[Wrathblood]

Ah. And it sounds like if you didn't get a couple during the right quest or event, you're basically screwed.

I'm playing two characters completely differently, one is a dual-wield, stealthy archer kinda guy who's a stormcloak and making decent progress along the central questline, while the other is a conjuring, 2h weapon, heavy armor kinda guy who's been to Solitude and will join the Empire, but hasn't quite yet. He still hasn't gone to Riverwood, talked to the Jarl of Whiterun or even seen a dragon yet other than in Helgen (focusing on the Winterhold and Riften stuff). Both are about level 30 and have had virtually zero overlap in the content they've gone through which is kind of neat.

The summoned Daedra Lords from Conjuring are the most entertaining part of the game to me. They're 8 feet tall, demonic looking, have huge flaming swords, at this stage of the game are quite powerful, and are really fast and can see stuff a long way away. They're also entertainingly aggressive. They'll stop for a second, bellow "A CHALLENGER APPROACHES!", draw their sword and charge off. I'll run after, catching up just in time to watch him totally obliterate like a goat or a squirrel or something and triumphantly yell something like "NONE MAY STAND BEFORE MY MIGHT!" over its dead body. It still makes me giggle to watch him in action.

[Sobeyet]

Wrathblood, on 27 November 2011 - 01:14 PM, said:

Ah. And it sounds like if you didn't get a couple during the right quest or event, you're basically screwed.

I'm playing two characters completely differently, one is a dual-wield, stealthy archer kinda guy who's a stormcloak and making decent progress along the central questline, while the other is a conjuring, 2h weapon, heavy armor kinda guy who's been to Solitude and will join the Empire, but hasn't quite yet. He still hasn't gone to Riverwood, talked to the Jarl of Whiterun or even seen a dragon yet other than in Helgen (focusing on the Winterhold and Riften stuff). Both are about level 30 and have had virtually zero overlap in the content they've gone through which is kind of neat.

The summoned Daedra Lords from Conjuring are the most entertaining part of the game to me. They're 8 feet tall, demonic looking, have huge flaming swords, at this stage of the game are quite powerful, and are really fast and can see stuff a long way away. They're also entertainingly aggressive. They'll stop for a second, bellow "A CHALLENGER APPROACHES!", draw their sword and charge off. I'll run after, catching up just in time to watch him totally obliterate like a goat or a squirrel or something and triumphantly yell something like "NONE MAY STAND BEFORE MY MIGHT!" over its dead body. It still makes me giggle to watch him in action.

And the reward isn't great for something you end up running all over the place for, I said screw it.

Destruction is crap at high levels, but the Daedra stays useful. Towards the end I got tired of fighting random mobs so I just let him run around doing his thing.

I did like the set battles between the Legion and Stormcloaks though, they should've added a random skirmish where the opposite faction tries to take over a town occasionally.

[Wrathblood]

Agreed. The random dragon attacks were actually fun, and I've run into plenty of random seeming small scale NPC on NPC battles. Having a rare larger scale one would have been cool.

Edit - For summoning, the Atronachs were fine, though even the storm one is a little underwhelming. The dread zombies are fun in that you can make 'em out of lots of different stuff and they're pretty powerful, but the AI seems like the worst and they're kinda homebodies, waiting for something to come along for them to attack rather than follow you. The Daedras are the most useful imo.

[Guinthel]

destruction is crap? god dammit I have been putting all my points into that tree.

The whole hack and slash first-person view thing just makes me feel ill.

Whats the deal with conjuration / illusion trees, what spells do they improve?

[Wrathblood]

You, um, can do 3rd person you know. Makes things a lot smoother.

I have no idea what conjuration improves. Maybe it makes your summoned stuff tougher? I leveled it for the better perks, and because it was really easy to level (find a spot where there's a hostile mob but it can't hit you, then cast Conjure: Sword until your eyes start to bleed. Was surprisingly fast, and stacking on a bunch of perks was pleasant, but the quick bump-up in level accompanied by no extra gear or spells let to a Frogger-like existence for a bit, with even random outdoor encounters a serious threat until he caught up a little). Don't think I've cast an Illusion spell yet.

[Guinthel]

I keep bringing out the wolf thing but it always gets in the way of my ranged attacks. Terrible mechanic.

[Wrathblood]

Just accidentally kill it with Flames or whatever. It hits them both and by the time it dies the mob is probably dead as well.

It took me a surprisingly long time to get good with Archery, but once you do, shooting around your wolf or other companion isn't really all that hard. The biggest issue I've got is using a bound bow so a miss accidentally dispels my summon, which is kind of inconvenient.

[Sobeyet]

Yeah, the destruction spells don't scale with level so they end up as mana drains that hit for jack shit. Conjuration's really easy to level if you're spamming the summon daedra spell, think I got mine during the Mage's College chain.

The only Illusion spell I found useful was invisibility - easier to sneak around and it doesn't break until you take action (like pickpocketing someone) so you can kind of cheese it. Muffle's okay, but toward the end I had multiple pairs of boots that came with it - good for leveling illusion though, just cast it on yourself while you run around. There are a couple of gloves in the game that double sneak attack damage, so with the perk it's a 12x multiplier, pretty OP if you have the patience for it.

So I finished Assassin's Creed this weekend, probably the weakest one out of the Ezio trilogy, but fun for a few days of entertainment. Franchise could definitely use a shot in the arm though, next one's supposed to be a full game (AC: II is still my favorite in the series) so hopefully it'll be more epic. I still enjoy the basic gameplay, but they couldn't extend the time frame to flesh out the story (Ezio hits his 50s, tough to climb buildings) like they did in the earlier games. That and with each game they feel compelled to add more bells and whistles (do I really need all these bombs?) so at some point it gets tacky.

Haven't decided what I'll play next, probably either Batman or CoD.

[Hecatus]

Quote

I dunno, the world didn't seem any different, no one really treats you any differently, etc. Trying to avoid spoilers, but I think the main quest line was one of the weakest parts of the game. Dark Brotherhood / Thieves Guild felt much more fleshed out.

Agreed.

Finished the mage/main/thief quest lines... and the companion guild still had the nerves to say they've never heard of me.