I almost wet myself.

[Ymir's blood]

Ok, that looks like cool vampires.

Actually, it reminds me a lot of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain which in the 90s made me think Vampire were cool again (for a limited time only).

(1)Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen intro - YouTube

[curses]

There's a nice little writeup in this month's Game Informer about what's in Dawnguard but damned if I can't find the info online. And I don't feel like going into the other room and getting it.

You get 2 new houses, two sides of the struggle to choose from, crossbows, vampire skill tree..and other stuff that I can't remember. Some places online have given a tentative release date of June 26. (360 only you luuuuuzers.)

[Ymir's blood]

I want a house with its own map marker, no NPCs to talk at me and a full set of crafting stations and a lot of containers. Oh and a bed. No frills no fuss no flash.

Also I want more spells or custom spellmaking. Also mounted combat is fine if you like horses, but why can't we fight underwater in this game. In 200 years, slaughterfish became unstoppable death machines and can psychically stop you from waiting or fast travelling ON LAND. (they learned that from the deer in Oblivion, apparently.)

[Ymir's blood]

Two new mods I've started using:

Ancient Spells. This mod adds a ton of new spells to the game, mostly taken from Morrowind and Oblivion. For Destruction, it adds mostly Expert level spells, AoE stuff though there is an Apprentice level Poison spell. One of the Expert ones is Enemies Explode. I never messed with it much in Oblivion (being more in making my own spells) but it is great in this game. My current character doesn't have Master level spells yet, so I don't know if any were added, but this mod gives some great new attacks for the late game.

There are a ton of Conjuration spells most of which are so-so. It allows one to summon skeletons like in the earlier games as well as Dwemer constructs and a variety of monsters. There is a Mass Soul Trap spell that looks useful but I've already mastered enchanting.

Alteration really shines. It adds in two of the Oblivion feather spells which are a great addition. It also adds in a few Open spells but they don't always seem to work and aren't labeled clearly. From Morrowind, it adds Mark and Recall (a form of teleport which is awesome) and Slowfall which is sort of weird but does work in a fashion. There are a few other spells of varying types that I've not messed with yet.

Restoration (a perfectly valid school of magic!) got some fortify spells but the big one is Panacea which cures all diseases and poisons. It sucks that they left Cure Disease out of the vanilla game.

Illusion got a some stuff added in from Oblivion, various forms of Night-Eye, Command Creature and Humanoid as well as two attack spells which don't really fit the school. Black Winter may have been Illusion in Oblivion, since it includes Paralyze, but that effect got moved to Alteration in Skyrim. I ought to start using it since in the last game I loved custom spells that included damage with paralysis.

All in all, it restores a lot of the fun that playing a mage in Oblivion had, which is great since I replayed that game recently and was struck by how much more fluid Skyrim is. All in all, Oblivion had more content, but Skyrim is so much better in gameplay.

-------

The other mod is just a new 'house.' It's a small cave under a rotted tree stump, just south of Riverwood in the mountains. It has it's own map marker, all the crafting stuff, a bed and some storage. Since it's not in a town I can go home without having to listen to NPCs talk at me. Just what I want in a town. It's not at all fancy but that's ok, and living under a rotted stump works great for my Argonian, but it would be good for any mage. (atmosphere wise, it has a full smithy) The mannequins move around a bit if you save and reload inside, but that's a bug common to a lot of house mods.

[curses]

OK, Dawnguard DLC. Awesomeness. I'd still rate Shivering Isles higher in content and new maps but Dawnguard has better beasties and crossbows.

So yeah, this will be spoilerific so skip it if you want to be surprised.

You were warned.

So the main quest line of Dawnsguard is pretty much the same whether you are a vampire or a Dawnguard (which frankly is a bit disappointing). I've only played through as a vampire so far so that's what I'm going to focus on. The skills tree for vampire lord is pretty cool and only accessible in that state(it's like werewolf powers were except you can use it more than once a day). You kill people with your vampire lord powers to get more perks in the tree. I haven't gotten them all yet, the DLC is buggy and kept freezing so I started a new game to see if that would fix it.

New beasties to fight, like armored trolls, bonemen, gargoyles and death hounds. You can shoot the hell out of them with the new weapon, a crossbow, which is awesomeness that boosts the archery tree but reloads s l o w l y. I have just found Dwarven bolts for it so there is that. There are now dragonbone weapons as well. Oh, there are new shouts too. And a new dragon that you can summon to help you fight.

New horse that is summoned like a familiar instead of just owned so if he dies you just summon him again. Plus he's a skeleton with a purple flame mane and tail so that's just

There is no new world like Shivering Isles (although you could say the Soul Cairn is a new world but it is in no way the same thing!) but it does unlock new forts, Dwemer ruins, and dungeons in the existing map. There's two new armor types, one you only use once and it's quest related(a staff, crown, or shield made at the Aetherium Forge), and one that I haven't worked out how to do yet (shellbug helmet).

There's still a ton of stuff that I haven't figured out yet so there may be more if I can tear myself away from the game to post.

[Ymir's blood]

I have mostly been trying to avoid reading anything in depth, but while reading about the Falmer today, I saw that they added female ones in the DLC. So that's a victory for the ladies.

Also, the skeleton horse thing is strange (but awesome) because when I went back to Oblivion recently, a summon skeleton horse spell was one of the mods I added. (never messed with mods that much in that game, just one real one and a bunch of fan made patches) I loved being able to have a mount and yet not have to worry about it showing up every time I fast traveled.

Oh yeah, I discovered a new exploit tonight for the vanilla game. I was going after Dawnbreaker but didn't know if I could get though the final battle. In the dungeon, I'd found a Bane of the Undead scroll and used it to clear out all the corrupted shades. Well, that spell is one of the ones that throws stuff around in the area it effects. It threw Dawnbreaker off of the pedestal onto the ground. That gave me an idea. I picked the sword up off of the floor and wasn't transported back to Meridia. Activating the pedestal did transport me back and gave me the standard 'Dawnbreaker added' message. Checked my inventory and yep, two identical swords. My character is a dual wielding fighter...


ETA that exploit is actually listed on the Wiki, but I hadn't read it before now.

[curses]

That is one of the greatest exploits, I need to try that.

[Ymir's blood]

It should work with most of the master level spells for illusion, bane of the undead, maybe mass paralysis and probably ice/fire storm, which are pretty easy to find on scrolls.

I'm still sorting out some of the changes made on the 1.5 patch regarding smithing. The experience gained from making or improving something is now based on the value created, so the iron daggers of old don't work so well. Transmuting iron ore to silver and gold, adding gems and making jewelry works pretty well. It's also now worth it to collect all the dwarven stuff that can be melted down and making stuff with it.

[Ymir's blood]

Dawnguard is finally out for the PC. I just wonder how well it'll work with my vampire mod.

[Stormlight]

It is? It's out??

[Ymir's blood]

Just in time for your vacation?

[Stormlight]

Now wouldn't that be nice!

[Ymir's blood]

So far, the only lead I have on the Dawnguard main quest led to the vampire hunters themselves. That isn't the faction I want, so I investigated another possible lead and ended up on what appears to be a lengthy side quest.

[Ymir's blood]

So I've become a vampire lord. It's a lot better than being a werewolf in the vanilla game, though there are similarities. (I'll have to explore the additions to lycanthropy with another character)

So far, I've determined that it's pretty easy to get vamp perks, skeletons don't provide life blood, I'm guessing draugr and automatons don't either. However, animals do, including deer, frostbite spiders, bears and mudcrabs but not horses. The drain spell is pretty good. I killed a blood dragon with it.

But the most fun part is the vampiric grip power.OMG you can pick up and throw people, bears and even giants with it. I kept finding myself killing stuff by throwing it off of cliffs and such, despite not getting advancement on my perks. So much fun. It didn't work on the dragon but did work on the giant. Easy combo for killing stuff. Drain at a distance, pick up and throw when it gets close, then drain again.

[Ymir's blood]

I had quit Skyrim for a few weeks and then got back in while recovering from bronchitis. Basically at first I just wanted to redo my work in creating the alternate start setup but ended up messing with the character until tonight. I had pretty much done everything but Dawnguard and started on it, but now it's just started crashing. I suppose it might be one of my mods, one of the recent ones just monkeys with the timer for the random vampire attacks so they never happen. Last night, before the crashes started, I had expanded it with optional files to stop Dawnguard attacks. I may revert it, but I don't know that it matters so much as I've beaten every other questline I care about already.

But anyway, while Dawnguard seems to have gotten mixed reviews, my only real complaint is that they added a lot of cool content not part of the questline, but the vampire attacks in cities really really suck. Turning off the mod with the mod manager seems to cause the game to CTD. I don't want to turn it off and loose the aetherial crown and arrow crafting and dragonbone weapons though. Oh well, it'll probably be a while before another character gets started, regardless.

[curses]

There are hints of a new DLC for Skyrim
Xbox 360 News: Skyrim DLC "Dragonborn" to feature mounted dragons, Morrowind armour, Solstheim - Xbox 360 - The Official Magazine

And here's the trailer that was on Xbox last week.

Skyrim Dragonborn DLC Trailer - YouTube

MORROWIND is there!

[Ymir's blood]

I hope dragon riding isn't as lame as mounter combat was. New areas to explore will be good. Just wish Bethesda would turn its back on trying to make everything epic and focus on new stuff to do and less bugs.

[Ymir's blood]

Some thoughts about Dragonborn

I only downloaded Dragonborn last night, not wanting to start it during the work week. So far, I've beaten its main quest and a few side quests for Raven Rock. The main quest was not bad, short but a big draw for me is the new dungeons and map to explore. Of the three dungeons in the MQ, none of them are very sneak friendly - bad at the moment because that's what my character does. Quest followers don't do sneaking very well and the Seekers/Lurkers are tough to snipe at, especially in the Apocrypha. I did encounter one bug/glitch, though nothing like some of the Dawnguard ones, it did make me revert a save and use some foul language. Apparently, it's possible to interrupt Mirrak's regeneration so that he stays ethereal but is able to attack. The second time through, I ran behind a pillar and healed myself while it was going on.

The Big Boss fight wasn't that bad apart from the bug. It's basically the same set up that they used in Dawnguard though my first thought was my brother's description of the end of KOTOR.

Beyond all that, the side quests don't seem bad. They're still autostarting (gotta wait for my mod to get updated) but at least the directions seem a more immersive. The big thrill for me is OMG Morrowind! I only played that game for a short time because of its leveling system being so close to Oblivion, which I played to death. However the world was so cool and a lot of it has been replicated for Skyrim now. It made me so happy when I realized that the soundtrack is even that of Morrowind. The visuals look like a blend of Skyrim's Nordic architecture and that of the Dummer. So it's like that older game (that I hope to return to someday) but with the fluid play and less finicky leveling of Skyrim.

So far, I'm pretty well pleased. Now I'm sort of fixated on finding out various bits of lore. One discrepancy, perhaps, that I've noticed though. The second councilor in Raven Rock tells that the Empire abandoned Morrowind during the Oblivion crisis. However, it was a plot point that Chancellor Ocato wasn't going to pull troops out of the provinces to deal with the gates. Developer error or 200 years of historical distortion. The unreliable narration does tend to make TES more real.

Also, the first councilor referred to the Morag Tong as 'fetchers.' I wonder if they've lost their sanctioned status? Apparently the Temple has reverted to its pre-Tribunal worship of Azura, Mephala and Boethiah. The squibs are apparently Ash Hoppers now, though thankfully they don't paralyze anymore.

[Stormlight]

I installed Dragonborn as well and started a new character. I haven't played Skyrim in months and so far I'm enjoying myself quite a lot.

[Ymir's blood]

After another Dawnguard fiasco*, I've gone back to Dragonborn. Honestly, I think this DLC is better than the content in the main game. I finally got around to using the Waking Dreams Black Book, which allows you to reset perk points. That is really cool.

Naturally, I have some thoughts on its uses.
1) Repair or realign skills. I've had a number of characters that abandoned using Mage Armor in favor of real armor because the former just isn't that good. Being able to reclaim those perk points (plus possibly Alt Dual Casting and Stability) would easily pay for enough Light Armor perks to exceed the armor rating offered by spells, plus to add to Smithing. I've also had characters that switched from light to heavy armor because I found a set that looked really cool.

2) Reclaim perks used for early game stuff, like extra levels of Agile Defender. I was just able to get two perks back and still hit the armor cap due to my Smithing and Enchanting being enough to improve my armor enough to make up for reduced effectiveness of my Light Armor skill.

3) Using perks to powerlevel skills and then reclaiming them, such as Alchemy or Sneak. Having the perks means the skill can be leveled quicker, but then you can use them somewhere else later.

4) Reclaiming crafting perks after making/improving everything you need for your character. Say you've mastered Smithing and created a ton of Legendary dragonbone swords and bows. Your armor is maxed out and you've got spares aplenty. If you don't need the perks in Smithing, they can be used elsewhere. I'm not crazy about this because I like to use different armor sets from time to time just to vary my appearance or for storytelling purposes.

I wouldn't get crazy with doing this as each skill requires a dragon soul to reset, but once in a while the cost isn't that bad.

*Beating the Dawnguard questline makes my game unstable and frequently crash. It's not bad on the Dawnguard (faction) side but is horrible as a vampire. I've tried removing mods and using the unofficial patch, altering game settings. Nothing seems to work. I just had to uninstall the plug in temporarily to get rid of the problem and keep playing my character, but it means all my work was worthless and I lost a bunch of cool items and spells. Some of them I used the console to restore, but it still sucks. Apart from a few rotten decisions on Bethesda's part and the horrible bugs, it's a pretty decent questline and one with some good rewards.

[Ymir's blood]

Major exploit detected!

I made a mage character to go through Dragonborn again and I just tonight discovered a really interesting thing. My mage has 100% Destruction fortification and I decided to enchant the weapon I was carrying. I decided to use the Chaos Enchantment since it's pretty cool and also Absorb Health, because it's great, especially for those with poor weapon skills (like this character). Well, playing a mage, I had invested heavily in Destruction perks, 2 levels each of Augmented Flames and Frost, plus one level of Augmented Shock. Those increase the damage you do with weapon enchantments as well, and they stack. 50+50+25= 125% bonus damage to the Chaos Enchantment and it also applied it to the Absorb Health. Even though I had no skill with One Handed, the monstrous amount of enchantment damage and health absorption allowed me to easily kill Lurkers, Seekers, Deathlords...

I've never noticed it before, but I assume the bonus effect would always be applied to a second enchantment on a weapon if the other enchantment was covered by perks. I know that if you have the elemental enchanting perks, that affects stuff as well, though I don't have those. Without the Chaos one, it's useful - with it, it's devastating. My war axe is absorbing over 50 points of health a hit and the Chaos Damage is 70 points per effect that activates - 50% chance of each.

[Ymir's blood]

The 1.9 patch went live just now for the PC at least. Looking over the list of fixes and changes, I can't help but think this is Bethesda's final upgrade. I think Dragonborn was the final DLC, but maybe there is another one scheduled. I seem to remember a number was specified a long time ago. Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn obviously. I don't know if the High Res patch or the Space Core things count, though I doubt it. Still, this is a pretty interesting patch. There are a lot of fixes that are a long time coming though there a few things unpatched. The most major is that there's still no correction for Farkas' worthless skill/class package which can make Dustman's Cairn a nightmare at high levels. They do however fix the bug that kept Collette from selling the master level restoration spell Guardian Circle.

Unfortunately, and I haven't tested this, they appear to have nerfed the Ancient Knowledge perk down to its much less useful original form. That's going to make hitting the armor cap a bit tougher at middle to high levels. Still should be possible with extra skill perks and/or alchemy.

The real interesting thing though is the 'Legendary Skill' update. Apparently, you can now reset a skill that's at 100 down to 15 (reclaiming any perk points spent on it) and level it again, thus removing the level cap and allowing more perks to be had. There shouldn't be any reason you couldn't just power level certain skills over and over to get more perks, should you desire. Most enemies will have stopped leveling up a long time before that's necessary. Ought to be interesting, at least.

I'm nearly done with my current character. I might run around a bit more, but mostly I just want to see if not using an alternate start has any effect on Dawnguard making the game unstable. For all it's flaws, I like that questline and it sucks to not be able to do it for fear the game will become unplayable.

[BrotherMan]

I thought there was another DLC on the horizon, Redguard. But I just googled it out and currently Bethesda are denying such a thing. I'd also believe that a lot of resources are being poured into the development of the MMO they're working on.

[curses]

Where would you like the new ES game (that won't be out for another 3 years) to be set? I'm thinking Summerset Isles.

[Ymir's blood]

As for a DLC, I find it hard to believe that they could top Dragonborn. I can think of a number of cool avenues to explore though. It would be nice to venture into more Oblivion planes. I'd like to see a return of the old daedra. There are a lot of potential 'hooks' in Skyrim itself, from the Kenjstag (sp?) Ruins near Morthal to unmarked places like a destroyed Nordic Ruin near Solitude.

As far as the next TeS game, assuming that they don't want to revisit old ground, the most likely places would be Elsweyr or Black Marsh. That's assuming that it isn't set far enough in the future for the Thalmor to have been defeated. If you were adventuring in the Aldmeri Dominion, that wouldn't allow for the free roaming adventures that Bethesda seems to like for its games. Maybe Valenwood as it could be in rebellion or so broken up that the Thalmor don't have control over all of it. Pity though as it would be interesting to see some of the races mentioned in the lore, such as the Sload.

What I'd really love is something on the scope of Arena, but that seems unlikely given the amount of work it would take to fill up all that space.

Oh, the legendary skills thing seems to work as I thought. I reset my Alteration skill and using the Mage Stone, the Aetherial Crown (Lover Stone) and the Secret of Arcana power from Dragonborn, I was able to powerlevel it back to 100 in a few minutes. I got three perks out of it and the skill seems to be able to be reset again. With the right stuff, it's basically a way to get free perks and stat raises. Sounds like an exploit, but at the sort of level you need to be to get an advantage from it, probably not that overpowering. I've felt that too few perks were given out anyway, since in order to fill out the perk trees of stuff you want to use, it's necessary to powerlevel a bunch of skills you aren't using.