Skyrim - v1.2 Update

Yep, that amulet. Spent hours doing the quests for that amulet and beating the big bosses then I get it and think WTF is this? 100 for all the stats would have been worth it and I could see why people would covet that amulet.

My enchanting skill is maxed so I can make a better one with my eyes closed. I just wish it lived up to its reputation.

As for found gear, you're right. I don't use anything (except for the masks and robes) that I find. Everything else I use is made by me. The masks are decent though. Depends on which mask you get. Also I can't make better robes for destruction and mana regen. So I keep those around. The archmage robes are ok and I keep them on me, but truthfully the expert robes are better.

skavenhorde said:

Yep, that amulet. Spent hours doing the quests for that amulet and beating the big bosses then I get it and think WTF is this? 100 for all the stats would have been worth it and I could see why people would covet that amulet.

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That amulet highlights one of the Skyrim´s loot issues rather well - risk or effort/reward ratio is off in this regard.
I liked the boss fights though, I wouldn´t mind more of similarly unique ones implemented, this quest´s final encounter was probably the most memorable one in the whole game for me.

skavenhorde said:

The masks are decent though.

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If you play a mage clothes/robes-style, they´re imo quite bad, because they´re all classified as light or heavy armor and as such nullify benefits from Mage Armor perks which I imagine are rather desirable to have as a non-armor wearing mage.

Mage armor perks? Where are those? ….let me guess. They're in alteration. I really wish Beth wrote down those perks in the manual. I could have mapped out my character a little better. Though I probrably wouldn't have changed that much about him. Destruction, alchemy, conjuration and enchanting are what I focused in.

I switch between my enchanted glass armor and robes depending on what kind of enemy I face. Sometimes I need a lot of mana/less mana-use and sometimes I need the armor. Now that I can put two enchantments on items I'm using the glass armor a little more. Still switch to robes sometimes.

Our characters are pretty similar, rat. I've got Destruction, Alchemy, Enchanting, with a little archery and smithing. I like to soften up my targets with a bow and weakness to fire. The bow is a soul bow, so easy targets get absorbed. It's enough to keep my staves and bow charged up. I might put some focus on Conjuration if my destruction spells start to not be enough. Right now, at level 30, I'm a 3-hit kill on almost anything. I've heard it goes down. I'm doing Gauldur's (I want to call him Gandohar) quest and the first 2/3 were easy fights. We'll see about #3.

Speaking of charging, I'm always close to running out of soul gems. So far the balance has been on the hairy edge. Wondering if I should run all the way to Azura's Shrine and do her quest...

skavenhorde said:

Mage armor perks? Where are those? ….let me guess. They're in alteration.

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Yep. With that perk maxed you can get 300 armor with the Ebonyflesh spell, but since you don´t play your mage as clothes-only, that point of mine was quite redundant.
Aaand thinking about it, that perk+spell combo maybe isn´t all that useful for mages anyway since it nets only 36% physical damage reduction. It might´ve been more interesting if dual casting the flesh spells would increase the rating, not the duration, or if they granted some additional resistances.
I still think some of those masks would be better classified as non-armors though, the game would benefit from some more incentives to not wear armor as a mage, I think.

crpgnut said:

I love luring dragons neear to Giant/Mammoth territory. It's the easiest way to get Giant Toe ingredients

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Pure Guinness...I mean genius

Sounds like another patch on the way: http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2011/12/01/skyrim-what-were-working-on/

And something even more interesting wrt Steam!

The only thing I wanted fixed was the re-mapping the 'F' key problem, and this patch hasn't fixed it for me. I've tried deleting the relevant config files and validating cache, etc. Still no dice.

It's not a big deal though when the rest of the game is so great.

Zloth said:

Sounds like another patch on the way: http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2011/12/01/skyrim-what-were-working-on/

And something even more interesting wrt Steam!

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Yeah and PC version is supposed to get the next incremental patch first and it does sound like they're committed to working on patches well through January at the least. Unfortunately January is also when we'll have to wait for the Creation Kit - I guess the unpolished version of the dev tools they actually used themselves was very very unpolished or their staff is actually all being assigned to the patches for the time being?

The Steam Workshop integration sounds interesting - wondering what kind of mod/conflict and management and maybe versioning they'll offer through it and the Creation Kit. Oh and anyone freaking out thinking mods will only be useable/accessible through Steam - they did confirm this was going to be wholly optional and you'll still be able to use third party sites to upload and obtain mods as you did in the past. It might be a useful tool if it handles version tracking and updating for the mods fairly well. This might also be how they'll sift through any mods they make availible on the consoles - if they still intend to do that.

The Steam thing sounds good, actually. I'd prefer another unified solution, naturally, but as long as we can achieve one - I can live with it being Steam. Unfortunately, I think we're a long way from a truly unified DD.

Well, last night I played for the first time this week and before I could stop it Steam autoupdated Skyrim. Crud.

First thing when I loaded a dragon attacked me at the mage college. Great, here we go with all the bugs I haven't been seeing! Only after at least a dozen more trips there that was the only one. And the bones from a previous dragon I killed long ago had finally been cleaned up. The dragon was not flying backwards, either. Nor were several others I saw way off in the distance while out and about.

When I popped into Whiterun to sell a few things WHAT THE HECK where is the lag? It was running completely smoothly now. This was the only performance problem I had previously. The game would run great out in the country and inside places EXCEPT inside towns. I don't remember seeing anything about this on the "what was fixed" list but something must have happened.

My wizard fought a few battles including versus wizards who were using the spells to give them protection from magic and their spells seemed to be working just fine as my fire blots weren't doing much damage to them. I used Dragonskin in one battle and it definitely worked. I had to run away from one such battle versus a more advanced caster because I was going through mana and potions waaay too fast and barely scratching him. How were people determining that magic protection and such were no longer working?

I didn't notice any new bugs. So for me at least the patch was a big success! I'll get a chance to play some more tonight and I am hoping I don't run into anything bad.

Speaking of Dragon bones/scales is there a point to keeping them or should I just sell them? My PC is a light armor peep and I was thinking eventually when I get my smithing up I can use the scales to create some bad arse light armor. Or is that a pipe dream and they are there just to sell for quick money?

Yes, you can use the scales to create light armor and the bones heavy armor.