The Elder Scrolls XIII: Born Under a Certain Sign

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Does anyone else get bothered that the NPC followers use taunts on enemies that are specific to your race? For example my Altmer vampire has Lydia following him around, and I've heard her shout 'Vampire! Burn it!' when I'm fighting...wolves. Ordinary, unmodded, definitely-not-undead wolves.

[Keltest]

Does anyone else get bothered that the NPC followers use taunts on enemies that are specific to your race? For example my Altmer vampire has Lydia following him around, and I've heard her shout 'Vampire! Burn it!' when I'm fighting...wolves. Ordinary, unmodded, definitely-not-undead wolves.

They could be were-pyres. You don't know.

[veti]

Or not.

Spoiler

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Every Sleeper will be "freed" when you kill a specific creature/NPC (killing Dagoth Ur works for all, obviously) at which point talking to them will result in gaining a point of reputation (and a thank you from the NPC).

Well, I'll be a daedroth's toenails. I thought they only got freed when you killed the big Ur himself.

That's how carefully I've avoided talking to them, I guess.

[Illven]

Mary can confirm that this is true.

As well as getting expelled from the legion for following orders...

[Balmas]

So, I've been playing Skyrim a lot lately as I prepare for my Skyrim Let's Play. One of the mods I haven't been able to get working is Gopher's iHud, which hides the compass and other UI elements when you don't want them. As I've been playing, especially since I've been playing Morrowind alongside, I've noticed something.

Skyrim wants you to never stop exploring. You're able to run forever. At any point, you can spin around in a circle and see probably two or three map markers on your compass waiting to be explored. Since turning that compass on, I've been running from one map marker to the next, with the only limiting factor being how much loot I can haul back to base and how long I can go before my food/water/firewood supplies start running low. There's always something to find, genocide, and loot.

At the same time, it somehow feels... lesser, than the exploration in Morrowind. When I go exploring in Morrowind, it's something I choose to do. I pick a
direction and start walking. Each new thing I uncover is something that I found, something that I poked around to find. I didn't just follow a map marker on my compass to that location; it's my discovery. It's a much more personal exploration. Instead of being seeing a map marker and going "Oh, a dwemer ruin, ho hum," I'm scanning the horizon and saying "Holy hell, that's a dwemer tower, let's go!"

I dunno. Am I making any sense here? Part of it is probably the fact that this is my first time playing Morrowind and so everything is new, but even when I find new things in Skyrim, the sense of discovery is different.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough--time for more Chord!

Spoiler: Chord: The Boots of Lying Speed

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Full Episode
After receiving my new orders, I mostly just puttered around for a few days. I took the guild guide to Caldera to take advantage of a local merchant who bought gear at a much higher price than those in Balmora. Caius gave me pointers on buttering people up. The spellmakers in the Mages guild were only too glad to take my money to make improved or lengthened versions of the spells I already knew. While the armorer fixed up my gear, I practiced summoning ghosts and stabbing them with equally-conjured spears.

Had the weirdest dream the night before I set out. It was like I was at a wedding, being guided about by the guide, but I couldn't speak at all. Being a bard, being unable to speak is the worst friggin' thing. My words are my life. Instead, I couldn't talk, couldn't move, couldn't do anything but listen as the groom blustered about omnipotence, omniscience, how sweet it was to be a god.

Prick. I'm the only one allowed to be that pretentious.

Anyway. Caius said to ignore it, or if not ignore it, to keep it quiet. The Ashlanders might accept dreams and put great meaning behind them, but the Tribunal temple either dismiss dreams as idle superstition or try to lock up the people who get too persistent in claiming prophetic visions.

========

With that in mind, I looked over my list of things to do. We had one chore to do in Vivec, courtesy of Caius: Go talk to three informants in Vivec city. However, we had many more things to do in the north; someone in the Caldera mage's guild wanted me to find a propylon key to make a master teleportation index. Ajira had intimated that someone in the Ald'Ruhn Mages Guild might have work for a magician, and Ranis had commissioned me to kill a necromancer in a town even further north. And you know, I hadn't actually explored between Balmora and Ald'Ruhn before...

Heeding the call of adventure, I cast my Jump spell and headed north. I've discovered that if I use Tinur's Hoptoad, I can easily bound forward thirty feet for virtually no effort, which means that when a cliff racer jumps out at me, I'm well-rested for the fight.

Caldera was... well, it was surprisingly close to Balmora. I thought that the road would be a much more windy affair, but instead it was practically a straight shot north. Very pleasant stretch of road, actually. Maybe guards patrol it, because I didn't see anything but a wandering betty netch on the way. And my business in Caldera was equally quick to be done; I walked into the pawnbroker, identified the index, slapped my gold down, and walked the fifty feet to give it to my employer in the Mages Guild, who indicated that the next one could be found in Vivec.

Along the way north to Ald'Ruhn, I was accosted by a naked nord who spun me a sob story about how he agreed to escort a woman who turned out to be a witch; she paralyzed him, and took him for everything he owned, including his prize axe! Given his name--WineSot--I wasn't all that confident in his story, but agree to search northwest, where he said the woman was.

We didn't find the woman he was looking for, but we did find another woman in need of help. Pemenie wanted to go to Gnaar Mok (I had to check my map to make sure of the name; nope, apparently Maar Gan and Gnaar Mok are different towns). In exchange, she'd give me her Boots of Blinding Speed. I shrugged. Sure, it was a bit out of the way, but why not?

Eventually, we figured out that Winesot had been confused; his woman wasn't to the northwest, but the northeast. When confronted, she told a different story; she hired Winesot as an escort for safety. Winesot got a bit too touchy. She hexed him, yes, and stole his things, yes, but she wasn't a witch or malevolent. She was even willing to give the axe back, so long as Winesot waited three days as a lesson. That wasn't good enough for Winesot, and after a bit of deliberation I groaned and agreed to help him. The bit of training I got once the woman lay dead didn't really feel good enough to match the pit in my stomach.

Fortunately, the trip to Gnaar Mok was much simpler. It required a bit of backtracking, but nothing too bad. The only interruption between there and the small town was a small egg mine. Too late, I realized that murdering the queen would probably tick off whoever relied on the kwama for their eggs.

========

Gnaar Mok itself was barely worthy of the term "town." You had a single-room inn, a small outpost, and then a series of small huts. Their trouble was equally small; a pair of breeding netch had been causing problems. Quickly and easily taken care of with a pair of destruction spells.

Pemenie thanked me for being her escort and handed me her "boots of blinding speed." By that, I learned, she meant boots which made me massively faster, but at the cost of blinding me entirely. The locals, on seeing my confusion, laughed and told me that Pemenie is known for selling substandard gear; she even has a bounty out for her!

I might have to collect that bounty. I'll figure that out in the morning, after I explore the ruins nearby.

[LibraryOgre]

Skill Uncapper.

Anyone used this? Any comments on it?

[VoxRationis]

So, I've been playing Skyrim a lot lately as I prepare for my Skyrim Let's Play. One of the mods I haven't been able to get working is Gopher's iHud, which hides the compass and other UI elements when you don't want them. As I've been playing, especially since I've been playing Morrowind alongside, I've noticed something.

Skyrim wants you to never stop exploring. You're able to run forever. At any point, you can spin around in a circle and see probably two or three map markers on your compass waiting to be explored. Since turning that compass on, I've been running from one map marker to the next, with the only limiting factor being how much loot I can haul back to base and how long I can go before my food/water/firewood supplies start running low. There's always something to find, genocide, and loot.

At the same time, it somehow feels... lesser, than the exploration in Morrowind. When I go exploring in Morrowind, it's something I choose to do. I pick a
direction and start walking. Each new thing I uncover is something that I found, something that I poked around to find. I didn't just follow a map marker on my compass to that location; it's my discovery. It's a much more personal exploration. Instead of being seeing a map marker and going "Oh, a dwemer ruin, ho hum," I'm scanning the horizon and saying "Holy hell, that's a dwemer tower, let's go!"

I dunno. Am I making any sense here? Part of it is probably the fact that this is my first time playing Morrowind and so everything is new, but even when I find new things in Skyrim, the sense of discovery is different.

You can set the HUD opacity to 0 in the display settings for Skyrim. Give yourself a more immersive experience.

[Triaxx]

Are you playing Skyrim SE? Or LE? Because the LE version requires SKSE, and the MCM menu. It probably needs to be configured the first time you use it because I believe it defaults to on. Have you got a character concept in mind?

[Rynjin]

Skill Uncapper.

Anyone used this? Any comments on it?

I might suggest, instead, you download the Community Uncapper to simply allow you to level skills past 100. For most skills, this has no or negligible effect (since there are few perks that scale purely off skill level, and the ones that do often have a hard or soft cap at 100 or some other arbitrary point like an armor/resistance cap), but would let you continue leveling.

;)

But yeah, it's pretty good. It can add a bit of power if you use Ordinator, since some of its perks don't have a max cap at 100 skill, but if you plan to level past 81 anyway it's either overkill already (vanilla) or you may NEED the boost (with greater difficulty mods).

[LibraryOgre]

Are you playing Skyrim SE? Or LE? Because the LE version requires SKSE, and the MCM menu. It probably needs to be configured the first time you use it because I believe it defaults to on. Have you got a character concept in mind?

Is this for me? I'm playing the original... my computer is a bit anemic by modern standards. I'm currently running through with an orc lady who mostly uses conjuration and one-handed weapons, but I've Legendaried Illusion something like 4 times, because Muffle is a wonderful spell.

[Triaxx]

No, that was to Balmas who was having issues with iHud.

Personally, I never used the Uncapper, since it's rare I get a skill to 100, for that matter it's rare to get a skill to 90. Going over is pointless.

[Spore]

Does anyone else get bothered that the NPC followers use taunts on enemies that are specific to your race? For example my Altmer vampire has Lydia following him around, and I've heard her shout 'Vampire! Burn it!' when I'm fighting...wolves. Ordinary, unmodded, definitely-not-undead wolves.

Maybe that has got something to do with you having a bounty? I can't recreate this now but Serana has a "NoCrime" in her morality which I found a bit odd for a century old necromancer.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Maybe that has got something to do with you having a bounty? I can't recreate this now but Serana has a "NoCrime" in her morality which I found a bit odd for a century old necromancer.

I'd need to fire up Skyrim to be sure, but I don't think my Altmer has a bounty presently or did at the time. Haven't done the questlines with him where it's a common possibility (no Thieves' Guild, no Dark Brotherhood).

[Rynjin]

Is this for me? I'm playing the original... my computer is a bit anemic by modern standards. I'm currently running through with an orc lady who mostly uses conjuration and one-handed weapons, but I've Legendaried Illusion something like 4 times, because Muffle is a wonderful spell.

If your computer isn't that great, you may actually Do want to swap over. Special Edition is better optimized and runs as a 64 bit program so it uses your system resources more efficiently.

My computer chugs playing Oldrim and crashes way more frequently, but runs SE smoothly.

[Balmas]

Are you playing Skyrim SE? Or LE? Because the LE version requires SKSE, and the MCM menu. It probably needs to be configured the first time you use it because I believe it defaults to on. Have you got a character concept in mind?

For the Let's Play, I'm using the special edition; it gives better performance, but the thing I'm really looking for is better stability. The legacy edition is good, but it's about as stable as a drunk dancing on a greased rail.

Spoiler: Current Mod List

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A Quality World Map - Paper
Arrows and Bolt Tweaks
Achievements Mods Enabler
Alternate Start - Live Another Life
Amazing Follower Tweaks
Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim
Ars Metallica
Aurora - Standing Stones of Skyrim
Bandolier - Bags and Pouches
Be a Bard
Better Magic (LE Port)
Blackreach Railroad
Book Covers Skyrim
Book Covers Skyrim Lost Library
Bound Pickaxe and Bound Woodcutter (LE Port)
Campfire - Complete Camping System
Convenient Horses
Custom Favorites Menu
Cutting Room Floor
Diverse Dragons Collection
Dragon Combat Overhaul
Dragon Souls To Attributes
Dynamic Dungeon Loot
Elemental Destruction Magic
Enchant Magic Damage and Potency (LE Port)
Even Better Quest Objectives
EBQC patches for Cutting Room Floor, Live Another Life, Paarthurnax Dilemma,
Falskaar
Fire and Ice Overhaul (LE Port, Tentative; causes stability issues)
Frostfall - Hypothermia Camping Survival
Functional Homes (LE port)
Harvest Overhaul Redone
Immersive Armors
Immersive Citizens
Imperious - Races of Skyrim
Improved Lighting Spells
iNeed
INIGO
IPM - Insane Armory
Leanwolf's Better-Shaped Weapons
Lfox Alchemists have Ingredients (LE port)
Lfox Blacksmiths have Metals (LE port)
Magicka Regen 3x
Master Spells Should Be Masterful (LE port)
Moonlight Tales SE
Open Cities Skyrim
Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim
Ordinator 50% more perks
Perk Points and More Gold for Bounty Quests (LE port)
Point the Way
Realistic Lighting Overhaul
Rich Skyrim Merchants (5000)
SkyUI 2.2
Smilodon - Combat of Skyrim
Soulmaster's Summon Lockpick Spell
Static Mesh Improvement Mod
Summermyst - Enchantments of Skyrim
Thunderchild - Epic Shouts and Immersion
Transmute Iron Ore First (LE port)
Unbound Bow
Unlimited Bookshelves
Unofficial Skyrim SE Patch
Vivid Weathers
Wet and Cold
Winter Is Coming SSE

As for characters: I'm still developing ideas for him. Chase (or maybe Chadrick, I haven't decided) is a Nord Skald, a bard, a war-chanter. He's an experienced fighter, having spent the last thirty years in the Imperial Legion. He lied about his age so he could help fight for his country against the Thalmor invasion, and then watched in horror as his country betrayed everything he thought they stood for. By that time, though, he'd already had a child with a Breton in Cheydinhal, and couldn't leave immediately.

When the news of the Skyrim rebellion hit Cheydinhal, though, Chase took stock of his life. He was coming up on his thirty-year mark in the military. He was ready for his pension, for a quiet retirement with his wife. His son was a grown man now, married and working as a merchant in Bruma. He discussed it with his wife. He hadn't joined Ulfric in taking back the Reach because of his wife and child. Could he really justify not going now, in Skyrim's greatest hour of need, now that he had a chance to make a difference?

With his wife's approval, and leaving behind the entirety of his pension to care for her while he was gone, Chase set out. He carried nothing but a pack, a lute, and the greatsword he'd used to defend the empire--and now would use to defend it again.

--------

Mechanically, Chase is going to focus primarily on speech and shouting, with Heavy Armor and Two Handed for when shouts/powers are on cooldown. He'll also be doing some crafting and blocking, but those aren't going to be the primary focus. Magic is one of those things that he respects--the Imperial Legion has battlemages, after all--but which he recognizes may be outside his normal skillset. He hits things with the metal clubs and shouts at them until they run away, and he's content with that.

[Triaxx]

Ah, first check and see if Ordinator needs a patch for Better Magic, which changes some of the same stuff.

Second, definitely get the down the speech tree. Not only does it have perks for shouting, but also for performing. Earthquake Drum is pretty cool, and well fitting for a battle Bard.

Incidentally, with Crash Fixes installed, and the Dwarven Mage Armor from Immersive Armors disabled, my Skyrim, heavily modded as it is, is the most stable I've ever seen it.

[Winter_Wolf]

If your computer isn't that great, you may actually Do want to swap over. Special Edition is better optimized and runs as a 64 bit program so it uses your system resources more efficiently.

My computer chugs playing Oldrim and crashes way more frequently, but runs SE smoothly.

I find this to be untrue. Probably it's one of those "boils down to your computer's individual quirks" scenarios. LE runs well enough and is rock solid stable even with 90 or so active mods. SE on the same machine is a slide show even with no mods. It's certainly worth a try, but I wouldn't oversell it.

(I mean technically I don't think I meet spec for quite a lot of games I run on my old laptop, yet the miracles continue. To an extent; I'm sure trying to put Fallout 4 on that machine would end poorly. Frankly I'm a bit shocked I can even get Cities:Skylines to load.)

[Spore]

I think SE requires a lot more up to date hardware but runs more smoothly on that. But SE runs better on my computer too. I mean there are no frame drops of hell when 2-3 light sources are in the screen.

[veti]

Skill Uncapper.

Anyone used this? Any comments on it?

It's a very powerful tool, and one of my favourite Skyrim accessories. Currently I have mine configured to: progress all skills as high as 120 (although some, most notably smithing, have effect formulas capped well below that); give 2 perks per level from level 15 onward (my substitute for "souls to perks" mods); progress some skills (Enchanting, Smithing) faster (because grinding is not fun) and others (Stealth, Illusion) slower; and possibly a few other tweaks that have slipped my mind for now.

That's the Special Edition version - the Oldrim version has a whole lot more functions.

What I particularly like is that it's configured by editing a text file, not by messing about with stupid in-game menus. If you're gonna tweak your game, that's how it should be done, in my opinion. Makes it much easier to keep track of what you've done (as well as save alternative settings).

[Winter_Wolf]

Though I've opted to stop using the uncapper, I'll note that you'll want to make sure that if you raise enchanting past 100 you definitely want to put a cap of no greater than 199 on it. Beyond that it does very weird things to weapon enchanting. I mean it is certainly amusing on some level to have a weapon that does several hundred elemental damage of at least one type or dozens of seconds of paralysis, or a vampiric weapon that drains the enemy to death at but a touch, it does weird things with uses/soul gen energy. You can still get goofy with worn gear with near impunity, though. Eventually you hit a point where the sheer numbers will crash the game, but at that point you're probably trying to break the game for it's own sake.

Still it makes a bit more sense that skills go over 100 via uncapper than doing the whole "legendary skill" thing vanilla style.

[Balmas]

Ah, first check and see if Ordinator needs a patch for Better Magic, which changes some of the same stuff.

Good catch.

Second, definitely get the down the speech tree. Not only does it have perks for shouting, but also for performing. Earthquake Drum is pretty cool, and well fitting for a battle Bard.

Incidentally, with Crash Fixes installed, and the Dwarven Mage Armor from Immersive Armors disabled, my Skyrim, heavily modded as it is, is the most stable I've ever seen it.

Heh. Honestly, part of the reason for me deciding that Chase is going to be a skald is because I looked at the speech tree and at Thunderchild and said, "That sounds awesome, Imma do that."


In other news, I've finally recovered my Vanilla skyrim modded game! After I deleted my Enderal install, I kinda figured that it was gone. Nope, I remembered this morning that Enderal makes a backup of your Skyrim folder. It was just a matter of installing Enderal, telling it to backup to where I had my old backup, and then restoring the backed up copy of my old modded Skyrim.

[Aeson]

To Balmas:
- As far as I am aware, there is no way to collect the bounty on Pemenie in the game, unless one of your mods added one or unless you count using the console to award yourself the bounty, nor do I recall the exact value of the bounty ever being stated.
- The Blind effect on the Boots of Blinding Speed can be reduced if you have a positive net resistance to magicka at the time you equip the boots, and the reduction in the magnitude of the boots' blinding effect will last until you unequip the boots regardless of whether or not your net resistance to magicka remains constant over that period. Your net resistance to magicka will not affect the magnitude of the Fortify Speed effect granted by the boots as Resistance and Weakness to Magicka only work on hostile effects.

[Balmas]

Yep, knew both of those things. I actually recorded M14 last saturday, and part of that was teleporting back to Balmora to make a pair of 2-sec 100% Magicka resistance spells. We speedy, baby.

[LibraryOgre]

So, I got the level uncapper and Khajiit Dialogue, and have started over, because of course I have.

I'm now a male khajiit. While my intention was to play exactly the same way as my orc lady, I find I'm already doing things differently. More bows, considering not bothering as much with summonable weapons, and certainly not with weapons-with-shields, and sticking to my "1:10 weight to gold ratio or GTFO" for most loot that is going to be turned into gold (enchanted items and a few other things don't need to follow it, especially if they're consumable)

[Mando Knight]

So, I got the level uncapper and Khajiit Dialogue, and have started over, because of course I have.

I'm now a male khajiit. While my intention was to play exactly the same way as my orc lady, I find I'm already doing things differently. More bows, considering not bothering as much with summonable weapons, and certainly not with weapons-with-shields, and sticking to my "1:10 weight to gold ratio or GTFO" for most loot that is going to be turned into gold (enchanted items and a few other things don't need to follow it, especially if they're consumable)

I generally jump to around 50:1 gold:weight fairly quickly. I generally don't need the extra cash-on-hand for a while, the shopkeepers generally don't have enough gold to buy all my jewelry and potions all the time anyway, and it means I don't have to go back to town after every single cave.

[Spore]

I honestly tried playing a Vigilant of Stendarr Setup. But it just makes no damn sense.

1) They run into melee with Robes. However they use Heavy Armor Boots and Gauntlets but no Shield.

2) They use Restoration Magic. The wards still drain a crazy amount of Magicka for their usefulness. The effects should be useful on undead. In practicality fire destruction effects work far better.

3) Maces are the worst onehanded weapon choice imho due to slow attack animations. You can't dodge as easy as with a sword. Power Attacks are better but if you wanted those, maybe use a Warhammer?

4) The blessing and necklace of Stendarr improve Block. Vigilants do not have Shields.

To be honest the build either works with complete Heavy Armor and Warhammers, taking Restoration as a sidepath. Or you use Destruction + Alteration Magic to blast down undead with fire. Or I could focus on Restoration via Ordinator and deal damage via Healing spells with False Light (probably still Shield plus Healing Spell as most are melee range spells).

[Rynjin]

With Ordinator, Smite makes maces one of the best undead killers. First Power Attack on a given enemy will deal 6x (8x with perk rank 2) damage as a critical, making it roughly as powerful as a full stealth specced dagger sneak attack if I recall (since I believe crits are natively 2x damage, multiplied by 6-8).

[Spore]

I know but there is still no reason not to use Heavy Armor. Restoration even helps with Stamina consumption.

[LibraryOgre]

I generally jump to around 50:1 gold:weight fairly quickly. I generally don't need the extra cash-on-hand for a while, the shopkeepers generally don't have enough gold to buy all my jewelry and potions all the time anyway, and it means I don't have to go back to town after every single cave.

I need to get 5k pretty quickly to afford my first house, so I can start adopting every orphan I can find (already have a mod that lets me get 6, which is every child living in the open, plus the one girl at the orphanage, with an extra slot)

[DigoDragon]

the shopkeepers generally don't have enough gold to buy all my jewelry and potions all the time anyway

This is painfully true, although Speech still levels even if you sell your junk for free.