About Melissan's stun attack: it only has a save penalty of -2 (or maybe even just zero), but her attack also penalizes saving throws by -1 per hit, and I believe that lasts 3 rounds, which means that she can impose very heavy penalties to saving throws if she lands many hits. The save penalties are dispellable but otherwise can't be blocked without PFMW or SCS Absolute Immunity.
The succubus charm is indeed -10 against males and 0 against females.
This is why I hate no-reloads. Decided to go to the Nashkel Carnival to buy the Shield Amulet and The One Gift lost. While there I figured I'd wrap up the mini-quests. Took out Oompah with no problem and then stopped in Zordral's tent. I was going to hop in and out of the tent to avoid his spells and figured 'no problem'. Things went well at first but he managed to fire off his mirror image which was annoying. I fled the tent, he chased. Hanslow got hit by an acid arrow and got struck by a lightning bolt almost simultaneously! Before he could chug a healing potion he was pushing up daisies...
I'm going to continue on with him because it's been a fun ride (and the 98!) but another solo no-reload bites the dust. At least I can join a party now (though Neera didn't survive her run in with the red mage).
After a suitable mourning period I'm going to try an elf fighter/thief for my next attempt. C'est la vie.
Well, it's a been a few months, and I didn't manage to finish BG2 before the 2.5 patch hit. Since I'm playing through Steam, I'm pretty sure this run is literally unplayable now since I think Steam just tried to auto-update a modded install and borked everything up horribly. So Fenix is done in BG2, and I'm probably going to move on to a Shaman or a WS -> Druid with all the buzz about them at the moment.
One of the nice things about the Vancian Magic perk is that dual-casting is completely free--it still only counts as a single spell. This means we can dual-cast illusion spells that already have double magnitude and hit virtually anything with a simple Calm spell. I settle down a pair of sabre cats out in the wilderness before they can threaten me.
Then I can tackle them one at a time. I zap them with dual-casted Lightning Bolt spells that should deal over 250 damage a pop.
For other fights, I can just use the Healing+Sparks combo for sustained healing and damage, or switch to the bow to save spells.
We make it to High Hrothgar, where the resident Greybeards teach us how to shout louder. Arngeir is especially impressed with our shoutiness.
With Saarthal complete and Frost proving very effective in combat, I decide to try the next College of Winterhold quest, which involves going into a dungeon and killing mages to steal back some books (libraries are serious business). Some of the enemies don't really appreciate the danger they're in.
The local mages have imprisoned a few vampires for unknown reasons, presumably for research. The vampires don't seem friendly.
Since the enemy of an enemy isn't always a friend, I decide to slay the vampires rather than free them and let them run rampant through Skyrim.
We rescue Orthorn from a cage on the way. Orthorn is the guy who stole the books in the first place--apparently he thought bringing the local mages a gift would make him their friend.
It did not. In fact, when we reach the boss of the dungeon, s/he offers to hand over the books on the condition we surrender Orthorn.
I don't know what happens to Orthorn if you ditch him and take the books back to the college, but I'd rather not put an innocent moron's life at risk. I zap the boss and move on.
Back at Whiterun, we're high enough level for some demented cultists to recognize us as the Dragonborn--or, in their view, an elaborate fake who for some reason needs to be destroyed. They hit hard and I'm worried about accidentally roasting a bystander, so I back off and let the guards deal with them.
Finally, I hit a breakthrough: Frost's Alteration is high enough for us to buy Detect Life from Tolfdir! Better still, it seems that we can now buy several other interesting Alteration spells, presumably from the Phenderix Magic Evolved mod.
Detect Life is a great spell for leveling Alteration because it grants experience based on how many critters it detects. Use the spell in the middle of Whiterun, and you gain experience much faster because there are so many living critters around.
We crank it all the way up to 60, which should be enough to afford some even stronger Alteration spells (the bigger spells don't appear in stores until you reach a high enough level). We choose a couple of new perks: Quadratic Wizard, which gives us another spell per day per 10 points of magicka, and bumps our spells per day from 20 to 30; and Welloc's Dormant Aura, which allows us to tack on some special effects to certain types of buffing spells.
From now on, whenever we cast an armor spell, we get an extra 50 points of armor, 50 more Health, and 1% Health regeneration per second.
Next up, the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, which we need to prove that we're the Dragonborn. Honestly, this is just a convenient plot device for introducing us to the Blades: the horn has been stolen from the relevant dungeon, replaced with a note telling us to meet one of the last members of the Blades, hiding in a secret room at an inn.
Delphine wants us to go kill a dragon for her. Why not? We hike out to the wilderness and then Alduin appears to resurrect one of his fellow dragons.
Alduin is the oldest of the dragons, known as the World Eater, and he's supposed to destroy the whole world or something. Apparently he's going around Skyrim shouting at dragon corpses until they come back to life, all to build his army.
There's a rather lovely poem that appears often in loading screens, and which I'm very fond of:
And the Scrolls have foretold of black wings in the cold that when brothers wage war come unfurled!
Alduin, bane of kings, ancient shadow unbound, with a hunger to swallow the world!
It's one of the few times you ever see anyone using anapestic meter.
Anyhoo, as the Dragonborn, we're supposed to kill Alduin, but... he can fly, and we can't. He leaves us as a meal for his fellow dragon...
...but, um... we have dual-casted Vancian Lightning Bolts. The dragon croaks in seconds.
Delphine thinks the high elves are secretly behind the dragon thing because conspiracy theories and racism. To investigate, we need to infiltrate an embassy, but since we can't be smuggled in with a box or something, we have to create a diversion. For some reason, our contact has no plan, so we have to come up with our own.
As always, our savior is a raging alcoholic in need of a drink.
This being an embassy, our primary responsibility here is shoot people with laser beams.
We find some incriminating documents, free a prisoner from the embassy torture dungeon, and fast-travel to Whiterun to sell off the blood-spattered armor of eight dudes that were just doing their job.
I finally get Frost's Destruction skill high enough for us to buy Chain Lightning and Fireball, giving us a new area-effect option that will strike much harder, much faster than our one-handed Sparks and Flames spells.
We also take a couple of perks to increase our fire and frost resistance and give Frost another 50 Health, an important defensive boost that will help us deal with dragons.
We head to Riften to hunt down one of the last remaining Blades, a paranoid old guy hiding in the Ratways under the city. A lot of lowlifes roam around this place, often territorial, and during a scuffle, I accidentally catch Lydia with an area-effect spell.
Lydia is just not very good at this game.
We find Esbern after committing some light crime for information. He's a basement dweller hiding from invisible enemies, so he's kind of big on security.
After zapping some of his enemies who ambush us on the way out...
Now we need to go check out Sky Haven Temple to find a prophecy on a wall. The area outside is swarming with Forsworn--a clan of half-naked barbarian folks with a violent streak.
But there's also a dragon on hand, and the Forsworn are fighting the dragon at the same time they're fighting us, and vice versa. It's a three-way fight, and also there's a bear, because why not?
But our new Slow Time spell gives us an excellent new option for dealing with all kinds of enemies. It doesn't just slow down the movement of all critters and effectively give me a better reaction time and more time to think--after a second or so, Frost only suffers partial slowdown, which means we move much faster than the enemies for a short period of time.
How much time? That actually gives us enough time to cast maybe 4.5 spells in a single second, with time slowed down enough for me to get the targeting just right. The bear goes down with a string of Chain Lightning spells.
Slow Time is a little bit like a Time Stop spell. It even makes us fast enough to dodge incoming enemy spells and attacks. Unlike Time Stop, though, we can't chain-cast it; we can only cast it once the previous duration expires, so refreshing it midway through is not an option.
I set about taking down the Forsworn, because they'll be harder to run away from than the dragon. They deal nasty damage in melee, though, and to save spells for the dragon, I have to use Healing+Sparks, which takes down enemies much more slowly and leaves Frost open for attack. We dip into our supply of healing potions and food to keep our Health high without burning too many spells.
Then the dragon lands right next to me. Knowing that my fire resistance isn't too strong, and not confident that a simple Healing spell can keep me safe, I deploy a ward alongside it, which I've heard can block dragon's breath because breath attacks hit in the form of a constant stream of weaker spells rather than one big one, and wards will remain until a sufficiently big single spell breaks them.
It holds, and the dragon flies off, leaving me to deal with the Forsworn. I use another sustained spell to avoid burning spell slots...
...but when I check my slots, I only have 4 left. I'm almost empty!
The Forsworn are gone, but the dragon remains. Fortunately, it's been wounded enough that it can no longer fly, and it's at a convenient distance. We finish it off with a bow and it tumbles down the hill.
I teleport back to our bed to restore our spells. The instant we walk outside, we run into a dragon, right in the middle of the college courtyard.
Luckily for us, I rested before I went outside, which means we arrive with full spell slots. We fry it.
Vancian Magic has its drawbacks, but it's really quite fun.
The starting save found us near Brage and we duly escorted him back to Nashkel to bump reputation up to 19. My idea had been that Farmer Brun's son would then get the final point, but Gate70 ruined that logic by talking to Oublek to get yet more reputation .
The ankheg nest managed only a single hit on Laraum between them and an isolated one near Tenya was unable to increase their score.
That opened the way to Ulgoth's Beard where Inspiro learnt a few spells he's not yet able to cast. Other purchases included some potions of mirrored eyes and a couple of those were put to good use on the roof of Durlag's Tower.
Next up was the Nashkel Mine. Laraum had no difficulty in bulldozing through a bunch of kobolds to go and find Mulahey. Inspiro then played safe by using the Greenstone Amulet before confronting Mulahey, while Laraum occupied the others.
Inspiro was hit by a gray ooze on the way out of the mine after MP lag caught him out by briefly displacing him closer to the ooze than Laraum. Trying to rest to heal up generated a bunch of kobolds and they proved persistent in following the duo out of the mine - but failed to do any more damage there.
Inspiro had learnt Mulahey's web scroll and put that to use against the Amazons.
I wasn't going to bother with a screenshot for Nimbul, but seeing that reminded me that Inspiro hasn't yet generated a familiar - and writing this might, just might, help me to remember to do that next time .
We moved north of the FAI to find a route to the Bandit Camp - and then I sheepishly led the way back to Beregost to slaughter Tranzig and get the appropriate map reference. Back at the Bandit Camp Laraum led the way through some bandits to find Taugosz. At that point Inspiro threw in a web to try and immobilize Taugosz. That worked, but unfortunately Laraum was also caught after not allowing for the jumping web caused by more MP lag. Inspiro unlimbered his fire wand to try and help, but without being able to run into the web found it hard to target the bandits and Laraum was taken down to 4 HPs while continuously failing his saves.
There was a brief hope of a last-minute reprieve when Taugosz and the nearest bandit both got stuck again, but another nearby bandit managed to get a shot off just as Inspiro shot him down.
After returning from the temple the duo went invisibly into Tazok's tent. Inspiro had not yet learnt blind, but a single web proved pretty effective at immobilizing the opposition. A skull trap did some damage before missiles finished off Venkt, Hakt and Britik. At that point Raemon was still out of sight, so Laraum moved forward a bit - and got stuck again. Fortunately though, we found that the single skull trap had already killed Raemon anyway .
About Melissan's stun attack: it only has a save penalty of -2 (or maybe even just zero), but her attack also penalizes saving throws by -1 per hit, and I believe that lasts 3 rounds, which means that she can impose very heavy penalties to saving throws if she lands many hits. The save penalties are dispellable but otherwise can't be blocked without PFMW or SCS Absolute Immunity.
The succubus charm is indeed -10 against males and 0 against females.
About Melissan's stun attack: it only has a save penalty of -2 (or maybe even just zero), but her attack also penalizes saving throws by -1 per hit, and I believe that lasts 3 rounds, which means that she can impose very heavy penalties to saving throws if she lands many hits. The save penalties are dispellable but otherwise can't be blocked without PFMW or SCS Absolute Immunity.
The succubus charm is indeed -10 against males and 0 against females.
is this even in non-Ascension playthroughs?
Yes - the succubus is part of the group you face after you've defeated Mel's 3rd incarnation.
About Melissan's stun attack: it only has a save penalty of -2 (or maybe even just zero), but her attack also penalizes saving throws by -1 per hit, and I believe that lasts 3 rounds, which means that she can impose very heavy penalties to saving throws if she lands many hits. The save penalties are dispellable but otherwise can't be blocked without PFMW or SCS Absolute Immunity.
The succubus charm is indeed -10 against males and 0 against females.
is this even in non-Ascension playthroughs?
Yes - the succubus is part of the group you face after you've defeated Mel's 3rd incarnation.
What about the cheesy melissan I hit you therefore I penalize your save?
Oh, and btw, is there a guide anywhere of suggested weapons to be worn in ToB to correctly sinergyze with each other when dual wielding? Not referring to off hand cheeses and so on.
What about the cheesy melissan I hit you therefore I penalize your save?
Oh, and btw, is there a guide anywhere of suggested weapons to be worn in ToB to correctly sinergyze with each other when dual wielding? Not referring to off hand cheeses and so on.
You can just avoid getting hit in melee, or use potions to lower saves, or equip something to provide immunity to stun.
For weapons it depends on what you're trying to achieve. Other than APR bonuses common choices would be: - weapons conferring immunities, e.g. to stun or level drain or charm. - DoE to boost physical resistance. - Crom Faeyr to boost strength. You may also find though that using a shield is the best option - for instance that would help reduce the number of hits Mel makes on you.
Going to get to my Thrasher run (human cleric) tonight. Will work on him after bowling tonight. Think we are in the Cloakwood. With any luck at the very least he can be out of BG 1 before the week-end's up.
Before we go back to Sky Haven Temple and finish clearing out the Forsworn inside, we use Detect Life to grind Alteration to afford one or two new perks, then buy a few more Alteration spells from Tolfdir. Our new armor spell, Ebonyflesh, will give us 350 points of armor provided we're only wearing robes and no actual armor. For reference, that amounts to 42% damage reduction, a major boost to our survivability, though we have to remember to cast it before major fights.
We also get the Paralyze spell, which is all but impossible for most creatures to resist and lasts for 27 seconds thanks to Vancian Magic and Alteration Mastery... or over 60 seconds if we dual-cast it, virtually an instant kill.
Aside from some spiders, fire traps, and some easy puzzles, Sky Haven Temple is no trouble. All we need to do to access Alduin's Wall and figure out the prophecy whatever is spill a bit of our blood onto a seal.
I will never understanding why people in TV and movies and video games cut their hand when they need to spill blood for some ritual. It hurts a lot more than cutting your arm or your leg and inflicts a much worse injury that can cripple the use of a hand for days at the very least.
The wall says that the ancient humans defeated Alduin using a Shout, and while Frost, as the Dragonborn, is very good at yelling, we don't know the words of that Shout. The Greybeards don't know it, either, so our only hope of learning it is to find an Elder Scroll.
An Elder Scroll is a scroll that has existed since the beginning of time or thereabouts and contains all knowledge of the universe, but is so confusing and inscrutable (the text on the scroll constantly moves, and the statements inside are contradictory and not always "true") that most people can barely understand any of it, and prolonged reading induces blindness. Mortals are too stupid to grasp the information fully, and the things are incredibly rare.
But, as it happens, an orc at the Winterhold college library knows a guy who used to write about them, a crazy hermit who's been camping out on an ice floe for many years. We head out to the hermit, who directs us to the location of the nearest Elder Scroll: locked up in a special device at the bottom of a dwarven ruin beneath the caves of Blackreach.
It's not far. We fast-travel to the ruins of Saarthal, then head north, where a Frostbite Spider is hanging around. I've dealt with these critters before and had no trouble, so I just Fireball the thing.
But Fireball doesn't kill the spider; this is a Giant Frostbite Spider, which is considerably tougher. It deals some minor poison damage with its ranged attack, then jumps on us just as we're charging our next Fireball spell.
Suddenly, Frost dies.
I have no idea what just happened. Frost was at nearly full Health; she would have been at 300 when the spider pounced. She might have been unarmored, but there's no way a Frostbite Spider could have dealt 300 damage in one hit. Even a dragon's bite doesn't do that much damage, at least in the unmodded game.
For a moment, I'm sure it's a bug. Then I check the numbers for the Smilodon mod and realizes that Smilodon applies some additional damage multipliers, and when I look up the Giant Frostbite Spider, it does 65 base damage. It seems like those multipliers were responsible for the death.
Then I actually apply the multipliers in Excel. Even with all relevant multipliers, the Giant Frostbite Spider shouldn't have been able to deal anywhere close to 300 damage. Even if it was a power attack and the power attack dealt more damage than it was supposed to, and the spider got extra bonuses from a combat skill of some sort, it still shouldn't have done 300 damage. Over 200 damage, maybe, as crazy as that sounds, but not 300.
But I'm not sure there isn't some other inexplicable factor, and while I've struggled to find a cause that's not just a bug, I don't have enough knowledge of the underlying game system (I've beaten the game like twice) or my mods (this is the first time I've played any of them) to know for certain that it had to be a bug.
Rather than persist in a run that might have ended legitimately, I decide to start over.
This time, though, I'm going to do things a little bit differently.
I played a Breton in both Morrowind and Oblivion, but after considering Frost's performance in Skyrim, I realize that her Breton bonuses just weren't that impactful. Having 25% magic resistance is a lovely boost, but spells just haven't been that big of a threat in this run. I can go without it.
I consider Argonians for their incredible Health regeneration via Histskin (a 60-second greater power usable once a day), but eventually settle on a High Elf, also known as an Altmer. High Elves get +50 magicka (which amounts to 5 extra spells per day once I pick the Quadratic Wizard feat) and a greater power, Highborn, which grants incredible magicka regeneration for 60 seconds, enough to get from 0 magicka to 100% in just a few seconds. That won't be very impactful after I pick Vancian Magic, but it will let us function for a very long time without needing Vancian Magic.
Apparently you take 50% more damage in Smilodon when casting or charging a spell, which is a huge, huge disadvantage for any mage character. I disable it for this run; it's very unbalanced and doesn't make much conceptual sense (why would you take so much more damage just for making a fist?). Disabling this also disables extra damage against characters who are using a bow, making a power attack, are staggered or paralyzed, or are struck from behind.
Also, this run will involve crafting. But to avoid grinding and abuse, our new High Elf, Zovai, can only use crafting ingredients that she finds in dungeons or in the wilderness; we can't buy anything from stores to use for Smithing, Enchant, or Alchemy.
This severely limits what we can do with crafting skills, but still allows us to do a little minor crafting, and it keeps us out adventuring instead of loitering around Whiterun doing inventory management. This way, we don't spend half the adventure on this screen.
We're still going to train Alteration in this run, but we won't take Vancian Magic for a long time; the Highborn greater power will let us spam strong spells in the meantime. The real reason we're going to use Alteration is because of the Slow Time spell, which will let us fire off several spells before an enemy can respond.
On the way up to Bleak Falls Barrow, we run into the same bandits as usual, but this time, some crazy lady joins the fight, and apparently she counts as an innocent--attacking her is illegal.
Since defeating her would mean a 1,000 gold in fines (the Elder Scrolls universe handles crime using fines and skill penalties from jail time), I run away and return when I've lost her.
I use the Highborn power to chain-cast Oakflesh and get Alteration up to 30. No Vancian Magic this time, but we still want the extra gold.
But I can't buy the Slow Time spell until Alteration 40, so I go inside Bleak Falls Barrow and spam Oakflesh while dodging the archer's arrows, leaving to rest by the standing stones whenever I run out of magicka and the Highborn power.
I grind it to 50, then delve into the dungeon to get some loot and nab the Dragonstone (a plot-critical item) from the boss. Food and potions keep us alive against the Draugr Deathlord.
We then head to the College of Winterhold to learn some new spells: Slow Time, Detect Life (to grind Alteration faster), Enhance Weapon Speed (which let us attack with weapons several times faster than normal), and Ironflesh, our next armor spell. We also buy a mod-introduced Illusion spell and grind it until we can get Shroud for a cheap Invisibility option, as well as Calm and a spell to improve store prices.
This is a lot of grinding considering it's a low-crafting run, but it's actually extremely fast. We don't need to spend much time to get the resources we need.
On the way to Whiterun to start the main quest, we run into a "Challenger," a mage who wants to fight us to prove he's tough. He is tough, but we have healing potions and food to outlast him.
With Bleak Falls Barrow already complete, all we need to do at Whiterun is kill a dragon. Since the guards can handle it on their own, I just grind Conjuration in the tower.
To make sure I can fast-travel to some key locations later on, I take a carriage to Riften and then Solitude. There's an execution going on in the latter, but I want to speed things up.
There's a speedrunning trick where you can sprint into a character who's talking, staggering them and cutting off their current line early. You can skip a lot of dialogue this way. I decide to use it to speed up the execution scene.
But the guards misinterpret my motives, and think I'm trying to save the prisoner from execution. A swarm of guards rushes me all at once! I use Shroud to go invisible, but invisibility in Skyrim is not a surefire defense like it is in Oblivion; Skyrim creatures and people will keep trying to attack you, and they're very good at hunting you down.
Knowing that the guards could butcher me in moments if I don't move, I pick the nearest opening and flee, not knowing where it goes. I end up climbing a staircase, though I don't know where.
But I get surrounded moments later, and I have to delve deep into my potions supply to avoid getting killed.
I barely make it out of the city alive. I have no idea what will happen when I go back (Solitude is a necessary destination for the main questline), but hopefully I'll be a little stronger when the time comes.
Back at Whiterun, I discover a new spell, Enhanced Speed, which lets me run significantly faster than normal. I figure it will help me get out of dangerous scrapes like the fight at Solitude a little quicker.
I've collected a lot of ingredients from various places since the game began, so I finally head to an alchemy lab to train. Once I get Alchemy to 30, I can pick the Experimenter perk, which in Ordinator identifies all effects of any ingredient you eat, which will give us a lot of useful information that I don't want to get by studying the UESP Wiki.
Since I barely know anything about potions, I just combine ingredients randomly until I get something right.
I don't get anywhere close to 30 Alchemy, so I'll have to try again later once I have more ingredients.
Time to head to Saarthal! Even if I don't want to do the quest there, Tolfdir is over there now and I want to be able to buy more Alteration spells in the future. Luckily, since we have the Enhance Speed spell and Shroud, we can travel anywhere at high speed and completely invisible.
Then I discover that invisibility is really, really weak in Skyrim, even more so than I thought. Enemies don't just track you when you go invisible in the middle of combat--a Snowy Sabre Cat can flat-out see through invisibility!
The Sabre Cat pounces on me and deals massive damage. I heal myself with more potions and food and use a teleport spell to escape to Riverwood before the cat murdalizes me.
I fast-travel back to Winterhold, but the Sabre Cat is still there! I hurry back to town using Enhance Speed and let the guards deal with it.
I don't know why the cats are so strong; a character my level would have trouble handling it without burning multiple potions.
I keep moving and run into another cat barely a minute later. This time, I hit it with a dual-cast Calm spell, buying me lots of time to figure out what to do with it.
The Flame Atronach won't last long against the Sabre Cat, and when the atronach goes down, the cat will turn its attention to me. Nor am I willing to drag every single Sabre Cat in Skyrim all the way back to town so the guards will kill it for me.
I blast it with a Destruction spell, but it's not enough to bring the cat down quickly. The Sabre Cat does big damage before I settle it down with another Calm spell.
We've made decent progress, though, and once my magicka regenerates, I know how to handle it. We back away to buy us more time, fire off a Ice Spike spell, and then hurry backward firing more Ice Spikes as the Sabre Cat charges at us. We kill it right before it lands another blow.
We keep going. Sure enough, we run into yet another cat 30 seconds later. I throw out a Flame Atronach and go invisible, but the cat doesn't take the bait. It keeps coming right for me.
Knowing I can't escape it, I decide to bring it down quickly with Destruction spells. But when I try to tank its attacks using potions, I find out that I'm running dangerously low.
My last attempts to escape the fight fail, and the cat kills me.
It's weird that such a basic enemy is so incredibly dangerous, and it's frustrating that there are so many of them. I start over, do all of my normal chores--grind Alteration, grind Illusion, buy spells, do the early quests, get money from the Philosopher's Stone perk--but when I get back to the same place and head to Saarthal, I still run into the same Sabre Cat. It's always there.
I pacify it with a Calm spell and it leaves me alone. It lays down and sets about eating a goat it killed before I arrived.
Unfortunately, I don't know if simply leaving the cat alone is an option. I can Calm this one, and the one after, and the one after that, but when the Calm spells wear off, I don't know if the Sabre Cats will forget about me or if they'll come looking for me, and the last thing I need are three no-longer-calm Sabre Cats attacking me simultaneously over at Saarthal.
I decide to take them down one by one, and this time, I play it much more carefully. I hit the Sabre Cat with a Destruction spell and immediately cast Calm on it to stop combat. Sure enough, the cat stops attacking. I repeat the process, casting a damage spell and then Calming the beast.
But this time, the Calm spell doesn't take. The cat keeps attacking me, ignoring the Calm spell entirely--even though the spell is supposed to affect up to level 37 creatures because of my perks even without being dual-casted. I take heavy damage and have to delve deep into our potion and food supply once again.
This simply isn't working. The cats completely ignore invisibility, they're too strong to kill with a Flame Atronach or with my own magic, and now this one is ignoring Calm spells. I don't know how I'm supposed to handle this animal at my level (my best Destruction spell only takes a small chunk out of its Health, and my weapons would do a sliver), but I'm not winning this fight.
I make a run for it and charge a teleport spell to Riverwood. But it doesn't work--the spell takes longer to active than the Recall spell; I have to wait another second for it to trigger. The failure costs me another 2-3 seconds.
It's enough time for the Sabre Cat to land one last hit.
This is deeply frustrating. I don't know why that Calm spell failed to work--I'm sure I've used Calm at least three times in a fight against one of the cats before. It doesn't seem reasonable for a random animal to be so, so much more dangerous than the Draugr Deathlord at Bleak Falls Barrow, or for them to be so incredibly common (like 3 cats in a 200-foot area), or for them to ignore invisibility. It's too much for a nameless enemy.
Regardless, we're back to square one. This time, I'm not going to take any risks with the Sabre Cats, no matter how reasonable. They shouldn't be so deadly, but they are, and that's the reality I need to work with.
This time, I enter Bleak Falls Barrow only when I've nabbed the Soul Trap spell so that I can gather fill up soul gems (which I found at the college, unowned) with draugr souls. I burn them all creating Damage Stamina enchantments on weapons, since they give more experience than other enchantments. Even though we're not allowed to buy ingredients for any crafting skills, the stuff we do find in the wild and in dungeons is enough to make lots of money. Combined with a custom "Charm" spell that improves store prices, we can afford essentially any spell we want.
We make our way back to the Saarthal quest. Once again, we have Sabre Cats to deal with, but I'm going to be much more careful. This time, I use Slow Time to make sure I can hit it with Calm before it hits me more than once.
With Slow Time, more heavy use of Calm, and better preparation before initiating combat (I always have the Flame Atronach out, as well as an armor spell active), I manage to bring the cats down. Slow Time ensures that I don't get caught off-guard or overwhelmed; I can run circles around the cats while time is slowed.
When I don't use Slow Time, I get in trouble against an Ice Wolf, who drains several potions because I didn't seize the advantage early.
We grind Alchemy with some more wild-caught ingredients and grind Alteration with Detect Life in Whiterun (it's not free like when I had Vancian Magic, but Highborn and the wait function give me plenty of magicka). Once I get Alteration to 80, I can choose a very lovely perk indeed.
Weak spells are now completely free to cast. The thing is, even though the best spells won't be affected by this perk, this perk will save us a lot of magicka and allow us to spam some very important low-end spells.
Shroud, our invisibility spell, and Muffle, which silences our footsteps, are both completely free; we can maintain invisibility and total silence indefinitely. Ice Spike and Lightning Bolt are also free to cast, which means we can dual-cast some decently powerful Destruction spells for free. The Calm spell is also free, which can be dual-cast to affect creatures over level 100 (I don't know if such creatures exist, even in my install), and Fast Healing is also free, which will heal us for 250 Health when dual-cast. Even Conjure Flame Atronach is free.
And while it won't directly help me cast a higher-end spell like Fireball, making all of these spells free will open up a lot of magicka for the bigger spells.
Anyway, back when I was in Bleak Falls, I stumbled upon Meridia's Beacon, presumably because I was higher-level than when I normally tackled the dungeon. I take the thing to Meridia's shrine, where the Daedric Prince asks me to go to a dungeon and wipe out some undead (Meridia thinks zombies are gooky and wants to torch them all).
The dungeon in question is filled with Corrupted Shades, shadowy black figures who attack with various weapons. I activate Slow Time and launch a few Destruction spells while the Corrupted Figures are all but helpless to fight back.
Now, I can't do this indefinitely because Slow Time does cost magicka (it's an Adept spell, so it's not free despite my perks) and magicka regenerates slowly during Slow Time. However, I can cast Slow Time several times before running out of magicka, and even if I run out without taking down the enemy, I can always hurry away and activate Highborn to get it all back within a few seconds.
But that's not really necessary. Thanks to Muffle, invisibility is now much more effective; enemies can't use sound to detect me, either.
I get hit by a spike trap, which reminds me to check my surroundings more carefully. Shortly after, I spot a tripwire.
These can be safely triggered from a difference using the Unrelenting Force Shout.
I finally reach the boss, a mage, who doesn't notice me. I hit him with a Calm spell, but it doesn't seem to take, and he chases after me along with all of his Corrupted Shades. I cast Slow Time and start blasting away.
The mage nails me with some frost spells, but it's nothing we can't handle. We burn away his shades and isolate him.
The boss dies, only to come back as a shade... but he doesn't have anything special to throw at us. We keep firing away at him, and the shade falls as well.
Done! Meridia rewards us with Dawnbreaker, a reasonably strong longsword that deals fire damage. Not too useful for a mage like Zovai, but helpful if for some reason we can't rely on spell damage.
I take Welloc's Dormant Arcana once again and rig it to grant us +50 Health and armor whenever we cast an armor spell. We're in excellent shape, finally, and it's time to move forward with the main quest.
I still run the risk of a sudden death from melee damage, but I've finally settled into a routine of beginning every fight with Slow Time, and the free Calm/Shroud/Muffle/Firebolt/Fast Healing spells make it so that I don't need to worry about burning too much magicka.
I've learned the same lesson I did in my Oblivion run. Like the Atronach birthsign, the Vancian Magic perk grants some very solid bonuses, but the inability to cast spells without worrying about saving resources for later meant that we often arrived at fights unprepared. Now, over-preparing for a fight incurs virtually no cost.
Trio session 12 3 Nettle. Female LE halfling assassin (Gate70) Teers. Male CN elf sorcerer (Grond0) April. Female NE human berserker > thief (Corey_Russell)
An unexpected delay (I was ill one week, Grond0 not available the next and Corey_Russell not available the week after) sees us with a long-awaited catch-up. After deciding I was hosting, we recalled (thanks to the save name) that we were heading to the Bandit camp.
After an ambush on the way we cleared the exterior and interior of the camp without due concern.
Off to Cloakwood next - April requiring a two handed sword. That led to Teers stepping outside the tent and a sword spider following him. A short while later he is dead.
April and Nettle kill the spiders off and head to a temple. 800gp later, Teers is none the worse for wear and we move on to Cloakwood Mine.
Teers blinds Drasus and his crew. Inside the mine we face a few enemies before Davaeorn's mirror images fail to evade a poisoned throwing dagger.
Once into the city we are soon poisoned by Marek. Have a backstab.
Drelik gets a backstab and after having his spell disrupted another hit is fatal.
His master is made of sterner stuff. Corey_Russell had rolled his character with the intention of dualling to mage but Grond0's casting skills convinced him a second thief would instead be preferable to second caster. So by this time we are two thieves and a sorcerer against Jardak and when Nettle is cornered she glugs an invisibility potion. Teers becomes target and we step outside.
Nettle becomes target once more while Teers finds better spellcasting against Jardak with Melf's Acid Arrows. April switches to Marek's shortbow +2 with magical arrows and Nettle outruns Jardak long enough to see him collapse.
To High Hrothgar! We run into lots of enemies on the way up, but Slow Time and some dual-casted Firebolt spells blast pretty much everything into oblivion.
We run into a Blood Dragon soon after, a stronger version of the normal dragon that appears at higher levels. Notice the multiple Firebolt spells in midair at the same time.
When the dragon lands nearby, I use Slow Time again to put some distance between me and the dragon, then keep blasting away until the dragon burns down.
We buy more spells, including Weakness to Fire, Frost, and Shock spells, Ebonyflesh, and a stronger form of Enhance Speed, which makes us run at a ludicrous speed when cast. We even learn a Fortify Enchant spell from Tolfdir, which makes all our enchanted items much stronger.
Since we're making excellent progress on leveling Enchant and now have a decent Alchemy skill as well as a Fortify Enchant spell, I decide to seek out Azura's Star, the re-usable soul gem, to fuel our future enchanting. After I visit Azura's Shrine near Saarthal, I follow the clues to a guy at the Winterhold inn. Apparently a friend of his took the star in an attempt to prolong his lifespan.
If you guessed that this means we're going to go fight a dungeon full of necromancers, you're right!
It doesn't take much time or much work to reach the boss of the dungeon, the Master Necromancer who is hiding across a small moat, protected from melee attacks by the water. I'm not worried; Zovai excels at ranged combat.
But apparently, so does the Master Necromancer. To my shock, he almost kills us with a frost spell right after the fight begins.
The only reason I survived is because that warning message popped up when I hit low Health. But that warning message isn't standard--it only shows up the first time in the game where you reach low Health!
If I had let myself get badly injured earlier in the run, I wouldn't have gotten that message, and there's a very strong chance I wouldn't have reacted in time to heal myself with potions. I press Tab to remove the warning message and immediately mash "I" to make sure I reach my inventory screen before the frost damage finishes me off. Luckily, we have a solid supply of potions of all kinds.
Once our frost resistance is way up, I deploy an area-effect Silence spell (another mod-introduced spell based on spells from Oblivion and Morrowind) to shut down the mage's spellcasting and blast him from afar with more Firebolts.
There are a few more scattered enemies around here, but they suffer the same fate.
We find Azura's Star, but it's broken and unusable. We return it to the shrine, but before we can get it fixed, we need to go inside the gem and kill Malyn Varen, the sick guy who tried to use the gem to preserve his life. We re-supply before we enter the gem.
The inside of the gem is nerve-wracking. I'm pretty sure we die if we fall off the edge, and we've got Dremora to deal with. We trade spells, and the visual effects blind me.
Fortunately, the Dremora's spells don't shove you around, so as long as we stand still when fighting, we won't fall off the edge.
When the Dremora fall, Malyn Varen comes out to defend himself. But he has no special defenses against our spells, least of all Slow Time.
We return to Azura's Shrine, where she restores the gem to its normal functionality.
It's also possible to go against Azura's wishes in this questline and end up with the Black Star, a re-usable black soul gem that can also trap humanoid souls. Humanoid souls are always the strongest type--grand souls--which means the Black Star is much, much more useful than Azura's Star. In fact, it's one of the absolute most useful items in the game.
However, one of the Skyrim expansions lets you visit the Soul Cairn, which is where souls go when they're trapped. The sentient souls, like those of humanoids, retain consciousness in the Soul Cairn, and life in the Soul Cairn is miserable and never-ending. I've never used a black soul gem since I saw the place; the concept of sending anyone to an eternal hell is simply too grim. Same reason I don't like Imprisonment in BG2.
We get some new Alteration spells from Tolfdir that can improve our elemental resistances, but unfortunately, the Fortify Alchemy spell appears to have no effect listed.
We finally go to Saarthal to collect some souls from the draugr (non-sentient critters seem okay for soul harvesting). As always, the psychic dude in goofy robes tells us vague prophetic stuff, but after so many playthroughs, one of his lines is completely false.
Azura's Star can only hold a single soul at a time, which means we have to use teleport spells to go in and out of the dungeon to make the most of them. The fights themselves are not hard: even though the draugr have gotten much stronger due to our higher levels, we can still handle most critters by chain-casting Firebolt during Slow Time. Even a Draugr Deathlord can't take more than a few steps before getting incinerated.
For some reason, the last draugr in this dungeon is immune to magic for many seconds after the fight begins. Then that immunity suddenly vanishes and he becomes quite vulnerable.
Zovai's Alteration is sky-high, but we still need to get it to 100 to learn the last and strongest Alteration spells. It only takes a few minutes to use Detect Life to grind Alteration to the maximum.
We then speak to Tolfdir, who says he's been working on a stronger armor spell. Long story short, he needs us to go find a dagger, kill a dragon, loot the dragon while holding the dagger, and then report back to him.
We head to the nearest possible location for the dagger, which is crawling with draugr, as so many places in Skyrim are. A Draugr Deathlord hits us with a three-word Unrelenting Force Shout, but we seem to be immune to getting ragdolled, presumably because we have partial resistance to getting staggered.
We find the dagger, head to the nearest Word Wall, and throw Destruction spells at the dragon until it croaks.
When we return to Tolfdir, he teaches us Dragonhide, the strongest armor spell in the game, which reduces all damage by 80% flat. It's extremely expensive to cast, but the extra damage reduction could prove very valuable later in the game.
We're approaching our peak strength for the game, but we still have a few optimizations left--as well as one major leap in the near future. I start preparing for the fight with Alduin later on.
We've already dealt with the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller quest, so it's time to meet with Delphine and kill a dragon with her. No problems there.
Now it's time to go to the embassy and kill some of our fellow High Elves. No problems there, either.
Next, we go to visit Esbern and kill the territorial lowlifes who get in our way. These folks should really try talking before they pick fights with strangers.
Once again, over at Sky Haven Temple, a dragon has joined the fight with the Forsworn. This time, it's an Ancient Dragon, with a much stronger breath weapon that forces me to flee and dip into our potion supply.
We don't have many Minor Healing Potions, but we have lots of stronger varieties I've been collecting over time.
The dragon leaves us alone and flies off to return to the Forsworn. When hitting the dragon in motion at far range proves difficult, I turn my attention to fighting the Forsworn instead.
Much like my other run, the dragon lands across the river when it gets too injured to fly. We throw out Firebolts while he's grounded.
He goes down fast.
The Forsworn Warlord's name makes her sound like a genuine threat, so I go to the trouble of nailing her with a Paralyze spell during Slow Time to make sure she doesn't fight back when we torch her.
Done!
We teleport back to the College of Winterhold so Faralda can offer us some training in Destruction. I need to get it to 50 to afford a certain perk.
I take the perk and will now deal 30% more damage with Destruction spells whenever I'm wearing robes.
But we have one more major bump in our strength to get. We're going to take Vancian Magic.
Why now? Well, our skills are already sky-high, we only have a few high-intensity fights left, and thanks to our extra magicka from the High Elf race and certain level ups, we can get more than 35 spells per day once we take the Quadratic Wizard perk. We've already got most of our spell-spamming done; now the only thing that's left is to maximize our output.
The perk that makes Novice and Apprentice spells free to cast does not stack with Vancian Magic, so those are two perks that are completely wasted if I take Vancian Magic. But I can get them back by using the Legendary Skills feature from the Dragonborn expansion.
Basically, I can re-set my Alteration skill from 100 to 15 and get all of my perk points back, which I can then assign wherever I like. Leveling up Alteration can then earn me even more perk points, which allows us to level indefinitely and fill every perk tree--at least in theory; actually doing that would take dozens of hours and is outside the scope of this run.
Re-setting Alteration to 15 sounds like a huge drop in power, but it's actually not much of a loss. We still have Detect Life, which means we can quickly train it back up...
...and once it hits 30, I can pick Vancian Magic and then cast it indefinitely, cranking it all the way back up to 100, giving us several level ups.
I could actually do this many times over in rather little time, but increasing our levels would probably not be wise. The extra Health would be lovely, but the perk points would largely be wasted (I don't have many good places to spend them) and I'd be dealing with considerably higher-level enemies that will probably gain more from my levels than I will.
We re-fill our Alteration skill tree, but take Geomancer so we'll take 30% less damage when wearing robes and Quadratic Wizard to get 36 spells per day. We have some spare perk points, so we spend them to strengthen our potions slightly and start brewing some new potions so I can get Alchemy higher and create a larger supply of stronger healing potions. Alchemy increases faster when crafting expensive potions, so I pick the effects that yield higher prices. We found a couple of Giant's Toes on the way here, which are very rare and very valuable potions that can be made into unusually expensive potions.
We don't have many Restore Health ingredients, but we do have high enough Alchemy and the right perks for our healing potions to restore over 80 Health a pop. Over at Whiterun, I stumble upon a very spectacular new spell.
It's exactly what I've been looking for since I started the first of these runs: a sustained Destruction spell with high damage output. Vancian Magic reduces the cost to 1 spell slot, which means we can now deal 50 damage per second indefinitely, instead of 16 like in my first run.
But that's for multiple-enemy skirmishes. For high-end single enemies like dragons, we have another mod-introduced spell that's much deadlier.
The projectile is a broad disk with moderate speed and range. It can't hit many critters or hit anything very far away, but the base damage is crazy, and if I dual-cast the spell, it will deal over 400 damage at the cost of a single spell slot.
It's not the only overpowered spell I have, now that Zovai has the Vancian Magic perk.
I doubt I'll ever need these spells, but I have them.
We learn about the Dragonrend Shout used to defeat Alduin long ago, talk to the crazy guy on the ice floe, and make our way to Alfthand, one of the entrances to Blackreach, where the Elder Scroll we need is hidden. Right outside the area, an Ancient Dragon ambushes us.
I use Greater Enhance Speed to scurry away under Slow Time, then buff Zovai with a fire resistance spell, a healing spell, and Dragonhide before moving in to engage the dragon with the Slasher spell. It takes a sizable chunk out of its Health, but then I receive a notice: I arrived with too few spells, and I'm quickly running out.
I block the dragon's breath weapon with a Greater Ward spell and finish it off with two or three more Slasher spells. By the time it's over, I only have a single spell left to cast Recall and return to our bed to restore our spell slots.
I will need to be careful about my spell slots. We have the slots to use buffing spells, and dual-casting them can make our Alteration buffs last for minutes at a time, but I'll have to check our spell count after every fight to make sure I don't lose track of how quickly we're burning vital resources.
Time to delve deep into Blackreach and snatch that Elder Scroll. I don't know all the different pathways into Blackreach, but the one I took runs through a Dwemer ruins that's crawling with Dwemer robots that are highly resistant to magic.
I can probably overpower them with a Potent Sparks spell or even a Slasher spell. But I have a more important spell to try out: Enhance Weapon Speed.
I've had this for a long time--for multiple runs, actually--but I've never made much use of it because I've been relying on spells to deal damage instead of weapons. But Enhance Weapon Speed is actually incredibly powerful... especially now that we have the high-damage Dragonbane katana.
Normally, Zovai can swing a sword a little faster than once per second. But for the very short duration in which Enhanced Weapon Speed is active, she can swing a sword--or any weapon, really; even a slow-moving warhammer--as fast as I can click the mouse button, many times per second. It drains our Stamina really fast, but it deals lots of nonmagical damage and we quickly gain levels in the One-Handed skill.
I travel with Dragonhide always active, but apparently it has no impact on trap damage, just like armor in Oblivion. I nearly die to a spinning blade trap when I accidentally fail to hop over a pressure plate on a slight incline.
It's a worrisome reminder that we're still reliant on high Health for surviving certain threats.
Lower down in the dungeon, Falmer--elf mutants who have lived so long underground that they lost their vision, their compassion for other creatures, and even their souls--wait in silence, listening for our approach. The Muffle spell makes us almost undetectable if we're careful, since they're so dependent on their sense of hearing, but it's not strictly necessary to sneak past them. I can always just blow them up instead.
They used to be Snow Elves, but they've long since lost that status. They're incredibly vicious and evil creatures; I find torture devices and desecrated corpses lying around their homes. I make a point of releasing the shackles from a bloody half-skeleton and a still-warm elf. It seemed wrong to leave them shackled even in death.
I use teleportation to return to our bed to restore our spell slots and make sure we always have plenty on hand for an emergency. On the way back, I run into the spinning blade trap again. This time, I don't take any risks--I use the Become Ethereal Shout to become intangible and immune to damage for a few brief seconds while I climb the incline.
There's a long cooldown for this Shout, so you can't stay invincible for long, but it's a lovely rescue option.
Finally, we arrive in Blackreach, the massive subterranean cavern filled with bioluminescent fungi. It's a very haunting and beautiful place.
I notice a Dwemer Centurion--a huge robot with crazy stats and resistances--and discover that I can dispatch it just by using a Weakness to Shock spell before blasting it with Chain Lightning.
I take some time to admire the scenery. Blackreach is one of the cooler places in Skyrim.
I fiddle with some puzzles and grab the Elder Scroll...
...but I've found some excellent loot around here and I want to keep poking around. I find something I don't think I've ever seen before: a humanoid servant to the Falmer.
To my surprise, the servants are loyal to their masters and attack Zovai on sight. But they are not much of a threat; they're just ordinary folks with some basic weaponry.
Once I've cleared out an entire settlement of Falmer and their humanoid goons, I decide to teleport back up to the surface. Yet again, the College of Winterhold is besieged by a dragon.
I drink a few fire resistance and healing potions to survive its breath, then bring it down with a Weakness to Shock spell and some lightning spells.
We're almost ready for the endgame. With the souls I've gathered in Blackreach, I enchant a new set of equipment to cover our weaknesses and make Zovai a little bit sturdier overall.
With the Elder Scroll in hand, I fast-travel to Paarthunax, the dragon who leads the Greybeards and lives at the Throat of the World. We use the scroll to look back into the past, the day Alduin was defeated, and learn the Shout that the ancient Nords use to bring down Alduin so many ages ago.
Just as the vision ends and we return to the present, Alduin appears to kill us, but Paarthunax is on our side.
Anxious about Alduin's breath weapons--he can breathe both frost and fire--I cast fire resistance and cold resistance spells under Slow Time while backing away.
Unfortunately, I mistake Paarthunax for Alduin (dragons looks so much alike!) and end up blasting both of them with dual-casted Ice Storm spells.
With Vancian Magic doubling our damage output, and our perks and skills increasing it further, Alduin's innate weakness to frost damage let us bring him down very quickly. But we can't quite kill him--not in the material plane, at least.
We'll have to figure out how to reach him later. In the meantime, I head back to the college... where yet another dragon foolishly attempts to slay us. We hit him with Weakness to Fire and blast him with Fireballs.
Alduin isn't keen on a showdown with the woman who's prophecied to kill him, so we need to figure out where he's hidden. Best way to do that? Bait one of his goons into stopping at Dragonsreach, trap the dragon there, and interrogate the dragon for his whereabouts. However, the Jarl is a little hesitant about inviting a dragon to his town.
He already has enough problems going on with the civil war. To deal with the dragon threat, we need to negotiate a temporary truce between the Imperial Legion and the Stormcloak rebels. This means we have to persuade the lead belligerents, Ulfric Stormcloak and General Tullius, to meet at a table at High Hrothgar for a Greybeard-mediated peace summit.
They're willing to play along when I broach the idea, though they show little enthusiasm for the prospect of saving the world.
Things are pretty tense. Much like in a lot of real-life diplomatic tiffs, there's at least one guy who insists on preconditions before he even agrees to sit at a table. Arngeir says something that I think everybody involved in a contentious international disagreement would understand.
It really bugs me when I hear people throw out preconditions. The only precondition for talks should be a temporary end to hostilities; that's the only thing that's truly necessary for a negotiation to take place. Preconditions are usually just excuses to not engage with the other party and/or grandstand and act like a tough guy in the face of "the enemy." It's childish and I find it incredible that some world leaders actually behave this way.
That being said, Ulfric's condition isn't that unreasonable. All he asks is that a Thalmor official at the table get lost. It's not a good way to approach the table, but to be fair, the Thalmor isn't a party to the negotiation, they have no valid stake in the affair, they have nothing to add to the discussion, the possible outcomes of the agreement don't infringe on any legitimate Thalmor interests... and, in all honesty, General Tullius should have realized that the Thalmor official's presence would just give Ulfric an excuse to act like a jerk or even ditch the negotiations entirely.
The Thalmor official comes off as rather possessive of the Empire.
It's not actually bad for the Thalmor lady to just sit there and listen--it doesn't cost us anything--but it also offers us no benefit. We can score points with Ulfric just by making a meaningless symbolic concession.
Ultimately, Tullius and Ulfric are more concerned with fighting their civil war than addressing the dragon threat. The negotiations process gets wrapped up in it. Really, all we need is a temporary end to hostilities for a few days or weeks--which, ceteris paribus, should affect both sides equally and therefore be perfectly fair--but both sides are demanding extra concessions before they agree to even that.
Ulfric wants some territory handed over. Tullius points out the obvious motive behind the demand.
However, Tullius also has some territorial issues to be resolved, and there's a chance that we can exchange certain territories at the summit--a process which otherwise would entail war and therefore loss of life.
Better to make trades at a table than on a battlefield.
Ulfric and Tullius keep arguing. Eventually, Esbern scolds them for their priorities--not a good diplomatic move, but very much on point given the circumstances.
Tullius still has grievances to resolve. The Stormcloaks have committed some atrocities, and it's not just Imperial Legion soldiers who have lost their lives because of the rebellion.
One of Ulfric's buddies loudly declares that the Empire commits loads more atrocities and is way worse than the honorable and righteous Stormcloak rebels, which is not necessarily true and primarily besides the point. As much as people care about morality, negotiations themselves are about trading and making marginal gains via clever compromises--saying "you guys are bad and should be nicer to us" is not an effective strategy; just an impulsive partisan response.
It's a decent concession. If this sets a precedent that reparations are important and atrocities are expensive to commit, belligerents are going to be less willing to repeat them.
Arngeir summarizes the terms of the deal. The Stormcloaks will gain control of Markarth, but in turn, they will withdraw from the Rift and pay reparations for the massacre at Karthwasten. It's a fairly even trade.
This quest is actually impossible to fail. You can completely screw it up and act like a partisan jerk by favoring one side at every turn, and they'll still grudgingly accept the deal.
Now we just need to figure out how to get a dragon to Dragonsreach. Esbern's plan is simple: yell out a dragon's name and see if he comes to party.
Sure enough, Odahviing is a stupid moron and walks right into our trap. It doesn't take long for him to crack--apparently Alduin's fellow dragons don't all agree with his leadership.
Odahviing says that Alduin is in Sovngarde, the Nord heaven for warriors, like Valhalla, and offers to give us a ride to the nearest portal to the place. The place is crawling with draugr and another dragon touches down to challenge us, but a good Slasher spell is enough to wreck any of them.
For the draugr, I want to train Zovai's One-Handed skill just in case we run out of spells in the final fight against Alduin and are forced to resort to melee. With Dragonhide crippling the enemy's damage output and Enhance Weapon Speed letting us strike multiple times per second, Zovai's One-Handed skill quickly creeps up.
It's actually pretty fun to use Enhance Weapon Speed; being able to strike so incredibly fast is more entertaining than having to wait almost a whole second before you can make another swing.
I switch back and forth from spells and sword. We've got some really high-level draugr around here, but they just don't have much to throw at us. Even their Unrelenting Force Shouts fail to do more than stagger us.
And, with teleportation spells, I can hop to Riverwood, rest up to re-fill my spell slots, and then hop back at peak strength to continue the fight deeper in the barrow.
To my surprise, my 44% boost to bow damage from the circlet still means that we deal precious little damage with bows. We have an ebony bow, but with a low skill and no perks in Archery, the damage from iron arrows is really not impressive compared to the other stuff we can do.
Outside the barrow, on the other side of the exterior, we get attacked by several high-end draugr at once. The damage isn't too scary, but I want to make sure that we don't even get close to low Health in this run. I don't want another ugly surprise ending the run.
I escape with Slow Time and tear them apart. One of them gets stuck in a crevice, allowing me to shoot him down. Like a lot of critters in Skyrim, he blends in with the gray environment.
Finally I spot the gateway to Sovngarde. A lone Dragon Priest--a high-level mage with a nice staff--blocks the way, already partly injured.
I move in to wipe him out with a Slasher spell...
...and then quickly reconsider. He has a ward active, and I remember seeing a mod-introduced Restoration perk from Ordinator that gave wards a chance of reflecting spells.
A dual-cast Slasher spell might well kill me in one hit if it got bounced back. I am not willing to take that kind of risk, so I switch to Enhance Weapon Speed instead and slash him up.
Soon, the Dragon Priest falls. Since we're low on spells and I don't know if teleportation will work inside Sovngarde, I teleport to Riverwood to rest before warping back to the portal.
We arrive in Sovngarde and use the Clear Skies shout to dispel the fog that Alduin has cast over the landscape. To gain admittance to the Hall of Valor, we have to fight a gigantic man named Tsun, a shirtless dude who completely towers over us. We cast Enhance Weapon Speed and offer to shave his chest.
He doesn't take much damage before ending the fight and letting us pass.
I don't like making my way to the Hall of Valor. The bridge is just a dragon spine with some heavy bones laid across, and I'm not sure I trust its structural integrity any more than I trust Zovai's balance. I'm not a big fan of heights.
We find the original heroes who first defeated Alduin and lead them out to challenge the World Eater, who is hiding behind his fog. As with many problems in Skyrim, the solution is for all of us to yell really loud until the problem goes away.
I search the sky. Unable to hide any longer, Alduin lands in front of us, shaking the earth with his landing.
By dual-casting Weakness to Frost, we can compound Alduin's innate vulnerability to frost damage, and since he's already facing us, we can probably deal extra damage with Ice Storm, since Ice Storm is a slow-moving projectile that deals damage based on how long the target stays inside the blast. Alduin crawls closer to snap at us.
We cast Slow Time and then fire off several Ice Storm spells in the space of a single second. At first, he takes only a little damage as the spells first touch him.
Then all of the Ice Storms pass through him, dealing massive damage. He's already more than halfway dead!
I keep casting Ice Storm over and over while Alduin wastes his time fighting the other heroes...
...and with a burst of light, his Health bar vanishes.
The battle is won! I grab some Tundra Cotton nearby before turning back to watch Alduin's death.
Even his bones disintegrate, and then there is nothing left. Skyrim is over!
I deliver the news to Paarthunax, who apparently has taken Alduin's place as the leader of the remaining dragons. He supports our victory over Alduin, but he mourns the loss of his old friend and brother.
Paarthunax takes wing and bids us farewell. He has work to do in uniting the rest of the dragons.
Zovai is level 41, a high-Health Vancian Magic build specializing in Alteration. Note her unusually high Illusion skill despite our not using many Calm spells--that's the result of spamming Muffle and Shroud to stay hidden when traveling around. Also note her high Speechcraft; we had to earn a lot of money to buy all those expensive spells.
One-Handed is at 50, almost entirely because of using Enhance Weapon Speed with the high-damage Dragonbane sword against some late-game enemies, and Enchant is almost 70 because I made so many weapons with Damage Stamina enchantments. Really, though, our crafting skills never actually impacted the run--I never got Smithing high enough to make anything useful, I never made much use of the potions I brewed, and by the time I made those last high-end enchantments, Zovai didn't even need the little bonuses. I thought crafting would give us a little extra boost, but it turned out to be a waste of time because we refused to purchase any crafting ingredients, limiting our supply.
Here's Zovai at the end of the game, warm and safe at the College of Winterhold.
One no-reload low-crafting Skyrim run with Smilodon, High Level Enemies, Ordinator, and Phenderix Magic Evolved, complete.
Thrasher the human cleric - FINAL BG 1 Update! Traveling with: Minsc, (Kagain), Ajantis, Kivan, Imoen, Dynaheir
I made some great progress with Thrasher. The party is a very solid team. I made a mistake and got my reputation too high and lost Kagain, so recruited Ajantis to replace him. I searched high and low for a magical bastard sword, but couldn't find one. Sashanstar refused to give us our reward even though all the dopplegangers were dead, but didn't want to lose rep killing him. I tried charming him to have his captain kill him for no rep loss, but that didn't work he has really high magic resistance.
Imoen was great thief and farsight and buffed skeletons were too much for Prat and gang. Ajantis got killed by spiders, so we decided to get the heck out of there. Dynaheir protected Minsc from petrification so Minsc took out the basilisks.
For Chapter 7, Kivan dispelled Slythe and that made Slythe easy to deal with him. Buffed skeletons also made duchal palace pretty straightforward. We encountered no problems in the thieve's maze.
We avoided the Undercity party (long way around) and then proceeded to deal with Sarevok. We had 4 skeletons and some buffs. Imoen pulled Sarevok, and we only got him and Semaj. Semaj's defenses got quickly dispelled by arrows and he fell quickly. Sarevok didn't live much longer.
BG 2 will be quite different, as I will try to solo that. Should be interesting.
Hey, since I don't know any better, I'm back in the challenge ! Here's Valalsia Ironheart, a female dwarven stalker.
I had a bit of a break from the game in the last few months for various reasons, but recently got back into it. I had a (modified) Dwarven Defender run a while back, but we can consider that one over. I also tried to casually play (aka with reloads) a necromancer who died early to a bandit ambush, but old habits are hard to shake : I just couldn't stay hooked on that playthrough for some reason. So, I rolled Valalsia, a character I had in mind for a long time.
She had three death before she really got going. The first was against the kobold shaman in the Nashkel mines who casted two Lightning Bolt spells at her, the second against Mutamin who charmed her while she was soloing, the third against Shoal due to slight bad placement.
Fourth time's the charm I guess ! After getting to level 6 by going after heavy xp monsters early, she gathered a team around her : Minsc (it's been a while since I've used him), Dynaheir, Coran, Branwen and Faldorn. Minsc was modified with a mod that grant him the Barbarian Ranger class; it gives him a rage that can be controlled, but under which he can't use any items. It's really fun mechanically. He also has a skill named Mighty Blow that let him do 4 points of damage if he foregoes 4 points of thac0. He also can't use any armor higher than chainmail. This mod makes him a glass cannon, which I like. There are other skills granted by this mod, like big bonuses to saving throws and immunities to psionics, but I didn't installed those parts because they're too much for me. Branwen was given the Priest of Tempus kit from Divine Remix (it's not a fresh install because it's probably the last time I use Divine Remix). The rest of the crew were left as-is. Once these companions were gathered, they started the main quest. Since we're high level for this part, Mulahey was dispatched with ease.
Then, the Bandit camp was next. The thing is, with SCS, there's a lot more bandits than in the regular game. And, since I got Item Randomizer installed, the scrolls accessible in shops were randomized too. Thalantyr had neither Grease or Web, my go-to spells for this fight, so I had to go through this fight the hard way. Early, things were going good, because Dynaheir already had two Fireball wands to waste these guys.
However, after a while, when enemies were seriously stacking with little means of slowing them down, we kept taking a lot of damage. Potions maintained us afloat and we finally prevailed.
The road to Cloakwood was opened. Since I'm tired, I'll leave it there and tell more about it later.
I'm a couple of weeks in to an intended month without playing BG (other than a bit of multiplayer). The intention of that is to build up an appetite for the game again to help me maintain concentration and give me a chance at the odd successful run (it's well over 100 attempts since I last had a success). It's working in the sense I keep having to restrain my desire to play, but I'll continue the cold turkey treatment for the full month .
For a few years now I've been having attempts on and off at a very challenging no-reload setup within King's Bounty (a game which I've never completed in any form) and I thought it was about time I had another crack at that. Seeing @semiticgod's various recent Elder Scrolls runs I wondered whether anyone would be interested in me posting a summary of my run ...
The Iron throne was uneventful. Missile damage and wands rule BG1 supreme.
In the undercellar. Slythe and Kristin where talken care off individually
No problems there
The palace fight on the other hand was a bit of a hassle.
Even though I had a full party, I recruited Ichtyl for the fight. Thank god
I got of to a bad start. I triggered the fight by accident. My initial dispel failed, and Llia died within moments thereafter.. Luckily Ichtyls greater malison + chaos combo worked its wonder. Followed by Dynaheirs web and my 3 characters with free action, the fight was won in the end
The maze was first “de-trapped” by stealth then cleared... the undercellar party got treated by some fireballs - they didnt like it one bit..
At the temple, I first lured Semaj out. Killed him easily and then lured Sarevok out.
My overconfidence nearly costed me - but 4 sips from Durlags goblet saved the day. Sarevok defeated. But I really need to buff even if I get dispelled...
Off to SoD which I consider an integral part of BG1. So we are halfway there.. The progress will be slow due to the lack of metagaming opportunities..
A fairly eventful session saw some close shaves, but no deaths.
Things started with a journey into the Cloakwood. Inspiro used invisibility to trip some web traps and make killing ettercaps easy. Laraum then wanted to get Spider's Bane, so led the way to Centeol's nest. I've noted before an oddity there that, even though the first character through the door appears to be further into the nest, one of the sword spiders only comes into battle when the next character entered. That cost a life for my sorcerer in the Trio yesterday and Inspiro also had to run when he was similarly attacked. He did a loop round and came back inside - drawing the sword spider and a couple of other enemies to attack Laraum. However, a giant spider switched from Laraum to Inspiro and poisoned him. In single player or as a MP client I would have just let him die, but as protagonist I sometimes take pity on the long-suffering Gate70 and chose to take a potion on this occasion .
Moving on to the Cloakwood Mine Drasus & co were webbed and Laraum slaughtered them with Drasus'sSpider's Bane.
There were no particular problems getting down to Davaeorn's level, but the battle horrors there hit Laraum pretty hard despite Inspiro using up a few frost wand charges on them. Laraum healed a bit with potions before taking a potion of magic blocking to assault the mage. After true sight got rid of mirror images, Davaeorn didn't last much longer.
In the City the poison quest yielded some boots of speed for Laraum from Lothander, though as he's nearly always using Spider's Bane that makes little difference to him. Marek then found himself in a sticky situation.
Next for the chop was Ramazith, but the ghasts in his tower proved to be an unexpectedly serious obstacle. Inspiro made himself invisible before going upstairs, but the asynchronicity of MP proved costly there when the ghasts decided he wasn't invisible after all despite the evidence of the battle text.
Things looked bad, but Laraum used his inquisitor abilities to dispel the hold effect and Inspiro was able to break contact before being attacked again.
For the next major encounter, Laraum tried to pull Degrodel's guards outside a few at a time. Things looked a bit dodgy when almost all of them followed at once, but most of them got stuck in webs and Laraum was able to clean them up easily enough.
The session finished with an assault on the Iron Throne. Inspiro threw in a couple of webs and a couple of skull traps for openers, as Laraum joined the assault. Inspiro tried to support with missiles, but hit a line of sight problem and promptly walked into the web. Fortunately Laraum was cutting down the held opposition pretty fast and didn't require any more help.
From the age of some computer files I have I think I started playing King's Bounty: the Legend about 6 years ago. The basic adventuring set-up is similar to Might & Magic, but like Heroes of Might & Magic combat is resolved on a separate hex-based screen. There are lots of different unit types you can place in your hero's army, but fairly early on I decided to do a run using only undead units. As I got better at the game I then made those rules harder, so that now I'm playing on the following basis: - no-reload (of course) on impossible difficulty - must never lose or run away from a fight (in KB losing a fight is not generally the end of the game, though it is in some cases) - must never have any creatures other than undead in an army when fighting (they can be carried on the adventure screen, to complete quests) - must never have fewer of any type of troop at the end of combat than the start
To make those rules a bit easier I used a game editor to check lots of starting positions to assess how easy they would be (there's a lot of randomness about whether particular equipment and spells is available in the game). I eventually settled on a starting position that I thought gave me some sort of chance to make progress and this run will be my 275th attempt at this same starting position .
I've generally seen improvements over time and have had my most successful attempt relatively recently, getting perhaps 2/3 of the way through the game. I've deliberately never looked at any walkthrough though, so there's still plenty of the game I've not seen and it may well be the case that it's impossible to complete the game using my rules - though that would be a bit of an anti-climax .
At the start of the game you are offered some trials to allow you to assess the type of class you want to be. In fact there's no option about that - you always end up as a treasure hunter - but normally you would want to do the trials to pick up various spells and treasure. However, you can't avoid fighting in those and there are no undead troops available here, so I'm forced to accept the job without doing the trials.
Leaving the trial area took me to an audience with the king. That provided an opportunity to get rid of my starting army there.
One of the objects in Greenwort, the area you start in, is a 'strange stone'. Activating this with the help of the local Mages Guild will randomly give you either a small bit of experience, a boost to defense or a boost to mana. The defense and mana boosts are real gains, but the experience is essentially meaningless in a long game, so for quite a while now I've been going to the Strange Stone immediately on starting the game and quitting the run if experience is offered (accounting for probably about 30-40 of my many attempts). In this case the Strange Stone turns into an altar offering an improvement to defense, so all is well to continue.
I've started a new no-reload game of one of my old favorites: Dragon Warrior Monsters. DWM is a Pokemon-style game based on the enemies from the old Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest games, but the gameplay is much more dynamic, complex, and subject to random chance than Pokemon games. Instead of being based on grinding and rock-paper-scissors matchups, DWM is based on breeding monsters to get new types of monsters.
Breeding monsters is the basis of DWM gameplay. Take the example of a Unicorn. Unicorns are awesome monsters that can heal your allies and even raise them from death. Problem is... you can't find one in the wild.
You can, however, breed certain monsters together to produce a baby Unicorn you can raise from birth. For instance, if you breed a Tonguella (imagine a fat biped with a big tongue) with any member of the Slime family, or any member of the Beast family with a Fangslime (a blob of slime with a mohawk), you'll get a Unicorn egg.
But catching most monsters is very difficult in DWM, and highly dependent on luck, so you can never quite be sure which monsters you're going to have, or what gender they are. Only a few select critters are guaranteed to join you, and to get the best critters in your party, you have to adapt to whatever the game throws at you.
This run will have a special restriction: I can't grind for experience. This means I can only enter a single "gate" (a wilderness area) once in the entire game, and once I explore all screens of a certain map, I have to go straight to the next area. I can't wander around aimlessly to get more experience.
More importantly, this severely limits what monsters I can catch. If I don't get a Gremlin in a certain gate, I can never get a Gremlin unless I breed for one--and the monsters at my disposal are 100% finite.
The game was designed assuming the player entered the "gates" multiple times in a single run to grind monsters and get new resources. In this run, I'll only have a fraction of the resources that I normally would have in DWM, and since this is a no-reload run, I have to roll with the punches in this highly luck-dependent game.
We start the game at home at midnight. Here's the main character, canonically named Terry, and his snoozing sister Milayou. Since screenshots are very small for this run, they won't be hidden in spoiler tags. Our problems begin when a weird little critter named Warubou hops out of a drawer to kidnap our sister. Shortly after, another weird little critter named Watabou hops out of the same drawer. Watabou promises to help us find our sister and hops back in the drawer. We climb in after him and are transported to a strange new world, where an old geezer has been expecting us. We find ourselves in GreatTree, a colossal tree that the locals have made into a small city. Up at the top, we meet the king, who wants us to raise monsters and win the Starry Night Tournament, an upcoming tournament for "monster masters," the DWM equivalent of Pokemon trainers. The king is surprised to hear that we have other goals in mind. But the victor of the Starry Night Tournament gets to make a wish, so if we win, we get to find our sister Milayou. It's quite convenient for the king who kidnapped us and is trying to force us into servitude. Notice that the game's textbox is rather tiny. A lot of sentences can't show up in a single screen.
We go to the farm to get some monsters, but there's only a single one left: Slib, the favorite monster of the former king. This is the first member of the Slime family, known simply as a Slime. Slime monsters have high HP and speed (AGL is agility, which determines which monster strikes first in each round of combat) as well as some decent resistances to spells. However, their other stats are pretty lousy, and this one gains levels very slowly.
That's a pretty big handicap in our run, since we're only going to get so many opportunities to earn XP. We're going to have to get fast-growing monsters as soon as we can, or else we'll hit a major block shortly into the game.
The king is furious that the head of the farm, little Pulio, let all of his other monsters run away. Pulio is about to be thrown into the dungeon when we step forward and offer to catch Hale, another Slime monster who ran away, if Pulio is freed. Before we go, we grab an Herb from a nearby chest. Herbs heal a little over 30 HP, which isn't much in the long run, but is actually a 100% heal option for early game critters. We then head off to the Traveler's Gate, a swirly portal thingy. These portals, or gates, lead to randomized wilderness areas. This one, for example, has 4 different maps, and you reach the next map by finding a big hole and hopping through it. The maps aren't too flashy. But the music is quite enchanting. It isn't long before we run into our first enemy--a Dracky! Our only monster, Slib the Slime, manages to bring it down in a few rounds, but unfortunately, the Dracky doesn't join us after it's been defeated. We should get a Dracky before the end of this gate, though, since the odds of catching monsters in the first area is unusually high. Normally, you need to give meat treats to monsters to lower their "Wild" score and make them more tame and willing to join you, but early-game critters have very low Wild and aren't too shy about joining the party.
We heal Slib with an Herb and keep searching the map for new Herbs and new monsters. We run into an Anteater! Slib gains a level by defeating this critter (Slib has a powerful advantage due to his unusually high starting HP) and the Anteater joins us. It's a pretty lousy monster, but right now, it's a valuable addition to the party. Our new monster, Ares the Anteater, belongs to the Beast family. Beasts have high HP and attack (ATK) values, which makes them great damage dealers, but otherwise their stats are mediocre.
Finally, we win over a Dracky, and fill our final party slot (we can only travel with three monsters at a time). Dirk the Dracky doesn't have great stats... ...but he'll grow very quickly and continue to be strong for a little while into the future. Once he learns the Sleep skill at a higher level, he'll be able to temporarily disable important enemies.
We win a few more fights with our trio of monsters and proceed to the boss, Hale, who must be beaten up before he'll agree to come back to the farmer. Hale is a Healer, one of the few monsters who inherently know the Heal spell. He lasts a long time, but his offensive powers aren't too scary. Once he goes down, Hale joins the party and immediately becomes our top monster. Watabou appears and warps us back to the king's chamber. Due to the rules of the run, we can never re-enter that gate to train our monsters, so we have to proceed to the next challenge.
In order to unlock new gates, we need to win fights at the arena. The receptionist is cute. The enemies are always the same for each run, but they can be pretty tough. We have to win three fights in a row, each one against a new batch of monsters, and we can't heal in between them. Fortunately, the first two fights are against some low-offense enemies who can't deal much damage. The last fight is against a group of zombies: two Spookies and a Hork. All of them can use Lushlicks, a one-round disabler. Apparently licking monsters induces a helpless shivering state. They have some decent attack power, too, but Hale is a sturdy character and has lots of MP to spam Heal spells. We have now unlocked two new areas: the Gates of Villager and Talisman. All the gates in this game have weird and mysterious names--maybe because of translation issues from the original Japanese.
These next two gates are going to be very important. We can't breed monsters yet because only older monsters--those who are at least level 10--can breed. Until then, we have to try to get as many useful monsters as we can.
Without the ability to grind, we need to be very efficient about breeding our monsters, and luck can play a huge role in the type of critters we can get.
Thrasher the human cleric - FINAL BG 1 Update! Traveling with: Minsc, (Kagain), Ajantis, Kivan, Imoen, Dynaheir
I made some great progress with Thrasher. The party is a very solid team. I made a mistake and got my reputation too high and lost Kagain, so recruited Ajantis to replace him. I searched high and low for a magical bastard sword, but couldn't find one. Sashanstar refused to give us our reward even though all the dopplegangers were dead, but didn't want to lose rep killing him. I tried charming him to have his captain kill him for no rep loss, but that didn't work he has really high magic resistance.
Comments
The succubus charm is indeed -10 against males and 0 against females.
Hanslow Tinderbow (RIP) update
This is why I hate no-reloads. Decided to go to the Nashkel Carnival to buy the Shield Amulet and The One Gift lost. While there I figured I'd wrap up the mini-quests. Took out Oompah with no problem and then stopped in Zordral's tent. I was going to hop in and out of the tent to avoid his spells and figured 'no problem'. Things went well at first but he managed to fire off his mirror image which was annoying. I fled the tent, he chased. Hanslow got hit by an acid arrow and got struck by a lightning bolt almost simultaneously! Before he could chug a healing potion he was pushing up daisies...I'm going to continue on with him because it's been a fun ride (and the 98!) but another solo no-reload bites the dust. At least I can join a party now (though Neera didn't survive her run in with the red mage).
After a suitable mourning period I'm going to try an elf fighter/thief for my next attempt. C'est la vie.
Frost: No-Reload Skyrim Run
Part 4
One of the nice things about the Vancian Magic perk is that dual-casting is completely free--it still only counts as a single spell. This means we can dual-cast illusion spells that already have double magnitude and hit virtually anything with a simple Calm spell. I settle down a pair of sabre cats out in the wilderness before they can threaten me.Then I can tackle them one at a time. I zap them with dual-casted Lightning Bolt spells that should deal over 250 damage a pop.
For other fights, I can just use the Healing+Sparks combo for sustained healing and damage, or switch to the bow to save spells.
We make it to High Hrothgar, where the resident Greybeards teach us how to shout louder. Arngeir is especially impressed with our shoutiness.
With Saarthal complete and Frost proving very effective in combat, I decide to try the next College of Winterhold quest, which involves going into a dungeon and killing mages to steal back some books (libraries are serious business). Some of the enemies don't really appreciate the danger they're in.
The local mages have imprisoned a few vampires for unknown reasons, presumably for research. The vampires don't seem friendly.
Since the enemy of an enemy isn't always a friend, I decide to slay the vampires rather than free them and let them run rampant through Skyrim.
We rescue Orthorn from a cage on the way. Orthorn is the guy who stole the books in the first place--apparently he thought bringing the local mages a gift would make him their friend.
It did not. In fact, when we reach the boss of the dungeon, s/he offers to hand over the books on the condition we surrender Orthorn.
I don't know what happens to Orthorn if you ditch him and take the books back to the college, but I'd rather not put an innocent moron's life at risk. I zap the boss and move on.
Back at Whiterun, we're high enough level for some demented cultists to recognize us as the Dragonborn--or, in their view, an elaborate fake who for some reason needs to be destroyed. They hit hard and I'm worried about accidentally roasting a bystander, so I back off and let the guards deal with them.
Finally, I hit a breakthrough: Frost's Alteration is high enough for us to buy Detect Life from Tolfdir! Better still, it seems that we can now buy several other interesting Alteration spells, presumably from the Phenderix Magic Evolved mod.
Detect Life is a great spell for leveling Alteration because it grants experience based on how many critters it detects. Use the spell in the middle of Whiterun, and you gain experience much faster because there are so many living critters around.
We crank it all the way up to 60, which should be enough to afford some even stronger Alteration spells (the bigger spells don't appear in stores until you reach a high enough level). We choose a couple of new perks: Quadratic Wizard, which gives us another spell per day per 10 points of magicka, and bumps our spells per day from 20 to 30; and Welloc's Dormant Aura, which allows us to tack on some special effects to certain types of buffing spells.
From now on, whenever we cast an armor spell, we get an extra 50 points of armor, 50 more Health, and 1% Health regeneration per second.
Next up, the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, which we need to prove that we're the Dragonborn. Honestly, this is just a convenient plot device for introducing us to the Blades: the horn has been stolen from the relevant dungeon, replaced with a note telling us to meet one of the last members of the Blades, hiding in a secret room at an inn.
Delphine wants us to go kill a dragon for her. Why not? We hike out to the wilderness and then Alduin appears to resurrect one of his fellow dragons.
Alduin is the oldest of the dragons, known as the World Eater, and he's supposed to destroy the whole world or something. Apparently he's going around Skyrim shouting at dragon corpses until they come back to life, all to build his army.
There's a rather lovely poem that appears often in loading screens, and which I'm very fond of:
And the Scrolls have foretold
of black wings in the cold
that when brothers wage war come unfurled!
Alduin, bane of kings, ancient shadow unbound,
with a hunger to swallow the world!
It's one of the few times you ever see anyone using anapestic meter.
Anyhoo, as the Dragonborn, we're supposed to kill Alduin, but... he can fly, and we can't. He leaves us as a meal for his fellow dragon...
...but, um... we have dual-casted Vancian Lightning Bolts. The dragon croaks in seconds.
Delphine thinks the high elves are secretly behind the dragon thing because conspiracy theories and racism. To investigate, we need to infiltrate an embassy, but since we can't be smuggled in with a box or something, we have to create a diversion. For some reason, our contact has no plan, so we have to come up with our own.
As always, our savior is a raging alcoholic in need of a drink.
This being an embassy, our primary responsibility here is shoot people with laser beams.
We find some incriminating documents, free a prisoner from the embassy torture dungeon, and fast-travel to Whiterun to sell off the blood-spattered armor of eight dudes that were just doing their job.
I finally get Frost's Destruction skill high enough for us to buy Chain Lightning and Fireball, giving us a new area-effect option that will strike much harder, much faster than our one-handed Sparks and Flames spells.
We also take a couple of perks to increase our fire and frost resistance and give Frost another 50 Health, an important defensive boost that will help us deal with dragons.
We head to Riften to hunt down one of the last remaining Blades, a paranoid old guy hiding in the Ratways under the city. A lot of lowlifes roam around this place, often territorial, and during a scuffle, I accidentally catch Lydia with an area-effect spell.
Lydia is just not very good at this game.
We find Esbern after committing some light crime for information. He's a basement dweller hiding from invisible enemies, so he's kind of big on security.
After zapping some of his enemies who ambush us on the way out...
Now we need to go check out Sky Haven Temple to find a prophecy on a wall. The area outside is swarming with Forsworn--a clan of half-naked barbarian folks with a violent streak.
But there's also a dragon on hand, and the Forsworn are fighting the dragon at the same time they're fighting us, and vice versa. It's a three-way fight, and also there's a bear, because why not?
But our new Slow Time spell gives us an excellent new option for dealing with all kinds of enemies. It doesn't just slow down the movement of all critters and effectively give me a better reaction time and more time to think--after a second or so, Frost only suffers partial slowdown, which means we move much faster than the enemies for a short period of time.
How much time? That actually gives us enough time to cast maybe 4.5 spells in a single second, with time slowed down enough for me to get the targeting just right. The bear goes down with a string of Chain Lightning spells.
Slow Time is a little bit like a Time Stop spell. It even makes us fast enough to dodge incoming enemy spells and attacks. Unlike Time Stop, though, we can't chain-cast it; we can only cast it once the previous duration expires, so refreshing it midway through is not an option.
I set about taking down the Forsworn, because they'll be harder to run away from than the dragon. They deal nasty damage in melee, though, and to save spells for the dragon, I have to use Healing+Sparks, which takes down enemies much more slowly and leaves Frost open for attack. We dip into our supply of healing potions and food to keep our Health high without burning too many spells.
Then the dragon lands right next to me. Knowing that my fire resistance isn't too strong, and not confident that a simple Healing spell can keep me safe, I deploy a ward alongside it, which I've heard can block dragon's breath because breath attacks hit in the form of a constant stream of weaker spells rather than one big one, and wards will remain until a sufficiently big single spell breaks them.
It holds, and the dragon flies off, leaving me to deal with the Forsworn. I use another sustained spell to avoid burning spell slots...
...but when I check my slots, I only have 4 left. I'm almost empty!
The Forsworn are gone, but the dragon remains. Fortunately, it's been wounded enough that it can no longer fly, and it's at a convenient distance. We finish it off with a bow and it tumbles down the hill.
I teleport back to our bed to restore our spells. The instant we walk outside, we run into a dragon, right in the middle of the college courtyard.
Luckily for us, I rested before I went outside, which means we arrive with full spell slots. We fry it.
Vancian Magic has its drawbacks, but it's really quite fun.
Inspiro (human skald, Grond0); Laraum (human inquisitor, Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/999191/#Comment_999191
The starting save found us near Brage and we duly escorted him back to Nashkel to bump reputation up to 19. My idea had been that Farmer Brun's son would then get the final point, but Gate70 ruined that logic by talking to Oublek to get yet more reputation
The ankheg nest managed only a single hit on Laraum between them and an isolated one near Tenya was unable to increase their score.
Next up was the Nashkel Mine. Laraum had no difficulty in bulldozing through a bunch of kobolds to go and find Mulahey. Inspiro then played safe by using the Greenstone Amulet before confronting Mulahey, while Laraum occupied the others.
Inspiro was hit by a gray ooze on the way out of the mine after MP lag caught him out by briefly displacing him closer to the ooze than Laraum. Trying to rest to heal up generated a bunch of kobolds and they proved persistent in following the duo out of the mine - but failed to do any more damage there.
I wasn't going to bother with a screenshot for Nimbul, but seeing that reminded me that Inspiro hasn't yet generated a familiar - and writing this might, just might, help me to remember to do that next time
We moved north of the FAI to find a route to the Bandit Camp - and then I sheepishly led the way back to Beregost to slaughter Tranzig and get the appropriate map reference. Back at the Bandit Camp Laraum led the way through some bandits to find Taugosz. At that point Inspiro threw in a web to try and immobilize Taugosz. That worked, but unfortunately Laraum was also caught after not allowing for the jumping web caused by more MP lag. Inspiro unlimbered his fire wand to try and help, but without being able to run into the web found it hard to target the bandits and Laraum was taken down to 4 HPs while continuously failing his saves.
After returning from the temple the duo went invisibly into Tazok's tent. Inspiro had not yet learnt blind, but a single web proved pretty effective at immobilizing the opposition. A skull trap did some damage before missiles finished off Venkt, Hakt and Britik. At that point Raemon was still out of sight, so Laraum moved forward a bit - and got stuck again. Fortunately though, we found that the single skull trap had already killed Raemon anyway
Inspiro, Skald 8, 50 HPs, 102 kills
Laraum, Inquisitor 6, 78 HPs, 172 kills, 2 deaths
Oh, and btw, is there a guide anywhere of suggested weapons to be worn in ToB to correctly sinergyze with each other when dual wielding? Not referring to off hand cheeses and so on.
For weapons it depends on what you're trying to achieve. Other than APR bonuses common choices would be:
- weapons conferring immunities, e.g. to stun or level drain or charm.
- DoE to boost physical resistance.
- Crom Faeyr to boost strength.
You may also find though that using a shield is the best option - for instance that would help reduce the number of hits Mel makes on you.
Frost: No-Reload Skyrim Run
Part 5
Before we go back to Sky Haven Temple and finish clearing out the Forsworn inside, we use Detect Life to grind Alteration to afford one or two new perks, then buy a few more Alteration spells from Tolfdir. Our new armor spell, Ebonyflesh, will give us 350 points of armor provided we're only wearing robes and no actual armor. For reference, that amounts to 42% damage reduction, a major boost to our survivability, though we have to remember to cast it before major fights.We also get the Paralyze spell, which is all but impossible for most creatures to resist and lasts for 27 seconds thanks to Vancian Magic and Alteration Mastery... or over 60 seconds if we dual-cast it, virtually an instant kill.
Aside from some spiders, fire traps, and some easy puzzles, Sky Haven Temple is no trouble. All we need to do to access Alduin's Wall and figure out the prophecy whatever is spill a bit of our blood onto a seal.
I will never understanding why people in TV and movies and video games cut their hand when they need to spill blood for some ritual. It hurts a lot more than cutting your arm or your leg and inflicts a much worse injury that can cripple the use of a hand for days at the very least.
The wall says that the ancient humans defeated Alduin using a Shout, and while Frost, as the Dragonborn, is very good at yelling, we don't know the words of that Shout. The Greybeards don't know it, either, so our only hope of learning it is to find an Elder Scroll.
An Elder Scroll is a scroll that has existed since the beginning of time or thereabouts and contains all knowledge of the universe, but is so confusing and inscrutable (the text on the scroll constantly moves, and the statements inside are contradictory and not always "true") that most people can barely understand any of it, and prolonged reading induces blindness. Mortals are too stupid to grasp the information fully, and the things are incredibly rare.
But, as it happens, an orc at the Winterhold college library knows a guy who used to write about them, a crazy hermit who's been camping out on an ice floe for many years. We head out to the hermit, who directs us to the location of the nearest Elder Scroll: locked up in a special device at the bottom of a dwarven ruin beneath the caves of Blackreach.
It's not far. We fast-travel to the ruins of Saarthal, then head north, where a Frostbite Spider is hanging around. I've dealt with these critters before and had no trouble, so I just Fireball the thing.
But Fireball doesn't kill the spider; this is a Giant Frostbite Spider, which is considerably tougher. It deals some minor poison damage with its ranged attack, then jumps on us just as we're charging our next Fireball spell.
Suddenly, Frost dies.
I have no idea what just happened. Frost was at nearly full Health; she would have been at 300 when the spider pounced. She might have been unarmored, but there's no way a Frostbite Spider could have dealt 300 damage in one hit. Even a dragon's bite doesn't do that much damage, at least in the unmodded game.
For a moment, I'm sure it's a bug. Then I check the numbers for the Smilodon mod and realizes that Smilodon applies some additional damage multipliers, and when I look up the Giant Frostbite Spider, it does 65 base damage. It seems like those multipliers were responsible for the death.
Then I actually apply the multipliers in Excel. Even with all relevant multipliers, the Giant Frostbite Spider shouldn't have been able to deal anywhere close to 300 damage. Even if it was a power attack and the power attack dealt more damage than it was supposed to, and the spider got extra bonuses from a combat skill of some sort, it still shouldn't have done 300 damage. Over 200 damage, maybe, as crazy as that sounds, but not 300.
But I'm not sure there isn't some other inexplicable factor, and while I've struggled to find a cause that's not just a bug, I don't have enough knowledge of the underlying game system (I've beaten the game like twice) or my mods (this is the first time I've played any of them) to know for certain that it had to be a bug.
Rather than persist in a run that might have ended legitimately, I decide to start over.
This time, though, I'm going to do things a little bit differently.
Zovai: No-Reload Skyrim Run
Part 6
I played a Breton in both Morrowind and Oblivion, but after considering Frost's performance in Skyrim, I realize that her Breton bonuses just weren't that impactful. Having 25% magic resistance is a lovely boost, but spells just haven't been that big of a threat in this run. I can go without it.I consider Argonians for their incredible Health regeneration via Histskin (a 60-second greater power usable once a day), but eventually settle on a High Elf, also known as an Altmer. High Elves get +50 magicka (which amounts to 5 extra spells per day once I pick the Quadratic Wizard feat) and a greater power, Highborn, which grants incredible magicka regeneration for 60 seconds, enough to get from 0 magicka to 100% in just a few seconds. That won't be very impactful after I pick Vancian Magic, but it will let us function for a very long time without needing Vancian Magic.
Apparently you take 50% more damage in Smilodon when casting or charging a spell, which is a huge, huge disadvantage for any mage character. I disable it for this run; it's very unbalanced and doesn't make much conceptual sense (why would you take so much more damage just for making a fist?). Disabling this also disables extra damage against characters who are using a bow, making a power attack, are staggered or paralyzed, or are struck from behind.
Also, this run will involve crafting. But to avoid grinding and abuse, our new High Elf, Zovai, can only use crafting ingredients that she finds in dungeons or in the wilderness; we can't buy anything from stores to use for Smithing, Enchant, or Alchemy.
This severely limits what we can do with crafting skills, but still allows us to do a little minor crafting, and it keeps us out adventuring instead of loitering around Whiterun doing inventory management. This way, we don't spend half the adventure on this screen.
We're still going to train Alteration in this run, but we won't take Vancian Magic for a long time; the Highborn greater power will let us spam strong spells in the meantime. The real reason we're going to use Alteration is because of the Slow Time spell, which will let us fire off several spells before an enemy can respond.
On the way up to Bleak Falls Barrow, we run into the same bandits as usual, but this time, some crazy lady joins the fight, and apparently she counts as an innocent--attacking her is illegal.
Since defeating her would mean a 1,000 gold in fines (the Elder Scrolls universe handles crime using fines and skill penalties from jail time), I run away and return when I've lost her.
I use the Highborn power to chain-cast Oakflesh and get Alteration up to 30. No Vancian Magic this time, but we still want the extra gold.
But I can't buy the Slow Time spell until Alteration 40, so I go inside Bleak Falls Barrow and spam Oakflesh while dodging the archer's arrows, leaving to rest by the standing stones whenever I run out of magicka and the Highborn power.
I grind it to 50, then delve into the dungeon to get some loot and nab the Dragonstone (a plot-critical item) from the boss. Food and potions keep us alive against the Draugr Deathlord.
We then head to the College of Winterhold to learn some new spells: Slow Time, Detect Life (to grind Alteration faster), Enhance Weapon Speed (which let us attack with weapons several times faster than normal), and Ironflesh, our next armor spell. We also buy a mod-introduced Illusion spell and grind it until we can get Shroud for a cheap Invisibility option, as well as Calm and a spell to improve store prices.
This is a lot of grinding considering it's a low-crafting run, but it's actually extremely fast. We don't need to spend much time to get the resources we need.
On the way to Whiterun to start the main quest, we run into a "Challenger," a mage who wants to fight us to prove he's tough. He is tough, but we have healing potions and food to outlast him.
With Bleak Falls Barrow already complete, all we need to do at Whiterun is kill a dragon. Since the guards can handle it on their own, I just grind Conjuration in the tower.
To make sure I can fast-travel to some key locations later on, I take a carriage to Riften and then Solitude. There's an execution going on in the latter, but I want to speed things up.
There's a speedrunning trick where you can sprint into a character who's talking, staggering them and cutting off their current line early. You can skip a lot of dialogue this way. I decide to use it to speed up the execution scene.
But the guards misinterpret my motives, and think I'm trying to save the prisoner from execution. A swarm of guards rushes me all at once! I use Shroud to go invisible, but invisibility in Skyrim is not a surefire defense like it is in Oblivion; Skyrim creatures and people will keep trying to attack you, and they're very good at hunting you down.
Knowing that the guards could butcher me in moments if I don't move, I pick the nearest opening and flee, not knowing where it goes. I end up climbing a staircase, though I don't know where.
But I get surrounded moments later, and I have to delve deep into my potions supply to avoid getting killed.
I barely make it out of the city alive. I have no idea what will happen when I go back (Solitude is a necessary destination for the main questline), but hopefully I'll be a little stronger when the time comes.
Back at Whiterun, I discover a new spell, Enhanced Speed, which lets me run significantly faster than normal. I figure it will help me get out of dangerous scrapes like the fight at Solitude a little quicker.
I've collected a lot of ingredients from various places since the game began, so I finally head to an alchemy lab to train. Once I get Alchemy to 30, I can pick the Experimenter perk, which in Ordinator identifies all effects of any ingredient you eat, which will give us a lot of useful information that I don't want to get by studying the UESP Wiki.
Since I barely know anything about potions, I just combine ingredients randomly until I get something right.
I don't get anywhere close to 30 Alchemy, so I'll have to try again later once I have more ingredients.
Time to head to Saarthal! Even if I don't want to do the quest there, Tolfdir is over there now and I want to be able to buy more Alteration spells in the future. Luckily, since we have the Enhance Speed spell and Shroud, we can travel anywhere at high speed and completely invisible.
Then I discover that invisibility is really, really weak in Skyrim, even more so than I thought. Enemies don't just track you when you go invisible in the middle of combat--a Snowy Sabre Cat can flat-out see through invisibility!
The Sabre Cat pounces on me and deals massive damage. I heal myself with more potions and food and use a teleport spell to escape to Riverwood before the cat murdalizes me.
I fast-travel back to Winterhold, but the Sabre Cat is still there! I hurry back to town using Enhance Speed and let the guards deal with it.
I don't know why the cats are so strong; a character my level would have trouble handling it without burning multiple potions.
I keep moving and run into another cat barely a minute later. This time, I hit it with a dual-cast Calm spell, buying me lots of time to figure out what to do with it.
The Flame Atronach won't last long against the Sabre Cat, and when the atronach goes down, the cat will turn its attention to me. Nor am I willing to drag every single Sabre Cat in Skyrim all the way back to town so the guards will kill it for me.
I blast it with a Destruction spell, but it's not enough to bring the cat down quickly. The Sabre Cat does big damage before I settle it down with another Calm spell.
We've made decent progress, though, and once my magicka regenerates, I know how to handle it. We back away to buy us more time, fire off a Ice Spike spell, and then hurry backward firing more Ice Spikes as the Sabre Cat charges at us. We kill it right before it lands another blow.
We keep going. Sure enough, we run into yet another cat 30 seconds later. I throw out a Flame Atronach and go invisible, but the cat doesn't take the bait. It keeps coming right for me.
Knowing I can't escape it, I decide to bring it down quickly with Destruction spells. But when I try to tank its attacks using potions, I find out that I'm running dangerously low.
My last attempts to escape the fight fail, and the cat kills me.
It's weird that such a basic enemy is so incredibly dangerous, and it's frustrating that there are so many of them. I start over, do all of my normal chores--grind Alteration, grind Illusion, buy spells, do the early quests, get money from the Philosopher's Stone perk--but when I get back to the same place and head to Saarthal, I still run into the same Sabre Cat. It's always there.
I pacify it with a Calm spell and it leaves me alone. It lays down and sets about eating a goat it killed before I arrived.
Unfortunately, I don't know if simply leaving the cat alone is an option. I can Calm this one, and the one after, and the one after that, but when the Calm spells wear off, I don't know if the Sabre Cats will forget about me or if they'll come looking for me, and the last thing I need are three no-longer-calm Sabre Cats attacking me simultaneously over at Saarthal.
I decide to take them down one by one, and this time, I play it much more carefully. I hit the Sabre Cat with a Destruction spell and immediately cast Calm on it to stop combat. Sure enough, the cat stops attacking. I repeat the process, casting a damage spell and then Calming the beast.
But this time, the Calm spell doesn't take. The cat keeps attacking me, ignoring the Calm spell entirely--even though the spell is supposed to affect up to level 37 creatures because of my perks even without being dual-casted. I take heavy damage and have to delve deep into our potion and food supply once again.
This simply isn't working. The cats completely ignore invisibility, they're too strong to kill with a Flame Atronach or with my own magic, and now this one is ignoring Calm spells. I don't know how I'm supposed to handle this animal at my level (my best Destruction spell only takes a small chunk out of its Health, and my weapons would do a sliver), but I'm not winning this fight.
I make a run for it and charge a teleport spell to Riverwood. But it doesn't work--the spell takes longer to active than the Recall spell; I have to wait another second for it to trigger. The failure costs me another 2-3 seconds.
It's enough time for the Sabre Cat to land one last hit.
This is deeply frustrating. I don't know why that Calm spell failed to work--I'm sure I've used Calm at least three times in a fight against one of the cats before. It doesn't seem reasonable for a random animal to be so, so much more dangerous than the Draugr Deathlord at Bleak Falls Barrow, or for them to be so incredibly common (like 3 cats in a 200-foot area), or for them to ignore invisibility. It's too much for a nameless enemy.
Regardless, we're back to square one. This time, I'm not going to take any risks with the Sabre Cats, no matter how reasonable. They shouldn't be so deadly, but they are, and that's the reality I need to work with.
Zovai: No-Reload Skyrim Run
Part 7
This time, I enter Bleak Falls Barrow only when I've nabbed the Soul Trap spell so that I can gather fill up soul gems (which I found at the college, unowned) with draugr souls. I burn them all creating Damage Stamina enchantments on weapons, since they give more experience than other enchantments. Even though we're not allowed to buy ingredients for any crafting skills, the stuff we do find in the wild and in dungeons is enough to make lots of money. Combined with a custom "Charm" spell that improves store prices, we can afford essentially any spell we want.We make our way back to the Saarthal quest. Once again, we have Sabre Cats to deal with, but I'm going to be much more careful. This time, I use Slow Time to make sure I can hit it with Calm before it hits me more than once.
With Slow Time, more heavy use of Calm, and better preparation before initiating combat (I always have the Flame Atronach out, as well as an armor spell active), I manage to bring the cats down. Slow Time ensures that I don't get caught off-guard or overwhelmed; I can run circles around the cats while time is slowed.
When I don't use Slow Time, I get in trouble against an Ice Wolf, who drains several potions because I didn't seize the advantage early.
We grind Alchemy with some more wild-caught ingredients and grind Alteration with Detect Life in Whiterun (it's not free like when I had Vancian Magic, but Highborn and the wait function give me plenty of magicka). Once I get Alteration to 80, I can choose a very lovely perk indeed.
Weak spells are now completely free to cast. The thing is, even though the best spells won't be affected by this perk, this perk will save us a lot of magicka and allow us to spam some very important low-end spells.
Shroud, our invisibility spell, and Muffle, which silences our footsteps, are both completely free; we can maintain invisibility and total silence indefinitely. Ice Spike and Lightning Bolt are also free to cast, which means we can dual-cast some decently powerful Destruction spells for free. The Calm spell is also free, which can be dual-cast to affect creatures over level 100 (I don't know if such creatures exist, even in my install), and Fast Healing is also free, which will heal us for 250 Health when dual-cast. Even Conjure Flame Atronach is free.
And while it won't directly help me cast a higher-end spell like Fireball, making all of these spells free will open up a lot of magicka for the bigger spells.
Anyway, back when I was in Bleak Falls, I stumbled upon Meridia's Beacon, presumably because I was higher-level than when I normally tackled the dungeon. I take the thing to Meridia's shrine, where the Daedric Prince asks me to go to a dungeon and wipe out some undead (Meridia thinks zombies are gooky and wants to torch them all).
The dungeon in question is filled with Corrupted Shades, shadowy black figures who attack with various weapons. I activate Slow Time and launch a few Destruction spells while the Corrupted Figures are all but helpless to fight back.
Now, I can't do this indefinitely because Slow Time does cost magicka (it's an Adept spell, so it's not free despite my perks) and magicka regenerates slowly during Slow Time. However, I can cast Slow Time several times before running out of magicka, and even if I run out without taking down the enemy, I can always hurry away and activate Highborn to get it all back within a few seconds.
But that's not really necessary. Thanks to Muffle, invisibility is now much more effective; enemies can't use sound to detect me, either.
I get hit by a spike trap, which reminds me to check my surroundings more carefully. Shortly after, I spot a tripwire.
These can be safely triggered from a difference using the Unrelenting Force Shout.
I finally reach the boss, a mage, who doesn't notice me. I hit him with a Calm spell, but it doesn't seem to take, and he chases after me along with all of his Corrupted Shades. I cast Slow Time and start blasting away.
The mage nails me with some frost spells, but it's nothing we can't handle. We burn away his shades and isolate him.
The boss dies, only to come back as a shade... but he doesn't have anything special to throw at us. We keep firing away at him, and the shade falls as well.
Done! Meridia rewards us with Dawnbreaker, a reasonably strong longsword that deals fire damage. Not too useful for a mage like Zovai, but helpful if for some reason we can't rely on spell damage.
I take Welloc's Dormant Arcana once again and rig it to grant us +50 Health and armor whenever we cast an armor spell. We're in excellent shape, finally, and it's time to move forward with the main quest.
I still run the risk of a sudden death from melee damage, but I've finally settled into a routine of beginning every fight with Slow Time, and the free Calm/Shroud/Muffle/Firebolt/Fast Healing spells make it so that I don't need to worry about burning too much magicka.
I've learned the same lesson I did in my Oblivion run. Like the Atronach birthsign, the Vancian Magic perk grants some very solid bonuses, but the inability to cast spells without worrying about saving resources for later meant that we often arrived at fights unprepared. Now, over-preparing for a fight incurs virtually no cost.
Nettle. Female LE halfling assassin (Gate70)
Teers. Male CN elf sorcerer (Grond0)
April. Female NE human berserker > thief (Corey_Russell)
An unexpected delay (I was ill one week, Grond0 not available the next and Corey_Russell not available the week after) sees us with a long-awaited catch-up. After deciding I was hosting, we recalled (thanks to the save name) that we were heading to the Bandit camp.
After an ambush on the way we cleared the exterior and interior of the camp without due concern.
Teers blinds Drasus and his crew. Inside the mine we face a few enemies before Davaeorn's mirror images fail to evade a poisoned throwing dagger.
Nettle becomes target once more while Teers finds better spellcasting against Jardak with Melf's Acid Arrows. April switches to Marek's shortbow +2 with magical arrows and Nettle outruns Jardak long enough to see him collapse.
Zovai: No-Reload Skyrim Run
Part 8
To High Hrothgar! We run into lots of enemies on the way up, but Slow Time and some dual-casted Firebolt spells blast pretty much everything into oblivion.We run into a Blood Dragon soon after, a stronger version of the normal dragon that appears at higher levels. Notice the multiple Firebolt spells in midair at the same time.
When the dragon lands nearby, I use Slow Time again to put some distance between me and the dragon, then keep blasting away until the dragon burns down.
We buy more spells, including Weakness to Fire, Frost, and Shock spells, Ebonyflesh, and a stronger form of Enhance Speed, which makes us run at a ludicrous speed when cast. We even learn a Fortify Enchant spell from Tolfdir, which makes all our enchanted items much stronger.
Since we're making excellent progress on leveling Enchant and now have a decent Alchemy skill as well as a Fortify Enchant spell, I decide to seek out Azura's Star, the re-usable soul gem, to fuel our future enchanting. After I visit Azura's Shrine near Saarthal, I follow the clues to a guy at the Winterhold inn. Apparently a friend of his took the star in an attempt to prolong his lifespan.
If you guessed that this means we're going to go fight a dungeon full of necromancers, you're right!
It doesn't take much time or much work to reach the boss of the dungeon, the Master Necromancer who is hiding across a small moat, protected from melee attacks by the water. I'm not worried; Zovai excels at ranged combat.
But apparently, so does the Master Necromancer. To my shock, he almost kills us with a frost spell right after the fight begins.
The only reason I survived is because that warning message popped up when I hit low Health. But that warning message isn't standard--it only shows up the first time in the game where you reach low Health!
If I had let myself get badly injured earlier in the run, I wouldn't have gotten that message, and there's a very strong chance I wouldn't have reacted in time to heal myself with potions. I press Tab to remove the warning message and immediately mash "I" to make sure I reach my inventory screen before the frost damage finishes me off. Luckily, we have a solid supply of potions of all kinds.
Once our frost resistance is way up, I deploy an area-effect Silence spell (another mod-introduced spell based on spells from Oblivion and Morrowind) to shut down the mage's spellcasting and blast him from afar with more Firebolts.
There are a few more scattered enemies around here, but they suffer the same fate.
We find Azura's Star, but it's broken and unusable. We return it to the shrine, but before we can get it fixed, we need to go inside the gem and kill Malyn Varen, the sick guy who tried to use the gem to preserve his life. We re-supply before we enter the gem.
The inside of the gem is nerve-wracking. I'm pretty sure we die if we fall off the edge, and we've got Dremora to deal with. We trade spells, and the visual effects blind me.
Fortunately, the Dremora's spells don't shove you around, so as long as we stand still when fighting, we won't fall off the edge.
When the Dremora fall, Malyn Varen comes out to defend himself. But he has no special defenses against our spells, least of all Slow Time.
We return to Azura's Shrine, where she restores the gem to its normal functionality.
It's also possible to go against Azura's wishes in this questline and end up with the Black Star, a re-usable black soul gem that can also trap humanoid souls. Humanoid souls are always the strongest type--grand souls--which means the Black Star is much, much more useful than Azura's Star. In fact, it's one of the absolute most useful items in the game.
However, one of the Skyrim expansions lets you visit the Soul Cairn, which is where souls go when they're trapped. The sentient souls, like those of humanoids, retain consciousness in the Soul Cairn, and life in the Soul Cairn is miserable and never-ending. I've never used a black soul gem since I saw the place; the concept of sending anyone to an eternal hell is simply too grim. Same reason I don't like Imprisonment in BG2.
We get some new Alteration spells from Tolfdir that can improve our elemental resistances, but unfortunately, the Fortify Alchemy spell appears to have no effect listed.
We finally go to Saarthal to collect some souls from the draugr (non-sentient critters seem okay for soul harvesting). As always, the psychic dude in goofy robes tells us vague prophetic stuff, but after so many playthroughs, one of his lines is completely false.
Azura's Star can only hold a single soul at a time, which means we have to use teleport spells to go in and out of the dungeon to make the most of them. The fights themselves are not hard: even though the draugr have gotten much stronger due to our higher levels, we can still handle most critters by chain-casting Firebolt during Slow Time. Even a Draugr Deathlord can't take more than a few steps before getting incinerated.
For some reason, the last draugr in this dungeon is immune to magic for many seconds after the fight begins. Then that immunity suddenly vanishes and he becomes quite vulnerable.
Zovai's Alteration is sky-high, but we still need to get it to 100 to learn the last and strongest Alteration spells. It only takes a few minutes to use Detect Life to grind Alteration to the maximum.
We then speak to Tolfdir, who says he's been working on a stronger armor spell. Long story short, he needs us to go find a dagger, kill a dragon, loot the dragon while holding the dagger, and then report back to him.
We head to the nearest possible location for the dagger, which is crawling with draugr, as so many places in Skyrim are. A Draugr Deathlord hits us with a three-word Unrelenting Force Shout, but we seem to be immune to getting ragdolled, presumably because we have partial resistance to getting staggered.
We find the dagger, head to the nearest Word Wall, and throw Destruction spells at the dragon until it croaks.
When we return to Tolfdir, he teaches us Dragonhide, the strongest armor spell in the game, which reduces all damage by 80% flat. It's extremely expensive to cast, but the extra damage reduction could prove very valuable later in the game.
Zovai: No-Reload Skyrim Run
Part 9
We're approaching our peak strength for the game, but we still have a few optimizations left--as well as one major leap in the near future. I start preparing for the fight with Alduin later on.We've already dealt with the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller quest, so it's time to meet with Delphine and kill a dragon with her. No problems there.
Now it's time to go to the embassy and kill some of our fellow High Elves. No problems there, either.
Next, we go to visit Esbern and kill the territorial lowlifes who get in our way. These folks should really try talking before they pick fights with strangers.
Once again, over at Sky Haven Temple, a dragon has joined the fight with the Forsworn. This time, it's an Ancient Dragon, with a much stronger breath weapon that forces me to flee and dip into our potion supply.
We don't have many Minor Healing Potions, but we have lots of stronger varieties I've been collecting over time.
The dragon leaves us alone and flies off to return to the Forsworn. When hitting the dragon in motion at far range proves difficult, I turn my attention to fighting the Forsworn instead.
Much like my other run, the dragon lands across the river when it gets too injured to fly. We throw out Firebolts while he's grounded.
He goes down fast.
The Forsworn Warlord's name makes her sound like a genuine threat, so I go to the trouble of nailing her with a Paralyze spell during Slow Time to make sure she doesn't fight back when we torch her.
Done!
We teleport back to the College of Winterhold so Faralda can offer us some training in Destruction. I need to get it to 50 to afford a certain perk.
I take the perk and will now deal 30% more damage with Destruction spells whenever I'm wearing robes.
But we have one more major bump in our strength to get. We're going to take Vancian Magic.
Why now? Well, our skills are already sky-high, we only have a few high-intensity fights left, and thanks to our extra magicka from the High Elf race and certain level ups, we can get more than 35 spells per day once we take the Quadratic Wizard perk. We've already got most of our spell-spamming done; now the only thing that's left is to maximize our output.
The perk that makes Novice and Apprentice spells free to cast does not stack with Vancian Magic, so those are two perks that are completely wasted if I take Vancian Magic. But I can get them back by using the Legendary Skills feature from the Dragonborn expansion.
Basically, I can re-set my Alteration skill from 100 to 15 and get all of my perk points back, which I can then assign wherever I like. Leveling up Alteration can then earn me even more perk points, which allows us to level indefinitely and fill every perk tree--at least in theory; actually doing that would take dozens of hours and is outside the scope of this run.
Re-setting Alteration to 15 sounds like a huge drop in power, but it's actually not much of a loss. We still have Detect Life, which means we can quickly train it back up...
...and once it hits 30, I can pick Vancian Magic and then cast it indefinitely, cranking it all the way back up to 100, giving us several level ups.
I could actually do this many times over in rather little time, but increasing our levels would probably not be wise. The extra Health would be lovely, but the perk points would largely be wasted (I don't have many good places to spend them) and I'd be dealing with considerably higher-level enemies that will probably gain more from my levels than I will.
We re-fill our Alteration skill tree, but take Geomancer so we'll take 30% less damage when wearing robes and Quadratic Wizard to get 36 spells per day. We have some spare perk points, so we spend them to strengthen our potions slightly and start brewing some new potions so I can get Alchemy higher and create a larger supply of stronger healing potions. Alchemy increases faster when crafting expensive potions, so I pick the effects that yield higher prices. We found a couple of Giant's Toes on the way here, which are very rare and very valuable potions that can be made into unusually expensive potions.
We don't have many Restore Health ingredients, but we do have high enough Alchemy and the right perks for our healing potions to restore over 80 Health a pop. Over at Whiterun, I stumble upon a very spectacular new spell.
It's exactly what I've been looking for since I started the first of these runs: a sustained Destruction spell with high damage output. Vancian Magic reduces the cost to 1 spell slot, which means we can now deal 50 damage per second indefinitely, instead of 16 like in my first run.
But that's for multiple-enemy skirmishes. For high-end single enemies like dragons, we have another mod-introduced spell that's much deadlier.
The projectile is a broad disk with moderate speed and range. It can't hit many critters or hit anything very far away, but the base damage is crazy, and if I dual-cast the spell, it will deal over 400 damage at the cost of a single spell slot.
It's not the only overpowered spell I have, now that Zovai has the Vancian Magic perk.
I doubt I'll ever need these spells, but I have them.
We learn about the Dragonrend Shout used to defeat Alduin long ago, talk to the crazy guy on the ice floe, and make our way to Alfthand, one of the entrances to Blackreach, where the Elder Scroll we need is hidden. Right outside the area, an Ancient Dragon ambushes us.
I use Greater Enhance Speed to scurry away under Slow Time, then buff Zovai with a fire resistance spell, a healing spell, and Dragonhide before moving in to engage the dragon with the Slasher spell. It takes a sizable chunk out of its Health, but then I receive a notice: I arrived with too few spells, and I'm quickly running out.
I block the dragon's breath weapon with a Greater Ward spell and finish it off with two or three more Slasher spells. By the time it's over, I only have a single spell left to cast Recall and return to our bed to restore our spell slots.
I will need to be careful about my spell slots. We have the slots to use buffing spells, and dual-casting them can make our Alteration buffs last for minutes at a time, but I'll have to check our spell count after every fight to make sure I don't lose track of how quickly we're burning vital resources.
Zovai: No-Reload Skyrim Run
Part 10
Time to delve deep into Blackreach and snatch that Elder Scroll. I don't know all the different pathways into Blackreach, but the one I took runs through a Dwemer ruins that's crawling with Dwemer robots that are highly resistant to magic.I can probably overpower them with a Potent Sparks spell or even a Slasher spell. But I have a more important spell to try out: Enhance Weapon Speed.
I've had this for a long time--for multiple runs, actually--but I've never made much use of it because I've been relying on spells to deal damage instead of weapons. But Enhance Weapon Speed is actually incredibly powerful... especially now that we have the high-damage Dragonbane katana.
Normally, Zovai can swing a sword a little faster than once per second. But for the very short duration in which Enhanced Weapon Speed is active, she can swing a sword--or any weapon, really; even a slow-moving warhammer--as fast as I can click the mouse button, many times per second. It drains our Stamina really fast, but it deals lots of nonmagical damage and we quickly gain levels in the One-Handed skill.
I travel with Dragonhide always active, but apparently it has no impact on trap damage, just like armor in Oblivion. I nearly die to a spinning blade trap when I accidentally fail to hop over a pressure plate on a slight incline.
It's a worrisome reminder that we're still reliant on high Health for surviving certain threats.
Lower down in the dungeon, Falmer--elf mutants who have lived so long underground that they lost their vision, their compassion for other creatures, and even their souls--wait in silence, listening for our approach. The Muffle spell makes us almost undetectable if we're careful, since they're so dependent on their sense of hearing, but it's not strictly necessary to sneak past them. I can always just blow them up instead.
They used to be Snow Elves, but they've long since lost that status. They're incredibly vicious and evil creatures; I find torture devices and desecrated corpses lying around their homes. I make a point of releasing the shackles from a bloody half-skeleton and a still-warm elf. It seemed wrong to leave them shackled even in death.
I use teleportation to return to our bed to restore our spell slots and make sure we always have plenty on hand for an emergency. On the way back, I run into the spinning blade trap again. This time, I don't take any risks--I use the Become Ethereal Shout to become intangible and immune to damage for a few brief seconds while I climb the incline.
There's a long cooldown for this Shout, so you can't stay invincible for long, but it's a lovely rescue option.
Finally, we arrive in Blackreach, the massive subterranean cavern filled with bioluminescent fungi. It's a very haunting and beautiful place.
I notice a Dwemer Centurion--a huge robot with crazy stats and resistances--and discover that I can dispatch it just by using a Weakness to Shock spell before blasting it with Chain Lightning.
I take some time to admire the scenery. Blackreach is one of the cooler places in Skyrim.
I fiddle with some puzzles and grab the Elder Scroll...
...but I've found some excellent loot around here and I want to keep poking around. I find something I don't think I've ever seen before: a humanoid servant to the Falmer.
To my surprise, the servants are loyal to their masters and attack Zovai on sight. But they are not much of a threat; they're just ordinary folks with some basic weaponry.
Once I've cleared out an entire settlement of Falmer and their humanoid goons, I decide to teleport back up to the surface. Yet again, the College of Winterhold is besieged by a dragon.
I drink a few fire resistance and healing potions to survive its breath, then bring it down with a Weakness to Shock spell and some lightning spells.
We're almost ready for the endgame. With the souls I've gathered in Blackreach, I enchant a new set of equipment to cover our weaknesses and make Zovai a little bit sturdier overall.
With the Elder Scroll in hand, I fast-travel to Paarthunax, the dragon who leads the Greybeards and lives at the Throat of the World. We use the scroll to look back into the past, the day Alduin was defeated, and learn the Shout that the ancient Nords use to bring down Alduin so many ages ago.
Just as the vision ends and we return to the present, Alduin appears to kill us, but Paarthunax is on our side.
Anxious about Alduin's breath weapons--he can breathe both frost and fire--I cast fire resistance and cold resistance spells under Slow Time while backing away.
Unfortunately, I mistake Paarthunax for Alduin (dragons looks so much alike!) and end up blasting both of them with dual-casted Ice Storm spells.
With Vancian Magic doubling our damage output, and our perks and skills increasing it further, Alduin's innate weakness to frost damage let us bring him down very quickly. But we can't quite kill him--not in the material plane, at least.
We'll have to figure out how to reach him later. In the meantime, I head back to the college... where yet another dragon foolishly attempts to slay us. We hit him with Weakness to Fire and blast him with Fireballs.
We're almost done.
Zovai: No-Reload Skyrim Run
Part 11
Alduin isn't keen on a showdown with the woman who's prophecied to kill him, so we need to figure out where he's hidden. Best way to do that? Bait one of his goons into stopping at Dragonsreach, trap the dragon there, and interrogate the dragon for his whereabouts. However, the Jarl is a little hesitant about inviting a dragon to his town.He already has enough problems going on with the civil war. To deal with the dragon threat, we need to negotiate a temporary truce between the Imperial Legion and the Stormcloak rebels. This means we have to persuade the lead belligerents, Ulfric Stormcloak and General Tullius, to meet at a table at High Hrothgar for a Greybeard-mediated peace summit.
They're willing to play along when I broach the idea, though they show little enthusiasm for the prospect of saving the world.
Things are pretty tense. Much like in a lot of real-life diplomatic tiffs, there's at least one guy who insists on preconditions before he even agrees to sit at a table. Arngeir says something that I think everybody involved in a contentious international disagreement would understand.
It really bugs me when I hear people throw out preconditions. The only precondition for talks should be a temporary end to hostilities; that's the only thing that's truly necessary for a negotiation to take place. Preconditions are usually just excuses to not engage with the other party and/or grandstand and act like a tough guy in the face of "the enemy." It's childish and I find it incredible that some world leaders actually behave this way.
That being said, Ulfric's condition isn't that unreasonable. All he asks is that a Thalmor official at the table get lost. It's not a good way to approach the table, but to be fair, the Thalmor isn't a party to the negotiation, they have no valid stake in the affair, they have nothing to add to the discussion, the possible outcomes of the agreement don't infringe on any legitimate Thalmor interests... and, in all honesty, General Tullius should have realized that the Thalmor official's presence would just give Ulfric an excuse to act like a jerk or even ditch the negotiations entirely.
The Thalmor official comes off as rather possessive of the Empire.
It's not actually bad for the Thalmor lady to just sit there and listen--it doesn't cost us anything--but it also offers us no benefit. We can score points with Ulfric just by making a meaningless symbolic concession.
Ultimately, Tullius and Ulfric are more concerned with fighting their civil war than addressing the dragon threat. The negotiations process gets wrapped up in it. Really, all we need is a temporary end to hostilities for a few days or weeks--which, ceteris paribus, should affect both sides equally and therefore be perfectly fair--but both sides are demanding extra concessions before they agree to even that.
Ulfric wants some territory handed over. Tullius points out the obvious motive behind the demand.
However, Tullius also has some territorial issues to be resolved, and there's a chance that we can exchange certain territories at the summit--a process which otherwise would entail war and therefore loss of life.
Better to make trades at a table than on a battlefield.
Ulfric and Tullius keep arguing. Eventually, Esbern scolds them for their priorities--not a good diplomatic move, but very much on point given the circumstances.
Tullius still has grievances to resolve. The Stormcloaks have committed some atrocities, and it's not just Imperial Legion soldiers who have lost their lives because of the rebellion.
One of Ulfric's buddies loudly declares that the Empire commits loads more atrocities and is way worse than the honorable and righteous Stormcloak rebels, which is not necessarily true and primarily besides the point. As much as people care about morality, negotiations themselves are about trading and making marginal gains via clever compromises--saying "you guys are bad and should be nicer to us" is not an effective strategy; just an impulsive partisan response.
It's a decent concession. If this sets a precedent that reparations are important and atrocities are expensive to commit, belligerents are going to be less willing to repeat them.
Arngeir summarizes the terms of the deal. The Stormcloaks will gain control of Markarth, but in turn, they will withdraw from the Rift and pay reparations for the massacre at Karthwasten. It's a fairly even trade.
This quest is actually impossible to fail. You can completely screw it up and act like a partisan jerk by favoring one side at every turn, and they'll still grudgingly accept the deal.
Now we just need to figure out how to get a dragon to Dragonsreach. Esbern's plan is simple: yell out a dragon's name and see if he comes to party.
Sure enough, Odahviing is a stupid moron and walks right into our trap. It doesn't take long for him to crack--apparently Alduin's fellow dragons don't all agree with his leadership.
Odahviing says that Alduin is in Sovngarde, the Nord heaven for warriors, like Valhalla, and offers to give us a ride to the nearest portal to the place. The place is crawling with draugr and another dragon touches down to challenge us, but a good Slasher spell is enough to wreck any of them.
For the draugr, I want to train Zovai's One-Handed skill just in case we run out of spells in the final fight against Alduin and are forced to resort to melee. With Dragonhide crippling the enemy's damage output and Enhance Weapon Speed letting us strike multiple times per second, Zovai's One-Handed skill quickly creeps up.
It's actually pretty fun to use Enhance Weapon Speed; being able to strike so incredibly fast is more entertaining than having to wait almost a whole second before you can make another swing.
I switch back and forth from spells and sword. We've got some really high-level draugr around here, but they just don't have much to throw at us. Even their Unrelenting Force Shouts fail to do more than stagger us.
And, with teleportation spells, I can hop to Riverwood, rest up to re-fill my spell slots, and then hop back at peak strength to continue the fight deeper in the barrow.
To my surprise, my 44% boost to bow damage from the circlet still means that we deal precious little damage with bows. We have an ebony bow, but with a low skill and no perks in Archery, the damage from iron arrows is really not impressive compared to the other stuff we can do.
Outside the barrow, on the other side of the exterior, we get attacked by several high-end draugr at once. The damage isn't too scary, but I want to make sure that we don't even get close to low Health in this run. I don't want another ugly surprise ending the run.
I escape with Slow Time and tear them apart. One of them gets stuck in a crevice, allowing me to shoot him down. Like a lot of critters in Skyrim, he blends in with the gray environment.
Finally I spot the gateway to Sovngarde. A lone Dragon Priest--a high-level mage with a nice staff--blocks the way, already partly injured.
I move in to wipe him out with a Slasher spell...
...and then quickly reconsider. He has a ward active, and I remember seeing a mod-introduced Restoration perk from Ordinator that gave wards a chance of reflecting spells.
A dual-cast Slasher spell might well kill me in one hit if it got bounced back. I am not willing to take that kind of risk, so I switch to Enhance Weapon Speed instead and slash him up.
Soon, the Dragon Priest falls. Since we're low on spells and I don't know if teleportation will work inside Sovngarde, I teleport to Riverwood to rest before warping back to the portal.
We arrive in Sovngarde and use the Clear Skies shout to dispel the fog that Alduin has cast over the landscape. To gain admittance to the Hall of Valor, we have to fight a gigantic man named Tsun, a shirtless dude who completely towers over us. We cast Enhance Weapon Speed and offer to shave his chest.
He doesn't take much damage before ending the fight and letting us pass.
I don't like making my way to the Hall of Valor. The bridge is just a dragon spine with some heavy bones laid across, and I'm not sure I trust its structural integrity any more than I trust Zovai's balance. I'm not a big fan of heights.
We find the original heroes who first defeated Alduin and lead them out to challenge the World Eater, who is hiding behind his fog. As with many problems in Skyrim, the solution is for all of us to yell really loud until the problem goes away.
I search the sky. Unable to hide any longer, Alduin lands in front of us, shaking the earth with his landing.
By dual-casting Weakness to Frost, we can compound Alduin's innate vulnerability to frost damage, and since he's already facing us, we can probably deal extra damage with Ice Storm, since Ice Storm is a slow-moving projectile that deals damage based on how long the target stays inside the blast. Alduin crawls closer to snap at us.
We cast Slow Time and then fire off several Ice Storm spells in the space of a single second. At first, he takes only a little damage as the spells first touch him.
Then all of the Ice Storms pass through him, dealing massive damage. He's already more than halfway dead!
I keep casting Ice Storm over and over while Alduin wastes his time fighting the other heroes...
...and with a burst of light, his Health bar vanishes.
The battle is won! I grab some Tundra Cotton nearby before turning back to watch Alduin's death.
Even his bones disintegrate, and then there is nothing left. Skyrim is over!
I deliver the news to Paarthunax, who apparently has taken Alduin's place as the leader of the remaining dragons. He supports our victory over Alduin, but he mourns the loss of his old friend and brother.
Paarthunax takes wing and bids us farewell. He has work to do in uniting the rest of the dragons.
Zovai is level 41, a high-Health Vancian Magic build specializing in Alteration. Note her unusually high Illusion skill despite our not using many Calm spells--that's the result of spamming Muffle and Shroud to stay hidden when traveling around. Also note her high Speechcraft; we had to earn a lot of money to buy all those expensive spells.
One-Handed is at 50, almost entirely because of using Enhance Weapon Speed with the high-damage Dragonbane sword against some late-game enemies, and Enchant is almost 70 because I made so many weapons with Damage Stamina enchantments. Really, though, our crafting skills never actually impacted the run--I never got Smithing high enough to make anything useful, I never made much use of the potions I brewed, and by the time I made those last high-end enchantments, Zovai didn't even need the little bonuses. I thought crafting would give us a little extra boost, but it turned out to be a waste of time because we refused to purchase any crafting ingredients, limiting our supply.
Here's Zovai at the end of the game, warm and safe at the College of Winterhold.
One no-reload low-crafting Skyrim run with Smilodon, High Level Enemies, Ordinator, and Phenderix Magic Evolved, complete.
Traveling with: Minsc, (Kagain), Ajantis, Kivan, Imoen, Dynaheir
I made some great progress with Thrasher. The party is a very solid team. I made a mistake and got my reputation too high and lost Kagain, so recruited Ajantis to replace him. I searched high and low for a magical bastard sword, but couldn't find one. Sashanstar refused to give us our reward even though all the dopplegangers were dead, but didn't want to lose rep killing him. I tried charming him to have his captain kill him for no rep loss, but that didn't work he has really high magic resistance.
Imoen was great thief and farsight and buffed skeletons were too much for Prat and gang. Ajantis got killed by spiders, so we decided to get the heck out of there. Dynaheir protected Minsc from petrification so Minsc took out the basilisks.
For Chapter 7, Kivan dispelled Slythe and that made Slythe easy to deal with him. Buffed skeletons also made duchal palace pretty straightforward. We encountered no problems in the thieve's maze.
We avoided the Undercity party (long way around) and then proceeded to deal with Sarevok. We had 4 skeletons and some buffs. Imoen pulled Sarevok, and we only got him and Semaj. Semaj's defenses got quickly dispelled by arrows and he fell quickly. Sarevok didn't live much longer.
BG 2 will be quite different, as I will try to solo that. Should be interesting.
Valalsia Ironheart, the dwarven Stalker
First post
Notable mods
- SCS (full prebuffs, full tactical challenge)
- Item Revisions
- Spell Revisions
- Rogue Rebalancing
- Tweak Anthology
- Item Randomizer
- plenty of npc mods
Hey, since I don't know any better, I'm back in the challenge ! Here's Valalsia Ironheart, a female dwarven stalker.
I had a bit of a break from the game in the last few months for various reasons, but recently got back into it. I had a (modified) Dwarven Defender run a while back, but we can consider that one over. I also tried to casually play (aka with reloads) a necromancer who died early to a bandit ambush, but old habits are hard to shake : I just couldn't stay hooked on that playthrough for some reason. So, I rolled Valalsia, a character I had in mind for a long time.
She had three death before she really got going. The first was against the kobold shaman in the Nashkel mines who casted two Lightning Bolt spells at her, the second against Mutamin who charmed her while she was soloing, the third against Shoal due to slight bad placement.
Fourth time's the charm I guess ! After getting to level 6 by going after heavy xp monsters early, she gathered a team around her : Minsc (it's been a while since I've used him), Dynaheir, Coran, Branwen and Faldorn. Minsc was modified with a mod that grant him the Barbarian Ranger class; it gives him a rage that can be controlled, but under which he can't use any items. It's really fun mechanically. He also has a skill named Mighty Blow that let him do 4 points of damage if he foregoes 4 points of thac0. He also can't use any armor higher than chainmail. This mod makes him a glass cannon, which I like. There are other skills granted by this mod, like big bonuses to saving throws and immunities to psionics, but I didn't installed those parts because they're too much for me. Branwen was given the Priest of Tempus kit from Divine Remix (it's not a fresh install because it's probably the last time I use Divine Remix). The rest of the crew were left as-is. Once these companions were gathered, they started the main quest. Since we're high level for this part, Mulahey was dispatched with ease.
Then, the Bandit camp was next. The thing is, with SCS, there's a lot more bandits than in the regular game. And, since I got Item Randomizer installed, the scrolls accessible in shops were randomized too. Thalantyr had neither Grease or Web, my go-to spells for this fight, so I had to go through this fight the hard way. Early, things were going good, because Dynaheir already had two Fireball wands to waste these guys.
However, after a while, when enemies were seriously stacking with little means of slowing them down, we kept taking a lot of damage. Potions maintained us afloat and we finally prevailed.
The road to Cloakwood was opened. Since I'm tired, I'll leave it there and tell more about it later.
Ciao !
For a few years now I've been having attempts on and off at a very challenging no-reload setup within King's Bounty (a game which I've never completed in any form) and I thought it was about time I had another crack at that. Seeing @semiticgod's various recent Elder Scrolls runs I wondered whether anyone would be interested in me posting a summary of my run ...
You need not ask. Off course we are interested. Best of luck.
In the meantime OK 93 skipped the final parts of Durlag and went after Sarevok instead.
Previously
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/997338/#Comment_997338
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/999361/#Comment_999361
The Iron throne was uneventful. Missile damage and wands rule BG1 supreme.
In the undercellar. Slythe and Kristin where talken care off individually
No problems there
The palace fight on the other hand was a bit of a hassle.
Even though I had a full party, I recruited Ichtyl for the fight. Thank god
I got of to a bad start. I triggered the fight by accident. My initial dispel failed, and Llia died within moments thereafter..
Luckily Ichtyls greater malison + chaos combo worked its wonder. Followed by Dynaheirs web and my 3 characters with free action, the fight was won in the end
The maze was first “de-trapped” by stealth then cleared... the undercellar party got treated by some fireballs - they didnt like it one bit..
At the temple, I first lured Semaj out. Killed him easily and then lured Sarevok out.
Off to SoD which I consider an integral part of BG1. So we are halfway there.. The progress will be slow due to the lack of metagaming opportunities..
Inspiro (human skald, Grond0); Laraum (human inquisitor, Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/999191/#Comment_999191
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1000717/#Comment_1000717
A fairly eventful session saw some close shaves, but no deaths.
Things started with a journey into the Cloakwood. Inspiro used invisibility to trip some web traps and make killing ettercaps easy. Laraum then wanted to get Spider's Bane, so led the way to Centeol's nest. I've noted before an oddity there that, even though the first character through the door appears to be further into the nest, one of the sword spiders only comes into battle when the next character entered. That cost a life for my sorcerer in the Trio yesterday and Inspiro also had to run when he was similarly attacked. He did a loop round and came back inside - drawing the sword spider and a couple of other enemies to attack Laraum. However, a giant spider switched from Laraum to Inspiro and poisoned him. In single player or as a MP client I would have just let him die, but as protagonist I sometimes take pity on the long-suffering Gate70 and chose to take a potion on this occasion
Moving on to the Cloakwood Mine Drasus & co were webbed and Laraum slaughtered them with
Drasus'sSpider's Bane.In the City the poison quest yielded some boots of speed for Laraum from Lothander, though as he's nearly always using Spider's Bane that makes little difference to him. Marek then found himself in a sticky situation.
For the next major encounter, Laraum tried to pull Degrodel's guards outside a few at a time. Things looked a bit dodgy when almost all of them followed at once, but most of them got stuck in webs and Laraum was able to clean them up easily enough.
The session finished with an assault on the Iron Throne. Inspiro threw in a couple of webs and a couple of skull traps for openers, as Laraum joined the assault. Inspiro tried to support with missiles, but hit a line of sight problem and promptly walked into the web. Fortunately Laraum was cutting down the held opposition pretty fast and didn't require any more help.
Inspiro, Skald 9, 55 HPs, 139 kills
Laraum, Inquisitor 7, 95 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 271 kills, 2 deaths
From the age of some computer files I have I think I started playing King's Bounty: the Legend about 6 years ago. The basic adventuring set-up is similar to Might & Magic, but like Heroes of Might & Magic combat is resolved on a separate hex-based screen. There are lots of different unit types you can place in your hero's army, but fairly early on I decided to do a run using only undead units. As I got better at the game I then made those rules harder, so that now I'm playing on the following basis:
- no-reload (of course) on impossible difficulty
- must never lose or run away from a fight (in KB losing a fight is not generally the end of the game, though it is in some cases)
- must never have any creatures other than undead in an army when fighting (they can be carried on the adventure screen, to complete quests)
- must never have fewer of any type of troop at the end of combat than the start
To make those rules a bit easier I used a game editor to check lots of starting positions to assess how easy they would be (there's a lot of randomness about whether particular equipment and spells is available in the game). I eventually settled on a starting position that I thought gave me some sort of chance to make progress and this run will be my 275th attempt at this same starting position
I've generally seen improvements over time and have had my most successful attempt relatively recently, getting perhaps 2/3 of the way through the game. I've deliberately never looked at any walkthrough though, so there's still plenty of the game I've not seen and it may well be the case that it's impossible to complete the game using my rules - though that would be a bit of an anti-climax
At the start of the game you are offered some trials to allow you to assess the type of class you want to be. In fact there's no option about that - you always end up as a treasure hunter - but normally you would want to do the trials to pick up various spells and treasure. However, you can't avoid fighting in those and there are no undead troops available here, so I'm forced to accept the job without doing the trials.
Leaving the trial area took me to an audience with the king. That provided an opportunity to get rid of my starting army there.
One of the objects in Greenwort, the area you start in, is a 'strange stone'. Activating this with the help of the local Mages Guild will randomly give you either a small bit of experience, a boost to defense or a boost to mana. The defense and mana boosts are real gains, but the experience is essentially meaningless in a long game, so for quite a while now I've been going to the Strange Stone immediately on starting the game and quitting the run if experience is offered (accounting for probably about 30-40 of my many attempts). In this case the Strange Stone turns into an altar offering an improvement to defense, so all is well to continue.
semi: No-Reload Dragon Warrior Monsters Run
Part 1
I've started a new no-reload game of one of my old favorites: Dragon Warrior Monsters. DWM is a Pokemon-style game based on the enemies from the old Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest games, but the gameplay is much more dynamic, complex, and subject to random chance than Pokemon games. Instead of being based on grinding and rock-paper-scissors matchups, DWM is based on breeding monsters to get new types of monsters.Breeding monsters is the basis of DWM gameplay. Take the example of a Unicorn. Unicorns are awesome monsters that can heal your allies and even raise them from death. Problem is... you can't find one in the wild.
You can, however, breed certain monsters together to produce a baby Unicorn you can raise from birth. For instance, if you breed a Tonguella (imagine a fat biped with a big tongue) with any member of the Slime family, or any member of the Beast family with a Fangslime (a blob of slime with a mohawk), you'll get a Unicorn egg.
But catching most monsters is very difficult in DWM, and highly dependent on luck, so you can never quite be sure which monsters you're going to have, or what gender they are. Only a few select critters are guaranteed to join you, and to get the best critters in your party, you have to adapt to whatever the game throws at you.
This run will have a special restriction: I can't grind for experience. This means I can only enter a single "gate" (a wilderness area) once in the entire game, and once I explore all screens of a certain map, I have to go straight to the next area. I can't wander around aimlessly to get more experience.
More importantly, this severely limits what monsters I can catch. If I don't get a Gremlin in a certain gate, I can never get a Gremlin unless I breed for one--and the monsters at my disposal are 100% finite.
The game was designed assuming the player entered the "gates" multiple times in a single run to grind monsters and get new resources. In this run, I'll only have a fraction of the resources that I normally would have in DWM, and since this is a no-reload run, I have to roll with the punches in this highly luck-dependent game.
We start the game at home at midnight. Here's the main character, canonically named Terry, and his snoozing sister Milayou. Since screenshots are very small for this run, they won't be hidden in spoiler tags.
Our problems begin when a weird little critter named Warubou hops out of a drawer to kidnap our sister.
Shortly after, another weird little critter named Watabou hops out of the same drawer.
Watabou promises to help us find our sister and hops back in the drawer. We climb in after him and are transported to a strange new world, where an old geezer has been expecting us.
We find ourselves in GreatTree, a colossal tree that the locals have made into a small city. Up at the top, we meet the king, who wants us to raise monsters and win the Starry Night Tournament, an upcoming tournament for "monster masters," the DWM equivalent of Pokemon trainers. The king is surprised to hear that we have other goals in mind.
But the victor of the Starry Night Tournament gets to make a wish, so if we win, we get to find our sister Milayou. It's quite convenient for the king who kidnapped us and is trying to force us into servitude.
Notice that the game's textbox is rather tiny. A lot of sentences can't show up in a single screen.
We go to the farm to get some monsters, but there's only a single one left: Slib, the favorite monster of the former king.
This is the first member of the Slime family, known simply as a Slime. Slime monsters have high HP and speed (AGL is agility, which determines which monster strikes first in each round of combat) as well as some decent resistances to spells. However, their other stats are pretty lousy, and this one gains levels very slowly.
That's a pretty big handicap in our run, since we're only going to get so many opportunities to earn XP. We're going to have to get fast-growing monsters as soon as we can, or else we'll hit a major block shortly into the game.
The king is furious that the head of the farm, little Pulio, let all of his other monsters run away. Pulio is about to be thrown into the dungeon when we step forward and offer to catch Hale, another Slime monster who ran away, if Pulio is freed.
Before we go, we grab an Herb from a nearby chest. Herbs heal a little over 30 HP, which isn't much in the long run, but is actually a 100% heal option for early game critters. We then head off to the Traveler's Gate, a swirly portal thingy.
These portals, or gates, lead to randomized wilderness areas. This one, for example, has 4 different maps, and you reach the next map by finding a big hole and hopping through it. The maps aren't too flashy.
But the music is quite enchanting. It isn't long before we run into our first enemy--a Dracky!
Our only monster, Slib the Slime, manages to bring it down in a few rounds, but unfortunately, the Dracky doesn't join us after it's been defeated. We should get a Dracky before the end of this gate, though, since the odds of catching monsters in the first area is unusually high. Normally, you need to give meat treats to monsters to lower their "Wild" score and make them more tame and willing to join you, but early-game critters have very low Wild and aren't too shy about joining the party.
We heal Slib with an Herb and keep searching the map for new Herbs and new monsters. We run into an Anteater!
Slib gains a level by defeating this critter (Slib has a powerful advantage due to his unusually high starting HP) and the Anteater joins us. It's a pretty lousy monster, but right now, it's a valuable addition to the party.
Our new monster, Ares the Anteater, belongs to the Beast family. Beasts have high HP and attack (ATK) values, which makes them great damage dealers, but otherwise their stats are mediocre.
Finally, we win over a Dracky, and fill our final party slot (we can only travel with three monsters at a time). Dirk the Dracky doesn't have great stats...
...but he'll grow very quickly and continue to be strong for a little while into the future. Once he learns the Sleep skill at a higher level, he'll be able to temporarily disable important enemies.
We win a few more fights with our trio of monsters and proceed to the boss, Hale, who must be beaten up before he'll agree to come back to the farmer. Hale is a Healer, one of the few monsters who inherently know the Heal spell.
He lasts a long time, but his offensive powers aren't too scary. Once he goes down, Hale joins the party and immediately becomes our top monster.
Watabou appears and warps us back to the king's chamber. Due to the rules of the run, we can never re-enter that gate to train our monsters, so we have to proceed to the next challenge.
In order to unlock new gates, we need to win fights at the arena. The receptionist is cute.
The enemies are always the same for each run, but they can be pretty tough. We have to win three fights in a row, each one against a new batch of monsters, and we can't heal in between them. Fortunately, the first two fights are against some low-offense enemies who can't deal much damage.
The last fight is against a group of zombies: two Spookies and a Hork. All of them can use Lushlicks, a one-round disabler. Apparently licking monsters induces a helpless shivering state.
They have some decent attack power, too, but Hale is a sturdy character and has lots of MP to spam Heal spells.
We have now unlocked two new areas: the Gates of Villager and Talisman. All the gates in this game have weird and mysterious names--maybe because of translation issues from the original Japanese.
These next two gates are going to be very important. We can't breed monsters yet because only older monsters--those who are at least level 10--can breed. Until then, we have to try to get as many useful monsters as we can.
Without the ability to grind, we need to be very efficient about breeding our monsters, and luck can play a huge role in the type of critters we can get.