» Thu May 31, 2012 4:24 am IMHO, this is a *lot* more challenging than playing the game normally.
My (self-imposed) rules:
- Stay at level 1, never use the skill menu, never level up, no perks. Skills *do* increase with use, i simply never open the skill menu to level up.
- Ignore the main quest completely.
- Never fast travel, always walk, ride or take a carriage.
- Earn money by exploring the land, hunting, chopping wood, mining ore, doing sidequests, creating items and selling loot.
- Eat and drink several times per day, sleep at night.
- No forced improving skills. I only use smiting when i want to make something i need.
I consider making 100 leather bracers to improve your skill cheating. Same goes for alchemy.
- No crosshair for the bow.
- Absolutely no use of console! Unless i get stuck between rocks or something and i have to tcl my way out or for screenshot purposes.
Where i'm at currently:
Level would be: 43
Skill increases: 628
Level displayed: 1
Magicka: 100
Health: 100
Stamina: 100
I'm wearing (improved) Wolf Armor with the current stats:
Armor: 56
Boots: 24
Gauntlets: 24
Helmet: 30
Shield: 38
- Did the companions questline up to the point where i could get Skyforge weapons. I'm going to need the extra boost.
- Switched to heavy armor for the added AR boost.
- I got married! For some reason, the dialog options for the guy at the temple in Riften did not show up for me earlier in the game so i thought there may be a level cap for marriage, but when i went back a while ago, the dialog was there and i was able to buy the amulet from him.
I married Uthgerd for puerly selfish reasons i'm afraid. You see, she's got a nice big house in Whiterun. And she's never there since she spends all her time at the local watering hole. Now that's a woman to my liking!
The house is big with plenty of containers and it has a cozy feeling to it.
- I've been really getting into quests and dungeon crawls lately.
Boss level enemies and higher level wildlife is still a challenge, but i don't mind that at all as it is actually much more interesting that way.
- Although my smiting and enchanting skills have progressed nicely, loot from dungeons etc. still comes in very handy as a lot of items give me better stats then what i can forge myself. I find myself carrying a rather large assortment of rings and amulets.
- The only mods i'm running are visual things like the HD texture pack and pine trees for whiterun.
I don't feel the need for any game-play altering mods.
I'm also playing with a INI tweak that makes bows and arrows behave more real life like.
Enemies:
While a lot of enemies are locked at level 1 with you (your off the mill Bandits etc.) some like Bosses, Bandit Chiefs or larger wildlife do have higher (in some cases *much* higher) base levels.
For example, i ran into a level 7 necromancer, two level 11 Sabre Cats and a level 22 Frost Troll.
Summary:
Overall, the game is getting easier (as is should) as i improve my skills, weapons and armor but it's not as linear as you would think.
It seems that at least some of the enemies scale with your skills. In fact, it almost seems like some of the random encounters are tailored to what skills you are particularly good at.
Of course, there are those enemies that are just set at certain high levels (mainly boss type enemies) from the beginning and i suspect those will always be hard to fight for me.
Exploring without fast-travel is really what keeps me coming back to this game. I hadn't though about this much before i started this character, but i have to say that the more i play like this, the more i think fast-travel is part of the reason why some people get bored so quickly. IMHO, they are missing out on 90% of the game.
