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Sunday 29 January 2012

Gamingheap Special: SKYRIM - Part 4

 Gamingheap Special: SKYRIM 

Part 4


Well, well I seem to have sort of ditched writing these specials up for some reason. Luckily right now I'm going through another Skyrim phase so I've decided to update this series! I'm sure you're happy to know :)

Plundering many dungeons, caves and forts and slaying any beasts that stand in my path I have amassed a small fortune of 40,000 gold - unfortunately not enough for the 'Golden Touch' trophy which requires 100,000 gold. I've begun to dabble in alchemy and have made several trips out to the forests and highlands of Skyrim to pick mountain flowers and find other natural alchemy ingredients. Making potions and poisons with alchemy is not only beneficial in battle but brewing those concoctions also fetches a pretty penny at any store. My ingredient collection isn't the only collection I have either! I have well over 100 books all retrieved (or stolen!) from the clean shelves of the court-mages to the dusty, cobweb covered shelves of the deepest dungeons. I have read only a handful of these books and I have to say, they are definitely one of the most interesting and enjoying parts of the game! Some books tell stories, others describe Skyrim's many wild beasts and of course there are the books that tell the lore of the elder scrolls series. I will probably sit down one weekend and read them all just for the full experience. I also have a mean cheese collection!

I have attempted several times now to decorate my manor house, but with no avail! It takes a heck of a long time to actually get the item you want to sit right on a table and then when it does you either end up knocking it off or it will be on the floor the next time you enter your house due to an unfortunate glitch. One thing that did end up alright however is a large tray in the basement of my home filled to the brim with valuable stones (emeralds, amethysts, garnets etc.).

In combat terms my bow skill is now 100. Because of this I have decided to switch to one-handed combat to further vary my fighting ability. My favourite combat style at the moment is a sword or dagger in one hand and a spell in the other (usually Magelight so I can send an orb forward to light my path if it is dark). I have done a few more quests and killed a lot more dragons too! One highlight I must mention is when I found my first dragon priest - Krosis - and after a tough battle managed to loot its mask which gives me +20 alchemy, lockpicking and bow skills. Other quests included obtaining daedric artifacts such as mehrunes dagger which has a chance to one-hit kill any enemy. One particular quest saw me scale a tower filled with witches and hagravens with a priest and then kill the master witch and looting a unique fire staff from her.

I will probably get around to doing a proper review on this game sometime this week or next - I warn you, it will be a hell of a long review! Yes, I'm having a heaven (or should I say Sovemgarde?) of a time with Skyrim and today I finally hit my 100th hour and I'm not looking to stop now!
How's Skyrim going for you?

4 comments:

Matt Sainsbury said...

Nice piece!

I have to ask - have you played any of the previous Elder Scrolls games? I'm interested to see how someone who likes Skyrim this much stacks them up.

I've plugged about 70 hours into Skyrim, and I put it about 3rd in my personal list of Elder Scrolls games. It's really, really, good, but Morrowind will always be my favourite :)

I discovered your blog from your post on Chalgyr's site. I really like your stuff - I've added you to the friends list at www.digitallydownloaded.net

You'll see me around a lot in the future :)

Chalgyr said...

Glad you two 'found' one another through my site. The last 2 weeks I've really made an effort to go out and find a lot more like-minded gaming sites and blogs to try and get some conversations going. Glad to see it seems to be working as I know a few others have linked up now through my site too!

Also? Great article - looking forward to your full review.

Skyrim came out amidst several other big releases, so I haven't given it nearly the time I have wanted to yet. Something about the Bethesda games - I always seem to start off slow in Oblivion, or Fallout and now Skyrim, but I wind up loving them and in the end wind up spending 100+ hours on them. I'm enjoying the game, but probably only have about 25 hours into it so far, so I have a lot of discovery ahead of me.

Oli said...

Thanks for the nice comments guys, very nice of you to drop by and leave your views!

@GamesAndBiz Yes I have played Oblivion and I absolutely loved it - I have never played Morrowind but I may purchase it just for the fun of it soon!

I think Skyrim is very good and a wondrous achievement by bethesda, but I have to say, I think I'm always going to prefer Oblivon :)

Chalgyr said...

I'm torn at this point. I never played Morrowind so I can't levy an opinion there - but Oblivion was a game that took me quite a while to get into. Once I did however, I played the heck out of it and easily logged 100+ hours. There's definitely a soft spot for me in that title. That said? There are some definite advantages technically with Skyrim I am appreciating so far as well.

And really, there's a sort of thrill that I always got with Oblivion when the environment changes and you realized you were stumbling onto an Oblivion gate that the random dragons doesn't QUITE hit with me, but both experiences outweigh anything I've ever stumbled onto within the Fallout titles.