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Gíslaug the Grim, nord dark paladin:
- Fetched a Helm from Yngol Barrow. Not the helm of Yngol though, but the other one for the Jarl.


Ragna Eorlene, nord Bard with Uthgerd the Unbroken.
- witnessed the burning of King Olaf. She's now officially a bard.
- They returned to Morthal, investigated an arson and ended vampire's threath to the town. She then delivered a letter to Whiterun (and hit the shops there, since Morthal only have alchemy-shop). She then bought a spot of land and started building Windstad Manor.
- After she run out of money and builiding materials, she went to Hob Fall's Cave to fetch Pantea's flute. She did pass Dawnstar but didn't stick around.
- After Pantea had her flute back, Ragna had turned in some loot for money and purchased materials, it was back to building project.

And I again created a new character:
Caedmon Montrose is breton vampire/witch -hunter
So far he's done the early game set up stage: escaped from Helgen, stopped at Riverwood and then to Bleak Falls Barrow.

So, uh... well, I'll preface this by saying that it's really cool how, even after all the hours I've logged on Skyrim in the past, there's still new things I'm just discovering now that I've started playing again. The wonders of an expansive open-world game, I guess.

But anyway, yesterday I'm traveling to Morthal (en route to Ustengrav) using a shortcut through the mountains I haven't taken before. Lydia and I run into what looks like a quaint, friendly looking cottage. "Drelas' Cottage," it's called. Okay, sounds cool. I go inside.

The first thing I notice is that the all the items are owned. Apparently I'm trespassing. Okay, not that weird. That's common enough.

The second thing I notice is that there's a psycho Dunmer launching every variety of deadly frost magic my way.

After a couple of ill-fated experiments (by ill-fated I mean I die), I eventually get the idea to draw him outside and get him to fight the dragon above the mountain pass for me (it detects me every time I try to sneak by). When that doesn't work, I try to fight the dragon myself. That does not end well either.

In the end, I just decide to book it. I get out of the dragon's range, it loses interest, and I get to Morthal safe and sound. Survival lessons learned: (1) don't talk to strangers, (2) when in doubt, run like a coward.

today in the game opened the command console and used the coc command to go to an alternate version of bleak falls barrow used for the e3 demo. it was really cool. there were some differences for example it is 1 world space (no load screens) and arvel doesn't die nor does he react any magic or melee attacks so you need to find the golden claw somewhere else (took me a bit to find it). if you wanna check it out here is the command: coc E3demoBleakFallsBarrow

Killed the giant spider in bleakfalls barrow. And three drauger! (I'm not used to playing on legendary).

I'm using a build I found on tamrielvault, so that's kind of interesting too; it's the swordmaster build, which means no armour except for flesh spells, and a pretty wicked dual wield block glitch. The build originally used a blades sword, but I decided to use dawnbreaker and the ghostblade instead, just for a bit more firepower. Since I can't take a lot of damage I usually end up dancing around avoiding as much damage as possible (usually at this point my mage armour runs out and somebody kill-cams me with a warhammer, but ya know). But now I can 1v1 bandits pretty well, and if there's a trap nearby I can usually trick enemies to their doom (which is how I killed those drauger).

Started a new game as a Breton summoner. This time I'm using the mods Combat Realism and Combat Evolved. The only real differences I've noticed are that enemies dodge and take cover more, and they do a lot more damage. I'm so used to playing on Legendary though that I only had to modify my usual tactics slightly. In most battles, I throw a summon at them and run the hell away. While my follower and pet engage them as well, I use Bound Bow and poisons to snipe at them from range.

I wanted my follower to be a summoner too, so I used Teldryn Sero for a while, before switching to Brelyna Maryon so that I could get married. So far so good. I'm planning on experimenting with the Aetherial Crown + Ritual Stone exploit to see if it's still possible.

Faclus The I is made. He is a Orc, and he is going to be basically a brute. He has escaped from the clutches of a dragon and is on his way to riverwood.

Okay, it turns out that the Ritual Stone method for raising a massive undead army isn't all it's cracked up to be. Here's what I found out:

* Casting any other kind of summoning spell will cause all your reanimated minions to die instantly, forcing you to use the Ritual Stone power again to raise them.
* You cannot fast travel with your undead army at all. Sometimes they drop dead the moment you arrive at your destination, other times they just vanish where they were standing. The distance does not make a difference, as they disappear even if the 200 sec duration has not yet expired.
* You can't even walk them anywhere manually, as they will disappear if you move too far away from their point of origin.

In other words, the Ritual Stone glitch has glitches of its own. I can't recommend a build based on this strategy to anyone.

Caedmon Montrose, breton vampire/witch -hunter
- Delivered the Golden Claw, solved love triangle and took Faendal as followor, made sure the bosmer is corretly armed and headed out to Whiterun.


Zafirah of Elinhir, redguard spellblade:
- Finally she and Erandur were able to get rid off all the Chaurus. They performed a ceremony at the top of the lighthouse. Hopefully the redguard family will now find peace in whatever afterlife they are.
- They they went to Whiterun to sell loot. Zafi escorted Erandur back to Nightcaller Temple and said good bye.
- Next she cleared cave full of bears near Ivarsted.

I made Rero Reri, the Dunmer nightblade and she spawned at Arcwind Point. After managing to fight through a Draugr Overlord and a bunch of skeletons and doing some exploration, she ran into the outside of Ruins of Bthalft and took care of the bandits there. After more wandering, she made it to Ivarstead.
She had some troubles with skooma in the past so every time she comes across moonsugar, sleeping tree sap, or skooma, I'll roll a dice and if it's an odd number, she'll take it and everything is on hold while she tries to find more, and if it's even, she'll leave it and move on.

Brigitte and the Friends of Skyrim do what Jarl Skald refuses to do, which is keep bandits from infesting Fort Dunstad. Brigitte goes on a mission with Mjoll the Lioness, then returns to Riften to scratch her itch with Kharjo. A visit to Blackreach starts her on a dalliance with Daedra that is better pursued on her own.

Since the Ritual Stone army strategy wasn't working, I came up with something better. I'm already a Breton summoner, so I figured I might as well go all out mage. However, this time I was able to do things a little differently. Thanks to the SkyUI mod, I can group the items on my favorites list, which allows me to equip them all at once. Normally, when I make enchanted apparel to reduce spell casting costs, I have to go into my inventory and manually switch between the sets when I want to use a different school. Now I can quickly switch between my Destruction gear and my Conjuration gear, for example. I made 3 sets, using the Extra Effect perk in Enchanting.

As for what I did with it today, I fried Miraak with dual-cast Thunderbolts. Since every single hit staggered him, he spent the whole fight crouched against the wall, unable to attack me at all. I've always found him to be the easiest of the five major bosses.

Being I hadn't played in some time I had the idea of making a character who would stay at level one and not level up any skills until I'd got through the intro and first few quests, to be a kind of template that I could take in a few different directions and not have to play the intro over again every time I got a new idea.

Well it got totally out of hand and now I have a guy with a dozen dragon souls' worth of shouts and a ton of good gear and followers, four houses, and he hasn't levelled up even a single skill so much as once, he's a level one imperial with an empty progress bar. I tell ya it really puts a new spin on the old Skyrim experience when you go trying to do some of the tougher quests without levelling up in anything at all. It was all fisticuffs, followers and fleeing until the shouts came into play, now it is amazing. Everything is level one just like me, they just can't deal with fusrodah and two words of dismay.

^That's actually a pretty cool idea.

Rero Reri, Dunmer Nightblade [level 7]:
-Did a radiant quest and the quest at Torva's Watch
-Made it to Riften to get her reward
-Avoided the Thieves Guild
For some reason, Sapphire wasn't talking to Shadr when I went in for the first time. Is it a bug of some kind?

Garrus Darelliun, Imperial guard and former TES IV NPC:
-Garrus woke up with a splitting headache in the back of a cart en route to Helgen. He chose to flee the razed town with Hadvar and accompanied him to Riverwood in the uniform of an Imperial Legionairre. He shed that uniform as soon as he arrived, as he left the service of the Empire well over a century ago. Hung around the Sleeping Giant, discovering alchemical properties and reminiscing about the days he and his wife ran a lodge up in the Valus mountains, providing meals and rest for travelers between Cyrodiil and Morrowind before everything blew up with the war and the Red Year. The Lazy Boar's Den, it was called.
-Cleared Embershard Mine as a 'thank you' to the folks of Riverwood, and decided to travel to Whiterun in the getup he assembled as a result: Studded Armor, Iron gauntlets, boots and a helmet. Looks good enough to be the poster model for something.
-Helped Faendal win Camilla's affection. In another life, Garrus may have gone for Camilla for his own. But his heart is set on a quest to find his long-missing wife, rumoured to be no longer among the vampires.
-Passed through the gates of Whiterun easily enough, though the guards mentioned he was dressed as a brigand. Aside from the dragon business, Garrus knew his wife had old family ties to Whiterun and wanted to see if any clues as to her current whereabouts could be found. He queries brought up mention of a woman named Alessandra who now resides in Riften. Garrus isn't confident that it may be her, but it's as good a lead as any.
-Joined the Companions. Perhaps a good bout of lycanthropy will shake off the vampirism. First assignment tonight, housebreak a bad little doggy in Ysolda's house.

Caedmon Montrose, breton vampire/witch -hunter
- Travelled to Whiterun, but not before he had cleared bandit camp or two around the town.

Ragna Eorlene, nord Bard with Uthgerd the Unbroken.

- Ragna and Uthgerd fetched Finn's Lute from some cave, a trip that included dragon attack outside Windhelm, plenty of wolves and bandits. She also bought herself a horse.
- After getting the Lute and telling some captain that some guy who needed killing was now dead, they visited Windhelm to sell loot.
She also picked up a book from fellow bard.
- Back to the Solitude, to deliver the lute and the book and get next mission: find some drum (seriously, doesn't anybody else in College do anything?)
- The dynamic duo travelled to Falkreanth. The smith wants a doggy.

Danae Neryssa, altmer Nightblade and Illia the witch:
- Basically just returned from Ivarstead to hang around in Winstad Manor, then went to Riften to sell loot.

Been trying to figure out a good way to train the armor and block skills while running Combat Evolved and Duel Combat Realism on Legendary difficulty. The problem is that enemies now hit more than 6 times harder, so even with 1,000 HP and 450 armor, they can still kill me in one hit. Training with giants is out of the question since their power attacks mean instant death. Training with low level bandits looked more promising, except that all they needed to do was land one power attack and their next attack would be an automatic death cam. Potions of fortify for the armor and block skills help somewhat, but it wasn't enough. I have a ton of healing items and can dual cast Grand Healing indefinitely, but I still need a way of controlling how much damage I take.

The solution, it turns out, is to use Dead Thrall. Kill a bandit, remove all their weapons, and give them something weak like an iron dagger. Make them a Dead Thrall and hit them 4 times. This allows me to train my defensive skills with a controlled amount of damage.


ETA: It turns out you can still use giants, as long as you can survive their power attacks. A giant's base attack rating is 240, so its power attack would do 480. Combat Evolved makes it where enemies do 6.25x damage on Legendary, so that 480 becomes 3,000. If you have 455 armor, that will reduce it to 1/3, but that will still do 1,000 damage, so you're going to need a little more than that. At the armor cap, a giant's power attack will do 600 damage. You can always try to interrupt it with a bash, so that you only have to worry about normal attacks.

My Dunmer Ashlander warrior Setiah Venerys is completing the quest for Molag Bal to gain his artifact, after which she will continue on to his rival Boethiah and gain her favor instead. Setiah isn't evil, she just wants to collect the artifacts to keep them out of the reach of those who do not understand the power of the Daedra.

Well, it's done. I didn't think it could be done but it is done. Julian Esposito the level one Imperial has slain Sahloknir, infiltrated and escaped the Thalmor embassy, and is off to Riften to look for Esbern. It took 313 in-game days of legendary difficulty to reach this point. In that time he has never used a weapon or spell, never advanced a skill, never stolen or pickpocketed an item, never used fast travel or wait or done any crafting besides the crafting tutorials. It was a truly thrilling moment when he managed to free the prisoners from the embassy dungeon and escape before Voice of the Emperor wore off.

I thought I had everything under control when I stopped the summoning ceremony for this Potema goddess the people in Solitude were worried about, but then Falk Firebeard told me the bad news. What I really wanted was a home in Solitude, but the asking price was too high. I thought if I went in there and took care of this menace once and for all Falk would give a care for my troubles, but alas he did not.

[I know this game is old, but it's new to me. Anyway, today I realized the Legendary edition I am borrowing has all of the add-ons, which are on the second disc. I downloaded them before playing today and was in for a treat of mass chaos.]

I made my first trek to Dawnstar to collect on a dragon bounty, and I had also heard a rumors of a museum opening. I arrived around 3:24 am with my friend, Farkas. I approached the guard at the entrance to let him know of my peaceful intentions. He spoke of some vampire problems the realm was having, but I ignored him and kept on down the path.

Then, suddenly out of the sky, came a blood dragon. Alarms were raised as the foul beast attacked the few gathered masses. As if that wasn't bad enough, a gang of vampires showed up. I decided to deal with those on the ground first and worry about the sky lizard last.

The guards joined in and we soon took down the vamps. Then it was time for the dragon. Thanks to Horik Halfhand and others we slew the beast in little time. Sadly, both Fruki and Irgner were slain in battle. As soon as I sucked in the dragon's soul a courier showed up to give me a message.

I traveled to the museum during these wee hours and was pleasantly surprised to see its curator waiting for me. After accepting yet another mission I went to see the Jarl, before heading to the Windpeak Inn. I spoke to a priest named Erandur who invited me on an epic quest. I accepted, hoping to gain the trust of the Jarl, and that's when it got even weirder.

As soon as we stepped out from the Inn an axe-wielding mercenary was waiting to chop off my head. With my two allies we easily dispatched of him. Then, a pair of cultists inquiring of my Dragonborn nature came toward me accusing me of heresy. We dealt with those fools just as easily.

Then it was off to end the Nightmare problem. I kept Farkas outside to watch our backs while Erandur and I took care of the problem. Now only if I could keep people from tracking my whereabouts...

After smelting nearly a thousand dwarven metal ingots, I decided to put them to good use. I switched to the Warrior Stone, rested up at home, and gave all the ingots (all types) stored at home to my follower. I also had quite a lot of gemstones thanks to the Prowler's Profit ability, so I brought those as well. We traveled to the nearest city with a blacksmith and I made Smithing Legendary. I bought up all the raw materials the blacksmith had and began forging stuff like there was no tomorrow. I already had the Ancient Knowledge ability, so Smithing went up pretty fast. Whenever I reached certain skill levels, I got the available perks and switched to a different item type. Here's the order I used:

Levels 15-30: Leather bracers and jewelry
Levels 30-50: Dwarven bows
Levels 50-70: Orcish and Nordic bows
Levels 70-80: Glass bows
Levels 80-100: Ebony bows (Then make Smithing Legendary again)

Any time I didn't have enough of a certain material, I'd use Dwarven bows or jewelry to reach the next perk level. Iron ingots run out the fastest, so I'd trade in the bows I'd just made for more of them. When the blacksmith ran out of stock, I'd save, punch him, and reload to reset his inventory.

It soon started to seem like I could keep doing this forever, since the items I was crafting were worth a lot more than the blacksmith's entire stock of materials, so I kept ending up with materials to spare. However, I eventually ran into a snag when I ran completely out of Dwarven metal ingots. Since I was carrying several thousand pounds of stuff at this point, I had to drag myself to my horse in order to fast travel back home. I'll probably do this again once I've raided Alftand and Blackreach, and I've managed to sell off the hundreds of bows I made.

^^ Dwarven Arrows bud, they weigh nothing so you can sell them off at your leisure, the only other ingredient is firewood, they bring in minimum 48 gold per ingot.

Now I got a problem, I don't know whether anyone even reads this anymore but I need a strat to defeat Tsun with my level one character, without levelling any skills. I never thought I could get through the Thalmor Embassy dungeon at level one, but I had a genius idea to go Voice of the Emperor>Summon Werebear>Disarm to single out the one dude with the key and make a break for it. I never imagined that I could beat Alduin at the throat of the world with a level one, but then someone told me that clear skies can interrupt his fire storm thing he does, that was the clincher, I never knew that before. Season Unending plus the civil war will open up all thaneships and properties for me. Tsun is the big obstacle though, if I can get call of valor I'll be unstoppable but I just can't think how to get past that guy.

I tried this in one of my first playthroughs, but I ran into a problem. It takes forever to acquire enough firewood, since you have to sit there and watch your character chop wood for ages. It's not like you can leave the game running to get lots of firewood either, since you automatically stop after 6 pieces. The other problem is that the firewood itself is quite heavy, weighing in at 5 apiece. Each wood chopping gives you 6 pieces, so that's 30 total weight. Therefore the reason I switched to Dwarven bows is because iron ingots are lighter than firewood and much faster to acquire.

I just downloaded the Wood Chopping Extended mod, so that should make things easier next time.

@SmokeyMcCanuck: Do you have Marked For Death? Staves might work too, if you have them. Tsun's page says he can be frozen with Ice Form, so you might be able to get him running towards a cliff and them freeze him and hope his momentum carries him over.

I decided like I needed to (see my character) hit something very hard. And again. And again. So:

Zenobia, Redguard warrior and smith

• Crafted a full set of steel armor and weapons

• Cleared out Halted Stream Camp

• Retrieved a fragment of Wuuthrad from Dustman's Cairn

• Retrieved the Dragonstone

• Slew Mirmulnir

• Took Lydia through Ustengrav

• Slew Sahloknir

• Used Marcurio as a pack mule through Avanchnzel

• Crafted two full sets of Dwarven armor and weapons

• Took Lydia through Bilegulch Mine

• Slew Vuljotnaak

• Crafted a full set of Orcish armor and two full sets of Elven weapons

• Killed Madanach and busted out of Cidhna Mine

• Leaned on Ainethach to sell out to the Silver-Bloods

• Rescued the Sybil of Dibella

• Slew a Blood Dragon near Old Hroldan

• Retrieved Last Scabbard of Akrash for Ghorza

• Took Lydia through Deepwood Redoubt, Deepwood Vale, and Hag's End

• Returned Hjalti's sword

• Took Lydia through Kilkreath Ruins and Bthardamz

• Bought Vlindrel Hall

• Became Thane of the Reach

The view from the porch of Vlindrel Hall is so nice, but I suppose Delphine is still expecting me to attend that silly Thalmor shindig.