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That weird graphical bug or whatever it is that causes ovals to appear around your hands when you have spells equipped is really obvious in this video. I've noticed it before but the conversation with Valerica is so long and boring that I kind of got distracted and was just watching that effect.
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Aug 5, 2018 14:13
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The Soul Cairn is a cool area, but yeah it's hard to navigate. That being said you can come back here, so you don't have to try to get everything in one sitting if you aren't worried about efficiency.
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Aug 5, 2018 15:23
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Arcomage posted:I kind of like the Soul Cairn. It's something entirely different from the sort of environment the game has gone so far, and there's some good lines and NPCs here if you stick around to hear them. I think you've basically summed up my feelings about the soul cairn. I also cannot emphasize enough how right you are that without a map, trying to be a completionist here is horrible. mortons stork posted:There's that, and there's also that the plan is idiotic and self-defeating even if successful, as blotting out the sun will annihilate plant life, therefore the entire food chain goes to hell, and in the end there's nobody even left to feed on. Good job, idiots. Alternately (and perhaps even more catastrophically since so many kinds of plants in Tamriel seem to grow in lightless places), it might delete all magic from the world. As I think I've said, the sun is the hole to the plane of the gods from which magic pours into Tamriel. Tiggum posted:That weird graphical bug or whatever it is that causes ovals to appear around your hands when you have spells equipped is really obvious in this video. I've noticed it before but the conversation with Valerica is so long and boring that I kind of got distracted and was just watching that effect. Me too! I don't think I'd often noticed it before, but it held my attention more than anything she said. I think this was actually one of the first times I skipped through plot dialogue since I had literally nothing to say about most of it other than that it's stupid.
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Aug 6, 2018 08:18
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Speaking of game-breaking stupidity and completionism in Skyrim.... I collected all 24 Stones of Baranziah and completed the quest... and that is the dumbest and most skewed reward I can imagine. The drop rate for gems just became horribly skewed - I had spent 30 levels trying to collect 2 Flawless Sapphires for buddy in riften, and I got them in the first 5 minutes after I had the bonus. To get that bonus + the sell anything to anyone speech perk basically makes limitless septims effortlessly.
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Aug 7, 2018 04:46
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CommonShore posted:Speaking of game-breaking stupidity and completionism in Skyrim.... i mean you have to go on an obnoxious scavenger hunt to get the bonus? i have a mod to point me to the stones as quest markers and i still have never picked them all up
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Aug 7, 2018 05:46
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Addamere posted:i mean I did it exactly once; it is THE most tedious (and second-most pointless!) quest in the entire game. Without patches, you are 95% likely to miss a gem in one of several locations you can never visit again, with the result that you might spend hundreds of hours finding the other gems but have the quest secretly be impossible to complete. Assuming you have the patches, you're still just not going to find them all. While some of the locations make sense or follow patterns (most Jarls have one, most guilds have one, etc.), some are totally bizarre. It's just not feasible that one person would find them all by exploring without a guide or MAYBE comparing notes with a bunch of extremely meticulous and eagle-eyed friends. Then the reward is comical. You find a dozen gems worth 10,000 gold or whatever in every single urn, chest, or spittoon in Skyrim. Great! Except 1) I've shown again and again that money is infinite in this game without even making an effort or spending a single perk on speech 2) You literally cannot sell those gems as fast as you find them because merchants still have the same tiny amount of gold, so the result is just that you have an ever-increasing amount of inventory clutter 3) You had to get through every single major questline in the game already and overcome every challenge in Skyrim. What are you even saving money for? When I found that was the reward, I hoarded up thousands of pounds of gems with some routine adventuring and dumped them in one house until I had turned the entire downstairs into a swimming pool of jewelry. But that is the only practical application and it gets old fast.
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Aug 7, 2018 06:00
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There's one funny but not really useful use for them in Dragonborn which I won't get into for spoiler reasons but yeah all it does is give you a swimming pool of gems. I once amassed so many in a bedroom that the game would crash trying to calculate the light reflection off all of them. Dawnguard is full of these huge and cool looking setpieces that are cool for about five minutes before you get bored of them but you have to spend hours in them and rapidly become super boring. The Soul Cairn is the worst because there's no distinguishing features beyond the same identical ruins so it's impossible to work out where you are in relation to your objectives, and half the quests and optional things are unmarked so you have no clue where you're going and where you've looked. Plus there's no fast travel points and your local map is useless, so there's no real way to navigate. There's this, Castle Volkihar (front and back) Fort Dawnguard, and the next part of this quest which have the same problem - cool to look at, tedious as hell in practice, especially if you're looking for the hidden secrets. It's all based on another part of the main quest which we haven't gotten to yet, which is cool once and people raved about which honestly had the same problem, but was a lot smaller to my recollection and had the bonus of being way easier to navigate and there being exactly one of them rather than three in sequence. And even that one got tedious as gently caress. Also yeah, this is supposedly why Serana is locked away rather than just her scroll, so Harkon can't have her blood. But what's stopping Harkon from just creating another Daughter of Coldharbour? Just offer another woman to Molag Bal annually? Either Harkon knows what he needs, in which case you'd think he'd have done it by now, or he doesn't (the most likely case), in which case you can hide the scrolls with you in the Soul Cairn and don't have to leave Serana alone in a column. Or take her with you. MinistryofLard fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Aug 7, 2018 |
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Aug 7, 2018 06:50
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Melth posted:When I found that was the reward, I hoarded up thousands of pounds of gems with some routine adventuring and dumped them in one house until I had turned the entire downstairs into a swimming pool of jewelry. But that is the only practical application and it gets old fast. I did this with cheese once in a wabbajack/Sheogorath theme playthrough and eventually there was so much cheese in my basement that the game started bugging out and eventually would just crash on trying to load the area.
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Aug 7, 2018 12:46
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The answer is obviously that vampirism severely degrades the brain. Thus Harkon et al. are giant morons and normal vampires are suicidal enough to take on multiple town guards and Obvious Hiro Protaganists by themselves
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Aug 7, 2018 14:31
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It's hard to fault vampirism for that in a place where the common person's reaction to a dragon is to run up and shank it with a dagger.
Guyver fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Aug 7, 2018 |
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Aug 7, 2018 14:46
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MinistryofLard posted:Also yeah, this is supposedly why Serana is locked away rather than just her scroll, so Harkon can't have her blood. But what's stopping Harkon from just creating another Daughter of Coldharbour? Just offer another woman to Molag Bal annually? Also, if there is one thing consistent across the entirety of the Elder Scrolls series, it is that Molag Bal is horrible to everyone - including his allies and servants. He creates the Daughters of Coldharbor not for a specific purpose (other than spreading discord, which is his sphere of influence), but because it's a fate worse than death to them. He most likely couldn't care less about Harkon or his plans, and might well kill Harkon out of hand for involving him in them if Harkon tried. Arcomage fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Aug 7, 2018 |
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Aug 7, 2018 23:38
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There is no way Molag Bal would make another Daughter of Coldharbour for Harkon when he could watch Harkon suffer by killing his own daughter, true.
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Aug 8, 2018 04:07
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sweet geek swag posted:There is no way Molag Bal would make another Daughter of Coldharbour for Harkon when he could watch Harkon suffer by killing his own daughter, true. He might if it meant ruining the whole world for everyone forever, which it would!
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Aug 8, 2018 06:53
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Actually giving Harkon what he wants sounds more like something Clavicus Vile would do.
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Aug 8, 2018 12:25
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Molag Bal is more likely to give Harkon someone who he thinks is helping to fulfil the prophecy but then who convinces Harkon's own daughter to turn against him and then they murder him in a torrent of blood and fire.
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Aug 8, 2018 14:57
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CommonShore posted:Molag Bal is more likely to give Harkon someone who he thinks is helping to fulfil the prophecy but then who convinces Harkon's own daughter to turn against him and then they murder him in a torrent of blood and fire. This explains why dawnguard is so stupid.
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Aug 8, 2018 17:00
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Out of the soul cairn, into the... anywhere else is fine really, please. Days 38-40: Soul Survivor (part 2)
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Aug 9, 2018 00:41
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Is there a downside to the Duurnehviir shout? I know ghost dragon quickly became my favorite tool for fightin bandits.
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Aug 9, 2018 16:38
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Man that was thoroughly unenjoyable. Glad we're done. Man, what happened to Bethesda expansions? Shivering Isles may not have been the most coherent plot in videogames history, but by god was the whole thing very interesting to look at all the way through.
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Aug 9, 2018 16:48
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Dragonborn is pretty good. Apart from that, the question is "Man, what happened to Elder Scrolls" and the answer is "Todd Howard".
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Aug 9, 2018 17:32
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:Is there a downside to the Duurnehviir shout? I know ghost dragon quickly became my favorite tool for fightin bandits. Massive, horrible cooldown that prevents you from using your other fun shouts. I never use the big ones for that reason (though on this character with 60% reduced shout cooldowns it might be more usable)
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Aug 9, 2018 18:32
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Gotta say the two times this episode when you were investigating something new to you and didn't know what to expect sounded like the most fun you've had in a long time in this LP. You really should do Dragonborn.
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Aug 9, 2018 18:38
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Also, unlike Dawnguard, Dragonborn is actually good. Plus there's parts of it where running blind won't be as much of a concern.Melth posted:Massive, horrible cooldown that prevents you from using your other fun shouts. Yeah fair point.
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Aug 9, 2018 18:44
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My (handsomely chiseled!) jaw hit the floor the first time I read about the item Hjalti is about to get: Days 41-42: Best Item in Skyrim
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Aug 12, 2018 07:23
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I suspect the mist up the mountain is magical and shouted into place by the babbling nostrils. Also it's only the first bit that's in any way dangerous and blocks you. I think it's possible to just walk up the whole way without shouting more than once.
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Aug 12, 2018 09:22
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A few points. Arngeir has a very different reaction to you if you just outright tell him the blades helped you find Alduin's Wall. Specifically, if you tell him that the blades are just helping you, he immediately gets a bit apologetic and decides to send you on to Paarthurnax without Einharth's intervention. This is definitely a situation where being cagey is just a bad idea. Arngeir has real reasons to distrust the Blades (they genocided the dragons after all) and you working with them has him very nervous, as ever since the Blades became the guardians of the Dragonborn, the Dragonborn haven't been listening to the Greybeards. Obviously just refusing to help the Dragonborn isn't going to help with that, so as long as you don't rile him up more he eventually sees reason. Refusing to tell him who helped you and demanding things of him just pisses him off though. Paarthurnax is... complicated. You shouldn't take what he says at face value. He's honest enough about what you will need to do to fight Alduin, but the one thing he is purposefully vague on is his backstory. My personal theory is that he created the Way of the Voice in order to weaken humans, whom he had come to see as an existential threat to dragons, but then the Akaviri arrived and killed all the dragons anyway. At that point I think Paarthurnax just kind of went native. He really believes in the Way of the Voice now. But he is only capable of believing in the Way of the Voice because there are no other dragons! As Arngeir said, shouting is intrinsic to dragons. The Way of the Voice is completely opposed to the way dragons simply have to live, just by their nature, which is that they use shouts for everything. There is simply no way that Paarthurnax actually believed in the Way of the Voice while other dragons were alive. Later on the Blades will give their perspective on Paarthurnax, which, as you might expect, is not all that nuanced. In some ways this is a lot like the quest with the Ali'kir, in that you can't really figure out what the truth is. The difference is that both the Ali'kir and Saadia were clearly lying to you. Paarthurnax isn't necessarily lying to you, he's just omitted most of the facts.
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Aug 12, 2018 15:22
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If the weather is too bad when you're outside with the greybeards, they can use the clear skies shout themselves. It's easy to notice when you're learning the whirlwind sprint and they all come outside with you. It's a useful shout if you're running survival type mods as well, since blizzards or rain can be obstacles in them.
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Aug 12, 2018 18:49
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sweet geek swag posted:Paarthurnax is... complicated. You shouldn't take what he says at face value. He's honest enough about what you will need to do to fight Alduin, but the one thing he is purposefully vague on is his backstory. My personal theory is that he created the Way of the Voice in order to weaken humans, whom he had come to see as an existential threat to dragons, but then the Akaviri arrived and killed all the dragons anyway. Could be, but Jurgen Windcaller was far more powerful than the other Tongues of his time. Maybe he was only that strong due to personal tutelage from Paarthurnax and no other Greybeard was ever that powerful again, but there's also Arngeir being able to speak normally, which seems to imply a greater mastery of the Voice than other Tongues. Of course, even if the Greybeards are stronger than other Tongues, their pacifism would still make them a non-issue for dragons.
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Aug 12, 2018 21:37
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The whole "Mortality is incomprehensible to the dragons" thing is kinda weird. Like, humans aren't immortal but we have no problem conceptualizing the idea of immortality. Maybe not all the nuances we'd run into, but it doesn't break our brain. Maybe dragons just don't have a lot of imagination?
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Aug 12, 2018 23:47
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Staltran posted:Could be, but Jurgen Windcaller was far more powerful than the other Tongues of his time. Maybe he was only that strong due to personal tutelage from Paarthurnax and no other Greybeard was ever that powerful again, but there's also Arngeir being able to speak normally, which seems to imply a greater mastery of the Voice than other Tongues. Of course, even if the Greybeards are stronger than other Tongues, their pacifism would still make them a non-issue for dragons. Jurgen Windcaller had an existential crisis because he incorrectly assumed that mastery of the voice alone would be enough to overcome any enemy, and the battle of Red Mountain proved that very wrong. Of course he was strong in the voice! The reason that the Way of the Voice is so devastating is that there are only a handful of people who can use it, and they won't use it for anything useful. The funny part is that dragons didn't get annihilated by the Nords, the got annihilated by the Akaviri. And it isn't entirely clear just how much the voice was used to kill them. Ironically if the Nords had still had the voice to repel the Akaviri, the dragons might have survived.
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Aug 13, 2018 00:24
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RandomMagus posted:The whole "Mortality is incomprehensible to the dragons" thing is kinda weird. Like, humans aren't immortal but we have no problem conceptualizing the idea of immortality. Maybe not all the nuances we'd run into, but it doesn't break our brain.
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Aug 13, 2018 02:05
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Paarthurnax reminds me a lot of Beast from the X-Men cartoon. Just super obnoxious, the way he keeps sprinkling random dragon words into his speech despite knowing that you can't understand them and being able to speak fluent... whatever language the people in this game speak. And Dragonrend is the most unbelievably underwhelming thing. It gets talked up as absolutely devastating to dragons but it turns out to be marginally useful at best, unless you've deliberately crippled yourself by not having any ranged attacks. I usually don't even want dragons to land because they almost always seem to choose the least convenient spots. I don't know how you've managed, in this LP, to get dragons who mostly land pretty much right in front of you. Whether through low health or Dragonrend I'd end up with them flying a kilometre away to find a good landing site every other time I fought one. RandomMagus posted:The whole "Mortality is incomprehensible to the dragons" thing is kinda weird. Like, humans aren't immortal but we have no problem conceptualizing the idea of immortality. Maybe not all the nuances we'd run into, but it doesn't break our brain. Mortality is so hard to conceptualise that most humans can't even do it. If you believe in any kind of afterlife, you already believe you're immortal and the idea of just not existing any more isn't even something you think of. Even if you don't explicitly believe in an afterlife you probably don't think much about what happens when you die, and it's impossible to imagine being dead because whatever you're imagining there's still a you there observing it.
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Aug 15, 2018 11:59
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Dragons are hard to hit when they are flying, unless they are doing their hover attack. Dragonrend makes them nice and immobile. It dramatically shortens dragon fights, which quickly become annoying anyway.
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Aug 15, 2018 15:26
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Making a Dragon land seems pretty boring on paper, but considering how many times I've seen a dragon either circle around aimlessly, aggro random wildlife 100m away, or just non stop strafing, I'd rather just have him crash land so I could kill him.
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Aug 15, 2018 15:56
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Once you get bored of fighting dragons it just becomes "let's get this over with as soon as possible."
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Aug 15, 2018 17:31
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It's a shame dragon fights get so boring, because even after 1000 hours in the game they still have some pretty good moments. I was playing on the weekend, running towards Valtheim towers. It was already cleared so I wasn't expecting anything. With no warning, a Dragon comes from behind and flame strafes me. It looped around the tower and turned back towards me, just as The One They Fear started playing. Too bad the fights get so tedious, because that is an impactful way to start a fight.
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Aug 16, 2018 03:28
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:It's a shame dragon fights get so boring, because even after 1000 hours in the game they still have some pretty good moments.
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Aug 16, 2018 04:22
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I'd chalk this up to the game having next to no variety for the player. All melee weapons act the same, with different speeds. All Bows act the same, with different speeds. Spells and shouts are really the only place where you have variety of choice, you have your fire projectiles, ice storm (my favorite since its an easy aoe that slows effectively), hitscan lightning. But even then a very cursory review reveals the most optimal choice, and all the others are quite bad in comparison.
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Aug 16, 2018 09:18
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I think it’s the lack of options for the player which makes things dull. Most enemy types really do have fairly different strengths, weaknesses, and widely different types of attacks. Learning the hitboxes and animations of various enemy attacks is pretty challenging and learning the best timing for every shield bash is not unlike learning to parry in Dark Souls I would enjoy the combat system quite well if we just had a few more options. A few more shouts which are actually viable instead of just Fus. And most importantly they should overhaul the stupid and terrible power attack system. Currently you have to waste perks unlocking each of 4 varieties of power attacks. And they’re all WORTHLESS. Imagine if instead those simple button combinations did an actually useful kind of attack.
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Aug 16, 2018 15:21
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Melth posted:I think it’s the lack of options for the player which makes things dull. I think it's more that the things you can do in theory is a huge option set (after all, that includes most of the spells, a couple potions / poisons, shouts, and some magic item bonuses), but the actual combat is pretty shallow. And melee isn't half as bad as archery, I can't count the number of LPs I bail on once they get into the stealth archer routine.  I decided to try spellblading it after Melth mentioned how bad it was, with the restriction I couldn't use combat maneuvers which took both hands on either a spell or the 1-handed weapon (so no bashing or Impact, but dual-casting Calm to raise the level cap or Ironflesh for the duration were OK). Not having access to on-demand stagger really changes how you play, and I've gotten a lot better at footwork and estimating attack ranges (and not just for those freaking cruise missile warhammers, but things like how far (and if it's possible) to strafe when a Forsworn chucks 4 Ice Storms at you), so thanks for that!  It did make me want to reply to that point about combat-viable shouts, though. I've gotten good use out of:* Ice Form: cooldown is bad, but it's a line AoE paralyze with a respectable duration. * Ethereal: I've been using necromancy a lot (and the spell level caps are synced to usually get the best creature in your level band; Revenant can animate Draugr Scourges, which are way better than Frost Atronachs), and phasing out often gives my summon time to hit the guy aggroed on me and thus switch targets, which they frustratingly don't often do (Frenzy is bad about that too). * Whirlwind Sprint: Like a less versatile Ethereal. I mostly use it to zoom past somebody charging in because the summons are usually behind me, setting up a flank. But I don't use it often. If I had patched Morokei I'd probably use repeated shouts like that more. * Slow Time: Seems like the only way to close in on a lightning-spamming mage (who fortunately aren't too common) or cast a Master-level scroll. It's also handy if the game rolls an archer boss (Deathlords seem to be that often enough), since you can't dodge at point-blank range and Slow Time is the only way to strafe around them. You can just range-duel them, but I had a rule where every "encounter" I have to hit at least one enemy with both a spell and a melee hit (which has made for some fraught dragon fights ). Force is awesome of course, and Animal Allegiance works on mammoths despite saying it's capped at level 20 (I've had Disarm work on enemies that should be outside its level band too). Nothing quite like luring a cave bear into an outdoor dungeon, making it your ally, and reanimating it once they kill it. Now that's conservation!  One last thing: I'm sure you know this, Melth, but the formula for raising your magic skills is pretty much only base cost divided by effect (which for Destruction is damage, so being on Legendary counts against you; for summons and such it's a timer that starts when the spell is in effect and an enemy is hostile). The game seems to expect you to upgrade your bread-and-butter spells to the ones you just got the perk to halve its cost for. So by sticking to Apprentice spells for so long (Fire Bolt, Flame Atronach) your growth curve is flattened. I mean, it's not like you have any other choice given your stipulations, but I made a ton of my Destruction levels off the Novice Robes Mirabelle gave me plus a ring I made from disenchanting the fixed Thalmor Robes in the shrine near Riverwood and casting Runes. Dual-casting those bad boys out of combat and letting your magicka come back and luring enemies into them is a great way of bypassing the cost for a fair bit of "free" damage. Armor spells are also basically free once you get Dual Cast and Stability (lasts 3 minutes 20 seconds, just regenerate your magicka before advancing and it'll probably still be on for the next fight), and starts giving you XP as soon as you alert an enemy. Anyway, sorry to ramble, that was a couple updates worth of stuff I wanted to chime in with and figured I'd dump it all at once. Still loving the LP!
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Aug 16, 2018 20:12
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