War, what is it good for?
The war plotline is between Imperial cockjockeys and manky rebels Stormcloaks. So which should Buttocks choose? Imperial sounds impressive. Stormcloak sounds like a B-list 1980s hair metal band. When Stormcloaks speak to you they're in awe of everything like a small child "What iz dis pretty fing? A flowar? Awwwwwww.". The Imperials are so smug that they can barely talk through their tight lipped grins.
Buttocks is a Nord. Proud, brutal and unimaginative. Also, perhaps, a bit stupid. Stormcloaks it is! Buttocks can also engage in his favourite sport of elf flattening.
Without spoilering, becoming part of the war means a number of battles in different places ending with a battle in the enemy's stronghold. By this point, Buttocks is crazily overpowered. With his two-handed-power-swing-of-face-mashing perk, he can hit everyone standing in front of him. What with that and magic shouts that throw hapless Imperials back, Buttocks was a one man rebellion engine. Some Stormcloaks were present but those that could keep up mostly got in the way.
Before the Final Mosh, Ulfric (leader of the Stormorons) gave an impressive speech. Full of big promises. And impressive. Pauses. Well written and well acted. The kind you'd see given on top of a snowy mountainside in a big budget Hollywood war flick before 1000 extras. Sadly, he was just standing in the middle of the road giving it to 8 Stormcloaks and Buttocks, who was trying desperately to get into Solitude to kick the fight off.
The final mosh itself was not very impressive - probably due to a spawn limit not providing enough mosh to stop me running through them and storming the castle that kicked off the talky-plot-bit.
It was fun but it would have been more of a laugh if there were enough of them to make it a challenge.
MWOP - Maniac WithOut Portfolio
If you're a King, the very last thing you want is to have a nut job without a war to keep them busy. How does Buttocks keep himself busy? With side quests! Buttocks thought it was high time to become a Companion and run through that plotline, which left him pretty unimpressed by his choices - even if the killing things was quite cool.
Multi-skillification
Levelling up in Skyrim is all about improving your skills. As your skills increase, so does your level. If you get a skill to 100, then using that technique isn't going to level you up.
Buttocks isn't the sort of fellow to stagnate, so he decided to do some of that stuff that he hadn't done before. Fighting in light armour, using a shield and a piddly little sword, shooting things with a bow, sneaking, conjuring flamey hovery men to help him fight. It all felt quite un-natural and made some of the quests pretty damn hard. So Buttocks now carries a single big-stick-with-big-axe-head and his heavy armour as well as all the light armour and sneaky stuff. When things get sticky, he changes up to tank mode and wades in.
Carrying two builds in this way works rather well, meaning I can progress using lightweight stuff against the little monsters and then when the boss shows up, blat him with massive axe. You can't carry as much but then Buttocks can buy most of Whiterun anyway.
Buttocks Smith
Smithing is expensive when you don't mine your own ore. And mining your own ore is not only time consuming but it's FUCKING DULL. So, the alternative is buy tonnes of ore from the smiths and do it that way. You then make the armour and sell it back at a massive loss. Expensive way of improving a skill but it does work. I kept Buttocks going long enough to improve his magical ebony armour of killing shit nearby.
RIP Stupid Fucking Rainbowklunge
"Stay there, Rainbowklunge. There be fighting afoot. Stay horsey. Nice horsey. Munch some grass. Good Rainbowklunge. Back in a minute..."
...
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, RAINBOWKLUNGE, I SAID FUCKING WAIT!"
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"GET OUT OF THERE, YOU QUADRAPEDAL PILLOCK!"
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"RUN, RUN! YOU STUPID BASTARD, RUN... NOOOOOOOOOO!"
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"RIGHT YOU FUCKERS, YOU KILLED MY FUCKING HORSE. NOW I'M GOING TO KILL YOU TWICE AS BAD."
...
"Dear, dear, Rainbowklunge. You fucking stupid horse."
I wouldn't have minded so much if the mosh Rainbowklunge had ran into was half decent, but it was a 30 second bandit random. He got slotted up by some nob end with a small axe. Not even a two handed one. I dragged Rainbowklunge's killer over to the edge of a cliff, stripped him, chucked all his stuff of the cliff, burnt the body then lobbed it off the cliff too. Bastard. Killed my camo horse. Needless to say, a period of digital mourning has begun.
Gods - wankers with cool shit
Daedra (Gods) missions are quite fun and sometimes give you cool stuff. Sometimes they don't. Imagine if you're the Daedra who hands out Magic Socks of Unsmelling to an adventurer who's standing there tooled up with cool stuff from other Daedra. You're going to look like a right dick:
"Thanks Mumpoozles, mighty and powerful Daedra of Fire and Death, so glad I can be your champion, now weilding Nigglingpain, sword of getting-a-bit-of-an-itch-in-the-middle-of-your-back-where-you-can't-quite-reach. I promise to use it instead of Fuckuall, sword of making shit explode."
The other plot
The one with the dragons. Is next.
Comments
A good way to boost the resale value of your smithed stuff and gain another skill in parrallel is do enchanting on everything you forge. Even a basic enchantment can make things worth a large amount of cash and enchanting levels quite quickly. You just need a stack of soul gems and a soul trap spell cast it on your target kill them harvest the soul (or get a weapon with the soul trap enchantment built in) and this then can be used to make enchantments on the weapons armour clothes medalions rings pickaxes and so on.
One thing that's worth nabbing is azura's star it's a reusable super soul gem you can fill over and over it's a deadric quest you can potentially get it corrupted to take human souls in there as well but that may be an evil quest.
Soon you'll be slapping super powerful enchantments on you gear that will soon be too expensive for any of the vendors in skyrim to buy (even with the reduced price all merchants give you) which is one of the major flaws in the economy.
Azura is Buttock's bee hatch. I have her star, oh yes.
I've installed the Dynamic Traders mod, which changes the trader's cash depending on how much you trade with them. Belathor, the grumpy twat, now has over 1500 because I keep buying/selling.
I should install that one set of magic to the maxed daedric or ebony armor (not my best stuff I don't sell that it requires dragon spleens) can be several thou
Are you talking about Dragon bone armour. Is it worth going for? I've got some nasty Daedric Ebony armour that drains the life out of people nearby - really handy if you're trying to get Block up by hiding behind a shield.
It doesn't look as cool but I think at the high end it has better specs
I have master level smithing and master level enchantment so can make Epic and legendary armor with any enhancements i fancy so can make as good if not better than found stuff
My character is a mage so the armour (dragon scale light armour) is there more for the mana boosts lydia has the hard core bone armour
I've finally purchased Skyrim, and about a week later a graphics card capable of pushing enough pixels to keep it happy.
I'm playing through as a light armour and shield conjuror, so my thing is mainly using bound sword to provide me with a hitting stick and summoning Demora lords to give things an additional kicking.
I started out following the main plot to Whiterun, then headed off to give the Companions a go. I did a few bits and pieces for them then wandered off in search of better spells. Winterhold was an obvious choice for that.
I've run through the Collage quests and now have the biggest pointy hat in the place. Did get a bit sidetracked at one point, turns out I was following an entirely different questline to assemble an amulet when I thought I was magifying. Oh well, its a nice bit of kit.
I have to admit towards the end of the mage questline I did come across a fight where my health was evaporating far too quick. I'm proud to say I beat them in the proud tradition of heroes everywhere, i.e. hiding round a corner and throwing Daedric Lords at them.
I've been working on smithing ('itting things), alchemy (eating bits of plant/monster you find) and to some extent enchanting on the way through. When I ended up in a dwarven ruin I thought aha! lovely raw materials for making lots of armour (skillups), and proceeded to collect everything that wasn't very bolted down. Dwarven knicknacks being fantabulously heavy resulted in that dungeon taking around three times as long as it should have.
A brief aside: I don't know if its a patch thing, but Lydia is unwilling to carry beyond a certain amount of weight in my game.
I shuffled out the exit and painstakingly limped my way to a nearby forge to smelt the metal into useful lumps, making it slightly heavier (?) in the process. I needed to get to town to sell some random (but not worthless) crap from my inventory, but it was a long way at those speeds. Luckily I had done enough companioneering to get a... perk. This allowed me to get near town (but not too near town...). I crept in and found no-one wanted my crap, or enough of it anyway. The cart refused to take me in my enladen state and I couldn't fast travel, so I bought a horse.
I was just clicking on Whiterun, where my house and the smithy are right next to each other, when it gave me the option to fast travel. I took it and lo! it worked, although it does seem to have vaporised the horse in the process. Oh well. Much (300+ ingots of dwarven metal) crafting later I had a spangly set of glass armour to show for it.
Not sure where to go next really. Think I might do a spot more main quest, then return to do some companioneering. I'm not going to be theiving, assassinating or barding on this char, I'll save that for a more sneaky individual.
What's your horse's name? Is your horse waiting outside Whiterun? It might be waiting for you down by the stables where the wagoneer waits.
I recommend getting the Dynamic Merchants plugin from the steam workshop. Even with that, I find that no-one has enough money to sell all the crap I collect. Most big dungeons now I don't bother searching much as a single sword or two at the end will break the banks of all the large merchants. I also found I was spending a good 5-10 minutes selling all the crap for each hour of play. Now that I have over 100,000 GP, it doesn't seem worthwhile.
Hmm, didn't have a name yet. Wait, got it:
Mike Hingdom IV.
Hmm, thought I'd checked the stables but will have a look. Not done any addons yet... will have to investigate. Skyrim and Diablo are currently fighting for my attention, as well as a statistics assignment...
The Dynamic Merchants is definitely worth a look (and is not a game breaker), as is SkyUI (allows ordering of inventory by weight and value). Mods are really easy to install through Steam Workshop.