What is Permadeath?
First and foremost, lets cover what Permadeath (aka Permanent Death) actually means. A very detailed description can be found here on Wikipedia
What it means to me personally, is simply to fully immerse me into the game experience. When a character dies when you are playing permadeath rules, it hurts. It hurts a lot because you’ve normally put in a massive amount of work and you’ve finally been beaten. The load function is useless. Trying to play is impossible, the character feels dead, the game is dead, the only option is to re-roll after death. You feel like you are cheating yourself by trying to keep going.
This play style is not for everybody. It can be all consuming, and some may argue that almost all games are designed so you die at some point or another. Blogging about my experience is not imposing my permadeath preference onto others. You can play the game you own whatever way you like, it’s your choice.
The reason I’m blogging about this is more about myself more than you, the greater internet audience. If I write down how I go about this, my connection with the character will be much stronger; the life and death struggle within the game becomes more vivid, more real. Other fans of permadeath may appreciate what I am doing, maybe I’ll inspire others to take up the ideal and attempt their own permadeath character.
I’ve been playing this style on a number of games over a number of years. Lord of the Rings Online (currently have a level 67 Warden that has never been killed/defeated and still going strong to the level cap of 75), Dragon Age Origins and Elder Scrolls Oblivion are examples. I’ve also played Skyrim on adept difficulty with permadeath and died at level 49. Ultimately, with games becoming more immersive, the possibility of having a character that can have just one life like we do (that I know of), becomes more and more probable. The reasoning behind decision making changes considerably, would you really throw your life away so rashly if you knew there was a high chance of dying? Would you prepare better to take out some of the risk rather than just rush in and risk it all? What strategy should you consider, where’s the best spot to launch your attack from? Yes, you can still do all these things with loading a saved game, but hopefully you see my point. Without a safety net under you, the experience is more real, at least to me.
What are the rules of Permadeath in Skyrim?
I’ve googled around and seen a couple of other blogs on this topic for permadeath. Skyrim itself does not support permadeath play style natively. In order to have permadeath style in place, there need to be rules that must be followed. In my own case, I know when I am dead, I can’t trick myself into thinking I’m not dead. I cant cheat myself.
The rules I am enforcing are as follows:
1. No deaths at all regardless of reason. Your character dies, they are dead. No excuses. You reroll.
2. Master difficulty level – this will be the most realistic. Adept difficulty just ended up being too easy after level 20.
3. No cheats.
4. No add on’s that give a benefit to the original game mechanics (eg. New armour or weapons). Mods that help improve the experience through streamlining the user interface are fine.
5. No loading. If something bad happens, like you kill your follower, or you get busted for a crime, tough, you need to get out of the situation you got yourself into. The load function is off limits during game play. The only exception is if there is some bug or something that breaks the game so you can’t finish a quest or some other obvious flaw that is due to a fault with the game. In this case, you must load the newest saved game that is not impacted by this problem.
6. No exploits like walking through walls, or using the invisible chest in Dawnstar. These are clearly not intended and they break the immersion.
7. No using the internet to solve quests that you are stuck on. Internet can be used to confirm a bug when it’s obvious something is wrong. Don’t use it to get advanced warning of new areas. You must build this knowledge yourself through your own play throughs.
I’ve seen other permadeath players talk about the “game breaking” skills of Smithing, Enchanting and Alchemy being used to give your player god like powers. While these things do make your character super powerful, they take time to master and you need to get out into the wilderness to get the ingredients or earn the gold to pay for the ingredients for these skills. They also gimp your character in the way that you could focus on these and be absolutely crap at fighting yet have a high level. Creatures that you fight will be levelled up, and if you’ve levelled up with these skills as the focus you will be weak. My take on this is that Lormak the Bear certainly wants to be walking around with the very best armour he can make, the best swords that can be made, the best enchantments that can be done and the very best alchemy potions he can use. He’ll certainly need them on master level. If he really did live in Skyrim, he’d be quite mad not to focus on these things to get greater protection. After all, he will be fighting dragons, and leather hide armour isn’t going to cut it.
Additionally, I’ve seen mention of other skills like overland travel not being used because it ruins the realism under permadeath. My thoughts on this is that the game design supports this and it’s fine to use. It will be a very long and drawn out game without it.
Have no fear, if it’s part of the native game, you can use it. If you find mammoths struggle to get up a steep slope and you sit back and shoot at them with arrows and they die, that is not an exploit, that is being smart.
Who is Lormak the Bear?
Lormak the Bear is a Nord. He is called “The Bear” due to his hulking figure and massive strength. He once almost killed a man by picking him up in a crushing bear hug.
The main source of his strength is good old fashioned Nord breeding. Some pillage on boats raided his mothers village and raped her, she died giving birth to him, and he was raised by his grandfather who has since passed on.
Lormak is destitute. He has got by simply be labouring. This is the second source of his great strength, hard, heavy manual labour. Digging through the rock hard ground of Skyrim does either kill you or make you stronger. He has also had some time repairing and building some of the roadways across Skryim, and this is where his trouble started with the Empire.
While repairing a road, the Empire marched back from a recent Skirmish with the Storm cloaks. Lormak foolishly looked directly at the commander who took exception to his gaze and accused him of trying to steal his horse. Unjustly, Lormak was quickly brought down while protesting his innocence. The Empire soldiers fear Nord’s like Lormak, they flock to the Stormcloak army. Lormak look just like the type of Nord that would turn on them, down and out, young, strong as an ox and staring down their commander.
Lormak had considered joining the Stormcloaks. He feels strongly about the foreign powers controlling Skyrim. He feels very strongly about the fact that Talos can not be worshipped. This is an affront to Nordish culture. While building the Empires roads, he has been given a death sentence to a crime he didn’t do. If this is how the empire treats true Nords, then he is better off joining the Stormcloaks and fighting for Talos.
While Lormak has heroic ideals, he is no hero. Lormak despises the weak. If a foe is defeated in battle and yields, Lormak is the type of person that will pulp the guy with his mace (which is his favourite weapon). Lormak has no qualms about shooting a person in the back either. Stealing is no big deal, it goes hand in hand with a life of vagrancy, and he despises mages, especially elvish ones as they are the weakest milk drinking cowards every to walk the lands of Skyrim. You would think that Lormak would be adverse to magic himself. While it is not his strong point, he’ll have no problem learning spells, especially ones that bring pain to his enemies.
While he feels strongly about Talos, and the fact that Talos can’t be worshipped any longer, he’ll have no problem working for a Daedra deity who might have an offer too good to be refused.
I'll play my character to this background. This will justify some of the paths I take in the game.
Lormak’s Skyrim Strategy .
Lormak will try and avoid direct confrontation as much as possible. If an opponent is weakened enough, he may engage in hand to hand combat and smash the guy with his mace. If the opponent is at full strength then he’ll try to avoid the fight until he can return with an advantage that will go his way.
The initial focus will be to always sneak and strike with bow shot from stealth.
Lormak will always find a companion to travel with him. This is insurance.
Getting gear to level Smithing, Enchanting and Alchemy will be a priority for the lower levels. Without good gear he will be sure to die.
Magic is not important initially. Maybe a few restoration spells will be useful. Magic will be something to consider more on the mid levels over 20.
Stealing is a good way to make money. He will be joining the thieves guild as soon as possible.
SPOILERS
As this is the journal of the great Nordish warrior Lormak the Bear expect spoilers for Skyrim. If you don't want spoilers don't read on.
Conclusion
Well there it is, one massive blog post to rule them all. Over the coming days, weeks and maybe months (hopefully) I’ll continue to update this with the latest news from Lormak the Bears epic adventure in the lands of Skyrim. Stay tuned.
