[Megathread] Skyrim Discussion

[Deleted]

I stumbled upon this mod - SPERG that I highly recommend you check out. I love ACE, but after looking at SPERG I'm now trying it out and will very likely stay with it. It doesn't have as many endorsements as the bigger ones, but it has a decent-sized fanbase. It's biggest appeal to me was how closely it stayed true to vanilla perks while attempting to fix what was boring or broken.

- Automatic perks. Basically, when you level up a skill, you get the boring passive talents (like +20% block, +10% 1h damage, + 20% sneak) automatically. This is similar to Cataclysm revamped talent trees philosophy. Boring but essential power perks are now baked into your skill level, so you can spend your points on other perks.
- Many meh perks were merged, so you only spent one point to get, say, 3 vanilla perk effects. All old vanilla perks are still present.
- Modular. If you don't like certain perk or effect (like automatic perks), you can turn them off.

It's not a perfect mod - for example, not sure if they fixed exploits - but you can supplement that with other mods that do fix the exploits for example. The readme is a giant wall of text worth reading. Definitely worth a look if you like the ideas from this author.

The problem is that I really like the rogue with illusion magic play style and previously, no matter what I did, it quickly turned into just invisibility left hand dagger right hand move from enemy to enemy, tap them once and they drop, then loot. It got old and boring after a few dungeons. Indoors I didnt even need invisibily.

There's also a problem with crafting loops and weapons/armor/enchants getting too good even without using any loops, making all found loot and quest rewards pointless. Just grabbing a random dagger or piece of armor, tempering them to godlike levels and putting 45% onehanded/33% illusion cost reduction on a ring for example. Vanilla is just riddled with them. Infinite money spamming potions made from just buying reagents from alchemy shops.. archery and destruction stunlocks.

I think vanilla is varied and interesting enough when looking at the variety of playstyles and options. The problem is that everything is pointless because the simplest method works best and intentionally going the harder way doesn't really work. It's not immersive, it's stupid and just doesnt feel right. I mean if I can just sneak behind that bandit leader and kill him in one hit, why bother with sneaking poisons in his pocket or stealing hes sword or even waiting till he turns hes back.. I can just silentroll in hes face and frontstab him and hes dead before he can even find me..

Anyway, I went with full Skyre for now. It doesn't actually seem so bad at first glance but I've yet to try spells. Had to unlearn most of the old ones using console which was rather tedious work (the mod should do that automatically or at least provide some option to do it when first loaded, like that respec potion). Crossbows and archery seem to be a bit overpowered though. Especially in the hands of enemies (lol:P) And I don't like some perks needing over 100 in skills much but that's a minor detail. Had to set skill caps to 150. I also wish the author would have left at least one crafting boost in. Enchant or potions. Can't loop it with just one after all

Still, the biggest problem I have with it is the unarmed "weapons". Having to equip your hands is just silly:P Besides, it's bugged too, if you use them for brawling, it's considered using a weapon and you get a fine plus have to kill the opponent or run away because they draw out their weapons and die if they health drops to zero instead of crouching.

[Deleted]

I like the crazy npc xbow damage
Makes the guards actually scary, makes you more careful when they can one-shot you from nowhere if you break the law.

[Deleted]

I like the crazy npc xbow damage
Makes the guards actually scary, makes you more careful when they can one-shot you from nowhere if you break the law.

Is it only guards though? I haven't roamed around much after installing it much but if random bandits or draugr can also 1 shot you, it isnt very balanced:P I dont mind guards being able to do that, unless maybe if I accidentally hit them during a dragon or vampire attack.

Anyway, I think I've spent at least 20-30 hours trying to fix all the bugs in the game.. and I don't mean just quests and glitches and such. Seems like I'm down to a choice of disabling all the water effects, playing with flickering and horrible ripples or turning off SLI which means that the FPS sometimes drops to 35 and maybe lower when there is lots of action going on on the screen... or disabling all the nice bloom effects, high texture mods, ENB etc.

It used to work somewhat with SLI on before I updated the driver when I had 3D vision enabled (but turned off in the game) but now I cant even get it to work by installing old drivers again.. and I'm not really prepared to install windows again:P

[Fhi]

<snip>

Fair enough. What cheat loops mod are/were you using? I think I need to get a couple for myself (sneak, alchemy, enchanting) although I refuse to use them in my current game.

[Deleted]

Fair enough. What cheat loops mod are/were you using? I think I need to get a couple for myself (sneak, alchemy, enchanting) although I refuse to use them in my current game.

Vanilla game? Didn't use the fortify restoration one, it was an obvious bug and probably not intended (enchant gear with fortify alchemy, make fortify restoration potion, drink it, unequip, reequip fortify alchemy gear, make new potion etc. and in the end make godmode fortify enchanting or fortify smithing potion). But even without that, the obvious although slower fortify enchanting potion, make fortify alchemy gear with it loop is still there. I had a mod before that broke the restoration bug loop but I abused the last one till I got skyre, which thankfully broke it. Bethesda really needs to hire some balance developers for TES 6 Everything is either super, mindnumbingly hard and then after you learn one trick, make one spell, it's effortless. Oblivion had that sleep spell abuse too, weakness to magic + paralyze custom spell which put everything to sleep for hours if you used it a few times in a row.

And cheat mods? Me? Unthinkable! I've never used any cheat or godmode item or code or mod in any game, honestly! Yea, Im boring:P I just dont want to intentionally not use game mechanics that are right out in the open. It just breaks immersion and is kinda stupid. I mean if there's a daedric goddagger of epic oneshotting right in my reach, why would I possibly take some crummy iron dagger instead?

I just hope the author of Skyre gets over hes obsession with crossbows and nerfs them. He got rid of destruction stunlock and then intentionally creates a new, stronger one?

[Fhi]

And cheat mods? Me? Unthinkable! I've never used any cheat or godmode item or code or mod in any game, honestly! Yea, Im boring:P I just dont want to intentionally not use game mechanics that are right out in the open. It just breaks immersion and is kinda stupid. I mean if there's a daedric goddagger of epic oneshotting right in my reach, why would I possibly take some crummy iron dagger instead?

No, lol, I meant mods that fix the exploits so you can't use them. ACE had them, but sadly it doesn't cover all the trees. I guess I'll just stay away from those skill trees. I'm playing hardcore RP anyway - sticking with steel armor only.

[Deleted]

No, lol, I meant mods that fix the exploits so you can't use them. ACE had them, but sadly it doesn't cover all the trees. I guess I'll just stay away from those skill trees. I'm playing hardcore RP anyway - sticking with steel armor only.

I guess I misunderstood you then:P Thought you were looking for cheats and exploits. Actually theres just so many of them in vanilla game. Skyre fixes a lot but it also adds some things that are not exactly immersive so I guess it's not for everyone.

There an exploit in nearly every tree in vanilla. Destruction has stunlock, illusion has invisibility, enchanting has 0 mana cost with 4 or fewer armor pieces, sneak gets too strong too fast and after 60-70 with perks invested, you become undetectable indoors and call kill everything with a dagger even on master. To fix most of them you'd need a complete overhaul.

What worked for me before Skyre was just patching the loops, I forgot what the mod was called but it was some tiny one that worked well and slowed down leveling speed to 1/5 of the original. Most of the overpowered things only come later in game so I was hoping to complete most of the game before getting any skill to 100 and then its not that bad if I do become OP, after saving the world 5 times and being the archmage and leader of the thieves and everything buuut nah. I barely got through the thieves guild quests + maybe 50 or so odd jobs for them and my enchanting was at 100 again, then 0 mana cost invisibility and everything became boring.

[Vespian]

I guess I misunderstood you then:P Thought you were looking for cheats and exploits. Actually theres just so many of them in vanilla game. Skyre fixes a lot but it also adds some things that are not exactly immersive so I guess it's not for everyone.

There an exploit in nearly every tree in vanilla. Destruction has stunlock, illusion has invisibility, enchanting has 0 mana cost with 4 or fewer armor pieces, sneak gets too strong too fast and after 60-70 with perks invested, you become undetectable indoors and call kill everything with a dagger even on master. To fix most of them you'd need a complete overhaul.

What worked for me before Skyre was just patching the loops, I forgot what the mod was called but it was some tiny one that worked well and slowed down leveling speed to 1/5 of the original. Most of the overpowered things only come later in game so I was hoping to complete most of the game before getting any skill to 100 and then its not that bad if I do become OP, after saving the world 5 times and being the archmage and leader of the thieves and everything buuut nah. I barely got through the thieves guild quests + maybe 50 or so odd jobs for them and my enchanting was at 100 again, then 0 mana cost invisibility and everything became boring.

This world is so far away from me. I have 50 hours played on one character. His smithing is 30 and his enchanting is like..15. The only way to level them fast is running around buying everything from vendors allover the place and rinse and repeat that. As long as you do not do this and just nicely play the game as it is intended, you'll never have enough steel or iron to even get beyond 45 before level 30. Unless, of course, you neglect all other progress and just go hunting for iron in mines.

I always have to laugh when I see people claiming that everything went too fast for them, while forgetting to mention that they exploited the system (shop respawns etc) to get that fast in first place.

[Deleted]

This world is so far away from me. I have 50 hours played on one character. His smithing is 30 and his enchanting is like..15. The only way to level them fast is running around buying everything from vendors allover the place and rinse and repeat that. As long as you do not do this and just nicely play the game as it is intended, you'll never have enough steel or iron to even get beyond 45 before level 30. Unless, of course, you neglect all other progress and just go hunting for iron in mines.

I always have to laugh when I see people claiming that everything went too fast for them, while forgetting to mention that they exploited the system (shop respawns etc) to get that fast in first place.

Never did that. I don't use fast travel so I was just running from place to place, picking up all the flowers and butterflies and stuff as well as mining ores. Even at the start, after one trip when I made all those into potions, I ended up with 10-20 more alchemy levels and 10k gold. So alchemy went up FAST. After exploring all the cities and maybe doing 1-2 quests, I was already at 60-70. Same with enchanting.. I never really used it before 100 for my own enchants but even disenchanting everything and only using the soul gems I found game I got that to 60 70 as well before even really starting playing.

And no, I never used wait command or exploited like that (besides, I was using needs mod from the start so I would have starved to death anyway like that:P) but I did buy every herb and bar when visiting a town yes. How is that exploiting? It's there for sale, not buying it is as stupid as not using armor because it makes you get hit too little..

Besides, even if I did, why should players force themselves not to use some of the game features? If I set the difficulty to master or experts, I should expect some challenge, no? Handicapping yourself is not a challenge. You could argue for bug abuse but not something that is just plain out there.

[Vespian]

Never did that. I don't use fast travel so I was just running from place to place, picking up all the flowers and butterflies and stuff as well as mining ores. Even at the start, after one trip when I made all those into potions, I ended up with 10-20 more alchemy levels and 10k gold. So alchemy went up FAST. After exploring all the cities and maybe doing 1-2 quests, I was already at 60-70. Same with enchanting.. I never really used it before 100 for my own enchants but even disenchanting everything and only using the soul gems I found game I got that to 60 70 as well before even really starting playing.

And no, I never used wait command or exploited like that (besides, I was using needs mod from the start so I would have starved to death anyway like that:P) but I did buy every herb and bar when visiting a town yes. How is that exploiting? It's there for sale, not buying it is as stupid as not using armor because it makes you get hit too little..

Because, as far as I know, their assortment replenishes and is therefore infinite and is therefore, in my eyes, an exploit. So I don't.

[Deleted]

Because, as far as I know, their assortment replenishes and is therefore infinite and is therefore, in my eyes, an exploit. So I don't.

It's a shop, of course it replenishes. If you buy all the cheese from your local supermarket and go back tomorrow, do you expect there to be no more cheese then?

[Vespian]

It's a shop, of course it replenishes. If you buy all the cheese from your local supermarket and go back tomorrow, do you expect there to be no more cheese then?

Practically, I expect them to. But waiting for it to happen also takes a lot longer Purely from a gameplay mechanic, I see it as abusing the system Which is why my road to LOLSOEASY TO GET 100, is actually a lot slower. And I enjoy it, while at the same time, never needing mods to force that particular speed.

Oh and now I think about it, re-stocking calculations are based on average sales. So if you buy all cheese in the store and the average sale per day is like ~2 and you just bought a 100 pieces, he will only have two the next day. If you respect the fact that the lore suggests that in Skyrim, we have no cars, no distribution centres and no on demand delivery, I would imagine restocking in a "real" Skyrim world, would take more than a few weeks.

[Fhi]

I kinda see both sides to be honest. The question lies in the degree of extremity. On one hand, someone who deliberately exploits would, say, sneak around the bear in the Helgen escape for 2 hours until sneak = 100 before leaving Helgen. On the other hand, someone else might say "Master is too easy, I'll just fight in my undies" and never spend perks. You can't really say that anyone who then chooses to wear armor and spend perk points are exploiting. I think, if by playing the game regularly, you become overpowered, that's a design fault, not abusing the system.

Crafting loop, yes. Not intended, definitely an exploit. But buying items from vendors when they're there, it's a design fault if it is not intended. There's a difference between avoiding exploits and deliberately restricting/gimping your game play. You shouldn't have to min/max, but you shouldn't have to intentionally screw yourself over anyway.

In my case, I have an economics mod. Prices are brutal (as they should be) depending on where you are. Iron ore in Whiterun where it is cheapest due to abundance of iron mines is 187g per ore, so it's not like I can just buy 300 of them and get smithing up by 50 levels. With the mod, I don't have to deliberately gimp myself, and I made a personal choice not to use exploits. I can play the game regularly, get frustrated that I can't seem to find enough corundrum ore to make steel items to get past level 28 smithing, but I don't have to gimp myself.

Ultimately, mods are a personal preference. Many play perfectly fine without any - the game is made playable without mods. They are far from necessary, but for some of us who likes more depth in a video game, mods suit our needs just fine.

[Vespian]

Ultimately, mods are a personal preference. Many play perfectly fine without any - the game is made playable without mods. They are far from necessary, but for some of us who likes more depth in a video game, mods suit our needs just fine.

All I was saying is, many, many people go like: "Skyrim Vanilla is just sooo waaay easy. I like, leveled all my perks to 100 before level 20 and I didn't even tryyyy *gay handgesture*" [for the record, not a stab at gay people, but you know what I mean] And then they start explaining how mods made that experience so much better because it's now hardcore hard to do things. But little old me, well, I have a few mods that add more flavour to my game, does it all without and can't even begin to see himself get a 100 smithing without dedicating a hundred hours of farming in mines.

My issue is not with mods. Nor is my issue with one person specifically. I just noticed a lot of this behaviour and in my humble opinion it's due to the fact that the game mechanics allow you to excessively "make use" of vendors to actually get your perks up to 100 with the speed of a train, that people show this behaviour. In essence, it's still abuse. Don't do it and it all becomes a lot harder and more rewarding.

[Deleted]

I just think that without any mods, there should be far less obvious exploits, overpowered things and shortcuts. Every time I played on vanilla settings and without even trying, I got alchemy to 100 in less than 5 hours into the game. I didn't wait around in shops, just picked flowers etc. on my path because I didn't like fast travel as it didn't feel very immersive. Only way around that would have deliberately not picking up herbs or make potions.

And 100 alchemy was already godmode even on master difficulty. Insane smithing potions to make 1 shotting bows and daggers and invisibility potions to bypass everything. Not that I needed it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijB2f-s5iyg pretty much guaranteed I could clear any dungeon even at level 1.

So yea, Bethesdas balancing is just terrible and always have been but the mods have always improved everything considerably. I just feel a little sorry for the console players.

[Vespian]

And 100 alchemy was already godmode even on master difficulty. Insane smithing potions to make 1 shotting bows and daggers and invisibility potions to bypass everything. Not that I needed it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijB2f-s5iyg pretty much guaranteed I could clear any dungeon even at level 1.

Oh yeah, no one is saying stealth isn't overpowered. Up to the point that I refuse to take it on some characters. All stealth + bow attacks are just too bloody bugged. Oh there's this guy I absolutely can't oneshot with anything and I have no frost or fire resistance so his spells literally oneshot me, so instead I will lurk in the dark and shoot over 50 arrows in his face until he dies.

That was on a char that didn't have any ranged perks and tried to go 1H all the way.

[Valenhil]

It's amazing how no matter which start I pick on Alternate Start, I always drift to Riverwood first.

[Deleted]

It's amazing how no matter which start I pick on Alternate Start, I always drift to Riverwood first.

Yeah, happens to me all the time aswell, except this time I started in Winterhold so it's taking me a very long time. :P

[mvaliz]

I just think that without any mods, there should be far less obvious exploits, overpowered things and shortcuts. Every time I played on vanilla settings and without even trying, I got alchemy to 100 in less than 5 hours into the game. I didn't wait around in shops, just picked flowers etc. on my path because I didn't like fast travel as it didn't feel very immersive. Only way around that would have deliberately not picking up herbs or make potions.

And 100 alchemy was already godmode even on master difficulty. Insane smithing potions to make 1 shotting bows and daggers and invisibility potions to bypass everything. Not that I needed it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijB2f-s5iyg pretty much guaranteed I could clear any dungeon even at level 1.

So yea, Bethesdas balancing is just terrible and always have been but the mods have always improved everything considerably. I just feel a little sorry for the console players.

Why feel sorry for us console players in terms of balance? I actually LIKE being able to become a bit OP for a change! ^_^

Only thing I wish I can get are a few tiny mods like the bug fixes that the PC gets. It really infuriates me that Bethesda has NOT even put out a bug-fix patch for ANY version of the game. >_<

I didn't even touch any professions until I was nearly done exploring the majority of the world. Alchemy was the one I leveled the last - and hated every minute of it. >_<

[Grizzly Willy]

They have put out bug fix patches.