Wow, is all I can say to that mod. Is this the same Yapette who once said, after I posted a review of Chewy, Esc from F5 about 50 years ago, that you would probably never play the game because you didn't like overly cute cartoon characters in your video games? [Image Can Not Be Found]

My Skyrim game counter reads 260 hours though I tend to pause the game and go watch a movie or cook dinner a lot so I don't know if it's counting that as well. I'm still on my same character I started with. In fact I can't even remember what he looks like. Dark elf something something. I'm collecting enchantments right now but still don't have anything enchanted. The toughened Daedric armor seems to do the job. There were some things I thought I wanted to mod but now I can't remember what they were. Since my game broke on the last patch, I'm just leaving it vanilla. I don't care so much about interface or story or character in my video games anymore as that is a losing battle. I just want to explore. Once I've seen it all, I'll probably just quit. My character could probably  be classed as the Liar Class. I accept all these quests, "yeah sure baby, trust me, I'll go find your favorite coffee cup." Then never think about it again. I must have over a 100 misc quests I don't even know for what.

Jeez, xtal, that would suck, losing all that play time. I don't even want to look at my save file. It must be big as a house by now. I could probably rent rooms in my save file. Whole families could get lost in there.

Steerpike said:

That would almost certainly lead to file corruption, though. I'd, y'know, run it by Bethsoft tech support before drawing up a lease agreement.

I know, right. Especially renters with kids. They mark up the walls and stick forks in the electrical outlets. Put goldfish in the waffle maker...

Guess I should have watched a few of those awful YouTube video afterall. I put tons of level points into magic, with a focus on destruction magic and now it is weak. With Destruction at around 68 (haven't trained it) my fireballs are enemic. I ran into a Dragon Priest last night and tried to take it down with ranged magic spells and the health bar wasn't even moving. I noticed that mine wasn't either. All these spells flying at me and my forge-hardened, unenchanted armor was protecting me nicely. I finally just walked over and hit boss man over the head with my sword and he died in two hits. So destruction is not working for me and I stupidly never put much in Alteration or Illusion or Conjuration. I'm at level 46 so I guess I have time to try and get some other schools of magic up since I have tons of level pts in magic. Either that or just start building up Stamina and ignore the destruction magic completely.

I did find several mods to up destruction magic so I'm testing one of them out before giving up on it.

The other mage had up a ward but I'm even having problems with regular old melee bandits. I've put nothing into archery at all (it's like at 21) but now I'm using it as my ranged attack instead of the wimpy fireball and it's much more effective. On the other hand,  my one-handed attack is scary. I can use Dragonrend to ground a dragon then just walk up and boink, boink over the head with a sword and it's dead. 

EDIT: Also, I would recommend selling loot as you go. I've got all this enchanted stuff piling up my Whiterun house and my Archemage room at the college but no way to sell it. Most merchants have only around 1100 septims tops unless, I guess, you practically do the whole Thief quest line and then you'll get a fence with 3,0000 septims. I have enchanted daggers worth over 2,000 by the bucketsful. Lately I've been selling stuff for half and third price just to move it. If any of the merchants had something I wanted I could up their till with my own coin but at this point it's all just junk to me. The only time I get to move some merchandize is if a trainer will also buy. Then all the coin you spend on training you can get back immediately if you have the right stuff to sell back to them. Otherwise...

Yapette, you'll be happy to know that there is no weapon deterioration in Skyrim or need to repair armor which actually feels weird to me. There is a weight limit depending on stamina. I just use the Steed Stone, one of many standing stones scattered across the map and activate it. It gives you an extra 100 lbs and no slowdown for heavy armor.  I'm aware of the Rich Merchants mod but for some reason I'm not really willing to change merchant buy limits.  I'm unloading a bunch of stuff on the Destruction Magic trainer as she buys enchanted rings, necklaces, boots, staffs, robes, clothing. I buy 5 levels of training for about 2,000 per level, then immediately sell her a bunch of magic loot.

However I have no problem modding the destruction magic perks to allow for damage increase at higher levels. As it stands now the game doesn't allow destruction spells to level like it does weapons and armor. Thieves and warriors can deal huge, huge amounts of damage. Mages will need to go with Illusion, Alteration and Conjuration to make up for the weak offensive magic at higher levels. Not a bad thing, but not my type of gameplay. I think I remember Oblivion's destruction magic being pretty overpowered. Now I think they've swerved too far the other way. Other than that one mod, I'm playing vanilla.

I'm at level 49 and am starting to rapidly lose interest though. I'm heading to Mexico for a week on Wednesday and so am taking some time off. Maybe I'll be energized by the time I get back. Or maybe it's time to take a look at Witcher 2.

Got in late last night and thought I would dink around in Skyrim a bit. I'm at level 50 and finally ran into my first Ancient Frost Dragon which smashed me flat. I haven't really had a problem with frost resistance until now and it's like being run over by a bus. Sucker blows some serious ice. I was just outside the Mage College and ran inside to check to see if I had anything and found some frost resistance potions I had stored in a barrel in the Arch Mage quarters. Back out the door and Shadowmere, the black horse with the red glowing eyes, which I just picked up from a Dark Brotherhood quest, was standing the dragon down and had its health bar to about a fourth which effectively grounded the dragon. My one decent resist frost potion did the job and I killed said dragon with my deadric sword and got a nifty animation for my reward. It appears Shadowmere is totally resistant to frost damage. She is officially my new best friend. And since I'm a dark elf, our eyes even match. I guess it's time to start considering enchanting some of my armor.