According to raptr I have 374 hrs invested in Skyrim and 25 out of 50 trophies. Haven't played the game in 2 months though.

374?! I raped the bitch and only did 180. 50 achievements, too

You used a playguide though. I do a lot of wandering and self-exploring, that I think I miss out on some of the convos since when I finally meet the person, I've already got their quest item in my inventory.

Only for the Ovlivion Walker one, dude. (and I found over half of the artifacts by myself.)

I'm a hardcore wanderer, too

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Originally Posted by meldavid

Dubz is right though that the game mechanics never really change from temple to temple, from cave to cave, whether you are fighting a dragon or a draugr.

If it were a Zelda game, you would have had loads of fun distractions like horse-racing, horseback archery and swordery, and boss battles that are a puzzle figuring out how to defeat. Then you would have temples with complex puzzles that went beyond cryptic matching of symbols, like dropping a statue from several stories above, so that you could drag it onto a switch, or using your shield to reflect sunlight onto a magical switch, and you actually had to survey each room for clues, rather than useless loot. This is what gave each temple variety and fun to explore.

Mounted combat is the headline addition in Skyrim update 1.6, due out on PC and consoles soon.
As detailed on the Bethesda Blog, the patch will allow both ranged and melee combat on horseback.
Update 1.6 also brings with it a number of bug fixes and stability tweaks. PC users can try it out now in Steam beta, though a final release date has not yet been set.
Here's the change log in full:
New features:

• Mounted Combat

Bug fixes:

• General stability and memory optimisations
  
• General AI pathfinding optimizations and bug fixes
  
• Optimisations and crash fixes for data leaks
  
• Fixed rare crash with lighting
  
• Fixed crashes related to loading and saving games
  
• Fixed crash with summoned creatures/NPCs
  
• Fixed rare issue where saves would be corrupted
  
• Improved logic for when ranged kill cams are played
  
• Fixed issue with ranged kill cams while killing a dragon
  
• Fixed rare issue with certain ranged kill cams not playing properly
  
• Fixed issue with nirnroot lighting not properly cleaning up
  
• Fixed issue where bow damage was being calculated incorrectly
  
• Fixed rare problem with werewolf kill moves would not finish animating properly
  
• In "The Break of Dawn" fixed rare issue where Meridia's Beacon would disappear from player's inventory
  
• Fixed occasional issue where followers would disappear after player pays off a bounty after committing a crime
  
• Fixed issue where certain creatures and NPCs would fail to respawn properly
  
• Fixed rare issue with dialogue subtitles not displaying properly
  
• Fixed issue with water appearing blurry when loading a saved game after creating a save underwater
  
• Fixed issue where map cursor would occasionally disappear after closing a message box with Kinect enabled (Xbox 360)
  
• Fixed rare issue with shouts only performing the first level and not other unlocked levels with Kinect enabled (Xbox 360)
  
• Fixed issue where the shout buttons would stop working properly if users mashed LB and RB during cooldown with Kinect enabled (Xbox 360)

About fucking time.

I think you meant to say,

"Wow the developer is still releasing free content patches for the game"

Hopefully you can throw fireballs from horseback

What Chippie said.

One day I'll go back and finish this. One day.

Haha same!

Take heart in the fact that it's actually impossible to finish

Haha, at least I should finish the main quest line.

Which reminds me: I'd prefer it if the UI indicated the difference between set quests and generated quests. It's not that I don't mind doing the generated stuff, I'd just like to know what is, erm, 'hand-crafted' one-time content and what is filler.

you'd be pretty disappointed if you found out half the filler stuff was more fun than the 'hand-crafted' stuff

i'm so proud of myself.
i have killed 4 dragons and a couple bears and found some treasure.

usually my man plays it but i was dieing to finish a particular quest which was going too slow.

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That's really well done. A T-Rex addition would indeed be awesome.

ERECTION!

Dawnguard expansion!

Quote:

The main quest has two different tracks, one for Vampire Lord and one for Dawnguard.

Dawnguard will offer 10-20 hours of gameplay, depending on how you play.

Even though the two story tracks are separate, they’ll come together at various key points in the story. “Whatever the Macguffin is,” Howard told me, “both sides come together around that point, and then it diverges afterwards.

The demo I played was partway into the Vampire Lord track. The plot involved helping a woman vampire named Serana find her mother, Valerica, who had fled Tamriel to a plane of Oblivion called “Soul Cairn”. We performed a ritual to open a portal to Soul Cairn.
Serana lives in a castle called Castle Volkhar, which is located in a previously inaccessable region of the far northwest corner of the map, near Icewater Jetty.

Serana and Valerica are both caught up in a much larger story involving pure vampires that followed Molag Bal. Those vampires are called the “Daughters of Coldharbor”.

There is at least one new dragon, named Durnivhiir. (Though I’m pretty sure it’s not spelled that way? Anyway, he’s a dragon. I didn’t meet him.)

Soul Cairn itself is a hefty chunk of land and feels somewhat similar to the late-stage realm you visit in the main quest of Skyrim, only much bigger. There are multiple castles and fortresses around, and things are shadowy and mysterious.

The plot involves an Elder Scroll. Yes! Another quest that directly involves an Elder Scroll!

Soul Cairn is but one of at least two large new landmasses in the game. However, the story will also play out across the Skyrim we all know and love, which is really cool. Said Howard, “You’re still going to be exploring the landmass that came with the main game, and then, I want to avoid quantifying, but there are at least two very large new areas. The Soul Cairn is one of them.”

The Vampire Lord works much like a werewolf in the main game — you can trigger the transformation with the right shoulder-button, and transform back at any time.

Once you’re a Vampire Lord, you no longer have access to your inventory items and can only use Vampire Lord abilities. The camera goes to third-person, as well, just like when you’re a werewolf.

The Vampire Lord’s abilities include Raise Dead, a spell that presumably raises dead enemies and has them fight for you, Summon Gargoyle, which (duh!) summons a gargoyle to fight alongside you, Vampiric Grip, which lets you grab and throw enemies, Vampire’s sight, which is basically night-vision, and the best one…

BATS. Maybe I’ve mentioned that you can blast around as a cloud of bats? Because you totally can. Also, there’s a second ability that lets you surround yourself with a cloud of vampire bats that damage your foes. Sort of like any other area-attack, only with bats and therefore superior in every way.

The Vampire Lord also has his own skill tree, which includes a number of abilities centred around regenerating health and stamina by killing and sucking blood.

Two of the cooler-looking high-level Vampire Lord abilities include Mist Form, which lets you become intangible mist as you regenerate your health and stamina, and Supernatural Reflexes, which makes every enemy in the world move much slower than you do.

In terms of difficulty, Bethesda has taken high-level characters into account. Dawnguard overall as a DLC, adds things across the game for higher-level characters.

Dawnguard is balanced assuming you’re at least level 10. 80 per cent of players are at least level 10.
If you’re a werewolf, becoming a Vampire Lord will cure you. You can’t be both at the same time.

There will be lots of sidequests in Dawnguard: “There will be [sidequests] within the factions,” Howard said, “for the most part, they’re anscillary things, miscellaneous quests that fill out what’s going on in either faction. Kind of like the way the factions worked [in the main game.]“

The sidequests won’t all be tied to the main Vampires/Dawnguard storyline. “There actually a really, really good other quest in there with a really cool dungeon” that has nothing to do with Dawnguard‘s main storyline. Two really’s! It must be good.

Dawnguard expands the game beyond the main quest in a lot of small ways. “There’s a lot of other things in [the expansion],” Howard told me. It’s easier for Bethesda to talk about the expansion in terms of the Dawnguard storyline, but the team has lots of other things they’ve been working on that they want to put in.

*swoon*

skeet

skeet

SKEET

*swoon*

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Who needs expansions when you could spend hundreds of hours doing this:

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bored ****s

superior input device gamers: what are the must-have graphical/interface (or other) mods for Skyrim?
as usual i'm late to the party but keen to improve my experience.

Firstly use nexus mod manager not the steam workshop. The steam workshop doesn't support all the good mods.

Here are the mods I use. Also use some custom ENB settings, FXAA injector and Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE). You need SKSE for some of the mods to work. Especially SkyUI

Where's the "all bitchez in latex" one?

Dr Seuss does Skyrim.

In other news, Dawnguard is fucking landing TOMORROW!

Gayyyyyyy currently housesitting so no online at the moment

Sweet... Thought expansions would only be available for PC for some reason.

So how exactly does this work, can you continue on with your already completed original storyline, or start a new game and choose to follow the new Dawnguard storyline?

Read the massive quote I posted, dude

I see

Think I'm gona give it a whirl this weekend.

I'm really looking forward to it, but I'm gonna hold off for a bit. Digging AC:Brotherhood hard right now and, when I'm not on that, I'm nerding it up MTG stylez.

Post thoughts, dude!

This is fucking amazing. Why has it taken me 3 months to see it!?

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That's seriously cool. I wonder if they can do a Skyrim mod for Minecraft though.

They have, ages ago.

As someone who's missed the whole Minecraft phenomenon, I really don't see why that is "fucking amazing"?

The pig mount is pretty cool I guess

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Originally Posted by ianwil1976

As someone who's missed the whole Minecraft phenomenon

Pretty much answered your own question there

Finally, some DLC to get *really* excited about!

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DRAGON MOUNTS

Fuck, I haven't even finished the main game

Dude...

I know, I know.... No time for it and don't want to get back in now, less than two weeks before I leave. I'll see if it runs on the laptop I'll be travelling with. Considering it works on consoles, I think I should be ok.

Also this comment on YT made me lol;
"MORROWIND MUSHROOMS! TELVANNI TOWERS! NETCH! ASCENDED SLEEPERS! CORPRUS DISEASE! RIEKLINGS! ...oh, and mountable dragons. Well, that's nice I guess."

I'd be lying if I said my pants didn't move when I saw the Morrowind stylings.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fledz

Fuck, I haven't even finished the main game

That makes two of us... and I started this fucking thread.

Can you really finish Skyrim?

Depends how pedantic you want to be. I finished the main quest and got every achievement which is pretty much as close to "completion" that you can get.

Kinda hard to knock off infinite procedurally generated quests

All I want is my two 90+ hour save games back.

Quote:

Originally Posted by B_e_de

All I want is my two 90+ hour save games back.

So use console commands to make your own.

If I lost my level 50 odd puddy tat like that...

Im not sure how many hours I've put in. 4 or 5 different character play through. They'll need to release about 4 decent sized DLC's before they can get me to start another playthrough.

But...DLC is additional content. Why do you need to start another play through? I just want cool new shit to do!

Cause all the characters I have saves left for are way too over powered as it is.

Plus, I still haven't done a dedicated Mage.