When a game doesn't facilitate your specific play style (Skyrim)

[SantoUno]

I've been playing Skyrim again nonstop for the past two weeks, and since the beginning I was determined to focus on mastering Conjuration and Restoration as my main playstyle, expecting to be able to get through the game. Unfortunately as encounters were becoming more and more grueling I slowly started to realize that wasn't the case.

My main routine would be to cast Oakflesh for additional protection, then cast a familiar or atronach or kill one enemy then reanimate it, then allow it to battle the enemy for me. I would routinely heal myself if needed. Unfortunately the enemy would either ignore my summon or simply kill it within seconds and then go for me as I ran out of magicka. It got to the point where animals in the wild would kill me in seconds if I didn't start blasting them immediately with Destruction spells ( I just got murdered by a bear at level 14, reloaded and then shot it again and again with Firebolt, completely ditching all the aforementioned support spells). The worst example was during the Diplomatic Immunity quest where you are almost guaranteed to have to battle ever single of the Thalmor who are exceptionally lethal with Destruction spells, where I pretty much ditched all other schools of magic and simply blasted them with Firebolt and Fire Rune again and again, having to constantly down health and magic potions when the Thalmor Wizards drained my magic with lightning. The final straw came when they kept using wards to completely block my spells, but when I tried using Steadfast Ward (Apprentice level ward), it was always shattered immediately.

I pretty much realized "Wow, I completely wasted my time with Restoration and Conjuration." I didn't want to simply blast every single enemy with Destruction spells, but it really seems like it's the only viable approach for mage characters.

This is extremely disheartening considering that in Oblivion, I was actually able to get through most of the game without always having to rely on just Destruction spells to win battles. Conjuration summons were actually hardy and capable of killing the enemies all by themselves, Restoration had direct damage spells like Absorb Health, and more importantly since you always gained experience when you cast a spell, not just during combat, you could actually raise the schools of magic really high to gain access to the necessary spells needed to stand a chance in combat without directly damaging the enemy.

So now I ask, is there any game you have played in which it allows for different play styles yet the game seems to only accommodate those who focus on a specific one, especially when it comes to combat? I understand that not all playstyles can be accommodated (remember Yahtzee's review on Deus Ex where Swimming and Poison Resistance where NOT within reason), but I think it's a massive failure on a game where it features several different ways to build your character but ultimately you're forced to go with the one that will allow you to kill the enemies faster.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

Assume you're playing on a console, because otherwise you'd have modded all the magic fixes into the game.

 

[baddude1337]

Indeed, you need mods to make late game mages viable. Hell, I needed mods just to make Skyrim fun, enjoyable and more immersive. Took over 200 mods and 40GB of HDD space to get there, but I did. Feast your eyes!

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197984929447/screenshots/?appid=72850&sort=newestfirst&browsefilter=myfiles&view=imagewall

If you are on PC, definitely check out magic mods. With conjuration at the very least you need to increase the number of summons you can have, which you can do with Wyre Bash's options.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

All Bethesda games are like that. Bioware too. You could max out biotic charge, throw and singularity and hope you don't get your ass shot while your abilities recharge, or you could get an assault rifle and fire bullets and win the game. Mass Effect 2 especially. Once I got the Revenant and max incendiary rounds not a single enemy last longer than half a clip. Even before that with an Avenger and some fire bullets. Nothing lives! Its like having a bolter against dudes in cardboard armor. More sad than anything else.

Skyrim too. Axe + Face = Win was the general equation I was running on, and it never failed. What was that line from Angron when asked about charging headlong into combat? "I have never failed to win a war my way. I buy my victories with the edge of my axe!" Seems to make sense to me.

Fallout is slightly different, but I'd say its more extreme. Don't bother getting only okay at speaking and sniping. Go max one or the other. Either be able to talk your way out of anything, or shoot everyone in VATS from the other side of the map. Otherwise you'll lose half the content to fail missions and feel like you wasted a lot of time and money.

Shadow of Mordor I remember being very straight forward despite claiming to be all about choices and strategy. I even did a thread where I asked what the fucking point of the enemy weaknesses was when no one was immune to the most basic attack and nearly 90% of all Warbosses were vulnerable to one-shot kill sneak attacks. Like, why bother with being weak to bees or wolves when none of those are nearby and a knife to the gut works every time? And yes, I did beat the game. And I can only remember 2 bosses immune to my sword. But they weren't immune to knives.

 

[SantoUno]

@ Here Comes Tomorrow and badude1337, yes I am playing Skyrim Legendary Edition on PS3. Honestly it's disheartening to always hear "yeah the mods will fix that little gripe with the game". I know pretty much every large scale game like Skyrim can be improved upon by the modding community, but I'd much rather use mods as an afterthought, not as a base requirement. Then again, I still play vanilla Oblivion and micromanage my skills to make sure I get +5 on three attributes every single level up.

On a side note, can anyone tell me if Ward spells are actually viable in Skyrim? Like I said, the enemies always seem to use them to repel all my damage yet when I use them on any mage or dragon's breath, they instantly break, which is what they are supposed to help defend against. I wonder if the Ward Absorb perk would even come to my rescue considering my wards never come in handy against mages and dragons.

 

[DoPo]

I know pretty much every large scale game like Skyrim can be improved upon by the modding community, but I'd much rather use mods as an afterthought, not as a base requirement.

Unfortunately, it is in Bethesda's case. In Oblivion I had to mod pretty much every skill I wanted to use to make them not suck as much, similar thing happened in Skyrim. The games are rigged - they don't really give you as much options as there appear to be because the mechanics are wonky, broken, don't work well when combined with other common elements of the game or more than one of these at once. It's quite telling when one of the most downloaded mods for Oblivion is "No Psychic Guards" which makes...the guards not psychic, so they don't IMMEDIATELY know when you've killed somebody who was sleeping alone in their house or something.

Admittedly, Skyrim was slightly better than Oblivion in terms of what needed fixing, but that's mostly because the Morrowind/Oblivion system was scrapped, after what I can only assume is Bethesda realizing they can't make it work (also, again, some of the most well known mods were to change the levellng system to what eventually was used in Skyrim).

 

[sXeth]

I found Restoration took a huge hit in Skyrim, compared to Oblivion where you could life-transfer from enemies or buff yourself to a demigod status. It sounds like you went off-focus though, since you cast Oakflesh, an incredibly expensive (before perking) Alteration spell.

Conjuration was the main viable spell school (though incredibly boring to watch your summons do everything) in Skyrim. Even Destruction became horribly ineffective unless you made 100% reduce cost gear, you'd always run out of magicka trying to take on enemies at higher levels.

On a side note, can anyone tell me if Ward spells are actually viable in Skyrim? Like I said, the enemies always seem to use them to repel all my damage yet when I use them on any mage or dragon's breath, they instantly break, which is what they are supposed to help defend against. I wonder if the Ward Absorb perk would even come to my rescue considering my wards never come in handy against mages and dragons.

Enemies have infinite magicka, or at least a huge buff to magicka regen (and probably don't suffer the penalty to it in combat). Wards are basically useless except against weaker enemies or with gear to reduce the cost to 0.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

It's the level scaling that really dose this. If they took that out, or tweaked it, then more styles would be workable as you could simply grind out extra levels. Mages are weak in skyrim, but you really wouldn't notice if they didn't scale the enemies.

 

[Asclepion]

Indeed, you need mods to make late game mages viable. Hell, I needed mods just to make Skyrim fun, enjoyable and more immersive. Took over 200 mods and 40GB of HDD space to get there, but I did. Feast your eyes!

It's amazing what modders have accomplished in the Elder Scrolls games.

What's your modlist? I could use some new ideas for mods to use when I eventually decide to give it another run through.

I can offer some:


One With Nature [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/54090/?] - Tired of being attacked by wolves? Then don't! Manually set AI for animals - set to "friendly" and enjoy nature walks in peace, or "allied" to become Princess Mononoke.

True Wolves Of Skyrim [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59174/?] - Changes the wolf model from Bethesda's horrible one to an actual realistic wolf.

Logical Health Limits [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/39388/?] - The leader of a band of thieves may be a legitimate badass, but he's still a regular fucking human. There's no reason that he would have 10 to 20 times the health of any other man there. This mod equalizes enemy HP values so that higher ranking enemies are only slightly tougher than standard ones.

More Spawns - Scriptless [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/60028/?] - Multiplies the number of spawned enemies 2x, 3x, or 4x. Battle wave upon wave of bandits that threaten to overwhelm any opposition.

ENBseries [http://enbdev.com/download_mod_tesskyrim.htm] - Fantastic mod that adds a number of user-configurable postprocessing effects into the game. There are many ENB presets people have made, of which my personal favorite is VandB ENB [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65584/?] (amazing color balance, subdued DoF, and low system requirements).

Remove Interior Fog [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29253/?] - Removes the depth fog of interior scenes that causes all distant objects to be less visible.

Simple Destruction Magic Rebalance [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69235/?] - It's no secret that Skyrim's vanilla magic system sucks. The biggest problem is that the damage output of weapons scales based on skill level, while the output of spells is static: a spell will do the same damage regardless of level and cannot be increased. This mod allows mages to viable by having Destruction magic scale by skill points and perks.

NPC Magic Rebalance [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/66313/?] - Enemy mages blatantly cheat. They have enormous mana pools, their spells costs half of what they cost the player, and while the player gets their regen cut by 2/3s in combat, NPCS's don't. This mod increases the spell cost for NPCs to be on a more equal field.

Heart Breaker [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32598/?] - Kill essential NPCs by ramming your hand through their chest and tearing their heart from their body. Quests involving them will now be broken, but they probably sucked anyway.

Males of Skyrim [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/61937/?], The Ordinary Women [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/70547/?], rxkx22 [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/2650523/?]'s Bijin series, many others - Alters the appearances of NPCs.

Interesting NPCs [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8429/?] - Adds 250+ Voiced NPCs and 50+ Quests, with extensive dialgoue options that provide humor and depth to each conversation.

Inconsequential NPCs [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/36334/?] - Adds random citizens to towns in order to make them more populated.

Intro Music Replacement by Malukah [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/2101/?] - Replaces the main menu theme with YouTuber Malukah's rendition of 'The Dragonborn Comes'. Original Video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z9TdDCWN7g&feature=youtu.be&hd=1]

Creepier Daedric Princes [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/71562/?] - Alters Daedric Prince voices. Example [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDV6D5ttb0E]

 

[IceForce]

As others have said, you broke your own rule by casting Oakflesh, because that's actually Alteration, not Conjuration or Restoration.

Anyway, the most OP magic school is actually Illusion. Mass-frenzying a bunch of enemies (while stealthed) helps thin the herd, and then you can reanimate one of the more powerful corpses to finish off the loan survivor.
And all this can be done without breaking stealth, without brandishing a weapon, and without launching a single fireball.

 

[Kyrian007]

I found Restoration took a huge hit in Skyrim, compared to Oblivion where you could life-transfer from enemies or buff yourself to a demigod status. It sounds like you went off-focus though, since you cast Oakflesh, an incredibly expensive (before perking) Alteration spell.

Conjuration was the main viable spell school (though incredibly boring to watch your summons do everything) in Skyrim. Even Destruction became horribly ineffective unless you made 100% reduce cost gear, you'd always run out of magicka trying to take on enemies at higher levels.

On a side note, can anyone tell me if Ward spells are actually viable in Skyrim? Like I said, the enemies always seem to use them to repel all my damage yet when I use them on any mage or dragon's breath, they instantly break, which is what they are supposed to help defend against. I wonder if the Ward Absorb perk would even come to my rescue considering my wards never come in handy against mages and dragons.

Enemies have infinite magicka, or at least a huge buff to magicka regen (and probably don't suffer the penalty to it in combat). Wards are basically useless except against weaker enemies or with gear to reduce the cost to 0.

Yeah, I never tried to focus on Restoration, except for my "crypt ranger" build who had focus on one handed and restoration. For wards and magic shields, I had the "breaking" problem, but it can be solved by activating it earlier. It "breaks" when it runs out of magic, OR when you try and activate it to block something that's ALREADY affecting you. If you hit it too late to block dragon's breath or a sustained magic effect like sparks or frost it "breaks." Just have to get the timing right.

But it seems like the OP had more of a "wasted levels" problem than anything else. The enemy's level increases with the dragonborn's. So if you accidentally level a skill that you aren't building toward, the enemy just got better and you basically didn't. That's why "I wanna be good at a handful of skills or just flat out good at everything" builds run into a wall. My first attempt at a mage was a complete disaster as I was trying to level all the magic skills from the start. And that's too many and you hit the wall. When I restarted and went with an Illusionist, Conjurer... not only OP, but kind of boring. Summoned monsters would kill everything that didn't kill each other after using fury, and there were always corpses around when monsters got killed. I wore robes, and never really needed alteration like Oakflesh or such. Barely had to do anything myself but the occasional backstab or arrow from the shadows. And I never ran into the "wall" or suffered from "wasted levels" because I WASN'T leveling: either armor skill, blocking, blacksmithing, destruction, alteration; and barely using "tertiary" skills like restoration, one handed, and archery very rarely. All I was really getting levels in was Conjuration, Illusion, and Sneak; with occasional secondary skills coming from Enchanting and lockpicking. That's basically the key to success in Skyrim. System altering mods aren't necessary unless you are just wanting a simple overpowered character without putting in the effort. The "rule of thumb" I've found that makes for good character builds... Pick at least 5 skills to ignore ENTIRELY, and then don't USE those skills. That will keep you from hitting the wall and progression goes like this. Early (levels 1 - 6 or 7) game is easy. Then the enemies get more difficult and you get a mid game stretch (levels 6 or 7 - 20 or so) where the game is challenging. Then somewhere around level 20, you get OP and stay that way for the rest of the game.

 

[IceForce]

The enemy's level increases with the dragonborn's. So if you accidentally level a skill that you aren't building toward, the enemy just got better and you basically didn't.

Yah, Critical Miss did a (rather amusing) comic regarding that:

Spoiler

Leveled enemies are a cruel mistress.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Yeah, I found being a mage very difficult early on, especially if you want to play the "mages don't wear armour" archetype. You're super squishy and until you get a few perks to keep your mana consumption down and regen up you run out of mana very quickly.

I made a necromancer with conjuration and alteration for armour but at low level they don't last long and drain lots of mana. You also need a dead body for necromany, so I needed a bit of destruction to kill someone to raise them. Then I'd get wrecked by an enemy before doing enough damage to kill them, especially before getting the ranged destruction spells, and multiple enemies could just ignore the summon and go for you even if you did get one raised and you'd probably run out of mana and have to flee, whatever the case.
So I started to sneak around a lot, blast someone with all I could manage from as a far away as possible and then sneak off as fast as I could, hoping I could hide again and regen enough mana to finish them off and raise them ASAP if they had friends, plus a desperate bit of sword swinging & potion chugging if that didn't work. Then of course, zombies don't sneak, so next encounter you couldn't employ the same tactics and you'd usually get rushed before you could get off a load of spell damage.

So yeah, I had to adapt early on to the big bad old world, and it was a struggle even then, but once I got a few of the aforementioned perks and some better spells and a few magic items things improved. Now my character is a vampire head of the mages guild with enough magic items to sink a battleship. They are pretty much an undetectable magic machinegun and mana dynamo. I think conjuration is basically a useful distraction when fighting groups or if you can't be bothered to fight things yourself at higher levels, but otherwise not so great as a main.

That said, I actually enjoyed the fact that it was hard doing things my way and that I had to adapt. My standard character type is the stealth sniper. I remember hearing people decrying the combat in oblivion and how you could get fucked over by levelling and thinking what the hell are they on about? I was breezing through without a thought. It just so happened that the stealth sniper build is a particularly effective one, I had no complaints about the combat because it barely ever happened to me, in the event an enemy wasn't killed outright by a poisoned arrow out of nowhere, by the time they got to me they were only a hit or 2 from death anyway.

Also, the Thalmor Embassy mission is pretty hard whatever for low level characters, you suddenly have to face a bunch of well armed and armoured enemies mixed with decent magic users in a pretty tight space with nowehere to run if they start to get the better of you.

 

[Thyunda]

Shadow of Mordor I remember being very straight forward despite claiming to be all about choices and strategy. I even did a thread where I asked what the fucking point of the enemy weaknesses was when no one was immune to the most basic attack and nearly 90% of all Warbosses were vulnerable to one-shot kill sneak attacks. Like, why bother with being weak to bees or wolves when none of those are nearby and a knife to the gut works every time? And yes, I did beat the game. And I can only remember 2 bosses immune to my sword. But they weren't immune to knives.

I didn't bother much with the story and just played about with appointing warchiefs and levelling them up by persuading them to oppress various groups of their own people to my ultimate benefit no hang on that's British colonialism.

If you mess about with the warchiefs and get them all to super-high levels you end up with at least one in three orc captains being immune to literally everything. Immune to counters, immune to basic strikes, I can't even remember how I killed them - probably using cat-wargs.

 

[freaper]

There are perk overhaul mods, PerkusMaximus comes to mind, though I don't remember if that one is the newer version or the discontinued one. If you're not on PC, well, you have my condolences.

 

[Riddle78]

If you're not on PC,that's your problem. ANY game with the Bethesda stamp on it is made for PC first,consoles second,because the ladies and gents who made the game knows; Build it from the ground up with modding in mind,and the game's active community will last DECADES. Morrowind's still going strong,per exemplar.

Start with perk overhaul mods. PerkusMaximus is the current major one,that's still supported. After that... Hell if I know. Go to the Skyrim Nexus. Mod your game until it fits your specifications. Learning to mod's easy,if you don't know how; There's a YouTube channel that I trust wholeheartedly on teaching and recommending mods for most games; Gopher's Vids. Go ahead,mod it. It's how it's meant to be played.

 

[happyninja42]

Aside from modding stuff, I would suggest you add a healthy dose of Alteration into your mix, and have a companion with you. The buffs you can give an ally with a high Alteration are quite impressive, and if you then spend your time using Restoration to keep the companion up and running, they can usually take down stuff without much issue.

I remember playing an Alteration/Restoration priest, who was a pacifist (unless you were undead), and I spent the entire time just buffing allies and healing them. One signature moment that shined for me, was randomly coming across a village being attacked by a dragon. I ran in with my companion to help, and basically started AOE buffing the town with Alteration to give them more HP, and prevent them from running away. So, instead of having a town freaking out at a dragons approach, I had a buffed up town of pissed off villagers, who basically gave the dragon a death of a thousand cuts. To top it off, at the same time, one of those wandering vampire hit squads from the Dawnguard dlc showed up, and I was juggling them away with Fus Ro Dah while I dealt with the dragon. Once the dragon died to the mob, we turned and stomped the vampires. And I think I lost maybe....1 villager? 2? I didn't actually throw a single offensive spell the entire time. All the dps was done by other people on my behalf.

So, maybe start buffing your conjured minions and then keep them up with Restoration? *shrugs* Worked pretty well for me.

*Edit* I might be misremembering the school of magic that gives health buffs to the target, and prevents them from fleeing. I think that's Alteration right? It's been a few years since I played Skyrim so I'm a little rusty on the various magic schools.

 

[Dragonbums]

If you're not on PC,that's your problem. ANY game with the Bethesda stamp on it is made for PC first,consoles second

But I feel that this shouldn't be excused at this point. If Bethesda wants to make their games for consoles to rake in that mad cash than they gotta give a shit and put in the work to actually make it a fun experience.

And honestly the same goes for PC as well. The only reason they don't blow chunks that bad is because you can input console commands or wait for the modding community to do a job Bethesda has people on staff paid to do for free.

No more fucking excuses. It's stupid and disgusting that they can get away with charging $60.00 per game with DLC expansions and throw out a game that has the quality of a low budget Wii shovel ware game.

The only thing that probably saved their ass is their phenomenal world building that made the fanbase literally wave away any inexcusable bug as 'That's Bethesda for you'

 

[CaitSeith]

That's too bad. I played as the equivalent of an Argonian Spellsword (perks in one-handed, light armor, alteration, restoration, destruction and enchanting) and had a descent time (never used a ward by the way, I used the free hand for healing instead or offensive magic). Later I brought a tank NPC with me, equipped her with enchanted armor and weapons, and rarely had problems after that.