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I haven't had that happen yet, but I also haven't got a spouse/child yet.
I did have a giant attack though. (I killed it in two shots.)
What spells or weapons did you use to kill the giant in two shots?
2 shots? 1 shot too many!
A Superior Dwarven Bow with a Daedric Arrow, shot from sneaking, followed up by a non-Sneak Attack.
Where'd you find a Daedric Arrow so soon in the game?
Dwarven Centurion in Nchuand-Zel dropped eight of them.
The number one requirement is Iron Ingots. Many things require Iron Ingots directly, and many other things require Iron Fittings, Nails, Locks, and Hinges, which you can only make with Iron ingots (and locks also require Corundum Ingots, which are a pain in the ass to get by the by).
After that, you need Quarried Stone and Clay. With a pickaxe, you can mine deposits of these in various places around the world. There's also a deposit of each just near each house, so you can easily stock up on a few hundred of each.
After that, you need Sawn Logs, which you can only buy from mills. You can buy 20 for 200 gold, but you'll need hundreds of them to fully build a house.
After that, you need a variety of miscellaneous objects. Straw and lass can be bought from general stores, as can most of these things. You'll occasionally need Leather Strips. To make Candles, you need Goat Horns. Etcetera, etcetera.
Anyway, I'm basically just fucking around to get ingots at the moment. Although I do spend a bit of time making Dwarven/Orcish Armour/Bows; I think 8 Dwarven bows, 9 Orcish Armours, and 45 Dwarven Armours, I think.
Our current relevant skills are:
Enchanting: 53
Smithing: 78
One-Handed: 53
Archery: 44
Light Armour: 74
Sneak: 60
Lockpicking: 45
Pickpocketing: 27
Speech: 43
Alchemy: 32
Illusion: 90
Restoration: 36
Current Level: 35
Current Health: 280
Current Magicka: 250
Current Stamina: 110
Once you get some stuff (Dwarven Smithing, Muffle/Invisibility), some skills level incredibly easily.
Since it has now been almost a fortnight and a half, I must ask — is this still going?
Yes. At some point. When I get over my current depression and stuff =V
And also when it's less ridiculously hot and I can actually play Skyrim without my laptop overheating, but mostly the depression thing.
You...killed a Dwarven Centurion?
That isn't that hard. You just have to walk backwards for an absurdly long time, save a few times, exploit terrain.
The full FUS RO DAH doesn't even STAGGER them! If it can throw giants and bears several feet in the air and make dragons lose their lunch...
I didn't even have to do that; he was engaged in combat with a Falmer on a path above me, so I was able to get several free sneak attack shots in, then I hid behind Mjoll and pegged him to death with Orcish Arrows. Took about thirty seconds.
Their most dangerous attack is their steam attack, but as long as you stay well away from them, it's not a huge issue. Just stack as much damage on them as you can in a short time period and you're set.
All about the burst damage.
If you're a primarily melee character, though.. Well, hope you brought health potions.
Dragons aren't made of metal.
And I don't see how that makes them hard to kill. All you need to do is run backwards while shooting at it with arrows or spells. The same strategy that lets you kill everything else in the game with very little effort.
My Khajiit is level 50 and he has 84 Archery, three levels of the Overdraw perk, a legendary Dragonbone Bow with Dragonbone Arrows, and a Shrouded Cowl that further increases bow damage by 20%. And I know for a fact that even this is not enough to one-shot a Centurion.
It is then lucky that nobody has claimed to have one-shot a Centurion, isn't it?
It took me, I think, a good twelve to fifteen arrows to kill the Centurion, with several of those having dealt 3x damage.
It's probably possible. Just need a ludicrously powerful enchanted dagger, and as much backstab multiplier as you can get your hands on.
30x with a decent dagger should do the trick anyway. As long as it does ~25 damage on a normal hit, I think.
The Redguard I'm (probably) going to create for this thread, though...
Can't be arsed digging the thread up, Nova? Allow me to do it for you.
Continuing...
TRUE Nords would NEVER give up their love for Talos, treaty or no treaty!
Hey, not cool! This is a liveblog thread, not a lore discussion thread. We have an entirely different thread for that.
So! New post time!
Interesting fact; this Dragon's Health Actor Value was set at 781.41, meaning it had 781 health. The highest damage I can do at any one time is 168, but that is only from a sneak attack with my best weapon.
I am not exactly clear on how setting the game to Master Difficulty affects it. It reduces the damage you deal by 50%, but I am not clear on whether this is reflected in the game's numbers, or if it takes the numbers presented to you and halves them.
Either way, I was able to deal either 141 or 70.5 damage to the dragon with my initial shot, and either 28/35 damage per hit or 14/17.5 damage per hit thereafter.
So, as you can imagine, I am currently more than a little concerned about getting into dragon fights.
I need better armour.
Anyway, we hand in the bounty, sell the stuff clogging up our inventory, and head on over to Winterhold to finish up this Thieve's Guild questline.
We speak to Enthir, who tell us to go to Calcelmo in Markarth and ask him to translate Gallus' journal, because Gallus wrote it in the Falmer language. (A cool touch!)
Here, I actually stop to double-check if we can read Gallus' journal and see the Falmer language for ourselves.
Lo and behold! We can!
Anyway, from here, we head on over to Markarth and speak to Calcelmo.
Calcelmo refuses to let us in, even after we remind him that we totally slew a giant spider for him (and saved Markarth from being overrun by Falmer, whatevs).
So, we're going to take that key to the museum he gave us, and find his research notes ourselves! And, in the process, we're going to be a little naughty.
Oh look. It appears I have accidentally stumbled into an accidental slaughter of some unlucky guards in the Dwemer Museum. And it appears the perpetrator has got away with it without a bounty on their heads.
In unrelated news, hypothetically, Markarth City Guards would be incredibly hard to take down. They would hypothetically take upwards of forty hits to kill each, and would deal 20% of my health in damage every swing, along with having ranged weapons. Hypothetically.
Anyway, since the Dwemer Museum is so coincidentally unguarded, I take all of this Dwemer stuff. For safekeeping.
I also stumble upon this:
I have never seen this before, despite over a year playing this game.
Apparently, the Dwarven Sphere Centurion Arrow is a permanent upgrade to a follower's arrows. This arrow- with a base damage value of 20, as opposed to the base damage value of 10 that Steel Arrows have- permanently replace Steel Arrows as the default arrow your follower will use, instead of the Steel Arrows they use if they have no other arrows.
Your follower needs to be willing to steal to get it, though, so we won't be getting it today, as cool as that would be as an upgrade for Aela when we get her.
Anyway, this part is basically one long dungeon. There's a few Wizard's Guards decked out in Steel Armour, but Calm + Backstab deals with everything easily enough. Along the way we pick up like 400 weights worth of Dwarven scrap, so we have pretty much infinite Dwarven Ingots now, too.
Once we get up to the top, we find a wall with Calcelmo's info on it! Unfortunately, it tells us we can't make an inscription, because we lack the items.
Luckily for us, I have been scouring the items for treasure, so I noticed the Rolls of Paper and the Charcoal upstairs!
With the Charcoal Rubbings on hand, we head back to Winterhold to speak with whatsisname again!
(Oh, incidentally, we also went up two levels in there, from Lockpicking and Stealth. I put the perks into Overdraw and Armsman, increasing our damage in each by 20%. Also found a ring that increases One-Handed damage by 25%, so combined with that, we are now hitting for 41 with our Elven Sword and 52 with our Bow, instead of 28 and 47.)
The story's pretty simple here. Essentially, Gallus believed that Mercer Frey had desecrated the Twilight Sepulcher- a temple dedicated to the Daedric Prince Nocturnal.
Katriah also gives us the Nightingale Blade.
With our Arcane Blacksmith perk, we can upgrade this. It's our strongest weapon currently, plus that enchantment is damned useful.
We head back to Riften to see what's what!
When we get there, the regular entrance to the Thieve's Guild is locked, so we have to go the long way. Luckily, we make it safely there, and meet with Karliah in front of the Guild.
We head into the guild together, and are confronted by Brynjolf.
We hand Gallus' journal to Brynjolf as proof of Mercer's deceit.
Brynjolf still won't take our word for it, though. So, he asks us to head over to the Vault and double-check!
And, surely enough, it's all gone.
Brynjolf asks us to go to Mercer's mansion in Riften and search for information on where he's gone. Oh, this'll be fun.
There's a dude called Vald guarding the place. We could buy off his debt with Maven Black-Briar, but... I think we'll just kill him instead.
The dungeon's pretty standard, although it has some twists; the way forward is blocked at one point, and you have to go through a secret opening in the back of a cabinet to get where you're going, and there's a ton of traps in the second half.
We make it through easy enough, though, and head back to the Thieve's Guild.
Turns out Mercer is going for something called the "Eyes of Falmer", which were something Gallus often debated going for.
Anyway, Karliah wants to speak with us!
Karliah wants to meet us at a stone south-east of Riften. Apparently, this will help us to stand on an equal footing with Mercer!
Well, let's go check anyway.
... Or, we could be attacked by a Dragon! Either way.
Anyway, we kill a Frost Dragon (much easier this time thanks to Karliah and Brynjolf), then head on over to this Stone and see what's what.
We head on deeper into the cave, listening to Brynjolf questioning why he's here on the way. In fact, I'm kinda wondering that myself.
Okay, so, Nightingale Armour! Sweet.
Heh, that's some pretty cool armour.
Anyway, it's got useful enchantments, too. The hood makes our Illusion spells cost 17% less, the gloves boost our one-handed damage by 25%, and the boots muffle us, eliminating any sound we make.
The Nightingales are a pretty badass group, honestly.
Karliah tells us the catch, now. Nocturnal will allow us to use our powers for whatever we want- and in return, we must guard the Twilight Sepulcher, both in life, and in death.
As an aside, I feel Karliah's voice acting is kinda weak.
Hello, strange floating blob of darkness!
This is Nocturnal, everyone. Say hello to the Daedric Prince!
We swear our oaths to Nocturnal, and promise to dedicate ourselves to her- in life, and in death. In turn, Nocturnal acknowledges Brynjolf and I as Nightingales, and restores Karliah's Nightingale status.
It turns out that Mercer has stolen something from the Guild- the Skeleton Key. This Daedric Artifact allows people to tap into their untapped potential. We have to get it back and return it to the Twilight Sepulcher. With it stolen, the Thieves Guild's luck is running dry- nearly literally. The Guild is slowly becoming less and less lucky.
Before we do that, though, Brynjolf offers us the position of leader of the Thieve's Guild.
I honestly tried to run it down, but I couldn't.
Anyway, we set off to kill Mercer! Along the way, we run into another Dragon. We kill it with only minor difficulty, then proceed on to th
shit
I ended up fighting Korsis for a good half hour. He literally had 975 health, and he was able to two-shot me- and his Staff of Fireballs is ridiculously fucking fast, too. And it explodes in a fifteen-foot radius. And he summons Frost Atronachs. Oh, and did I mention that I'm playing on Master? And that I'm still wearing my Nightingale gear, which does not help my Fire Resistance at all?
We do eventually defeat him, though, through absolutely liberal use of Health potions, poisons, Fire Resist potions, about fifty scrolls, all my Daedric Arrows, and several magical weapons (Chillrend, the Nightingale Blade, and my Orcish Sword of Binding (Legendary) ). also he ran out of charges on his fireball staff so
Holy crap. Let me just say, holy crap. That was one of the most ridiculously bullshit fights yet. While I was checking the guy's Health Value, I had to resist the temptation to mod him to have one health.
Anyway, what was our reward for this bullshit?
Well, at least it wasn't a complete waste of time.
Anyway, we head on over to Dwarvenmcunpronouncable to confront Mercer, finally!
It's pretty much a letdown, except when it's not.
The place is filled with high-powered Falmer like Shadowmasters, meaning that either you'd best be stealthy or you'd best be able to faceroll Falmer. I picked the former route, and it was pretty fun, but I felt it lacked anything to make it feel stealthy.
Anyway, when you get to the end, you fight Mercer, and he's pretty tough. Nothing compared to that Dragon Priest, though, so I just whale on him until he's dead.I loot the two Eyes of Falmer, 8 (???) Potions of Plentiful Healing, and the Skeleton Key from him.
The chamber then fills with water. I feel this segment could have been effective, making you panic, but for the compass telling you where to go, bleh.
Anyway, once we're out, Karliah tells us to go to the Pilgrim's Path and take the Skeleton Key back to the Twilight Sepulcher once and for all. And dear god did that sound nerdy.
The Pilgrim's Path, on the other hand, is appropriately awesome. It's more a place of metaphor than of reality- in fact, I wish it had dropped the Sentinels completely, and just focused more on the hidden traps and things like the sun route.
Anyway, we return the Skeleton Key to Nocturnal.
Wow, Nocturnal is annoying.
Anyway, our reward is to be able to collect one of several powers. I don't actually care what I get so I step on one at random, the full moon.
Karliah speaks to Gallus for a bit, then Gallus disappears into the shadows- the realm of Nocturnal.
And... that's that. A rather underwhelming end, to be honest.
My overall impression of the Thieves Guild questline is that it had potential, but it was marred by a number of factors.
They failed to integrate stealthy gameplay with the quest's dungeons, even its unique ones, so it came off as kinda lame. The voice acting was sub-par for many of the characters, including major ones such as Karliah, which was annoying. The mythology of the quest was cool, but I was a bit frustrated at the constant lack of choices in it. So on, so forth.
That said, the Nightingale Armour is badass. I would honestly have loved a questline revolving around just the Nightingales, dropping all of the Thieves Guild stuff. It's an awesome concept, and the parts of the questline revolving around them were much better than the parts of the quest revolving around regular Thieves Guild stuff.
Nocturnal is pretty hot.
That said, what color is the Nightingale armor supposed to be? I always assumed it was white/silver/grey.
And... okay! Skills time!
We are currently Level 40. We have 260 Magicka, 320 Health, and 110 Stamina.
Our skills are currently:
One-Handed: 62
Archery: 54
Light Armour: 75
Sneak: 77
Lockpicking: 59
Pickpocket: 27
Speech: 52
Alchemy: 32
Illusion: 91
Restoration: 37
Enchanting: 60
Smithing: 98
We currently have 20, 413 gold. Our most powerful weapons are a Dwarven Sword of Arcing (Legendary) (71 damage), followed up by an Orcish Sword of Binding (Legendary) (67 damage), our Nightingale Blade (Exquisite) (63 damage), our Elven Sword (Exquisite) (55 damage), and our Dwarven Bow (Legendary) (45 damage). Our Armour Rating is 236 when wearing a Glass Armour, Elven Gauntlets, and Elven Boots.
We are playing on Master Difficulty.
So; what do we do next?
They are dark brown/dark silver/dark grey. When seen in the sunlight, they are brighter coloured, but they are coloured darker when in shadow, as seen above.
heh, I still haven't finished the Thieves' Guild questline because I don't want to give up the Skeleton Key
I'm not that fond of the Skeleton Key for the same reason I've stopped pumping any perks into Lockpicking - it's just not something I really find myself needing that often.
Protip: The unlock position is always different every time you start picking a lock, so what I tend to do with the Expert- and Master-level locks (and a few really tricky Adept-level ones) is I just keep going in and out of the lockpicking view until I get a starting point nice and close to the unlock position. It's much more efficient this way.
Okay! Time for something different.
(In order to get 100 Smithing, by the way, I made about two dozen Legendary Orcish Armours, then about one hundred and fifty Dwarven Swords. You'll see why that's important soon.)
Anyway, we craft a set of Dragonscale Armour, then improve it to Legendary. Looking at it, the entire armour set is much better than our current armour- 304, compared to 236.
But wait! We're not done yet!
First, we go out of our basement in Lakeview Manor (Our house from Hearthfire, near Falkreath, where I've been going to smith) and make ourselves an Enchanting Table. Then, we go back and grab all of those Legendary Orcish Armours, check our nearby chest for Soul Gems (looking for Greater Soul Gems and Common Soul Gems), then head up and Enchant every one of those armours.
This alone doesn't do much, only bringing us up to 65 Enchanting. But, from there, we begin what is going to be a long and arduous process; we zip around all the major cities we've been to- Markarth, Whiterun, Solitude- and begin selling off those armours to the blacksmiths in those towns. We make sure to wait a day in each city, allowing the blacksmiths to fully replenish their gold. There are five blacksmiths total- one in Markarth, one in Solitude, and three in Whiterun.
We gain around 25,000 gold from that, and head up to Winterhold!
There, there's a guy who tutors you in Enchanting. We fork over a huge chunk of our gold in exchange for him tutoring us to 70 Enchanting, then level, take the Corpus Enchanter perk, and pay him another huge chunk to tutor us to 75!
Now, we begin an even longer arduous task, as we zip around the College of Winterhold, Dragonsreach, the Blue Palace, and Underground Keep, buying every Petty Soul Gem we can get our hands on. I did this for over an hour, and got over 200 of them.
Then, we grab our Orcish Sword of Binding, and delve deep into a bunch of Draugr ruins.
You don't really want to know how long it took to fill them.
Once that's done, we head back to Lakeview Manor and begin enchanting all those Dwarven Swords we made before!
It takes something like 140 of them, but in the end, we get to 100 Enchanting, and take the Extra Effect perk, which allows us to put two enchantments on the same item.
Then, we head back down to our dungeon and grab all our Grand Soul Gems. Heading back upstairs, we begin enchanting all our stuff with dual enchantments, focusing on increasing One-Handed/Light Armour wherever possible.
We also buy this while we're selling all those Dwarven Swords:
And, just for comparison, here's our two major swords at the moment.
"But Nova!" you say, aghast. "Why are you deliberately overpowering yourself? I thought you were trying to make this fun!"
Well, I'm glad you asked!
Yes! You see that correctly! We are going to be doing Dawnguard soon, on Legendary difficulty!
But, first, we're going to get two major questlines done first; the main questline and the Civil War.
So! I will be back soon with the first update of the main questline in some time.