The Elder Scrolls XIV: Good? Bad? I'm the one with the Thu'um!

[LibraryOgre]

Welcome, one and all, to the latest thread for us to discuss, debate, and rag on our favorite series of Bethesda RPGs!


Previous threads:

Who's excited for Skyrim? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=202414)
Skyrim II: A Dragon A Day Keeps The Draugr At Bay. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222730)
Skyrim III: Get rich selling protective knee gear! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12323418#post12323418)
Skyrim IV: Oblivion (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=228914)
Skyrim V: Skyrim (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?243186-Skyrim-V-Skyrim&p=13225784#post13225784)
Skyrim Thread VI: Dov Riders, AWAY! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=262708)
The Elder Scrolls VII: Do you believe in mod? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=298127)
The Elder Scrolls: By the VIII Divines (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?329913-The-Elder-Scrolls-By-the-VIII-Divines)
It's the IX Divines You milk drinker! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?370764-The-Elder-Scrolls-It-s-the-IX-Divines-you-milk-drinkers)
The Elder Scrolls X: Thalmor Or Less (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?416193-The-Elder-Scrolls-X-Thalmor-or-Less)
Wouldn't Want to Be Elsweyer (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?492511-The-Elder-Scrolls-XI-Wouldn-t-Want-To-Be-Elsweyr)
Twelve Worlds of Creation (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?510977-Elder-Scrolls-XII-Twelve-Worlds-of-Creation)
The Elder Scrolls XIII: Born Under a Certain Sign (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?526026-The-Elder-Scrolls-XIII-Born-Under-a-Certain-Sign)


Handy things For Skyrim:
Official forums (http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/forum/117-v-skyrim/)
Perk calculator (http://skyrimcalculator.com/)
Some things you need to know about Skyrim (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12328428#post12328428)
The Wiki (http://uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page)


Have at it!

[Keltest]

Um, twelfth? I'm sensing some copy paste demons involved here.

[Triaxx]

No, running joke. Every thread since 12 has had the wrong first post.

[LibraryOgre]

I was raised on Palladium Books. Cut and paste is my religion, man! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CduA0TULnow)

[Ogremindes]

Urgh... I'm officially deciding that trying to mod classic Skyrim is not freaking worth it. No matter how careful and methodical I am: mysterious gpu spikes outta nowhere. So stuff it. Maybe I'll have better luck with SE after all, if I can stand to keep at it. I feel like I've been doing this for a week :(

[Triaxx]

What horrible things were you trying to do to Skyrim?

[Ogremindes]

What horrible things were you trying to do to Skyrim?

Actually, I've worked out my problem is an overheating GPU. Since it's an iMac and I can't open it up, it's goin' back to the shop to be fixed. Or maybe just cleaned.

[Triaxx]

Well speaking of crashy Skyrim weirdness, does anyone understand how random encounters are stored/created? I've got one of those that crashes when the game picks it, and since it only happens with Rigmor of Bruma installed, I'd very much like to figure out if it's that doing it, or some other mod so I can report it. I assume it's something inside the .esp, but I'd like to know what I'm looking for before I go looking.

[Akisa]

I'm reposting my question to here

I'm thinking of starting up a new Skyrim run and I'm wondering what mods people recommend? I'm looking for both content and graphic mods.

[Triaxx]

You said you were playing Special Edition?

Ordinator and the rest of Eno's stuff is good, I'm not actually sure if any other perk mods have been updated. Inigo seems interesting, and I'm quite enjoying Rigmor of Bruma. There's also Beyond Skyrim: Bruma.

Can't think of anything graphically to add, though Immersive HUD and Dynavision are useful options if they've been ported.

[Spore]

SE runs a lot smoother (better framerate) on my system. That and usual bugs (cursor bug when alt-tabbing out) are gone. The ESSENTIAL mods are there. Though the advanced stuff (Drachis Argonians or different body meshes) will likely never get ported.

[Triaxx]

To be fair, porting is somewhat unnecessary if it's not using a .BSA file.

[Akisa]

SE runs a lot smoother (better framerate) on my system. That and usual bugs (cursor bug when alt-tabbing out) are gone. The ESSENTIAL mods are there. Though the advanced stuff (Drachis Argonians or different body meshes) will likely never get ported.


But I always go Khajit!

[Caelestion]

The last TES game I was playing was OpenMW 0.42 last summer. I should probably give that another go some time.

[DigoDragon]

To be fair, porting is somewhat unnecessary if it's not using a .BSA file.

That's good to know. I think one of the old armor mods I had isn't being updated anymore by the author, but it's just lose textures.



But I always go Khajit!

This one agrees!

[Triaxx]

This one says once you go Khajiit, you never return.

My first character was actually a Khajiit, who ended up being a very capable mage. Surprisingly fun to play actually.

[ArlEammon]

Does Amren have a mod that let's you get to play with him ?

[Triaxx]

I feel I have not often enough stated for the record that I despise Deadly Dragons shock element dragons. Not even the storm dragons or the other high end variants, but the basic Dragon with shock breath.

[veti]

Does anyone know the one about the Breton and the bear tamer?

Just asking.

[DigoDragon]

I feel I have not often enough stated for the record that I despise Deadly Dragons shock element dragons. Not even the storm dragons or the other high end variants, but the basic Dragon with shock breath.

I'm guessing the reason starts with O, ends with P, and has you getting killed repeatedly in the middle of it?

[Triaxx]

Yeah, pretty much. Shock's just plain stronger than Fire/Frost, and I find shock resist gear to be much less common than the other two.

[LibraryOgre]

Yeah, pretty much. Shock's just plain stronger than Fire/Frost, and I find shock resist gear to be much less common than the other two.

The drain on Magicka is a real beast. But, that (and the fact that no one is resistant to shock) is part of why I prefer lightning-based spells.

[Rynjin]

Really? I've long found Frost to be the strongest element. But I've played with mods that overhaul combat to actually deplete Stamina and debuff you if you're out so long I may have forgotten what Vanilla is like.

Even then though Ice Storm is hands down the best AoE damage spell in the game, and potentially the most powerful all around damage spell. You get so much bang for your magicka it's not even funny, since it hits like three times (more if your enemy backpedals away from you).

[Calemyr]

Really? I've long found Frost to be the strongest element. But I've played with mods that overhaul combat to actually deplete Stamina and debuff you if you're out so long I may have forgotten what Vanilla is like.

Even then though Ice Storm is hands down the best AoE damage spell in the game, and potentially the most powerful all around damage spell. You get so much bang for your magicka it's not even funny, since it hits like three times (more if your enemy backpedals away from you).

All three elements have their strengths. Frost is great against physical threats like bears and melee npcs. The slow debuff makes keeping out of reach pretty easy and the stamina damage keeps their power attacks at a minimum. For efficiency, fire is fast and cheap and combines nasty initial damage with damage over time. When combined with elemental weaknesses, both can be absolutely devastating. That said, I find shock to be my go-to. First off, there are way too many things with resistance to fire and frost, but next to nothing with shock resistance, making it a good all-around element. Second, the projectile speed makes it easier to hit targets. And last, there's nothing quite like taking a mage's magicka away while doing damage. When I play a mage, I use all three, but shock is what I have in hand when I don't know what I'm going to run across next, particularly against dragons until I know what element they are.

[Triaxx]

Frost also has a built-in slowing effect.

Shock dragons are so deeply deadly, because while it takes a second for fire or frost to track from one target to the next, shock jumps targets instantly.

[Balmas]

I tend to default to either lightning or fire for destruction. Pre-100 Enchanting, fire is simply the most efficient in terms of damage-per-thaum, has a decent array of enemies that don't have immunities, and has decent projectile speed. Then when I get enough enchanting to have free destruction casting, it's over to lightning for its hitscan nature, nearly-nonexistent resistant enemies, and good anti-mage utility.

I'll note that I usually also usually run a mod to add enchantments to increase magic potency (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/14265), which means that with a high enough enchanting skill you can swat dragons out of the sky with a single well-placed lightning bold.

[factotum]

Just a point of order: isn't it traditional to add a post to the *old* thread pointing at the new one when it's created? I only just noticed this thread was here (more than a week after it was created).

[Triaxx]

The other difficulty with dragon lightning is that it tends to stun lock you and get you killed because you can't move.

Ice makes for a super effective sniping tool. Lightning has a shorter range even though it's hit scan, and firebolts both wobble and tend to fizzle out before hitting. Ice Spikes on the other hand fly totally straight, and have a hilariously long projectile life time.

[veti]

The other difficulty with dragon lightning is that it tends to stun lock you and get you killed because you can't move.

Ice makes for a super effective sniping tool. Lightning has a shorter range even though it's hit scan, and firebolts both wobble and tend to fizzle out before hitting. Ice Spikes on the other hand fly totally straight, and have a hilariously long projectile life time.

I don't think I can accept the characterisation as "super effective" of any of the destruction spells as sniping weapons. They're just not strong enough to one-shot any opponent worth worrying about, no matter how carefully delivered. A non-magical bow (in the hands of a similarly levelled, stealthy user) can do significantly more damage, either as a single shot or in DPS.

Maybe with a mod that lets you apply stealth perks to spell damage, I could buy it.

[Balmas]

I don't think I can accept the characterisation as "super effective" of any of the destruction spells as sniping weapons. They're just not strong enough to one-shot any opponent worth worrying about, no matter how carefully delivered. A non-magical bow (in the hands of a similarly levelled, stealthy user) can do significantly more damage, either as a single shot or in DPS.

Maybe with a mod that lets you apply stealth perks to spell damage, I could buy it.

Part of the reason for that, though, is that every weapon type has both enchantments and perks that boost damage, while Destruction's perks mostly focus on cost reduction.

The above-linked mod fixes that, at least partially, by adding in enchantments that allow you to boost destruction damage.

[Inarius]

The thing about destruction is its simultaneously weak and OP. Impact + augmented rank 2+ 100% destruction cost reduction makes it so you stunlock every enemy in the game. Even if your damage is utter crap while doing it you're in no actual danger of dying.

Its why I like mods that both nerf impact and swap the alchemy and enchanting effects so you get bonus damage from gear and cost reduction from alchemy. It boosts the underperforming aspect of destruction while nerfing the OP part of it. Just makes destruction feel better to me doing it that way.

[Triaxx]

Differing definition of sniping. You're thinking of hitting and doing massive damage, while I'm thinking of reaching out and touching them from a distance well beyond their ability to attack back.

[Rynjin]

But yeah, with perk overhaul mods (which usually add a spell sneak attack) and Apocalpyse (both of which I consider necessary mods) you also get proper high damage spell sniping. Ice Shiv is real neato.

[Triaxx]

I find every time I use Ice Shiv, they turn around just before it arrives, negating the whole effort. Bolide on the other hand that's stronger the further away you are? Yeah, much better.

[Rynjin]

Gotta take a small dip in Illusion for silent casting if you wanna sneaky mage.

[Triaxx]

Usually the explosion and pile of corpses give me away most of the time.

[DigoDragon]

Usually the explosion and pile of corpses give me away most of the time.

If there are any witnesses, then clearly the explosion is not big enough. :smallbiggrin:

[Balmas]

There's a number of things in Vanilla Skyrim's magic system that have bothered me for a long time.

First off is that both perks and enchantments are focused on cost reduction. In fact, it seems that using enchantment to get your spells' cost reduction up is expected, given the costs of the higher level spells. 300 magicka for a single Expert Rout? 1400 magicka for Master level spells? Even with the 50% cost reduction you'd get for investing 5 perks into the tree, and the 41% innate cost reduction you'd get for having 100 skill in the school, you're talking thirty two levels' worth of pumping magicka to be able to cast a single Master level spell once.

In practice, though, using perks to reduce costs for spellcasting is superfluous, because enchanting can reduce costs all the way to zero for at least two schools at a time. (It's just one more factor that makes crafting skills the trifecta of Boring But Necessary that they are in Skyrim.) In effect, you have twenty-five perks that are almost entirely useless because another skill tree makes them obsolete.

You need to invest heavily down each magic still perk tree just to make them viable. Destruction is simultaneously OP and wimpy, depending on whether or not you have Impact and the cost reduction to spam double-cast spells. Illusion spells won't effect the second-most common enemy in the game until you have the 90 skill necessary to get Master of the Mind. Alteration has some of the more useful utility spells in the game, so naturally none of the perks support them. Two thirds of the spells in Restoration are either useless or gimped by the focus on two-handed casting in the game. Conjuration is, admittedly, one of the best skills in the game, if only because Skyrim's difficulty system makes conjured minions more powerful than you are at the highest difficulties.

Compare that to other skills. All weapon skill trees give you better damage, or more efficient use of stamina, or useful new abilities. Some of them are worse than others, like basically anything involving criticals or bleeding, but you can rely on them to actually make you more effective at killing/incapacitating things. Even comparing damage-boosting perks, Destruction makes you spend eight perks for a ~300% increase, compared to weapons' Smithing+Enchanting+100% more damage perks, all of which stack with each other and which cost only five perks and don't take into account other damage-boosting perks.

I dunno, man. I've been staring at this screen trying to figure out how to explain how I feel for about an hour now. Most of the skills are weak, except for Conjuration which is one of the strongest schools in the game. Illusion has silent casting for some reason, when I'd put it in the sneak tree.

Just me complaining about Skyrim's balance, I guess.

[Anteros]

I've honestly never seen any reason to put points into anything but magic when you level up anyway. I don't even really play mages, but the health and stamina options just don't see necessary at all.

[Triaxx]

Never mind that on top of all that, Dual Casting is by default, not only worthless, but worse than worthless. For 2.8 times the input cost, you get 2.2 times the output. Meaning you get three times the damage give or take, just casting pairs of spells than you do casting one dual-cast one.

All this together is among the many reasons I never used vanilla magic. I went from Balanced Magic to SkyRe's perks, to now Ordinators.

There is some support to the Alteration spells in vanilla. One perk makes them last slightly longer. Stability at 70 gives +50% duration. And Mage Armor Doubles and eventually triples the protection if you're not wearing armor while using a flesh spell. But there's no penalty in vanilla for being in full Daedric armor and waving magic at everything. So there's no point at all in not just wearing armor, unless you're roleplaying.

And illusion doesn't affect the three types of enemies you'd most want it to. Undead, which are everywhere. Automatons which are in every Dwemer ruin, which is EVERYWHERE, and Atronachs, which are less common, but are a summon that the aforementioned undead absolutely love. But what's more important? After a while they flat out stop working period. I understand why, but getting more powerful as I am, I should be getting the upgrade to those spells for free when I pickup the next relevant perk. Even if you're dedicated enough to run back to town, and pick up the more powerful version upon being informed the enemy is too strong, by the time you get back, they may well have changed into something even immune to the new spell. And by then even the most dedicated RP'er is going to switch to just beating it to death.

Smithing and Enchanting don't even necessarily take perks to stupidly boost effectiveness. Plus you can stack on potions from Alchemy that make you do bonus damage when stabbing/slashing/bludgeoning things.

[veti]

Never mind that on top of all that, Dual Casting is by default, not only worthless, but worse than worthless. For 2.8 times the input cost, you get 2.2 times the output. Meaning you get three times the damage give or take, just casting pairs of spells than you do casting one dual-cast one.

Even allowing for the factor of two that you seem to have dropped, schools have their own bonuses for dual casting. Destruction gives you Impact, which is game-breakingly powerful. Illusion allows you to affect higher level targets, who would otherwise be immune - there is no such thing as a partial frenzy. Both are well worth the higher casting cost, even without the "magicka cost is irrelevant anyway" exploit.


There is some support to the Alteration spells in vanilla. One perk makes them last slightly longer. Stability at 70 gives +50% duration. And Mage Armor Doubles and eventually triples the protection if you're not wearing armor while using a flesh spell. But there's no penalty in vanilla for being in full Daedric armor and waving magic at everything. So there's no point at all in not just wearing armor, unless you're roleplaying.

Weight. Armour weighs. Heavy armour weighs a lot. I've never actually worn daedric armour, but I imagine it weighs even more. And don't talk to me about perks that make it weightless, because by the time I get that far up the armour perk tree I'm ready to retire the character anyway. Armour is pretty much the last skill to advance, by the time that reaches 70 there's really not much in the game that can slow you down.

Alteration perks also include magic resistance.


And illusion doesn't affect the three types of enemies you'd most want it to. Undead, which are everywhere. Automatons which are in every Dwemer ruin, which is EVERYWHERE, and Atronachs, which are less common, but are a summon that the aforementioned undead absolutely love. But what's more important? After a while they flat out stop working period. I understand why, but getting more powerful as I am, I should be getting the upgrade to those spells for free when I pickup the next relevant perk. Even if you're dedicated enough to run back to town, and pick up the more powerful version upon being informed the enemy is too strong, by the time you get back, they may well have changed into something even immune to the new spell. And by then even the most dedicated RP'er is going to switch to just beating it to death.

If you invest fully in the Illusion perk tree, you can illude[1] every living enemy. (Well, except Alduin. But let's face it, Alduin makes most every skill except "stabbing him in the face" irrelevant.) Certainly if you make that tree your main focus, you should be able to keep up with all living enemies. Frenzy, unperked, affects up to level 14; add Kindred Mage and Rage to get it up to a respectable level 36 - and that's before dual-casting, which allows it to reach, well, everything with a mind. And that's just an Adept-level spell.

True, it's harder to get the perks that allow you to affect undead and automatons, but - well, that's a limitation of the school. All that means is that you need to have some other skills up your sleeve. If you want to play a one-trick pony in Skyrim, Illusion is not for you - try two-handed weapons instead.


[1] That should totally be a word, so I'm coining it here and now unless someone can give me an existing word that's more specific than "affect" or "influence".

[Aeson]

[illude] should totally be a word, so I'm coining it here and now unless someone can give me an existing word that's more specific than "affect" or "influence".
As it happens, "illude" is, in fact, a transitive verb in the English language, and one of its meanings is "to subject to an illusion." (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/illude)

Re: dual casting, I'd add that the rate at which something happens can matter quite a bit, especially if the scenario is not heavily one-sided.

[factotum]

I do see where Triaxx is coming from with regard to the dual-casting system. Why does it cost nearly three times as much mana to make your spells only a little over twice as effective? Things like Impact shouldn't be taken into account when determining the spell cost, IMHO, because you're not guaranteed to have them.

[Anteros]

I do see where Triaxx is coming from with regard to the dual-casting system. Why does it cost nearly three times as much mana to make your spells only a little over twice as effective? Things like Impact shouldn't be taken into account when determining the spell cost, IMHO, because you're not guaranteed to have them.

Well, since it's not a turn based RPG you have to consider the time it takes to pump out your damage/spells as well. Dual casting helps on that front. Damage might be lower in the long term with dual casting, but it's almost objectively better for things like burst damage, or shutting down a single dangerous enemy.

Alternatively, I guess you could just hop on a rock and be completely immune to most enemies...but only the Dragonborn possesses such elite skills.

[Triaxx]

I suppose dual casting is useful for utility spells where you've got to deal with arbitrary level caps. For destruction it's less useful to have an additional twenty percent damage than a full third casting. Yes, the additional mana waste is useful for the coin flip of Impact, but just spraying spells works just as well.

A level 1 character can grab the Steed Stone, lose the weight of the armor, and now be completely protected for free, plus the other benefits of Steed. Magic Resistance is... at 30, 50, and 70, and is such a tiny fraction that even an awkwardly bad enchanter can beat it on two items. One if you bother with a potion.

Illusion's fantastic, but eventually you're left with the final enemy, so you need something to deal with it. And after you've burnt all your magicka on making him deal with his friends, you need something efficient to deal with him and single cast Destruction is what you want.

As usual, damage comes down to did you just miss with your one half-bar super shot?

I'm also purposely ignoring total cost reduction, because by the time you can manage that, it's irrelevant what you've taken perk wise, because it suddenly costs nothing. Plus you can only get two schools for free, which is something of an unfair balance to the equation. It's like asking what would you buy if you had infinite money, but Food and Bills no longer cost anything. It means the two things you need money most for are gone from the equation, imbalancing it heavily towards luxuries.

[DigoDragon]

I dunno, man. I've been staring at this screen trying to figure out how to explain how I feel for about an hour now.

I think this line says a lot about how you really feel.



There is some support to the Alteration spells in vanilla. One perk makes them last slightly longer. Stability at 70 gives +50% duration. And Mage Armor Doubles and eventually triples the protection if you're not wearing armor while using a flesh spell. But there's no penalty in vanilla for being in full Daedric armor and waving magic at everything. So there's no point at all in not just wearing armor, unless you're roleplaying.

The only significant "penalty" for wearing armor is that's less available carry weight for looting dungeons. ;)

I generally wear armor. Light armor though, since a high crafting skill allows you to still hit the armor cap.



I'm also purposely ignoring total cost reduction, because by the time you can manage that, it's irrelevant what you've taken perk wise, because it suddenly costs nothing. Plus you can only get two schools for free, which is something of an unfair balance to the equation. It's like asking what would you buy if you had infinite money, but Food and Bills no longer cost anything. It means the two things you need money most for are gone from the equation, imbalancing it heavily towards luxuries.

Does buying Bethesda count as a luxury? :smallbiggrin:

[Triaxx]

After a bit you realize there's no point in anything but gold and jewels which are essentially weightless. You can carry quite a bit once you stop grabbing up every useless bit of shiny armor you see.

He says taking advantage of companions and multiple magical containers to haul anything and everything not nailed down out of the various dungeons.

Bethesda's never been a luxury.

[veti]

A level 1 character can grab the Steed Stone, lose the weight of the armor, and now be completely protected for free, plus the other benefits of Steed.
Sure, but quite apart from getting to the Steed stone, I only get one stone slot, and if I spend it on the Steed that means I don't get to use the Lord or the Shadow or... whatever.

Magic Resistance is... at 30, 50, and 70, and is such a tiny fraction that even an awkwardly bad enchanter can beat it on two items. One if you bother with a potion.
Same response applies. I'll take an internal ability over one that I have to wear a specific item for any day, thanks. Especially since they stack anyway. Combined with the Agent of Mara power, even one or two levels of magic resistance perks go a long way to making me pretty much unstoppable.

It's like asking what would you buy if you had infinite money, but Food and Bills no longer cost anything. It means the two things you need money most for are gone from the equation, imbalancing it heavily towards luxuries.
If I had infinite money I wouldn't care about the cost of food and bills, so I'd spend those enchantment slots on something else too...

[Rynjin]

Well, since it's not a turn based RPG you have to consider the time it takes to pump out your damage/spells as well. Dual casting helps on that front. Damage might be lower in the long term with dual casting, but it's almost objectively better for things like burst damage, or shutting down a single dangerous enemy.

Alternatively, I guess you could just hop on a rock and be completely immune to most enemies...but only the Dragonborn possesses such elite skills.

Well, no, you just cast two spells at once. Remember even if you're not dual casting you can cast with both hands simultaneously. It's just as fast, only a teeny tiny bit less effective, costs less magicka, and doesn't put all your eggs into one spell basket.

[halfeye]

I prefer Oblivion.

Why?

1/ Casting is easier/faster, select spell, press 'c'.

2/ Carrying stuff is easier. Sigil stones with feather 125? Yes please! and there are feather potions and feather spells too, total somewhere past carrying 2,000 units (lbs? Kgs? dunno, but it's enough for any one dungeon).

3/ If you go with 5/5/5 / 5/5/luck you're OP, at least until very late in the game.

4/ I suspect that the complaints about the faces are the uncanny valley kicking in, Skyrim's faces have totally unrealistic hair, which is probably deliberate. Olivion doesn't do old faces well, but Skyrim doesn't either.

5/ Oblivion gates are huge dungeons (somewhat repetitive, but huge). There may be more in Skyrim (I haven't checked), but the dungeons in Oblivion are better.

6/ No random wyverns. This isn't 100 % positive.

7/ Bows aren't overpowered to the same extent.

[Anteros]

Well, no, you just cast two spells at once. Remember even if you're not dual casting you can cast with both hands simultaneously. It's just as fast, only a teeny tiny bit less effective, costs less magicka, and doesn't put all your eggs into one spell basket.

It's still less damage though. You're trading long term damage output for higher dps if you want to look at it in MMO terms. Burst damage is situationally better than sustained, so it's nice to have the option. For example, it's a lot better to pop out of cover for 1 second to throw a lightning bolt than it is to stand right in front of the enemy spraying continuous lightning.


I prefer Oblivion.

Why?

1/ Casting is easier/faster, select spell, press 'c'.

2/ Carrying stuff is easier. Sigil stones with feather 125? Yes please! and there are feather potions and feather spells too, total somewhere past carrying 2,000 units (lbs? Kgs? dunno, but it's enough for any one dungeon).

3/ If you go with 5/5/5 / 5/5/luck you're OP, at least until very late in the game.

4/ I suspect that the complaints about the faces are the uncanny valley kicking in, Skyrim's faces have totally unrealistic hair, which is probably deliberate. Olivion doesn't do old faces well, but Skyrim doesn't either.

5/ Oblivion gates are huge dungeons (somewhat repetitive, but huge). There may be more in Skyrim (I haven't checked), but the dungeons in Oblivion are better.

6/ No random wyverns. This isn't 100 % positive.

7/ Bows aren't overpowered to the same extent.

I think both Oblivion and Morrowind are better games in a lot of way. The UI and the graphics haven't aged well at all for them though.

[Rynjin]

It's still less damage though. You're trading long term damage output for higher dps if you want to look at it in MMO terms. Burst damage is situationally better than sustained, so it's nice to have the option. For example, it's a lot better to pop out of cover for 1 second to throw a lightning bolt than it is to stand right in front of the enemy spraying continuous lightning.

The thing is, because it's such a tiny increase in damage, that is only even arguably better when you're fighting a single stronger target, it's not worth it.

Most of the time, you'll be fighting multiple targets, and so fire two spells is better.

Or, alternately, you're fighting something immense like a dragon...and then Time To Kill becomes far more important than DPS. In most scenarios the tiny increase from dual casting is not going to result in a higher TTK...and will often result in less, as you chew through your magicka and have to wait for it to recharge or chug potions.

[halfeye]

I think both Oblivion and Morrowind are better games in a lot of way. The UI and the graphics haven't aged well at all for them though.

Nor has Skyrim, Fallout 4 in 1080p is amazing, leaves Skyrim at 2560 * 1440 totally in the dust of it's wake, Fallout 4 almost looks photographic.

On the other hand, on GUI's I think Skyrim took a step backward on containers, 'r' for instert was okay but 'r' for take all when it's only a click away from insert one at a time? Who hasn't picked up all the contents of a container unintentionally? I've done it dozens of times, and I hate it.

[Aeson]

In most scenarios the tiny increase from dual casting is not going to result in a higher TTK...and will often result in less, as you chew through your magicka and have to wait for it to recharge or chug potions.
(I'd point out that when you're talking about time to kill, lower TTK is better than higher TTK, because reducing TTK means killing the target and thereby shutting down that incoming damage source faster. "Dual casting will not result in higher TTK and will often result in less" implies that it is often better to dual cast than not to do so, which I gather is not a statement that you agree with.)


I think both Oblivion and Morrowind are better games in a lot of way. The UI and the graphics haven't aged well at all for them though.
While I don't think that the UI for any of the TES games is all that great, I personally think that Morrowind's UI is the best UI in the three most recent TES games, especially when it comes to inventory/spell/character information. At least to me, the resizable and relocatable windows that let you see everything you need or might want to know in one location are preferable to the fifteen different submenus filled with oversized font and large low-resolution icons that Oblivion uses or the similar menu system that Skyrim uses.

[Anteros]

The thing is, because it's such a tiny increase in damage, that is only even arguably better when you're fighting a single stronger target, it's not worth it.

Most of the time, you'll be fighting multiple targets, and so fire two spells is better.

Or, alternately, you're fighting something immense like a dragon...and then Time To Kill becomes far more important than DPS. In most scenarios the tiny increase from dual casting is not going to result in a higher TTK...and will often result in less, as you chew through your magicka and have to wait for it to recharge or chug potions.

I can't say I've ever really noticed many magicka problems in Skyrim. Then again, I do solely boost magic when I level, since health and stamina are completely unnecessary. I don't particularly focus my perks or gear towards magic though.

I think dual casting is good enough for what it is. It's a low level perk that gives you increased damage potential on all your spells as long as your mana can sustain it and slightly increased utility as well. It's not the best perk in the game, but it's situationally useful like most other perks around its level.

[Rynjin]

(I'd point out that when you're talking about time to kill, lower TTK is better than higher TTK, because reducing TTK means killing the target and thereby shutting down that incoming damage source faster. "Dual casting will not result in higher TTK and will often result in less" implies that it is often better to dual cast than not to do so, which I gather is not a statement that you agree with.)

Thanks for the catch; that and other typos are the price to pay for not giving your full attention to either thing you're doing at the time. =/


I can't say I've ever really noticed many magicka problems in Skyrim. Then again, I do solely boost magic when I level, since health and stamina are completely unnecessary. I don't particularly focus my perks or gear towards magic though.

I think dual casting is good enough for what it is. It's a low level perk that gives you increased damage potential on all your spells as long as your mana can sustain it and slightly increased utility as well. It's not the best perk in the game, but it's situationally useful like most other perks around its level.

Even in vanilla Skyrim I find there are too many things that can chew through a mere 100 HP to COMPLETELY neglect it, though I do usually leave off at about 200-250.

RE: Magicka running out, even if you get some cost reduction, if you don't hit that 100% there's still a solid chance of running out since many spells are extraordinarily expensive. Yeah, you might have 600 MP, but when that big badass spell you like costs 150 and doesn't AoE enough to kill everyone, things get tight.

[Anteros]

Even in vanilla Skyrim I find there are too many things that can chew through a mere 100 HP to COMPLETELY neglect it, though I do usually leave off at about 200-250.

RE: Magicka running out, even if you get some cost reduction, if you don't hit that 100% there's still a solid chance of running out since many spells are extraordinarily expensive. Yeah, you might have 600 MP, but when that big badass spell you like costs 150 and doesn't AoE enough to kill everyone, things get tight.

I've never really had any problems with leaving health at 100. Sure, you die sometimes if something strong gets the drop on you, but that's part of the fun of playing. I don't bother maxing out my armor for the same reason. If I wanted to play as an invulnerable god I'd just turn the cheat on and save myself 100 hours.

Same thing with magicka. Sure, you might run low in an extraordinarily tough fight...but that's part of the fun. It's not as if you aren't lugging around 6,000 magic potions anyway if you really need them.

Granted, someone else's optimally designed character would probably destroy mine in a fight...but for me the point of the game is to make a build that's fun to play and strong without breaking the game.

[Triaxx]

Of course if you really want to go that route you should spend the entire game crouched with a bow under the influence of Atronach chugging enchanting/alchemy looped potions that boost the damage of arrows by some absurd amount. Or save the effort and just TGM.

Yes, technically you get a shorter Time to Kill with dual casting, but then you spend more time either waiting on your magicka to regenerate, or chugging potions. Or doing both because you run out of the potions, and then have to sit and wait. Personally I'd rather spend the mana on a full powered blast than 20% of one.

[factotum]

While I don't think that the UI for any of the TES games is all that great, I personally think that Morrowind's UI is the best UI in the three most recent TES games, especially when it comes to inventory/spell/character information.

That's almost certainly because Morrowind was the last TES game where the PC was the primary platform with consoles largely an afterthought, so they designed a decent (not great, but decent) PC UI and then fudged it as best they could to work on console. Oblivion and Skyrim both have console-derived UIs, and in the case of Skyrim at least they didn't bother to change it to work properly with mouse and keyboard.

[LibraryOgre]

That's almost certainly because Morrowind was the last TES game where the PC was the primary platform with consoles largely an afterthought, so they designed a decent (not great, but decent) PC UI and then fudged it as best they could to work on console. Oblivion and Skyrim both have console-derived UIs, and in the case of Skyrim at least they didn't bother to change it to work properly with mouse and keyboard.

True dat. I couldn't play Skyrim without SkyUI.

[Techwarrior]

Speaking of mods, does anyone know of a mid for levelled items that adjusts their stats when you level up?

[Rynjin]

Comes in (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6657/) at least (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/16090) three flavors. (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/22996/)

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Sure, but quite apart from getting to the Steed stone, I only get one stone slot, and if I spend it on the Steed that means I don't get to use the Lord or the Shadow or... whatever.

Katria says hi, and would you please leave her with some dignity? (Admittedly the crown falls under your 'specific item' clause.)



While I don't think that the UI for any of the TES games is all that great, I personally think that Morrowind's UI is the best UI in the three most recent TES games, especially when it comes to inventory/spell/character information.

Gotta disagree, because of two words: Quest Log.

[Triaxx]

Admittedly it's not like Morrowind needed another excuse to wander around lost.

[Balmas]

I've honestly never seen any reason to put points into anything but magic when you level up anyway. I don't even really play mages, but the health and stamina options just don't see necessary at all.

I disagree. In fact, if you're playing vanilla Skyrim, there's very little point to investing in anything but health. See, in most cases, your most effective attack is going to be the standard, non-stamina draining one. Even if you need to power attack or block, the cost of such actions is so low as to be regenerated in seconds. Magicka is similarly useless, because you're able to get free spellcasting for up to two schools of magic, with near weightless 75%% cost reduction in the form of circlets/rings/amulets for the other three. Unless you're regularly casting expert and master level spells from all five schools of magic, you're better off just increasing your survivability. After all, if you run out of magic, you have to wait a while to cast again; if you run out of health, you die and have to run through all the progress you've made since your last save.


There is some support to the Alteration spells in vanilla. One perk makes them last slightly longer. Stability at 70 gives +50% duration. And Mage Armor Doubles and eventually triples the protection if you're not wearing armor while using a flesh spell. But there's no penalty in vanilla for being in full Daedric armor and waving magic at everything. So there's no point at all in not just wearing armor, unless you're roleplaying.

I've never felt that the mage armor spells were really worth it. Even with the three perks invested to triple the armor received, and the expert-level Ebonyflesh, you're still talking about only half the armor you'd get from a properly smithed bit of armor.

Although, Ordinator once again makes this interesting by making it so that clothing gets stronger enchantments than armor with the right perks, so you can actually wander around as a mage in fancy clothing. Now if I can just find a mod for an umbrella, my dream of cosplaying as Taako can finally be realized.,


Sure, but quite apart from getting to the Steed stone, I only get one stone slot, and if I spend it on the Steed that means I don't get to use the Lord or the Shadow or... whatever.

Same response applies. I'll take an internal ability over one that I have to wear a specific item for any day, thanks. Especially since they stack anyway. Combined with the Agent of Mara power, even one or two levels of magic resistance perks go a long way to making me pretty much unstoppable.

If I had infinite money I wouldn't care about the cost of food and bills, so I'd spend those enchantment slots on something else too...

Not sure I understand this perspective. From my point of view, it's much simpler and effective to just wear the items instead of using the perks. Perk points are, after all, much scarcer than items or enchanting slots, and much more resistant to being swapped out after the fact.


I prefer Oblivion.

One playthrough of Oblivion was enough for me. After about a hundred hours, it all began to feel samey and stale. The Ayleid ruins all felt the same. The abandoned forts all felt the same. The oblivion realms were pulled from a pool of half a dozen plots, and so once I'd done more than ten I'd about seen them all. Having eight voice actors for the base game meant that everybody sounded the same, with people having arguments with themselves. It was a bland Middle-Earth knockoff where the difficulty abruptly jumped every five levels, and required you to either level perfectly or not level at all.

It just feels like the ugly stepchild of the modern franchise. It didn't have the polished, awe-inspiring world of Morrowind, or the smooth mechanics of Skyrim. It's stuck in an awkward lurch where both world and mechanics are meh.


Nor has Skyrim, Fallout 4 in 1080p is amazing, leaves Skyrim at 2560 * 1440 totally in the dust of it's wake, Fallout 4 almost looks photographic.

On the other hand, on GUI's I think Skyrim took a step backward on containers, 'r' for instert was okay but 'r' for take all when it's only a click away from insert one at a time? Who hasn't picked up all the contents of a container unintentionally? I've done it dozens of times, and I hate it.

SkyUI, man. Can't live without it.


Gotta disagree, because of two words: Quest Log.

Eh, they did a lot to fix that though when they added the index. That way, if you remembered roughly who gave the quest--mages guild, fighter's guild, Morag Tong--you could figure out what the game expected.

The problem came when the game actively gave you wrong directions.

[Anteros]

I disagree. In fact, if you're playing vanilla Skyrim, there's very little point to investing in anything but health. See, in most cases, your most effective attack is going to be the standard, non-stamina draining one. Even if you need to power attack or block, the cost of such actions is so low as to be regenerated in seconds. Magicka is similarly useless, because you're able to get free spellcasting for up to two schools of magic, with near weightless 75%% cost reduction in the form of circlets/rings/amulets for the other three. Unless you're regularly casting expert and master level spells from all five schools of magic, you're better off just increasing your survivability. After all, if you run out of magic, you have to wait a while to cast again; if you run out of health, you die and have to run through all the progress you've made since your last save.


I don't know about your playthroughs, but by the time I get to the point where I have all this reduction gear and these perks I've been long since unkillable anyway. Not to mention the fact that I don't particularly like using the spell cost reduction gear or perks in the first place. Pumping mana safely allows me to ignore them and still wear the gear I want.


Of course if you really want to go that route you should spend the entire game crouched with a bow under the influence of Atronach chugging enchanting/alchemy looped potions that boost the damage of arrows by some absurd amount. Or save the effort and just TGM.

Yes, technically you get a shorter Time to Kill with dual casting, but then you spend more time either waiting on your magicka to regenerate, or chugging potions. Or doing both because you run out of the potions, and then have to sit and wait. Personally I'd rather spend the mana on a full powered blast than 20% of one.

Hey, it's fine if you don't like to use it. Far be it from me to tell you how to play a single player game. I'm just saying that the perk can be situationally useful for some builds. That's really all you can ask for a single perk point available at a very low level.

[Triaxx]

I will note my dislike is personal bias towards destruction where it's at it's weakest.

Mage Armor and the -flesh spells are in a weird place. Early, the jump from 40 to 80 armor is tremendous. Later, not so much. Until you suddenly have a spell that straight up puts you at Armor Cap.

[Aeson]

Gotta disagree, because of two words: Quest Log.
They added one in Bloodmoon, and the only way in which it is worse than the one in Oblivion is the lack of the direction/location arrows on the compass/map, but I generally dislike that feature anyways.


Eh, they did a lot to fix that though when they added the index. That way, if you remembered roughly who gave the quest--mages guild, fighter's guild, Morag Tong--you could figure out what the game expected.
There's an explicit quest log alongside the topics index. Gives you a list of your active quests, and clicking one pulls up the journal entries related to that quest.

[Balmas]

I will note my dislike is personal bias towards destruction where it's at it's weakest.

Mage Armor and the -flesh spells are in a weird place. Early, the jump from 40 to 80 armor is tremendous. Later, not so much. Until you suddenly have a spell that straight up puts you at Armor Cap.

Aye, that's my main issue with the -Flesh spells, is that they're absolute trash until you get the master level spell. Even with three perks to upgrade the protection offered, you're talking stuff like an apprentice level spell, Stoneflesh, that provides barely more protection than an unupgraded suit of leather armor, while also being forbidden from wearing all those fun Dragon Priest masks that count as armor and negate the protection spells' perk bonus. Ebonyflesh is comparable to someone wearing Daedric armor, provided that person wearing Daedric armor also has no skill in Heavy Armor and has never seen an armor workbench in his life. Oh, and also they only last a minute, or a minute 30 seconds if you somehow manage to survive to Alteration 70 while wearing no armor.

Then you get to Master Level alteration spells, and find that you can hit armor cap with no perk investment, which makes those three previous perks pretty useless in retrospect. Except that the master level spell only lasts 45 seconds, even with the perks. And takes three seconds to cast, standing perfectly still. And is interrupted by anything that might stagger you, like spells, shouts, or power attacks. And costs over a thousand mana.

I dunno. Master level spells in general are just more garbage than expert level.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I've never felt that the mage armor spells were really worth it. Even with the three perks invested to triple the armor received, and the expert-level Ebonyflesh, you're still talking about only half the armor you'd get from a properly smithed bit of armor.

Likewise here. My issue is that they don't last long enough. If I want to buff myself before a fight, the spell has expired before the fight is even half over.


Although, Ordinator once again makes this interesting by making it so that clothing gets stronger enchantments than armor with the right perks, so you can actually wander around as a mage in fancy clothing.

I really hope the next single player game does like ESO and does 'light' armor that is basically clothing at all but the highest levels and makes the leather medium. My big hangup with going around in robes is that armor increases your skill in armor and by extension your level, making you more powerful. Clothes don't do that. :smallfrown:



One playthrough of Oblivion was enough for me. After about a hundred hours, it all began to feel samey and stale. The Ayleid ruins all felt the same. The abandoned forts all felt the same. The oblivion realms were pulled from a pool of half a dozen plots, and so once I'd done more than ten I'd about seen them all. Having eight voice actors for the base game meant that everybody sounded the same, with people having arguments with themselves. It was a bland Middle-Earth knockoff where the difficulty abruptly jumped every five levels, and required you to either level perfectly or not level at all.

Generally agree here too. The problem was made worse in that a lot of the dungeons didn't have much in the way of their own plot - no people to rescue, no artifacts worth the name, no books to read. The Oblivion Gates especially were just dungeons, they never felt like part of a larger world. And the leveling system took out the lower-level monsters as you leveled up, so eventually you'd stop seeing the Imps and Scamps and such and ONLY run into Minotaurs and Dreugh and Xivilai.


They added one in Bloodmoon, and the only way in which it is worse than the one in Oblivion is the lack of the direction/location arrows on the compass/map, but I generally dislike that feature anyways.

I'm well aware. It's terrible. And I disagree over it being nearly on par with Oblivion's; I never had the problems with Oblivion's that I did with Morrowind's.

[Triaxx]

As with so many things, mods have solved a lot of the issues I have with those spells. Sustained Spells, keeps the flesh spell going for me constantly, which means I'm always protected. Or I can use Ocato's Recital from Apocalypse to turn them on when a fight starts. The other bit, is the fact that increasing skill in Ordinator extends the length of the spells.

On the other hand, I've always found it odd to not see people piling the various flesh spells on top of whatever armor they've already got on. It's essentially a free extra chest plate worth of armor early, and gloves later on.

[Anteros]

On the other hand, I've always found it odd to not see people piling the various flesh spells on top of whatever armor they've already got on. It's essentially a free extra chest plate worth of armor early, and gloves later on.

This is what I always did. At least at first I did. The problem is that it's not really necessary in Skyrim since you almost never get hit anyway, and like everyone else, I just didn't find it worth the time investment.

[The_Jackal]

My biggest problem with the mage armor line is that there's no reason not to just wear light armor. None. While I'm generally in favor of offering players freedom to explore their concept, I do feel like Skyrim's magic system did a poor job of articulating trade offs in terms of the mechanics available.

[Rynjin]

I like that Ordinator gives a few perks in Destruction and Alteration that increase spell effectiveness in robes at least.

[DigoDragon]

True dat. I couldn't play Skyrim without SkyUI.

I haven't played Skyrim yet with SkyUI.



I disagree. In fact, if you're playing vanilla Skyrim, there's very little point to investing in anything but health. See, in most cases, your most effective attack is going to be the standard, non-stamina draining one. Even if you need to power attack or block, the cost of such actions is so low as to be regenerated in seconds. Magicka is similarly useless, because you're able to get free spellcasting for up to two schools of magic, with near weightless 75%% cost reduction in the form of circlets/rings/amulets for the other three. Unless you're regularly casting expert and master level spells from all five schools of magic, you're better off just increasing your survivability. After all, if you run out of magic, you have to wait a while to cast again; if you run out of health, you die and have to run through all the progress you've made since your last save.

Eh, I suppose so. I've always preferred bows and early on I've never regretted investing a couple levels in stamina for the zoom (and then sprinting away when I nail the bandit leader in the head and his minions come pouring out of the camp like a Surge commercial). :smalltongue:

[Spore]

My biggest problem with the mage armor line is that there's no reason not to just wear light armor. None. While I'm generally in favor of offering players freedom to explore their concept, I do feel like Skyrim's magic system did a poor job of articulating trade offs in terms of the mechanics available.

Your idea of "none" is a bit polarizing. You get increased magicka regen and the best vanilla mage armor is a robe. Sure almost anyone learns enchanting. But that is partly because crafting skills are OP.

[Triaxx]

I've found robed wizards do just fine. Even in vanilla, either Illusion based crowd control, or just piling on Destruction damage so nothing get's close. Armor spells are more for keeping those random arrows from insta-killing you.

[Rynjin]

TBF to Bethesda as well, I think they EXPECTED when they made the game more people would use Wards as a pure mage, which closes the Armor gap a bit.

That's my estimate based on how NPC mages play anyway.

[The_Jackal]

Your idea of "none" is a bit polarizing. You get increased magicka regen and the best vanilla mage armor is a robe. Sure almost anyone learns enchanting. But that is partly because crafting skills are OP.

I suppose if you forego crafting, there's a reason to wear robes, but I think that's a poor excuse for an incomplete and poorly balanced game system.

[Balmas]

TBF to Bethesda as well, I think they EXPECTED when they made the game more people would use Wards as a pure mage, which closes the Armor gap a bit.

That's my estimate based on how NPC mages play anyway.

If Bethesda expected that, then they really shouldn't have made dual-casting so central to being effective.

[Triaxx]

Or Wards so pitifully ineffective.

The only thing is that crafting eventually reaches a point for armor, where there's no return. You hit the armor cap, and then any more effort is totally wasted. As a wizard, there's no need to waste that many resources, when I get a spell that gives me instant armor cap. And if I max enchanting, I can massively boost my magicka, and Magicka regen, and proceed to roll over the top of just about anything.

[The_Jackal]

Or Wards so pitifully ineffective.

The only thing is that crafting eventually reaches a point for armor, where there's no return. You hit the armor cap, and then any more effort is totally wasted. As a wizard, there's no need to waste that many resources, when I get a spell that gives me instant armor cap. And if I max enchanting, I can massively boost my magicka, and Magicka regen, and proceed to roll over the top of just about anything.

Also, wards only block spells. Arrows, which are quite common and just as deadly, if not more, fly right through.

The way the various systems in the game work, it feels as if different teams worked on different parts of the game, and didn't ever compare notes.

[Anteros]

I just don't think that Skyrim is attempting to accomplish what you guys want it to. It's not some sort of survival or realism simulator. They want you to feel powerful. They want you to feel unrestricted. They couldn't care less if the gameplay is balanced or builds are equal. That isn't their goal. They have to be aware how easy it is to completely destroy any semblance of difficulty in the game. At this point it has to be intentional.

It works too. Skyrim is wildly popular for good reason. People like to feel powerful. They like making whatever type of character they want to play and steamrolling over the world like a hero out of legend. A lot of the skills and perks you can take in this game are pure flavoring for what type of character you want to play rather than any kind of tactical decision. They don't want your mage to feel obligated to wear robes if you don't want to. The entire point is that every single build is viable and powerful. Sure, individual skills might be over or underpowered, but on the whole none of that matters.

[Temotei]

Wards also block dragon breath entirely, which is by far the best use for them. If you can't find cover, putting up a cheap ward isn't hard even for a simpleton character.

[The_Jackal]

I just don't think that Skyrim is attempting to accomplish what you guys want it to. It's not some sort of survival or realism simulator. They want you to feel powerful. They want you to feel unrestricted. They couldn't care less if the gameplay is balanced or builds are equal. That isn't their goal. They have to be aware how easy it is to completely destroy any semblance of difficulty in the game. At this point it has to be intentional.

I don't think it would take an enormous level of effort to look at their magic vs. crafting mechanics and get them into something approaching parity. And I find fault with the notion that 'because it's single player, balance doesn't matter'. If that's true, why put in a difficulty slider? Because as things work now, if you want to play a Legendary difficulty game as a magic user, you need to mod heavily. I'm not asking for intricately tuned balance fit for a multiplayer game, here. I just think that putting a designer on fixing the balance and scaling issues for, like, a week, would go a long way toward making the game better.

Also, if you look at Fallout IV, you can see that they are trying to make their games more balanced. Fallout 4, while by no means perfect, actually implements good common-sense game design principles like diminishing returns, better weapon balance, and fewer multiplicative scaling systems. So they are getting better.

As for why it's important for a single-player game, well, my reasoning goes like this: You shouldn't have to know the underlying game mechanics for them to be balanced and sensible. You shouldn't have to know that 567 armor is a magic number in Skyrim, or that magic resistance caps out at 85%. More should be better, and the rate of improvement should be simple, observable, and intuitive. WoW did this exceedingly well with their armor system. At any given level, adding more armor would result in a linear increase in your effective health. So, if, at level 60, 300 armor raised your effective health by 5%, then adding another 300 armor would also increase your effective health by another 5% (of the base, not the previous total). The result is a system that is, yes, quite arithmetically complex, but also highly intuitive. There's no magic number, more is just better. Fallout 4 also has a similar system, where at low levels of armor, relative to incoming damage, the armor behaves more like a threshold system, and as the ratio of armor to damage improves, it acts more like a ratio-based system of damage reduction. There's never an amount of armor that's pointless, or worse to have for the wearer.

When you contrast those kinds of well-designed systems with say, Skyrim's magic system, where deep investment into perks and itemization in Magic really do almost nothing for your damage output, or where the end-game paradigm of 'zero cost spells' make early acquisition of magic school basic perks a waste, it's pretty reasonable to point out the system's shortcomings, IMO.


It works too. Skyrim is wildly popular for good reason. People like to feel powerful. They like making whatever type of character they want to play and steamrolling over the world like a hero out of legend. A lot of the skills and perks you can take in this game are pure flavoring for what type of character you want to play rather than any kind of tactical decision. They don't want your mage to feel obligated to wear robes if you don't want to. The entire point is that every single build is viable and powerful. Sure, individual skills might be over or underpowered, but on the whole none of that matters.

Freedom, flexibilty, and power are in no way incompatible with good game balance and system design. I'd argue that they're actually mutually reinforcing. Good systems are easy for player to understand and feel powerful when using, without needing to sit down with a calculator to determine what's best. I'm not advocating for a 'all casters must wear robes' system. I'm advocating for a "don't make wearing robes a mistake", which is without question what it is now.


Wards also block dragon breath entirely, which is by far the best use for them. If you can't find cover, putting up a cheap ward isn't hard even for a simpleton character.

True, but not really an option for an archer, and not really necessary if you stack magic resistance and a couple of elemental resists.

[Triaxx]

Unfortunately for something to be 'balanced' no option can have any benefit whatsoever over any other option. So Robes and Light armor should thus provide absolutely equal protection to heavy armor, such that the selection is a purely cosmetic one.

If you want a balanced game, every enemy has one HP, all weapons do one HP and armor does nothing. Your game is now balanced, and so mind numbingly boring no one will ever want to play it.

There's no penalty to wearing robes, but there's no penalty to wearing armor. There's only benefit, which robes don't have. The fact that robes do come in several formats which are enchanted with abilities you cannot duplicate without exploiting the system isn't enough of a benefit to make them worth considering.

[Rynjin]

Unfortunately for something to be 'balanced' no option can have any benefit whatsoever over any other option. So Robes and Light armor should thus provide absolutely equal protection to heavy armor, such that the selection is a purely cosmetic one.

If you want a balanced game, every enemy has one HP, all weapons do one HP and armor does nothing. Your game is now balanced, and so mind numbingly boring no one will ever want to play it.

You very clearly do not understand what the concept of balance is. I get very, very tired of seeing this fallacy bandied about (on RPG forums especially).

"Balanced" and "homogenous" are not the same thing. They are different words, with different meanings, and when people conflate the two it irks me.

I sincerely do not understand how the idea that balance means "no option can have any benefit whatsoever over any other option" became so popular. You have all played games before. It does not require much critical thought to take note that, even if you can't articulate it, most games are balanced around tradeoffs and incomparable abilities. Numerics are not the only factor of a game.

For example, the ability to teleport 10 feet in a direction is not directly comparable to the ability to fire a target seeking projectile. They are two different abilities with two different uses, and characters that choose them will have different abilities, but can be balanced against each other when viewing the entire package to make sure neither character has inordinate impact on the game.

To go back to the example at hand, the different armor types do not need to have the exact same effect to be balanced. They simply need to provide incomparables unique to their style. If you get more armor in heavy armor, but the ability to dodge in light armor, and increased spell magnitude in no armor, you have created incomparables (and thus unique and potentially balanced build paths).

Likewise, things can be balanced based on tradeoffs. If, say, armor types had an increasing scale of stamina consumption and regeneration (and stamina were made a worthwhile ability with actual significant uses), light armor and robes might have less armor but would have a leg up in a different arena than heavy armor.

[LibraryOgre]

Unfortunately for something to be 'balanced' no option can have any benefit whatsoever over any other option. So Robes and Light armor should thus provide absolutely equal protection to heavy armor, such that the selection is a purely cosmetic one.


It's always about trade-offs.

One-handed weapons do less damage than two-handed weapons. But one-handed weapons are usually faster, and allow you to have a 2nd weapon, a shield, or a spell at the ready. That's a trade-off that results in balance.

Heavy armor protects you better, but more heavily impacts your stealth, magic skills, and speed. That's a balanced trade-off, in theory.

What is the advantage of magic over a bow? What is the advantage of a bow over magic? Balancing these things so there are fewer stupid options, and especially so stupid options aren't contradicted by the lore (i.e. It is a bad idea to be a Destruction-focused caster, because you won't do enough damage to keep up with a fully-perked warrior), is the key to creating an easily fun game, instead of a game with build-traps... things that should be effective, but simply are not.

[Aeson]

IAnd I find fault with the notion that 'because it's single player, balance doesn't matter'. If that's true, why put in a difficulty slider?
The difficulty slider is about adjusting the degree to which the player is challenged by the game (notionally, anyways; Bethesda difficulty sliders tend to be more about how much you want to feel like you're tickling a damage sponge to death while dodging knock-out punches), whereas balance between the various skills, abilities, spells, weapons, and armor is about equality of options presented to the player. These are not the same thing, they are not done for entirely the same reasons, and they are not equally important.

Also, while I do not entirely agree with the idea that equality of options is irrelevant to single player games, I also don't entirely disagree. As long as the game is fun more or less regardless of playstyle, game balance is largely irrelevant, whether in a single-player or multiplayer environment, and whether the environment is competitive or not. To a great extent, it is the imbalances between the playstyles which make them different - magic tends to be better at AoE or burst damage but worse at single-target or sustained damage than mundane, high mobility tends to come at a cost to durability, range tends to be safer but lower damage than melee, etc.* That one is sometimes better than another is fine. That one is always better than another can also be fine, so long as the weaker option isn't completely useless or only usable as a severe self-imposed handicap and the stronger option isn't so strong as to completely trivialize** the game. For better or worse, those are rather ill-defined lines.

*As general rules. Not necessarily true in any specific game or series of games.
**I will add that trivializing the game can be acceptable if whatever challenges posed by the game which the ability trivializes are not where the majority of the fun of the game is, and at least for me that is largely but not entirely true of combat difficulty in TES games, especially considering Bethesda's propensity to make things 'harder' by making them more tedious without really changing anything else. Other games do the 'tickle a damage sponge to death while dodging knock-out punches' thing far better than the TES games do, and if I wanted to do that I'd go play one of them instead of cranking the difficulty up in a TES game. For some people, the fun of a tycoon game is in getting to the point where money doesn't matter, for others the fun part of the game starts at the point where money doesn't matter, and for still others the fun part of the game is somewhere in between.

[Anteros]

There already are numerous benefits to wearing robes over heavy armor though. They're just being discounted. Weight is one and the sneak penalty is another. For mage specific things there are set bonuses that would require you to invest heavily into crafting to replicate with heavy armor.

Sure, there are skills that make light armor redundant if you invest in them. It makes no more sense to call robes under powered than it does to call armor under powered because there are ways to hit the armor cap while naked.

Almost all of my characters end up wearing robes until they have very high magic simply because the set bonuses are good, and replicating them on heavier armor with enchanting is a long and boring grind.

To Jackal: I vehemently disagree that Fallout 4 is anything resembling well designed, well balanced, or even a step in the right direction. It's worse than its predecessors in almost every way. This really isn't the thread to discuss it though.

[Triaxx]

I understand the difference. You're confusing the lack of understanding with reducto ad absurdum. The point I was making is that you're never going to get and should not strive for that perfect balance. It makes things boring. Having all choices be equal is essentially stripping away all choice.

[Rynjin]

I understand the difference. You're confusing the lack of understanding with reducto ad absurdum. The point I was making is that you're never going to get and should not strive for that perfect balance. It makes things boring. Having all choices be equal is essentially stripping away all choice.

And yet the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. Completely ignoring balance is just as bad as hyperfocusing on it. And of the two it's the more likely bad outcome.

[The_Jackal]

I understand the difference. You're confusing the lack of understanding with reducto ad absurdum. The point I was making is that you're never going to get and should not strive for that perfect balance. It makes things boring. Having all choices be equal is essentially stripping away all choice.

Nobody is advocating perfect equality. Merely interesting trade-offs in lieu of options which are objectively and unambiguously inferior. There is, simply no manner in which cloth armor + skin spells are remotely competitive with heavy or light armor.

[veti]

Gotta disagree, because of two words: Quest Log.

The Bloodmoon expansion did a pretty good job of fixing Morrowind's quest log. Overall, though, the quest log is the one area where I would award top honours to Oblivion. With Morrowind in second place, and Skyrim a very distant third.

[Triaxx]

There's the problem, the idea that robes+spells MUST be competitive. The thought that 'I must be able to stand and fight wearing nothing but robes and using some magic, the same as someone in purpose made heavy armor.' NO. Not only is that completely nuts, but also it again goes back to that idea that everything must be as identical as possible.

There's no reason for it, when robes+spells is designed for a completely different style of play. If you don't have the full armor, there's no reason for you to be standing at the front of the battle trying to block swords with your face.

This is the same kind of argument that leads to a mages guild anyone can enter without ever having cast a spell. A thieves guild that lets you just butcher everything in your path. The idea that no path should ever be closed to you.

[Rynjin]

There's the problem, the idea that robes+spells MUST be competitive. The thought that 'I must be able to stand and fight wearing nothing but robes and using some magic, the same as someone in purpose made heavy armor.' NO. Not only is that completely nuts, but also it again goes back to that idea that everything must be as identical as possible.

There's no reason for it, when robes+spells is designed for a completely different style of play. If you don't have the full armor, there's no reason for you to be standing at the front of the battle trying to block swords with your face.

This is the same kind of argument that leads to a mages guild anyone can enter without ever having cast a spell. A thieves guild that lets you just butcher everything in your path. The idea that no path should ever be closed to you.

Thankfully, the only one making this argument is you.

Everybody else says robes need to be competitive. As in, there needs to be a reason to take the option.

Only you have misunderstood what the word "competitive" means and confused it with the word "homogenous" again.

I suppose you'll claim it's reduction rather than misunderstanding again, but either way you don't seem to be quite following the conversation at hand.

[The_Jackal]

There's the problem, the idea that robes+spells MUST be competitive. The thought that 'I must be able to stand and fight wearing nothing but robes and using some magic, the same as someone in purpose made heavy armor.' NO. Not only is that completely nuts, but also it again goes back to that idea that everything must be as identical as possible.

Let's invert the valence of this argument and see how it holds up, shall we? "There's the problem, the idea that robes+spells MUST be inferior." If A > B, B < A, right? Can we agree of the basic principles of algebra at least?

No one is arguing for symmetry. We're advocating for creative and interesting asymmetry, rather than just 'B < A'.

[Keltest]

Let's invert the valence of this argument and see how it holds up, shall we? "There's the problem, the idea that robes+spells MUST be inferior." If A > B, B < A, right? Can we agree of the basic principles of algebra at least?

No one is arguing for symmetry. We're advocating for creative and interesting asymmetry, rather than just 'B < A'.

Ok, but then what does that translate to? If theyre filling the protective role like armor does, then they need something that makes you want to choose them over wearing full plate (or light armor, once you hit a high enough level). Right now the only thing they really have going for them is weight, which isn't much of an issue for most of the game. So you have to branch out and start doing totally different things than wearing armor, at which point we run into the same issue of "why wear full plate when you can cast a spell and be just as protected, and also have the benefits of robes?"

[Triaxx]

No, I'm following the conversation quite well thank you. I'm arguing that you're failing to comprehend why what you're arguing for is wrong.

Not being armor they don't incur a movement penalty, nor do they incur a penalty to stealth.

There's no perk investment to make them stronger, in exchange for relying on magic to do the task.

Doubling the protection provided by the spells requires 3 perks invested, instead of 5.

Improving the protection has you going out and casting the spell when enemies are present, instead of spending hours making jewelry at a crafting station. Then you simply buy up the next level of defense and can continue adventuring.

And no need to try and maintain a matched set to get full benefit. Nor any need to have a full face covering helmet.

Honestly, with all those advantages, I find it hard to imagine why you'd suffocate yourself in armor.

[Aeson]

Ok, but then what does that translate to? If theyre filling the protective role like armor does, then they need something that makes you want to choose them over wearing full plate (or light armor, once you hit a high enough level). Right now the only thing they really have going for them is weight, which isn't much of an issue for most of the game. So you have to branch out and start doing totally different things than wearing armor, at which point we run into the same issue of "why wear full plate when you can cast a spell and be just as protected, and also have the benefits of robes?"
On top of that, the spells are a semi-active defense (you need to cast the spell to get the benefits, and the spell is only active for a certain duration) that costs resources (magicka and casting time) to use, whereas armor is essentially a fully passive defense (you'll always benefit from its bonus) with no ongoing resource costs to make use of its baseline effects.

Arguably, that Alteration does more than just provide armor-like protection helps balance things, but honestly, aside from the armor spells, Skyrim's Alteration spells strike me as rather situational, especially if you don't like running with companions or summoned minions.

[The_Jackal]

No, I'm following the conversation quite well thank you. I'm arguing that you're failing to comprehend why what you're arguing for is wrong.

Because it isn't.


Not being armor they don't incur a movement penalty, nor do they incur a penalty to stealth.

Do you even notice the movement penalty when wearing heavier armor? I certainly don't. And what low-level caster is relying on stealth, when you've got to blow your ambush by casting your skin spell at the outset of a fight, or worse, go unarmored until you hard cast your skin spell during open combat.


There's no perk investment to make them stronger, in exchange for relying on magic to do the task.

Doubling the protection provided by the spells requires 3 perks invested, instead of 5.

To get the equivalent silent protection of armor, you need 50 points in the illusion school, plus 4 perk points, compared to 3 perk points for unhindered in the light armor tree, or 4 from heavy armor's conditioning perk. And at that point, you've still got to spend magicka and time to apply a skin spell, whereas armor simply works, passively, all the time.


Improving the protection has you going out and casting the spell when enemies are present, instead of spending hours making jewelry at a crafting station. Then you simply buy up the next level of defense and can continue adventuring.

A process which is incredibly lucrative, and comparatively trivial. Besides, it's not as if a caster build that wants to scale like a physical build isn't going to dump an equivalent amount of time into collecting and crafting alchemy reagents for their fortify <school> potions that they'll be main-lining throughout the game.


And no need to try and maintain a matched set to get full benefit. Nor any need to have a full face covering helmet.

While matched set will lower the bar of how much crafting you'll need to undertake to cap your armor, you can still quite easily mix and match and still cap out. It just takes more effort.


Honestly, with all those advantages, I find it hard to imagine why you'd suffocate yourself in armor.

Because it's better. It's on passively, all the time. It doesn't require resources or time in combat to activate, it doesn't suddenly vanish at an inopportune time. Simply put, the opportunity costs of going unarmored are not worth it. There is no build that I can imagine that can't be made better by the inclusion of armor. Not using it is objectively a handicap.

[Rynjin]

Not being armor they don't incur a movement penalty, nor do they incur a penalty to stealth.

Both being largely irrelevant, particularly the latter. Don't pretend like you don't know how broken Skyrim's stealth is.


There's no perk investment to make them stronger, in exchange for relying on magic to do the task.

Doubling the protection provided by the spells requires 3 perks invested, instead of 5.

You contradict yourself here. Regardless, requiring three perks for an inferior benefit is not an upside. You get less output for a more cumbersome input.


Improving the protection has you going out and casting the spell when enemies are present, instead of spending hours making jewelry at a crafting station. Then you simply buy up the next level of defense and can continue adventuring.

You're really reaching for upsides here. I'm not sure what you hope to gain with this line of argument. The time spent on acquiring an inferior level of defense may be less, but it's more cumbersome and slow in the moment. That is a downside, not an upside.


And no need to try and maintain a matched set to get full benefit. Nor any need to have a full face covering helmet.

Again, not having an upside is...not an advantage. You're operating on anti-logic at this point, claiming that having less benefit is an advantage because you require less investment to get no benefit.

This is like saying investing in the stock market is completely pointless because it requires research to gain a benefit; as opposed to simply not making any money at all which requires no time spent on your end. It's ludicrous.

[Triaxx]

Okay fine, you win. Robes are useless.

[Keltest]

Speaking of... um... not this...

I'm considering starting a new morrowind run. Can anyone recommend me some basic quality of life mods to help with things like magicka regen so I can actually cast spells with some regularity, and other things like that you guys think are helpful?

[veti]

Not being armor they don't incur a movement penalty, nor do they incur a penalty to stealth.


And there's the real problem, in my mind at least..

The supposed disadvantages of heavy armour, other than weight, are barely noticeable. You can jump and swim and run at almost the same speed, without even tiring. You can sneak just fine. There's no concept of flexibility or being able to squeeze into narrow spaces. It doesn't even take any longer to get dressed.

Possibly, at some design stage, someone had a dream of doing some of those things differently. But then they ran into the inane "never prevent any character from doing anything" rule, and understandably gave up.

There are only two really important variables to armour: protection and weight. There is some meaningful tradeoff between those two. But everything else is irrelevant, and just two variables isn't enough to support three different styles.

[Keltest]

And there's the real problem, in my mind at least..

The supposed disadvantages of heavy armour, other than weight, are barely noticeable. You can jump and swim and run at almost the same speed, without even tiring. You can sneak just fine. There's no concept of flexibility or being able to squeeze into narrow spaces. It doesn't even take any longer to get dressed.

Possibly, at some design stage, someone had a dream of doing some of those things differently. But then they ran into the inane "never prevent any character from doing anything" rule, and understandably gave up.

There are only two really important variables to armour: protection and weight. There is some meaningful tradeoff between those two. But everything else is irrelevant, and just two variables isn't enough to support three different styles.

I think the original intent here was that the perk system would add additional knobs to twist and levers to pull. Once youre trained in heavy armor, you can pick some abilities that let you do new and interesting things with it that you cant do with light armor or robes.

For example, wearing heavy gauntlets increases your unarmed damage. That is interesting, and if it scaled better with weapon damage, would unlock an entirely new style of play. But they dropped the ball, really hard. Most of the perks are some flavor of "have more armor" which is fairly meaningless when you can make something as low as elven armor hit the armor cap, especially for heavy armor, which reaches it that much easier.

[Triaxx]

So... I finally stumbled across the last word of Drain Vitality. That was extremely well hidden.

All the way down at Arcwind Point which I'm not even sure everyone knows is there.

[Balmas]

To my mind, the problem stems from how the -Flesh spells are handled; they're all done in terms of armor and damage resistance, which means they're directly comparable to other systems of armor. When everything's expressed in terms of armor, Flesh spels can't help but come out unfavorably. They start out weak and don't scale very well until you hit 90 Alteration, and then abruptly you can hit the armor cap. Even then, the fact that you need to pay an upkeep cost on the order of 1000 magicka every 45 seconds means that most people will stick with the armor that does the same thing passively, and doesn't require you to spend however long it takes to get 90 Alteration with barely half the protection you could get from decently smithed armor.

Consider Morrowind's versions of protection for a mage. You could summon actual weightless Daedric armor, of course, which required no skill in armor, didn't slow you down, didn't cost extra fatigue to run in, and didn't carry the same 100-300ish pound hit to carry weight that you'd get from heavy armor. This was appealing, because in Morrowind, different kinds of armor actually had tangible, noticeable downsides attached to them, unlike in Skyrim. However, that wasn't your only option. You could put up a Sanctuary spell, and have a much greater chance to dodge your enemy's attack. You could Levitate or Jump to a bit of convenient level architecture from which to rain down destruction spells and spear stabs. Failing that, you could blind your enemies, or drain their agility so they stumble, or simply Fortify your speed to the point that you could outrun them. You had your pick of how to avoid taking damage, any one of which was both competitive with and distinct from simply wearing armor.

If I were to redesign the -Flesh series of spells, I would do my utmost to stay away from armor entirely. Instead, I'd try to make each Flesh spell its own, new flavor of damage reduction. Maybe you'd have one that is just a speed fortification, so you can outrun and dodge around your enemies, while another gives you a chance to absorb incoming damage and return it as Magicka, Atronach stone style. Maybe we borrow from Payday 2's perk decks, and have spells that turn damage dealt into health returned, or just have an entire line of spells based around "you run so fast that you're dodging bullets like Neo in the Matrix." The point is, these Flesh spells should be more interesting and present more alternatives than just "You pay upkeep for armor."

[Keltest]

Another thing is that to actually use heavy armor effectively, you had to work for it. A level one character could, theoretically, put on a full suit of daedric armor and be functionally invulnerable to the things theyre going to be fighting. If they did that however, they probably couldn't move. Getting enough strength to effectively wear heavy armor and still be able to carry, well, anything, meant that you had to sacrifice somewhere else, like, say, willpower. In Skyrim, that tradeoff isn't really there. You can stick loot on your packmule follower, add enchantments to jewelry, and eventually you can just straight up negate the weight of your worn armor. And even the heaviest armors only take up like a third of your default carrying capacity. Wearing armor in skyrim actively makes it easier to wear armor over time.

[DigoDragon]

So... I finally stumbled across the last word of Drain Vitality. That was extremely well hidden.

All the way down at Arcwind Point which I'm not even sure everyone knows is there.

Huh, I didn't know that was there. Added by Dawnguard it seems. Well, good to know when I come back to the game!

[Triaxx]

Honestly I think SkyRe's versions of the Flesh spells had the right idea. They each offered something extra, which in theory could be triggered by a perk, but mostly just worked randomly. Oakflesh provided bonus resistance to shock I think, and Stoneflesh had a random chance to give Feather. It gave them a little something extra without being just more numbers.

[Aeson]

In Skyrim, that tradeoff isn't really there. You can ... add enchantments to jewelry, and eventually you can just straight up negate the weight of your worn armor.
Technically, these were possible in Morrowind, and arguably Morrowind is worse about the enchanted trinkets since you can get on-use and constant effect on self enchantments from a hell of a lot more stuff in Morrowind (pants, shirt, robe, boots, two gauntlets/gloves, two pauldrons, greaves, chest piece, helmet, shield, weapon, two rings, one amulet - 18 items total) than in the later games (feet, legs, body, hands, head, shield, two rings, one amulet - 9 items total), and items in Morrowind also weren't restricted to single-effect enchantments. Granted, this was offset by enchanting services being ludicrously expensive for even fairly minor effects, by it being ludicrously difficult to do enchanting yourself without resorting to exploit-like tactics, and by not all items being able to carry similarly powerful enchantments.


Consider Morrowind's versions of protection for a mage. You could summon actual weightless Daedric armor, of course, which required no skill in armor, didn't slow you down, didn't cost extra fatigue to run in, and didn't carry the same 100-300ish pound hit to carry weight that you'd get from heavy armor. This was appealing, because in Morrowind, different kinds of armor actually had tangible, noticeable downsides attached to them, unlike in Skyrim. However, that wasn't your only option. You could put up a Sanctuary spell, and have a much greater chance to dodge your enemy's attack. You could Levitate or Jump to a bit of convenient level architecture from which to rain down destruction spells and spear stabs. Failing that, you could blind your enemies, or drain their agility so they stumble, or simply Fortify your speed to the point that you could outrun them. You had your pick of how to avoid taking damage, any one of which was both competitive with and distinct from simply wearing armor.
Also Burden (typically not cost-effective), Fortify Health (dangerous since you'll die if you don't have more HP than the effect magnitude when the effect wears off), Drain/Damage/Absorb Strength, Shield, Paralyze, Demoralize Creature/Humanoid and Turn Undead, Frenzy, Chameleon, and Invisibility. Situationally, Water Walking and Lock could also help. Arguably also [Element] Shield and Absorb Health.


If I were to redesign the -Flesh series of spells, I would do my utmost to stay away from armor entirely. Instead, I'd try to make each Flesh spell its own, new flavor of damage reduction. Maybe you'd have one that is just a speed fortification, so you can outrun and dodge around your enemies, while another gives you a chance to absorb incoming damage and return it as Magicka, Atronach stone style. Maybe we borrow from Payday 2's perk decks, and have spells that turn damage dealt into health returned, or just have an entire line of spells based around "you run so fast that you're dodging bullets like Neo in the Matrix." The point is, these Flesh spells should be more interesting and present more alternatives than just "You pay upkeep for armor."
I certainly wouldn't mind seeing the Xflesh spells gain interesting riders in addition to or in place of their +Armor effect (especially if it also meant that there were a greater variety of useful spells available; I realize Morrowid and Oblivion did it too, but I don't greatly care for the Novice Fireball, Apprentice Fireball, Adept Fireball, Expert Fireball, Master Fireball approach that a lot of spells, including the XFlesh line, take) but I'd be okay with them remaining as just +Armor effects if the bonus scaled decently with skill rather than being entirely determined by which spell you're using and what perks you have.


Honestly I think SkyRe's versions of the Flesh spells had the right idea. They each offered something extra, which in theory could be triggered by a perk, but mostly just worked randomly. Oakflesh provided bonus resistance to shock I think, and Stoneflesh had a random chance to give Feather. It gave them a little something extra without being just more numbers.
Personally, I don't care much for "chance of [effect] on cast" as a rider and I think it's a terrible way to balance options against one another, especially if the chance of getting the rider is low or the rider is only of much use if consistently obtained (e.g. Feather).

[Caelestion]

I'm considering starting a new morrowind run. Can anyone recommend me some basic quality of life mods to help with things like magicka regen so I can actually cast spells with some regularity, and other things like that you guys think are helpful?

This is my list of mod folders for OpenMW. You should find some inspiration in there, at least. :smallsmile:

data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Classic Mods\Dwemer_Clock_Alternative_v12"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Classic Mods\Featherweight Soul Gems for Sale"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Classic Mods\Freed Slaves"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Classic Mods\Imperial Legion Badge"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Classic Mods\Quick Char and DB Delayer"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Classic Mods\Teleportation Spells"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dialogue mods\Alternate Messages V1.4"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dialogue mods\Dagoth_Gares_Voice_addon_v11"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dialogue mods\DjangosDialogue1_3-37328-1-3"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dialogue mods\Expanded Dialogue"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dialogue mods\LGNPC_merged_lt"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dialogue mods\Lich Barilzar Voice Addon"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dialogue mods\NastierCamonnaTong_12-22601"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dremora in Morrowind\PlayableDremora-v11-21149"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dremora in Morrowind\Psy Dremora v2 - Darknut"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dremora in Morrowind\Quest - Love in the Time of Daedra-43635-1-01"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dungeons and Factions\Faction_Living_Quarters-40702-v1-00"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dungeons and Factions\MagicalMissions-38773-1-1"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dungeons and Factions\Of Dungeons and Abodes -44253"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Dungeons and Factions\Of Justice and Innocence 1.31 MR -34046"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\GCD Lean v2.0.4a"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Graphic Herbalism v1.3a -43140\Graphic Herbalism (Tamriel Data 03) -43829-2-2"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Graphic Herbalism v1.3a -43140\Graphic Herbalism -43140-1-3a"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Houses and Stores\Baratheons Businesses"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Houses and Stores\BB2 Falconer Leather"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Houses and Stores\Buyable Hlaalo Manor"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Houses and Stores\Carnithus Armamentarium Complete-3906"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Houses and Stores\Dramatic Vivec 4.2.1-43385-4-2-1"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Houses and Stores\IndyBank v2.4 -14887"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\HUD and UI mods\Better Dialogue Font-36873"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\HUD and UI mods\Crosshair - Battlespire Subtle Dot -43135"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\HUD and UI mods\HD Intro Cinematic"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\HUD and UI mods\Modern User Interface-42526-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Main Menu Replacers\Menu - Vivec and Ordinator -43923-2-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Marbred Magic Border Icon Replacers\MMBIR - Stars"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Marbred Magic Border Icon Replacers\Subtle Magic Glow - Fade -4468"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Mesh Replacers\Akulakhan Replacer-42855-4"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Mesh Replacers\Apel fire retexture v2-42554-v2"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Mesh Replacers\Dunmer Lanterns Replacer 9.0-43219-9-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Mesh Replacers\Kalamestaris Compiled Mods"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Mesh Replacers\Mesh Improvements Optimized v1.4"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Mesh Replacers\RR - Better Books v1 -43266"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Mesh Replacers\RR - Better Frescoes V1.1 -43266"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Mesh Replacers\RR - Better Meshes v1.2 -43266"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Mesh Replacers\RR - Better Potions -43266"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Meshes and Textures for OpenMW - Flash3113\Clannfear Replacer - OpenMW-45173-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Meshes and Textures for OpenMW - Flash3113\Divayth Fyr Puzzle Fixed-45155-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Meshes and Textures for OpenMW - Flash3113\Dwemer Puzzle Box - OpenMW-45006-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Meshes and Textures for OpenMW - Flash3113\Ice Blade of the Monarch - OpenMW-45062-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Meshes and Textures for OpenMW - Flash3113\Ingredients Mesh Replacer 2.2-44067-2-2\Data Files"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Meshes and Textures for OpenMW - Flash3113\Mehrunes' Razor - OpenMW-44792-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Meshes and Textures for OpenMW - Flash3113\Stronghold Retexture-43948-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Morrowind Rebirth v4.3 -37795\Data Files"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Multiple Teleport Marking Mod (OpenMW - TR etc) -44825-1-3"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Music\Baldur's Gate"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Music\Divine Divinity"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Splash Compilation\Bloodmoon"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Splash Compilation\Cities and Ruins"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Splash Compilation\Community Pack"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Splash Compilation\Concept Art Based Splashes v1.0 -43603"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Splash Compilation\HD Concept Splashes -43081-1-0"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Splash Compilation\HD_2K_Splash -44490"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Splash Compilation\Lost Splashes"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Splash Compilation\Lovely Loading Screens -42313-1-0"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Splash Compilation\Morrowind"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Splash Compilation\Tamriel Rebuilt"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Splash Compilation\Tribunal"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Roberts Bodies v0-3 -43138\Robert's Bodies"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Roberts Bodies v0-3 -43138\RB Bosmer and Orcish Females"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tamriel Data (HD)-44537-04"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tamriel Rebuilt 16.12\Skyrim_Main Beta-44921-02"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tamriel Rebuilt 16.12\Stirk PC_Main Beta-44922-01"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tamriel Rebuilt 16.12\Tamriel Rebuilt 16.12-42145-16-12"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tamriel Rebuilt 16.12\Tamriel Rebuilt Guilds Unified-44656-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tamriel Rebuilt 16.12\TR Data OpenMW - Patch for version 03-44537-01"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Telvanni mods\Building Up Uvirith's Legacy"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Telvanni mods\Propylons_1.3"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Telvanni mods\Rise of House Telvanni v1-52_-27525"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Telvanni mods\Uviriths_Legacy_3.52"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Books and Scrolls\Arukinns Textures - Books and Scrolls-43100-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Books and Scrolls\Arukinns Journal with AST Bookmark and Vurts Scroll 2"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Books and Scrolls\BooksofVvardenfell_2.41"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Clothes and Robes\Better Clothes compilation"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Clothes and Robes\Better Robes 0-3-1 and Robes Overhaul"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Connary\- Connarys Caves and Sewers"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Connary\- Connarys Landscapes"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Connary\- Connarys Mournhold"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Connary\- Connarys Old Mournhold"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Darknut\Darknuts Better Clothes Textures-43423-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Darknut\Darknuts Creature Textures - Compiled -43420"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Darknut\DN Armor Textures -43416-1-2"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Darknut\DN WeaponsComplete -43418-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Darknut\DN World Textures v1.0 -45056"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Ashlander Lanterns Retexture-43219-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\AST beds texture replacer-21970-1-1"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Better Kegstands 1_1-37708-1-1"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Better Skulls -28729"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Better Skulls Optional"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\GhostNulls Silverware Enhancer-1246"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Kets Paper Lanterns Retexture-45123"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Kets Potions and Beverages Retexture-44781-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Key Replacer Daduke -6749"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Long Live The Glassware - Retexture-44016-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Long Live The Limeware - Retexture-44045-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Long Live The Plates - Retexture-43935-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Morrowind Pillow Replacer v1-21884"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\R-Zero's Dwemer Coin and Quill -44025"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Septims and Dumacs 3.7-1634-3-7"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Clutter\Soulgem Replacer 0.9.1 -44117"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Other\BlessedBeTheSaints-21345"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Other\Dunmer Banners - Lysols Guar Skins compatibility"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Other\Plangkye Telvanni Textures"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Other\Road Marker Retextured-28311"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Other\Real Signposts-3879"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Items - Other\Tapestries-22551-1-1"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - Lysols Normal Maps\Lysols Guar Skin Banners Normal Mapped 1.0 for OpenMW-44355-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - MQ Tiddy\- Hlaalu Arkitektora MQ -43098-1-1"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - MQ Tiddy\- MQ Ordo Arkitektora-43940-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - MQ Tiddy\- MQ Velothi Textures-43511-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - MQ Tiddy\Armours - Outlander Styles MQ-44210-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - MQ Tiddy\Full Dwemer Retexture MQ-44264-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - MQ Tiddy\MQ Boat-Ship Textures-43520-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - MQ Tiddy\MQ Daedric Textures-43486-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - MQ Tiddy\MQ Land Textures 25363"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - MQ Tiddy\MQ Redoran Arkitektora-43003-1-1"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - MQ Tiddy\MQ Saints and Tribunal Frescoes-43810-1-0a"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - MQ Tiddy\MQ Sewer vanilla-43144-1"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Textures - MQ Tiddy\MQ Urns-43541-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\The Hostiles-42830-1-5"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tweak Mods\Ashlander_Transports"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tweak Mods\Correspondences of Morrowind-44771-1-01"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tweak Mods\EasyCamping-42919-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tweak Mods\ExpandedMoA and HR"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tweak Mods\Frostmoth Repaired_v0_31-27457"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tweak Mods\Lower First Person Sneak Mode-43108-1-0-1"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tweak Mods\Morning Star bugfix"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tweak Mods\Speechcraft Rebalance-43113-1-0"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Tweak Mods\Speed and Stamina Tweaked-43413-1-0a"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Voices and Textures - Gods and Monsters\Almalexia Voice -31656"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Voices and Textures - Gods and Monsters\BetterAlmalexia-23388"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Voices and Textures - Gods and Monsters\Dagoth Ur Voice addon v1.0-592"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Voices and Textures - Gods and Monsters\Divine Dagoth Ur- ddfields update-39431"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Voices and Textures - Gods and Monsters\Psy_Azura_Replacer1"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Voices and Textures - Gods and Monsters\Psy_VGR - CreatureEdition_1_2"
data="J:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Voices and Textures - Gods and Monsters\Vivec Voice Addon Tribunal Version-589"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Westly Mods\Master Head Pack X"
data="C:\Games\OpenMW Mods\Westly Mods\Westlys_Pluginless_Head_and_Hair_Replacer_Com plete"

[Balmas]

Here's a quick question, kinda building on the above: When my PC bricked itself a while back, I managed to save the files for my Morrowind install to an external harddrive. I'm working to get it back together so I can continue my Chord Let's Play. Since I'm going to have to redo all my mods anyway, I was debating whether I should rebuild it as it was--with MGE/MGSO--or whether I should make the jump towards OpenMW.

The question is, how compatible are the two? Can saves be transferred over to OpenMW? Can regular Morrowind mods be used with OpenMW? I've done a cursory read through the OpenMW site, without many answers.

[Temotei]

Honestly I think SkyRe's versions of the Flesh spells had the right idea. They each offered something extra, which in theory could be triggered by a perk, but mostly just worked randomly. Oakflesh provided bonus resistance to shock I think, and Stoneflesh had a random chance to give Feather. It gave them a little something extra without being just more numbers.

I preferred PerMa's version, which as far as I remember, didn't have any chance-based effects. Stoneflesh had damage reduction vs. arrows or something, Oakflesh gave bonus stamina regen, I think, etc.

Of course, their armor values stayed the same, so there was little reason to use Oakflesh by the time you hit Ironflesh even if you did like the stamina regen effect.

But yeah, as is, flesh spells are better on people who have armor already to supplement their value rather than for dedicated mages.

EDIT: I'd also like to note that Dragonhide is still better on armored characters than it is for mages because it doesn't give armor--it gives straight damage reduction, which stacks with armor's damage reduction.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Here's a quick question, kinda building on the above: When my PC bricked itself a while back, I managed to save the files for my Morrowind install to an external harddrive. I'm working to get it back together so I can continue my Chord Let's Play. Since I'm going to have to redo all my mods anyway, I was debating whether I should rebuild it as it was--with MGE/MGSO--or whether I should make the jump towards OpenMW.

The question is, how compatible are the two? Can saves be transferred over to OpenMW? Can regular Morrowind mods be used with OpenMW? I've done a cursory read through the OpenMW site, without many answers.

Depends on what mods you used to use. A lot of them aren't needed anymore, because rendering already works in the new engine, and resolutions are automatically a thing up to 4k. So a lot of things MGE/MGSO were needed to do are no longer needed, because the engine handles them innately. However, I don't think the save files themselves are compatible. They might be, but they also might not be. It might be easier to simply start anew.

Having said that, there was zero balance in Morrowind when it came to protection. This is, after all, the game in which clothing was far better than any armor, because you could enchant up pieces that added up to 100% Sanctuary and be literally invulnerable, without hacks or cheats. And it really isn't all that difficult with the Summon Golden Saint spell. Alternately, you could go for 100% Chameleon and be literally invisible, even to things which can see invisible. Or you could go Atronach sign then enchant up the other 50% spell absorb to be not only immune to spells, but actually heal magika from them.

[veti]

I think the original intent here was that the perk system would add additional knobs to twist and levers to pull. Once youre trained in heavy armor, you can pick some abilities that let you do new and interesting things with it that you cant do with light armor or robes.

IMO, it would be more interesting if heavy armour just protected you better, and the new flavourful feats were added to the others...

There's some evidence that originally the armour cap was supposed to be different for light and heavy armour, but that wasn't implemented. Would be a good start, I think - set the cap at, say, 50% for light armour. But that would require creating some real compensatory bonuses for light armour (such as a significant speed or fatigue penalty for heavy armour), and clearly that ran against the ethos that said "Never, ever, ever under any circumstances or pretext whatsoever, penalise the player for anything".

[Aeson]

Or you could go Atronach sign then enchant up the other 50% spell absorb to be not only immune to spells, but actually heal magika from them.
This is true for Oblivion, but believing this in Morrowind is a good way to get your character killed. 50 points of spell absorption from Atronach plus 50 points of spell absorbtion from other sources only absorbs at most 75% of incoming magic in Morrowind, and if your 50 points from other sources is split between multiple other sources more of the incoming magic will get through. If you wanted to be immune to magic, you'd need to have a way to get 100 points of spell absorption from a single source, or you'd need a total of 100 points of reflect from any combination of sources (note: does not protect against your own spells if they get reflected back at you), or in theory you could get 100% resistance to each of the four elements and magicka.


This is, after all, the game in which clothing was far better than any armor, because you could enchant up pieces that added up to 100% Sanctuary and be literally invulnerable, without hacks or cheats.
Even if you used all eight non-weapon, non-armor slots to get Sanctuary, you'd need on average 12.5% Sanctuary per slot. Assuming we're talking about constant effect items, that's about 65 enchanting points per item, or -325 percentage points to your enchant success chance. With 100 skill in Enchant, 100 Intelligence, and 100 Luck, you're looking at a -187.5% chance of successfully creating that item without going to an Enchanter. Even with Fortify Enchant 100, Fortify Intelligence 100, and Fortify Luck 100, you're still looking at a -50% chance of successfully creating that item yourself, and you'd need another 200 Intelligence before you hit a 0% chance of creating the item successfully on your own.

It isn't literally impossible without hacks or cheats because Alchemy and Enchant have positive feedback loops that you can exploit, but I strongly suspect that making something like that without exploiting those positive feedback loops (particularly Alchemy's for potions of intelligence +lots) would be very nearly impossible and probably have a success rate so low as to be effectively impossible, and crafting it through an Enchanter would be exorbitantly expensive.

[Triaxx]

37th lesson of Vivec: thou shalt save scum for thy life depends upon it.

I didn't mean as a chance effect, but as a bonus power on top of the protection already offered.

[Caelestion]

The question is, how compatible are the two? Can saves be transferred over to OpenMW? Can regular Morrowind mods be used with OpenMW? I've done a cursory read through the OpenMW site, without many answers.

As Shneekey notes, it's better to start a new save file with OpenMW, but you could always try transferring it and seeing what happens. OpenMW uses a different save format, I believe, and certainly a different plug-in (".omw") format, but it should be possible to rename certain .omw files to .esp files and still run them through the original CS.

OpenMW has fixed various issues and comes with optional several upgrades that you can activate by altering the main config file. Certain mods aren't compatible, but the wiki has a fairly extensive list of popular mods and how they interact with OpenMW as a whole.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

This is true for Oblivion, but believing this in Morrowind is a good way to get your character killed. 50 points of spell absorption from Atronach plus 50 points of spell absorbtion from other sources only absorbs at most 75% of incoming magic in Morrowind, and if your 50 points from other sources is split between multiple other sources more of the incoming magic will get through. If you wanted to be immune to magic, you'd need to have a way to get 100 points of spell absorption from a single source, or you'd need a total of 100 points of reflect from any combination of sources (note: does not protect against your own spells if they get reflected back at you), or in theory you could get 100% resistance to each of the four elements and magicka.Seemed to work just fine for me in my mumble-hundred hours of playing Morrowind. Never played Oblivion, so I don't know how it works there.


Even if you used all eight non-weapon, non-armor slots to get Sanctuary, you'd need on average 12.5% Sanctuary per slot. Assuming we're talking about constant effect items, that's about 65 enchanting points per item, or -325 percentage points to your enchant success chance. With 100 skill in Enchant, 100 Intelligence, and 100 Luck, you're looking at a -187.5% chance of successfully creating that item without going to an Enchanter. Even with Fortify Enchant 100, Fortify Intelligence 100, and Fortify Luck 100, you're still looking at a -50% chance of successfully creating that item yourself, and you'd need another 200 Intelligence before you hit a 0% chance of creating the item successfully on your own.

It isn't literally impossible without hacks or cheats because Alchemy and Enchant have positive feedback loops that you can exploit, but I strongly suspect that making something like that without exploiting those positive feedback loops (particularly Alchemy's for potions of intelligence +lots) would be very nearly impossible and probably have a success rate so low as to be effectively impossible, and crafting it through an Enchanter would be exorbitantly expensive.Umm... really not that hard, man. At least I never had any troubles with it. The trick is that you don't need on average 12.5% per slot. The trick is that you do constant effect Sanctuary 1-15. Then equip and unequip until you get the 15%. Rinse, wash, repeat. Much cheaper, much easier, much more effective. And it's not like you're ever going to unequip it. And because of the enchantibility of Exquisite clothing... not really all that difficult.

I mean, yea... the alchemy feedback loops are stupidly good, and a good way to 'brute force' it, but not really necessary.

You also seem to think I am speaking theoretically. I'm speaking from practice, and having done it many, many times. Granted, I generally wait until I have Azura's Star and Summon Golden Saint to power it less expensively, but it is theoretically possible the first time you roll into Balmora, if you do exploit those loops you mentioned.

You sound like you're talking about something by looking up the Wiki on enchanting and quoting stats, never having actually played with the mechanic yourself. Which isn't surprising, the game probably lost popularity before you were even born. But trust me, it works. It works very well.

[Triaxx]

I would say it's strange you've never played Oblivion... but I can totally understand why you haven't.

[Balmas]

Concept for which I would instantly buy a $600 VR headset: Morrowind VR, with modern graphics, done by the people who did LA Noir VR.


You sound like you're talking about something by looking up the Wiki on enchanting and quoting stats, never having actually played with the mechanic yourself. Which isn't surprising, the game probably lost popularity before you were even born. But trust me, it works. It works very well.

I mean, Aeson did do that playthrough with Mary around the time I was doing Carltmer, so it's not like (s)he's a noob...

Thanks for the advice with the save.

[Caelestion]

Well, if you want to totally break MW's crafting system, go to town (really!), but I am unlikely to be joining you or extolling the virtues of doing so.

[Aeson]

Seemed to work just fine for me in my mumble-hundred hours of playing Morrowind. Never played Oblivion, so I don't know how it works there.
Then you were very lucky.


Umm... really not that hard, man. At least I never had any troubles with it. The trick is that you don't need on average 12.5% per slot. The trick is that you do constant effect Sanctuary 1-15. Then equip and unequip until you get the 15%. Rinse, wash, repeat. Much cheaper, much easier, much more effective. And it's not like you're ever going to unequip it. And because of the enchantibility of Exquisite clothing... not really all that difficult.
One, I'm not much for self-inflicted tedium. If you are, good for you.

Two, CE Santuary 1-15 is still 40 enchantment points, or -200 percentage points to your chance to successfully create the item without going to a vendor. With 100 Enchant, 100 Intelligence, and 100 Luck, you're still at a -62.5% chance to successfully create the item. It can more reasonably be created than a CE Sanctuary 13, but it's still not what I'd call "ridiculously easy."


You sound like you're talking about something by looking up the Wiki on enchanting and quoting stats, never having actually played with the mechanic yourself. Which isn't surprising, the game probably lost popularity before you were even born. But trust me, it works. It works very well.
Seeing as you have no idea how old I am, what games I have or have not played, how much I have played them, or really anything else about me, and that the same is true for me with regards to you, and for most people posting in or reading this thread with respect to any other person posting in or reading this thread, I would suggest that arguments based on unprovable claims to superior age or experience and unfounded and unprovable assumptions about others' lack thereof are at best poor form and at worst a combination of an ad hominem attack and an appeal to authority.


I mean, Aeson did do that playthrough with Mary around the time I was doing Carltmer, so it's not like (s)he's a noob...
I wasn't the one who posted the Mary playthrough; that was Illven.

[Triaxx]

I assume there's some reason you can't just create a 100 Sanctuary on one Item at a vendor? And is a vendor a 100% chance?

[Balmas]

I assume there's some reason you can't just create a 100 Sanctuary on one Item at a vendor? And is a vendor a 100% chance?

Each item has a limit of how much enchantment it can hold. As a general rule, amulets, rings, and clothing are more enchantable--that is, they can hold a more powerful enchantment--than armor. You also get better enchantments with higher-tier gear, ie. you can fit a larger enchantment in an exquisite amulet than a common one, and more in Daedric than steel.

Constant effect enchantments can only be obtained with a Grand Soul gem, meaning you need to soul trap either a golden saint, one of two unique creatures, or Vivec himself to have a constant effect enchantment. Since you can summon and soul trap Golden Saints, that's probably the most practical enchantment. Grand Souls provide 400 enchantment points, of which you can fit at most 120 in a high-quality amulet/ring.

Enchanting on your own can be done, but it's ridiculously difficult, with low odds of success unless you're abusing potion loops to get Fortify Intelligence +Lots. Enchanters have a 100% chance of creating the item you want, but their services are prohibitively expensive, on the order of tens of thousands of septims when most merchants only have a few hundred septims available for sale of items.

The limiting factors are how enchantable the items are. What I'd really like is a mod that makes the limit more about the soul gem, so you can actually get all that goodness on one amulet.

[Triaxx]

Ah, that seems somehow more sensible than Skyrim limiting what can be enchanted on what.

[LibraryOgre]

37th lesson of Vivec: thou shalt save scum for thy life depends upon it.

I didn't mean as a chance effect, but as a bonus power on top of the protection already offered.

I didn't get the power of CHIM just to NOT save scum. ;-)

And, of course, there's an additional benefit to playing a Breton who likes light armor: The Boots of Blinding Speed. Get 50% another magic resistance, even for an instant, and slap those speedy boys on your feet. Who cares what magnitude your levitate is at when you've got a 250 speed?

[Keltest]

I didn't get the power of CHIM just to NOT save scum. ;-)

And, of course, there's an additional benefit to playing a Breton who likes light armor: The Boots of Blinding Speed. Get 50% another magic resistance, even for an instant, and slap those speedy boys on your feet. Who cares what magnitude your levitate is at when you've got a 250 speed?

Plus, it sounds like youre tap dancing your way across the environment, which is an amusing enough image on its own.

[Balmas]

*Don't Stop Me Now echoes in the distance as Chord zips past*

I mean, if you're playing a Breton bard with the boots of Speed, it's your solemn duty to have only the best tunes around.

[Keltest]

*Don't Stop Me Now echoes in the distance as Chord zips past*

I mean, if you're playing a Breton bard with the boots of Speed, it's your solemn duty to have only the best tunes around.

Are you still updating that BTW? I found Chord's tired dismay at being the Chosen One greatly amusing.

[Balmas]

Are you still updating that BTW? I found Chord's tired dismay at being the Chosen One greatly amusing.

Working on getting it online again. After my PC bricked itself, I managed to save the files, but I'm still in the process of installing mods, troubleshooting, and getting things to a state where I can record stably.

Step one: Get MGSO working in such a way that I don't crash every time I go too fast with jumping.

[Triaxx]

How exactly did it brick itself? I never did find out what happened.

[Balmas]

I don't even know, man. It just bluescreened one day, and nothing but a fresh Windows install could get it on its feet. Nothing wrong with the hardware, that I could find, and I could never pinpoint a software cause either.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

If ESVI has stupid advertisements in the opening screen like Skyrim SE does, I'm going to seriously consider not buying it. :smallmad: Seriously?!! It's bad enough getting that garbage in ESO, but at least ESO has the excuse that it needs to keep the servers running! :smallfurious: Next thing you know they'll have advertisements in-game!

[The_Jackal]

If ESVI has stupid advertisements in the opening screen like Skyrim SE does, I'm going to seriously consider not buying it. :smallmad: Seriously?!! It's bad enough getting that garbage in ESO, but at least ESO has the excuse that it needs to keep the servers running! :smallfurious: Next thing you know they'll have advertisements in-game!

I didn't realize they were hyping Elder Scrolls VI yet.

[Triaxx]

They're not. Supposedly they've not even bothered to start on it.

[Inarius]

Yeah rumor has it their next game out will be a sci fi game called Starfield. Then they're going to release another full sized game and then eventually they'll get around to TES 6. So like 4-6 years away if their next game releases this year.

[Triaxx]

Hopefully what shows up between now and then is actually good.

[factotum]

When did they add adverts to the loading screen of Skyrim? I've never seen one.

[veti]

The initial launch screen of Skyrim Special Edition features about 4 lines of text in the upper right-hand corner, which is generally used to plug some tat from their "paid mods" store.

It's tiresome, but not that bad. It could have been on every loading screen...

[Triaxx]

I'm willing to bet, that like Fallout 4, there's a mod for that.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Thing is, if they have four years before they officially start working on it, then they have four years to plan for all kinds of microtransaction garbage to be baked into it between now and then.

Which is why I'm venting now. I can go back to normal-version Skyrim for an add-free experience, but ESVI might not have that option. A single player game should not be subjecting me to this.

[DigoDragon]

It's tiresome, but not that bad. It could have been on every loading screen...

Unless it could cause breakage of certain mods when the ads update like it was doing in FO4?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Enchanting on your own can be done, but it's ridiculously difficult, with low odds of success unless you're abusing potion loops to get Fortify Intelligence +Lots. Enchanters have a 100% chance of creating the item you want, but their services are prohibitively expensive, on the order of tens of thousands of septims when most merchants only have a few hundred septims available for sale of items.There's also the Creeper, and a certain mudcrab. Doesn't take long to bankroll yourself to the point where you can max-enchant clothing and jewlery, even without any enchanting skill whatsoever. In many ways, it's easier than grinding up to 100 enchanting, you can do it in very short order, especially if you know how to cheese Ordinators. Understanding certain barter concepts can help you get the most out of items that supposedly are more expensive than any vendor anywhere in Morrowind can afford.


What I'd really like is a mod that makes the limit more about the soul gem, so you can actually get all that goodness on one amulet.Interesting idea. I'd go for that.

[The_Jackal]

They're not. Supposedly they've not even bothered to start on it.

My understanding is that they're working on the game engine. Given that Bethsoft and Id software are both owned by Zenimax, I expect their next engine to be a custom implementation of IdTech6 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_6).


Thing is, if they have four years before they officially start working on it, then they have four years to plan for all kinds of microtransaction garbage to be baked into it between now and then.

Which is why I'm venting now. I can go back to normal-version Skyrim for an add-free experience, but ESVI might not have that option. A single player game should not be subjecting me to this.

The problem is that microtransactions are really, really profitable. Look at Eve Online, or GTA Online, or League of Legends, and you can see just how much cash you can soak people for. Honestly, I attribute much of Bethesda's success to bucking industry trends and just offering a good, solid, single-player game without any BS. You would think that they'd be able to convince Zenimax of that fact. We'll see whether they wise up.

[Triaxx]

What's the clue to finding that Mudcrab? I can find Creeper, but the crab eludes me.

[factotum]

What's the clue to finding that Mudcrab? I can find Creeper, but the crab eludes me.

If I remember right, the Mudcrab lurks in that area of small islands to the east of Vivec City.

[Caelestion]

I don't know why people bother with the mudcrab. Given that it's a monster and therefore doesn't barter, you might as well just add the cash into your inventory via the console and then dump whatever items you think fair. It's no less cheaty, after all.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I don't know why people bother with the mudcrab. Given that it's a monster and therefore doesn't barter, you might as well just add the cash into your inventory via the console and then dump whatever items you think fair. It's no less cheaty, after all.

It is an intentional mechanic included in the base game by the developers. By definition, not a cheat. Cheezy, perhaps, but not cheating. It's a reward for NOT killing everything like a typical TES murderhobo.

[Triaxx]

On the islands near Vivec... yup, typical Morrowind directions. Good enough to find it, but irritatingly non specific.

[Caelestion]

It is an intentional mechanic included in the base game by the developers. By definition, not a cheat. Cheezy, perhaps, but not cheating. It's a reward for NOT killing everything like a typical TES murderhobo.

Lots of cheats are included in many games. It's an Easter egg, certainly, but that doesn't make its use any less subverting of the intended bartering mechanics.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Lots of cheats are included in many games. It's an Easter egg, certainly, but that doesn't make its use any less subverting of the intended bartering mechanics.

Depends on what you mean by "intended bartering mechanics", I suppose.

[Keltest]

On the islands near Vivec... yup, typical Morrowind directions. Good enough to find it, but irritatingly non specific.

It was good enough for me to find him. If you google it, I'm sure you can find a map with his location marked.

Speaking of which, I just used a Mark spell to teleport back to him every time I found something worth more than a thousand gold. I'm sure there are ways to sell a glass longsword to a normal vendor for more than a tiny fraction of its value, but frankly I don't really want to have to look up a guide to do the same thing this crustacean will do for me without any extra work.

[Triaxx]

There's a multiple mark mod that I hope works with OpenMW, which is how I intend to play Morrowind.

[veti]

Depends on what you mean by "intended bartering mechanics", I suppose.

My personal preferred route to infinite money in Morrowind is to sell arrows singly, then buy them back in bulk, negotiating a steeper discount each time. This makes a profit from the get-go, and simultaneously improves my barter skill.

After doing this a few times, I have no trouble buying whatever I like from whoever I like, then selling it back to them for more than I just paid for it. At that point, obviously money is irrelevant.

Never found the mudcrab.

[Caelestion]

The Multi-Mark mod does work for OpenMW, provided that you get the OMW version and place it beneath any other mods affecting spells, including MW Rebirth.

I also never understood why people were fixated with getting the "true" value of something. Glass, ebony and so on is more of an object of barter, rather than something you can expect to get the value stamped on the item.

[factotum]

My personal preferred route to infinite money in Morrowind is to sell arrows singly, then buy them back in bulk, negotiating a steeper discount each time. This makes a profit from the get-go, and simultaneously improves my barter skill.

What happens when the merchant runs out of money? The main advantage of Creeper and Mudcrab is that they have more money than most other merchants (*all* other merchants, in the case of the mudcrab), so you can sell much more expensive items to them for nearer their true value.

[Triaxx]

I tend to collect and sell either everything not nailed down, or huge quantities of the actually valuable stuff, so money is no issue for me.

[Keltest]

The Multi-Mark mod does work for OpenMW, provided that you get the OMW version and place it beneath any other mods affecting spells, including MW Rebirth.

I also never understood why people were fixated with getting the "true" value of something. Glass, ebony and so on is more of an object of barter, rather than something you can expect to get the value stamped on the item.

Because glass and ebony items are heavy, to say nothing of daedric, and no single merchant sells even a fraction of enough stuff that I would actually use for me to get even a fraction of their value out of that. I would have to buy the entire inventory of an armorer and then sell it back to them over the course of a week to get my money's worth out of that one glass sword.

[Caelestion]

"Your money's worth". Well, if you must insist on getting every single coin that the glass item says it's worth. then yes, you do what you have to. What any item is really worth is what you can get for it, regardless of what the game claims its value is.

[halfeye]

"Your money's worth". Well, if you must insist on getting every single coin that the glass item says it's worth. then yes, you do what you have to. What any item is really worth is what you can get for it, regardless of what the game claims its value is.

That's surely true in any game. The interesting question is why did the developers think there is a value different to that which you can get for it?

[Balmas]

So, a combination of Diverse Dragons and Dragon Combat Overhaul make for a surefire way to tear your hair out. Chadwick just spent a full hour on one dragon fight.

Part of it was that he'd just fought five other dragons in the same day (one at Northwind Mine which called another for help, and then two which he'd run away from at an earlier point who hadn't despawned and were still out for blood, and then the scripted dragon fight at Kynesgrove.) As a result, he had a grand total of three of his good potions.

Part of it was that Dragon Combat Overhaul makes it so that not only can dragons spawn in multiples of up to three, but that they can then call for help and summon up to two more dragons to fight with them.

Part of it is that Diverse Dragons Collection offers dragons with much more powerful, deleveled dragons with more armor, more shouts, and much more damaging shouts.

So, when I walked over to Delphine to talk about the Blades, and three dragons showed up, and instantly summoned two more to fight, any one of whose breath weapons was enough to do 150% of my health bar in damage... Well, let's just say that Chadwick spent a lot of time in the little entrance to the nordic ruins nearby, pelting dragons with the Wabbajack, while Inigo and Lydia got repeatedly toasted.

[Aeson]

That's surely true in any game. The interesting question is why did the developers think there is a value different to that which you can get for it?
In the case of Morrowind, an item's base value is less its "true" value than its value relative to other things in the game. You might not be able to get 100 gold for an item with a base value of 100, but you can probably get about twice as much for it as for an item with a base value of 50 or about half as much for it as for an item with a base value of 200; similarly, it'll probably cost you about twice as much to purchase as an item with a base value of 50 or about half as much as an item with a base value of 200 would.

In a lot of other games, if the value listed for an item is not the sale value, then it's its purchase value, or sometimes a nominal value typically between the purchase and sale values, with actual purchase/sale values being determined by applying some multiplier to the base value.


My personal preferred route to infinite money in Morrowind is to sell arrows singly, then buy them back in bulk, negotiating a steeper discount each time. This makes a profit from the get-go, and simultaneously improves my barter skill.
Personally, if I were going to go for an infinite money loop in Morrowind, I'd rather go to a vendor, such as Nalcarya of White Haven, who has at least one pair of restocking ingredients which share an effect, buy the ingredients, turn them into potioins, and sell them back. Takes a bit more setup, but as long as your Alchemy skill is decent it's a lot faster than selling an arrow at a time and then buying the stack back.

[Triaxx]

@Balmas: THIS IS SKY- *burnt, frosted, electrocuted* If only your shield made you apocalypse proof. :D Honestly I'm getting a lot of mileage out of Spellbreaker. I'd not be surviving Solstheim without it.

[Caelestion]

Also, if you want to get tens of thousands of gold from each piece of glass armour, why not simply install a mod that increases Meldor's gold supply or which adds a few high-value vendors to the game? If that's your play-style, why bother wasting time with abusing bugs in the Mercantile system or spending ages with Easter egg merchants when you could simply go to a high-value merchant and be done with it?

[Keltest]

Also, if you want to get tens of thousands of gold from each piece of glass armour, why not simply install a mod that increases Meldor's gold supply or which adds a few high-value vendors to the game? If that's your play-style, why bother wasting time with abusing bugs in the Mercantile system or spending ages with Easter egg merchants when you could simply go to a high-value merchant and be done with it?

I don't necessarily care if its tens of thousands of gold, I just don't want to have to go through a song and dance every time I find one to get any more use out of it than I could out of, say, a steel equivalent piece. Ebony and Daedric items in particular are heavy, so ive found myself leaving them where they are instead of pawning them because I just cant possibly justify taking them over ten times their achievable value in bonemold and dwarven items.

[Ogremindes]

Does anyone know if the mods Brigandage and Common Clothes support Frostfall? In haven't found an answer on Google and I'm sans PC ATM.

[Kesnit]

I just ran into a minor but annoying glitch and was wondering if anyone knows a solution.

I made a werewolf and completed the Companions questline. I'm trying to get the Werewolf Master achievement, so just went to towns, killed everyone I could, and ate their hearts. My werewolf perk level increased and I finally took the last perk. However, the achievement didn't pop.

Has anyone had this happen? Do you know why it happened?

[Triaxx]

I always thought that required the totems.

[Dhavaer]

I always thought that required the totems.

No, I got it without the totems last month.

Have you used mods or the console at all?

[Kesnit]

No, I got it without the totems last month.

Have you used mods or the console at all?

My game is modded, though I don't think I have anything that affects werewolf perks. I did give myself a few of the perks with the console, but when the achievement didn't pop, I reloaded a save before I gave myself the perks and did the kill-a-thon.

I was in god mode, but my wife plays continually in god mode and it hasn't kept her from popping the achievements.

[Balmas]

Which version of Skyrim? If you're using Special Edition, you need to use an achievements enabler because Bethesda won't let you get achievements in modded playthroughs.

[Triaxx]

What Balmas said, and did you get all four ranks of the base damage boost?

[DigoDragon]

Which version of Skyrim? If you're using Special Edition, you need to use an achievements enabler because Bethesda won't let you get achievements in modded playthroughs.

Wait, for Steam achievements? Huh, thanks for mentioning it. I didn't know that was a thing.

[Kesnit]

Which version of Skyrim? If you're using Special Edition, you need to use an achievements enabler because Bethesda won't let you get achievements in modded playthroughs.

Original edition.


What Balmas said, and did you get all four ranks of the base damage boost?

Yes.

[Triaxx]

Did you check if you already had the achievement?

[Kesnit]

Did you check if you already had the achievement?

*chuckle* Yes, twice. The first time after I tried giving myself the perks, and again after I tried just grinding.

[Triaxx]

Anyone else tried the mod Northern Encounters for Skyrim LE? Some of the encounters are hard. So far none of them were as hard as a little place called Atmoran outpost, full of a dozen Draugr Deathlords, who all shout. Sometimes together, sometimes one after another. It took over an hour to work my way through the tower, only to find a ladder at the end. This lead me to the roof, with another five deathlords who proceeded to shout me off the tower. Fortunately Ordinator's version of Cushioned grants fall damage immunity. So I go back up and instantly go flying again. The sheer hilarity of the situation is just... beyond me.

[Balmas]

I have never been one for introspection. After all, basic training teaches a soldier that when an order comes, it is to be obeyed, instantly, and with a minimum of fuss. Still, as I sit in Candlehearth hall, I feel the need to get my thoughts down on paper. Maybe then the maelstrom of thoughts will settle.

Thirty-five days. By the Nine, it feels as if it's been so much longer. Thirty-five days since I helped my dear Edwinna to board a transport bound to Hammerfell, where she'd be safe from Thalmor inquisition or Imperial reprisals. Thirty-five days since I left that note resigning my command of the Cheydinhal garrison, so I could join the fight for Skyrim's freedom. Thirty-four days since that imperial patrol caught me crossing the border at Bruma.

Much has happened, since that day. Quite by accident, I've become a prominent member of society. Thane of Whiterun. A proud member of the most ancient and respected fighting force in the world. I somehow convinced the Mages of Winterhold of my competence in magic, despite most of that ability residing in the collection of amulets and assorted doodads I've created. I've become a smith to rival Eorlund. I even fell in with a criminal gang in Riften, and am doing my best to subtly sabotage them. All of this, without even touching on that most surprising development.

Dovahkiin. Dragonborn. The Greybeards called me to their temple, voices echoing across the sky, as Talos of old. After passing their trials, they named me Ysmir, Dovahsebrom, Stormcrown. The solemnity of the moment escaped me at the time, and it was only after I left their temple and studied the words spoken that I discovered the burden they placed on me. More than ever, now, my actions carry weight beyond that of a simple Imperial garrison commander.

Mayhaps that's why my thoughts weigh on me so heavily. Thirty-four days of travel, of trials, of learning again how to survive in the homeland I left so long ago. My circuit has taken me through nearly all of the holds of Skyrim--even now, the urge to call them provinces rises in me. I have seen much, and it has been… well, almost a nonchalant affair to slash my way through all that oppose me. I've slain a score of dragons, devoured their souls, and turned their knowledge to greater my own strength. And tonight, I finally took the step that binds me to my chosen course, to Ulfric and his Stormcloaks.

I've known it was what I was going to do. It was why I left Cyrodil. I left Skyrim as a boy to defend my home, my empire, from an Aldmeri threat. And now, having seen that the Empire could not, would not respect the sacrifices made to achieve that defense, I return to defend my birth home. Ulfric promises that we can return to the old ways, we can unite against the meric threat. We can convene the Moot, choose a high king, begin to prepare for war. We free Skyrim from the yoke of the Thalmor death squads, while simultaneously allowing Cyrodil to turn all their efforts towards recovering and rebuilding.

So it shook me to my core when I came back to the Palace of the Kings, and heard Ulfric shouting, "Damn the Jarls, and damn the Moot if it means we hand Skyrim to the elves." Such thoughts seemed… Well, I'll be blunt. I nearly walked, then and there. Already, I avoid killing Imperial patrols if I can. Too easily, my thoughts turn to friendly faces, and how many of these boys may be just like I was at their age: fresh recruits, having joined to protect their home. To see Ulfric Stormcloak blustering about how he'd completely destroy the old ways if it meant being able to fight the Thalmor… I'm not sure how to describe my level of unease. All I could think of was all the imperial propaganda plastered on the walls of the Cheydinhal barracks, about how Ulfric was a fascist, who relies on force of personality to achieve his goals, and who's only in this for power and his own aggrandizement. A traitorous thought ran across my mind that maybe they were right.

I still took the oath, of course. What other option was there? To allow the Aldmeri Dominion to crush any who might even think of worshipping Talos? To let the Thalmor run rampant over my homeland? This war drains both Cyrodil and Skyrim of their resources and troops; it has to end. Still, I felt as if it were with another's voice that I took the oath binding me to Ulfric Stormcloak. Intellectually, I found little different between their oath and the one I'd administered to new recruits so many times; both require fealty and obedience to a leader, their officers, and your fellow soldiers. But while I felt proud to administer that oath, proud to take it in defense of both Cyrodil and my homeland, swearing fealty to Ulfric left me feeling vaguely unclean.

Mayhaps I've just been a soldier for too long. In my heart of hearts, there remains an Imperial trooper who feels that he is committing not just treason, but a blasphemy against everything he stood for these long years. I long for the familiar embrace of Legion steel, and know that I'll not be able to wear it again until this conflict is over; even when the war is won, the shame will probably still keep me from my uniform for a time.

Bah. The thunder of my thoughts has only increased for having written this down. After I finish my stew, I'll turn in for the night. I'll talk to the Aretino lad in the morning, and then it will be time to head towards Whiterun once more; Korvanjund awaits.

[Psyren]

So, who in here plays ESO and how is it? I'm under increasing pressure to roll and I just noticed some cheapo Steam keys for it, but I'm still on the fence. What do people think of the combat, how is the group content, how is the endgame?

[Keltest]

I play it, I enjoy it. Theres two engames to strive for: PvE and PvP. The PvP is really easy to enjoy IMO, the PvE works best if you have a guild or a group of friends (big surprise). The group combat can get a little hectic at first, but once you start figuring everything out I think it works pretty well, with everybody having clearly defined roles that have just enough overlap that a good, say, tank, can help backup heal if you have a new healer, and a good single target DPS can help clear out the minions that the AoE dps should be dealing with (and vice versa).

As an MMO, it is at its most enjoyable if you have friends, but theres plenty of content doable if youre a solo player or are just killing time until your friends get on.

You don't need an ESO plus membership to enjoy the game, but ive been told it is greatly worth it if you play more than casually.

[Inarius]

ESO is a pretty solid MMO and if you like the genre you really should give it a try. Combat wise its somewhere between slower tab target combat like FF14 and high paced action combat like black desert. It leans more towards the actiony side but you don't have to worry about things like i-frames and perfect blocks to avoid damage.

Group content is pretty solid, there's a large amount of 4 man dungeons and a decent amount of 12 mans out there. Most of the 4 mans can be done with a duo or trio if you wind up a friend or two short for the night which worked out pretty well for me since my current gaming friends are in timezones all over the place. Generally speaking the older dungeons are a bit easier while the newer stuff that's released via DLC tends to be a lot less forgiving so there are dungeons to build towards as you gear up and gain more champion points (basically endgame levelling).

Endgame is a bit weird because of level scaling to the point where it really depends on your goals for the game. If you're there for getting high end gear via 12 mans you'll find the game pretty lacking. If you're there to quest you'll find a ton of things to do, The thieves guild and dark brotherhood questlines in particular are pretty fun, though the rewards will be lacking. 4 mans tend to offer a middle ground, there's a lot of them though only some of the gear you get from them is as good as what you can get from 12 mans. There's also a solid pvp zone that's always active and offers either large scale pvp in cyrodil or smaller scale pvp inside the imperial city itself if you're looking for smaller scale skirmishes.

As Keltest mentioned subbing for the game is a fairly good deal because you get full access to all the DLC. It also gives you a crafting bag which is a godsend if you want to do any crafting at all in the game. You'll also get 15 dollars worth of ingame store currency so if you ever intend to buy crowns to get something subbing can be the better option.

[Anteros]

So, who in here plays ESO and how is it? I'm under increasing pressure to roll and I just noticed some cheapo Steam keys for it, but I'm still on the fence. What do people think of the combat, how is the group content, how is the endgame?

I played it for a few months and it's pretty fun to just run around and explore everything. It's basically an Elder Scrolls game with slightly modified gameplay and multiplayer. I don't think there's really much in the way of endgame, but exploring the setting was fun.

[Asmotherion]

This feedback question goes to people who have played both Legendary (or Original Skyrim+a DLC+a Mod) and Remastered on a PC/Laptop:

Questions:
-Has Esbern's Voice finally been unpacked by default? Other major fixes that have been fixed?
-Does the Remastered Edition include or is compatible with the DLCs? If the latter, does it also work with Legendary Edition?
-Compatibility with non-Steam based mods tested?
-Do you believe Bethesda did a better job at upgrading the Textures, Meshes and overall visuals than modders did with various mods?
-As someone who still occasionally plays Skyrim, would you encourage me to remove my Mods and install Skyrim Remastered, or keep my Skyrim experiance as it is, and perhaps try Remastered on an other console/PC?

Thank you for your time. I am just a bit worried about installing it, and regreting it latter on because of loosing my mods and saves over something that would be worth less. Thank you again.

[Triaxx]

Bugfixes in a Bethesda Game? Yeah, no. Actually rather than fixing the audio, there was quite a lot of complaining about it getting worse.

DLC's are packed into the game.

Not all the old mods work, but a lot of them have been tested.

That one's a debate. Some say yes, some say no. I'm firmly in the doesn't matter in the slightest camp.

Special Edition installs into a new folder, so you can have two separate games. Not all the old mods have been ported, or will be ported, but some new ones have popped up. It's your choice. Personally I'd just go new game and not take the risk.

[Balmas]

This feedback question goes to people who have played both Legendary (or Original Skyrim+a DLC+a Mod) and Remastered on a PC/Laptop:

Questions:
-Has Esbern's Voice finally been unpacked by default? Other major fixes that have been fixed?

Man, they're shipping the Skyrim for the switch, seven years later, and they still haven't included the most basic bug fixes.


-Does the Remastered Edition include or is compatible with the DLCs? If the latter, does it also work with Legendary Edition?

The Special Edition includes all the DLC. It's still packaged in the same file format, though, with the DLC having their own .bsa and .esm files.


-Compatibility with non-Steam based mods tested?

Not sure what you're asking here. Do you mean, do non-steam mods work? Yeah, that's fine. I'll note that some mods for Legendary edition will work with Special Edition right off the bat, some you can convert by just changing the master in the creation kit, and some will have to wait until either the mod author or another good samaritan ports it to the special edition. I'm still waiting for Someguy to release his mods for Special Edition, for example, but he says that's not going to happen until he finishes his latest mod, Thirsk Mead Hall Saga.


-Do you believe Bethesda did a better job at upgrading the Textures, Meshes and overall visuals than modders did with various mods?

Oh, heck no. You're always going to be able to find modded textures that are either more detailed or more to your tastes than those provided in the base game. Meshes are largely unchanged from vanilla LE Skyrim. I will note that for the Special Edition, Bethesda changed the color palette somewhat--while you'll still be seeing a lot of browns, greys, greens, and whites, they're much more saturated than in the Legendary version, and you'll alwso have some lovely pastels on sunny days.. Considering just how washed out LE was, I consider that a positive thing.

However, for me, the main draw of the Special edition isn't the improved textures or visuals, since I'm going to be modding that anyway. Instead, the true benefit is the new, 64-bit engine. That lets me use more processing power and more RAM, and the installation is much more stable as a result. The default graphics aren't that special, but you can do more with the Special edition.


-As someone who still occasionally plays Skyrim, would you encourage me to remove my Mods and install Skyrim Remastered, or keep my Skyrim experiance as it is, and perhaps try Remastered on an other console/PC?

The good news is that both Steam and Nexus treat LE and SE as separate games, so you can keep your vanilla save as it is. It's only an issue if you're on an SSD and don't have the storage to spare.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

While we're on the subject of mods for SE, is there any particular trick to porting warpaints over from vanilla to SE? Do they need to be in a different format or is the file structure particularly picky about being added to? I ask because I tried linking them in and now the entire face of the race modified vanishes after a few clicks, leaving creepy floating eyes and mouth and hair and that's it.

[veti]

Thank you for your time. I am just a bit worried about installing it, and regreting it latter on because of loosing my mods and saves over something that would be worth less. Thank you again.

If you've got the disc space and the budget for it, I wouldn't hesitate.

Your old mods and saves will be fine, because it's a whole separate game. As Balmas said, it's only an issue if you're short of space. There are a lot of mods available for SSE in its own right - the full range will probably never catch up with Oldrim, but there are plenty to be getting on with.

I was ambivalent at first, but now I've clocked almost as many hours in SSE as in Oldrim, and I've never really looked back. Most of the old bugs are still there (although stability and loading times are better), but there are lots of little changes that, in my estimation, are far better than any modder came up with. My favourite is how you can actually shelter from snow and rain now - it no longer falls right through arches/roofs/trees/whatever else you might try to shelter under (although, and this is even better, the wind does blow it through).

The colour palette and flare effects make for a greyer, earthier landscape and everyday people - not a bad thing - but that makes the colourful scenes stand out all the more. Fighting a dragon at sunset is a truly beautiful scene.

Enjoy.

[Triaxx]

Me, I'm sticking with Oldrim, since too many of the mods I want are Oldrim only.

[halfeye]

-Has Esbern's Voice finally been unpacked by default?

What is this about? I had a problem with Esbern's sound file, but I thought it was peculiar to my machine, or perhaps to the way I played through that particular run. Or is Esbern't Voice something different?

[Kareeah_Indaga]

While we're on the subject of mods for SE, is there any particular trick to porting warpaints over from vanilla to SE? Do they need to be in a different format or is the file structure particularly picky about being added to? I ask because I tried linking them in and now the entire face of the race modified vanishes after a few clicks, leaving creepy floating eyes and mouth and hair and that's it.

For the curious: looks like it was just the file structure being pickier than Skyrim original vanilla.

[druid91]

So I started playing Skyrim again. Going good old fashioned Thu'um shouting Heavy armored two hander Nord. Though with the addition of using a horse whenever possible. Though some fights simply make that impossible to do practically, like Dragons or dungeons.

[BlueMoon1991]

Hey everyone.
What is your favorite Elder Scrolls game? I have a love for Skyrim but ive always been partial to Oblivion. Its just a really fun and entertaining game!
Also, what do you typical play as when you do play Elder Scrolls and why?
I always go with Argonian :D love the water breathing and resist to diseases!

[Crow]

My favorite was Morrowind. The way they executed the story for the Nerevarine was probably some of the best writing they have ever done for an Elder Scrolls game.

Also, I really enjoyed how you didn't have a quest marker, so you had to rely on NPCs for directions everywhere. "Go past the caldera, off to the west and keep going until you reach a big tree in the shape of Azura. If you reach a big pile of guar dung, you've gone too far."

[BlueMoon1991]

My favorite was Morrowind. The way they executed the story for the Nerevarine was probably some of the best writing they have ever done for an Elder Scrolls game.

Also, I really enjoyed how you didn't have a quest marker, so you had to rely on NPCs for directions everywhere. "Go past the caldera, off to the west and keep going until you reach a big tree in the shape of Azura. If you reach a big pile of guar dung, you've gone too far."

I havent played to much into Morrowind but i do have it! I liked what I did play of it!
I remember when I did first play Morrowind, it felt different to me in some way. And i got really hooked. But had some issues and wasnt able to finish it. I need to get back in to it xD

[Lord Raziere]

My favorite is skyrim cause I actually managed to complete it while both Oblivion and Morrowind I just died a lot and got nowhere.

I typically go orc, since I so rarely get to play orcs in any videogame.

[BlueMoon1991]

My favorite is skyrim cause I actually managed to complete it while both Oblivion and Morrowind I just died a lot and got nowhere.

I typically go orc, since I so rarely get to play orcs in any videogame.

Orcs are pretty freaking awesome. If I am not going Argonian then im going Orc! XD
I wish more gamee actually gave the options to play as an Orc, well actually..anything for that matter.

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Wonder: Merged in another Elder Scrolls thread; there may be some errant double posts before this, as a result.

[DigoDragon]

Skyrim's the only game in the series I've played so far. I do own Oblivion. Just... still in the box. >.>



So I started playing Skyrim again. Going good old fashioned Thu'um shouting Heavy armored two hander Nord. Though with the addition of using a horse whenever possible. Though some fights simply make that impossible to do practically, like Dragons or dungeons.

I vaguely remember an occasional glitch in Convenient Horses where certain specific dungeons let me call my horse cause the zone was flagged as being an "outside" area. You're a better warrior than I if you can manage a fight on horseback.

[Triaxx]

Light Cavalry tactics, not heavy. Ride up, strike and ride past. Long slashing attacks are your best option. Make them chase you then loop around and hit them again. CH is helpful, since sprinting with a weapon out will knock them down.

[factotum]

I do own Oblivion. Just... still in the box. >.>


Best place for it, believe me, Oblivion was not a good game.

[LibraryOgre]

Best place for it, believe me, Oblivion was not a good game.

While it has some very real problems (level scaling), I disagree that it's a bad game. I find it quite fun and playable... you just have to decide not to level if you can avoid it, so the world doesn't outpace you.

[Caelestion]

Best place for it, believe me, Oblivion was not a good game.

Nonsense. Oblivion had several very real flaws, but all the TES games do and it certainly deserves to be played. The UI is far too large, the faces are hideous and the levelling system needs to be purged with holy fire, but there's countless hours of fun to be found there.

[LibraryOgre]

The UI is far too large

Really curious about this point. What do you mean by that?

[Caelestion]

It's seemingly designed for playing an Xbox from halfway across the room, as on a PC, the subtitles are huge, the compass and HUD icons are larger than necessary and the inventory screen can handle a mere six items at once. The DarNified UI is an essential mod for me.

[Balmas]

I've only ever played the three most modern of the Elder Scrolls titles. (Main titles, I should say; I and my obsessive personality are staying well away from Elder Scrolls Online.)

Both Morrowind and Skyrim are in the top ten of my fave games of all time, but I think that Morrowind has slightly edged out Skyrim for favorite game. In fact, I find that my Skyrim install is increasingly full of mods dedicated to making Skyrim more like Morrowind. The sheer diversity in the world, the wonderful surge of excitement on hearing the majesty of Morrowind's music, the joy of simply wandering around Morrowind's tiny continent, all make it my favorite Elder Scrolls game.

Skyrim is also good, but it's one of those titles where I just put on a youtube playlist on the second monitor and let my brain shut off for a while. It's the game I play when I've had a long day at work, and don't quite have the brainspace for something like Witcher. Gaming comfort food, if you will.

The only one I don’t really like is Oblivion. It's not that it's a bad game. (Indeed, I think it has some of the best written quests in Elder Scrolls history.) The problem is that while it has its good points, the flaws quickly add up. The worst is that it all gets repetitive quickly, which means that I can't play too long without wanting to start play a different game.



Nonsense. Oblivion had several very real flaws, but all the TES games do and it certainly deserves to be played. The UI is far too large, the faces are hideous and the levelling system needs to be purged with holy fire, but there's countless hours of fun to be found there.

Eh, 'countless' is a bit of a stretch, I think.

[Caelestion]

Well, I've literally lost count of how much time I spent playing the game back in the day and that's with Wrye Bash helpfully telling me how many saved hours I had put into each character.

[halfeye]

Skyrim's the only game in the series I've played so far. I do own Oblivion. Just... still in the box. >.>

You are missing something wonderful.

There are issues that should be faced:

1/ Leveling up needs to be dealt with carefully. You can do 5-5-5 with 5-5-luck leveling, that will leave you somewhat overpowered, which is enjoyable, but not as challenging as may be ideal (the default system gives you on average something like 1-2-2, which is not enough, I'm kind of thinking of a playthrough trying to get 3-3-3 or 4-3-4 or something like, I won't be doing that for a while yet if I ever do). I've seen it argued that for a Thief character, the default leveling system works fine (I never play thieves, so it may be true for all I know).

2/ Your allied NPCs don't level as you do, but all the enemies do, so you want to do most of the main quest early, because you need the help of your allies more in that (after the Battle of Bruma is one potential waiting point).

3/ The sigil stones you receive for closing the Oblivion gates stop leveling at level 17, so you may want to wait till then to start shutting ones you don't otherwise have a reason to shut.

4/ There's an issue with save games getting corrupted, it may be only with later versions of the executable, typically shows up at around level 13 to level 17, fires slow down so they don't flicker, there was an easy fix on the web, I don't know if it's still available for download.

I believe Oblivion is the best of the Elder Scrolls games I have played (I don't play with mods).

[NovenFromTheSun]

I'm planning an Oblivion playthrough soon, can anyone recommend a mod that fixes the level scaling without removing it completely (I still want a sense that I'm not the only one increasing their skills)?

[Triaxx]

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul. It doesn't quite fix it in the way you're hoping. But it stops the enemies from getting too much tougher.

Balmas, did you play without that?

[Techwarrior]

I just want something akin to a points system, instead of having to try and get 5s by not leveling skills. That was always the part that made me hate playing oblivion.

[Balmas]

I don't have the modlist on me, but I recall playing with a mod that made leveling up simpler, something like Madd leveler did for Morrowind. The problem was that while this allowed all attributes to rise without worrying about 10-10-Luck skill increases, it meant I also leveled up much more quickly. I think I installed OOO halfway through, but I'm not sure I did it correctly, since I still saw minotaurs, trolls, and unkillable goblins.

[Triaxx]

Yeah, OOO needed to be from the beginning since it adds absolutely tons of stuff.

[Caelestion]

OOO is my go-to mod for playing Oblivion, even more so than DarNified UI. More content, better distributed loot and monsters that don't automatically scale to your level.

I used to use KCAS (https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/1888) for my levelling needs, but it's been so long now, there's probably at least a couple of better options since then.

[halfeye]

The biggest difference that favours Oblivion in my view is the ease of getting loot to shops and selling it.

You can carry a lot more, at least later in the game. Feather spells actually stack, and you can stack feather potions too (to a limit of four, which is three more potions than Skyrim).

The limit on the shops ability to buy is per item, which is very silly, but it's not stupidly low unlike Skyrim's per shop limit.

[Caelestion]

I was always a fan of Enhanced Economy, which gives the game a much more MW-like system.

[DigoDragon]

1/ Leveling up needs to be dealt with carefully. You can do 5-5-5 with 5-5-luck leveling, that will leave you somewhat overpowered, which is enjoyable, but not as challenging as may be ideal (the default system gives you on average something like 1-2-2, which is not enough, I'm kind of thinking of a playthrough trying to get 3-3-3 or 4-3-4 or something like, I won't be doing that for a while yet if I ever do). I've seen it argued that for a Thief character, the default leveling system works fine (I never play thieves, so it may be true for all I know).

Uh... :smalltongue: I'll figure out this new language later when I play the game. I'm sure I'll find a decent leveling system to work with given all the recommends here.

[Triaxx]

I'm going to give Maskar's overhaul a go. I didn't see anything that should prevent a mid game install.

[LibraryOgre]

Uh... :smalltongue: I'll figure out this new language later when I play the game. I'm sure I'll find a decent leveling system to work with given all the recommends here.

To simplify: You get to increase 3 attributes each time you level. Depending on how much of that level depended on improving certain skills, you get better improvements. So, if you used a lot of Strength skills in that level, you might get 3 or 5 points added, if you increase strength. Didn't use a lot of Speed skills? Your speed will only improve 1 or 2 points.

Luck is the odd one out; no skills key off it, so you can only add 1 point per level to luck. Some people don't both, wanting 5-5-5 on every stat, every level. Others will go with 5-5-Luck, figuring the luck improvement is worth it.

Me, I just suck up and deal. I level only when my character is required to sleep to get some event.

[Triaxx]

I've played through the entire game at level 2. Because that's when you can get Azura's Star.

[Aeson]

YI've seen it argued that for a Thief character, the default leveling system works fine (I never play thieves, so it may be true for all I know).
I did an archer/assassin character once, which is similar, and my experience was that as long as you can avoid getting into combat you're fine, but I found that I'd often run into situations where single sneak attacks won't kill fairly basic enemies (let alone elite or boss enemies), and it can be difficult or impossible to become hidden again after revealing yourself with an attack at low levels. There are also a number of areas where sneaking past enemies really isn't an option without a very high sneak skill or magical assistance, even ignoring that a lot of the quests require you to fight something.

Also, bit of a personal opinion, but I really don't think that Oblivion is designed to support thief-type characters very well. If you stick to the cities, you'll rapidly run out of new things to do - I'm pretty sure you can burgle every house in any city other than the Imperial City in one or maybe two nights, though the castles are marginally more challenging - while if you go questing or dungeon-delving, chances are you'll be forced to a more combat-oriented playstyle, at least at low levels when Sneak doesn't allow you to hide in places where only the blind or the brain-dead couldn't spot you. There are also the issues that the vast majority of in-city locations contain little of any real value - a great many miscellaneous items are literally worthless to the player character, and even high-end clothing has so little value that it's hardly worth taking - and that fencing stolen goods is inconvenient, especially if not part of the Thieves' Guild. The best way to make money as a thief in Oblivion, especially at low levels when even the jewelry is barely worth stealing, is to steal food items and turn them into potions, but most food items, and even many other potion ingredients, are so cheap that you could make almost as much profit by doing the same thing legitimately.

[Caelestion]

Funnily enough, Sorcerer Dave (https://www.youtube.com/user/Jingles1215) opined literally the opposite and I agree with him. In MW, no one had any schedules, so burgling was a matter of murder and theft or attempting to sneak around without being spotted, and Skyrim has small, fairly dull cities (Markarth is still small, but easily the most visually distinct), so thievery is even less fun than in Oblivion.

I'll highlight OOO again as a QoL upgrade for thieves, because it alters the values of clutter and often puts really valuable stuff in wealthy neighbourhoods.

[Triaxx]

He's also been flagging Better Cities, which adds more places to steal from.

[Caelestion]

Yes, but I never used BC (I was always one for Open Cities) and I still agree with him.

[Triaxx]

When I first played Oblivion, I had a Potato. Now I'v have a properly powerful computer and don't like Open Cities itself. So...

[Caelestion]

So, what's the problem?

[Triaxx]

Too many issues, which are simply correctable by not having Open Cities. Plus after discovering Better Cities, I can live with a few load zones.

[Aeson]

Funnily enough, Sorcerer Dave (https://www.youtube.com/user/Jingles1215) opined literally the opposite and I agree with him. In MW, no one had any schedules, so burgling was a matter of murder and theft or attempting to sneak around without being spotted, and Skyrim has small, fairly dull cities (Markarth is still small, but easily the most visually distinct), so thievery is even less fun than in Oblivion.

I'll highlight OOO again as a QoL upgrade for thieves, because it alters the values of clutter and often puts really valuable stuff in wealthy neighbourhoods.
I didn't say that Morrowind supported a thief playstyle better than Oblivion did, I said that Oblivion didn't support a thief playstyle well. Personally, I think that Morrowind and Oblivion are about equally bad at supporting a thieving playstyle, just in different ways. Oblivion's NPC schedules create opportunities to steal things, but there's almost nothing worth stealing, and the schedules are so predictable that you hardly need to study a target's schedule to figure out a good time to try to rob him or her; Morrowind may be somewhat lacking in good opportunities to steal things in most areas with NPCs, but the items laying around the place are often actually worth taking (both in an in-game monetary sense and in a utility-to-the-player sense).

Also, while unmodded Morrowind doesn't have scheduled NPCs, it does have patrolling NPCs, and its lockpicking mechanic doesn't freeze the universe the way that Oblivion's does. If you're trying to pick a lock somewhere on one or more NPC patrol routes, having a quick, reliable way to open a lock (whether it's the character having a high security skill and at least one lockpick, or having a spell, scroll, or enchanted item for opening locks) and picking a good time to attempt to do it is more important in Morrowind than in Oblivion, where you only need a brief moment when NPCs cannot see you and you'll be fine as long as you don't run out of lockpicks before you can beat the minigame.

Oh, and if we're bringing mods in, do be aware that there at least used to be mods that added schedules of some fashion to Morrowind NPCs. If Oblivion having nothing worth stealing isn't evidence for Oblivion not supporting a thieving playstyle because mods can fix that, then Morrowind not having NPC schedules is also not evidence for Morrowind not supporting a thieving playstyle, because mods can fix that.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Bah. Just when I think I'm making progress in NifSkope, the Creation Kit decides not to play nice. Presently it looks like a new skin - which looked fine in NifSkope - is somehow going from mostly blackish in Nif to a lovely and alpha-transparency-free shade of lavender in the CK. :smallannoyed: At a guess the specular map is somehow becoming visible, but it's using the vanilla version of that. :smallconfused:

[Triaxx]

Speaking of Oblivion Mods, now that it's working for me again, I'm tempted to restart my LP with Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul (https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/42780/?tab=2&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Foblivion%2 Fajax%2Fmodfiles%2F%3Fid%3D42780&pUp=1) in it from the start, and a slightly more focused character build. I've never played with it before and I'm wondering if anyone else has? I've seen Oscuro's done to death so I'm kind of interested in something new.

[Balmas]

So, Fudgemuppet just released a video on why Enchanting sucks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFtoztMkTYk&t=0s), and I think they make some good points. Namely, enchanting sucks because it's a super powerful skill.

A player who makes the most of enchanting can easily craft items that are as good or better than artifacts blessed by the gods themselves. Why use an artifact of stamina absorbtion when you can craft an item of both stamina and health absorbtion, and in greater magnitudes to boot? Why bother with Chillrend when you can put the same enchantments on a more powerful weapon? The only artifacts that are competitive with what you can make with Enchantment are the things that you can't make with Enchanting, usually due to unique effects.

The other side of the coin is that if a character doesn't use enchanting, that character is severely gimped comparatively, and will struggle in the higher levels. Try fighting dragons without resist magic clothing, or playing a mage without spell cost reduction gear. Even a pure warrior suffers without his armor of fortify weapon skill +lots%, to the order of being half or a third as effective.

A third problem with Enchanting is that one skill allows you to replace every other skill. Want to be a mage? Congrats, you now have zero-cost spellcasting that lets you be a master wizard for no further investment. Want to be a thief? Even if you have no skill in thievery, you can make up an amulet of muffle, gloves of pickpocketing, boots of fortify sneak, and bam! Instant thief. One skill replaces all the rest.

On a personal nite, I'll note that this is particularly problematic because enchanting is so bloody tedious to raise. At 1 XP per item enchanted, you're looking at a grind of around 310 items to go from 15 to 100 in Enchanting. And it is a grind; while you could theoretically get to 100 enchanting over the course of an entire game, you're unlikely to make 310 items unless you really work at it.

Crafting skills in general are kinda lackluster in Skyrim, but Enchanting's the real problem child. It's boring to raise, but is practically required for every character thanks to the power it offers.

ADDITIONAL: If skill discussions aren't your thing, how about Chadwick? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlJpL7vjDo8)

[DigoDragon]

On a personal nite, I'll note that this is particularly problematic because enchanting is so bloody tedious to raise. At 1 XP per item enchanted, you're looking at a grind of around 310 items to go from 15 to 100 in Enchanting. And it is a grind; while you could theoretically get to 100 enchanting over the course of an entire game, you're unlikely to make 310 items unless you really work at it.

Don't you get an exp point for reverse engineering a magic item to 'learn' the enchantment?

I remember filling a companion's inventory full of empty soul gems and giving them a soul-capture weapon so that after a dungeon crawl I had a bunch of cheap gems to enchant something on all the vendor trash I collected. Yep, lots of grinding indeed.

[Triaxx]

Umm, like smithing, XP gain is controlled by the final cost of the item. Which is why Fortify Sneak and Destruction are the two best effects to learn.

Personally except during the very early game, ore when it's built-in the Archmage's Robes, I get along just fine without any cost reduction.

[veti]

Umm, like smithing, XP gain is controlled by the final cost of the item. Which is why Fortify Sneak and Destruction are the two best effects to learn.

'Fraid not. You get exactly the same Enchanting exp for using a petty soul gem to add +1 fire damage to an iron dagger, as you do for using a black soul gem to add 30 points Drain Fatigue to a daedric greatsword.

And the best monetary value that I've found comes from 'fortify carry weight'.


Don't you get an exp point for reverse engineering a magic item to 'learn' the enchantment?

You do, and that experience makes me think there's some gross oversimplification going on with this "1 XP per enchantment" talk. Because you get way more experience for learning some enchantments than others. Most noticeably, armour/clothing enchantments are worth way more than weapon enchantments.

I agree that enchanting is overpowered. But on balance, not much more so than smithing.

[Triaxx]

Ah, I see, I had it confused with disenchantment.

[Keltest]

A quick google check seems to indicate that the size of the soul gem used is the determining factor in how much XP you get for creating an enchanted object.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Bah. Just when I think I'm making progress in NifSkope, the Creation Kit decides not to play nice. Presently it looks like a new skin - which looked fine in NifSkope - is somehow going from mostly blackish in Nif to a lovely and alpha-transparency-free shade of lavender in the CK. :smallannoyed: At a guess the specular map is somehow becoming visible, but it's using the vanilla version of that. :smallconfused:

Turns out the pink color was the Creation Kit telling me that just because Nifskope was happy with the skin's file path didn't mean that it was. :smalltongue: Now I get to figure out why some of the new stuff won't show up in the actual modded game.

[Balmas]

There are three ways to gain Enchanting experience: enchanting items, disenchanting things to learn new enchantments, and recharging enchanted items with soul gems. Enchanting one item gives you a fixed amount of XP regardless of the value, enchantment, or soul size used. Disenchanting an item gives you more XP if you disenchant a valuable item than a less valuable item. Finally, recharging a weapon gives you more XP if you use a larger soul gem, which makes the Black Star ideal for quickly grinding XP.

[LibraryOgre]

Though, as mentioned, loading up your companion with petty soul gems and giving them a soul-taking weapon is also hella effective. "Oh, look, I made 300 pairs of magic pants that fortify carry weight for their own weight!"

[halfeye]

In my experience, it takes a lot less grinding to get enchanting leveled up, than it does to get smithing leveled up.

Also, weapon enchanting with weak soul gems is much more effective than non-weapon enchanting, the strengh of the damage is static depending on your level, whereas with non-weapon enchanting the strength of the effect depends on your level and the size of the soul gem. Of course, if the soul gem is small, the power in the weapon runs out sooner. I used to enchant every bow I could find with weak soul gems, the way I see it is twenty or thirty guards with five shot bows could probably take down a dragon, but one bow wouldn't do a bandit too much good.

I think I agree that enchanting is overpowered in Skyrim, but in Oblivion feather spells, potions and items are more overpowered than enchanting is in Skyrim (IMO, obviously). There was probably something overpowered in Morrowind but I haven't played that much.

[Balmas]

I think I agree that enchanting is overpowered in Skyrim, but in Oblivion feather spells, potions and items are more overpowered than enchanting is in Skyrim. There was probably something overpowered in Morrowind but I haven't played that much.

Oh, sure. Morrowind had no end of overpowered things, but that was mostly a function of the magic system having the potential to get stupid broken. At the same time, it made you work for your enchantments. They were stupidly expensive, and that in a world where you couldn't easily offload any valuable loot for its true value.

Even then, you had artifacts that were valuable because you couldn't replicate them yourself. Stuff like the Boots of Blinding Speed, or the spear of Hircine, or the Boots of the Apostle.


Though, as mentioned, loading up your companion with petty soul gems and giving them a soul-taking weapon is also hella effective. "Oh, look, I made 300 pairs of magic pants that fortify carry weight for their own weight!"

The grind for soul gems isn't so much the problem, so much as the subsequent coming back to town and the mind-numbing process of "ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft, ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft, ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft," ad nauseum and times three hundred.

[LibraryOgre]

The grind for soul gems isn't so much the problem, so much as the subsequent coming back to town and the mind-numbing process of "ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft, ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft, ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft," ad nauseum and times three hundred.

Eh, I have a farming alt in LOTRO. Tedium is fun. ;-)

[The_Jackal]

So, Fudgemuppet just released a video on why Enchanting sucks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFtoztMkTYk&t=0s), and I think they make some good points. Namely, enchanting sucks because it's a super powerful skill.

IMO, the core problem isn't enchanting, it's Skyrim's bad power scaling. Crafting skills are wildly powerful because of how they scale with each other, and with perks and skills. They also provide subtractive instead of factor discounts and damage reduction. So, for example, every point of armor up to the cap is a linear reduction to the amount of damage you take, which winds up being a powerful multiplier of your effective health. The same is true with magicka discounts and your effective magicka, which go all the way up to infinity. It's no wonder that these can provide some insanely overpowered benefits.


A player who makes the most of enchanting can easily craft items that are as good or better than artifacts blessed by the gods themselves. Why use an artifact of stamina absorbtion when you can craft an item of both stamina and health absorbtion, and in greater magnitudes to boot? Why bother with Chillrend when you can put the same enchantments on a more powerful weapon? The only artifacts that are competitive with what you can make with Enchantment are the things that you can't make with Enchanting, usually due to unique effects.

Well, there's no right answer to whether the best quest items should be better than the best crafted items. If you can't make anything top tier from crafting, why bother? I'll agree that the crafted gear shouldn't be so far and away better than items you get in the world. Ideally, you'd want crafting to be able to improve, and scale up, dropped rewards. That way there's a reason to do it, and a way to keep dropped items being cool. Give them some effects and combinations which can't be duplicated from crafting, and you're golden.


he other side of the coin is that if a character doesn't use enchanting, that character is severely gimped comparatively, and will struggle in the higher levels. Try fighting dragons without resist magic clothing, or playing a mage without spell cost reduction gear. Even a pure warrior suffers without his armor of fortify weapon skill +lots%, to the order of being half or a third as effective.

Yeah, that's scaling problems, and itemization. But also, with the difficulty slider being there, I don't know that it's an objective problem.


A third problem with Enchanting is that one skill allows you to replace every other skill. Want to be a mage? Congrats, you now have zero-cost spellcasting that lets you be a master wizard for no further investment. Want to be a thief? Even if you have no skill in thievery, you can make up an amulet of muffle, gloves of pickpocketing, boots of fortify sneak, and bam! Instant thief. One skill replaces all the rest.

But it doesn't. There's no skill that Enchanting completely replaces, and good luck affording to level up crafting without getting some other skills. There's plenty of good perks in every skill tree that are good by themselves, better with crafting, and not redundant. Only the core 'cost discount' perks in magic trees are really the problem.


On a personal nite, I'll note that this is particularly problematic because enchanting is so bloody tedious to raise. At 1 XP per item enchanted, you're looking at a grind of around 310 items to go from 15 to 100 in Enchanting. And it is a grind; while you could theoretically get to 100 enchanting over the course of an entire game, you're unlikely to make 310 items unless you really work at it.

I agree that Enchanting is a chore, but surely it's not THAT hard. If I may, consider leveling speech to get your merchants more agreeable, along with the perks that let you sell anything to anyone. Then you can buy soul gems from the game's abundant spell vendors, and sell all the junk you'd otherwise have to lug around to seven different vendors. I don't even bother with using soul trap. Cash->Soul Gems->Enchanted Weapons->More Cash.


Crafting skills in general are kinda lackluster in Skyrim, but Enchanting's the real problem child. It's boring to raise, but is practically required for every character thanks to the power it offers.

Disagree, they're all kind of OP. They're tedious to raise, but honestly, I don't mind it too much. I just intersperse dungeon clearing with some crafting, then go back to dungeon clearing to get more materials and gold.

[halfeye]

the mind-numbing process of "ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft, ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft, ring, fortify sneak, petty soul, craft," ad nauseum and times three hundred.

Compared to how many times of making and improving an iron dagger? sure the dagger's a little easier per item, but how many daggers do you need? five thousand? ten thousand? I always made leather bracers as a sideline, and I have no idea how many of either it was, just way too many, and much more than enchanting took. I'm pretty sure that with enchanting with high level items I got a level per item at times, and I'm sure it was something like thirty daggers and bracers per level of smithing (less at lower levels, an extra item to level per level?).

[Balmas]

Iell, there's no right answer to whether the best quest items should be better than the best crafted items. If you can't make anything top tier from crafting, why bother? I'll agree that the crafted gear shouldn't be so far and away better than items you get in the world. Ideally, you'd want crafting to be able to improve, and scale up, dropped rewards. That way there's a reason to do it, and a way to keep dropped items being cool. Give them some effects and combinations which can't be duplicated from crafting, and you're golden.

You have to have a bit of a gradient when it comes to quest rewards, I think. There are some items which are basically just "this is my lucky dagger," which is fine as just a bog-standard steel dagger, and then you have stuff like "The god Auri-el crafted and wielded this bow in the war against Lorkhan." To my mind, crafting should allow you to make things that are better than most of what you'll find in the world, but not quite as good as daedric/aedric artifacts.

I like the way that Enaisiaiaon handles it in his Artificer mod. Daedric artifacts are already as powerful in terms of physical damage as you could make with master smithing, but with the caveat of being unable to smith it further yourself. You're not going to be able to improve on a weapon that a god crafted, after all. They also each bear a unique enchantment, and usually have some kind of downside as well. Volendrung weighs a ton, swings about half as quickly as an equivalent warhammer, but makes up for it by sending enemies flying a la Fus Ro Dah. Dawnbreaker does 55 points of sun damage on its own, and triple that to undead, at the cost of swinging at about the speed of a war axe. Wabbajack does 200 points of damage with its attack, and has infinite charges, but also weighs about thirty pounds. Stuff like that, which makes them interesting alternatives to just crafting your own gear.


But also, with the difficulty slider being there, I don't know that it's an objective problem.

I've felt for a while that Bethesda's difficulty slider is basically a shortcut so they don't have to spend time balancing the game.


But it doesn't. There's no skill that Enchanting completely replaces, and good luck affording to level up crafting without getting some other skills. There's plenty of good perks in every skill tree that are good by themselves, better with crafting, and not redundant. Only the core 'cost discount' perks in magic trees are really the problem.

It doesn't completely replace them, no, but it allows you to obtain similar results with much less investment. Muffle, Fortify sneak, fortify pickpocket, and the sneak attack thing from the dark brotherhood make you a passable thief for almost no investment, even if you don't get the benefit of automatically losing enemies when you start to sneak. Fortify stamina, block, heavy armor, and one-handed makes you a decent tank, even if you've spent the past fifty levels upping your mana. And of course, if you have enchanting, the main difference between you and the archmage is that one of you will have perks to make your spells more effective.


I agree that Enchanting is a chore, but surely it's not THAT hard. If I may, consider leveling speech to get your merchants more agreeable, along with the perks that let you sell anything to anyone. Then you can buy soul gems from the game's abundant spell vendors, and sell all the junk you'd otherwise have to lug around to seven different vendors. I don't even bother with using soul trap. Cash->Soul Gems->Enchanted Weapons->More Cash.

Didn't say it's hard. I said it's tedious. It's a skill from which nearly every character benefits immensely, but which is boring to acquire. In essence, all you have to do is acquire soul gems, go to the station, and spend the next hour mashing the same buttons in the same order.


Disagree, they're all kind of OP. They're tedious to raise, but honestly, I don't mind it too much. I just intersperse dungeon clearing with some crafting, then go back to dungeon clearing to get more materials and gold.

Oh, aye, especially in tandem with one another. However, it's Enchanting that really causes problem. You can't get into too much trouble with smithing's damage increase, or with alchemy's temporary boosts. But throw Enchanting into the mix, and suddenly you have weapons that deal three hundred points of damage, and permanent max-cap magic resistance, and potions that make the vanilla potions useless in comparison.

[Rynjin]

Well, there's no right answer to whether the best quest items should be better than the best crafted items. If you can't make anything top tier from crafting, why bother? I'll agree that the crafted gear shouldn't be so far and away better than items you get in the world. Ideally, you'd want crafting to be able to improve, and scale up, dropped rewards. That way there's a reason to do it, and a way to keep dropped items being cool. Give them some effects and combinations which can't be duplicated from crafting, and you're golden.


Well, there's the right answer: Give unique effects for unique items, instead of just "Enchantment that already exists, but maybe slightly better, but you can't Dual Enchant it".

The Dragon Priest masks are laaaame, and so are most of the other unique items. The Bloodskal Blade and Crown of Aetherium are the only two I can think of off the top of my head.

[halfeye]

potions that make the vanilla potions useless in comparison.
The carry weight potions still get nowhere near Oblivion's feather potions.

[Triaxx]

Sarthaal Amulet and the Diadem of the Savant are two more because you can't duplicate those effects.

Iron Daggers are simple, since you get the items then it's two button presses per. Enchanting is eight. (Item tab, item, enchantment tab, enchantment, Soul Gem Tab, Soul Gem, craft item, confirm) Plus you can't even line them up with the 'confirm' dialogue option so you're either using the mouse to move around, or Better Dialogue Box controls.

I'm really partial to Zim's Immersive Artifacts (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/81036/?) instead. Volendrung has it's standard drain 50 Stamina, but you can paralyze with a Sideways power attack, and while it weighs 35, it also costs less stamina to power attack. Dawnbreaker does 40 fire damage, with a bonus 20 on the first hit to undead, a 35% chance to stagger them to a knee, and a 5% chance to knock them down entirely. Plus if you're a two-handed character, you can swap it out into a two handed version. Wabbajack doesn't do damage, but keeps their health, so while they might be a super tough rabbit when transformed, if you kill them they die instead of just turning back to normal. Plus it can instantly kill very rarely.

What I really like is how strong it makes the Nightingale gear. It means there's some chance you're actually going to want to wear it all, instead of just slapping on one or two pieces now and again. And also the Staff of Magnus instantly kills Magical Anamolies which makes life so much easier doing the radiant quest bits. Also Thane weapons are now interesting and useful, instead of just 'Blade of X'.