How do you play Skyrim?

Skyrim is a really big game. Just really big. It's too big.

Witcher 2 and DA:O had focused storyline with some side quests. There was no need for any wiki. Just go where one part of the main quest leads me to. Finish that, and then do every sidequest in that area before moving on. These games are linear. There is a clear progression and steps.

Skyrim there is nothing. It's just there and you just have to explore and figure it out. But me as a player, I have set focus on what I want to do in a game, and Skyrim is just out of reach. So I use a wiki. For example I look up where all the dragon priests are. But I don't read further on how to get the mask. There is a simple list of Dragon Priests - Location.

This isn't something I like doing, but to do what I want to do without wasting hundreds of hours and just wandering around exploring for myself, I use the wikia.

But... I don't use google to figure out puzzles or quests or anything. I just use the wiki to identify who the Priests are just where some things are located. For quests, right now I just get them as I go and do them.

How about you? Are you the type who is going to sink 300 hours into this game just exploring and figuring out everything for yourself? Or like me, who don't want to spend hundreds of hours in this game but want to get as much done as possible?

 

I just bought a malibal P150HM w/ a ATI 6990m

Anyone have this? Does it play good on skyrim?

 

OMG. Good for you, we get it, you got yourself a great laptop with the top GPU. Good grief, wrong thread, go boast about your laptop somewhere else. And yes I see your post as pure attention seeking, boasting as asking if a 6990M can run Skryim is an attention seeking question.

Also completely offtopic.

 

I randomly picked a town on the map and headed out after the opening events. Basically since then I've been exploring everything that pops up along the way. The only time I used a wiki was when I contracted vampirism and wanted to make a cure disease potion

I think Skyrim does a great job of leading you along just enough so that you have as little or as much hand holding as you want. The ability to have as many active quest markers as you want is nice, as well as differentiating between the one-off, simple quests and others that will take a bit more time.

 

I haven't used a wiki or anything yet. I like the huge world and exploring on my own. Because of that I like all of the side quests. Just by doing the side quests you can easily explore 90% of the map. Get a quest in Whitehall that you have to travel to Riften to finish. While in Riften talk to people and get more quests sending you to a dozen more new places. Etc. Etc.

My favorite thing about the large map and numerous quests is the replayability. It will be easy to go thru the whole game a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time with new characters and find new places and quests that you may have missed before or redo quests you already have, but choose a different side and get a different outcome.

 

My Skyrim experience:

'Ooo, what's that?'

'Ooo, what's that?'

'There's a main quest?'

etc...

 

I do whatever I want to do in this game. Haven't gotten far on the main quest.

I don't like looking up wiki's etc. It feels like cheating and spoils the experience.

 

I guess I have the opposite problem as the OP. For these bigger more open world/sandbox games I don't use a strat guide at all. I just wander around until I get bored then I finish the main quest at that point.

However, I tend to use strat guides/wikis more often with linear games because I'm always afraid I'll miss out on some awesome weapon or armor that I won't be able to find again.

I'm having this problem on FF8 where the bosses aren't necessarily difficult, but everytime I come to a new area I check my strat guide to make sure I'm not missing anything before I leave. I'm always paranoid I'll get to the final boss and not be able to beat them because I didn't pick up all the epic gear along the way.

 

I just like walking around exploring. If I find a random dungeon I enter it and attack random strongholds. Every now and then ill go do a main quest then a few side ones. Whatever I feel like really, because the world is just fun to explore and look around.

 

The beauty of Skyrim game is the exploration.

I'm having fun just running around, finding towns, and accepting every quest someone offers me.

Witcher 2 and Dragon Age are completely different types of RPGs.

 

I just explore. I actually think I'm going to start over because I want to do a two handed berserker style. Going toe to toe is just too hard with the way my character is set up right now.

 

Wandering around, working for the Dark Brotherhood/Thieves Guild/Companions. I went up to the top of the mountain, but since then I've forgotten that there is a main quest in this game.

 

yeah i love the fact that you can just go off on your own in Skyrim, im around 26hrs in and have only done the first "main quest" once i got to whiterun i starting doing side quests and haven't looked back, absolutely love the game so far, working on a labyrinth i found at the moment.

 

I just got "Dah" for the Unrelenting Force shout and it opened me up more to the Main Quest but I have deviated back to the side quests. I also finished the quests for the College of Winterhold since I always play as a derivation of a Mage in TES games and beat those first.

 

I ended up dissapointed...
At first i was leveling smithing and doing some quests to farm gold.
Got to level 30 in 2-3 days like this.

Then i decided i d go test my daedric enchanted bow on main story, so i went to gravebeards and...

Spoiler

3 hours later game was over :/

To sum it up: DONT even try main story quest if you want to keep playing the game.

 

Trolls are obvious nowadays....

 

That's weird, I went to gravebeards and continued main quest, and its easy 3 hrs later and game running strong, then again, maybe I'm slow or on a different path?

 

My understanding is the game never stops, never ends. So doing main quest doesn't matter as you are placed back in the world to do side quests, explore, etc.

 

Spoiler

Its roughly like this:
1. Getting scrolls — 1 hour, fighting alduin
2. Arranging council, running back and forth. Calling for dragon and defeating it 1 hour.
3. Following alduin into his lair and killing it — 1 hour.

I might not remember exactly what happened before that but original storyline is surprisingly short nevertheless

 

I love the idea that it's NOT linear. There are so many things to do in this game and theres not set way of doing them. You play the game YOU want and the game becomes somewhat unique to you.

For reference, I do use the wiki usually only when I'm about done with a dungeon, to make sure I haven't missed anything important in there. Otherwise I don't use it.

I'm playing a pure mage and just going straight up the destruction tree for now and spending a few points in restoration.

 

Agreed yes, the world is expansive, open world, and you are free to wander and explore, do whatever quest you want in whatever order.

But for the main quest, it's as linear as any. And it's much much much shorter than any other RPG out there and sub-par.
- No big decisions.
- No consequences.
- 100% linear fetch boy quest line.

 

Apples to apples comparisons don't work too well with RPGs.

 

i hope u didnt expect alduin to turn into a princess and make babies with u in the end?

 

If your character is a woman, they won't be able to make babies won't they .

On topic, i struck out on my own as soon as i could, i'm probably going to end up level 30 to 50 before i even seriously think of tackling the main quest. The good thing id i got immersed in the game right away, something that took me an awfully long time with fallout.

EDIT: I only use the web when i encounter a glitch which happened during the waking nightmare quest...

 

I watched a livestream of somebody playing, only doing the main quest, absolutely no side quests.

It took him 37 hours. If you are not a developer/QA tester who knows some secret glitch, or cheating using console command, there is no possible way you can beat the game during your first playthrough in 3 hours, even on Hello Kitty difficulty setting.

There is one dungeon containing an Elder Scroll that will probably take most people about 10-15 hours to complete, perhaps more if you are the "explorer" type, less if you are playing on easy setting. One dungeon! There are multiple different environments inside this one dungeon, including an entire underground lake. I think this dungeon alone might be bigger than dragon age 2. And there are 150+ dungeons in the game.

Did you actually play through the main quest? I can't see how anyone would consider it to be a "fetch boy" quest line, not by any stretch of the imagination.

I've only completed the first couple steps of the MQ and already from the very beginning of the tutorial, you begin to choose whether to side with the Stormcloaks or the Legion. The parts of the main quest I've completed are not fetch quests, but involve learning how to use dragon shouts from some jedi master-types, sneaking into a party at an embassy disguised as one of the guests, etc. Not some cheap CGI cutscene where you press a button to trigger a quicktime event, but the entire game unfolds live.

As for consequences, how about conquering Windhelm for the Legion and turning it into an imperial city, or conquering Solitude for the Stormcloaks and making Ulfric High King of Skyrim?

IMO, playing a TES game trying to "beat" the game, is doing it wrong. Join a faction or two - the questlines for all the factions are brilliant. There are lots of choices and consequences all along the way. I've only done part of the thieves guild questline so far and already my mind is blown. Watched part of companions quests and can't wait to try on my next playthrough as a warrior.

I think you are also onto the right track with your interest in collecting the dragon priest masks. In my case, I haven't reviewed the wiki so far except once when I thought a quest was bugged, but the desire to collect more dragon shouts is another great motivator to explore every dungeon I encounter.

 

As people already said, it´s all about the exploring and discovery. I am doing about 80% of the "miscellaneous" quests and 20% of the bigger ones. No guides whasoever.

I am at 60 hours of gaming and still didn´t took sides, other than joining the Companions, although I am considering officially joining the Stormcloak Rebellion. Unoficcially, I kill every Imperial detachment escorting prisioners I find.

I didn´t like the way I was treated in Manarch, the city built upon dwarven ruins. I am seriously inclined to make a raid and kill all the city guard and maybe everybody else in the city.

 

I ran into an orc who called me a milkdrinker. I'm not quite sure what that means, but I didn't like his tone, so I smote him mightily.

 

Isn't FF a game where if you get stuck-ish you can just grind your way to Level 35691618 and oneshot the boss, anyways?

I tried 2h for all of about 20 minutes before deciding that it just felt too slow. Give sword & board a try. It's pretty powerful. Will suck up more perks, though.

For me it was more like:

Spoiler

1. Getting the Elder Scroll: Picked it up when I was doing another quest and wandered into Blackreach, in which I got lost for quite a few hours just because it was so damned amazing.
2. What council? Did the whole dragon-trapping thing, though, which was pretty neat. Plus a lot more running here and there in between, getting distracted by various things.
3. Hopped off to Sovngarde and killed Alduin - ... yeah, an hour.

 

FF8 actually seems to be the only one that you can't do that for 2 reasons:

1) The monsters/bosses scale with your level.
2) I read that some point near the end game you aren't allowed to leave and try to re-level if you can't beat the lasts bosses (I didn't read more into this because I didn't want to spoil the plot).

 

I think that people should play the main quest until you get the full Unrelenting Force spell. After that though, you can deviate from the main quest to do other things like quell the Civil War or do the many faction quests. Holding off the entire Main Quest is a bit dumb as you can get a great base Shout very early in the game.

That is what I did, after getting "Dah" for "Fus Roh Dah," I am going to hold off the Main Quest till I am in the heart of the Civil War debacle. Until then time to...

Spoiler

Kill the Emperor for the Dark Brotherhood...

 

well i did do a few parts of the main quest after doing a few side quests (killed my first dragon and all), but i got sidetracked right from the beginning .

 

OK, I hated the game the first 2-3 hours as I didn't know what to do or better why I should do it. Then I stopped the main quest and started exploring and have been sucked in ever since. The world is amazing and leaves you plenty of room to explore. If you are the kind of player that wants to 'score a perfect' character I guess then it is more difficult to enjoy. It's a game you immerse yourself in and have fun with regardless of how you play. It doesn't matter - there is no multiplayer ;-)

Fallout always sucks me dead in cause I played the very first ones (still think they were amazing games which really let you change the world you were in)

 

So I finally stopped fast traveling and holy crap that is when the game really shines. The game as a whole is beautiful

 

I started over as pure mage. I like it. The robes look pretty awesome in this game. Working on getting my FUS RO DAH on, and then doing the College quest line.

The Altmer are way more awesome than they were in Oblivion. My Altmer looks like a boss.

 

I actually really like my mage. lol
They feel a lot better than they did in Oblivion, more power. But I'm only lvl 21 so I can only imagine what Master spells will look like

 

the thing i like about skyrim as mentioned above is the ability to just walk around and explore. I play a fighter with sword/axe shield and my companion is a wizard Apprentice. I find this combo deadly. He's got deadly ranged lightening and fireball attacks and I run in to clean things up. Level 26 now and with my extremely high one handed attack (boosted with amulet of wielding +25 and orc gloves +35), I leave all those in front of me dead.

I'm essentially just doing misc quests and i'm taking my time doing the main quest

 

Sounds like any other Elder's Scroll game... A chaotic mess of quests that have you searching every nook and cranny of the game for more. You got to love it. =D

 

you gotta love it, bro! Simple formula, but it works