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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim |OT2| Team Edward's Revenge

Grinchy

Banned
Because Destruction doesn't scale at all in terms of damage. There are a few one-off increases in damage when you get a new spell, or add a perk, but that's it. Once you get to a certain point you will never ever hit any harder. And that extra damage is something you have to pay for with the increased Magicka cost of spells.

Compare that to melee weapons or bows which cause your damage to increase directly as your skill increases, you can increase the damage much higher with perks (+100% with 5 perks verses +50% in Fire/Frost/Shock with 6 perks), you can add +damage enchantments to gear, and you can improve weapons further with Smithing. Plus you can constantly perform normal attacks with no stamina, and the cost of power attacks is the same with a crappy weapon as it is with a badass Daedric Sword of Infinite Win.

It's one of the major balancing fuckups in the game.

Damn, so what does this mean for a high-level mage? My Dest and Conj are leveling pretty evenly, but obviously I do the other magic types like Alt and Rest as well. Do I have to use bound weapons at some point?
 
Valdr's Lucky Dagger, people, I'm telling you. Valdr's Lucky Dagger. You can get it fresh out of Helgen and it offers a baseline 25% boosted critical rate. Use it with Elemental Fury you you'll shed dragons to mulch. I've kept the same weapon from lv.3 to lv.30.

I've read you can upgrade it to ~89 damage, but I'm at 100 smithing and have some decent smithing enchantments equipped but can only get it to 36. Any idea? Or is 36 damage enough?
 

Hyunkel6

Member
How are some of you getting those insane -25% magicka enchantments? Everytime I disenchant some item, I always get a weaker version of the enchantment. I tried creating with black soul gems filled with greater souls, but I still get a weaker enchantement than the original one.
 
How are some of you getting those insane -25% magicka enchantments? Everytime I disenchant some item, I always get a weaker version of the enchantment. I tried creating with black soul gems filled with greater souls, but I still get a weaker enchantement than the original one.

Probably Fortify Enchanting potions. Though creating effective potions requires a large Alchemy skill/luck in finding them.
 

Volimar

Member
Damn, so what does this mean for a high-level mage? My Dest and Conj are leveling pretty evenly, but obviously I do the other magic types like Alt and Rest as well. Do I have to use bound weapons at some point?

Summoned creatures will help make up the shortfall.
 
How are some of you getting those insane -25% magicka enchantments? Everytime I disenchant some item, I always get a weaker version of the enchantment. I tried creating with black soul gems filled with greater souls, but I still get a weaker enchantement than the original one.

Do you have perks in enchanting ?
 
Glad I jumped into the thread, I'm thinking of making a mage class soon (which I've never really committed to in an Elder Scrolls game) and some of this info is really good to know.

I have a couple basic questions about Conjuration by the way. I'd like my mage to use conjured weapons mostly, I think, rather than real ones, but I'm curious how the skills work.

Does Conjuration raise only when you conjure the weapon, or also each time you use it?

If a melee weapon is conjured, does using it raise the appropriate One-Handed or Two-Handed skill? Likewise, does using a conjured bow raise Archery?
 
Glad I jumped into the thread, I'm thinking of making a mage class soon (which I've never really committed to in an Elder Scrolls game) and some of this info is really good to know.

I have a couple basic questions about Conjuration by the way. I'd like my mage to use conjured weapons mostly, I think, rather than real ones, but I'm curious how the skills work.

Does Conjuration raise only when you conjure the weapon, or also each time you use it?

If a melee weapon is conjured, does using it raise One-Handed? Likewise, does using a conjured bow raise Archery?

Conjured weapons raise their respective weapon skill with use, yes.

How conjuration is levelled up is interesting. If you summon a bound sword, the conjuring of it or the wielding of it isn't what improves your skill, so much as proximity to enemies. If you have a bound sword, your skill is going to increase simply by being around hostile characters.
 

lil smoke

Banned
Firebolt is probably the best all around fire spell. Good damage to mana ratio.

LOL I have a really hard time aiming that damn thing. I think last night I spent an hour practicing reading the actual distance it has, and it is up there with my arrows, except the lob on it is extremely discombobulating.
 

lil smoke

Banned
Is there a reason why a random dark elf would attack me on my traveling? He just run up to me and started punching me with his fists (he wears a gauntlet), he's all like "yeaaaah! I can take on you!"

I don't think so, he just have a bunch of food and alcohol on him, and skoomas

Oh hmm, strange. Must be wood elf in my experience, then.
This type of stuff kinda makes me anxious for MP hopefully a few years later. I am a proud Wood Elf, a true Wood Elf would not punch but sneak and pick from afar.
 
How are some of you getting those insane -25% magicka enchantments? Everytime I disenchant some item, I always get a weaker version of the enchantment. I tried creating with black soul gems filled with greater souls, but I still get a weaker enchantement than the original one.

you need your enchanting skill to be 100 (along with the perks) to get -25% as well as use grand souls. Its a heavy investment but pays off in dividends
 
My First Dragon Encounter

I was happy just watching it fight a Giant, then see the Giant get attacked by wolves, but then I decided to join the fight and... well... it doesn't end well for me

I know you've all had a million moments like this but it was my first and I thought it was funny! You might want to skip to near the end.
 
My First Dragon Encounter

I was happy just watching it fight a Giant, then see the Giant get attacked by wolves, but then I decided to join the fight and... well... it doesn't end well for me

I know you've all had a million moments like this but it was my first and I thought it was funny! You might want to skip to near the end.

I havnt even touched this game since i finished character creation and got to winterhold i really really should.
 

witness

Member
Finished the main story, I decided to only main path the main quest first and then do whatever I want to after that. Took me a bit under 20 hours of playtime, I did do a couple of college of magic quests during that time. I loved it and thought it was incredible, so much better than the terrible Oblivion main quests. I finished as a level 11.

I went with a Destruction, Shock, and dual wielding 1hers most of the time. Though I think i'm done with being a mage and will stick with dual wielding and archery, magic is just not as satisfying for me. Its nice being free and able to do whatever I want now in the game with the main storyline done. Getting some incredible shouts before really exploring the world doesn't hurt!

Absolutely my game of the year.
 

Procarbine

Forever Platinum
What level are you guys that destruction falls off? I'm 45 and am pretty much a god. Cost reduction enchants made top level spells cost nothing, so I just spam them and kill everything very quickly.
 

Anteater

Member
Where's my patch yo :(

I hope I don't need to wait another weekend, these fireball mages are having way too much fun frying me in my heavy armor while I slowly approach them

I guess I'll just summon my dremora lord... maybe the dremora lord should play the game for me
 

gdt

Member
Okay, how the hell can I buy the house in Winterhold? The Blood on The Ice or whatever quest wont trigger.

Do I have to finish the Civil War quest first?
 

ShinNL

Member
Because Destruction doesn't scale at all in terms of damage. There are a few one-off increases in damage when you get a new spell, or add a perk, but that's it. Once you get to a certain point you will never ever hit any harder. And that extra damage is something you have to pay for with the increased Magicka cost of spells.

Compare that to melee weapons or bows which cause your damage to increase directly as your skill increases, you can increase the damage much higher with perks (+100% with 5 perks verses +50% in Fire/Frost/Shock with 6 perks), you can add +damage enchantments to gear, and you can improve weapons further with Smithing. Plus you can constantly perform normal attacks with no stamina, and the cost of power attacks is the same with a crappy weapon as it is with a badass Daedric Sword of Infinite Win.

It's one of the major balancing fuckups in the game.
You know, I love min-maxing. But since I'm melee I'm no super expert on magic. However, I did try it a bit with left-over perks for a bit (without saving) and what I realized and what I never read about it: why aren't you pure magic users investing heavily into alchemy? You can make fortify destruction potions to increase strength by a lot. You can even favorite and hotkey it. There's no excuse (aside from running out of ingredients to create them). Dual casting adept/expert skills + perks + potions = pretty darn powerful.

Also, low level magic users should invest heavily in staffs. They are meant to be used when you run out of magicka: they get all the benefits from perks/skill level/fortification. Not sure if you can dual cast though, probably not.
 

NumberTwo

Paper or plastic?
You know what's funny? Ive had a time where me and my follower friendly fired the dremora and they chased me around for a while until I respawn them -.-

That happened to me just last night. I was in some underground sanctuary, and a couple of Spriggans sprayed some green goop on my Dremoras. They turned on me, and I freaked out. Ran around for like 10 secs. until, it dawned on me to just spawn them again. :p

Also, though it has cons, I love playing as a full mage.
 

SolKane

Member
It's crazy how pickpocket is easy to lvl, just grab some gloves and ring with +% pickpocket, grab 1 ring/necklace or 2 from someone with 70-90% chance to steal, and +1 pickpocket skill already! Makes it easy to lvl up when you are high lvl.

How do you see the percent chance of pickpocketing an item? I just started a thief character and I've been wondering about this.
 

Anteater

Member
Getting blast by mages, summons dremora lord

Couldn't find my way up the fort, summons dremora lord over the wall

I'm making a bad habit out of this
 
VTMoW.jpg


Its such a shame the Blades are idiots. The armor looks cool.
 

TTG

Member
I didn't kill anyone in that quest, except for the first merc you meet. Without any potions or spells.

Was your sneaking really high? Because I have a few items to boost mine(mainly from assassin's guild), but over all it blows. I'll give it another try tonight, but I wouldn't expect to be perfect. I think there's a reason there's a bunch of traps and stuff you can activate on the way.
 
You know, I love min-maxing. But since I'm melee I'm no super expert on magic. However, I did try it a bit with left-over perks for a bit (without saving) and what I realized and what I never read about it: why aren't you pure magic users investing heavily into alchemy? You can make fortify destruction potions to increase strength by a lot. You can even favorite and hotkey it. There's no excuse (aside from running out of ingredients to create them). Dual casting adept/expert skills + perks + potions = pretty darn powerful.

Also, low level magic users should invest heavily in staffs. They are meant to be used when you run out of magicka: they get all the benefits from perks/skill level/fortification. Not sure if you can dual cast though, probably not.

If you want to play a pure Destruction mage without using enchanting to get free casts (which is equally gamebreaking by allowing an infinite stunlock against a single enemy, even if the damage is weak), then yes you will need alchemy. But that'll just bring it up to the kind of damage you can put out normally with other game styles. And remember there are potions to increase melee/bow damage too.

Theoretically if you're willing to use the fortify restoration/enchanting loop you could make an arbitrarily powerful fortify destruction potion that balances out the damage. It's still a broken balancing issue by forcing a player into certain perks to compete with what others get for nothing.



Damn, so what does this mean for a high-level mage? My Dest and Conj are leveling pretty evenly, but obviously I do the other magic types like Alt and Rest as well. Do I have to use bound weapons at some point?

Conjuration seems to scale quite well, though at high levels you end up with a few problem with raising dead, as certain enemies will end up too high a level to raise (a pretty stupid restriction but easily fixed by mods if you have the PC version). Bound weapons start off very well but are less effective at higher levels because you can't enchant them or improve them with smithing.

Alteration: armour spells are quite ineffective at higher levels, save for the Master one which is very effective but impractical to use. Paralyse is extremely powerful though, and borderline gamebreaking in my opinion.

I haven't found any huge problems with Restoration, at least with healing spells. If I remember rightly though the turn undead spells should become useless at higher levels because they only work up to level 30 or something, but don't quote me on that.

Illusion: all over the place. Until you unlock the perk that allows it to work on almost all enemies it's kind of ineffective a lot of the time, but powerful when you can use it. With the perks you can get it scaling pretty well until max level, though you might end up with a few enemies that are too powerful to affect. With perks and dual-casting though, pretty much anyone can be influenced.

The other schools do suffer from scaling problems but they're no way near as apparent, and generally can work very well up to max level. Destruction is the main problem.
 

BLACKLAC

Member
What kind of output do I get with 100 Enchanting after using a fortify enchanting potion made with 100 Alchemy?

No perks for either Enchanting or Alchemy. I currently have 100 Enchanting and working my way up Alchemy (lvl 72).

And what if I find a couple fortify Alchemy/Enchanting items to help with that(I found an item that has 'potion creation 22% stronger')?
 
Can someone explain the fortify restoration trick with alchemy? I think I've been doing it wrong because my fortify percentages keep jumping around and I'm not noticing a big increase when I'm making potions. I have a whole set of fortify alchemy gear and can get my fortify restoration potions up to +200%, but it seems like that's just giving me one or two percentage points on my fortify enchant potions.
 
I'm going to echo how ineffective destruction magic is. My previous character which was a two-handed/heavy armour Nord had a much easier time with pretty much everything. I found Master with him easier than Adept with this mage. I can't take a hit and I have to wait around, twiddling my thumbs between spells.

I hope a mod comes out to tweak the damage because this sucks right now. I had to start leveling up sneak and archery just to cope.
 
Can someone explain the fortify restoration trick with alchemy? I think I've been doing it wrong because my fortify percentages keep jumping around and I'm not noticing a big increase when I'm making potions. I have a whole set of fortify alchemy gear and can get my fortify restoration potions up to +200%, but it seems like that's just giving me one or two percentage points on my fortify enchant potions.

I'm assuming this hasn't been fixed in the 1.3 patch.

Enchant gear with fortify alchemy.

Create a fortify restoration potion and drink it. This boosts the effectiveness of your fortify alchemy gear (along with other stuff such as fortify smithing enchantments). I think you need to re-equip your fortify alchemy gear because it won't multiply existing buffs, only new ones.

Create a more powerful fortify restoration potion and continue the process until your alchemy is as powerful as you want it to be. Once you're at that stage craft your super powerful potions e.g. fortify enchantment/smithing.

Optional: if you use super powerful fortify enchantment/smithing potions, use them to create your absurdly powerful enchantments/gear.

If you're aiming for specific values then it gets harder to calculate because the numbers increase very quickly, and at higher values they don't seem to multiply properly. If you don't want to completely break the game then don't go too far with this. Plus if you keep looping it then it won't take long before you end up with values far larger than intended... that probably won't be good for game stability...
 
I thought I'd be molesting everything like the high level mages I was encountering (could have been when resistance was broken).

Having spells not scale with their stat LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE was a dumb move.

So time to bail out and go with one handed/shield or two handed melee character?

I'm like 10 hours in and have destruction up to lvl 40 already, heh. It doesn't feel that powerful so far I have to admit.
 
So time to bail out and go with one handed/shield or two handed melee character?

I'm like 10 hours in and have destruction up to lvl 40 already, heh. It doesn't feel that powerful so far I have to admit.

It's decent as a supplement, but you'll need to deal physical damage somehow.

I'm coping fine since I invested a decent amount into magicka but the early goings were quite tough. Illusion/Destruction/Sneak/Archery is what I'm rolling with now and it's quite fun. Particularly the Illusion part.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Well...the doors dont take long...5-10 seconds, but the distance travel takes about 20 seconds. If you add it all up you basically spend more time loading than doing the jobs themselves. That and 30 jobs seriously? On top of all that I have already done for them...ugh.
20 seconds wtf? I don't have an SSD or anything but it's nowhere near that even traveling across the map. I'll count...
 

coopolon

Member
Sad this game is so easy. Have played on master the entire time. Playing as a sword and shield nord with restration. A few fights in the beginning were too hard and I had to leave and come back. But by 20s everything was pretty easy long as I kept an eye on my health bar.

Now at 46 everything just falls down. The problem is I am nowhere near "end game" in the major quest lines, and I'm getitng to the point where any more progression with my character would be just to do something. All my skills I planned for my character are at or near 100.

This game will really benefit from a mod like OOO or FOWE,
 

grkazan12

Member
My god I'm having so much fun with this game, I decided to chronicle at least some of my adventures, but my favorite one so far has to be the bullshit fox that lead me to basically nothing. Thankfully I recorded it when it happened and made some slight edits.

Check it out here: Fox leads to Nothingness
 
I really want to get into this game but everytime I watch a video to hype myself, I just...I just don't get it. Nothing of it looks appealing. Then again that's what I thought of Fallout 3 until I actually played it. Vegas, however, was a big disappointment. I don't know whether to jump on this or not.
 
I really want to get into this game but everytime I watch a video to hype myself, I just...I just don't get it. Nothing of it looks appealing. Then again that's what I thought of Fallout 3 until I actually played it. Vegas, however, was a big disappointment. I don't know whether to jump on this or not.
Do it. So much better than Fallout 3. IMO.
 

ShinNL

Member
I really want to get into this game but everytime I watch a video to hype myself, I just...I just don't get it. Nothing of it looks appealing. Then again that's what I thought of Fallout 3 until I actually played it. Vegas, however, was a big disappointment. I don't know whether to jump on this or not.
What I like most about the game is that you control your own pacing. You can rush from quest to quest and town to town and slaughter everything asap, you can just wander around the world doing random stuff, you can spend a huge amount of time in menus and just plan out your build, you can search for every loot there possible is. Anything you do seems to have no limit, rather that you are the limit of what you're doing in the game. Unlike many games where there are only so many quests, only so many things to discover, only so big of a world, only so many ways to tweak your character... this game makes you feel tiny in the beginning and the more you play the more epic you become.

Plus it's a fantasy setting. Fantasy settings are the best :D
 
Was your sneaking really high? Because I have a few items to boost mine(mainly from assassin's guild), but over all it blows. I'll give it another try tonight, but I wouldn't expect to be perfect. I think there's a reason there's a bunch of traps and stuff you can activate on the way.

I think it was about 60 at the time. I did forget to mention that I killed the mercenaries in one of the final rooms with a trap, too.
 
I'm enjoying the game a lot but Bethesda overhyped the unique dungeons etc I think. The best the game has to offer is walking around the world and seeing the random events. Very few of the quests/dungeons have been interesting thus far.
 
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