. 

Originally Posted By Traveller (26 AUG 2012 1:30pm)

I don't know if you ever watch the TV show Leverage, (it's a US show, but you might also be able to watch it) but if the thieves were doing stuff similar to that, or at least had jobs similar to those that you could choose to stick to, (where you do heists and schemes tricking bad guys) it would have been much more fun, but you're right, many of the quests make you feel bad and like a cheat and bully...

 

I have found that if you simply want to do "good guy" quests, one should simply talk to as many people as you can, and you pick up some nice positive quests that way.  If you do enough 'good' quests, you get to be thane in the cities in those areas and it gives you the opportunity to buy houses in some of the major cities.

Heya Trav -  

I did all the "good" quests too and became a Thane in all possible towns. Also bought houses all over the place, but always used the one in Whiterun (the modest, little Breezehome) because it is the most conveniently located (near a major, quick-travel spawn point and close to numerous merchants). It also has the most efficient interior for quickly stowing gear and sleeping plus it comes with my favorite female sidekick, Lydia. 

However, I ran out of related ethical side quests and decided to do the whole set of Thief, Dark Brotherhood assassination and Companion missions, becoming guildmaster in each case. Sames goes for the College of Winterhold. Together, those factions provide a huge amount of extra gameplay and some of it is quite challenging. 

Nevertheless, those missions also run dry or become highly repetitive after a while and there just aren't that many really good fan-made quest mods, plus only one official DLC to date.  So my days of roaming the stark yet beautiful land of Skyrim are basically over for now. 

Hopefully, there will be some more DLCs and major quest mods, because I do love that game - almost as much as Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.  If there was more new content available, I would be quite happy playing all three almost exclusively... 

Cheers, Terry 

Gee, Terry, that is one cartload full of quests.. i just can't seem to get my own quest list down, more just keep  piling up, and i've been at it for days...

Anyway, I was just about to say that the little Mara quests are so sweet... and now i find myself married... 

Perhaps just as well, since we go everywhere together anyway.  Yes, yes, believe it or not, i have finally found a nice follower who is not a churlish oaf that rushes in front of my fireballs and gets himself killed. .  (it's Mercurio from Riften, will you believe it.)  I liked him as a follower, because he stays nicely back and watches my back with his lightning bolts.

 It's just so weird to hear him call me "my love..." 

I'd found him quite arrogant at the start, but i grew used to the sod over time, and now.. well... we're officially inseparable, it seems. 

So out with it, guys, who did the rest of you marry?     {-- Not that there is any of that, marriage in Skyrim consists of getting homecooked meals...  

. 

I married my fearless, Nordic housejarl Lydia and we are very happy living in our cozy, little Whiterun cottage called Breezehome. 

Cheers, Terry 

It's a pity that there doesn't seem all that much you can do with all your gold. I've bought all the properties and their amenities that go along, with the exception of Markarth. (I doubt I will ever be able to fix a broken quest necessary for gaining official approval) So different from The Witcher games where one would save and save for a favorited item.

What I would really like to know is have I found every location? (Miss the good old explorer perk from FO3 and FONV although I suppose some might speculate it removes the challenge aspect) Prior to DG I have 344 original destinations on the map.

Originally Posted By Terry Penrod (27 AUG 2012 5:15pm)

I married my fearless, Nordic housejarl Lydia and we are very happy living in our cozy, little Whiterun cottage called Breezehome.

LOL, I made the same choice myself, guess the the following scene might look somewhat familiar. Lately though she seems oblivious that I've been carousing around with another 'female.'

Yes, i suddenly have the store dialog option too now with Mercurio, and he also gives me half, which is 100 septims.  Since we never discussed having a store before, and since he used to live over at the Bee and Barb in Riften before we got hitched, i did wonder where the store suddenly materialised from.  (I still don't have the faintest clue where the store might be situated...)

You know i was quite schocked when Mercurio showed homself as a potential suitor, since i'd never thought of him that way. ..and most of the time he looks like a faceless automaton, since I've made him a very nice suit of dwarven armor that he wears all the time.

I'll post a photo of my companion soon.  Anyways, i first should have realized i had feelings for him when i found out that dastardly Esbern had killed my poor darling during the "cornered rat " quest. (Or was it just after?)  Well, maybe it was the Aldmeri guys, though i doubt they'd be strong enough to have killed him. No, i suspect it was Esbern, but anyway, i'll make sure to keep them apart in future..

Anyway, i've had dogs and horses killed before, and didn't much care, but for poor dear Mercurio, i had to go and look for a cheat to resurrect him; (I wasn't prepared to go through the whole spiel with Esbern all over again, so trying to find a save from before Mercurio had been killed wasn't an option)- and resurrect him i did.  (He'd been so tough before, that i didn't know he could be killed. )

However, what i do find rather hilarious, is that Mercurio makes sarcastic comments about me needing to avoid traps, and yet he is so dumb regarding traps it's just not true!  I always walk nicely around them, hoping that he'll follow in my exact footsteps, but he always blunders right into the traps.  Once he set a trap off on me and killed me.   

I get revenge on him when  i'm out ingredient and ore hunting; then i make him swim in the icy sea and clamber around icy boulders.    I know he hates the cold because he often complains about it while we're in caves.

He often makes very apt remarks regarding the places we visit, though, so i do enjoy his company i suppose.  Except when i ask him to carry something- then i get an earful about him not being a pack mule.   

Now i'm curious about what the other companions say when you visit various places.

I guess i've been neglecting my wife for quite some time... I didn't remember her name or where i left her...

After visiting Soltitude, Markarth and Riften, i finally found her in Windhelm. Oddly she was still happy to see me and gave me a shitload of money 

My wife is Mjoll the Lioness of Riften.

I'm terrible with companions, they usually die within minutes even though i'm not a spellcaster

@CB: there's a console command to reveal all unfound map markers: tmm (,,)

a full description can be found in the uesp: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Console

Originally Posted By markornikov (28 AUG 2012 4:14am)

 

I'm terrible with companions, they usually die within minutes even though i'm not a spellcaster 

Yes, i am too, so i have no idea whatsoever what posessed me to hire Mercurio.  I know there was a reason, but slap me if i can remember what it was...

After having two or three horses and dogs die on me, i definitely gave up on those. Plus i'm such a clumsy nut that even when i do melee combat, i end up hitting my companion because usually they push in front of you to get at the enemy.  Ok, i did kill Mercurio once because he uncharacteristically ran right in front of me just after i'd let loose a huge fireball, but that was really the odd time out.  (...erm, and that could have been my bad, because i turned to shoot something to the side of me... 

Originally Posted By markornikov (28 AUG 2012 4:14am)

@CB: there's a console command to reveal all unfound map markers: tmm (,,)

a full description can be found in the uesp:http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Console

 

No no no no, i'm not going to give in to the temptation...          { me holding my breath

Soon we'll be able to have kids, buy land and build our own house ... 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/28/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-hearthfire-announced?utm_source=Skyrim&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Skyrim%208.28_6892_335846_335852&utm_content=15767969

Originally Posted By Traveller (28 AUG 2012 6:05am)

Originally Posted By markornikov (28 AUG 2012 4:14am)

@CB: there's a console command to reveal all unfound map markers: tmm (,,)

a full description can be found in the uesp:http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Console

 

No no no no, i'm not going to give in to the temptation...          { me holding my breath

Very cute. Just for the sake of doing so I wouldn't bow to temptation either. On the other hand considering the dozens and dozens of hours I've spent crisscrossing the lands from place to place, panning and aligning my compass in search of elusive markers that aren't on my map, I would have to say though that the above does sound useful.

Unless mandated by quest, my character is a lone wolf: stealthy and deadly. I have used a companion or two in the past. Yes, some are better than others at keeping back when in the face of enemies and some are quieter but in time they eventually become more of a liability than an asset. 

Although I do have the option of dismissing Serana in DG I have kept her on (although against my better judgement as she tends to be overly aggressive) with her being integral to the storyline.

Originally Posted By markornikov (28 AUG 2012 11:44am)

Soon we'll be able to have kids, buy land and build our own house ... 

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/28/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-hearthfire-announced?utm_source=Skyrim&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Skyrim%208.28_6892_335846_335852&utm_content=15767969

Sounds like it will be good for the ladies who like to arrange their shelves and dishes. Perhaps they will even be able to dust and vacuum.
 

Originally Posted By CB (28 AUG 2012 12:29pm)

Originally Posted By markornikov (28 AUG 2012 11:44am)

Soon we'll be able to have kids, buy land and build our own house ... 

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/28/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-hearthfire-announced?utm_source=Skyrim&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Skyrim%208.28_6892_335846_335852&utm_content=15767969

Sounds like it will be good for the ladies who like to arrange their shelves and dishes. Perhaps they will even be able to dust and vacuum.
  

 

Ha ha ha.  *Rolls eyes at CB.* Let me explain. 

I got my house in Whiterun as part of one of the earlier quests.   In Morrowind, one could just throw junk down anywhere, so i used to have piles of junk in front of some of the temple doors, which is where you transported to using a certain spell that could port you out of trouble even while you were in combat and even while you were overburdened, and this spell would dunk you down in the relative safety of the front of a temple. 

So the temple of the Nines at Sadrith Mora and the temple at Balmora, for instance had piles and piles of my junk.  More piles lay just inside the mage's guild and inside the fighter's guild. 

The nice thing about these piles were that they remained stationary, no matter what.  NPC's could not take or move them, you could drop something in the wilderness and go back 100 years later, and that item would still be in exactly the same place.

In Oblivion this changed.  People took your stuff if you left them outside, so it was better to have a house to keep the junk in, where the items were supposedly safe from disappearing.

Since the same applies in Skyrim, the obvious thing for me was to throw my junk down just inside the door of the house in Whiterun, right?

Bt there's a difference to Morrowind.   A very sad difference. Loot doesn't pile into stacks anymore.  Gone are the days where you can place an item exactly where you want it. Items seem to repel one another, so now, if you throw junk down, it scatters around and rolls all over the place. 

All this would still be ok with me, i don't mind my house looking like a pigsty, only, I started falling over the stuff. And when you try and walk in there, you end up kicking your stuff all over the place, and it literally hurts you - you see your health bar coming up. So i picked up a bunch of stuff and went to put it in the chest upstairs. 

Only, with the chest there's a new problem.  The items are not arranged in categories like in your characters' inventory, it's just one huge list that you have to trawl through to find anything.

So i go buy a few furnishings to get more closets in order to spread the stuff a bit to make the list shorter, and now the 'furnishings' are all on top of my junk.  ..and i seem unable to pick up stuff from the floor and put them on tables and shelves, they just bounce right off, back onto the floor again.

Anyway, I have a beautiful house in Markarth, a huge thing and very nice inside, but i haven't even bothered to furnish it, because it's so hard to get to it from the gate.

My only other current house, the one in Riften, seemed ideal to install my new husband into, since Lydia dearest gives us zero privacy in the house in Whiterun (Breezehome) ; she has installed herself in our bedroom, and refuses to leave the table there, where she sits and eats a piece of bread all the time with a bitchy air. In fact, i've just thought of the perfect plan to get rid of her...-make her my follower and she'll soon have a little "accident" in battle.. 

I should do that to the housecarl in Riften as well- heh heh heh. Only problem is that the carls apparently prevent people from stealing your stuff- and it might be especially dicey to leave your home ungaurded in Riften.

Anyway, to get back to the houses;  it's different now that i'm married.  It simply didn't seem right to invite my new husband into a run-down, empty cobwebby home, ( i find that for me Riften home really is just a few steps away from both the main gate and the markets and stores- despite Terry's apparent preference for Whiterun) so i purchased all the furnishings, and it really does look nicer and more cozy. Except, that if you don't step extremely carefully, the plates and baskets and  food gets knocked off the tables and start rolling around on the floor.   ..and I cannot seem to place them back again, and that really irritates me.   I don't know if you quite "get" my frustration w ith that, but anyway, there it is.

Unfortunately i have to go through the kitchen to get to my storage chest in the bedroom and to my alchemy table and enchanting lab.  ..and though i don't enchant a lot, I brew potions all the time - i swill health and magica potions like they go out of fashion, and i also sell a few potions i make.   (Smithing and Alchemy are the crafts i mainly employ)

Which brings me to my only complaint about Riften as a base.  It doesn't have an ore smelter.  (Or I haven't found it, anyway)

I think i should start looking into trying to get a home in Windhelm - they have a handy marketplace with all the smithing amenities.  I was just a bit nervous because it's -you know- the Stormcloak base, so i haven't even spoken to the Jarl yet lest i get drafted to the Stormcloaks.

Be careful with the house in Windhelm, i'd save before you start that quest because there's a certain bug that can prevent you from getting that house!!! Which is the best in Skyrim btw 

I love gathering trophies and weapons but haven't got enough room te show them in my houses, so an extra new home would be most welcome. 

Selling loot is an option, but i already have >250000 gold and tons of gems 

I tried using a mod that is supposed to organize your storage chests (as well as any other containers with loot) but it seemed to conflict with the inventory mod I'm currently using which is probably out of date.

I finally learned how to use the console. I had no other choice but to use player.additem and setstage as it was the only way to complete one quest that would allow the game to unlock a series of side quests. 

I can certainly understand that decisions and actions you make in a game could have some influence on DLC but to render it unplayable or incomplete through no real fault of my own is a big mistake.

I also learned another valuable lesson. I wasted a lot of time before I finally realized that not everything you read on the elder scrolls wiki is necessarily correct.

Sorry to hear about that, CB!  Inventory mod?  What does it do?  I'd actually be interested in getting the one that divides one's storage chests into divisions.

In my own Skyrim news, i have now advanced to being able to make ebony weapons and armor, and i have outfitted myself in ebony, whereas my partner has half-ebony (legendary) and half dwarvern (also legendary) at this point.  My armor rating is around 200 by now. 

Oh, which brings me to a question i wanted to ask... does food keep spawning in your houses when  you've furnished them?  My house in Riften seems to be overflowing with cheese and beer...   

Originally Posted By Traveller (3 SEP 2012 10:27am)

Oh, which brings me to a question i wanted to ask... does food keep spawning in your houses when  you've furnished them?  My house in Riften seems to be overflowing with cheese and beer...   

I didn't before, the first time i made the mistake of taking everything away and was left with an empty house for the remainder of the game :\

All the ingredients in winterhold do respawn though

Thanks for the warning, Marko...- i've been raiding the kitchens of garlic, and the alchemy labs of ingredients as well... oh well, there's still a lot of goodies left.

Maybe the Riftonians just really like cheese and ale a lot - and the Markarthians seem to like sweets and candy.

Originally Posted By Traveller (3 SEP 2012 10:03am)

Sorry to hear about that, CB!  Inventory mod?  What does it do?  I'd actually be interested in getting the one that divides one's storage chests into divisions.

I've been using QD Inventory for a long time. It keeps your equipped items at the top and doesn't let you sell them by mistake. I've seen other(s) that look prettier, but I'm happy with this.

Chest/container categorization seems, at least to me, a bit more complicated than other simpler mods. I'll probably study it some more but it's not high priority for now. At this point I tend to sell off most things (to one particular buyer) that I doubt I will ever need and keep my pockets with lots of room to spare. Since I already have ridiculous amounts of gold all I tend to collect these days are the the valuable gems I find.

Thanks CB!

Well, i've encountered a new problem lately.  I cannot find vendors that have large enough amounts of cash to buy some of my single items.  For instance, a few of my items now sell for prices over 1500 - 2000 gold, and most of the vendors keep less  than 2000 gold - many of them keep only around 750 on them. 

I did in the past buy some training from the smith in Riften to up his cash reserves, but apparently by now I could teach him a thing or two about smithing. 

Originally Posted By Traveller (4 SEP 2012 1:21am)

 

Well, i've encountered a new problem lately.  I cannot find vendors that have large enough amounts of cash to buy some of my single items.  For instance, a few of my items now sell for prices over 1500 - 2000 gold, and most of the vendors keep less  than 2000 gold - many of them keep only around 750 on them. 

 

Two perks in the speech skill tree imcrease the amount of gold shopkeepers have with 1500 in total.

Or BUY something for a change, otherwise you'll end up swimming in useless gold 

Originally Posted By markornikov (4 SEP 2012 1:46am)

 

 

Two perks in the speech skill tree imcrease the amount of gold shopkeepers have with 1500 in total.

Or BUY something for a change, otherwise you'll end up swimming in useless gold 

 

 

LOL, yes, i have started buying!  I bought some ebony ingots, which just resulted in me having even MORE expensive things to sell!! 

Also, i've outfitted my 3 houses to the max,  (The Markarth one reallly is beautiful, isn't it?  I can imagine having a nice jacuzzi in that one, powered and heated by those dwarven steamworks.  I wonder if they make use of geothermal energy...  ) so i think it's it time that i start making a decision on the civil war so i can buy two more houses, but both sides in the civil war debacle have merits and negatives, so i'm finding it a really hard decision to make.

Will look out for those perks, thanks!

After you finish off all Thieves Guild quests and become the leader or whatever, Tonilia (Ragged Flagon) has 4000 gold and she buys everything, gems and all.

I suspect that by the time i become master of the Thieve's Guild, I won't have much else to do in this game... 

Spoiler AlertExcept perhaps for the Dark Brotherhood

Oh!  I still wanted to ask if any of you have noticed if traders keep your goodies.  (So you can buy it back again later if you perhaps need it for a quest.)

I've thought that selling off stuff might be a good way to avoid clutter, but then i get anxiety that i might need the stuff again, for instance i never collected Dwemer stuff until i got a quest requiring 10 of a certain Dwemer item, and now i, er.. have actually started to collect stuff like that, causing a lot of clutter.  

Shops reset rather quickly, after 48hours or something.

I usually store all my clutter in one container