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[Azkanan]

Experienced trader-gamer across many games: Alright, time to head to the market to see what sells well and where. Buy low, sell high.

"WANT SOME FISH? 12 GOLD"
"Sure. Oh, wait, wrong one. Here, have it back."
"...You're giving me 3 gold for this? Fuck this, I'll go strip some dead bandits and scavenge every coin and ingredient I can find."

Best example of this was when another guy playing in the same room all of a sudden yells 'FUCK! I just accidentally sold my sword to a vendor for 1000 gold and now she want 7000 for me to take it back!' That happened twice in the same day.

Fucking slimy imperials with their silver tongues.

[The Merchant Of Menace]

Buy back sword.
Kill vendor with it.
(Money is already in Hammerspace)
No profit

[Greiger]

So folks are complaining that mages are really weak in skyrim...yet mages regularly two shot me when I fight them.  Turns fighting mages into "close to melee range as quickly as possible while wearing a beerhat loaded with vigorous health potions and dodging every ice spike sent your way or DIE".  I practically have to save every two seconds in order to beat one.  Everything else on the other hand barely moves my health, and doesn't move it at all with hristskin active.

Am I missing something here?  It seems to me like mages are untouchable killing machines.

[Rose]

You sound exactly like a guy from an IRC channel I hang out on.
Are you him?

[3]

Am I missing something here?  It seems to me like mages are untouchable killing machines.

Because, as I implied a while back, NPC mages don't obey the same rules as the PC. They have far too much mana for one thing, and their spells seem to scale better than the ones available to the player do. I wouldn't be surprised if that was due to the same issue as was with Oblivion's default level scaling: NPCs are unerringly efficient with their level/skill distribution, and get more skills/level than the player does anyway.

[IronyOwl]

So folks are complaining that mages are really weak in skyrim...yet mages regularly two shot me when I fight them.  Turns fighting mages into "close to melee range as quickly as possible while wearing a beerhat loaded with vigorous health potions and dodging every ice spike sent your way or DIE".  I practically have to save every two seconds in order to beat one.  Everything else on the other hand barely moves my health, and doesn't move it at all with hristskin active.

Am I missing something here?  It seems to me like mages are untouchable killing machines.

PC and NPC mages are two separate things. Plus your armor is probably waaaaaay above your resist (likely zero), so it makes sense that you'd have more trouble with them than most other things. Finally, I assume they're squishier and thus hit harder.

Histskin is pure lol, so no surprise there.

Also, you don't sound like you've ever faced the Chaurus (FUCK. YOU.) in melee.

[Rose]

Yes

Fuck those giant earwigs.

[Neonivek]

Ehh Dragons are all easy to me ever since I found out the Dual Casting strategy.

[Greiger]

I haven't fought a charus recently, but I did about 10 levels or so ago, didn't have too much trouble.  But I can melee giants no problem, I would think those would hit harder than most anything around.

Though after looking around a bit it seems my armor rating is so high that I'm actually armor rating capped, which could explain why mages (which ignore armor) seem inordinately strong, and everything that relies on actually causing physical harm seem so weak.

And nope Japa, I havent been in an IRC in about 5 months.

[nenjin]

Ehh Dragons are all easy to me ever since I found out the Dual Casting strategy.

Dragons are, by far, one of the easiest things in Skyrim to fight. It's a sad but undeniable fact.

And yeah, who really wants to spend enchant slots on resists? It's a big reason why upper level mages cut through melees like hot knives through butter. Their bottomless mana pools (and I suspect auto-firing spells with no charge up times but simulated cool downs) basically turns them into magical Gatling guns. Getting in close is the only way to bring them down, and boy does running into a hail of icebolts fucking suck.

On that note, whatever ever happened to Dispel? Another causality of "lost technology" I guess. But I'd actually use magic specifically for dispel against mage shields if it was available.

[Greiger]

I just saw that my statistics are currently saying my favorite spell is 'raise zombie'.  Consitering that I never actually raised a zombie, I think my favorite spell is actually "Dragon Catapult".

I'm not sure whether that means I'm just really easy to amuse or that I need to use more magic.

[Cthulhu]

These books, man.  Scourge of the Gray Quarter is so sharp you can cut yourself on it.  Pretty much a flawless representation of the typical closet racist's views, injected into the game.

On the other end of the spectrum, Antecedents of Dwemer Law.  Just reading the name put me to sleep on my first encounter.  The second time I saw it I was sneaking through a certain spoiler place for the thieves guild questline, and my subsequent scream of "Who thought this shit needed to be written down?!" alerted every guard in the city.  Seriously, I understand that they're going for that authentic feel, putting actual scholarly texts to make you feel like it's a real world that exists beyond the player's exploits, but come on.

Also, compared to the Companions the rewards late in the thieves guild quest are insane.

Spoiler: No giant quest spoilers, some minor ones and rewards you may want to be surprised by (click to show/hide)

The nightingale armor is great, and the muffle effect makes the Assassin's Blade perk worth getting, as you can always get into melee unseen.  The nightingale blade is okay, but completely overshadowed by The Motherfucking Chillrend, straight outta Cyrodiil and sitting in a display case just asking to be taken.  I'm pretty sure you can't enchant a weapon with paralysis, so even though cold is a weak element in Skyrim the paralysis effect is pure gold. 

The nightingale bow is good.  I won't call it great, but it's good. 

The agent powers are awesome.  Shadowcloak of Nocturnal (120 seconds of invisibility, refreshed by stealthing) turns every fight into that scene from Chronicles of Riddick where he snuffs the candles and murders half the galaxy before they realize what's happening.

Thieves guild quest line:  Decent, not amazing, definitely not as good as Oblivion's thieves guild, but the rewards are so awesome it doesn't matter.

[nenjin]

Definitely agree on the TG quest. I can already tell that someone got all the creative freedom they wanted to do the questline and it's probably the best guild quest in the game between duration (actually probably too long), pacing, rewards and interesting quests. The side jobs are just a bonus. I haven't done the Companions or Mages Guild, but based on people's impressions I can already tell that the TG was better than both. Like the TG questline stole all the mojo from the other two Maybe the DB quest line will be a little better.

I got virtually everything I could want as a Rogue player out of the TG. And that's a tall order that most games never live up to. Is the TG a little cliche at times, a little off kilter, trying to hard to be twisty? At times. But it was so much content it took me three days to get through it my normal speed. Almost being done now, I can say I'm satisfied.

Just reading the name put me to sleep on my first encounter.

I can't claim to be an avid reader of all TES literature over the last three games....but yeah. Some of the titles are incredibly dry, and others I feel like I don't need a book to explain why Nords hate foreigners.

Everquest taught me everything I need to know about fantasy racism. "You've ruined your own lands, you're not going to ruin mine!"

[Neonivek]

So folks are complaining that mages are really weak in skyrim...yet mages regularly two shot me when I fight them.  Turns fighting mages into "close to melee range as quickly as possible while wearing a beerhat loaded with vigorous health potions and dodging every ice spike sent your way or DIE".  I practically have to save every two seconds in order to beat one.  Everything else on the other hand barely moves my health, and doesn't move it at all with hristskin active.

Am I missing something here?  It seems to me like mages are untouchable killing machines.

PC and NPC mages are two separate things. Plus your armor is probably waaaaaay above your resist (likely zero), so it makes sense that you'd have more trouble with them than most other things. Finally, I assume they're squishier and thus hit harder.

Histskin is pure lol, so no surprise there.

Also, you don't sound like you've ever faced the Chaurus (FUCK. YOU.) in melee.

It is because of a few things

1) Equipment improves as the game goes on while spells remain static. (You can quickly outdate your spells with just equipment. 40 damage with 30 frost damage? excellent!)
2) Enemies don't have to sacrifice Magika or Health. They can have both while you can only have one.
3) The Perks for Non-magic are great and add up to insane damage totals. Magic gets 50% max for a spell (2x if you count double soul).

The ONLY thing going for Destruction over Bows... the ONLY thing. Is its ability to stun lock. Otherwise Bows quickly out damage destruction magic.

[Cthulhu]

I think it's just easier to make a quality quest line for a thieves guild than a fighter's guild.  Mages should be a good bet for quality, but maybe they just dropped the ball this time.  There's not a whole lot you can do with a fighter's guild though.