Recent content by WhiterunModder

ngl that reply nails it, but I'd add: modding changes the math here pretty significantly if you're open to it. Ordinator (the perk overhaul) completely rebalances unarmed to actually feel like a real playstyle instead of "heavy armor with a gimmick." The unarmed tree gets its own identity...

I've done like six playthroughs now and every single time I grind to Daedric Smithing I just... stop. There's literally nothing left to make that's worth the effort. Dragon Armor is fine but it's not a game-changer, and by the time you can actually craft it you're already decked out in whatever...

Karstaag's actually one of those fights where your build hits a wall, yeah. Two-handed melee into a creature that's basically a walking freeze-lock is rough on Legendary. The problem isn't that you're bad at the fight - it's that frost immunity and crowd control are way more valuable here than...

Yeah, that's fair, but I'd push back a tiny bit - the loop isn't useless, it's just that vanilla Skyrim doesn't really need you to do it. There's a huge difference. Where it actually clicks is if you're doing something like a pure mage run on Legendary where you're getting oneshot by dragons...

Yeah, I think you're nailing it. The Forsworn Conspiracy works because it actually trusts the player to connect dots instead of spoon-feeding everything. Most Skyrim quests feel like they're designed for people who don't want to pay attention, but this one rewards you for actually listening to...

Playing through on Legendary right now with a pure conjurer build and honestly I'm shocked at how hard this trivializes everything. I'm level 31, I summon two Dremora Lords and literally everything dies while I stand back casting Mayhem. The scaling on summoned creature health is completely...

Vanilla + Ordinator actually holds up better than you'd think, but there's a catch - it depends on what kind of mage you want to be. Ordinator's perks are genuinely good at making the vanilla spell trees feel less thin. The destruction tree gets stuff that actually rewards you for committing to...

I've been MO2-only since like 2021 and honestly I can't imagine going back, but I think you're being a bit generous to Vortex here. It's not just that MO2 scales better - it's that Vortex's whole architecture is fundamentally limited. You're not actually managing your install, you're managing...

Running a modded playthrough on PC (around 180 mods, MO2, Community Shaders + an ENB preset) and I'm noticing frame drops whenever I cast anything from Apocalypse. I love the spell variety, but I'm wondering if I'm just adding bloat for the sake of it. Would dropping Apocalypse entirely and...

Yeah, I think you're nailing the core issue. Restoration is fundamentally reactive in a game that doesn't really reward it, and the perks don't fix that - they just make the reactive playstyle slightly cheaper. You're still healing damage that shouldn't have happened in the first place. The...

Yeah, the vanilla follower AI is genuinely terrible for stealth. They'll aggro guards from three rooms away or just casually walk past enemies while you're in sneak mode. It's not really intentional design so much as the game's AI just wasn't built to handle "stay hidden with the player" as a...

Yeah, I think you're onto something, though I'd push back slightly on the "no telegraph" part. The whole mountain encounter is supposed to feel like a pilgrimage - you're going to meet this ancient dragon on his turf with no hand-holding. That's kind of the point thematically. But you're right...

Playstyle-first, honestly. The perk-tree approach feels like reading a shopping list when what people actually want is "I want to play a sneaky archer" or "frost mage sounds cool" and then figure out the path. That said, don't assume people know where trainers are or which vendors have what...

Yeah, this is a real design problem that Bethesda never really solved. Shouts are supposed to be your thing as the Dragonborn but they're balanced like ultimate abilities you use once per fight, not your actual playstyle. The cooldown scaling is brutal too - like, Unrelenting Force at 15...

Yeah, that's solid advice. I'd add that if you're actually using the stuff you craft, you're also getting Smithing XP from repairs down the line, so it's not like the grind totally stops after level 30 anyway. Might as well build toward armor you'll wear. One thing I'd push back on though -...