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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Here's the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03bL9-uVVMU As always, I'm looking for ways to improve
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Dec 11, 2017 15:40
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Blog Free or Die posted:Yess, excited to see this LP. I've never played Skyrim, or found an LP that interested me, but I loved your exhaustively detailed take on Civ II. I plan to go just as exhaustively into Skyrim if I can and use SCIENCE to disprove a lot of really common, stupid misconceptions about the mechanics. Thanks for the feedback about fire spells, I'm going to try to balance the audio differently in the next episode. Flamester posted:Any reason why you aren't using the survival mode despite still resting and eating? I would also recommend the alternate start mod if you meet a unfortunate end, mainly to justify joining the imperial side, and for skipping the overly long tutorial. Several reasons! Firstly, I don't have access to it. It's only in the newer release of the game, which I didn't get because I didn't have all the DLCs already at the time it came out. So I'd basically have to re-buy Skyrim and THEN buy survival mode to get it. Not worthwhile when the newer version hardly changes anything. Secondly, their survival mode is vastly inferior to many fan-made ones, so if I wanted to do a survival mode I would use one of those. Thirdly, I find survival modes to be somewhere between irrelevant and a nuisance anyway. I already consistently do all the things like eat and stay dry and sleep and not fast-travel that they require, so I don't need a mode to punish me if I don't. And I don't find any of them terribly realistic. Fourthly, I'm trying to use almost no mods or changes to the base game (other than the unofficial patch which is more or less necessary and also removes a pile of mage exploits I could use to wreck everything).
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Dec 12, 2017 04:09
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I’m going to go into lots of detail about both summons and traps in the near future. Suffice it to say that everyone seems to be wrong about summons and difficulty modifiers and that traps work in strange ways. With console command testing I am going to disprove a lot of myths.
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Dec 12, 2017 18:06
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I am kinda surprised to see you actually using the flames spell, as I remember on normal difficulty that ate your entire mana bar to kill one guy. Ehhh, I actually like the current destruction system quite well. I'll demonstrate in the next video that one mana bar can actually kill one guy on legendary, so it should be about 4 on normal. But I like destruction being a very expensive way to kill people. It forces you to be creative and use numerous schools of magic. What I think is great about being a mage is that there's a right tool for every job if you're smart. Warriors only have a handful of tricks but they're extremely effective. Mages have a whole utility belt, but the brainless solution of just blasting people in the face with fire until they die is inefficient.
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Dec 13, 2017 03:48
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Lynneth posted:Melth, I get that you don't want to use mods much at all, but could you maybe at least use an inventory mod? The layout of Skyrim's inventory is just terrible, and a proper menu like SkyUI is just so good. I’ll consider it, though I’ve never really disliked the basic inventory (except when it gets cluttered) ApeHawk posted:It isn't so much that magic is underpowered, it's which schools. Illusion, Restoration, and Conjuration are all pretty potent especially in the late game, but Alteration and Destruction just teeter off and aren't that fun to play with. I disagree actually. Alteration and Destruction are both at their weakest point now and will become far stronger later. Alteration in particular suffers from ALL of its early spells being useless. But late in the game it has all kinds of amazing spells and a bunch of its perks are truly fantastic. Meanwhile Restoration is always usable but its power peaks in the mid-early game.
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Dec 13, 2017 15:18
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Simply Simon posted:I have never played or even looked at Skyrim beyond half an hour of trying it out at a friend's, and it seems like the inventory would become a super nightmare very soon...unless you know exactly what to leave lying around, and what to sell immediately first chance you get. Melth seems to have both things covered. Then if you factor in the challenges, he won't have to carry around crafting, alchemy etc. ingredients, so that should clear things up even more? I guess? Forgive me if I'm talking nonsense and materials are their own tab anyway or whatever. For this video at least, I didn't have an issue. You’re mostly right. I’ll generally be traveling light and immediately offloading most stuff I pick up. One of the great things about being a mage is how little gear you need. Alchemy ingredients are actually their own tab, but smithing supplies and soul gems for enchanting are all tossed in miscellaneous (which CAN get cluttered if you don’t know how to buy and sell intelligently).
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Dec 13, 2017 17:53
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Here's episode two, with co-commentary and some timely technical help from Mara: Days 1-2: Bleak Falls Barrow Melth fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Dec 17, 2017 |
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Dec 13, 2017 20:00
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Deadmeat5150 posted:That dude in the barrow was not our first Dark Elf, Irilith or whatever her name is, in Whiterun is. The Guard Captain. Yeah, I meant Dark Elf enemy though. I was talking about their fire resistance afterall. Poil posted:Fury is a fun spell but it scales so slowly compared to the speed of leveling so it quickly becomes useless. Actually, Fury can easily be made viable straight into the late game.
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Dec 14, 2017 04:44
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Deranged Imp posted:I'm actually doing a play through with a lighting overhaul that removes most light sources from uninhabited worldspaces. It really changes the atmosphere of dungeon crawling in a good way, but is also kinda frustrating because the game is not designed for it in pretty much anyway. Fun changes overall though. That does sound interesting. It’s always irked me a bit how Skyrim is always perfectly lit, even on cloudy midnights or underground. That really screws the khajiit by making their one power complete trash. All the mage light spells and torches are useless too. On the other hand not being able to see would be a nuisance AND get in the way of seeing the beautiful scenery. Maybe if the AI was smarter we could have followers be torchbearers like old school D&D. RickVoid posted:I really appreciate the effort you're putting into showing the game being played as the devs clearly intended, giving the game an opportunity to show off its various set pieces. Glad you like it! I myself basically always start the main quest fast both because in character I think I should be jumping on this crazy dragon problem and/of currying favor with a jarl and because unlocking shouting is a new world of tactical possibilities and fun abilities.
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Dec 14, 2017 19:47
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The atronach forge is technically not crafting, so I COULD use it. However, I can't do it in character. I have never in my entire life actually found a recipe for the atronach forge in-game, so unless that changes Hjalti will never be able to use it. Except to create hostile flame atronachs that try to kill you and serve no practical purpose whatsoever. It's not THAT game-breaking anyway. The best thing you can make with it (before you have like 100 conjuration skill and thus must have earned your way up to pretty high level anyway) is a tome or staff of Storm Atronach. The staff admittedly is ludicrously strong at low levels, but both are just pretty good by level 25 or so.
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Dec 15, 2017 02:34
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Weeble posted:You can randomly find recipes for it in-game on slain Conjurers..... written in the Daedric alphabet. I can read daedric well enough, the problem is that I have never in my life found one of those on the hundreds and hundreds of conjurers I have killed. Nor have I found them in the other spots they can be randomly found. Bad luck I guess, they're a pretty rare drop. Especially considering 95% of the recipes are useless garbage anyway. Thanakyris posted:I guess you could use it to harvest fire salts (drat you Balimund), or maybe souls, but there are other easier ways to do both of those things, so whatever. As for the draugr weak to fire thing, this is why you don't trust the Elder Scrolls wiki. The UESP has been doing it's job much longer and much better, though I will grudgingly admit that for lore, your best bet is probably the Imperial Library. Nope, it costs you fire salts to summon them, so it truly is worthless. Yeah, the Elder Scrolls wiki is complete garbage. It annoys me so much that they somehow ended up higher on google searches despite being inferior in every way. I remember when that started to happen and watched in helpless desperation. UESP wiki is often wrong about stuff too though. Wildly wrong at times.
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Dec 15, 2017 05:04
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Days 3-4: Like Old Tiber Septim Man did this turn out to be a tough episode to put together. I had so many different sound problems! It's also a weirdly peaceful episode. Other than like 20 minutes fighting a dragon of course.
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Dec 17, 2017 20:42
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Weeble posted:So I've been playing the game again thanks to this thread, and in line with my last post: A scroll or a book or a staff?
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Dec 18, 2017 15:18
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Weeble posted:Book. I'd be quite happy finding one of those since it would let me justify experimenting to find the storm atronach book with its fairly similar recipe Where did you find it by the way?
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Dec 19, 2017 02:27
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I was about to post that it dropped daedric stuff but then I remembered you needed to find enemy ebony weapons first. I don't know; having played both legendary no crafting warriors and legendary no crafting mages I would say their DPS output is fairly comparable for a long time. Honestly, I think warriors should have a bigger edge in DPS. Let me throw out some rough numbers here for the end of the mid-game. A mixed bows and one-handed warrior will get to 80 one-handed at ballpark the same level a mage gets to 60 destruction. Each has just unlocked all their damage perks; 5 levels of Armsman for a 100% increase and 2 levels of Augmented Flames for 50%. Dawnbreaker is the best sword for most of the game, and Firebolt is the most mana-efficient spell. The warrior deals about 12 (base) x 1.4 (skill bonus) x 2 (perk bonus) +11 (fire enchantment including afterburn) = 43.6 damage, and they can strike about once per second assuming the enemy isn't blocking or anything. You can plausibly have about 50% worth of one-handed bonuses from enchanted gear at that level without sacrificing other important bonuses, so let's call it 60.4 DPS. A single firebolt deals about 25 base x 1.5 (perk bonus) x 1.1 (afterburn) = 41.25 damage. You can generally take a shot about every second if the enemy isn't dodging around. But you can do 2 shots at once, so 82.5 DPS on the mage. Actually slightly better. Even if we assume the mage actually only has 1 augmented flames perk they'll be pretty comparable. Now it's true the mage needs to watch his mana, but I know from experience that it's quite possible to get enough to take down the enemies you have to.
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Dec 20, 2017 05:50
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MinistryofLard posted:So the real advantage of Khajit is that they get a significant bonus to hand-to-hand damage from day one - which, at level one, means your punches actually do more damage than any unimproved sword. This falls off pretty fast and doesn't scale well at all compared to hand to hand, but if you want a viable hand-to-hand build in vanilla you have to play a Khajit. On legendary it would be very problematic. You have garbage reach with unarmed so you can’t avoid blows as well, and it’s extremely difficult to raise your armor skills without training so you will take forever to get the Fists of Steel perk. Needing to use heavy will make it even harder to dodge of course. And then if you’re not enchanting then you can’t get those critical unarmed bonuses from the gloves of the pugilist Avoiding skill bonuses IS a decent upside for people who truly intend to do no melee, but those people shouldn’t be in melee using their claws either
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Dec 20, 2017 20:24
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Powerfrog posted:So is this LP going to explore the high level content? I've made dozens of characters on Skyrim but I usually get bored before reaching a high overall level so I've never really seen the difficulty scaling in action. I intend to explore a decent amount of content as long as it makes sense in character. (While there’s a dragon invasion going on and I don’t know the cause it seems logical for Hjalti to prioritize that a while). I have a big character arc outlined, but of course there’s no guarantee I’ll survive. Jester Mcgee posted:Just wanted to check in and let you know that this is the only Skyrim let's play I've ever enjoyed. You have great commentary and keep the pace up enough to keep in interesting. Thanks! Anything else you’d like me to talk about or other ways I could make it better?
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Dec 21, 2017 17:14
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GrayDorian posted:I'm curious what you think the most powerful builds are (warrior and mage) without using some of the broken systems inherent in the game, like the smithing/enchantment/alchemy loop Well there are all kinds of ways to break the game and I rarely think in terms of builds so much as in terms of important capabilities and perks which are either worth it or not worth it
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Dec 21, 2017 21:57
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Days 4-5: Dragon the Legion Into This Next episode! I'm getting a better idea of how long these will take to make, so I should have a stable update schedule in the near future Melth fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Dec 22, 2017 |
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Dec 22, 2017 02:06
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GrayDorian posted:Any must have items/spells for a warrior playthrough? Is it possible to message you? I want to keep most of my cleverest gear choices secret from the general public for my eventual warrior playthrough. I'll talk about spells here though since I won't be doing a spellsword. Using bound weapons is VERY viable. You can acquire Bound Sword almost immediately and get a perk that will make it daedric quality within 2 levels. If you're doing that route, you MUST stop at Fort Amol along the northern route from Whiterun to Ivarstead. There in the Fort Amol prison section you can find the one and only guaranteed low-level copy of Bound Bow. Bound Bow is the best bow in the entire game for some reason, WAY better than a mere daedric bow. It also comes with 100 free daedric arrows every time you cast it. Crazy stuff. Xflesh spells become quite useful later for warriors but are useless at the start. For mages they are always useless even with the Mage Armor perks. I consider it an exploit, but warriors LOVE the stamina restore from perked restoration spells for endless power attacks. Destruction is a viable alternative to bows. Unlike a mage who has better stuff to invest his pre-fight mana in, you may find the rune spells useful. But don't go beyond the apprentice level spells. Qrr posted:There's kind of an abrupt cut at 47:22, it's a little odd. Thanks for pointing that out. My video editing software has been causing all kinds of problems and has taken to deleting seemingly random 5 second snippets of sound or video out of the middle of my episodes. That one slipped by me. Since I'm a perfectionist, I redid my editing and I'm re-uploading the video. Should be done by morning. Melth fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Dec 22, 2017 |
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Dec 22, 2017 07:17
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Just released a slightly edited version of the video to fix that abrupt jump at 47:22. I have had so many editing software and youtube problems with this episode...Poil posted:I'm not sure if it's a spoiler how Ysolde makes her money, but she's dealing with the khajiit traders. She sells drugs to them. Well she's trying to! But she's just getting started in that shady business and her supply chain appears to have a critical missing link, so she can't have made much money there yet Weeble posted:Another tip for a Warrior: Invest in Destruction. I disagree with this tip. It's a nice little side benefit for people doing destruction instead of archery (as are the elemental damage perks which in at least some versions of the game work on weapons too), but the benefit is really small and not worth the time spent grinding a skill you aren't using. Particularly since any enchanting XP saved on not needing to use as many soul gems for recharging will be more than exceeded by the destruction XP.
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Dec 22, 2017 15:13
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Weeble posted:Other perks that will benefit you no matter your build: Put at least 3 perks into Speech. Those perks ARE really tempting, but on the other hand money quickly becomes infinite unless you’re doing vast amounts of both smithing and training. It goes against my nature, but after a certain point the smart move is just to stop looting anything at all because you don’t need the money. As it happens, that’s usually around the time your speech gets high enough to qualify for Merchant
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Dec 24, 2017 05:06
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Palladium posted:Hey Melth love your challenge LP, because I sure as hell not going to enjoy doing that myself as I don't like fights that last forever regardless of actual difficulty. Shame about legendary is just piling more numbers against that you have to resort to exploiting the AI all the time and not a God Hand/Dark Souls balance of hard-but-fair. I really do need to play Dark Souls sometime. God Hand always looked really silly when my roommate played it though. The trouble is that I just don't really like RPGs or action games much. I like Skyrim mainly because it's pretty much the exact setting I spent my whole life up until 2011 wishing someone would make a game for. I mean it's like these developers were in my D&D campaigns taking better notes than my players. I also think there's a certain elegance to many of the mechanics which is completely unlike all the convoluted and terrible gameplay in the rest of this series of remarkable, unpleasant games. RearmingStrafbomber posted:The bear song deserves a Grammy. Thanks! I hope "May have talents beyond those of mortals" makes it onto the dust jacket of one of my books someday. As for atronachs vs bears, a simple comparison of stats tells you that bears will destroy flame atronachs easily on any difficulty. They will also often beat frost atronachs because the ones you summon are MUCH weaker than anyone else's on any difficulty, but that's a closer fight. Bears are just brutal, which is a big reason I picked up that Kyne shout. I could kill a bear now with some cleverness if I really wanted to, but it will never be worth the effort. I do kind of like that actually. Yes they're a nuisance, but fighting a bear in hand to hand combat SHOULD always be so dangerous and unrewarding that you would never do it. Meanwhile you're allowed to avoid them 90% of the time because they'll warn you off and not pick a fight.
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Dec 25, 2017 07:33
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The next episode is ready! Days 5-6: A Word to the Wise I'm going to try for a schedule of updating every Wednesday and see how that works out. Also! I was thinking this LP is developed enough to start posting it around on other sites. Anyone have any recommendations of Elder Scrolls sites with a substantial LP community?
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Jan 1, 2018 19:03
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Poil posted:Is there any enemy you can't just run past when outdoors? Even sprinting uphill/upstairs doesn't seem to slow you down enough for something nasty and hungry to catch up. It depends a lot on what's in the way. Saber cats at least can go slightly faster than your sprint on even ground but often run in slow zigzags for trivial obstacles. Generally speaking the issue is that you run out of stamina and THEN they catch you and kill you. Or that you run past one and then immediately encounter another but are now out of stamina. Chronische posted:That happens a lot actually, especially with dragons. They ARE shouting when they do breath attacks and stuff and they can be heard doing so, but usually after the breath is already going out. Yeah, though I find it to mainly be a problem when fighting draugr. Dragons basically only ever do their breath weapon. 95% don't HAVE any other shouts, so you know exactly what to expect. Draugr on the other hand can have a decently wide variety. I don't mind being hit by a Fus Ro Dah at all (except from a death overlord or someone else who can actually ragdoll me), but I do NOT want to stand there and get hit by a Zun Haal Viik that I assumed was a Fus Ro Dah and lose a legendary weapon forever.
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Jan 1, 2018 22:01
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Poil posted:Yes that freaking disarm shout is awful. Dark twisting corridors and rooms full of junk and wonky physics where objects have barely any weight and are covered with rubber. I think the number one spell I would like to see added to Elder Scrolls, which would solve this problem and others, would be some kind of detect magic.
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Jan 2, 2018 20:25
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Blocking is a trap, never do it on purpose. The mechanics of block are extremely complex, but I’ll get into them on that warrior playthrough. Another thing you’ll see on that playthrough is just how crippling blocking is and how the most dangerous enemies in the game are always those who do not block. I do hear good things about requiem so I often consider trying it, but I just like the base game too much to bother. The enemy’s extreme toughness can be a nuisance sometimes, but it’s never a chore to me like max difficulty Oblivion was
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Jan 3, 2018 19:20
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Edited: next episode had an audio oddity I didn't catch at one point; I'm fixing that and then I'll re-upload
Melth fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Jan 4, 2018 |
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Jan 4, 2018 02:01
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Re-uploaded episode 6: Days 6-7: Two Words from the 'Wise'
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Jan 4, 2018 15:21
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:In retrospect it's kinda hilarious how Arngeir isn't doing anything but yelling at the others to give you free stuff. Yeah, that’s one of like 12 weird choices about how they handled the graybeards. I have a lot of thoughts to eventually share about how the graybeards and the dragons and their relation to shouting are handled in this game. Poil posted:Also I believe all cultists are dunmer so using fire magic on them isn't a very good idea. I’ve never played Dragonborn before so I just assumed they were all nords. Looking it up, it seems like half are dark elves and half are nords, so only lightning is a good choice since it’s hard to tell their race through that mask. Olesh posted:This may seem like an odd question, but are you going back in post and adding in additional audio commentary? There's a moderately jarring contrast between some of your audio. For an example of what I'm talking about, when you're reading out the text of Emblem I at around the 5 minute mark, the second line sounds distinctly different from the first and third lines, as if you recorded it in a different room or something. This LP is normally live commentary, but this particular episode does have some parts like that where I changed something in post. I wasn’t expecting Mara’s Atmora question so at the time I gave only a partial explanation of the Cyrodiil jungle thing. Since that’s a really contentious issue which there’s a ton of misinformation about, I decided to go back and dub in a somewhat fuller treatment. That required tweaking a few other lines to make it fit.
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Jan 4, 2018 20:21
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