Rastas - Feeling lost and disconnected

It's been a long time between posts. Has my latest venture of Permadeath died? No, that has not occurred.

The project has been shelved and is gathering dust.

Other games are getting my attention at the moment. They aren't necessarily better, I think Skyrim is just plain awesome, they are just a bit more social. Lord of the Rings Online had an expansion released, a bunch of my friends are playing it, and I am not paying Skryim the attention it deserves to get back into the game to continue.


With such long breaks between playing, there's that re-introduction feeling to get back in the zone. Only after long hours of playing, and fighting do you feel the rhythm returning, where you feel in complete control and can dominate each encounter.

I've noted that the Dragon Born expansion has been released. In an effort to engage once more, I purchased it. Installing it via Steam was met with some issues and the game ended up having to be installed fresh after being removed. Have no fear, I backed up the saved games so I lost nothing.

After a lengthy installation process, I then applied once more a range of Mods. The list is much reduced from before, here's what's in place:

W.A.T.E.R. - Water and Terrain Enhancement Redux
Sound and Propagation Overhaul
SkyUI (honestly, how can you play it without this?)
Skyrim HD - 2K Textures Skyrim - HD v1_6 Full - Riften
Skyrim HD - 2K Textures Skyrim - HD v1_6 Full - Towns
Skyrim HD - 2K Textures Skyrim - HD v1_6 Full - Misc
Skyrim HD - 2K Textures Skyrim - HD v1_6 Full - Landscape
Skyrim HD - 2K Textures Skyrim - HD v1_6 Full - Dungeons
Enhanced Blood Textures

That's it. It's looking a treat. Very nice graphics, absolutely beautiful. Sound and propagation overhaul is pretty interesting. Check out the Youtube video demonstrating this. On a headset, this is a must have.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqfekEHV3NA&feature=player_embedded


With the release of Dragonborn, there are a couple of key things on Permadeath that have changed. Namely, the difficulty level of "Legendary" and the "Legendary" skills.

I've had a long hard think about these. I'd been playing on the Master difficulty rating the entire game as that was the hardest rating until now. Should I bump it up to Legendary? My decision on this is to leave it on Master.

When I roll a new character, I'll have a crack on Legendary from the very beginning. This game, I'll leave it as it has been from the start. It's true to the Permadeath rules. It's plenty hard, and the fear of death is always present especially with spells.

So next feature was the Legendary skills. This basically resets a skill back to 15 and you can level it once more. Your character will be nerfed in the skill in a big way if you do this. So what's the benefit? First and foremost, you get all your skill points you've allocated back...these can be reassigned to another skill. Smithing for instance, once you smith up the very best items, you can reset it, allocate the smith points to other skills, and then grind up your smithing skill all over again. While doing this, you will gain ranks to level your character.

I'll also reject this feature with one exception. If somehow I manager to complete all skills and have them all maxed out, then I will reconsider this as I will be unable to level any higher. I could legitimately use this to farm up levels. While I'd be able to gain levels reasonably quickly once more, it would make the game super boring. I put in the hard work grinding up skills like smithing to make good gear, I'm not going to reset it, it's time to complete some of the major quest lines and take on the hard content.


Last of all, I applied a few great little tweaks to the ini files. I'll post in a separate article once I finish up with these. They really enhance the experience, wish I'd known about them before. One takes away that annoying lag when you transition to first person mode.

Once I'm done with all the tweaking, and adjusting and Skryim is ready and perfect again for the next session, I'll get some time off Lord of the Rings Online and put in an effort to acquaint myself with Skyrim once more.

Creatures of Skyrim.

I took these two nice pic's just before I one shotted both of these foes. The dragon was a standard dragon type guarding another dragon wall. I'd never visited there, normally I'm encountering ancient dragons so I am wondering if the dragon walls are pre-determined with regards to the dragon type on there.

Second is a Giant. I really like this, the body scars that are put on him are so detailed. From the side, they are slightly raised and look like the real deal. Such great attention to detail.

Cut Scene Kills

Using the console to pause the cut scene I've taken some nice snap shots as cut scene kicked in on a few kills.

 

First shows Rastas after he has ran his dagger across the neck of a bandit for 30x backstab damage. Note the flame effects start to come through. The blade does fire damage and can also paralyse just in case the victim survives the initial attack. It's quite the deadly combo.

 

 

 

Next is a caged Skeeva with the flames spell going through the cage bars soaking it in fire and kill it. The graphics are simply spectacular. The level of detail in this game is really impressive.



Final is another caged Skeeva cut scene. This time I've opted for the fireball attack which exploded all around the poor beast. I got the snap shot just as the explosion blew away the poor Skeeva. You can't even see it in all that flame. 

Murder at the Stumbling Sabre-Cat in Fort Dunstad

While questing through the mountains I stumbled upon Fort Dunstad which was filled with bandits.

There's a tavern inside the Fort and it has the name of the "Stumbling Sabre-Cat". Check out the pic to see why. Note the circlet on it's head...very strange.

Additionally, there appeared to be the tavern owner (Baral Sendu)
 downstairs, murdered on his bed. There were two bandits standing by it when I went down and I disposed of them.

Check out the screen shot. I have the a mod installed for additional blood details.

Rastas - Now a Vampire Lord

Hunting down some vampires on the Dawnguard questline I found myself in a situation where I was offered a chance to become a Vampire Lord. I didn't like the idea of this, but the situation where you get the offer could have meant that I was destroyed by multiple foes. I didn't have the guts to reject the offer and now here's the result.

Yep, that's Rastas. Not happy about the transformation at all. Hoping it can get reversed somehow. Obviously, the people that may know how to do this are the Dawnguard, yet I don't really want to turn up to them like this they'll hunt me down.

Hmmmm....

Rastas - Level 60 Permadeath

Had a fight with an Old Orc and tanked him for quite some time to get my blocking skill up high enough to hit level 60.

Check out this awesome screen shot of Rastas. I've been enjoying the roaming camera quite a bit.

Level 58 - Master Assassin

Another productive session on last night.

Took out a dog fighting ring near Riften and also cleared out Honeyside for the thieves guild. Additionally, found and joined the Dawnguard and have my first mission with them.

I got interested in taking some nice screen shots as well and discovered that you can essentially unlock the camera view using the console.

Basically you open the console by using the ~ key.

You then type

tfc 1

This turns on the roaming camera. The game pauses and lets you roam around using the ASDF keys and you can position the camera to get the perfect shot. I was surprised just at how detailed things could get doing this.

Opening the console once more and typing

tfc 0

Will turn the feature off again and revert the game back to having locked to your character.

Apparently the command tm will remove the HUD and give you a nice clean clutter free camera shot. I haven't tried this as yet.

I bound these commands to my MMORPG Razer Naga mouse to the side buttons using the macro feature. I can now see something and quickly get the camera feature activated, take a good picture, and then turn the feature back off and snap back into the game.

I noted that this command can be used as a cheat as you can use the free camera roaming ability to look around corners, and scope out a place before you actually go there. I certainly will not be doing anything like that. I am simply using the feature to get screen good screen shots. If anything, the distraction could end up fatal if I stupidly try and look for that perfect opportunity to take a snap shot rather than my health getting damaged.

Here's three samples of what I captured last night.

Picture 1 shows Rastas drawing back the bow and aiming it down a road. I like this as the level of detail is simply amazing. You can see the bow string, the position of the fingers drawing the bow back, even the position of his eye.

Picture 2 shows Rastas in his full glass armour inside the Dawnguard citadel. I'll look to get a better pic of this with the HUD off perhaps at a more scenic location.

 

Picture 3 shows Rastas assassinating some poor bandit in a cut scene death. Note the blistered skin on the face of the bandit. This comes form a mod called "Burn Freeze Shock Effects v3.3" A very nice mod which obviously does what it says on bodies. The flame burning this poor man has made him nice and crispy. Note also the blood spray out. Cut scenes deteriorate the high definition graphics due to the way the work. Using the roaming camera here with my macro'ed mouse buttons simply pauses the game. I can't reposition the camera. I'll try and get a cleaner shot of this type of cut scene where I remove the shield and it can get in the way of a good pic.

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.

Level 56 - God Mode.

The balance of the game has been skewed to the point where it really does feel that I simply can not die. I know better though. The game can quickly turn and within a few seconds, I'll be dead, probably with that surprised look on my face as I topple over.

I feel that this over confidence is going to be my downfall.

The tactic that Rastas is using is either a stealth bow shot, or a sneak up and critical strike with 30 x backstab damage. Not many things withstand the first hit.

There was one recent point where it was touch and go. Roaming around the wilderness I spotted a battle tacking place in the middle of the night between some sort of wizard and a bear. It didn't last long, but I had positioned myself in the shadows of an overhang and waited. Sure enough, the wizard walked towards me. I had my dagger ready for a nice backstab. This is the ideal way to kill magic users, don't even give them a chance to fire off their magic.

As the wizard walked closer, the eye indicator for stealth opened right up and before I knew it I'd been spotted. It was night, I was in shadows, I have muffle spell on my boots, I have a stealth rating of 100. How? Well, it turned out what I was waiting for was actually a Volkihar Master Vampire.

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Volkihar_Master_Vampire

My health evaporated under some blistering spells. It was all I could do to keep my health high enough and not get taken out. I thought about engaging, but I was burning through health and stamina potions like mad. I ended up doing the sensible thing and just running for it. This thing seems to have infinite mana. It was destroying me. I ran down a rocky hill in the middle of the night and was lucky not to have fallen to my death. I finally got rid of it.

During my most recent session I completed the quest Waking Nightmare. I must say, the Daedric whispering orders into my ear has a high appeal. I know what they want is wrong, but still, acting out what they want feels good. That Erandur was deceitful and had it coming in my opinion.

Level 51 - 100 ranking in Alchemy

Things are shaping up well, levelling has slowed considerably though, and I need those skill points badly.

I'm way to craft heavy.

Alchemy now has 100 skill point ranking, and I've invested in 5/5 to make the most powerful potions.

My time is now spent trying to sell off the massive stockpile of potions I've made, and then finding/buying components to make potions of enchantment, Daedric weapons, grand soul gems, and enchantments.

I alsmost have a complete set of Alchemy and Smithing clothes that give a 29% boost to their respective skills.

My last potion of blacksmithing potion I made gives a 130% increase to smithing skill which I believe is the highest possible amount.

My gear needs to be upgraded now both with Smithing and Enchantments. Once this is done, I'll be protected well for most situations. I still have a big fear of magic users, one shot traps, and orcs with two handed weapons.

Level 45 reach...a close call with death

Had two very close calls with death in the last session.



I was fighting Mammoths to farm Grand Souls, and heard a thundering footstep sound. I normally play with the headset on but this time was playing with speakers. Wasn't sure where it came from as my hearing direction was confused with the mammoths fighting my minion in front of me. Spun around and looked, couldn't see anything, so continued to range down my arrows onto the mammoths. It was then I was thumped by a massive giant swing knocking off 3/4 of my hit points. I was able to recover and swap from bow to my paralysing dagger and use some healing pots. The fight was pretty frantic though, it got a few big hits on me and seemed to resist the paralysis a lot. I swapped over to a daedric sword of fire (+31 fire damage), and continued my assault. It's huge blows would knock my health down a lot forcing me to use my health potions to recover. I got the feeling I was just one critical strike away from death. Thankfully, the damage the sword was doing finally paid off and the giant lay dead at me feet.



The second fight was against a bandit outlaw. We were going at each other with bows. I didn't bother even trying to dodge with my massive 550 hit points and heavy armour and just lined up the bandit and was shooting him. Problem was, he was doing the same, and was doing ALOT of damage. My damage was not fast enough and I was forced to use health pots twice. As he was finally being worn down, my hits were on 50% and I wasn't interested in wasting a health pot at this point. I lined up for the last shot, and he did the same and he managed to get me first. I blinked because my hits and dropped to just 10% and that heartbeat sound effect was coming through the speakers, I was in big trouble...he crit'ed me on that shot and almost finished me. My arrow was let loose and it struck true, dropping his hits down enough to make him beg for mercy. I put him out of his misery.

A big lapse of concentration on both accounts almost cost me my characters life. Even at level 45, I need to keep focused.



Enchanting is now 95/100, all focus is getting this maxed out to get the double enchantment trait which I've never managed to get before. This will change everything, I'll stack on fortify health on every armour/jewellery item I can equip and it will protect me much better with extra hit points.

Level 43 - very strong character build

I've reached level 43 and have maxed out my smithing. My characters build is the best yet. I feel in control on all fights and am rarely using healing pots.

Really enjoying the game now. Biggest problem is contstantly being overloaded and levelling. The levels are much slower now and I'm desperate to get traits picked out. So many good ones that I would like but can't level quick enough to get them.

My new best method of attacking is to use a dagger with paralyze on it, pop and invisibility potion, sneak behind the victim and do a 15x backstab attack on them. If they have enough hits (which they often do) to survive the initial attack, they are paralyzed and I get them with a second 15x attack as they haven't detected me while paralyzed.

It's incredibly powerful, but what can they do. I have not given them any real chance of detecting me and they are at my mercy. I'm only thankful that the NPC's haven't worked out this combo attack and get me with a similar method. I'd be one shotted for sure. I don't think I could survive more than 6 hits anyway without potting.

Hit points are boosted to over 500 atm as well to protect from big one shot hits.

Power Levelling!

Had a couple of big weekends playing Skyrim and power levelled Rastas all the way through to level 35 (about to hit 36).

Pure permadeath. No deaths.

I've managed to level well, and have good crafting skills. Still just under the levels that Lormak died though, so I am still vulnerable.

Fought a Pyromancer at level 35 and it was pretty brutal. My companion took most of the damage. Getting one of those guys at the wrong time and it's good night for sure. The fireballs were just relentless.

Archery damage has gone down considerably since the latest patch. Still, I'm hardly ever drawing my sword.

Next session will attempt to push through level 40. It's going to be some weeks away though.

Rastas - Breton Permadeath

I'm rerolling with a Breton called Rastas. 25% magic resistance is a solid bonus for the racial class. Permadeath is possible in Skyrim, perhpas this will be the right combination.

Focus will be on crafting, aclchemy, enchanting and smithing. Combat will take second place. Magic skill third place.

Key quest line focus will be to join the Imperials and follow the companion quest line through.

Rastas is in Skyrim for glory...nothing else.

Valeria has died - for real.

It's been quite sometime since I last posted an update.

Diablo 3 got released, and took my focus away from this game for a bit.

I plunged back into Skyrim over the last few weeks and managed to level Valeria up to level  27.

I'm convienced that this game could be permadeathed. She was unlucky to die fighting some Foresworn in a mine.

A Briarheart hit her with that frost spell. The mine was thin, and the spell run ice up the length of the tunnel. She survived the initial blow, but the pulse damage from the ice surrounding her dropped her before she could take some health potions.

Nice move by the Briarheart. An awesome way to use that spell.

I replayed the fight and of course was able to defeat the Foresworn without dying, so it was a wasted death. A winnable fight, just unlucky to get caught be such a good move by the Briarheart.

Once I hit level 20, the next 7 levels were all on crafting. It's a shame, as they made me quite a lot stronger, and this was my first real fight since about level 20. I'd missed the chance to do a lot of armour upgrades. It probably wouldn't have helped.


I believe if you can get to level 35 without dying, then it would take something pretty special to kill you off, or be very unlucky. The hardest difficulty level is really hardest on the first 35 levels. Once you can enchant armour properly, smith up good weapons, and create strong potions, you can certainly take on harder boss's.

I'm playing on a non-permadeath character and rarely die at level 49. The main reasons I die is simply due to me rushing through. I'm slack with crafting armour, and don't have the best gear. I'm sure a proper fitted permadeath character would be fine at the higher level stuff. I'm soloing Ancient Dragons on the hardest difficulty. I've taken out some big fights pretty comfortably solo.

In the future, I'll reroll another permadeath character. Probably after the new expansion pack is launched and a patch or two is put onto it. I found the latest 1.6 patch to be pretty buggy as well and it did impact some of my play in combat which was risky. Did not impact my death though.


RIP Valeria. It was good while it lasted.

Valeria has died....or so it seems.

Last night I had a successful battle focused session which involved me taking on Skooma smugglers nearby Whiterun, followed by a return to Helgen to fight off some bandits that moved in there, and last of all a clear out of Embershard mine between Helgen and Riverwood.

The Skooma smugglers were quite tough. They were of the Outlaw bandit type which I am unable to solo without drinking potions. Two v’s one is really difficult as they can reduce poor Valeria to near death with a couple of swipes. I wasn’t going to fight them both at once and cleverly took them on one at a time. Still burned a few health potions in the process though. While looting their three more walked in. Don’t know where they came from or why they weren’t in the camp originally, but they didn’t like me nosing around their stuff and gave chase. There is a nearby outpost with Whiterun guards at it which I ran towards. Somehow, more bandits saw me while running there so I had over five giving chase. As I arrived near the guards, there was a battle going on with bandits at the outpost. It was quite frantic, but once I shook off the ones that were running immediately behind me onto some of the guards it allowed me to turn around and shoot at them with my bow which easily does the most damage. The bandits didn’t have a chase as the guards were well equipped to handle them. They all lay dead around the tower with plenty of great loot to sell off. I returned to the camp and completed my looting there.

Next destination was Helgen. I bought a horse for the trip with my new found wealth and it was a good thing too as there were quite a lot of bandits roaming around in the ruins. The horse helped out quite a bit in the fight, distracting the bandits while it gave me a chance to pick them off with my bow. Inside the old citadel there were even more, some of them the outlaw types which were much harder to kill off. Had a very solid fight against once with a mace and shield. A worthy foe indeed! This group also had a bandit chieftain with them. A female as well, this was one very tough fight. I burned through all my poisons on her, two potions of paralysis and lots and lots of food and health potions. Finally she succumbed to my cuts and I defeated her leaving me to loot a large chest down there with some pretty decent items in it.

Last of all I cleared out Embershard mine. This was pretty easy/straight forward. Some good ore to be found in there and some average loot.

With all the money that I’ve earned I took some more lessons in one handed fighting and paid off all my bounties. I’m no longer a wanted woman and can now breathe easier. I think I need to get to all main Skyrim cities and check them out. I also need a fence to get rid of stolen items as I am building up quite the collection of stuff which I’m carrying around but can’t sell off.

My level is now midway through level 11.

So how did I die? After playing the game I was plagued by the most horrible of dreams. I am getting over a cold, and had a disturbed sleep as well which didn’t help. The dream had Valeria once again fighting the bandit chieftain, but this time her hits went down close to 0. I’ve hit the tab button and my items have shown up but in the dream I couldn’t use any health potions or food. It kept saying error. When I tab’ed out the rest of my health vanished and I fell down dead. I felt completely helpless in the dream to prevent this and was quite annoyed. I knew it was a dream but in my half sleep I kept tossing over the various options I should have done to avoid that situation. I woke up the next day exhausted. Hopefully it’s not a vision of the future J

Comprehensive Looting of Whiterun

Last nights session has given me cause to re-think the whole training strategy.

The point of it was to make sure that on each level I was heavy with combat increases. Doing too much non combat ranking in skills early makes your character weak in combat. In the early levels, it's very easy to dilute your skills as everything can go up quickly.

Picking up all the free and easy loot in places like the Companions headquarters and the Dragonsreach itself yielded me plenty of gold which allowed me to train in several ranks to up to level 8. I am maxed on level 8 already.

Plates, pots, pretty much anything that I could pick up and on sell was taken. It was picked clean. This is a safeway to gain strength but it counterproductive.

I could easily go out and fight bandits and hunt down creatures without too much risk. I can rank my combat skills pretty easily this way as I'd be constantly using them. I'd hold back on crafting and stockpile things that I've found. This way I'd still be combat heavy on my first 10+ levels, but I'd have not wasted a fortune on training. It's quite expensive and it is tedious picking up junk to sell off. Better to fight and get combat loot, save my money and spend it on better armour and magic items.

Seems obvious now, I'll be level 9 when I level up and I'm obviously much more confident now as I've invested in increased hit points each level so I'm much stronger. Additionally, I'm armed with a good supply of healing potions, have invisibility and paralysis potions. There are a number of basic dungeons nearby which will allow me to clear them out and start gathering ore which I will stockpile for crafting later.

I'm confident I can comfortably reach level 20 without taking on too much risk with fighting. I'll then focus on upgrading my characters armour/items and focus on crafting. Level 20 through to 30 would be strong crafting levels. Of course improved combat through there would also be good.

My main focus at the moment is:
Archery (11 trained ranks in this so far)
Stealth
Speech craft (for the extra money it brings in - the higher I get this early the more it pays).
One Handed (7 trained ranks in this so far)
Heavy Armour
Block

I've also left a number of skill books lying around without using them. For instance, there's one on Smithing at the Skyforge. That can stay there, when my Smithing skill is up around the 80+ mark, that book would be much better to read then, rather than now as it is very easy to gain a rank in Smithing at the moment.

I wish there was a way to pick up skill books without reading them so I could stockpile them.

Balbus - shot down and killed.

Another two levels gained. Trying desperately to hold back on levelling so I can get 5 combat ranks per level in Archery at the moment.

Found more bandits and looted along with a treasure map to find a chest near Riverwood which allowed me to finance the next 5 levels. Unfortunately, I’d gained too many skill increases and I was forced to jump from level 5 to level 7.

It’s better than the level 1 to level 5 jump I did last. I think I should be able to control it from now on. I’ve now bought 10 ranks in Archery and levelled it quite a bit in fighting as well. I have over 30 skill points in it already.

Also found a guy called Balbus lurking around Riverwood on the outskirts. He was blabbing on about collecting ingredients for someone called the gourmet. With pick pocketing, I inspected him and decided he was a prime target for a bit of highway robbery. I shot him in the back with my bow while he wasn’t looking and he almost died after one hit. A second shot finished him off. All his stuff is mine including his fork!

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Balbus

Valeria has now made it to Whiterun and talked with the Jarl about the Dragon attack. There’s plenty of free loot lying around his home which she is picking up and selling off. It’s quite profitable. She’ll be seeking to level up one handed with training as it should be fairly cheap to do this for 5 ranks and get it out of the way. Definitely want to get my sneak skill higher as well. Doing triple damage from sneak attacks is really going to be a big advantage if I can get that in these early levels.

So Valeria needs heaps of money for training, and she needs to pay off some bounties. Whiterun guards haven’t bothered to halt her for the 25 gold bounty on her head there. That’s fine with me. She wants to clear the Falkereath bounty as soon as possible.

The Companions have also extended an invite to their organisation. I should go there and loot their building clean as well. I’m not too interested in what they do at this point of the game, but it does have an advantage of some paid work and a place to stay.

Hired Thugs – Battle of Riverwood

As Valeria returns to Riverwood, laden with loot from bandits and Talsgar the Wanderer she spies a few burly Nords walking towards her from the Sleeping Giant Inn.

 

A feeling of apprehension arose in her, but she walked forward. Sure enough, it was bad news. These were apparently hired thugs sent to teach her a lesson. They were all wearing heavy armour, two with two handed weapons the other with sword and shield.

 

Still on level 1, Valeria was clearly out matched by these guys. All she could do was run for it. The whoosh of a two handed weapon gave her extra incentive to sprint away and jump a fence to get out of the immediate danger. Maybe there was a better way out of this, she waited until they got close enough and used “Voice of the Emperor” on them and two of them sheathed their weapons, the third continued on with the attack.

How dare they! Time to fight back. She ran down towards the rivers edge and use her new evasive technique to outfox the pursing hired thug. All arrows were put into him and he was still up and running with about 33% of health. These guys were tough too! Then she remembered the paralysis poison. If she could coat her sword with that, paralyze this guy, and then hack into him, it may just be enough to take him out of action. The plan worked brilliantly. As the poison wore off the thug, he tried to rise to his feet but it was too late. The finally killing blow came as a cut scene. Ha! Serves him right.

 

On his body was a note saying that Orgnar at the Sleeping Giant Inn had hired them to teach me a lesson. What! I only stole a bag of coins from under his counter…there is no way he saw me do that….hmm.

As this news sunk in, the two other thugs showed on the other side of the river. A battle which now stretched out to around 30 minutes occurred. I quickly ran out of arrow recovered from the dead thugs body and ended up using my Sparks spell to range them both down. It took ages. They had a lot of health and I constantly had to move around using the river as a way to slow them down and gain distance from them. It was a pretty intense fight with two of them, but once one died, the other was easier to manage and it was another great victory despite still being on level 1.

 

I now had enough gold generated by selling all the loot from the fighting to buy training for archery 5 times. Gladly I leveled up and had enough ranks to push me midway through level 5. Missed out on training a bit then, but it can’t be helped. All level bonus’s were put into health. Now I need to find enough gold for another 5 training sessions.

I went back to the Sleeping Giant Inn and eyeballed Orgnar. He pretended everything was okay. If I hadn’t seen the note, I’d have never known. I told him all about these thugs that I beat up alongside the river so I think he got the message. Back off Orgnar, try that again and I’ll come back and personally run you though!