I'm still playing on adept. You're right, it's too easy. But I don't feel like getting my ass kicked every minute, so I'll stick with it for now. I'm too old to want to deal with Dark Souls crap.

I haven't played this that much - still going back and forth between this and building ships in Starfield (over 40 on my current playthrough). But I've gotten up to level 16 and taken advantage of shit I've seen in YT videos to get some kick ass equipment and higher-than-I-should-have stats. A guy called ESO has some excellent content if you haven't seen it.

Just starting the Kvatch mission. I had completely forgotten that Sean Bean plays Martin. That voice is unmistakable.

Shit - I caught the vampirism and ignored it until it was too late. Now I have to do the ****ing cure quest. :cuss:

Man, I remember when that happened to me in the original PC game. LMAO. I was equally pissed off and impressed with the unique quest....

Just finished it. Talk about the fetch quest from the lowest pit of ****ing hell. God that was obnoxious.

Elder Scrolls 4 really isn't even enhanced by the combat. A person could move the game down to Novice, and have arguably more fun with the game than the normal setting.

For instance, on Novice, sneaking up on a bandit and putting an arrow in his head will kill him instantly. Whats not to like there?

All the difficulty settings really govern are health of enemies, and damage they do is increased. There aren't higher volumes of enemies, stringer enemy types replacing weaker ones, or any new gane mechanics.

ES4 is fantastic because of the quests, the exploration, and environmental storytelling.

Combat is slightly improved for the remaster, but it is still very very basic.

Novice difficulty in ES4 remaster is equivalent to "Story Mode" in modern games like Witcher 3, or the Jedi Fallen Order/Survivor games. So if combat is dragging down the experience, just turn that shit down and speed up the process immensely.

It's just a matter of do I want to have to hit this guy 4-5 times, or do I want to have to hit this guy 50 times.

I'm now remembering something I never liked about this game - you don't gain experience points for killing things or completing quests - just advancing skills. And obviously as your preferred skills get higher and higher it takes longer and longer to advance, unless you start concentrating on other skills that you don't generally use or give a shit about. My character is a stealth archer and I really don't look forward to having to shift over to doing weak ass low level shit that's completely contrary to my build in order to keep leveling up. Yeah, I realize that the intent is to force you to round out your character, but I don't really want to round out my character. I just want to be a stealth archer. Oh well.

That's the kicker with ES games though. Unless you turn the game down to Novice, you'll never get that power fantasy character of being a total badass.

Enemies scale with your level, so they're always just as strong as you are, and as a stealth archer build, those 5 agility points you're spending ( along with the 5 ranks of training marksman before each level up if you're really smart) is just enough to get you marginally more powerful on a level up.

I have a character that has 100 Marksman, and using a Daedric Bow with Daedric Arrows, it's still a chore to drop anything armored with my bow, even if I lead with a triple damage stealth shot.

There's no way I'd have been able to grind out 75 levels of marksman through normal gameplay, so the 5 training ranks per level up was a godsend, albeit expensive as ****.

The only real bonus to leveling marksman all the way up is the chance to paralyze at 75, and then greater chance to paralyze at 100.

That seems to fall short when you can literally enchant a bow with paralyze far before you reach those ranks.

Leveling up really only serves the combat portion of the game anyway, with the exception of strength allowing you to carry more weight, and speed allowing you to move a little faster, both of which can be augmented much faster through enchanted gear or fortify spells.

I'd seriously consider just dropping your difficulty to apprentice, or Novice, where you can then simply focus on stealth and marksman and play through the entire experience without having to feel obligated to grind skills you don't use just to get to max level.

I think level 18 is when top tier enemies, gear, and sigil stones from the oblivion gates appear. I'd grind to reach 18, then drop it to apprentice or novice, whichever provides the most fun, and just enjoy the game tailored how you want to play.

OOOOF.

Save your game, creating multiple files, during the heist quest for Thieves Guild.

Super annoying bug that when you sit in the reading chair, it causes the moth priests to become hostile immediately, and they will not deliver the Elder Scroll to you so that you can steal it.

A couple of times sitting in the chair soft locked the game. Music still played and I could bring up my hotkey menu, but nothing else. Couldn't pause, or bring up the save/load screen.

Not sure if it had anything to do with it or not, but I removed all my armor so that my movement would be totally silent before sitting in the chair, and then the npcs followed the direction of the scene and brought the scroll.

If I hadn't had a save file prior to this, I'd have had to start the entire quest over.

Instead of playing Oblivion again for the 5th time, y'all should be playing Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. It's 10x the game any thing Bethesda has put out

Lol.

Ok bruh.

Game has to be highly moddable, it's what makes Bethesda games great.

Lol, so you haven't played KCD2 then. Enjoy the shitty enemy level scaling, jank, and worse writing I guess.

I get the appeal of modding and to a lesser extent the fantasy setting. Just think KCD2 needs a lot more love in more corners. As a WRPG, it's on the mount Rushmore with BG3 and Witcher 3.

The first one was equal parts magnificent and awful. The main quest was fantastic (probably the best of any game I've ever played) and I loved the way it looked, the realistic aspects of it, and that they took the time to make so many of the places in the game historically accurate. OTOH, the combat system was ****ING HORRIBLE and goddamn, it was so brutally, unnecessarily difficult. I've mentioned before that I could shoot a bow better in real life as a child than Hal could with maxed out archery skills, and I didn't even do it all that much. I must have rage quit that ****er a hundred times, but finally powered through it. I just don't think I have the patience for it anymore.

KCD with Bethesda game mechanics would have been so awesome that it would make Witcher 3 look like Pong by comparison.

For what it's worth, and as someone who skipped the first one due to the aforementioned issues, apparently it's night and day between the games as far as approachability, combat, and removal of Jank. Opinions and all, but I think KCD2 is the greatest game ever made (not my favorite game, that would be Helldivers 2).

It's a stunning achievement in narrative work, player choice and agency, and RPG systems.

This two are such bros. The antithesis of the modern gaming industry.
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