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All from memory, right here:

"Kick! Punch! It's all in the mind.
If you wanna test me, I'm sure you'll find
That the things I teach ya', are sure to beat y'a
But nevertheless, you'll get a lesson from teacher."

Anyway, Skyrim no longer controls my existence. Still playing it regularly but it feels a little more in hand. Always nice when that Sandbox Madness wears off and I'm just left really liking the game in a much saner, more wholesome way, and not out of some amplified digital wanderlust.

I feel like I've turned some kind of corner, skill-wise. This happened with Fallout, too; where at some point I leveled high enough that even enemies who were leveling with me didn't feel so hard any more. I'm sure there's plenty of challenging stuff left (Elder Dragons have started spawning, and man, do they take awhile to bring down), but I've definitely cross some kind of threshold over the last couple of days (I'm at level 39). So that probably means it's time to do a few more nagging sidequests and then get on with the main storyline, which has been pretty fantastic whenever I've torn myself away from the open world stuff.

By the by, which way did everyone go on the Civil War? I'm a ways away from having to choose, I think, and I know they always give you lots of good reasons to go either way with choices like this, but...

That is hilarious! I took my son up to gamestop last thursday and he picked UFC 2010. I thought I was going to break the controller as well.


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"This could be complicated. You know on the first one I crashed and burned." - Maverick

I went with the Stormcloaks, too, for the reasons you mentioned and because my character is a Nord. But, superficially, it gave me pause knowing that if I sided with the Empire, I'd have ended up with a fly house in Windhelm, which is far and away my favorite city in the game.

I went Empire in the end...



I've got an older character saved having just joined the rebels tho, so I might revisit that, just to see what storming Solitude is like. (Plus the open air combat is a fair bit more fun than the cave dwelling stuff, as a rule).

Do you get a different pad? I've got a Windhelm place. (The one tied to the mysterious murders).

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Nope, the same one, although the murderer mission glitched on my game and wouldn't proceed. So my hope was that I could circumvent the problem by siding with the Empire and completing the Civil War quest to get the house. (Although I'm betting you have to complete the murderer quest in order to get the option to buy the home.)

But I decided against it after looking at photos/videos of the house. Not a very attractive design, and the Hearthfire DLC makes the whole thing moot anyway (though I wish you could have built a home in the autumn-like area around Sarethi Farm).

Yeah I think that mission was part of becoming Thane. And yep, the house ain't all that. Strangely nostalgic to live in it not covered in blood and such tho

Is there a limit to where you can build on Hearthfire then? It has to be total wilds or something? (I still use the 'original' Whiterun pad as it goes - it's got everything nigh enchanting, and I just dumped so much stuff there initially it'd be a pain to move it now).

I hear a lot of people talking about glitches. I don't know if I've had one significant glitch in 90-ish hours of playtime. Ditto for Fallout. Is this just because I always wait awhile to buy these games, and by then they're super-patched?

I loved all the stages, except the driving lessons one. Pretty boring.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Omigosh, Yoda and TUS, now THAT STUPID rap from that video game is STUCK in my HEAD. Thanks so much. LOL

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I didn't run into any quest glitches until recently, mainly seems to be some of the late-in-the-day & minor splinter quests that weren't checked properly (it seems like outcome overlap can mess with things. Stuff like the civil war. I had to return a crown to a deposed Jarl who was determinedly stirring some soup on house arrest instead. That was tricky )

Some of the radiant stuff can be odd too. I've had unkillable skeletal dragons breathing heavily on a hillside but otherwise not doing anything (who Lydia wouldn't leave alone until they were dead. Again, tricky ). Stuff like that, but that's a lot more understandable.

The Blood on The Ice bug is a pretty common one but I think it's been patched out. One thing to say is not to leave it too late in the game to enter Windhelm and trigger it because if the main story is too far along the quest doesn't appear.

I had a weird glitch yesterday with my new playthrough - On my wedding day I walked into the temple to marry Muiri and 3 vampires spawned right in front of me. All the guests started to fight them (and I was unable to move in 3rd person) and 'Quest failed' came up on the screen. I had to load an earlier save but every time I entered the temple the vampires would spawn. Eventually had to load a save before I'd even proposed to Muiri.

I'll clear up Dawnguard then get hitched.

Oh yeah, Lydia died in this playthrough - The first time this has happened to me when I wasn't just messing around. She'd become swamped by 20 Falmer followers in Blackreach and I was getting pinned down by Falmer archers and couldn't reach her until it was too late. I was gutted, especially since the last patch means she's much less sarcastic when you tell her to carry stuff.

Went looking for a new follower mod and the one everyone's talking about is Vilja in Skyrim, a reboot of a popular Oblivion mod. I loaded it up and after a few minutes decided it wasn't for me - It had exactly the same massive downside as the Oblivion Vilja had, really *really* annoying voice acting.

Don't want to be too harsh because apparently the mod auther is the one providing Vilja's voice and she's put a heck of a lot of work into the mod itself but it just sounds like a bored au pair from a 70s adult movie.

Shame.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

There are three prospective plots of land to choose from:

Heljarchen Hall is located in the Pale, southeast of Dawnstar, and can be purchased from the Jarl of Dawnstar (must be at least Level 22 and have completed both "Waking Nightmare" and "Kill the Giant"). The environment around the home is very snowy.

Lakeview Manor is located in Falkreath Hold, north of Pinewatch, and can be purchased from the steward of Falkreath (must complete "Kill the Bandit Leader" and possibly "Rare Gifts," if Siddgeir is Jarl). The environment around the home is mostly a dense, rainy woodland.

Windstad Manor is located in Hjaalmarch, southeast of Solitude and west of Dawnstar, and can be purchased at High Moon Hall in Morthal (from the steward or the Jarl, depending on which faction has control of the village). You must complete "Laid to Rest" before you can purchase. The environment resembles a tundra and includes a view of Solitude.

Possibly. I was able to do the "Blood on the Ice" quest with a later character, likely after one of the major updates. I probably waited until it was too late to do the quest with my first character, as Tacitus suggests, though I seem to remember getting the go-ahead to investigate even though the first body would never appear.

I still see some other minor glitches: mostly freezing at load screens (or the load screen never comes up), freezing in-game, and the occasional wacky glitching NPC. I haven't seen many quest glitches, though I did see a minor one the other day in the Dragonborn DLC. It was a quest in which I had to kill a specific number of enemies. I did that, and the quest tallied it, but I never got the quest completion. I reloaded and tried again, and it worked fine. *shrug*

Anyone want Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition for free? It's a Christmas gift from GOG, so head over here to pick it up. You'll need to be a member but that only takes a couple of minutes and you get some more free games when you join.

EDIT - Golg, it works on Macs too but I think it's a 24hr deal.

Talking of Skyrim bugs, I noticed one a few minutes ago on my character - mad glowing eyes...



Apparently it's pretty common (never seen it before though) and can only be fixed by fiddling about in the console.



Phew!

The eagle-eyed might notice a cool mod I've got installed - Improved closed-faced helmets. You can now see guards' peepers.

Re: Hearthfire. After having fun building the first house, it disappointed me. All 3 properties are the same and will only differ if you choose to add alternative extensions. Also, I'm sure you're supposed to get letters from all 3 Jarls but I've only ever had one from the Jarl of Falkreath - I get that you need to be at a reasonably high level to be considered for Thane of Dawnstar but Thane of Morthal is easy to get so you need to manually ask if there's a property available in the hold.

Speaking of Hearthfire, there's another glitch I've noticed recently.

I've got the "Armory" built onto my home, with several armor mannequins. On one of the mannequins, I had a set of Ancient Falmer armor (semi-spoiler, you get it from the Dawnguard DLC), but then I decided to replace it with something else (Ebony armor, I believe). So I removed the Falmer armor from the "basket" and put in all the new Ebony pieces. Everything displayed correctly, no problem.

After a few in-game days of adventuring, I came back to my home and discovered that the mannequin was still sporting the Ebony helm and shield, but in place of the cuirass, gauntlets, and boots, the Ancient Falmer armor had reappeared. More specifically, it had been duplicated. My previous set was still sitting in another chest, where I had left it.

So I re-dressed the mannequin again with Ebony armor, stashed the newly cloned Ancient Falmer armor, and set off again. A few days later, I came back... and the same thing had happened. Right now, I'm up to, like, six sets of Ancient Falmer armor.

I realize this is somewhat of a Midas thing going on, and could be extremely beneficial to my pocketbook. But at this point in the game, I've got more valuable items than I could ever realistically sell... so I'm really just annoyed that one of my mannequins now seems to be hardwired to wear this armor.

Anecdotally, it seems like some dungeons/enemies don't level with you. Almost all do, but I just went through Shriekwind Bastion at level 40, and it's one of those places I discovered fairly early but never went through, and almost everyone other than the last guy was a pushover. It seems like the boss Draugrs almost always level, but a lot of the ones along the way don't necessarily.

One thing I'm noticing is that Shock damage really messes me up. I've got enough potions to get through it, but I have to use several of them every time. Dunno why that's a weak spot, but it seems like it is. Probably has been for awhile, but I'm thinking I might have passed some leveling threshold where I'm suddenly seeing more of it from Forsworn Briarhearts and random Necromancers and stuff.

Not sure why this would be a thing; I'm not wearing armor or necklaces that are specifically good at blocking Fire or Frost; they're all just general. Anyone see anything like this? Is something about Shock damage special?

Kick, punch, you all remember
Chop chop back again yes forever,
You have many challenges comin at ya
First is a fire, don't retire, now

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I never played Um Jammer Lammy....