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 Since one maximum difficulty let's play at a time is evidently not enough to send me to videogame Valhalla, I'm going to aggro a second! Episodes: Days 1-2: Unbound Days 2-3: Bleak Falls Barrow Days 3-4: Like Old Tiber Septim Days 4-5: Dragon the Legion Into This Days 5-6: A Word to the Wise Days 6-7: Two Words from the 'Wise' Day 7: Tome Raider Days 8-9: Driften Through Riften Days 9-10: Horrible Creatures Days 10-12: (pl)Under Saarthal Days 12-13: Another Apprentice Incinerated (part 1) Days 12-13: Another Apprentice Incinerated (part 2) Day 14: Hjalted Streams Camp Days 14-15: Feim and Fortune Day 15: Low Elf-Esteem (part 1) Day 15: Low Elf-Esteem (part 2) Days 16-17: Hike Hrothgar Days 17-18: Meddling Kids Days 18-19: Drag(on) Racing Day 19: Psijic Disorder Day 20: The Wages of Synod (part 1) Day 20: The Wages of Synod (part 2) Days 20-21: Claws and Effect Day 21: A Minor Maze Day 22: A Major Maze (part 1) Day 22: A Major Maze (part 2) Days 23-25: Sphere Today, Gone Tomorrow Days 25-26: Cantripped Shenanigans Days 27-28: The Music of Life Days 28-29: Murder is Novice Days 29-31: Lore is a Battlefield Days 31-32: Undeath of the Party Days 32-33: A Mark(arth)ed Man Days 33-34: Redwater Done Day 34: Actually Crazy Days 35-36: Such a Drag(on) Days 36-37: A Blunder of the World Days 37-38: The Eponymous Scroll Days 38: Castlevania: Elegy of Boredom Days 38-40: Soul Survivor (part 1) Days 38-40: Soul Survivor (part 2) Days 41-42: Best Item in Skyrim Days 43-44: (f)Lame Atronachs Days 44-46: Orcish Manners Day 46: Bookwyrm Day 47: Expedition Exposition Day 48-49: Humongous Fungus (part 1) Day 48-49: Humongous Fungus (part 2) Days 50-51: Alduinterrupted Days 51-53: Arngeiring Up Days 53-54: Convection Detection Days 54-55: Fungeon Crawl Days 55-57: Serana, Begana! Day 57: Like Moths to Flame Days 57-58: Cold Cache Days 58-59: Frenzy Road Day 59: Truce or Dare Days 60-61: Brodahviing Days 61-62: Skuldafn fen koz Krongrah Day 62: Victory and Sovngarde! Day 63-64: Cultes des Fooles Day 64: Doomsday Plot IV Day 64-65: Lurkers & Horkers Day 66: The Spider Provider Day 66: He Stole the Soul! Days 66-68: The Destruction Expert Day 69: (pr)Icy Spear Day 69: Neloth 2? Day 70: The Companion's Cubes (part 1) Day 70: The Companion's Cubes (part 2) Day 70: The Realm of Badness Day 71: Need for Mead Day 71: Benkongerieklings Day 71: Glitch Trials Day 72: Uneventful so Far Day 73: Miner Setbacks Day 73: Sunfire or Stunfire (part 1) Day 73: Sunfire or Stunfire (part 2) Day 74: A Tour of Solstheim Day 75: Mushroom Stew(ard) Day 76: Re-un-re-unearthed Day 76-77: The Manmer in the Iron Mask Day 77-79: A Thrilling Page-Turner Day 79: Caution: Glitched Floor Day 79-80: Fire with Fire Day 80: Dark Roast Day 80: 'Dov' means Dragon About Me: Some of you may know me from my ongoing or finished LPs of Age of Mythology, Civilization 2, Fire Emblem, or Fire Emblem: Binding Blade- but since Skyrim is a very different kind of game, many of you probably don’t. What I do is make challenge runs of my favorite strategy (or strategy/skill) games, piling up obstacles on top of max difficulty and then finding the most elegant way to win. My style is to go in-depth about the best possible tactics, hidden mechanics, and what I think of the narrative and game-design choices. Although you can see I’ve done quite a few screenshot LPs, I’m still fairly new to video editing and always looking for feedback on how to improve. About Skyrim: Skyrim is the fifth main series game in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls franchise, and the first to become widely popular- with good reason. While the other entries in the series were often groundbreaking and unique, they were also usually rather bad as games. Skyrim changed that, so I loved it from the first time I turned it on. The mechanics were simple, yet deep. There was finally enough everyday detail included that you could play a character rather than just a game. The world was wide and open, with innumerable interesting things to find and places to explore both on and off the path. The aesthetic was a dream come true for me personally, the kind of setting and style I’ve often written and always longed for in a videogame. Most importantly, it never stopped being fun. Combat was fast-paced and easy to pick up yet complex to master; winning even small fights was more about player skill than stats and numbers. Even leveling up wasn’t a pointless treadmill because you got to choose new and interesting capabilities rather than merely gaining higher numbers, but leveling didn’t trivialize the game either because the enemy powered up too. Replay value was nearly infinite with so many places to go and different approaches to take. Plus there was room for the player to replay and grow because the difficulty modes were admirably balanced, offering everything from a borderline god mode on Novice to a massive challenge for even expert players on Legendary. Which brings me to the subject at hand… About this LP There are thousands of LPs of Skyrim of all styles, many even on legendary difficulty. So why make my own? Two reasons. First, I think I have unusually deep knowledge of both the game mechanics and the game lore, so I can talk about some little-trod ground. Second, none of those guys actually played on legendary as far as I’m concerned. Nearly all of them relied upon one of a handful of simple, cheap tactics that trivialized the game and let them completely avoid the challenge of legendary: that enemy damage is tripled and player damage is quartered. Most of them just used followers. That alone makes difficulty irrelevant. Enemies will mindlessly attack your followers, so you will never face any danger at all. Many of them broke the game in half with silly crafting grinding. By abusing the crafting system a knowledgeable player can become a literally invincible killing machine without ever facing a single fight along the way. For that matter, even a little bit of smart crafting grants vast amounts of money and matchlessly strong equipment with no real effort and no impact from the difficulty. Others simply used stealth. Now I readily concede that stealth should be a legitimate tactic, but the fact of the matter is that the enemy AI can’t deal with it. That’s one of Skyrim’s biggest flaws. Even a player with no knowledge and no investment in the stealth skill is borderline undetectable unless they try to be found, and you can shoot arrow after arrow into most enemies without them even being certain you exist, let alone finding and fighting you. My problem with these tactics is not that they’re effective but that they’re equally effective on all difficulties, so LPs using them don’t actually show anything about legendary difficulty. My LP will be nearly unique in that I will face the challenge head-on, relying on tactics and skill and limited resources to not merely survive but roleplay through the world. So here are the rules (feel free to suggest others as I get ready to get this started): 1) I do my own stunts: No followers. If a quest makes me take a follower I have to get that part over with as fast as possible. No silly little things like recruiting a follower, stripping them of all their gear, and then immediately telling them to go home either. Also, no summon staves. Regular summons that I have to spend mana on are alright though. 2) I see what you did there: No defeating (or avoiding) enemies with stealth. The only thing I can use it for is taking a five-finger discount when I’m already unseen (because even if you’re inside a locked room NPCs psychically know you’re stealing unless you’re in stealth mode). 3) Bannedicrafts: No crafting at all. Cooking is alright except… 4) No soup for you!: No using the soups or other foods that restore 1 stamina per second to infinitely stunlock enemies. For that matter, no carrying around a stack of 50 stamina potions and chugging one per power attack (a few stamina potions used in a non-silly way are fine though). 5) Noverhead: No getting up on cliffs or boulders the enemy can’t climb and just sitting there getting free hits because I’m the only one in the universe who can jump. 6) Right into the danger zone: No fast traveling, wagon rides, etc. At least not until I’ve taken that route a bunch of times so it would be boring. 7) Nil trainers: No using skill trainers (or silly grinding) to boost up my skills without effort. Every level up has to be earned through actual adventuring, finding skillbooks, etc. 8) Oh know you don’t: No abusing out of character knowledge. This is a really broad one, but basically I’m going to try to roleplay my character such that their choices may be very smart mechanically but always make in-character sense. So no traipsing off to a place I’ve never heard of to go get a legendary weapon I shouldn’t know is there. 9) Victory… or SOVNGARDE!: Permadeath in battle. Anything where my character would take their rightful place in Sovngarde, but not silly things like a basket I bumped richocheting back at 1000 miles an hour (that’s killed me on 3 separate occasions) or walking around a corner and getting one-shot-killed by an arrow from an enemy I didn’t even have a chance to see. Well there we go, one each for all 9 divines. The polling on whether I should be a warrior or mage was so close it came down to a single vote! If my mage character Hjalti Montrose dies early (or I successfully complete his intended story), then I'll try again as a warrior. Melth fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Apr 16, 2023 |
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Dec 7, 2017 07:22
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 00:18 |
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Through might of muscles, prove yourself. Warrior. And 9) I swear these are for when I forget my keys, officer: Only lockpick doors you cant find the keys to. chests are fair game because fuuuuck that.
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Dec 7, 2017 08:05
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Mage because playing as a warrior seems tedious and boring to me.
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Dec 7, 2017 08:14
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Tiggum posted:Mage because playing as a warrior seems tedious and boring to me.  Mage, it should increase your survivability slightly. As long as you don't mind running out of mana before you've even taken half the hit points off an enemy.
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Dec 7, 2017 15:22
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Through might of muscles, prove yourself. Warrior. I’m not sure I understand? Like if a key exists for a door I must go and find that key rather than picking the lock? That seems like it would require a lot of out of character knowledge (and also for me to have a perfect memorized list of all keys and doors in the universe)
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Dec 7, 2017 18:59
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Melth posted:I’m not sure I understand? Like if a key exists for a door I must go and find that key rather than picking the lock? That seems like it would require a lot of out of character knowledge (and also for me to have a perfect memorized list of all keys and doors in the universe) Sounded good in theory. Mainly because usually I tend to go lazy and just lockpick sequence break through some dungeons.
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Dec 7, 2017 19:04
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Mage, because I find the difference between spells more interesting than the difference between weapons. Also, are you married to vanilla or will you accept mod suggestions?
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Dec 7, 2017 19:36
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Hmm, this may be more interesting than the other LP going on right now. The guy knows his stuff, that much is true, but every video eventually turns into him plinking away with a bow and arrow from stealth for 45 minutes. It's one thing if you're doing that yourself in your own game, but it really doesn't make for interesting viewing. Anyway, I'd actually like to see a Fighter, because permadeath makes combat much more meaningful when you don't have a dozen flame atronarchs backing you up at every turn.
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Dec 7, 2017 20:14
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Ooh, this sounds entertaining. So is the thread over if you get a suitably metal death, or will you restart a time or two? Spellblade: One-handed weapon + spell. Axes are neat too. edit: Not one of the fuckin' beast races, please. Mad Khajiit and Wizard Lizards are not funny anymore. RickVoid fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Dec 7, 2017 |
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Dec 7, 2017 20:36
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:Hmm, this may be more interesting than the other LP going on right now. The guy knows his stuff, that much is true, but every video eventually turns into him plinking away with a bow and arrow from stealth for 45 minutes. It's one thing if you're doing that yourself in your own game, but it really doesn't make for interesting viewing. Is that the Ironman one where he can die 8 times before it becomes an actual Ironman challenge? Because boy yeah that sure sounds like a boring waste of everyone's time twice over. I got bored of Sneak Archery when I was playing, because it's both really boring, really easy and yet really slow. At least Sneak Daggers deal all of the damage ever and get you sweet kill anims every time for good measure. Still gets old real quick tho'. I might be forgetting some fun builds, but I think the only one I haven't at least attempted at some point is good ol' fashioned fisticuffs - biggest, heaviest armor and the almighty Iron Fist bearing down on poor fools. Probably isn't that good at damage for the longest time, though, so it'd probably be really tedious for ages especially without smithing real stuff to use with it. Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Dec 7, 2017 |
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Dec 7, 2017 21:26
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Regarding mods, I’m going to keep things very close to vanilla. I guess I’m open to suggestions but I plan on only: 1) the unofficial patch 2) the quest reward leveler so I can do the fun quests without waiting for level 40 3) Disable killcams against the player. I have no idea what they were smoking when they decided to give enemies a luck based chance of cinematically one-shotting the player with no chance to dodge, block, stun, etc. It’s one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever seen in a video game. If I’m a mage I’ll disable killcams for myself too since they glitch constantly for magic. RickVoid posted:Ooh, this sounds entertaining. Don’t worry, there’s no way in Coldharbor I would ever play one of the sub-human races. With my LPs I always try to show the smartest ways to approach a game. Khajiit are completely worthless even at their intended role (and I’ll go into which races are best and worst at great length later). Argonians are not completely worthless but they do suck. Similarly though I’m not going to play with spells in one hand and weapons in the other; that’s one of the worst possible fighting styles. Now I could play a hybrid magic and weapons character, but I wouldn’t use that fighting style.
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Dec 7, 2017 21:45
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Dragonatrix posted:Is that the Ironman one where he can die 8 times before it becomes an actual Ironman challenge? Because boy yeah that sure sounds like a boring waste of everyone's time twice over. Yup, that's the one. He also did a New Vegas run that was a little more interesting, due to added conditions, but, again, it all boils down to sneak&snipe&sneak&snipe&... Like I said, the guy knows the game well, which is good, but anything even looks at him, he runs to the other end of the map. Even speeding up combat (which is all bow and arrows), every fight takes way too long, and he only gets into melee combat if he has a follower with him and the enemy is fighting them.
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Dec 7, 2017 21:47
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mage, the added variety in spell schools should help avoid the tedium of bashing the billionth zombie with a slightly bigger club than the one before that. actually, here's a thought: after the mandatory tutorial dungeon, don't go to riverwood/whiterun, but anywhere else. double nine fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Dec 7, 2017 |
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Dec 7, 2017 23:14
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Do it as a mage because I think magic in this game is dumb.
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Dec 8, 2017 00:30
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you're not wrong.
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Dec 8, 2017 01:10
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double nine posted:mage, the added variety in spell schools should help avoid the tedium of bashing the billionth zombie with a slightly bigger club than the one before that. This is part of why I love Skyrim. Finished the tutorial? Pick a direction. Have fun. After several hundred hours it's now hard to find something that feels new, but it took several hundred hours and I dunno how many characters and mods to get there. I've only actually finished the game once though.
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Dec 8, 2017 01:47
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Oh as a note for you guys voting; if I'm a mage then I will definitely be a vampire. If I'm a warrior I guess I'll join the dawnguard but it's not going to be a priority.
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Dec 8, 2017 05:24
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Even more reason to be a Mage then.
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Dec 8, 2017 06:55
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I have an arbitrary challenge for you, should you choose to accept it: No Graverobbing: You cannot loot dead enemies (unless it's necessary for quest/progression reasons).
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Dec 8, 2017 07:56
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Melth posted:I have no idea what they were smoking when they decided to give enemies a luck based chance of cinematically one-shotting the player with no chance to dodge, block, stun, etc. Melth posted:If I’m a mage I’ll disable killcams for myself too since they glitch constantly for magic.
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Dec 8, 2017 10:08
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I suspect that it is more how it's just random slow motion of your spells being normal. You don't even get a screaming burning corpse collapsing or anything. It's just a waste of time. Arrow hits at least have the projectile cam and melee has neat stuff where you kick a dog/wolf in the ribs and drive an axe through its back.
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Dec 8, 2017 10:28
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Poil posted:I suspect that it is more how it's just random slow motion of your spells being normal. You don't even get a screaming burning corpse collapsing or anything. It's just a waste of time. Arrow hits at least have the projectile cam and melee has neat stuff where you kick a dog/wolf in the ribs and drive an axe through its back. It’s both. The arrow cam can glitch sometimes too, but not all the time at least. And seeing that projectile cam can be a fun pat on the back if you made a skillful trick shot against a moving target or something. On the other hand, projectile magic takes very little skill to hit with, so there’s not much to celebrate following the projectile. And then yeah it always glitches and misses. And then sometimes you’re frozen in time for minutes on end as enemies walk up and kill you in slow motion.
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Dec 8, 2017 15:19
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ApeHawk posted:I have an arbitrary challenge for you, should you choose to accept it: Hm. I think I'd miss out on too many unique, interesting items and like 90% of all quest rewards. Thanks for the suggestion though.
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Dec 9, 2017 01:35
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Mage I remember the damage spells being useless rear end and I look forward to you getting around that. I'm guessing paralysis/illusion spam.
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Dec 9, 2017 03:10
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ApeHawk posted:I have an arbitrary challenge for you, should you choose to accept it: Fixed that for ya.
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Dec 9, 2017 03:47
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That also seems really dumb to me. Most of the "challenges" in this run are basically Melth saying "I won't exploit this feature of the game to become ridiculously OP". This, on the other hand, coupled with the "no crafting" challenge, just seems to be saying "don't have money".
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Dec 9, 2017 07:17
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It's not a bad challenge idea for another kind of LP, but I don't think it's a perfect fit here. My goal is more to show how to face legendary at its full ferocity and defeat it without exploits, so I'm mainly looking for exploits to rule out in advance. I also think it would add less raw difficulty than you might think. As a mage, I will be drowning in money before long. Warriors may have a money shortage for a while, but eventually anyone in Skyrim can become extremely rich with normal play. Taking away one out of about 4 major money sources would certainly slow the gain, but not eliminate it entirely.
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Dec 10, 2017 07:28
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A real nord uses weapons. Warrior.
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Dec 10, 2017 12:00
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Go with a Nord Warrior who uses two-handers and guzzles potions like there's no tomorrow.
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Dec 10, 2017 13:43
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Currently Mage has a hefty lead so I’m going with that (unless a ton of people vote for warrior this morning before I start working on the first episode). If I die though I’ll try again as a warrior. Either way, I’ve got a character idea in mind.
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Dec 10, 2017 16:17
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I'd like to vote warrior if it isn't too late
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Dec 10, 2017 17:16
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ilmucche posted:I'd like to vote warrior if it isn't too late It's not too late yet, but the clock is really ticking now! Rickvoid, since I'm not doing a spellblade are you going to pick a side in warrior vs mage?
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Dec 10, 2017 19:48
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I'll toss in another vote for Warrior.
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Dec 10, 2017 19:57
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Gimmick option: both. Warrior and mage, but each episode you only use one loadout - either regular spells, or the special short-ranged spell that is "a big loving weapon." This is probably a bad gimmick though. It would change things up a bit, but it's probably not worth doing.
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Dec 10, 2017 20:16
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I"ll vote for Warrior too, avoiding exploits means you have honor, not like those tricksy mages always cheating their way through life.
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Dec 10, 2017 20:40
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Jeez, Magic is pretty trash in Skyrim I find. Wouldn't mind seeing a mage run to be proven wrong.
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Dec 10, 2017 20:51
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Melee, heavy armor, FISTICUFFS! So yeah, Warrior
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Dec 10, 2017 21:07
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I'm going for mage. zap, zap, zap!
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Dec 10, 2017 21:39
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Mage wins by 1 vote then, I'm going to start working on the video. And if I get killed, I'll try again as a warrior.
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Dec 10, 2017 21:51
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 00:18 |
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Mage would have been my vote, so this works. Looking forward to the video.
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Dec 10, 2017 22:46
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