Skyrim

[Unkindled]

How does defense work if I dual-wield, or use a bow? Just run out of reach?

Pretty much, yea. With the bow, you can eventually get a perk to smack things with the bow to make it easier to keep anything close off of you. Dual wielding, when you level it up enough, you strike things so fast and it does so much damage, you don't really need to block, especially since it staggers them when you dual power attack.

I still prefer to use it as a secondary means of attack rather than my primary since mages will mess you up on higher levels if you're not skilled in blocking. Dragons too. There's different ways you can get around that though. Enchanting for magic resistance, or the shout "Become Ethereal" which makes you immune to damage and look like a ghost for a time. Makes it easier to get close to your opponents and put the hurt on them quickly.

 

[sidspyker]

Finally about to give this game a try.

1) Any recommended "builds"? Not power-wise, but fun? What mechanics are more fleshed out? Dual swords? Magic? Shield? Else? Or are they all well balanced?

Magic is shit in every TES game, not viable and almost always you'll have to resort to using something else when they close in during the beginning and you're likely to just get bored of it once you have levelled up sufficiently and you can just point and click till things die. There was a mod that somewhat alleviated the former but I cannot for the life of me recall the name.

Anyway, you're better off playing as a warrior or archer.

 

[EliHarel]

Alrighty. I'll go for archer with dual weapons as a secondary resort.

Downloaded:

- Better PC UI
- Unofficial patch
- Combat Realism

Other recommendations?

 

[Sana_mia]

Finally about to give this game a try.

1) Any recommended "builds"? Not power-wise, but fun? What mechanics are more fleshed out? Dual swords? Magic? Shield? Else? Or are they all well balanced?

2) Any recommended mods? Not for graphics, since my computer is crap, but mechanics.

I prefer stealth+bow. Works pretty well after a while and bows are usable while on horseback.

Mods Must haves:
SkyUI- requirement for a lot of mods.

Recommended non graphic stuff:
-Convenient horses. as the name says makes horses convenient thanks to a lot of settings how they should behave.
-Deadly Dragons - don't let the name scare you, they aren't deadly if you don't want them to be, but you can add and change the re-spawn/behavior through a special settings window. Also adds the important option of making NPC's immortal if they are shop keepers or quest related.
-Localized Thieves guild jobs. After 4-5 times doing a stupid quest in the wrong city you'll love this one. Also Considered essential by me if you're using Falskaar, Dragonborn or whatever landmass that adds city's where these jobs can take place.
-Stones of Barenziah quest markers. Really that quest can become a pain without them.

Nice to have if you're doing a second game:
Live another life

And my personal favorite:
Inigo the best funny follower, However his update is due in 3 days.

Edit: and use nexus mod manager if possible, also LOOT to organize load order. Steam is not really good if you have any mods that require SKSE. Bigger mods aren't on steam anyway and some script heavy mods should never be updated on an existing game. Don't believe the legend of a clean save, it doesn't exist.

 

[sidspyker]

+1 for convenient horses.

 

[Unkindled]

Magic is shit in every TES game, not viable and almost always you'll have to resort to using something else when they close in during the beginning and you're likely to just get bored of it once you have levelled up sufficiently and you can just point and click till things die. There was a mod that somewhat alleviated the former but I cannot for the life of me recall the name.

Anyway, you're better off playing as a warrior or archer.

I got around just fine with my mage in the beginning

In fact, it made some parts easier, like having to fight frost trolls early on. You get the impact perk and they're nothing. Honestly I had a lot of fun with Skyrim's magic. It only gets strained if you play on master and legendary. Especially legendary. Otherwise, and especially if you combine it with enchanting, I'd say magic is pretty powerful. Makes dragons mince meat.

edit: Also, this is just my opinion, but when it comes to gameplay changes like deadly dragons, I think those should be reserved for after the first playthrough. That's just me though.

 

[sidspyker]

I got around just fine with my mage in the beginning

In fact, it made some parts easier, like having to fight frost trolls early on. You get the impact perk and they're nothing. Honestly I had a lot of fun with Skyrim's magic. It only gets strained if you play on master and legendary. Especially legendary. Otherwise, and especially if you combine it with enchanting, I'd say magic is pretty powerful. Makes dragons mince meat.

That's what I'm saying.

Very beginning - Multiple enemies engaging in combat, you can't win alone by just magic. Well unless you run around... A LOT, which defeats the purpose.
Later game - Magic is OP, get bored since enemies are not even remotely challenging.

There is a big difference between forcing yourself to use magic because you want to 'roleplay' a mage and using the most efficient method. Eventually I said fuck it and became a battlemage. Answering with both magic and steel.

 

[Unkindled]

@sidspyker
You can't exactly go around charging a bunch of dudes with your sword in the beginning either, not if they're anything more than draugr and bandits. It's easier since you're not reliant on a mana pool, but fighting big stronger targets in trade in the beginning is easier for you as a mage.

Also, too many people pass up using a staff, which complements your mage well. Use that when you don't have mana or don't want to waste it. Every self respecting mage has a decent staff.

As for the difficulty, that's a problem with the game in general, hence why I play on legendary.

edit: I mean magicka, lol. Too used to magic the gathering.

 

[sidspyker]

@sidspyker
You can't exactly go around charging a bunch of dudes with your sword in the beginning either, not if they're anything more than draugr and bandits. It's easier since you're not reliant on a mana pool, but fighting big stronger targets in trade in the beginning is easier for you as a mage.

Also, too many people pass up using a staff, which complements your mage well. Use that when you don't have mana or don't want to waste it. Every self respecting mage has a decent staff.

As for the difficulty, that's a problem with the game in general, hence why I play on legendary.

edit: I mean magicka, lol. Too used to magic the gathering.

Well don't mistake me for one of those people who just built a magic class from the first time I've played the old TES games as a mage too, Battlemage and Pure mage and Spellsword(a rarity these days).

And I've always found them very lacking, I can't exactly describe how but they just lack something.

 

[Unkindled]

Well don't mistake me for one of those people who just built a magic class from the first time I've played the old TES games as a mage too, Battlemage and Pure mage and Spellsword(a rarity these days).

And I've always found them very lacking, I can't exactly describe how but they just lack something.

I can understand that. For me, the earlier games always had great variety and customization to magic and what you could do with them, but the magic always felt... lacking, as you said. Then Skyrim came and the magic looked and felt like "real" magic, but while it looked cooler and was more fun to use, there's less to do with it. It's simplified. Still more to do than hacking and slashing though. But funnily enough, I still prefer cracking skulls, lol.

 

[Sana_mia]

The difficulty is a bit off overall. I switched to a lot of mods that make everything more difficult and just up the difficulty towards legendary every few levels.

Legendary with my load order would mean I die on lvl 1 once I step a foot outside of a city.
Or stay in a city, or just forgot to make a fire.
Seriously what made me create a monster where 6 dragons ravaged Solitude within five minutes...

 

[Unkindled]

The difficulty is a bit off overall. I switched to a lot of mods that make everything more difficult and just up the difficulty towards legendary every few levels.

Legendary with my load order would mean I die on lvl 1 once I step a foot outside of a city.
Or stay in a city, or just forgot to make a fire.
Seriously what made me create a monster where 6 dragons ravaged Solitude within five minutes...

I tried to go from level 1 on legendary once, and only once, just to say I did it and for kicks and giggles... most tedious and ridiculous fucking thing ever, but then, the difficulty is just supposed to be tailored to the experience you need. So normally, I only switch it to master, then legendary when the game gets too easy, which is what was intended.

 

[sidspyker]

I can understand that. For me, the earlier games always had great variety and customization to magic and what you could do with them, but the magic always felt... lacking, as you said. Then Skyrim came and the magic looked and felt like "real" magic, but while it looked cooler and was more fun to use, there's less to do with it. It's simplified. Still more to do than hacking and slashing though. But funnily enough, I still prefer cracking skulls, lol.

Pretty much, you can consider my opinion that of a jaded person, lol.
@eliharel you're fresh meat just go play the game and you'll understand what suits you.

 

[Sana_mia]

@eliharel you're fresh meat just go play the game and you'll understand what suits you.

Pretty much this, just grab weapons and armor and try it out, the worst that can happen is you get a few levels before deciding what you like to do.
Oh and just remembered a mod that makes life easier...

Blacksmith Storage Chests - Automatic Storage for Smithing Supplies by kryptopyr
It's a scripted sorting for special chests to drop smithing stuff in. You'll want those materials sooner or later so why not auto-sort them away without spending 5 minutes digging through your inventory.
I always found the annoying part to sort all those iron bars and leather pieces in chests for later use.

 

[Unkindled]

And with the inclusion of Dragonborn the dlc, you could always correct it later in case you didn't just want to make another character. That's what I'd prefer to do though. Don't like erasing who my character is.

 

[Sana_mia]

@Unkindled
Well usually the saves get destroyed by bloating, magic or just plain weirdness before that becomes an issue. I've never made it above lvl 85 before it became plain unplayable. Last one was a lvl 80 character that couldn't draw a weapon or activate a door after finally completing the civil war. The bug appeared exactly 10 in game hours after kicking the Legion out of Solitude.

 

[Unkindled]

Fortunately, I haven't had issues with that. Worst bug I had which is fixed now, was I couldn't progress in the main questline to rescue esbern, because I killed Durge in the thieves guild... Still don't get that. Was very very pissed, but that's the only time I had a glitch that made my game unplayable.

 

[Sana_mia]

After 12 characters each hitting at least lvl 50 I can say. I know every console command to fix a quest. Only that specific bug? Damn took me 3 weeks to find out what mods where causing it. Solution replay 40 real life hours or ditch the save...

Warning: Never ever install "Wet and Cold Holidays" together with "Civil War Overhaul" they aren't compatible... Or at least until someone makes a patch for that.

 

[Unkindled]

A friend of mine had her whole game crash hard because of civil war overhaul. She had to redownload all her mods after that. I won't be getting that one.

 

[Sana_mia]

A friend of mine had her whole game crash hard because of civil war overhaul. She had to redownload all her mods after that. I won't be getting that one.

I've been running civil war overhaul since it was first released. Nothing bad happens if you strictly stick to the things the mod author says, wouldn't play skyrim without it. The problem is in this case a really specif bug that's caused by the way how wet and cold works. Found a fix, but by then I already updated three dozen mods and it was too late to re-build everything to it's original status.

Then again I really want to play an Argonian for a change and never tried being an evil vampire before. So time to go all out evil... Might even join the Legion for this one.