Level 57

Reading books is good. Rastas had stockpiled a great many to use later to help level skills later when they really counted for more rather than earlier when they were easier to gain.

Now was the time to use them. It's slow going levelling, but with the amount of books, and some training, level 57 has been reached. Furthermore, level 58 is really not that far away either due to the over supply.

The skill point went into Speechcraft. I can now pay 500 gold to a vendor and they end up getting more money to use each day. This pays back almost instantly. One of the problems that Rastas has, is selling off loot. He simply has accumulated too many things and it's difficult to cart them around to sell off.

Additionally, I've gone now for an all light armour build. My heavy chest armour was sold off for 12,000+ gold which was good as it helped level Speechcraft further. While light armour is not worth anywhere near as much financially, it's still pretty awesome and has the same bonus's.

Apparently the armour cap is 567 rating. Anything over this is a waste. With shield on, I go over, with shield off, I go under. Next level I might spend one more point in light armour to get the 25% bonus for having a set of glass armour and that should put me over, even with a bow, without a shield.

All physical damage will be reduced by 80% which is very handy.

Permadeath is still good.

It's been a long, long time since I posted an updated on my permadeath experience with Skyrim.

A number of things had happened in real life which put it down the priority list. Work, a major expansion release in LOTRO and some significant hardware upgrades on my PC along with some OS rebuilding meant that it took a back seat to all the other things happening in my life.

I'm pleased to say though, I'm ready once more to continue, this time on a far more powerful gaming system. I'm playing on Ultra settings, with a 4gb graphics card (2 x 2gb in Crossfire configuration), plus I have a new on board PCI-E SDD drive which is simply lightening quick.

As Skyrim is a Steam game, I had to figure out how to link the folder on my old style mechanical drive, to the new SSD drive and make Steam unaware that the physical files weren't in the location that it thought they were in. Mklink was my friend :)

Additionally, with some recent Steam sales I picked up Dawnguard and the other minor expansion for house building on PC so I now have new content to explore which I know nothing of.

First logon to the game in many months was successful. Hardware upgrade, Steam reinstallation, reinstallation of all the mods etc, is completed without issues....yay!!!

It took some time to reacquaint myself with the controls. Running around on top of some battlements I was practicing jump and jumped over a big hole which would have been the death of me if I'd botched it. I only just made it over too....and I kind of had a reality check.....this is permadeath, don't be an arse and do stuff like that! You'll blow 56 levels of careful work.

So with the re-install, and a patch that had since come out while from my last post I was pleased to get a letter from the Jarl in Falkreath. I'd been doing a lot of work there, in the hope I'd be a Thane, but something had happened which stopped the Jarl from talking to me. Obviously, something in the new patch, or perhaps the expansions has realigned the Jarl and he felt it his duty to write me a letter and welcome me back. I of course, made my way straight there.

He mentioned some problem with some bandits. I needed to kill them off. I'd done this on other play throughs but had never become a Thane in this hold. I accepted and set off to kill his enemies.

The controls and feel of the game seemed strange to me after being so long away from it. I wasn't able to travel to the location directly so went to the nearest ruin. Once arrived, I was immediately set upon by foresworn. Great....not willing to take any risk here with being overrun while struggling to get my rhythm back, I potted and invisibility potion and backed away.

I stumbled across a wood elf, very suspicious.....I did a test shot nearby and he instantly turned hostile and started looking around for the person who shot the arrow. Not wasting my advantage, I plugged away at him, but he kept advancing.....hmmm....I thought I had god mode by now....

He started using magic, looked like some protection or healing spell. I rained arrows into him and eventually had him begging for mercy. Beg all you want Wood Elf, but today you die. I shot him in the neck and that was the end of him.

Not sure what his story was, maybe he would have tried to rob me if I got near enough. Oh well, he clearly was not friendly.

I moved on further up the valley and encountered a bear which I one shotted. Now that's more like it. Btw, the time was 2am so perfect for some sniping.

Finally, I've come upon the bandit outpost. I've got into a nice position in a very dark shadow and taken out the lone guard that was keeping watch. Beautiful shot through the night, poor guy didn't know what hit him.

Working my way up onto some rocks overlooking the wall I spotted another victim. Two arrows to dispatch him, and this time his friend was alerted. He gave up looking for me, turned around, and whack, an arrow hit him in the chest and finished him off too.

The bandit camp was now empty. One doorway to a mine was the only other place the bandit leader could be hiding. I've snuck in and could immediately hear the guy talking about how he was thinking about getting into town and paying off his bounty so he could live a free man. The fool, he has crossed forces he could never even comprehend. The mine had some beautiful shadows where I was able to carefully take my aim and shoot into him.

Twas a beautiful shot, with a cut scene and everything. The arrow went through a gap in his heavy steel armour and almost went right through him. The flame damage from the bow lit him up from the inside out and he crumpled to the ground dead in one deadly shot.

That was it for the first session since a large break. It was quick, but it was a lot of fun. I think next session I'll spend my time doing easy quests and getting the feeling back. Then it will be time to take on some of the more risky stuff again. I hear Dawnstar is about Vampires….shudder…those guys are very tough.