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And in case you're having trouble with that, the bonuses from our current equipment are;
- One-Handed attacks do 88% more damage;
- Light Armour skill is increased by 55 points;
- Restoration spells cost 24% less to cast;
- Magicka regenerates 47% faster;
- Frost Resistance has been increased by 28%.
Okay, so! Question time!
Would everyone here consider using the various Staffs you can get as cheating?
I have an Illusion-based staff which I'm fine with using, but I also just found a Staff of Fireballs. Would it be considered cheating to use that, or would nobody really care?
I'd say it's not cheating, on the grounds that a staff is an enchanted weapon which is unaffected by player skill. So unless you're restricting the types of enchanted items you can use, I say go for it.
Staves are affected by a player's rank in their respective skills, though.
You'd better join the vampires. That's all I'm saying.
I would never join the vampires, that would be stupid and OOC for me.
Please? I want to point and laugh at the Vampire Lord form.
The 7,000 Steps to High Hrothgar begin in Ivarstead.
The trip itself isn't very interesting, so I won't cover it much. However, there are two things I'll share.
These are Frost Trolls, and they suck. I had to fight four of them on the way up.
Trolls regenerate, and they are strong. Even with my newfound high Armour Rating/Light Armour skill, they were knocking off a solid 30% of my health a hit. Still, they gave my Restoration a workout, and I eventually figured out a method to fight them which didn't result in too much damage.
Trolls are also weak to fire, Frost Trolls doubly so, so that helped.
Second, there are Carved Emblems along the Steps that tell the story of the Dragon War and the founding of the Greybeards.
Anyway, we make it to the top with little trouble, and head inside the giant fort therein.
They ask us to demonstrate our Thu'um (our Voice). We knock him backwards several feet, and they acknowledge us as Dragonborn.
This theme, the theme of temperance and wisdom in the face of power, is actually a pretty cool theme, and one that crops up a lot in the main questline.
Unfortunately, it's rather let down by the very nature of the game, which lets you dick around with your power as much as you want. It's the first TES game where I've felt that the open nature of the game works against its themes, rather than for it.
Anyway, Arngeir teaches us two Shouts- Ro, the second word of Unrelenting Force, and Wuld, the first word of Whirlwind Sprint- then sends us off to find the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller.
We head off to Ustengrav.
Ustengrav's a pretty standard dungeon, so I won't go into details on it too much. We're pretty high-leveled at 45 now, so we're starting to see Draugr Wights/Deathlords regularly replacing regular Draugr/Restless Draugr/Draugr Scourges, and at the start of the dungeon are a few Mages (Master Necromancer, Master Conjurer, and some type of Fire Mage who I forget who had a Staff of Fireballs).
There are cool things, though. Like this:
Yes. There is a cave behind the waterfall.
A Draugr Deathlord comes out, but we cut him to death easily enough, and we proceed on.
Anyway, we proceed through the dungeon, eliminating Draugr along the way (also, fighting Draugr really eats up the charges on our weapons), and head on to pick up the Horn.
But... what's this?
Ffffff-
Whatever.
We head to Riverwood and go to-
That's not even our only problem; Vampires show up too!
But whatever. We deal with them handily enough.
So. I guess Dragonborn has started too.
We head into the inn and ask to rent the attic room.
Delphine asks us to follow her.
Wow. A cabinet with a false backing. Never seen that in this game before.
She did, she's not lying.
... She is, however, extremely arrogant.
But I didn't have a choice! This quest is on rails!
Anyway, Delphine tells us what's what; the dragons aren't just coming back, they're coming back to life. They were dead, and something is bringing them back.
She's figured out where the next one will be resurrected- at Kynesgrove. We're going to head there.
Also, I don't know if you remember, but waaaay back when we returned the Dragonstone to Farengar, we actually met Delphine.
We've actually unlocked Kynesgrove as a fast travel point, so we'll just head there straight away.
Ah, shit.
Haha holy shit Alduin is here.
You know, if this game was in the hands of a competent developer, they could have made the whole "Dragon or Man" thing a worthwhile theme.
As it is, though? Bleh.
Anyway, Sahloknir is a powerful dragon. Ridiculously powerful, really; i.e. "Powerful enough to two-shot me with his wings which are his weakest attack".
(The translation of the above goes:
Alduin: "Sahloknir, ziil gro dovah ulse!" (Sahloknir, I bind your dragon spirit for eternity!)
Alduin: "Slen tiid vo!" (Flesh unrot!)
Sahloknir: "Alduin, thuri! Boaan tiid vokriiha suleyksejun kruziik?" (Alduin, my lord! The ancient undead rising again?)
Alduin: "Geh, Sahloknir, kaali mir." (Yes, Sahloknir, the Allegiance of Champions.)
Alduin: "Ful, losei Dovahkiin? Zu'u koraav nid nol dov do hi." (So, you're the Dragonborn? Your voice shines not from Dragonkind, but from yourself)
Alduin: "You do not even know our tongue, do you? Such arrogance, to dare take for yourself the name of Dovah."
Alduin: "Sahloknir, krii daar joorre." (Sahloknir, slay the mortals) )
Also, if you're interested, Sahloknir has 1859.56 health here. I guess it's lucky that we deliberately broke Smithing and Enchanting as we did, else there's no way I could win here without spending hours.
Anyway, we kill Sahloknir, and Delphine acknowledges us as Dragonborn. Sweet.
She thinks that the Thalmor are behind the dragon uprising. There's a fairly solid line of thought behind it, but I don't buy it (partially because I know who is behind it, hehehe).
She asks us to meet her back in Riverwood.
Delphine's plan is, essentially, for us to sneak into the Thalmor Embassy during a party and wreak havoc.
Well... whatever.
Totally inconspicuous.
Anyway, this is another of the parts of the game that is a total let down. It should be exciting, but instead, it's really boring. You mingle, then speak to people a couple of times, then go down and kill a bunch of Thalmor with all your best gear because you smuggled it in, then escape unharmed.
There's a few cool bits, though. Here they are:
This is Elenwen. The leader of the Thalmor in Skyrim.
This is Erikur being a douche.
Apparently, the Thalmor know nothing about the dragons, either.
But, we may as well slaughter more Thalmor, right?
Hrm.
And finally, some books.
The Thalmor Report on the Dragon Incident:
So, basically, the Thalmor have no idea, but they've located someone who might know something.
The Thalmor's Dossier on Delphine:
Basically, Bethesda's attempt to make Delphine sound like a badass.
Delphine was one of the Blade's best agents during the Great War, and she just managed to escape the purges in the Aldmeri Dominion (also, I knew the Blades had been operating in there still!). Since, the Thalmor have been hunting her down, but every Thalmor who has met her had died, and Delphine has remained free- but under constant pressure.
Again, in the hands of a competent writer, Delphine could have been a really great character- someone pushed to extremes to survive, constantly paranoid, and concerned only with the ideal of the Blades as a great warrior sect. But she's written by Bethesda, so her characterization is... lacking.
The Thalmor Dossier on Ulfric Stormcloak:
You should be able to read between the lines. Ulfric thinks he's not serving the Thalmor, but he's playing into their hands anywhere- but the Thalmor have to be careful, because if anything unexpected happens, the situation might spiral out of their control.
The Thalmor Dossier on Esbern:
Anyway, we escape without hassle.
And... this post is long, so I'll end it here.
I can provide images of it, but I can't give up being able to hire an armoured troll follower, sorry.
Anyway!
The Thalmor Embassy quest is the perfect opportunity for Skyrim to have done what other games have done; depowering you, forcing you to go in without your powerful gear, and fight your way out with just your innate skills and what you can find along the way.
These sections are often exciting for the player because they up the stakes, providing more tension and a greater challenge than normal for the player. Of course, it has to be carefully balanced, but with leveled enemies/gear, Skyrim already had all the pieces it needed to do this.
Instead, there was about a minute of infiltration and then bam, you grab your gear and you're good to go.
It's a bog-standard dungeon with the trappings of something different and it's annoying.
You can do what?
...okay. Fuck the Vampire Lord. I wanna see the troll.
Did you get the maid thrown into the dungeon? That would be a scummy thing to do.
Yep.
Yes, unfortunately. I was able to rescue her safely though.
That's good. Nothing's worse than the service industry suffering more than it needs to.
Also, that's FREAKING RAD.
I particularly like the axes on their wrists.
how on earth did you get such great equipment so quickly
like, jeez, I just made due with some steel plate armor until I did the Boethiah quest...
She strip mined Skyrim.
Level 45, dude. I had ~20 Dragon Bones/Scales floating around, so as soon as I hit 100 Smithing, I was free to go.
Plus, I linked the mods I'm using on the first page. Crafting+: Weapons and Crafting+Armour allows me to melt down weapons and armours for about half the ingots it takes to make them, so that's useful.
Basically, for a while, I went making Iron Armours until I hit 20 Smithing, then Steel until... I think 40 or so? You could probably check the thread to check exactly when. Then I went to Mzinchaleft and Nchuand-Zel and grabbed all the Dwemer stuff from there, then melted it down for ingots, which resulted in something like 400.
Once you hit 80 Smithing or so, it's a slog, but it's not hard or anything. Just takes some time to get together enough Leather/Dwarven/Iron/Steel Ingots. Once you hit being able to make armours Flawless, it's worth it to improve armours, too, due to the amount of Smithing EXP gained being derived from the value of the gear being made.
If you have enough gold, it's even quicker than I could do it.
If you're asking about Enchanting...
... Just, patience. I walked around between four different towns for something like an hour and a half doing nothing but buying Petty Soul gems, then spent another two hours filling them, then another half an hour enchanting crap to get up 25 Enchanting levels.
I probably could have had this gear by the time I was Level 30, but I wanted time to boost my Armsman/Overdraw skills so that my damage could keep up, and to get my Stealth up there more.
Also, the only worthwhile armours for Light Armour are Glass and Dragonscale, so I had to get them because I got annoyed with this one fight with a cave bear I did twelve times because I kept dying. And Kolsis because fuck Kolsis. I needed the damage reduction.
I didn't want to hit the armour cap, but I wanted better than some crap Elven Armour at least.
Elven armour isn't bad, it's just ugly as all hell.
Elven armour sucks ass, even once improved. Like, improved up to Legendary it was still a good 40 points or so behind Dragonscale.
"Behind the best armour in the game" isn't really a fair comparison.
It's worse than Glass, even.
It's the third-best light armour in the game, but it sucked really hard so I needed better armour.
Forgeable light armour by power: Hide < Leather < Elven < Chitin < Scaled < Glass < Stahlrim < Dragonscale
Note that Chitin and Scaled Armour are weaker than Elven Gilded Armour, but the rest of the pieces are stronger.
Of course, non-forgeable armour screws it up a bit.
Yes, but I didn't have the DLC's at the start, and I can't make the DLC armours now because I can't get the stuff for Chitin/Stahlrim armours.
Actually, Elven Gilded Armour is stronger than Glass too, with 4 higher AR than Glass. Only Stahlrim/Dragonscale outclasses it. However, you can only get the chestpiece as Gilded.
Oh my god this post has been deleted three times screw this :V I'm just going to fucking summarize everywhere I'm up to.
Getting Esber was pretty easy- there were only five Thalmor, plus one of the only two Khajiit in the entirety of Skyrim attacked us. We got him back to Riverwood safely.
There, he told us of the one thing he thought of that might help us- Alduin's Wall, in the lost Blades sanctuary of Sky Haven Temple.
We reclaimed Sky Haven Temple, and looked at Alduin's Wall. There, we learned that a Shout was responsible for his defeat last time.
We headed back to the Greybeards, where we gave them the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller. They acknowledged us as Dragonborn, Ysmir, Dragon of the North. Then, we spoke to Arngeir, who told us we'd have to speak to Paarthurnax, their leader (after he threw a hissy fit).
Paarthurnax told us that he didn't know the shout, but he knew how we could learn it- using an Elder Scroll to throw us back in time and learning the Shout directly from those that made it.
We headed to the College of Winterhold and spoke to the librarian there, who told us to talk to Septimus Sigmus, the leader in Elder Scrolls theory.
We headed north into the freezing wilds and spoke to him. He gave us a blank Lexicon and a key to Blackreach, then told us we'd have to go there and fill the Lexicon with knowledge if we wanted to get the Elder Scroll.
We did so, and headed back to the Throat of the World to speak with Paarthurnax. He told us to hurry and use it- Alduin could appear at any moment.
We used it, and we were thrown back in time to the time of the first fight with Alduin. We learned the three words of Dragonrend, then were flung back to the present time, where Alduin appeared.
We fought Alduin and drove him off, but were unable to kill him.
Paarthurnax came up with a plan to discover where Alduin had retreated to- using Dragonsreach to trap a dragon. To do so, though, we have to convince the Jarl of Whiterun to allow us to.
And that's where we're up to.
Okay!
Balgruff is... well, he's not fine with letting us use Dragonsreach to capture a dragon, but he's willing to let us do it. However, we need to make Whiterun safe from the Imperials and the Stormcloaks first.
So, we head back to Arngeir and speak to him. He agrees to host a peace council, so long as both Ulfric and General Tullius agree to come.
So, we head over to Windhelm first, and speak to Ulfric.
I won't go over everything Ulfric said, because Ulfric is a douche and the entire speech he made before I spoke to him legitimately made me angry.
I did get to speak to him, though. I told him the Greybeards had summoned a peace council. He initially refused, but when I told him Alduin had returned, he agreed- "I'll give Tullius one last chance to run back to the Empire with his tail between his legs."
That entire thing pissed me off, so let's go talk to Tullius.
As always, Tullius kind of pisses me off too, but in a different manner than Ulfric does. Tullius doesn't refer to the murder of one of his friends as a message to the Jarls, at least.
Tullius is also initially against going to the peace conference, but I am able to convince him that the dragons are a greater threat right now. He eventually agrees, admitting that it's getting hard to even move troops around without attracting a dragon attack.
Legate Rikke is still the best Imperial character, though.
Anyway, we head back to Arngeir and gear up for the peace conference.
Arngeir is really coming to dislike me.
The Blades are also arrogant, as always. But Arngeir agrees to let them in eventually.
Essentially, this peace conference has a simple goal; each side has demands, and you have to choose them.
First, we have to decide whether Elenwen stays or goes. She goes, of course.
Second, we have to decide what the Empire gets in return for giving Ulfric Markarth. This is actually a fair deal; Ulfric did originally free Markarth from the Thalmor, after all.
We agree that Riften is a fair trade.
Jesus Christ. I don't want to deal with fucking politics. I want to deal with the DRAGONS.
Luckily, Esbern agrees with me. For the first time in the game, I'm glad to see him, as he stands up and dresses both Ulfric and Tullius down.
We finally move onto the third demand. The Empire wants compensation for the massacre at Karthwasten.
We agree to this, and after a bunch of bickering, we're finally done with this stupid peace council.
Afterwards, we speak to Esbern. He tells us that we can Call a Dragon by using their name as a Shout. He gives us the name of a Dragon likely to come to us when called- Ohdaviing.
Then, he speaks to us about Paarthurnax.
He wants us to kill Paarthurnax. Paarthurnax has committed atrocities in the past, and Esbern believes that the passage of centuries in the meantime is not adequate justice.
go die, esbern
Anyway, we go back to Dragonsreach to talk to Balgruff.
Balgruff agrees to let us do this, so we head out the back and Call Odahviing.
Odahviing appears, and we fight him. Of course, the purpose of the fight isn't to win- it's to trap him. So, I attack him with Dragonrend, then lure him further in, where the trap of Dragonsreach slams down on him.
haha! We win!
Anyway, Odahviing tells us... one reason he came here was to test our Thu'um. Some Dragons have begun to question whether Alduin's Thu'um is truly the strongest.
Odahviing tells us where to find Alduin- in Sovngarde, where he is eating the souls of mortals to regain his strength.
Aw, I wanted a Dragon servant :c
We hesitantly agree to let Odahviing out so he can carry us to the place where Sovngarde borders the mortal world.
He doesn't immediately eat us, which is a plus.
HAHAHA
YES
Anyway, we arrive at... this place. Skuldafn, I think it's called.
This place is basically full of bullshit fights, so I'm not even going to list them. Just know that my very first encounter in this place was with two Draugr Deathlords, a Draugr Scourge, and a Dragon.
After many many Draugr Deathlords, we kill Nahkriin (looting his mask) and enter Sovngarde.
We travel through the mists, where Alduin is constantly flying over, attacking everything.
Eventually, we reach the Hall, where we can talk to the people who killed Alduin last time! But first...
Dammit.
And yes. Yes, that bridge is a giant dragon's skeleton.
Anyway, Tsun's not that hard. He has a lot of health, but you only need to knock about 400 of it off, and he's barely got any armour. It's easier than any one of the Draugr Deathlords I faced on my way here, let alone challenges like the Dragon Priests.
... Yes. Yes, that is Ysgramor, the first Harbinger of the Companions. Sweet.
So, bsically, this fight's pretty simple. First, the three Heroes and I Shout together, three times, to get rid of Alduin's Mist, which is a way for Alduin to hide himself from sight. Then, we kill him. He's a pretty standard dragon, it's easy, except he has 2960 Health and that fucking meteor shout.
I just stand back and Dragonrend/shoot him, though. I go up two Archery levels, even.
And with that completely anticlimactic fight, the main story of Skyrim is done. We gain a new Shout, allowing us to call the Heroes from Sovngarde, and return to the Throat of the World, where we find...
i dont know if i can kill that many dragons
Anyway, dragons start flying off and circling the Throat in huge numbers, shouting things like "Mu Los Vomir" and "Alduin Nahkriin". Looking it up, these could mean "Mu Los Vomir" relies a lot on context- it literally means "We is not-allegiance", but it probably means something more like "We do not owe you our allegiance" or "We no longer owe our allegiance". "Alduin Nahkriin" is more troublesome, as it means "Alduin Vengeance"- is it referring to vengeance on Alduin, or vengeance BY Alduin?
Oh well. This is a more suitably epic end to the main quest anyway.
And with that, Paarthurnax flies off, and we speak to Odahviing!
Paarthurnax gives us the ability to summon him at any point in time.
And this marks the point that the main quest is absolutely done. There is nothing else I can do, so I'll end this here.
Elven Gilded has an AR of 35, whilst Glass has one of 38.
Right, right. My mistake.
Anyway! I'm installing ACE now, and we'll see how it goes with Dawnguard.
Grr.