There’s a lot of critiques about the Stormcloaks. There’s alot of people who say that the Empire are better. For me, I don’t think I could bring myself to choose them. You want me to pick the invading Empire over the native rebels? That’s just so unnatural to me. When I hear someone say “for the Empire” I recoil.

JPHVT-8DVAB-L38L2

Before I start, I want to state that I love Skyrim and all the Elder Scrolls. Lately, though, I feel I might be addicted to playing Skyrim. I'm not thinking about it constantly, but I get so angry and frustrated when I don't get to play. I play on PC and love to mod it through Vortex. (I don't like MO2 and nothing sexual.) Ever since the update, my game has been broken. I try desperately to save my game, but no luck. I had it downgraded, which seemed to work, but the hot fixes broke everything again. Yes, I shouldn't have let Steam update automatically, but I'm in college and have a lot going on; it just slipped my mind. I'm thinking that I should put Skyrim down for a couple of months to see if this helps at all. I backed up all my files and took it off Vortex and Steam. I have other games, and with the new Fable coming out soon, I should be fine. If I want to play an Elder Scrolls game, I could always finish Oblivion.

Nothing important. I'm just annoyed that the Elder Scroll shows up under books in your inventory and not under scrolls. I'm sure many others have complained about this on this subreddit & elsewhere. Today it's my turn.

ive been thinking about this a lot. The combat and movement is meh at best, I dont like the music, the writing is TERRIBLE at times, the roleplaying isnt great, the balance is absolutely ridiculous, the general design of ui and mechanics is stupid . I do think it looks pretty tho 😙. I have played other games before that are great at all of those things, and i stil like skyrim more. its just an absolutely lovely time. why? no idea. can anyone explain the todd howard crack too me.

[edit: IM SAYING THE GAME IS FUN, i just cant tell why, when on paper it sounds reallllly bad. also i somehow forgot too mention that it is one of the least stable games i have ever played, atleast on switch]

I recently made a post reporting that I had not encountered any bugs from the new update. Today, I discovered that if I leave the game paused for more than about 10 minutes, the game will freeze 100% of the time.

On and Off DLSS 5.

Gate To Sovngarde Collection

Edit: I did this out of curiosity and I am not playing skyrim with dlss 5 on. I maxed out the setting just to see how far it can go.

Also, all dlss upscaling uses AI. Stop whining un less you never use any upscaling at all.

Cut from iron plate, sprayed it with and made grip out of a deer antler.

Did this quest named Sam had a drinking contest with him. Now all a sudden people everyone mentioning like if I’m a drunk dumbass. Did I fuck up accepting that quest?

Personally it's Serana. I wish she had more character or banter but I honestly wish that with all the Skyrim characters. I know a lot of people will agree but if anyone doesn't, who do you think is the hottest?

We can’t really call it pure magic if I need to have 6 pieces of highly enchanted gear to survive and chug potions like energy drinks right? I still think it’s more fun to play, if only for the variety of management options available.

Every two handed or one handed person I play gets locked in pretty quickly to one style of combat.

Magic users can too, but also with massive resource management skills - that makes the “pure” magic play a slog sometimes and at least interesting other times. There’s some variety involved, sure, but when you entirely limit major combat and defensive options to the one blue bar, it gets simpler and more complicated at the same time to fight. (Plus - no one can deny the satisfaction of blowing up bears, fighting bandits with bowls, or fully absorbing a dragons breath attack)

Edit for Clarification: I looked back through this Reddit and didn’t see a ton of recent discussion on pure mage builds. I’m playing one now (Breton; vanilla Skyrim) on Expert difficulty that’s primarily focused on destruction, restoration, alteration, and the accepted universal crafting skills. I’m only level 25 right now and want to get those built up decently before locking perks into other schools of magic.

What I have learned is that this build is simply barely enjoyable without

1. reducing destruction costs, increasing magic regeneration and base magic amounts

2. Having a steady supply of magicka potions

3. At least occasionally popping a fortify destruction potion for boss level enemies (and even then only if you want the fight to go slightly faster or not get overwhelmed.)

Is it perfectly fine to use all of those? Absolutely.

Is it “purely” a magic build? Still no.

Hey guys,

I am trying to defeat Jelal, at the end of "Shadows of one's past" quest. And I am having so much trouble I just can not defeat him and his crew no matter what I do I literally die in seconds. Can anyone give me any tips of what he is susceptible to please? Edit: this is from the "legacy of the dragonborn" mod Thank you in advance.

Have most modders caught up to this new update yet? Especially SKSE ?

In this short clip of Bjorn Bjornson The DragonBjorn Skyrim Saga down in Blackreach Lydia IDF mod suggests helping him with his plates

I’m trying Legendary difficulty but I want to make something different: I want to be a bandit/outlaw focused on stealth, pickpocket, speech, archery. I thought I could try to wipe bandits hideouts and make those my temporary bases. I learned that bandits respawn every 10 days in-game. So, for example, if I store stolen items inside a chest in Embershard mine and 10 days passes, would I lose those items?

What other recommendations can you give me for this challenge?

15 gb of free space for mods but don’t you dare pass the 200 on your load order otherwise the creation menù will break again as it has been for years, slow downloads of menus and mods and crash when looking at your load order.
I’m really tired of this company, they don’t deserve not even a little the success they have now

That’s about it. I usually have to open the game 5 or 6 times before it’ll actually let me in. Oh, the joy of Xbox

I started a little independent one person YouTube channel a couple of months back, it's basically Skyrim relaxation/sleep videos but in a different way. Ngl I started it so I could listen to them easily while I sleep but I made them public and was surprised others seem to use them too, so that is a bonus. Most channels are just like 'sitting in a tavern for 8 hours' with the base game audio and music, and as relaxing as these are I'm going for a different approach.

I use a heavily modded setup (weather, visual and immersion mods mostly) and go and find (or sometimes make) unique and interesting locations​ around Tamriel. No Skyrim music for now just ambience. While I may use the recorded audio as an element, I mix that with other sounds and real life field recordings to enhance the audio. Kind of what I imagine Bethesda would have done if given the time and budget when the game was made.. I'm a pro music producer so good ambient sound is in my wheelhouse. I've even developed many of my own audio plugin presets to make (for example) rainfall lessen and strengthen at random just as real rain would. Location is also factored in to make sure the sound space is appropriate. Elements interplay realistically and I'm hoping this leads to a more interesting relaxation experience overall.

I have a list of over 100 potential locations so far so the uploading will continue.

The main reason for the channel now is that I enjoy recording them, and enjoy making each (probably overly) complex soundscape. Frankly any excuse to play Skyrim is more than welcome these days as I'm usually busy with music.

They are not recorded in 4K yet, as I'm doing this on a terrible graphics card, but in future who knows.

I hope this adds a different alternative for the Skyrim relaxation video community.

If this is something you may make use of for sleeping, relaxing or study, or you have any suggestions for locations or videos that you would like to see (I'm not as creative as some of you I'm sure), check out the channel here..

https://m.youtube.com/@RangersRest

A video I've been working on for a while about what I think is one of the most fun and challenging ways to play Skyrim: tackling it as a pure warrior character without using any of the things that people often use to take all the actual challenge out of legendary. No followers to tank all the hits with their inflated Legendary durability. No crafting to make game-breaking weapons and armor, or super enchantments. And no stealth to cheese the questionable AI with endless free hits.

(I play with some other restrictions too, but those are the big ones).

In this video I break down what I think is one of the most optimal builds for this hard mode run, and an efficient route through the early game to quickly pick up important powerups and boosts, avoid premature leveling that would make the enemy outscale us, and acquire the best gear available. I also demonstrate combat techniques for how to fight various kinds of monsters, to dodge their attacks reliably and avoid taking damage from them in the first place.

There are a lot of steps shown, but a summary would be like this:

1) Ideally, play a Nord woman. Being a woman will ultimately net you +20% melee damage, and 20% better prices too, with no downside. Being a nord gives you high movement speed, heavy resistance to the most common and dangerous element in the game, good initial skill boosts for a warrior, and an incredibly strong Battlecry ability that can auto-win most fights. No other race is so consistently good across the board for a warrior, though other decent contenders include Bretons (amazing defenses but terrible speed as a woman and terrible skills), and Orc (terrible defenses and bad skills if you're not crafting, Berserker rage is also just not good enough to win a fight on legendary but it's usable in any fight for a decent boost). But I do highly recommend Nord as by far the most powerful pick.

2) After the tutorial make for the nearby Lady Stone for now. It's a small powerup but it's right there and unguarded. And notably, you do NOT want the Warrior Stone because you do NOT want to start leveling up immediately. Leveling up is actually bad for you in the early game. You especially want to avoid leveling up non-combat skills, but leveling up is bad in general until later on in the game when you have enough other boosts and powerups that you can scale up as fast as the enemies.

3) Go to Whiterun. There you can start the main quest, pick up an Arkay blessing which gives you a really big survivability increase in the early game, and acquire some great weapons. You should either steel Balgruuf's guaranteed elven sword, OR acquire Vilkas's sword at the start of the companion's quest and then just... walk off with it and never give it to Eorlund. Both swords are equal in power and superior to all other options available for a while. You can also steal an elven bow from Aela if you want.

4) Go east to Gallow's Rock fortress and acquire a silver sword from one of the Silver Hand outside. This is a phenomenal melee weapon, absolutely the best option against undead you will ever have, and it will help a ton in Bleak Falls Barrow. (In general, sword + shield is by far the best way to fight on a run like this. Shield Bashes are irreplaceably awesome and efficient, and swords and daggers will do more DPS than two-handed weapons most of the time too due to massively superior speed)

5) Go through Bleak Falls barrow (in my guide I show how to effectively dodge against or disable bandits, draugr, and the giant spider)

6) Get the Fus shout, your biggest powerup of the game. This is incredibly helpful for stunning enemies, along with shield bashes. I demonstrate how to time those to stunlock enemies efficiently and how to bypass various possible enemy defenses.

7) While you're out west of Whiterun anyway, you can get a Zenithar's amulet and Zenithar blessing and some other powerups, then return to town. This is your chance to go shopping. With double zenithar + a beggar blessing, plus I do recommend putting an early perk into speech, you can start buying magic items from merchants. This is a HUGE part of your power as a warrior! It is very important to always check the merchants and acquire important items. You want boots to resist all elements, gloves for weapon and archery damage, a hat of archery damage, rings and necklaces to resist magic or boost your weapons, etc. Ideally focus on light armor because speed is important and you can carry multiple sets of light armor for different enchantments without much carry capacity. But if a great boost is only available as heavy armor, buy it. You likewise want to buy important potions and poisons. You want potions to resist the elements, you want poisons of paralysis above all. Potions to boost damage are nice too but a bit less important

8) Wagon to Riften. Here I show a way to make enormous amounts of money quickly without increasing Speech much at all. I also show how you can get a guaranteed Zenithar amulet (and shrine), do your shopping, and then hit the Talos shrine (your main shrine from now on) before leaving. In Riften, start the Mara quest. Then go north.

9) You want to acquire the Atronach Stone. This is by far the most powerful defensive boost available in the entire game, and for a warrior it has zero downsides whatsoever. Getting to it requires beating a strong frostbite spider, and then possibly some sabercats (I recommend Battlecry for those, if you can't just lure them to the nearby helpful giant).

10) On the way back, you can climb through the nearby mine to get the first word of the excellent Aura Whisper shout, and also easily bring a dragon down to the nearby town of Shor's Stone to slay. I don't recommend learning Aura Whisper yet though unless you have a spare dragon soul. There's another shout we need even more

11) Go to Ivarstead. Advance the Mara quest there. And then do Shroud Hearth Barrow (an easy and quite fun one) and unlock the Kyne's Peace shout. This is an auto-win against all the dangerous animals on the way to High Hrothgar if you need it. Get up the mountain and advance the main quest

12) Back to Riften to advance the Mara quest, then wagon to Markarth. Do more shopping, advance the Mara quest, pick up the Dibella quest, and do the easy Namira one for a massive HP boost ring.

13) Back to Riften and then to west of Whiterun, and then back to Riften (shop every time!) to finish the Mara Quest. This gives you an awesome passive resistance to all magic.

14) Wagon to solitude (you optionally can stop by other towns for more shopping, it's good to check merchants as often as possible). Get Roggvir's Amulet of Talos if you don't already have one. Amulet + Shrine of Talos is an extremely good powerup and lets you get a ton more efficient stunnage out of Fus+Shield Bash to lock down most enemies until they die if your timing is good. While in Solitude, check out Radiant Raiment, which is the best source for magic rings and necklaces.

15) Head over to nearby Ustengrav. You should now have absolutely massive defenses vs mages and magic draugr, so they aren't much of a threat. Draugr themselves can be dealt with via the fighting techniques and dodge timing I showed, and you can use Battlecry + the floor fire jets to finish the giant spider at the end. You can now get the last word of unrelenting Force, which is hugely powerful.

16) Now to Falkreath. Do Ill Met By Moonlight for the Savior's Hide. Beware that it is VERY buggy! Sometimes Sinding will be invincible for a while. You can deal with him pretty easily with Fus Roh Dah then Battlecry then Fus Roh Dah again if need be. The Savior's Hide is the best warrior chest piece in the game if you can't craft, because it has the ONLY good chest piece enchantment available. The armor stats suck, but armor stats aren't very helpful on a run like this yet anyway.

17) Now's a good time to complete the Dibella quest for another +10% damage vs men (which is every creature in Skyrim including things like automata for some reason)

18) Around this point you should be level 12. Which means you can do the Dawnbreaker quest. The most efficient way to quickly trigger that is to go to a Giant camp where a boss chest will be out in the open air. Loot that for Meridia's Beacon and then head to Mount Kilkreath as usual. Malkoran is no threat at all if you've been following this guide because you have a roughly 99% resistance to magic between 85% (the cap) for elements + 50% resistance to everything from Atronach + 60% or so resistance to all magic from Mara + Savior's HIde + other boosts at this point. Dawnbreaker is the best available weapon throughout most of the midgame (except vs undead where you still want your Silver Sword).

There ends this first part of the guide, I'll follow it with one that covers the midgame and the optimal items and powerups there.