[cerveza_fiesta]

Well, started my journey to Winterhold. I am to become a mage it seems.

I have a few Whiterun quests remaining but I need a place to live and store stuff. The Apprentice quarters at the mage college should do nicely I think.

I have also decided to specialize in blades for my "fighter" part of my fighter-mage goodness. Trying also to level enchanting a bit so I can get some light armor with proper mana recharge abilities built-in. Damn that skill levels fast at the start. I got it up to 35 with hardly any effort. Just enchant a bunch of iron daggers (which boosts smithing of course) and re-sell to make a bunch of money while I'm at it.

And damn does force-push ever ruin peoples' faces. Difficult mage?

VOOSS! ROH! MOTHERFUCKER!

I gotta get the last "word" for that one. Too much fun bowling over bandits and stunning dragons with it.

[QuickTidal]

In the "this is pretty funny" category: My warrior (with a few mage powers, but nothing staggering) has just become an arch-mage. It makes me laugh because I STILL am not powerful enough (even with the staff of magus) to take on Maelin Varyn (or whatever his name is) and his cohorts, within the star of Azura. They throw about 6 fireballs in quick succession and smoke me EVERY. DAMN. TIME. It doesn't matter if I use a steadfast ward or not, there is literally no chance to drop the ward long enough to hit them since they fire the magic in such quick succession, and even ATTEMPTING to get in close with melee weapons is a joke too since by the time you get close enough your health is fucked too quickly to revive yourself. I'd have to double fist health potions.

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

Ignore the other mages, use Slow Time and then run straight to Varyn. Hack at him until he's dead and then run about a bit, healing and avoiding the fireballs until you get pulled out again.

Just finished the Thieves Guild quest chain, which was cool.

My only problem is that I have all this cool armour but none of it quite does everything I want. Archmage robes are great for spell casting and magicka regen (combined with Morokei, it's awesome, though I want to get the final mask, so I'll have to lose morokei and it's 100% regen (and the most I can enchant anything with is 21% D:)) but you have no armour rating; Thieves Guild armour is good for carry space, but my other stuff looks better; Ancient Shrouded gloves for awesome backstab but now I'm starting to mix and match, though I tend to wear it with the Thieves armour or the Archmage robes; and the Nightingale armour looks badass (and the muffle on the boots is good), so if I'm wearing it, it has to be as a full set, else it doesn't look right but then I has less magicka and hardly any regen, so I can't rely on my magic for long.

I just don't know! I need to get the muffle sneak perk at 70 and I wanted to try to make myself some armour that I could enchant with magicka fortifications and whatnot, for the perfect combination but now I've found out that I can't enchant things with, like...100% regen, I'm not sure what to do.

I think I just rambled there. I don't know if it even makes sense but WHATEVER.

[Illuyankas]

Scrounge as much fire resist gear as you can - Ragnvald, northish of Markarth has a dragon priest with a 30% to all three mask, and then it's either enchants or getting lucky with looting. Also Slow Time.

Still think reaching archmage when your highest mage skill is less than three higher than your actual level sucks though.

[drinksinbars]

 Morgoth, on 28 November 2011 - 09:38 AM, said:

I've considered incinerating that annoying twat a few times myself.

I've got a problem though, which I hope there is some sort of solution for. I sold the mask of that ridiculous dragon priest on top of that mountain. Something starting with a K. Only to realise that the mask is part of a quest of sorts. Is there some way for me to track it down other than checking every single store I could possibly have sold it to?

if your on the pc you may be able to generate the item from the console?

[Beezulbubba]

Holy shit, the trek up to High Hrothgar is one fraught with great peril. Is there a suggested level one should acquire before making the attempt? (I'm level 8 :-()

[QuickTidal]

 GaystadFlourishHammer, on 28 November 2011 - 08:08 PM, said:

Holy shit, the trek up to High Hrothgar is one fraught with great peril. Is there a suggested level one should acquire before making the attempt? (I'm level 8 :-()

I did it when I was around that level...there is one nasty ass Frost Troll near the top (who will tear you a new one if you engage him at that level), but if you rush past him and run the fuck up the next bit he won't follow you far and you'll make it (that's what I did).

Funnily enough the other day I came back (I'm now level 21) and I fucking destroyed that same Frost Troll...just to show him who became fucking boss.

[Beezulbubba]

^^^ Sweet! I never thought of just running by (on the trek up I ran into a bear, a snow saber cat and the frost troll). If I see enemies/monsters, then I want to engage, kill and loot. I think I need to readjust my approach and run when it is prudent.

[Illuyankas]

If you're a Nord, Battle Cry is actually useful for once.

[Beezulbubba]

Let one fly and have a seat to see the results.

[Morgoth]

My lvl 34 Althmer Wizard is getting pretty ridiculous. I've focused almost exclusively on Destruction, Alteration and Restoration. I am all but immune to spell casters at this point, I've got an armor rating of 300(still not a Master of Alteration sadly), my magic regen is off the charts and no matter how powerful someone is they simply cannot survive being continuously pummeled by dual wielded lightning bolts. The stagger effect is ridiculous. I only ever have trouble when I fight several high level undead at once. Even dragons die without ever being able to harm me.

With groups of regular people I just use paralyze on the lot and focus on one guy at the time.

The only time I ever had serious difficulties was when fighting a forsworn briar heart in a mine just outside of Markarth. I was a fairly low level and that bastard was throwing Ice Spears at me while using Greater Ward to deflect my puny adept destruction attacks.

Also, Highborn must be by far the most powerful late game skill. With the power activated I can throw almost an unlimited amount of thunderbolts without having to drink a single potion.

[Obdigore]

Morgy, if you play on any higher than the standard difficulty, it gets interesting/frustrating.

If you start a new character and use melee/archery, you are so much stronger than a mage. Not that I didn't absolutely love frying everyone/everything with fire, but honestly I felt stronger at level 15 with my warrior (in dwarven, I didn't freak-level blacksmithing) than I did at 35 with my mage.

This post has been edited by Obdigore: 29 November 2011 - 10:36 AM

[Morgoth]

maybe, this is my first character yet, but I'm playing on expert and it goes fine so far.

[Silencer]

It's because, to an extent, the linear warrior/quadratic wizard dynamic is stifled through level scaling and the specific choices for the power of spells.

With non-smithed armour, mages will *always* be more (potentially) protected than any warrior. But once you throw smithing into the mix, the armour becomes the quadratic to the wizard's linear shields.

Plus consider that very few things exist in the game which have "resistance to stabbing", while there are actually quite a few creatures and NPCs running around with some level of elemental damage resistance - that plays havoc on enchantments too, of course, but when your weapon is hitting for base damage 55...the enchantments don't matter too much.

If I'm looking at the game correctly, you'll notice that wizards are substantially more powerful in a direct level-to-level comparison only through levels 1-5, 15-30, and otherwise are generally weaker. That's just an approximation of course, as there is a bit of difference with racial traits and so forth, though not much.

The system has also been geared towards multiclassing a LOT. Which is part of the reason for the mage/warrior dynamic in the game; you're meant to be leveling both to an extent, and in order to avoid that underpowering you, they have different high and low points of advancement.

[Morgoth]

It's hard to see how multiclassing would work in connection with high lvl wizardry though. You'll need a lot of skill points and a lot of magicka just to be able to use the high lvl spells effectively. I certainly see the value of a warrior using paralyze and detect spells for sure, but the defensive spells in the alteration school needs you to be without armour, and doing actual damage with destruction spells require a massive amounts of spells points. Meaning you're simply not able to put much in stamina and health.

I've put some focus on stealth, which makes clearing dungeons easy enough. Sneak up on enemy, stun, kill, repeat. Mind, I do use blades on paralyzed opponents.

Still, I would have expected the expert lvl destruction spells to do a lot more damage. Seems to me they might've been too worried about making the wizard class overpowered.

[Obdigore]

 Morgoth, on 29 November 2011 - 11:05 AM, said:

It's hard to see how multiclassing would work in connection with high lvl wizardry though. You'll need a lot of skill points and a lot of magicka just to be able to use the high lvl spells effectively. I certainly see the value of a warrior using paralyze and detect spells for sure, but the defensive spells in the alteration school needs you to be without armour, and doing actual damage with destruction spells require a massive amounts of spells points. Meaning you're simply not able to put much in stamina and health.

I've put some focus on stealth, which makes clearing dungeons easy enough. Sneak up on enemy, stun, kill, repeat. Mind, I do use blades on paralyzed opponents.

Still, I would have expected the expert lvl destruction spells to do a lot more damage. Seems to me they might've been too worried about making the wizard class overpowered.

They were, because in Morrowind at least (I didn't play a lot of Oblivion, sue me) the mages were quite OP.

Hopefully it is addressed in the x-packs. A lot of people that are playing a rogue/thief class use some magic as backup, such as summon daedra or fear/paralize to help them take on packs of enemies when they can only instant-kill one from stealth.

On my warrior the only magic I used was chanting and resto after battles to regain health.

[SylvanShade]

I bought Sony Vegas, and I made this video. I was happy to find an NPC sitting in a non-sittable area for some reason....

[POOPOO MCBUMFACE]

Not having destruction spells scale was pants-on-head stupid. My dual-wielding battlemage eventually gave up on destruction altogether; after about level 30, it just couldn't keep up with the damage he dished out dual-wielding. And that was with a mod that boosted destruction.

Also, absolutely wonderful:
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=EjvA4aZS7rs

[Adjutant Stormy~]

GODDAMNED DRAGONS.

Seriously, those bastards only land (so I can punch them in the face) if they have A SOLID SQUARE MILE of open space.

[Beezulbubba]

WTF?!?!?!