And that was one of the early inclings I had that I may not like the book. Though the joust was rather interesting with Sandor's big brother. I don't see that really happening in Skyrim either, mostly for the sake of programming and extra stuff to work in.

I believe that Daggerfall let you use weapons on horseback, I think. You could get shot, I know that much. Bows in that game though were a royal pain in the neck and we never really did figure out how to work them. That, and there were glitches in many places and getting stuck in the rafters of houses while levitating was relatively common. I still have issues in Morrowind the odd time when I get trapped in the foliage somewhere and can't work my way out.

Oblivion had that issue, too. I hope they fix it in Skyrim, I've lost hours of playtime to it before.

I had that happen to me while underwater a couple times. That was a bit of a panic. I'm a compulsive saver though since the autosave and quicksave no longer work for me, so I never lost much time.

Fast travel is usually enough to get around it in Oblivion, except... in Oblivion (the Plane). Which is of course where it's easiest to get stuck.

I always have a mark spell set up in a guild or something so I can amke a speedy getaway (magic is almost worth it just for that). Does that not work in Oblivion?

Nope, no marks or telelportation spells of any kind.

In Oblivion or in Oblivion period?

In the game, at all. I know, it's confusing.

It's annoying is what that is! Oh well. It's not crucial but it is handy for carrying copious amounts of items into town, teleporting inside the secret hideout place in Morrowind instead of waiting for the door to open at dusk and dawn, and for teleporting into Daggerfall in the DF game so you don't get killed by a vengeful ghost if you happen to arrive at night.

I have no idea how to use magic. @o@ Like spells and stuff.

It's easy enough. You can set spells like you can with quick weapons (in Morrowind anyway. Not sure about Obliv.) The "r" key runs magic while the "f" key is for fighting. Just point and click as normal. The spells are stored in a seperate window appart from the usual inventory block, map block, etc. Again, this is all Morrowind. Not the easiest thing to use in straight up fight but handy enough for other things.

Yeah but once you use them, don't they go away forever? D8

The scrolls, yes, but not the spells. They're always around as long as you have the magic to cast them. Scrolls can be annoying to use in combat because once you cast it, it disapears and you just have a fist that doesn't do anything. Need to pause and grab another one or switch to fighting.

Apparently, in Skyrim, magic is going be able to be "dual wielded" with one-handed weapons, so you can alternate between spell and sword without any pause in the action.

you can do that in morrowind sort of, but you have to be fast with the keyboard.

Yeah, I don't really understand what they mean by it, but they're making a big deal out of it, so it must be new in some way.

If DWing provides a passive boost damage instead of letting you actually swing two weapons at once, maybe DWing spell will infuse the spell's effect into your weapon?

How do you learn spells? O:

You buy them, from mage's guilds or vendors in the various cities.

Which Elder Scrolls game are talking about, by the way, as it's slightly different in all of them.

Oh I'm playing Oblivion for PS3. xD I've only had it for a couple of months. I royally messed up my first file so I recently started over.

Ah, yeah, shops and mages guilds. Talk to the NPCs in the mage's guilds, most of them sell spells. You might have to do the quests to join the various guild halls, though.

oh okay, thanks so much! Cx

Sure, no problem.

I even get payed for it. :p

Any idea on if spells have been changed from Oblivion, or if there the same?

They sound pretty different. Like, with a fire spell, you'll be able to do various things like throw a fireball, set an exploding trap, set your sword on fire, shield yourself from fire, etc.

I'm not really sure how it's going to work, but it sounds a lot different than what we've had before.

Another wait and see. *sigh* 11/11/11 can't get here fast enough.

I know. But if it works like that, then I can't wait to see about mixing and matching spell effects. Setting one of my swords on fire, and freeze the other one.

Sounds very interesting! I might get this game (:

Have you played any of the others?

Has there been any talk about what manner of guilds will be in the game? Or organizations in general? I like having stuff to join but it did get annoying only being able to really stick with one guild or another because a lot of them conflict in Morrowind. It would be nice to have perhaps more joinable things that maybe weren't on guild level. I currently have characters in all the -standard- joinable guilds and I've kinda run out of amusements from them so far, though I'm enjoying the Morag Tong stuff more since it's relatiely new to me.

One fun thing in Daggerfall was that the assassin's guild was secret. The only was to get an invitation to join was to start killing people and a letter would show up eventually basically threatening you to join. If memory serves, of course. We always intended to join so I don't know what would happen if you ignored the letter, or maybe I just don't remember. I seem to think that it wouldn't make them happy, and it's been some time I played the game.

Well, the Dark Brotherhood was kind of like that in Oblivion. After your first murder, Lucian LaChance would approach you in the wilderness and offer to recruit you.

Anyway, the known factions in Skyrim at this time are:

Fighters Guild
Imperial Guard
Thieves Guild
Dark Brotherhood
The Blades
And two mage's guilds, one nature-based and one necromantic-based

Sounds like an improvement over Oblivion.

Was his name really "LaChance?"

I like the idea of two mage's guilds. I forgot about the Imperials. I've never bothered with them and the Blades don't really count since in Morrowind you don't have a choice. I'm always in the mage's guild though for access to easy travel and magic stuff so I'm curious to see what Skyrim does with the two. Looks like I'll be playing the game twice through already. :). (glares warily at laptop)

Yes, that's his name. :p

And keep in mind, Oblivion only had the 4 (fighters, mages, thieves, dark brotherhood), 5 if you count the knights of the nine, so this is looking like a substantial improvement, especially if they flesh out the guild quests more.

That's an improvement over Daggerfall, that's for sure.

Fighters guild: go kill bear in house. go kill tiger in house. go kill rats in house. go kill bats in house. *Level up* go kill harpy in house...

Mages guild: cast sleep spell on X. Guard mage x. *Level up* escort oracle from a to b. Uncurse person...

all with generous doses of "repeat"

Well, that's basically all the fighters guild is in Oblivion. The others are better.

I forgot about the imperial arena, that's sort of a guild in oblivion, too. Haven't heard of anything like it in Skyrim. I hope there's some sort of battle-for-prizes type quest available, though.

In Daggerfall, my sister and I used to save before asking the mage guy for a quest and keep reloading until we got the "guard mage x in trance" quest because you always got a magic item out of it. We wereb't terribly good fighters to begin with though. We would always be slaughtered the first time around by the assassins, then when we reloaded they game would apparently take pity on us as that assassins suddenly can't hit the broad side of a barn.

Harpies were also the most evil things to kill. They couldn't be wounded by *any* weapon, magic or otherwise. You had to use yoru fists. We killed one I think, mostly by opening the door it was behind, punching or kicking, and slamming the door before it could hit back. Open, punch, slam, repeat. A lot. Fighter's guild rewards were crappy too.

One thing I noticed that was dropped from Daggerfall for later games were certain monster being able to open doors. Harpies were not one of them thankfully.

Heh, that sounds like old-school RPG design. Reminds of damage reduction in older DnD editions that would flat-out cancel damage from weapons below a certain power.

The monsters opening doors mechanic reminds me of how much it helps to listen to the background while playing the Elder Scrolls games and that's something I've found interesting and fun about the game. Hearing the doors open was the only warning of a monster, and the battles cries of other monsters in Morrowind (or the freaky skeleton in Daggerfall opening dungeon) were handy and added to the esperience in my opinion. Although, my headphones at one point were so sensitive that the thunder in Morrowind would make me jump out of my skin.

So, I just read that bows are going to be different in this one. They'll be a lot slower to draw and fire, but do a lot more damage. Sneak attacks with them should be almost invariably lethal. Also, arrows are apparently going to be a lot rarer, as a consequence.

Thoughts on this? I kind of like the idea, as I like assassinating enemies over battling them. I'd always open battle with an arrow sneak attack in Oblivion, now, the battle might be over after that first shot. :D

Not sure. I would like the arrows to mean more. If memory serves, there wasn't a heck of a lot of different between iron, steel, and chitin. I used them all indescriminately. I have mounds too, so rarer shouldn't be an issue except for practicing.

I'm always using my bow, and killing a lot of people with them because my sneak is good enough that most of the time they either stand there or can't find me when they come looking. Of course, even if they did spot me I usually found a high spot for myself via acrobatics and shot them anyway. I might miss not being able to load up on 200 arrows when I head out 'hunting' but then, the challenge might be interesting, too.

I would very much like to see a greater variety of magical bows or bows in general. I happened to snag a Daedric longbow in Morrowind relatively early and I haven't used anything else since.

Well, that's one point against Morrowind's lack of level scaling, in that you can get end-game equipment early on if you know what you're doing. It can make the game a bit boring.

Oblivion's, on the other hand, is also boring, as you'll never be able to sneak something special out of the game before you should have it (barring Umbra and her Ebony armor).

Skyrim needs to have some kind of mix of both. I say, let the epic-level NPCs keep their awesome gear, and if you can manage to kill them (or rob their homes, which should be VERY difficult) than all the power to you, enjoy your prize. Random loot, on the other hand, should scale within a range of maybe +/- 5 levels to you, but have higher-level items be rare and a cause for excitement when you find them.

Well I did put a fair amount of effort into getting that bow so I'm still pleased that I have it. It's sort of become my pride and joy in the game now. I have one other bow from a quest that is in one of the trophy cases in my mansion mod but that's it. I'm not sure I've even seen another enchanted bow. On the flip side of course, enchanted melee weapons are a dime a dozen later on in the game. I don't even bother to pick them up anymore unless they're worth something.