Hoarders - Skyrm Style

[Fit4aking]

I think I have found a source of income that is greater than scouring dungeons!  Forsworn Redoubts are chock FULL of crap.  I've raided two of them in the last two days with amazing results.

Since they are holding forts there are a lot of them to kill but that alone is a treat.  All of the Forsworn wear hide armor so at this point it's one swing and they fall.  I've made a mini-game out of that by allowing them to hit me, leveling heavy armor, and set up a power attack, leveling one-handed, and almost each time I get a cut-scene of some amazing kill.  Good stuff.  They don't hold much on them so I don't really bother with their stuff but inside of their tents are all sorts of treasures.  Since they worship Hagraven's you will have a little bit of a fight as both I've met conjour up to 3 mages to fight with them.  That means there are loads of soul gems, lots of fallen Nords, Imperials, Stormcloaks, and full bands of Khajit that wander too close to their camp.

Clearing their holds, which can be huge, has netted me over 8,000 gold and I've almost ran out of room in Whiterun to put things.  If I could sell everything in one fell swoop I could have easily cleared 12,000 to 15,000 gold on the stuff I've found.  I almost have a full set of Orcish armor waiting for me in a chest along side enough Dark Soul Gems to enchant it with whatever I want.  (I'm saving that for higher level enchanting and then I'll have a full set of Orcish to compliment my full set of Exquisite Imperial)

I stumbled on another one just outside of Riverwood last night and I tagged it as a place to go back to because I was getting distracted from the main goal of completing a Companions mission.

Damn treasure getting in the way of actual accomplishments.  Guess I'm just greedy.

[Big Mooing Cow]

OOOOH... that sounds right up my alley!  I need to level my heavy armor and one-handed, too.  My sneak needs leveling too, so I think I'll put the bow away for a while and creep up on some Forsworn.  Maybe even leave Mjoll at home.

I know what you mean about treasure collecting.  In Skyrim the mechanics of thievery (ie: you can do it without being shut out of every civilized area for being hated) mean I spent a LOT of time sneaking around keeps looting stuff.  Some of those nobles have tons of loot!  (The richie rich jerks in Markath should check their coffers quick before looking down their nose at me in the future, for example.)

My cat isn't the kind of guy to rob a peasant blind, but those well-off or merely disliked tend to lose their luxury goods every nightfall.  Between these ill-gotten goods and the (often very heavy!) loot in the dungeons I spend much of my time compulsively organizing inventory.  I spent a good half hour just selling crafted daggers last night, for example.  Oftentimes I just fill up a container in my house with booty to hawk later, because I don't want to screw around with inventory management.  Maybe I should keep one house for "stuff to sell" and one house for "stuff to keep"?  That might make my life a lot easier, cause right now my armor armoire (heh) has a ton of junk amongst the high-end magic gear, and it's a pain to pull a few thousand gold worth of junk out every few game days to sell.

That reminds me, I need to go house shopping again.

So much to do in this game!  Is there some kind of main quest here?  I forgot what it was all about.  Some dragon saved me from the chopping block, but after that I don't remember much!

[DirtDriver]

Got a new character;

Anslem, Nord, Heavy Armor, Two-Handed, with Block and Smithing secondary skills. He hit level 15 before skinning his first dragon and launching the main quest. Following the guide early on for berserker except this one is not an Orc. Going 50/50 on heath and stamina. Going to avoid branching out in other skill trees until his armor and smithing hit 100. Block and Two-Handed are taking care of themselves.

He's no hoarder, either. Dude only carries one weapon, a greatsword, and a kevlar padded tin suit. Sells everything he can get his hands on to make daggers. For some reason he has a obsession with making iron daggers.

Getting married won't creep me out so much and of course, I now have Lydia back after her dirt nap in that dwemer ruin.

DD

[Big Mooing Cow]

LOL!  I'm picturing a caveman-looking dude with face paint, hunched over an anvil with a pile of forty daggers strewn around him.  "<GRUNT>.  Need more ore." 

So how are the dragon fights as a melee character?  A ton of sprinting and waiting?


I discovered last night that if you invest in the Riverwood trader he will have 10,000 gold.  Yes, not 1,000.  10,000!  I sold my giant backlog of daggers in 10 minutes.  You'll need 70 speech, Dirt, but smithing becomes painless with the investment perk!

[DirtDriver]

hmmmmm...better check my speech level...hard to level it up when Anselm only knows how to grunt.

Also, Lydia seems to be playing hard to get. Anselm is a Thane, dammit. And he already owns property. What's her problem!

DD

[DirtDriver]

Oh yeah, fighting dragons? Can't do it. Don't have dragonrend so I can't force them to land. I use the Monty Python method...run away!

DD

[Big Mooing Cow]

LOL you should get Lydia some coconuts to aid you in fleeing. 

Had my first broken quest tonight.  I'm helping some mages with some crazy magic balls.  Apparently a falmer is supposed to have a focusing crystal, but I could NOT find him.  Or rather, I could find him but not his focusing crystal.  Had to open the console and first give myself the item, and then force the quest to the next step.  Thank goodness for the console!

Not sure what I'm going to do next... I think I need to advance the main quest and call this playthrough a wrap.  I don't want to do too much stuff the first time.  I like playing through many times exploring a small amount of content.

[DirtDriver]

Anselm broke level 20 and I wasn't aiming for that. I am trying to slow him down and be very particular about the use of perks. I have almost decided to shun enchantments this time and just rely on found items. He made Lydia very unhappy with the amount of septims spent on smithing. But he broke 80 and only has 19 points to go before dragon armor puts an end to it all.

DD

[DirtDriver]

And the biggest problem with Lydia is that she keeps stealing Anslem's kills! He was wearing down an argonian in a castle courtyard, picking up armor and block points along the way when all of a sudden this arrow goes through the argonian's neck and he drops like a stuck pig.

On the other hand, she swings a pretty mean greatsword. Anslem will be in mid-slash when she will sneak in a whack and end the fight.

She needs to stay home for awhile.

DD

[Big Mooing Cow]

Mjoll does the same to me.  I've got a great bead on a skeleton or something for a follow-up to my initial sneak attack, and she runs in screaming from behind me, blocking my shot.  I growl at her, but then she chops the enemy into tiny bits before I can manage to aim around her.

If only she'd stop blabbering about Grimsever.  I swear I'm going to cast muffle on her one of these days.

Also, the 15% paralyze perk for archery is a RIOT.  People go stiff like a board and fall over.  Pure comedy gold.  The cave bear that rolled down the hill was especially amusing!

Can't wait to play again as a mage.  I'm really looking forward to dual-wielding spells!  After tonight's fun, one of my main spells is definitely going to be paralyze.

[DirtDriver]

Oh yeah, paralyze was so much fun in Oblivion for the same reason. I don't have that for my archery yet. Must find.

However, there is a an Ice Form shout that does the same only with popsicle attributes added in. When I was leveling Leowynn I would shout at the opponenet to allow time to heal. Caught a guy in full draw on bow. he looked like an ice sculpture. LOL

DD

[Big Mooing Cow]

Whoa, that sounds like a TON of fun.  I'm going to have to spend some of those dragon points I've been collecting.  The only shout I've used regularly is the "sprint" one, to give me a little more running juice.

I hit a draugr (sp?) boss last night with his sword pulled back ready to take a whack at me.  He sloooooowly teetered over and landed on his back, in full rigor mortis (which is fitting, I guess!).  My wife thinks I'm insane with all the giggling coming out of my office.  She can't talk much, though.  I've caught her grinning at her screen as she picks vaults clean in Fallout 3. 

[Fit4aking]

The Disarm shout is pretty fun.  Nothing turns the tide on an ambush like making the attackers drop all of their weapons.  The look of a Nord Warrior that just lost his Battleaxe and now has to fight with bare fists is priceless.  They really should wear more armor.

I have the Ice and Fire blast ones as well.  I need to use them more.  I also have a spell that turns steel ore to silver and silver ore to gold.  That would be a decent way to add more value to goods but I'm sitting on over 20k in gold at the moment.  No need to be greedy.

[Big Mooing Cow]

Wow, I've been neglecting the shouts completely.  Disarm sounds really fun too!  I could definitely use that for some of the beefier melee attackers.

This is what I love about the Skyrim and Fallout series; there's SO much to do, you can play differently each time and it's almost a different game.

[BIGmuddyBRONCO]

I have all my stuff at the college in Winterhold. The Archmages quarters are under magic lock and key(of which I am the only one who has) I have a graden of plants in the center dais and I have bottomless pit trunks that I have probably over 4 or 5 hundred items in. Oh and the maids there replensih my ingredients I take from the shelf.