• Tag Archives Elder Scrolls
  • ENDERAL: FORGOTTEN STORIES – Conclusion

    I wanted to clear the entire map before giving up, but the events of the Angel main quest just encapsulated everything wrong with the Mod. Specifically: The railroading. For a work that seems to champion freeform exploration, it’s insanely rigid about quest progression to the point that items or enemies tied to quests simply don’t exist until the proper queststate is triggered.

    Still, I did clear ~most~ of the map (everything except Thalgard and the locations in the north-northeast part of Frostcliff Mountains) and got to level 55 so can say a few things for sure.

    • – Marksmanship is basically worthless without Stealth, and even then you’re going to need a backup plan for the fights you can’t sneak in.
    • Phasmalism is a mixed bag. It helped keep enemies off me as an archer, but seems like it would better support a melee character since the souls are pretty fragile.
    • – I suggest not bothering to explore any area quests don’t send you to, unless they contain a specific item you need or you’re a completionist. And if you are one, then you’ll absolutely want to install the Tracking Tool Mod.
    • – If you do want to explore everything the general area order is:
      Suncoast/Heartland/Farmer Coast -> West Cliff -> King’s Pass -> Fogville/Whisperwood ->
      Goldenforst -> Dark Valley/Crystal Forest -> Desert -> Frostcliff -> Thalgard.
    • – Plan to max out 3 Memory trees, 3 Combat Skills, and 2-3 Crafting Skills.
    • – For Combat Skills there’s not much point in raising the Magic ones over 90 (including the Knowledge bonus).
    • – Some Crafting Skills have an optimal point to stop raising them (assuming no racial bonus):
      25 Lockpick, 47-65 Rhetoric & 61-70 Sleight of Hand (depending on if you can craft the Venturer gear or not), and 56-75-100 Handicraft (depending on if you care about enhancement and find the ring)
    • – Talk to every named NPC, as several of them have quests or Knowledge prompts.
    • – Don’t bother looting anything with a Value/Weight Ratio under 20 unless you need it for a crafting recipe.

  • ENDERAL: FORGOTTEN STORIES

    In the mood to play something like Skyrim I was scanning through GOG’s library when I stumbled across the sequel to Nehrim. How did they get a total conversion Mod listed like a stand-alone game? I have no idea, but it certainly makes installation a breeze.

    While I remember Nehrim feeling significantly different gameplay-wise from Oblivion, Enderal is only really different where the leveling system is concerned. Basically it’s ‘just’ Skyrim with the leveling and exploration aspects of the Gothic series. Which is to say you level by killing things (which are not level-scaled) and completing quests while being able to find all sorts of hidden things hand-placed around the world and location maps. None of which so far have felt similar. The magic, perk system, skill usage, and combat are all the same (though there are some new perks).

    So far, with the Sun Coast through King’s Pass areas cleared as a stealth ranged build with the Ghostblade affinity, it’s just what I was looking for… though I strongly suspect I’ll burn out before completing it.


  • ESO – 2 Month Mark

    With the second month of ESO+ having just expired, it seems like a good as time as any to take a break from the game to focus on some other stuff.

    At this point I’ve cleared all content up through the Summerset chapter (apart from the Trials, which I’ve decided to skip due to lack of automated matchmaking, and Blackrose Prison), maxed out all weapon, armor, crafting, guild, & world skill lines (besides werewolf), acquired all pack/bank slots, and reached Champion Level 659.

    Only thing I regret is not getting into the card game earlier (currently only rank 5). It gives so, so many crafting materials as rewards for playing it’s not even funny; legendary ones can even show up in the consolation prize. Just a massive missed opportunity there.

    I’ll probably go back sometime after FFXIV‘s next major patch to finish up the remaining story chapters, though I don’t think this will be a game I’ll be playing long-term. There’s a certain lack of variety that comes from only being able to slot 5 abilities at a time, the trading system is just flat-out horrific, and it kind of pisses me off how incredibly unbalanced the PvP situation is.


  • The Elder Scrolls -ONLINE-

    Picked this game up on a whim a little over a week ago after seeing it mentioned a new expansion was just released and noticing it had no monthly fees.

    The good news, for fans of the series anyway, is it plays exactly like a single-player Elder Scrolls game. The quests you can pick up are on par with those games as well rather than the expected ‘go here and kill/collect x’, a significant number of them with actual roleplaying choices.

    The bad news is that since it doesn’t have a mandatory monthly fee, it’s completely inundated with microtransactions. You’ll be rather frequently pressured to buy things like lootboxes and quality of life upgrades (like extra build slots, more inventory space, or portable shops) with real money. The small silver lining there is that the game’s optional monthly fee (ESO+) gives you an equivalent amount of premium currency to spend on that stuff in addition to its normal benefits.

    Speaking of, I strongly suggest grabbing at least one month’s worth of ESO+ if you end up enjoying the start of the game. There’s one main reason for this: The Crafting Bag. This provides infinite storage for all crafting materials. It will be absolutely necessary until you’ve gotten enough money to expand your inventory and bank space a decent amount. Access to all optional DLC is certainly nice, but not necessary at the start (once you’ve gotten to max loot drop level it’s a different story however).

    Aside from that, new players should also pick up the two free DLC immediately (Imperial City and Armory) and place the Armory item in your starter apartment. This item, if used correctly, will provide free character resets (which normally cost thousands of gold). While you only get two slots by default (getting more requires paying real money), that’s enough to make the first slot a ‘blank’ one with no skills/attributes learned while the second one can be whatever. I’d personally suggest a dedicated crafting build.

    Assuming you picked up the full game rather than just the ‘basic’ version (and you should’ve, since it costs more to upgrade later) another good thing to immediately do is pick up the Excavation skill and join the Psijic Order. The former because that’s the only way to get Mythic items and you’ll want to start leveling it immediately, and the latter because it will both help with leveling Excavation and grants access to the various Psijic caches scattered about (you should pick up the Thieves’ Guild skill line as well, if you decided to grab ESO+, for a similar reason).

    So. That’s all the fun stuff out of the way. Now the issues, of which for me at least there are mainly two:

    • 1) The player trading system is garbage. You need a third party tool/website to find anything, and you can’t sell anything unless you’re in a player-run guild (with at least 50 people) who’s paid to have a merchant spot somewhere.
    • 2) Researching traits for crafting takes forever. We’re talking days once you get to the fourth trait or so… presumably so they can sell more research boost microtransactions.

  • Skyrim Modding – Dynamic Loot

    I find myself in a curious predicament. Basically, I find myself in the role of the “idea guy”. I have what seems like a rock-solid idea, yet am not able to personally implement it… it’s a somewhat distressing situation.

    The issue is this:

    Normally if I get a modding idea I simply fire up the relevant modding utility and make it. In this particular instance though I seem to be totally disinclined to learn how Skyrim’s scripting language differs from Oblivion’s (never even mind the fact that I haven’t dealt with Oblivion in what feels like decades). Even if I were interested in figuring it out, it would require using a Toolset and I pathologically avoid Bethesda-made Toolsets because they tend to be clunky messes for the most part. So I’m doubly stuck and it’s eating at me something fierce.

    What’s the idea? The idea is simplicity itself:

    Quite some time ago someone made a Dynamic Loot Mod for Skyrim that created dynamically enchanted weapons/armor on enemies. They did this by making a ton of pre-enchanted ‘blueprints’. That method is incredibly inefficient and introduces all sorts of continuity issues if used with any sort of weapon/armor rebalancing Mod. What I want to do is use a method similar to that used over in the Dynamic Weapon Speed Mod, switching out the ‘change the speed’ bit for ‘add enchantment x’. That way anytime the base unenchanted version of an item is spawned it would get dynamically enchanted (all the default generically enchanted weapons would be replaced by the unenchanted version through TES5Edit’s “Change FormID” functionality).

    This should not require much effort, which raises the question of why hasn’t it been done yet (though perhaps it has, as I’ve only checked Google and Nexus). Can you not add enchantments to weapons via quest or item-based scripts? The default enchanter obviously uses a script to add them and the Enchantment Shouts Mod appears to add enchantments on the fly… so that doesn’t seem to be the case.

    Maybe it’ll eventually bug me enough that I’ll actually investigate some day. It’s more likely I’ll just fix the bugs in the existing Dynamic Loot Mod (such as its Orcish Shield templates using the Draugr Boots item values) and then forget about it though, as Skyrim angers me to the point that I have little desire to actually play it.

    —————-
    UPDATE
    —————-

    So yeah, I made that patch for Dynamic Loot after all. Not going to bother uploading it to Nexus because I’m lazy.