[Hotelier]

Ags_rule. (sorry, I meant to reply to your post, but goofed)
What difficulty are you on?, sounds like expert or master if they are creaming you, but you are doing little damage to them.
Have you been boosting your health enough when you level up?. Have you improved your weapons and armour, a high smithing skill let's you improve them more.
Enemies mostly have a fixed level, but dungeons adjust the NPC's to your level, within a certain range.
The leveling section in the following site explains leveling really well.
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Skyrim
It also has loads of useful info about skyrim. Including animal and NPC levels etc and a really good map! http://www.uesp.net/maps/srmap/srmap.shtml

[ags_rule]

Originally Posted by Hotelier

Ags_rule. (sorry, I meant to reply to your post, but goofed)
What difficulty are you on?, sounds like expert or master if they are creaming you, but you are doing little damage to them.
Have you been boosting your health enough when you level up?. Have you improved your weapons and armour, a high smithing skill let's you improve them more.
Enemies mostly have a fixed level, but dungeons adjust the NPC's to your level, within a certain range.
The leveling section in the following site explains leveling really well.
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Skyrim
It also has loads of useful info about skyrim. Including animal and NPC levels etc and a really good map! http://www.uesp.net/maps/srmap/srmap.shtml

No, I'm on normal.

Thanks for the help though! Don't get me wrong, my character is more powerful than when I first started - makes quick work of bandits and other low-level characters, for example.

The main thing that confuses me is my armour rating. I know I'm mixing light and heavy armour which isn't ideal (it's just until I get my enchantment high enough), but the Dragur Deathlords can kill me in literally 3 hits, and I'm Level 30!

[Danger Close]

What kind of character are you developing?
One handed warrior? Pure Mage? Sneaky assassin?

What armour do you have?
Iron, Steel, Elven, Glass?

What weapons?
One-handed, two-handed, bow, staff?

Have you got Sanguine Rose yet? It's a big help at lower levels.

[ags_rule]

Originally Posted by Danger Close

What kind of character are you developing?
One handed warrior? Pure Mage? Sneaky assassin?

What armour do you have?
Iron, Steel, Elven, Glass?

What weapons?
One-handed, two-handed, bow, staff?

Have you got Sanguine Rose yet? It's a big help at lower levels.

One Handed Warrior. That skill is quite high, over 60 I think.

Steel Helmet of Eminent Archery (Bows 30% damage)
Saviour's Hide (Magic Resistance 15%)
Gauntlets of the Old Gods (Bows 20% damage)
Boots of the Old Gods (20% harder to detect sneak)
Orcish Shield

All of those have been upgraded as far as my current smithing skill allows.

Weapons:

Mace of Molag Ball (about 55 damage)
Glass Bow (About 75 damage)

I'm finding that I can use close combat easily enough with weak/mid-level characters, but for bosses and pseudo-bosses the only tactic that works is firing the bow and running away, rinse and repeat for 5-10 minutes.

[Hotelier]

Having a set of matching armour boosts your damage protection a lot if you take the perks.
Also try enchanting a ring and a necklace with health boosts/improved weapon damage enchantments.

You can get much higher weapon damage rating by improving your weapons with smithing.

[ags_rule]

Yeah I want to go all light armour but I couldn't create an enchantment anywhere nearly powerful enough to match the 30% extra bow damage I'm getting from the steel helmet

[richie4eva]

Latest progress from me

Level 41
Killed an Elder Dragon for the first time a few days ago
Arch Mage of Winterhold
Companion quests complete so am therefore a Werewolf
Member of Thieves Guild
Just started the Dark Brotherhood Quests
Halfway through the Main Quest

Weapons - Glass Bow (Iron, Steel, Orcish, Glass and Elven arrows in inventory), Elven Sword, Glass Shield and Gauntlets, Glass One Handed Axe

Armour - Elven Light Helmet (Exquisite), Thieves Guild Armour

Boots - Elven Boots (Exquisite)


Got the Dawnguard expansion but haven't started the actual mission yet

[Danger Close]

Glass bow is a good weapon. If you haven't, you should enchant it with fire, frost or shock damage.
If light armour is the way you want to go. Elven is best and go with the Guilded Cuirass instead of standard. Until you can create Dragon armour anyway. (I personally don't like the look of either set of Dragon armour, so I stick to Daedric(heavy only, although I do wish they'd come up with some Daedric light armour)).

Create/stock up some soul gems, spare jewellery and spare sets of armour, leather is fairly inexpensive and plentiful for this.

Create some FORTIFY ENCHANTING potions and take before enchanting the spare armour and jewellery.

Enchant armour and jewellery with FORTIFY ALCHEMY and equip them.

Create some FORTIFY ENCHANTMENT potions. They should be stronger than the first set. Take these and enchant a new set with FORTIFY ALCHEMY. Again, these should be stronger.

Keep repeating these steps unitl they don't improve.

Create a FORTIGY SMITHING potion.
Enchant a set with FORTIFY SMITHING and equip these when improving or creating weapons.

You can sell your weaker sets of enchanted armour for a bit of cash and you have better weapons and improved your alchemy and enchanting skills.


You can also spam smithing, which a lot of people do. Easiest way is to get a tonne of iron ore and leather strips and start banging out iron daggers.

[Doomy]

Originally Posted by richie4eva

Latest progress from me

Level 41
Killed an Elder Dragon for the first time a few days ago
Arch Mage of Winterhold
Companion quests complete so am therefore a Werewolf
Member of Thieves Guild
Just started the Dark Brotherhood Quests
Halfway through the Main Quest

Weapons - Glass Bow (Iron, Steel, Orcish, Glass and Elven arrows in inventory), Elven Sword, Glass Shield and Gauntlets, Glass One Handed Axe

Armour - Elven Light Helmet (Exquisite), Thieves Guild Armour

Boots - Elven Boots (Exquisite)


Got the Dawnguard expansion but haven't started the actual mission yet

I would suggest that you consider starting a new character. At that level the DB, Main and especially the Dawnguard quest lines will be no challenge whatsoever, and are likely to dissapoint. The quests are never quite as much fun 2nd time through.

[ags_rule]

Unfortunately have ran into the dreaded Companions questline glitch

For those of you who are unaware, after Blood's Honour, the Companions are in a permanent state of mourning and the next quest does not start. This happens if you have already cleared Driftshade Refuge, which is common as it is the location of the Helm of Winterhold, a quest given by the Jarl.

Apparently on the PC it can be fixed thanks to the command console, but obviously that isn't in the PS3 version. So, does anyone know of a console fix?

[Danger Close]

Have you downloaded the latest update?

I don't remember this happening to me first time round. (pre updates)

[ags_rule]

Originally Posted by Danger Close

Have you downloaded the latest update?

I don't remember this happening to me first time round. (pre updates)

Yep, update makes no difference (1.5 was promoted as having a fix for it but it doesn't).

[davethorp]

New DLC announced: Hearthfire

Allows you to buy a plot of land and craft your own home which you can move your spouse into and even adopt kids.

Coming next week on XBox 360 for 400 points. Presumably it will appear approx 5-6 weeks later on PC if dawnguard was anything to go by and some time in 2067 for PS3

http://www.denofgeek.com/games/22474...-dlc-announced

EDIT - ok just spotted the other thread about the DLC

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1725788

[Si_Crewe]

Just thought I'd check in after deciding to try the Dawnguard DLC.

I swore I'd carry on playing Skyrim even after finishing all the quests but I lost interest and only just worked up the enthusiasm to try Dawnguard.

I'm not that impressed by it TBH.
It's nice to have a reason to be playing it again but, frankly, it doesn't seem to have anything challenging to offer to somebody who's already got themselves and all their housecarls tooled up with legendary daedric armour and weapons, has more money than god and a decent grasp of magic too.

I would never have believed it when I started playing but it really does seem like your character can outgrow the game.

Still I guess it's fun to have a reason to go back to it.

[jorrai]

Originally Posted by Si_Crewe

Just thought I'd check in after deciding to try the Dawnguard DLC.

I swore I'd carry on playing Skyrim even after finishing all the quests but I lost interest and only just worked up the enthusiasm to try Dawnguard.

I'm not that impressed by it TBH.
It's nice to have a reason to be playing it again but, frankly, it doesn't seem to have anything challenging to offer to somebody who's already got themselves and all their housecarls tooled up with legendary daedric armour and weapons, has more money than god and a decent grasp of magic too.

I would never have believed it when I started playing but it really does seem like your character can outgrow the game.

Still I guess it's fun to have a reason to go back to it.

I can't disagree with that, still love the game, but you reach a point where their is simply nothing to do and nothing can challenge you.

I hope the next Elder scrolls game has some type of co-op mode for questing with your friends, the MMO does not remotely interest me, but being able to join up with 2-3 friends would certainly make it more fun. Done enough MMO's to realise they are crap, even if done as well as they can be.

Whilst I'm here, is the new house building DLC any good? That interests me more than Dawnguard.

[Doomy]

Originally Posted by Si_Crewe

I would never have believed it when I started playing but it really does seem like your character can outgrow the game.

Still I guess it's fun to have a reason to go back to it.

I retire my characters between 30 (fighter) and 45 (Mage) because it gets too easy. If DG comes out for PS3, I will be starting again (probably twice)

[Danger Close]

I'm hoping the next DLC will have new bad guys and at higher levels.
It's something Borderlands did well, having the enemies level up along with you.
Or in Fallout 3 with the additions of Albino Radscorpions, the deadly Ghoul Reavers and those near immortal Hillbillies in Point Lookout.

[Si_Crewe]

Originally Posted by jorrai

I hope the next Elder scrolls game has some type of co-op mode for questing with your friends, the MMO does not remotely interest me, but being able to join up with 2-3 friends would certainly make it more fun. Done enough MMO's to realise they are crap, even if done as well as they can be.

Same here.

The missus loves all this "swords and sorcery" stuff and ends up peering over my shoulder while I'm playing Skyrim and it'd be great to be able to have a co-op mode to allow a bit of "tourism", even if it had all sorts of arbitrary restrictions like not allowing player characters to get too far apart etc.

Perhaps some kind of plot device where co-op players "souls" were linked together somehow so that if they get too far apart they begin to lose consciousness (and health) and if they don't get closer together quickly they die, a bit like what happened when you strayed past the outer edges of the map in Far Cry 2?

Originally Posted by Doomy

I retire my characters between 30 (fighter) and 45 (Mage) because it gets too easy. If DG comes out for PS3, I will be starting again (probably twice)

Yeah, I was thinking of doing the same thing when I started Dawnguard but I guess my curiosity got the better of me.

Thing is, Skyrim was loooong and some bits of it were rather boring/frustrating so by the end of it all I didn't really feel compelled to just start over.
If Dawnguard is short enough to leave me wanting more I probably WILL just restart the whole thing and play as a different character class.

[Hotelier]

Originally Posted by Danger Close

I'm hoping the next DLC will have new bad guys and at higher levels.
It's something Borderlands did well, having the enemies level up along with you.
Or in Fallout 3 with the additions of Albino Radscorpions, the deadly Ghoul Reavers and those near immortal Hillbillies in Point Lookout.

Yep, Overlords as well....
And who can forget the deadly deathclaws and legendary bloatfly in Fallout new vegas and DLC's .

But yes, some challenging enemys for later on in the game would be nice.....I much prefer the early stages of skyrim at the moment.

[Si_Crewe]

WARNING: May contain spoilers!

Hmmm, so, is that it for Dawnguard?

I ended up siding with the Vampires (cos Selene - erm, I mean Selana, of course - is a cute chick) did a few "go fetch" missions, killed a Snow Elf and Harkon then butchered the Dawnguard leaders and now all I seem to be getting is those rinse-and-repeat "go kill" missions.

The final (?) mission for the vampires, where you butcher the Dawnguard leaders, was so easy that it took, literally, about 30 seconds.
It was so easy that I ended up redoing it and just let Selana do it all by herself.

I also thought it was kinda clumsy the way they handled the whole vampire thing.
I found a guy who can cure vampirism ages ago and so, while playing Dawnguard, agreed to become a vampire so I could hang out with the cool kids then went and got myself cured, only to find that in subsequent missions you NEED to use vampire powers to complete them so I had to get Selana to reinfect me before I could complete the missions.
Way to waste a black soul gem.

What happened to all the stuff related to Harkon's grand scheme to extinguish the sun?
Does that all bite the dust if you decide to kill Harkon rather than giving him the magic bow?
I was kinda looking forward to having the choice of whether to do it or not.

Or am I supposed to do a certain number of "go kill" missions before something else starts?

[davethorp]

Think you mean Serana

You still spend a great deal of time with her if you side with the Dawnguard as she turns against her father just before you go get the moth priest and turns up at fort dawnguard and then the storyline proceeds pretty much as per siding with the vampires except you will have to slaughter all the vampires to get to Harkon for the final confrontation

I believe giving Harkon the bow will still trigger the final confrontation with him with the downshot that you will not be able to use the bow against Harkon and will have to loot it back off his corpse once you have killed him. Worth mentioning that you can use the bow to blot out the sun for a day if you treat Elven Arrows with Serana's blood and then fire a shot at the sun

The main storyline finishes once Harkon is defeated although whichever faction you sided with will still have radiant quests

[Doomy]

I while away the time waiting in vain for PS3 Dawnguard, I tried a new Hardcore style. DiD (Dead is Dead)

You play as normal, but when you die, NO RELOAD. Really heightens the tension and was a welcome relief to some of the other Hardcore styles (no crafting, no fast travel, eat&sleep).

Managed to get my Illusionist up to level 15 before seeing the fatal message "Giant is too powerful for Calm" followed very shortly after by reaching orbit. Serves me right for getting cocky by ignoring my lost follower and trying to get the Giant to take out a chasing Dragon. Ho hum, was fun though, would recommend this style of Hardcore to those who may be a little jaded.

[Hotelier]

Yes, playing games with the 'no restarts' rule really changes a game and makes it such a challenge. Its not something id do on every game, i have short patience and get 'game rage' easily...but sometimes, with a game ive played to death and know very well..(fallout 3 for eg) I like the no restart style...freshens up the game no end

[Si_Crewe]

Originally Posted by Hotelier

Yes, playing games with the 'no restarts' rule really changes a game and makes it such a challenge. Its not something id do on every game, i have short patience and get 'game rage' easily...but sometimes, with a game ive played to death and know very well..(fallout 3 for eg) I like the no restart style...freshens up the game no end

I don't think it really needs to be that big a deal TBH.

What I mean is, when you're a new player to a game you simply don't know the potential danger of an opponent.
In real life, of course, you wouldn't be the only person attempting to fight with the baddies so you'd be able to watch as your comrades got slaughtered or, at least, you'd hear stories about how such-and-such a thing isn't to be messed with.

In a game, of course, the whole world is going to hell and everybody else is minding their own business and it's always up to the player to jump in and sort it out.

Because of that dynamic, because the only way to discover the level of danger of an opponent is for the player to actually jump in and engage them, I don't think respawning is terribly unfair.

The point, however, is that in a game like Skyrim, once you HAVE psent time with it and you know what creatures present the biggest threats, the lack of respawn isn't really a big issue because the player already HAS the knowledge about which opponents are to be treated with respect and, most likely, you'll also know of tactics that can beat them and you'll be aware of the value of setting things up to replenish your health either quickly or automatically.

I played through Dawnguard as a vampire without dying or even coming close to it. It was slightly harder as a human but not much.

Must say, I've just restarted it, for yucks, and it's kinda strange going back to being weak and pathetic but that disadvantage is mostly offset by the knowledge that I already have and the understanding of the optimal way the game can be played.

Kinda reminds me of the old Ghost Recon games, where the player would die after taking a single shot.
It was "realistic" insofar as the amount of health you had but, in the end, it just made the game like a very pretty version of the old "simon" electronic game, where winning just meant remembering what to do next.
Do it right and you progress, do it wrong and you get to do it over.

Fortunately, Skyrim's open-world means that a player isn't compelled to do anything at a specific time in order to progress so, once you are aware of how hard things are going to be, you can just sort of potter about, training your character to the required level before progressing.

[Danger Close]

Why not try playing without adding any perks. Or using the best equipment?

I have one character that has no perks in any of the offensive or defensive skill trees. Only wears light armour and only uses middle of the road weapons - no ebony, deadric of dragon. And no enchantments.
I'm finding it's more of challenge that way. My lvl 79 character can go toe-to-toe with any enemy and come out with hardly a scratch.