightning out of my hands! I'm going to spend the entire game using this one spell!"

And I did. Never even bothered upgrading to higher-level spells. Killed Alduin with it and everything.

DYRE

But that spell sucks... >.>