Search results

So I've read the posts about Restoration scaling and the loop exploit, but I'm genuinely asking: if you DO cheese your Restoration up to 100 early, what's the point? You already have healing spells that work fine. Are people doing this just to break the game on purpose, or is there an actual...

I just realized I've been playing this game for over a thousand hours and I've never actually pickpocketed someone during a fight. Like, not as a build thing—just as a panic move. Grabbed a bandit chief's key while he was swinging at me, unlocked the door behind him, and suddenly I had an exit...

Blood on the Ice has been bugged since launch and I'm convinced nobody actually finishes it on their own. I just spent two hours trying to get the quest to progress past the second clue stage and it kept failing to trigger the next objective. Checked my mods (just USSEP, nothing crazy)...

I've been replaying it for the first time in years and I forgot how tight this questline actually is. Like, it starts with a simple murder investigation in Markarth, then you realize the guard is dirty, then you get framed and thrown in Cidhna Mine, and suddenly you're either breaking out or...

ngl the previous reply nailed it, but I'd push back slightly on one thing: vanilla alchemy absolutely works, you just have to actually use the poisons instead of hoarding them like they're precious artifacts. Most players craft a paralysis poison, get nervous about "wasting" it, and never touch...

Honestly, the problem isn't stealth archer itself—it's that nothing else in Skyrim's leveling system scales to match it. Once you hit that damage threshold, yeah, everything else feels slow. But there are a few builds that actually stay engaging if you commit to them. Melee magic hybrid is...

Playing through my fifth or sixth playthrough now and I finally grabbed Ordinator after years of vanilla only. Not even running a full overhaul, just swapped the perk trees and kept everything else vanilla. I'm genuinely shocked how much this changes what's actually viable. Like, I always knew...

Yeah, I get what you're saying. The Thieves Guild questline does have solid buildup - the whole Mercer betrayal, Karliah coming back, the skeleton key stuff - but then Blindsighted just kind of... ends it. You're right that there's no real payoff to all that tension. That said, I think the...

I'm running a pure mage build on my second playthrough (level 21, Adept difficulty) and my Fireball and Ice Spike are barely tickling anything. Draugr are just walking through my damage like it's nothing, and I'm chugging magicka potions constantly just to stay relevant in combat. I know there's...

Playing through Dawnguard again on my 6th or 7th playthrough and I just realized the actual hook of the whole expansion isn't the vampire vs Dawnguard choice or Serana or even the Soul Cairn. It's that the expansion forces you to actually engage with the radiant quest system in a way the base...

You're not wrong that alchemy scales faster early on, but I think you're underselling the friction a bit. The Fortify Alchemy loop requires you to actually know it exists - most players never touch it. Enchanting loop is more intuitive once you get the first few pieces rolling, and honestly the...

Okay, real talk: level 12 is way too early to judge vanilla. You're still in the tutorial phase where everything one-shots you and perks haven't actually come online yet. The mods you ran on PC probably had perk overhauls that front-loaded the fun, which is why vanilla feels dead by comparison...

I think you're conflating a couple different things here. Yeah, the Civil War itself is pretty bare-bones - you're right about that. But the hold-specific quests that get locked aren't really "entire quest chains" in the way you're describing. Most of them are radiant jobs or minor stuff that...

Illusion gets way better once you hit the perks that matter, but you're right that the early-to-mid stretch is rough. The issue is that by level 25-30 on anything above Adept, most humanoid enemies have high enough magic resist that your spells just bounce off, and the AI breaks out of crowd...

Yeah, Requiem spoils you hard on this. Once you see how badly vanilla's leveled lists work, it's tough to unsee. The thing that gets me is that vanilla tries to have it both ways - enemies scale with you, but also there's this hard cap on their gear tier, so you end up in this weird middle...

Yeah, that reply nails it. I'd just add that the persuasion checks themselves are way less useful than they sound because, like they said, you can almost always just... not engage with them. Walk away, pickpocket, punch, whatever. The game rarely gates content behind a speech check you can't...

I've been running the numbers on my current playthrough and honestly the alchemy exploit is worse than people admit. Like, you can hit the damage cap on poisons before you even get to Expert level. One paralysis poison and suddenly every melee enemy in the game is just lying there. The...

You're not wrong, but I think you're also comparing Skyrim to a memory of Morrowind that's gotten better with time. Morrowind's weapon variety was partly just visual - yeah, a katana looked different, but the actual gameplay loop was still "equip the highest damage number and swing." The...

I've been doing a pure Dawnguard playthrough on my 8th run and I just realized how much better Fort Dawnguard actually is as a base compared to Volkihar if you're a crafter. Like, everyone fixates on the castle being "cooler" aesthetically but the fort has a smelter, forge, workbench, and...

You're not wrong about the radiant job padding, but I think it's actually doing something the game doesn't advertise well. Those early jobs aren't just filler - they're supposed to rebuild the Guild's reputation in each hold. The problem is the game never makes that goal feel real to you. You're...