Skyrim: general questions and discussion.

[Mister K]

Hello, how are you doing?

So during the last Steam Autumn Sale I've bought Skyrim with all the DLC. I've checked the wiki and now I have a few questions about it and I would really appreciate if you fine ladies and gentlemen helped me out with them:

1. Dawnguard DLC gives access to crossbows. Will I be able to buy them anywhere or do I have to play the DLC to get my hands on them?

2. I've checked the perks in Speech tree and they don't seem to be too interesting. Am I correct in thinking that putting points in them is a waste of points? Or am I wrong? And if I am, then why?

3. I really like spells in Destruction school, but I remember that someone somewhere mentioned that in this game Destruction spells are severely underpowered and it is better to go with Conjuration? How true is/was it for you?

4. I am thinking about finishing "Civil War" questline first and then doing other stuff. Is there a recommended minimum level that I need to have in order to successfully finish this questline? Or I can simply jump into it?

5. In this game you can become either werewolf or a vampire. Is it worth it? If yes, then which one is better? Also, if I become a vampire, will I be able to finish Dawnguard questline on human side?

Thank you very much.

Oh, and so that this thread won't lose its purpose too soon, I'd also like you to write about your favourite skills, questlines, experiences, etc. etc. Tell me about your thoughts on agame.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

1. I've never found any crossbows while playing the game outside of starting Dawnguard. Plenty of bolts, though.

2. Speech, Alchemy and Pickpocketing are basically "stat dumps" or stuff you pick up only for the purpose of roleplaying. Absolutely nothing in the game is impossible without using these skills, and very few things are easier with high ranks in them. You can even completely ignore the Lockpicking skill tree if you're halfway competent with the lockpick minigame.

3. Destruction is quite underpowered, yes. It doesn't help that there are basically a half-dozen spells in that school that are actually useful.

4. I haven't finished that questline myself, but I don't believe much of it really depends on skill levels. You might have trouble with the final stages without being competent in combat, though.

5. Even with recent fixes, werewolfism really isn't very worthwhile; it's physically powerful, but you can forget about stealth or healing or any other useful secondary skill. I've never had a character be a vampire, but from what I've read there's some interesting perks to it. I also have no idea how vampirism affects the Dawnguard questline.

My thoughts on the game: Finish the vanilla version once, then mod it up.

 

[Saelune]

The useful part of speech is the ability to sell anything to anyone. Considering how picky merchants can be, its very useful. Otherwise no, its not a worthwhile skill tree.

You can do the Civil War at any level and be fine.

You cannot finish the human side as a vampire. Become a vampire later. Serana can turn you into a Vampire Lord post DLC if you dont cure her until you do it.

I dont think being a vampire OR werewolf is worth it really. Maybe Vampire Lord is fine, but you can switch back to your regular form whenever. Werewolves leaves you waiting alot if you dont want to be in beast form, since there is no way to just turn back.

I use conjuration more than destruction, but thats mostly for the bound bow spell, cause well, stealth archer. But most spells are destruction spells.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

My thoughts on the game: Finish the vanilla version once, then mod it up.

Eh, I'd recommend everyone just goes for mods as soon as they can. Skyrim clearly isn't a particularly well made game in terms of mechanics or features, so adding things you'll like can only be a positive. I see no reason in being familiar with a baseline experience if it's a Bethesda one[footnote]I played Skyrim on 360, btw, so I can tolerate vanilla. there's just no reason to go for it if you have a choice of drastically improving it.[/footnote].

As for the questions - I'll try no to entirely repeat the above info:

2. I've checked the perks in Speech tree and they don't seem to be too interesting. Am I correct in thinking that putting points in them is a waste of points? Or am I wrong? And if I am, then why?

As Rogue Wolf said; arguably it's more about RP'ing, and even then that's questionable. One or two points in haggling's not a bad option, but if you play for long enough then the amount of loot available through normal play means you'll never be skint.

3. I really like spells in Destruction school, but I remember that someone somewhere mentioned that in this game Destruction spells are severely underpowered and it is better to go with Conjuration? How true is/was it for you?

No, I'd say both are functional once you've got enough points in 'em. But both could do with tweaking via mods, or even replacing with perks overhauls.

If you play on the highest diff you may encounter balancing issues early on, but otherwise Destruction in particular suffices just fine (Conjuration's very much an ancillary skill early on, so it typically always needs something else to compliment it).

4. I am thinking about finishing "Civil War" questline first and then doing other stuff. Is there a recommended minimum level that I need to have in order to successfully finish this questline? Or I can simply jump into it?

Nah, it doesn't matter. For me, as with most things in a TES, it's more about when and why a character chooses to involve themselves in something like that.

If you don't RP, though, and really want to go through the [deeply underwhelming] Civil War arc, I'd suggest starting it quite early, as if you join as a world savin' badass, not a single moment of 'battle'/haphazard-skirmish will challenge you in any way.

A minor plot detail gleaned from the MQ might make the choice between the two sides more interesting (meaning it could be worth getting stuck in to the MQ first), but that's subjective, because I could see the added context as being just as intriguing after you've made a choice, depending on the player's feelings and whether or not they RP.

5. In this game you can become either werewolf or a vampire. Is it worth it? If yes, then which one is better? Also, if I become a vampire, will I be able to finish Dawnguard questline on human side?

Well, I think both are terribly implemented, so again, it's more about whether it suits your character [if you RP]. Nothing stops you from trying both in the same run. Keep in mind the Vampire Lord's greatest foes are doorways, btw... I'd also recommend something like the Predator Vision mod for tweaking both vamp and wolfie (and khajit) night vision, as I think those features should've been included in the base game.

Someone can correct me as I've never tried it, but yeah, I do believe you can finish the Dawnguard's side of the questline as a vamp, though I'm assuming that given barely anything in Skyrim has a consequence, and also because of a certain story element.

Oh, and so that this thread won't lose its purpose too soon, I'd also like you to write about your favourite skills, questlines, experiences, etc. etc. Tell me about your thoughts on agame.

Favourite skills = whatever's relevant to a given RP.

Questlines? Eh, kinda none of them given the quality of writing... But the Dawnguard questline takes you to one of my favourite locations in the series, so I always have a soft spot for that, regardless of how badly its design is (it pretty much just flings you from one side of the map to the other, several times, and if you don't use fast-travel that can become a complete pain).

The Thieves Guild arc is divisive amongst fans, but I actually rather enjoyed it. All the main faction questlines are pitifully short, and the TG's is no exception. But it felt like there was a little more build up, and more believable busywork to do before the story lurched to its conclusion. I favour rogue/stealth builds in the mainline TES's, so the TG's an easy draw for me.

As for experiences? It is a love/hate game; I think it's woefully designed in so many ways (combat, writing, story, use of TES lore, menus, etc), but the world design and freedom it gives you is still remarkable. Typically, my best TES experiences arise from role-play - using innocuous items or events to either forward or reshape my character's [mis]adventures. Other than that, my best TES (and Fallout) experiences are almost always out in the wild, well away from any inane NPC or storyline. That's when the game feels the most convincingly immersive, and for Bethesda games I think it's the small fleeting moments which cohere to make them great, despite their many flaws.

edit

You cannot finish the human side as a vampire. Become a vampire later. Serana can turn you into a Vampire Lord post DLC if you dont cure her until you do it.

Huh, is that true? I'll cross out a paragraph above then.

I dont think being a vampire OR werewolf is worth it really. Maybe Vampire Lord is fine, but you can switch back to your regular form whenever. Werewolves leaves you waiting alot if you dont want to be in beast form, since there is no way to just turn back.

There's a mod to fix that. ;-)

 

[Asita]

1. ...Yes and no? Each of the shops draws semi-randomly from a given pool of possibilities, and they tend to refresh about once every two [in-game] days or so. So any given blacksmith might sell a crossbow, but they are never guaranteed to have them. That being said, you're also looking at Dawnguard wrong. Assuming that it's installed, you'll start getting fairly frequent vampire attacks between the time you hit level 9 and the time you finish the Dawnguard questline. These vampires can and will kill non-essential npcs very quickly[footnote]Which is particularly annoying if they kill the merchants.[/footnote], so unless you're either waiting to install the dlc or are both below level 9 and willing to install the Dawnguard Delayed mod (For Special Edition, For Regular Skyrim), you'll probably want to put Dawnguard at the top of your priorities list anyways.

2. Speech is largely a waste. In addition to being a pain to level (I don't think any of my characters have ever gotten it to 100), most of the perks are redundant. For instance, if you do the Thieves Guild questline (including enough radiant quests to restore the guild's influence in the major holds in core Skyrim), you receive the Amulet of Articulation, which allows you to pass every persuade/intimidate check in the game. Additionally, getting the guild to that point allows you to invoke the connection and bribe the guards. So taking the Thieves Guild to completion renders the right side of the Speech tree completely irrelevant. The left side is more useful, it's also entirely a convenience thing which ultimately boils down to you having to fast-travel less to sell your loot to different merchants.

3. Destruction magic's problem is that it doesn't scale. If you want to be a destruction mage you're probably going to want to look into mods like Perkus Maximus, Ordinator, Apocalypse or Midas Magic. That being said, those are all "overhaul" mods, and probably not ideal for a first playthrough. Magic in general really gets shunted in Skyrim, with a good number of perks tied up in "cast spells for half cost" perks.

And yes, Conjuration is much more effective than Destruction, because its bound weapons (particularly bound sword and bound bow) give you decent quality weapons which scale with the relevant perks. To repeat myself, however: Mages are shunted in Skyrim. Those bound swords and bound bows are spectacular early game, but if you invest in Smithing then you will easily surpass them by improving late-game equipment at the whetstone.

4. Most content in the game is level scaled. That said, you'd probably want to be level 12+ before starting the Civil War.

5. Yes. You can become a werewolf through the Companions questline, and you can become a regular vampire through combat with a regular vampire. The latter is very chance based and only has 10% a chance of occurring if a) You are not immune to disease, and b) the vampire casts vampiric drain on you.

In terms of commonalities, both Vampirism and Lycanthropy give you immunity to disease.

Vampirism has some perks to it, such as 20-50% resistance to frost (resistance improving the longer you go without feeding), a 25% bonus to your illusion spells and sneaking ability, the vampiric drain spell, a once-per day reanimate dead spell (scaling in a similar manner to your resistance to frost), a once per day calm spell (only available if you go 1+ days without feeding), a functional equivalent of night eye (much more useful if you install lighting mods than in vanilla skyrim, absolutely redundant if you're playing as a Khajiit), and a once per day invisibility power (only available if blood starved). Countering this, Vampirism also makes you 20-50% weaker to fire, and in daylight your health, magicka, and stamina are all reduced by 15-60 points and their regeneration rate is negated.

Lycanthropy, by contrast is almost entirely contained within a once-per day power which lets you transform into...well, a werewolf for 150 seconds. As of Dawnguard, Werewolf has its own perk tree which is advanced by eating the hearts of corpses in your wolf form (to skill it up, you must enter the skill menu when in wolf form). Before taking that into account, however, the wolf form does the following: increases your health by 50 and your stamina by 100. Stamina regen increases from 5% to 20%. Carrying Capacity increases by 2000. Wolves will not attack you. Base unarmed damage increases from 4 to 20, and reach improves from 96 to 150. Your claws have a Fortify Unarmed Damage effect which increases the damage by another 0-60 points (depending on level. 0 below level 11, 60 at level 50+). If Dawnguard is installed you also get damage resistance of 0-400 (same level scaling). Your base rate of health regeneration, however, is set to zero and you cannot use any items, spells, or equipment when in beast form. Additionally, you cannot get the "rested" buff (temporary bonus to skill up rate) for sleeping in a bed at any point if you are a werewolf. Transforming in front of almost any non-follower friendly NPC will also give you a bounty of 1000 at the nearest major hold (which is very handy for getting a steam achievement that requires that you have a bounty of 1000 at every major hold), but if nobody sees you transform you are effectively anonymous.

Of these two, Lycanthropy is far and away the winner simply because basic Vampirism has significant downsides but not much in the way of upsides. That being said, Dawnguard also gives you a few opportunities to become a Vampire Lord, an enhanced strain of vampirism that still holds to all of the rules listed above but also grants an at-will power to transform into...well, a Vampire Lord which is more on-par with Lycanthropy's Beast Form and like Lycanthropy has its own skill tree. Whether or not that compensates for the downsides is fairly subjective. If you want to become a vampire lord there are several options: 1) accept Harkon's gift early in the Dawnguard questline (this counts as joining his faction). 2) ask to become a vampire at the Soul Cairn part of the Dawnguard questline[footnote]Note: If you entered as part of the Dawnguard, you'll need to cure your vampirism after completing the Soul Cairn. Until then, the Dawnguard will reject you and refuse to let you progress in the questline[/footnote], and 3) You can ask to become a vampire at any point after the Dawnguard questline is completed...provided that the one turning you isn't convinced to give up their own vampirism.

 

[Mister K]

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Wow, thanks for the answers.

I cannot believe that speech is actually even worse skill than I though. I mean, judging by what Asita wrote, Bethesda probably understood that speech sucks but it was too late to change stuff, so they've just included the auto-success amulet in the game.

I guess I'll wait for later levels and will simply start summoning spirits then.

Vampirism and Lycantropy do sound boring. I think I'll skip/cure them.

About crossbows (to those who managed to get them): how good/bad are they?

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

I cannot believe that speech is actually even worse skill than I though. I mean, judging by what Asita wrote, Bethesda probably understood that speech sucks but it was too late to change stuff, so they've just included the auto-success amulet in the game.

Keep in mind one major DLC does have a persistent respec feature as a reward at the end, and being on PC gives you access to console commands and mods. There's no reason you can't just play around to find what works or is most enjoyable, particularly if you're not RP'ing.

Vampirism and Lycantropy do sound boring. I think I'll skip/cure them.

Again, modding can make them much more interesting/worthwhile, so don't just discard or avoid a feature because vanilla wasted it.

About crossbows (to those who managed to get them): how good/bad are they?

Eh, they're okay. It's really just down to preference in a few ways, f'instance; whilst bows need to be drawn to get full power, forced crossbow reload animations drastically slow you down after pulling the trigger, so firing a bolt means your movement is going to be hampered immediately afterwards. You can (or could) cancel out of it by de-equipping, but to me that's a ridiculous workaround to avoid being rooted to the spot.

I know there's a mod which lets you decide to reload when you wish, though, so that'll fix that issue if it bothers you. With vanilla there are, what, two variants? The normal crossbow, and the Dwemer version. Without mods, crossbows are a very neglected weapon in Skyrim.

I personally never saw the benefits in crossbows vs hi-end upgraded bows, though, so for me I mostly just ignored them. I'm pretty sure their bolt drop arc is shorter than arrows, too, making them even more questionable as ranged weapons.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I'm putting points into speech so that I can get gold. You see, one of the trophies in the game is to get 100,000 gold, and while gold does seem to be everywhere, this is still a HUGE amount to save up. As such, I'm trying to get to the perks where every merchant will not only buy whatever now, but also gets an extra 1000 gold to start with. Because when you're carrying around a piece of armor that is worth 850, plus some jewelry that is worth a few hundred each, you will find that merchants run out of money real quick, and thus you're stuck carrying it around.
So yeah, speech is really useful if you're going to trading and trying to get gold for all your loot, but otherwise you don't have to worry about it.

 

[Xan Krieger]

I'm putting points into speech so that I can get gold. You see, one of the trophies in the game is to get 100,000 gold, and while gold does seem to be everywhere, this is still a HUGE amount to save up. As such, I'm trying to get to the perks where every merchant will not only buy whatever now, but also gets an extra 1000 gold to start with. Because when you're carrying around a piece of armor that is worth 850, plus some jewelry that is worth a few hundred each, you will find that merchants run out of money real quick, and thus you're stuck carrying it around.
So yeah, speech is really useful if you're going to trading and trying to get gold for all your loot, but otherwise you don't have to worry about it.

I just got that achievement about two days ago and it's all thanks to the perks in the speech tree. Even that ability to invest 500 gold in a shop adds up as you do more and more transactions. I think my speech level is 94 or 95, also helps in quests when I can easily persuade people to do as I wish instead of having to do extra parts of a quest or fight them.

"4. I am thinking about finishing "Civil War" questline first and then doing other stuff. Is there a recommended minimum level that I need to have in order to successfully finish this questline? Or I can simply jump into it?"
Are you good at killing people? If so join the stormcloaks in Windhelm and wipe out the people who tried to murder you at the start of the game.

"3. I really like spells in Destruction school, but I remember that someone somewhere mentioned that in this game Destruction spells are severely underpowered and it is better to go with Conjuration? How true is/was it for you?"
I'm more of a warrior but have dabbled in magic and I have shouts that are more deadly than most spells. Sure shouts have a cooldown time but spells can run out of mana so it about evens out. Also I can summon a dragon and ride it, sure I can't throw fireballs at people but that's what the dragon is for

 

[Wrex Brogan]

1. Yeah, stuck to Dawnguard unless you throw in mods - and, to be honest, outside of mods they're pretty disappointing to begin with, with the sole appeal being you can make exploding bolts after a long-ass quest. Vanilla bow and arrow are better - and ironically faster - than the Crossbows.

2. Yep, pretty much useless. Invest elsewhere, like a crafting tree or pickpocketing, since either of those make you way more money than max speech.

3. Yes and no - the problem Destruction faces is that it's severely underpowered at low levels, which can make it difficult to level up. Around the 50-mark point with some perk investment it's pretty decent, though I highly recommend taking Enchanting so you can deck yourself out in Reduced Destruction Cost gear, since even dumping all your level ups into Mana doesn't give you a big enough pool to throw around the high level spells. Also avoid the Max level destruction spells, since they're all pretty useless (high powered, but have massive costs and cast times - much better to just spam cheaper, lower level spells to kill things).

4. No real recommended level for it, though I suggest having Steel, Elven or Dwemer tier armour before you start it, since you end up fighting a lot of enemies with decent gear and bows. Also invest in a shield, since you get shot at a lot.

5. Werewolves and Vampires are pretty useless unless you mod the crap out of them - half the time you'll be killed mid transformation if you do it in battle and don't last long in a fight anyway due to lack of armour as a werewolf, and the Vampires spells and abilities don't scale very well, so any mid-level enemy will ruin your shit.

As for me - I enjoyed Blacksmithing as my primary skill, that I felt was well implemented (if a little imbalanced before they patched it - yes, I am the Best Blacksmith, I made 500 iron daggers!). Sadly outside the main story not a lot of the side quests stuck with me since far, far, far too many of them relied on the 'YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE OF [insert god/daedra here]' schtick, which I got sick of back in Oblivion. Most of the time if I'm not doing a specific roleplay, I end up as a kind of Dragon Hunter, just roaming around killing dragons rather than doing anything related to the sidequests.

 

[aozgolo]

To elaborate a few points:

You can do the questline for the Civil War whenever you want, most Civil War questlines have you fighting along with other NPCs so you're seldom alone. There is however some benefit to postponing the Civil War questline until later in the game's story. There is an event I won't go into detail on where you actually get a lot more story banter and story choices if the civil war is still ongoing.

For destruction magic, it IS worth it IF you decide to make it your primary attack method. In other words, don't really use it hoping to supplement other skills like melee or archery, because to make Destruction worth it, you need to invest into the tree. It may still be technically underpowered but it's still a blast to play with, and it has it's own playstyle rather different from others. Conjuration is considered more useful because it is a complimentary school, for example it pairs amazingly well with archery. A conjuration archer can summon daedra to tank an enemy while you keep shooting them at range, and you can eventually get the Conjure Bow spell which means you never need arrows again, and remains a potent bow even until the late game, only a few special bows outrank it. You can also get the ability to soul trap enemies with conjured weapons giving you an easy time of filling soul gems.

Speech tree is typically worth it only as a time-saving measure. All shops restock their gold every 24 hours, and in the 5 major cities there are shops where you can sell all your item types, with a bit of wandering between them. Getting gold is just a patience game though, there are a lot of money sinks in the game, but they do eventually dry up later on to the point where you won't be buying too much of anything anymore (especially if you ignore Hearthfire DLC or buying houses, which are the biggest money sinks). Lockpicking as someone else said is largely able to be ignored. You can open Master lockpicks without it, you just break a lot more picks but you will quickly find you end up with way more picks than you'll ever need. Alchemy is hit or miss though, it's great in theory but you find so many potions leveled to you just through normal exploration.

Finally in regards to werewolves and vampires, they really boil down to a roleplay choice, and shouldn't be taken based on their statistical aspects. From a roleplay perspective they work well and you will really feel like a werewolf or vampire, but they should in a sense be seen as intentional handicaps, there are perks to being them, but the handicap is where the fun lies, as you have to work around certain things. Also worth noting, the Vampire Lord in Dawnguard is NOT the same thing as a standard vampire, they operate very differently with different skills, so technically you have 3. As far as being able to join Dawnguard after contracting vampirism, you CAN but only if you cure your vampirism first! You can also become a vampire lord even after completing Dawnguard if you choose. There exists LOTS of mods to overhaul vampires and werewolves as well.

 

[Asita]

Vampirism and Lycantropy do sound boring. I think I'll skip/cure them.

Eh...yes and no? Lycanthropy is something you have to get if you're doing the Companions questline, and the downside to it is negligible enough to be virtually nonexistent, so there's not much incentive to get rid of it instead of just ignoring it. The major upside to Lycanthropy specifically is that it has some absolutely devastating attack power. A power attack in it will throw people much like a full Unrelenting Force shout and take off a good chunk of HP in the process. Sprinting in that form will close the gap between you and an enemy faster than anything short of Whirlwind Sprint, and if you fully rank up its power in the perk tree a running attack can instantly kill a lot of enemies, including several tiers of dragons.

Additionally, Lycanthropy and both forms of Vampirism make you completely immune to all diseases, which while far from a huge buff does remove an added bit of annoyance considering that diseases are negative stat buffs.

About crossbows (to those who managed to get them): how good/bad are they?

Depends on the assumptions. In terms of simple "each shot to the face" damage, the basic crossbow is about on par with the Daedric bow, and the Dwarven Crossbow is about on par with the Dragonbone bow. The enhanced versions of both also have the unique effect of ignoring 50% of the enemy's armor (useless against mage robes, quite useful against full plate). That being said, the bow is also twice as fast and much quieter, so if you're going for stealth-archer the bow will serve you better for anything short of "across the cavern" shooting.

2. Speech, Alchemy and Pickpocketing are basically "stat dumps" or stuff you pick up only for the purpose of roleplaying. Absolutely nothing in the game is impossible without using these skills, and very few things are easier with high ranks in them. You can even completely ignore the Lockpicking skill tree if you're halfway competent with the lockpick minigame.

Eh...yes and no. There isn't much in pickpocketing that's worthwhile, but "Extra Pockets" gives you an extra 100 to carrying capacity, which is quite handy.

Similarly, for most intents and purposes Alchemy can be safely ignored, but clever investing in it allows you to absolutely break the game because of a weird interaction between restoration potions and skill enchantments. Get some weak enchantment gear...like say, +8% Alchemy on a headpiece and neckpiece. Put points into Alchemist (optionally, max out Alchemist), Physician, and Benefactor. Equip the alchemy equipment, craft a restoration potion. Drink the potion, unequip and reequip the alchemy gear, make another restoration potion. As you do this, the values on your equipment will go up and up, and you'll create better and better potions. Repeat, repeat, repeat...and before you know it you'll have +2183261% Restoration potions...which can be used to boost your other crafting enchantments, like smithing and enchanting. Make...I don't know, half a dozen iron daggers? Drink the restoration potion, equip the smithing gear and hit the grindstone to improve those daggers. Bam. 0-100 in smithing in less than two minutes, and you get daggers which - if you're inclined to use them - have listed damage in the thousands and sell for upwards of 3000 gold. As an added bonus, you can then make the skill legendary and repeat the process for rapid levelling (which makes it so much less annoying to reach the level where legendary dragons start spawning).

Mind you, this Fortify Restoration exploit is fixed in the Unofficial Patch.

 

[DeadProxy]

By now, your questions are pretty much answered, so I'll just go with the "share experiences" bit at the end of your post.

I'll start with my experience with the werewolf transformation, which I really only dabbled with in vanilla Skyrim, and it quickly got useless around level 20-30. You lose all your armour protection and range options, with little gains. There's a skill tree introduced in the Dawnguard dlc, but I think it's hard for it to matter when your approaching levels above 60. You can bite peoples heads off though, which is pretty cool.

There was a quest early on that I had a fun time with on one character. When you first enter Whiterun, you overhear 2 Redguard people talking with some guards, and then give you a quest when you talk to them. At some point in the quest, you get the option to kill his group, or help him capture someone. I took the third choice and played him like a fiddle. I agreed to help him, then pickpocketed his entire group of their cool (but weak) scimitars, and left them in the cave. Fast forward like 60-80 game hours or something, and his entire gang were still waiting in the cave looong after I'd killed their leader, still weaponless. So when I randomly returned to the cave as super-dovaking-guy, I couldn't help but slaughter them all as a werewolf.

When it comes to favourite skills, it's really hard to beat the final Sneak skill, especially if it's boosted with sneak damage and dagger damage. The "Turn invisible in Combat when crouched" is so overpowered by the time you get it. Most of my melee combat was just me running straight at my enemies, then crouching right in front of them, then attacking once which would trigger a backstab animation 90% of the time. Super fun.

Writing this is helping me realize I'm starting to forget stuff that happened in my 900+ hours spent in skyrim the first time around, which is good for when I'll eventually pick it up again. But I did remember something that I doubt I'll ever forget when it comes to skyrim, and that was one stupid mage I was fighting one random time. I attacked him, and he decided to say, "Do you know who I am? I'm the master of the arcane!" to which I immediately cut off his head. That one tickled me a little. And then there was the first time I ever pick pocketed a "Briarheart Forsworn" enemy. You can literally steal their harts out of their chest if your skills are high enough. The first time I ever did, I got to watch the guy slump over in pain and then slide down a couple dozen stairs. Good feels.

As a final thing, I'll never forget my skill grinding routine. Find alchemy spell for iron-silver-gold transmuting. Pickpocket gems from townsfolk/world, make jewelry, sell for profit. You level up your Sneak, pickpocket, speech and blacksmithing pretty reliably, and you'll have more money than you'll ever need in time.

 

[Samechiel]

Vampirism and Lycantropy do sound boring. I think I'll skip/cure them.

Nah, man. You get offered Lycanthropy at the beginning of the Companions quest chain, so pick it up and then just let it rot in your powers tab. Rested bonus is worthless and you don't have to be in wolf form to benefit from the disease immunity. Throw away all those pain-in-the-ass bottles of Cure Disease potion, because you'll never have to worry about contracting rockjoint ever again!

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Hello, how are you doing?

So during the last Steam Autumn Sale I've bought Skyrim with all the DLC. I've checked the wiki and now I have a few questions about it and I would really appreciate if you fine ladies and gentlemen helped me out with them:

1. Dawnguard DLC gives access to crossbows. Will I be able to buy them anywhere or do I have to play the DLC to get my hands on them?

2. I've checked the perks in Speech tree and they don't seem to be too interesting. Am I correct in thinking that putting points in them is a waste of points? Or am I wrong? And if I am, then why?

3. I really like spells in Destruction school, but I remember that someone somewhere mentioned that in this game Destruction spells are severely underpowered and it is better to go with Conjuration? How true is/was it for you?

4. I am thinking about finishing "Civil War" questline first and then doing other stuff. Is there a recommended minimum level that I need to have in order to successfully finish this questline? Or I can simply jump into it?

5. In this game you can become either werewolf or a vampire. Is it worth it? If yes, then which one is better? Also, if I become a vampire, will I be able to finish Dawnguard questline on human side?

Thank you very much.

Oh, and so that this thread won't lose its purpose too soon, I'd also like you to write about your favourite skills, questlines, experiences, etc. etc. Tell me about your thoughts on agame.

1. You'll find basic crossbows as you progress anyway, and get given one for joining the Dawnguard. The advanced ones however can only be obtained by playing thru the DLC having joined the Dawnguard against the Volkihar Vampires.

2. They aren't particularly, but they do have some use. I like the perks to enable selling any item to any merchant, stolen items and investing in merchants. It makes obtaining money easier. But, I wouldn't invest gold and use the 5 training levels/level on it.

3. Destruction doesn't scale into the latter parts of the game, sadly. Frost for starters is disadvantaged out of the gate since so many enemies are resistant to it (Nords, Undead, a lot of wildlife). Since Bethesda made the foolish decision that skill points would reduce mana costs instead of dmg done (whereas with weapon skills, it does increase dmg), and further, there aren't dmg enchantments in the vanilla game, Destruction will fall off around the 40s-50s. Conjuration is a decent school. You can summon allies as well as your own daedric level weaponry.

4. You can do the civil war whenever you like. The main quest in fact requires that the civil war is settled, or you have to do an entire extra quest. It will change the landscape, some characters and some dialogue but the game will play out just fine however you approach it.

5. Some things to note. You cannot join the Dawnguard and be a vampire. You cannot join Volkihar without becoming a vampire and curing lycanthropy. You cannot complete the Companions storyline without becoming a werewolf (and curing vampirism). With that said, you don't have to do all factions, or you can do one first then the other. In terms of effectiveness, the vanilla werewolf, like destruction magic does fall off towards the late game. Vampires are much more versatile since you can mix vampiric abilities with any other form of combat with VL form as a bonus. Both conditions can be cured with a short quest in-game as well.

Having said all of the above, it only applies to a vanilla, unmodded game. Since you have the PC version, there is no reason you can't use mods. I personally have mods specifically for some of what was mentioned. I have a mod to make Destruction magic scale, another that adds more spells, one that "overhauls" the werewolf form (adding more progression/perks and making it viable late game), another for vampirism. I highly recommend using the like if you'd like to go any of these routes.

The thing with Skyrim is that it lets you approach combat from whatever path you choose. If you go speechcraft and alchemy, you can barter for better gear and drink a potion to enhance your damage or poison the enemy. If you go pickpocket and blacksmithing, you can steal the gold to buy the ingots to craft/upgrade your weapon. Both ways net you more damage, just the path you took to get it is different. They aren't mutually exclusive however, so you can level up all four. Or just go stealth archer like everyone else.

 

[Tanis]

DO THE VAMPIRE PLOT LINE!

No, seriously, do it NOW!

Why? Because you ca summon THIS ************!

 

[Saelune]

DO THE VAMPIRE PLOT LINE!

No, seriously, do it NOW!

Why? Because you ca summon THIS ************!

You dont need to be a vampire to get it. Maybe you know that, but it makes it sound like you have to join the vampires.

 

[Tanis]

I know, but I'm team 'Blacken The Sun', you filthy fur ball!

 

[wings012]

1. You gotta play the DLC and if you want the strongest crossbows - you basically can't be a vampire lord AFAIK cause it means siding against the vampires. IMO neither are that big a deal. Crossbows can be pretty powerful, but they don't do anything that Daedric Longbows don't. Vampire transformation falls into the whole caveat of being unable to use your gear, making it a transformation that weakens you. So eh, take your pick.

2. It's been a while since I played, but I reckon there's speech checks and crap along the way somewhere that may get you better outcomes in some quests and places. Other than that, don't really need those skills to become the majority owner of Skyrim's economy.

3. Issue with spells is that they have rather fixed damage values. So they only scale up to a certain degree and... stop. Whether that's good enough or not is up to you, but weapons and armour scale way higher. Especially once you start factoring using a mix of alchemy and blacksmithing to loop into each other for more stupid weapon upgrades. While flinging fireballs might be more entertaining, they aren't going to outdamage Legendary Daedric gear.

4. Just do it whenever, but as mentioned the main quest will take you to the rest of it. The does scale a bit in difficulty anyhow. Not to the degree of Oblivion silliness, but higher ranking bandits, forsworn and even dragons only spawn at certain level thresholds.

5. Neither imo. Equipment scaling is too ridiculous(once you factor in enchantments even more so) and being a vampire or werewolf means being unable to use your gear. At least while transformed. I'd pick Lycanthropy in this regard since you can transform whenever and it comes with basically no drawbacks, heck you even get disease immunity if my memory serves me right. While vampirism has all sorts of caveats. While you can't have both active at the same time, you can basically switch between the two by speaking to the right NPC. I believe you can still become a Vampire Lord while siding with the Dawnguard through Serana but my memory's iffy. If you can't and it really bothers you there's probably a console command or a mod out there that remedies it.

The two forms probably have some novelty uses in the early to mid game. But don't expect them to hold their own against Dragon Priests and Draugr Deathlords. And there's also nothing stopping you from catapulting your smithing skill up to silly levels right from the get go and rendering those forms moot super early.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Since your questions have been answered I'll just blather on about my experience with it.

Initially I didn't like it. Had no interest in the world, the environment just didn't do it for me and generally the draw of Bethesda FPRPGs is the exploration. Also wasn't a fan of the "chosen one" plot. Started as my usual stealth sniper and uninstalled a couple of times.

Then I got the alternate start mod and decided to go necromancer. I usually do the full RP so I wanted to wear magic robes and only allow soft armour on hands and feet (preferably no armour), just use daggers, no archery etc to get that wizard feel. Previously all my Bethesda FPRPG characters had been stealth snipers, which just happens to be pretty OP. This time I did a lot of running away and hiding at the start as the damage you do with magic vs the amount of mana use is pretty low and if I couldn't run and hide to regenerate after an initial attack most fights would end in a desperate slashing with a dagger while spamming food for health regen. So suddenly RPing a character that has a really tough time of it was actually quite a breath of fresh air. The character ending up being a vampire lord necromancer head of the mages guild, though I never used the transformation skill, seemed more powerful without it.


PS maybe get the Better Vampires mod. It adds a progression system to it, so the more people you bite overall you level up, getting stronger in terms of damage, speed, ability to fall distance, mana regen, lessens fire and sun weakness. You can make thralls, change the feeding mechanism so you get more powerful when satiated and less powerful when starving and a bunch of other shit. Most of it is customizable so you can mostly decide which bits you want to play with.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9717/?

Also the shopkeepers have more gold mod and the bag of holding mod.