Minichan

I've been playing ultimate skyrim

@previous (B)
old skyrim is buggy as fuck still apparently. had to load an old save from just before character creation because the ride into helen was all fucked up and the horse kept getting stuck. turns out it was an fps issue. anything over 60fps borks all kinds of shit. like you swim across the sky and the water vibrates and does weird shit.

@previous (squeegee)
> like you swim across the sky and the water vibrates and does weird shit.

I've been wasting my money on drugs all this time.

@822,586 (squeegee)

Yeah the physics are tied to frame rate so you need to either try to limit the fps or mod it to the extent you get like 45fps

@previous (B)
Just buy an slower computer.

holy shit, illusion is awesome. the first character i made was a rogue with points in sneak, one-handed, archery and light armor. it was ultimately pretty weak in any kind of fight with multiple opponents and it was pretty impossible to finish the main quest line with so many points in lockpicking and pickpocketing. the last gauntlet before the last boss has a bunch of dragons and it's impossible to stealth through it with just max sneak. and i couldn't hold my own in a stand-up-fight since all my bonuses were towards stealth attacks.

but this illusion rogue build is fucking unstoppable. huge group of enemies clustered up? no problem, cast frenzy and watch them kill each other in a fit of rage, then pick off the wounded winner with a backstab.

or just go invisible and go around them. walk right up to the bandit leader or whatever, slit their throat, and then disappear into thin air again. i don't even really have to worry about pathing or staying behind targets, i can just walk up and sneak attack them from any direction, kill them, and immediately vanish. it's a lot of fun, actually. and if i get overwhelmed i can just cast one of several calming spells and everyone just chills the fuck out while i go around executing everybody.

sort of feels like a cross between a world of warcraft rogue and a jedi.

i don't really even use armor all that much, i've spent most of the game wearing stolen clothes.

@previous (squeegee)
neat. i haven't played in like 5 years but i got bored and started a new character like three weeks ago. wasn't sure what to do differently so I stopped playing after like an hour but now i want to try this

@previous (F)
i decided to completely skip the main quest line so i never went to see the jarl of whiterun. so no dragons fucking everything up all the time. just went straight into the thief and assassin questlines. but now i'm thinking i could beat the main quest line with this one too. mostly i just wanted to redo the questline to assassinate the emperor. another fun one i did years ago was a block/one-handed/heavy armor/blacksmith warrior. block is a surprisingly fun talent tree, the word i would use to describe it would be juggernaut. you don't need stealth, you don't need tactics, you just need space to build up a running start and you fuck up everyone's world.

i did a mage too, a full on magic user with points in destruction/conjuration/alteration/illusion/restoration but never really liked it. kinda have always found the most synergy by mixing magic and standard attacks.

i was thinking earlier that the only thing i've not really tried is a two-handed specialist. but, i could put points into two-handed/heavy armor/alteration/restoration and basically build a holy paladin. that might give all the defense of a block/heavy armor build with the armor boosts from alteration and restoration's banishing the dead and the high damage from two handed weapons might make it a lot of fun too. i could totally see using a two-handed dwarven war hammer stolen from the dwemer museum being very good early game

@823,285 (F)
oh yeah, and if you do try illusion/stealth then pick either 1-handed or archery, not both. you just won't need both. stealth lets you take talents that give bonuses to both daggers and bows, i think daggers is more fun once you get invisibility. and get illusion magic pretty early, it's super useful. you'll be teching into it very hard, actually. i'm pretty much aiming for all of the talents. skipping dual cast for now. get talents that allow spells to work on higher level enemies over talents that decrease casting cost.

how to fast level illusion:go to the illusion instructor and take his quest to "attune the college's energy things" and you'll get a pair of tuning gloves. the gloves give you a two hour buff that increases your mana regen like 1000% or something. wear the gloves to get buffed, then enter the college main hall, f5, and start spamming people with rage/calm/courage. use stealth, though, and stay hidden so they don't attack you, they all are at least apprentice or adept and their spells can fuck you up. especially the instructors. but, no one can die, so just let them beat each other until you're the highest level in the room. you can continue to do this at any time, but without the mana regen it takes a bit longer. but it's way faster than trying to level up just in dungeons only. you're at college though, consider it classwork.

anyway, get illusion early on and let your spells replace the use of archery for long range attacks. i wasted 2 points improving damage with bows and i'm not sure i'll even be using it much going foward. but the bigger issue is splitting kills between archery and one-handed and not leveling one or the other quickly enough. i haven't put a single point into anything defensive, like armor. i'm wholly relying on illusion to shut down opponents who might damage me. invisibility, a level 70 spell, is pretty much the perfect replacement for needing any kind of armor at all, it would seem. earlier i killed two knights in ebony armor from the Mehrune's Razor (dagger) quest line. one shot them both. the first time i did it my rogue had a horrible time with them, had to do it over and over until i finally managed to eek out a win. but this time i just went invisible and stealth stabbed them in the face and they died in one hit. pretty sure this is my ultimate skyrim rogue. my other rogue is a pretty sweet vampire though...

and the downside, i forgot to mention the downside. illusion magic doesn't work on everything. it seems to work on all animals and people though, especially once you take the talents that let spells work on higher level opponents. but, it doesn't work on the undead, robots, and dragons i think. they're all immune, and tbh i'm not sure how dragons deal with invisibility. if they can just see you, which may be the case. it may be they're just immune to being cast upon. the top talent at level 100 does give you the skill to cast illusion spells on the undead and robots though. but until level 100 you won't be getting much help from that school of magic when dealing with those things. you'll be relying on stealth and one-handed. so archery is always there as a backup if you really need it and decide to do a bunch of crypts and dwemer ruins early on. but i think it's redundant.

(Edited 48 seconds later.)

@823,288 (squeegee)
I always wanted to do an illusion/battlemage kinda playthrough because nothing was ever as successful as my first super simple one-handed dual-wielding stealth cat but it seemed like such a pain in the ass to level up the magic trees. did a destruction one once but that sucked. i don't really like the archery in the game anyway. last time I just used the 'conjure arrow' spell from console commands. it just shoots an arrow out your hand or st
i started the game in solstheim w/ mod so I'm not on the main quest either. sick of that shit. fuck those flippy horses

(Edited 22 seconds later.)

@previous (F)
illusion is super easy to level since it has a bunch of spells that don't start combat so you can just run around casting calm on everyone in towns.

Is Skyrim the one where you end up fighting Tiamat in Stovokor? I think it is.