The Elder Scrolls XV: This is my Thu'um Stick

[Spore]

Hmm, an independent third option would be neat. Worked for New Vegas quite well. Who would be our "Yes Man" for Skyrim tho...?

Maybe Amaund Motierre? Many DB quests have a redeeming quality for murder, why not "we murder the emperor and the resulting power vacuum allows you to win the civil war". Of course one needs to remove the raging racist Ulfric too.

With both leaders gone, you can unite Skyrim to go against the Thalmor.

[DigoDragon]

I don't see them helping you other than advice, but Paarthurnax and his dragons could be your robot army.

Probably too few dragons in that pot, but the imagery of the Dragonborn atop a fleet of dragons landing in Solitude to declare themselves the occupying force is a juicy one to imagine. :3

or just take the Blades, and like, go on a quest to like, repurpose those stupid Dwemer ruins lying about eternally producing new automatons for themselves to like, kick out the Thalmor and such.

The Blades were in service to the former Dragonborn emperor of long ago, weren't they? I could see them being your inner circle.

Having said that, ultimately I think that faction would end up largely indistinguishable from an Imperial victory anyway. As much as the Imperials can be nasty at times, anything short of unity with them leaves both the Empire and Skyrim isolated and vulnerable to a Dominion invasion.

I'd take it every time though if it let me kill Maven Blackbriar.

That's a good point. Ultimately I prefer Skyrim remaining united with the empire, I just think some of the Imperial leadership does need replacement.

I'll agree on the Maven point. :3

[Balmas]

Well, unless you're playing modded, that will rapidly turn into a total glass pea-shooter, given the way magic doesn't scale in vanilla Skyrim.

I'm playing with Ordinator, which allows spell and shout effectiveness to scale with skill, as well as some mods that add enchantments for spell efficacy. It makes it so that by the high levels, I can actually keep pace with enemy health, but still have to keep on top of mana management.

[Resileaf]

I'm playing with Ordinator, which allows spell and shout effectiveness to scale with skill, as well as some mods that add enchantments for spell efficacy. It makes it so that by the high levels, I can actually keep pace with enemy health, but still have to keep on top of mana management.

Always hated how magic didn't scale, and unlike Oblivion and Morrowind, you can't create new spells to keep up with enemy health. This is a lifesaving mod.

[Ogremindes]

On the subject of Ordinator, EnaiSiaion (author of Ordinator) recently released Vokrii - Minimalistic Perks of Skyrim. As the name suggests, it has a much lighter touch than Ordinator.

I'm not sure what I feel about it. If it was available when I started modding Skyrim I probably would have used it over Ordinator, but at this point I have no idea what the vanilla perks even are.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I am going to second backing Balgruuf; he's a sensible fellow, and even Ulfric admits he's a True Nord. IIRC most of the rest are either crazy, racist, corrupt or stupid anyway.

[LibraryOgre]

Hmmm... what if you had a council of Jarls as a witan, and could throw your weight (as multi-thane Harbinger Archmage Guild Master Whisperer Dovahkiin) behind any one of them, with differing results? Baalgruuf would be an obvious choice, but Maven Blackbriar would be angling for her pet jarl, Tullius would support Elsif, and the Stormcloak-aligned Jarls might be behind Ulfric, etc. Your job would be to find the Jarls who aren't terribly committed one way or another and bring them to your side. The Thalmor would want to attend; the Stormcloaks (and some of the others) would object that it was a Nord matter, not subject to the Thalmor's interference, and the Thalmor would say that, if they were disinvited, why was the legion there, etc.

[The Jack]

{{Scrubbed}}

[Kantaki]

The Thalmor would want to attend; the Stormcloaks (and some of the others) would object that it was a Nord matter, not subject to the Thalmor's interference, and the Thalmor would say that, if they were disinvited, why was the legion there, etc.

"That's actually quite simple: No one likes you." is what my altmer character would say.

No seriously, some of the greatest moments she had were walking up to some of those Thalmor thugs on the road- wearing Thalor robes -and basically shouting "Talos rules" at the top of her lungs.

I think by now they might be onto her though...
The last group tried to kill her before she even got a word out.

No, really, I literally walked up to a random patrol and they immediatly got aggressive.
Not that Stormcloaks and Imperials are any better...

[Vinyadan]

Not letting the player make war against the Thalmor also was super weird. I get that it's a bigger deal than Skyrim, but still. Is it in a DLC?

[Resileaf]

Not letting the player make war against the Thalmor also was super weird. I get that it's a bigger deal than Skyrim, but still. Is it in a DLC?

It's not. Chances are that war against the Thalmor will be part of a future game.

[Keltest]

It's not. Chances are that war against the Thalmor will be part of a future game.

The Thalmor are mostly a token presence in Skyrim anyway. You could burn down all of their holdings and kill, like, a few dozen elves at most. That's less a war and more Saturday relaxation for the Dragonborn.

Actually, come to think of it, its entirely possible to invade both Thalmor forts and kill everyone inside.

[factotum]

You can't kill the most annoying Thalmor in the game, though, because Ancano is marked plot critical. My assassin mage killed him but good with a backstab when he mouthed off to her, but he just went down on his knee and wouldn't die!

[Kareeah_Indaga]

"That's actually quite simple: No one likes you." is what my altmer character would say.

No seriously, some of the greatest moments she had were walking up to some of those Thalmor thugs on the road- wearing Thalor robes -and basically shouting "Talos rules" at the top of her lungs.

I think by now they might be onto her though...
The last group tried to kill her before she even got a word out.

No, really, I literally walked up to a random patrol and they immediatly got aggressive.
Not that Stormcloaks and Imperials are any better...

Was it a normal patrol or one of the death squad random encounters?

It's not. Chances are that war against the Thalmor will be part of a future game.

One hopes so. If they resolve it off-screen I'm going to be annoyed.

[Triaxx]

It's probably been resolved off-screen. They usually do. Middle of a war isn't conducive to the way Bethesda games are designed. Big open world don't work well when constrained by battle lines.

[Kantaki]

Was it a normal patrol or one of the death squad random encounters?

No idea.
They were a bit unusual in that all three of them were wearing armor, but I could initiate the usual dialogue tree.
It's just that they turned hostile before I actually picked a option.

Well, and they did that thing where they drew their swords because I was standing near them.
But that happens with the patrols of other factions too.

Which makes it a shame there isn't a „You're all morons. I'm running the show now.” option.
I mean I wouldn't trust most of those guys to run a lemonade stall, much less to run a country.
And getting antagonized on the road for no reason doesn't help.
Especially if the guys in the military camps are perfectly fine with me walking around.

[Lord Raziere]

Hey guys, what do you do when your modded skyrim se game keeps CTD when you try to exit to other areas or save? I've been trying to look up solutions but getting some better answers from asking myself just to make sure.

[Keltest]

Hey guys, what do you do when your modded skyrim se game keeps CTD when you try to exit to other areas or save? I've been trying to look up solutions but getting some better answers from asking myself just to make sure.

First I check if it does this on all saves or just this specific one. If the former, I start disabling and re-enabling mods until I find the one causing the crash and then I banish it from my computer. If the latter, I cry because its probably a corrupted save file and I don't usually make enough backups to keep me from losing several hours of playtime.

[Lord Raziere]

First I check if it does this on all saves or just this specific one. If the former, I start disabling and re-enabling mods until I find the one causing the crash and then I banish it from my computer. If the latter, I cry because its probably a corrupted save file and I don't usually make enough backups to keep me from losing several hours of playtime.

well I tried with a slightly earlier save and that CTD when I opened a door as well, so its probably a mod then. according to LOOT, its Undeath Remastered that has all these ITMs and Wild edits, but so its probably that even though it hasn't done that before, I've got a lot of mods so I'm not surprised if one of my more recent ones caused it to screw up though. its the only one I'm getting errors for, so....

[Keltest]

well I tried with a slightly earlier save and that CTD when I opened a door as well, so its probably a mod then. according to LOOT, its Undeath Remastered that has all these ITMs and Wild edits, but so its probably that even though it hasn't done that before, I've got a lot of mods so I'm not surprised if one of my more recent ones caused it to screw up though. its the only one I'm getting errors for, so....

how much earlier? If it was only one or two zone transitions ago, it could conceivably have become corrupted as well. Try making a new game or loading a different character.

[Lord Raziere]

how much earlier? If it was only one or two zone transitions ago, it could conceivably have become corrupted as well. Try making a new game or loading a different character.

.....tried a different character. worked fine. dammit. my last save before the autos and the current save on that character is three levels ago.

[Keltest]

.....tried a different character. worked fine. dammit. my last save before the autos and the current save on that character is three levels ago.

I guess if you really want to procrastinate on reloading this save, you could run the other character to the same zone transition and see if that's whats broken.

[Lord Raziere]

I guess if you really want to procrastinate on reloading this save, you could run the other character to the same zone transition and see if that's whats broken.

well I tried the three levels lower save and tried to enter the inn of winterhold, since I was outside the college rather than inside, but when I did it CTD as well. ....can I just....not do anything with winter hold?

[Keltest]

well I tried the three levels lower save and tried to enter the inn of winterhold, since I was outside the college rather than inside, but when I did it CTD as well. ....can I just....not do anything with winter hold?

As long as you don't care about the college or the house, sure.

Having said that, at this point I think its safe to say its a mod causing some horrible issue when you load Winterhold, so you may want to try and isolate it to make sure it isn't causing issues anywhere else.

[Lord Raziere]

As long as you don't care about the college or the house, sure.

Having said that, at this point I think its safe to say its a mod causing some horrible issue when you load Winterhold, so you may want to try and isolate it to make sure it isn't causing issues anywhere else.

good news I found the horrible mod, my character can step outside the college again.

bad news, I won't get to cast poison spells unless it was just the version of the mod that didn't add perks that was doing it.

Edit: nope nope nope, poison spells just won't work, nope.....

[Keltest]

Im always deeply curious what it is about mods that do things like add spells which cause entire areas to crap out.

[Lord Raziere]

Im always deeply curious what it is about mods that do things like add spells which cause entire areas to crap out.

I got like, a few other add spell mods that are far more extensive than the one that was causing me problems, even adding more than just spells, and they don't do that. heck, I even got one mod that gives me a few poison spells anyways without it, I just didn't find the vendor that sold them until after. it has nothing to do with size, just whether the person made the mod well enough, apparently according to a guide about cleaning dirty plugins.

[Triaxx]

xEdit can actually clean plug-in's for you.

Do you have other things that alter Winterhold?

[Lord Raziere]

xEdit can actually clean plug-in's for you.

Do you have other things that alter Winterhold?

I mean if you count a legend of zelda mod that places a thing thats apart of a scavenger hunt for skulltula tokens, yes....or that mod that places book describing the infinity stones in skyrim...or colorful magic.... but those are big mods that covers all of skyrim pretty much.

I don't have any mods that focus SPECIFICALLY on changing the college, just things that are kind of everywhere and just so happen to put something in the college, like the above, but they don't cause any problems.

[Lord Raziere]

Uuuh, another, different problem came up? I've tried googling it but it doesn't take...

my saves aren't being sorted by character anymore in skyrim se. normally it sorts by character so that they aren't mixed up here and there, but for some reason my saves of my latest session are in the general save part when I show all saves, but not the character specific saves, everything else still works though. can anyone tell me whats going on?