I got my copy of Skyrim today (thanks to broken Royal Mail tracking) and I can't wait to play it. But I want to start with a non-biased mind, or rather with no doubts.

You see, my friend (both of us have played Morrowind and Oblivion) was excited about Skyrim but he is upset about some things in the game. Namely,

a) Dragons don't feel epic (compared to...DDO.). How do they feel for you?

b ) Gameplay is not balanced because he find fights easy on the master difficulty, although he can get killed by one or two hits by some enemies or ranged fighters. But at the same time he thinks it's very hard or impossible to focus on non-combat skills such as Speech, Smithing or Alchemy because then he can't handle the fights. Is this true or it depends on how well are you able to fight? I heard that Enchanting and Alchemy is broken, so it seems a bit contradictory.

And he finds Restoration useless, he said that when he fights, then switches to healing and heals, the HP increase is immediately cancelled by the enemy attacks because he can't evade. He literally said that because there are no rolls or strafing he can't dodge enemy attacks 'coz all enemies are fast like hell. Is this just bad gameplay or true? Like that he should heal while attacking/blocking? (if the multitasking thing is true). Or do some enemies have bugged reach?

c) Oh, and according to him magic skills (and alchemy) raise veeery slowly (though I think didn't have the appropriate Guardian Stone activated), he said he stormed an entire keep with it and got almost no increases. Though I don't know how often did he actually cast spells (since if you KO every enemy with one hit it's obvious that it'll take more keeps or dungeons to level up the skills then, say, if you needed to cast at each enemy a fireball six times).

d) He said he gets rarely Speech options in dialogue and finds the skill hard to raise. And it takes him a long time to get a quest in a city, supposedly he has to search a long time (which contradicts a reviwer who said he was constantly getting quests from people).

I think Skyrim has some serious balance/progression issues but that it's still really fun.

Restoration is not useless. Once you get the respite perk it becomes awesome for any melee fighter. Power attacks are actually very useful in skyrim so stamina becomes important to manage. Respite makes all your healing spells restore stamina as well. More stamina = more power attacks.


If it takes him a Long time to get a quest I would question his mental capacity.

a) Dragons for me go back and forth. Sometimes the fights feel very epic and they get my heart racing a little bit. Then there are those times where i feel like a God because i just kicked the [censored] out of a dragon in 30 seconds.

b ) Scaling can be a little funky because you will run into mobs that you one or 2 shot. Then you run into those times where you are running for your life chugging potions dodging behind walls and trees to avoid spells and arrows. Using every tool in your arsenal to make it out alive. You don't want to FOCUS on non combat skills. Leveling them up at a normal pace doesn't cause any problems. The problems with the crafting are the people that leveled them all to 100 when their combat skills are sitting at 15. Or the people that use the alchemy and enchanting to buff the smithing or vice versa to make their gear and weapons ridiculously overpowered.

Restoration is far from useless your friend just isn't good at getting away from people i guess. There is strafing in Skyrim so I'm also not very sure what your friend is doing wrong there. Sounds purely user error to me.

c) I've not noticed this problem? Not sure what to really say here.

d) Speech options don't come up all that often but they are definitely there. Selling and buying loot increases your speech craft though i've never really paid attention to how fast/slow it levels. Also there are quests all over in towns. If you just listen to people talk while walking around then go talk to them you will get plenty of quests. There are people spending 20+ hours with quests from just Whiterun.

Non-combat skills require companion support. Alchemy is good for debuffing enemies and making potions. Smithing+Enchanting+give enhanced weapons to a companion = that companion owns the hell out of the enemy. You could also have smithing, enchanting, and some combat skills all together.

All crafting skills actually raise very fast, the problem is finding materials. You can find those in the wild or at certain merchants.

In order to find quest-related things, turn on the indicators in your map.

Thanks for your reply!

c) So you mean by that it's true, right? Whoops, didn't see the "not". That's awesome, I'm glad. I want to use magic skills a lot!

d) That's good, he made it sound like they pop up very rarely and somebody else said he hasn't seen those options even once (but then again he is kind of weird and may have just overlooked them).

"very serious"

If your Mage has more kills with a melee weapons than destruction and conjuration spells... you're not really playing a mage.


Skyrim is still engaging, but where weapons should be a backup just in case for a mage, they aren't.