Forums » Elder Scrolls

Increasing the Challenge/Immersion for Skyrim

    • 66 posts
    June 15, 2012 8:36 PM EDT

    Hi guys

    So we've all had Skyrim for 7 months now (approx) many of us rolling multiple characters and exploring Skyrim in its entirety. I thought i'd post a short list of some rules you can make for yourself to increase the immersion experience and the challenge of Skyrim.

    1) play on highest difficulty (obvious...)

    2) dead = dead, great fun but I suggest starting it after level 7 - 10, my Khajiit scumbag just had his head cut off by a bounty hunter.

    3) NO ENCHANTING, enchanted weapons must be found by adventuring.

    4) NO SMITHING, again, you must find all weapons and armour through adventuring (or stealing) 

    Of course if you use the next few rules you can work for and buy weapons and armour, making every one a real experience.

    The following rules are for those who feel that money is far too easy to accumulate in Skyrim.

    5) Armour (and weapons if you're feeling really awesome) looted from dead enemies are broken and therefore cannot be resold. - Personally I love this one as you don't come out of Helgen keep with circa 1000 gold worth of stuff. It's something I wish was implemented in the game by Bethesda.

    You may want to also include found weapons in this rule as there really is way too much gold available from weapons on weapon racks.

    6) Potions are poisonous to every other NPC therefore you are not allowed to sell them. This also should apply to soul gems - their sale is frowned upon so no one will buy them.

    7) Only stolen jewelery/gems can be sold, which puts the natural restriction of only selling it to a fence into the equation. Or, as my khajiit, you can just hoard them because they're shiny.

    Try these and see how much it improves the game

    some others, added by Runered

    8)  No fast travel. - one that I forgot lol I tend to do this anyway.

    9)  Eat Food and Sleep every day.

    10) Turn off the music.  Why should your character hear battle music every time they're about to be attacked?!

    11)  Turn down your brightness; this makes dark dungeons/caves actually dark. 

    • 577 posts
    June 15, 2012 8:59 PM EDT

    eeeeshh...those are some tight rules there. But to be honest, you don't really need to sell anything for coin. Get it through quest solving, etc.....and if you're really hardcore, coin shouldn't matter at all to you. What do you need it for anyway?

    • 856 posts
    June 15, 2012 9:00 PM EDT

    Everything looks good.  I always do 1 and 2. (starting at 1st level - I've lost a few characters in the Helgen intro).

    And often 3 and/or 4, because I usually only work on one crafting skill, so no enchanting and no smithing would just equate to use alchemy.  May I suggest NO Crafting at all.

    6.  I usually do something similar here with the potions - I usually place all of them in a chest, and then remove the ones I wish to use; so I often end up not selling them.

    7. Forces people to join the thieves guild, something that doesn't really work with most of my characters.

    May I also suggest:

    8.  No fast travel.

    9.  Eat Food and Sleep every day.

    10. Turn off the music.  Why should your character hear battle music every time they're about to be attacked?!

    11.  Turn down your brightness; this makes dark dungeons/caves actually dark. 

    • 66 posts
    June 15, 2012 9:14 PM EDT

    7. Does force you into the thieves guild but I guess that's fine for me as all my characters have been thieves.

    If you're stealing jewelery and gems you're probably in the guild anyway. For an all around good guy character the rule could be modified so that found jewelery is able to be sold. - maybe add in a random event for yourself, that your jewelery is sometimes lost (I.E. drop some randomly)

    • 856 posts
    June 15, 2012 9:24 PM EDT

    Actually I often drop jewelry / money in my the homes of my character friends...as a thanks for helping me when I needed it.  But good idea.

    I still haven't gotten the 100k achievement (I drop loot in chests in my home, intending to sell later, but rarely get around to it).

    • 9 posts
    June 16, 2012 8:50 PM EDT

    It never did make any sense to me that my character could carry 6 suits suits of armor around ... much less SNEAK that way ... *grin*

    As for the other rules, for myself personally the no FT ones and etc just make the game more tedious, not more fun.  But to each his/her own.

    • 66 posts
    June 16, 2012 9:39 PM EDT

    More tedious?

    Interesting position, for me no fast travel means I'm always encountering random events and new caves/ruins.

    Something that I really enjoy about Skyrim.

    • 9 posts
    June 16, 2012 10:18 PM EDT

    Discovering new stuff is awesome.  Getting jumped by bears/sabrecats constantly is not.  Running back and forth from Whiterun to Windhelm to deliver the Jarl's Axe (Civil War questline) = really boring.

    I suppose I'm more of a "gently caress" than "avoid completely" guy.  I agree with the spirit of the rule.

    • 63 posts
    June 16, 2012 10:56 PM EDT

    Hmmm. In terms of the crafting skills. Shouldn't we be picking them based on our character? If I'm playing a thief, I sure as hell aren't likely to pick up a hammer, or a morter and pestle or learn arcane enchantments.

    Apart from my first character, usually, I'm only ever picking one crafting skill and I tend to not bomb it with leveling exercises. I usually end up somewhere around 40 to 70 skill level depending on the character by the time I hit level 50.

    • 9 posts
    June 17, 2012 2:17 PM EDT

    Wow that sounds cool.  My first character is the only one I got past level 50, these days by 40 I feel too ultrapowerful.  I'll try it your way EvilTrain 

    • 16 posts
    June 17, 2012 3:18 PM EDT

    Hmmmm, I liked, perhaps a bit too extremist though :OMight try it someday, with a heavy armored mage, with 2h and speech so I dont have to join TG!

    • 856 posts
    June 18, 2012 9:11 PM EDT

    not all the way down - I don't want it 'dark' out in the daytime.  I turned it down a bit when I entered a cave so it looked very dark - I often have to use torches or light spells to look around thoroughly.

  • Con
    • 41 posts
    June 19, 2012 7:50 PM EDT

    He means turn off your display.