» Thu Jun 07, 2012 5:24 am player runs into.
I used to not have fun with skyrim, because I wasnt playing it the right way. This is some advice i'd give you from my experience.
First and foremost: The steed stone is northwest of solitude... fetch. Arguably the best guardian stone in the game, it makes you're equipped armor weigh nothing, removes any movement penalty from the armor, and gives you're character the strength to pick up 100 more pounds of equipment. This is useful obviously in that it is extremely conveniencing, both for getting around, combat, and sneaking (as the armor weighing nothing makes it make about as much noise as light armor) and also allows you to pick up ALOT of crap that you will sell in order to increase you're speech skill. Using this guardian stone will prevent you from ragequitting the game on account of you getting tired of tedious item micromanagement and otherwise having to spend time on stupid things getting in the way of enjoying the game.
Don't farm, dont exploit, just play the game, don't be a miser. Constantly be thinking about different ways you can use youre money and capital to improve your character. Dont try and think long term, unless it doesnt have to do with farming. Enchant and improve you're equipment, and buy recipes and make healing potions and other such things that will be of use to you on your quests. Dont farm youre crafts, use them. Unless its late game and farming actually yields a worthwhile profit, don't. The game is built specifically to punish farming. Whatever profit you make is smaller or about the same as any money you would have made just going out plundering dungeons and doing quests.
Sell that crap. If you have crafting supplies, books, spell tomes, miscellaneous apparel and weapons that you keep telling yourself you're going to use eventually, just go sell it. Dont even store it, just go sell it. Crafting ingredients are in no short supply and are inexpensive (if youre not buying them for the sake of farming) and most non rare items are not worth keeping as you can craft them whenever. There are certain things that you should go store, like staffs (as they are very rare) and certain other items, but most things can just be thrown away.
Use that crap. Just as there are items that should just be thrown away, some have use. Instead of being lazy and selling your enchanted things, go disenchant them. You cant learn enchantments from anything other than enchanted items, so be very careful about selling them. Also, if youve always been too lazy to be bothered with alchemy, you are kind of missing out. Go to a potion store and buy recipes, and then make the recipes you want. If the store doesnt have the recipes you want, wait two nights and check again. Same thing with enchanting and smithing. If you havent bothered with smithing and enchanting, you are holding your character's full potential back.
Pick up that crap. If you got the steed stone, this shouldnt be an issue. Granted there are certain things not worth picking up, but if you've freed enough room in you're inventory as Ive suggested you do you should almost never have a problem. I dont care if its animal pelt, 5 gold, dont care. Unless it's hide or fur armor, ancient nord weapons, or those damn numerous burial urns that no sane person should ever bother with, you should probably be picking it up. You can always drop it later.
Be smart with you're perks and leveling, but don't be miserly. You want to be smart about how you level, but you also want to have fun. I used to never invest perk points in the simple "increase effectiveness by X%" perks because I thought them an inefficient investment. I could have not been more wrong. Granted there are some perks not worth the expense, particularly the ones where the benefit of continual investment past the first one drops off (example would be haggling) but for the most part you should just always be spending your perks abundantly. If you can help it though, don't spend perks until you actually need them, and save before spending so you can experiment with it first. Also, you should definitally specialize your skills. Pick either archery, destruction, one and two handed to invest your perks in, otherwise you will have a generally weaker character.
Now, with the main things out of the way, it now comes to what character you will play and how you can most effectively enjoy your experience playing a:
Thief. Be warned, if you choose a thief, you need to understand you will not be using sneak as a side skill. It will effectively be one of your main combat abilities next to either one handed or archery or both. Your thief will be fragile in direct combat, as your perks and leveling time will be going into that which weakens any other combat abilites, so it becomes even more important to stay out of combat all together. The damage bonuses from sneaking in one handed and archer are helpful, but by themselves are hardly sufficient. When sneaking, you're trying to even the odds as much as you can before you're inevitably detected. This is where illusion and alchemy come in. With alchemy, poisons serve to enhance the amount of damage you can do in addition to your sneak attack bonuses. With illusion, you can turn enemies on one another, or calm them if you accidentally get caught. Any fighting you do following sneak assaults should be very minor "clean ups". Also be warned, that being a thief draws out the game considerably compared to combat focused classes, as sneaking takes much more time. It takes great patience.
Warrior/Archer/Light infantry. These three are pretty straightforward. As long as the above tips are followed it shouldnt be very difficult to achieve success.
Mage Warrior. This kind of build is the most popular. Unfortunately it's tricky to pull off unless you know a few things. You can mix up and specialize in whatever combination of mage and warrior skills you want in general, with a few exceptions. You need to use either alteration or armor, not both. I have found from personal experience that it makes you weaker in the long run. Invest you're perk points and leveling into restoration instead if you want to use armor. Use alteration in addition to restoration if you're going for a robes wearing character, as at only level 30 you get a perk that increases the effectiveness of alteration by 2x and later 3 times, which is a drastic difference. Its clear the developers intended this as a way to make alteration unattractive to mage warrior builds. You actually can use a shield in addition to you're spells. The switch delay is nonexistant, allowing you to switch between restoration or whatever spells you wish to use instantaneously. Since mage warrior's are more up close than pure mage builds they need block to help mitigate damage. Also, I cannot stress how important restoration is to a mage warrior. It's you're main defensive skill alongside block (if you choose to use it). When you use spells you want to be normally at somewhat of a distance from enemies, meaning you're going to want to use sprint. There is a perk that allows a massive amount of stamina to be restored along with you're healing spells, as well as a perk that increases healing by 50% (which is huge) which also applies to stamina restoration. If you want to spam power attacks or sprint basically indefinitely this allows just that.
My last piece of advice is, do not underestimate enchantment. It is basically required that any mage use enchanting or enchanted robes so that you can use magicka at least on a semi-regular basis. By default, magicka recharges very slowly and you have very little of it. You will be wanting to be putting a chunk of you're attribute points into magicka when you level up. You don't need stamina really at all. Putting a bit of points into health after you're magicka is pretty high isnt a bad idea though. Using enchantments, you need to buff you're armor, rings, and amulets with fortify restoration or other magicka buffs, restoration buff is preferred because that's probably what you'll need the most. For the pieces of armor you cannot apply a restoration buff, choose fortify magicka recharge over fortify magicka. Fortify magicka is not percentage based and therefore and therefore is insignificant to fortify recharge speed which is.
The only thing that's wrong with Skyrim that the devs didn't implement consequences to the player's actions...
. Its also apparently obvious you have some kind of contempt for my whole thread because I "dared" to give players advice on playing their perfect little game. Lets debunk your arguments now.
