Ok, I know what you're thinking. Mighty Thor has to be a Nord with a gigantic hammer; that would make sense right? Wrong. Mighty Thor is an Orc with a hammer because orcs have no doubt the best race power, Berserker Rage. This power mixed with a set of heavy armor and a badass hammer equals clobbering time. The resulting double damage output and half damage received is a great daily power and the only one I have really used that often.

Mighty Thor is the first character I have made on the PC version of Skyrim. This means from the get go I loaded up a few mods like improved skyforge and bag of holding. Nothing that will greatly change the experience, just enough to make things a little better. I stand by the fact that the console versions still look amazing and I commend Bethesda for that, but that said the PC version shines the brightest and looks real nice. Loading off a SSD is pretty great too.

For the first 10 or so hours with Mighty Thor I was having a great time. Crafting my own heavy armor and completely ignoring enchanting. Then I made a poor decision. I was at about level 22 and thought it was about time to max enchanting and make some badass armor. Little did I know that patches seem to have made enchanting take forever to level past 60 skill. It is no longer worth the time it takes to (a. collect 100s of soul gems and (b. sit in that menu enchanting 100s of crafted iron daggers. I got it to about 80, gave up and just console commanded my way to some ultimate armor that would have taken at least another few hours of grinding. Then I took him out for a spin and realized the foolish mistake I had repeated for the second time.

Once you craft and enchant an ultimate armor set there is no point playing the game anymore. You can't die and you one hit everything. This is what happened with my first character I made on Xbox. I obsessed over making the most overkill armor: enchanting armor that boosts smithing then smithed up some uber armor so I could then enchant while drinking enchanting elixirs so after that I could make armor that improved my damage output to over 300% of what it would normally be. If you survived that last sentence then you know what horrible spiral I fell into. This is one I fell into again with Thor and then I realized what I had done!

This isn't World of Warcraft, I'm not raiding with this character so what does it matter. I hated that obsessive part of WOW, aka grinding for the best loot so that you could raid for the best loot so you could get better loot blah blah blah. Who cares, it's all BS really. There's a point where a game becomes a job that your not being paid to do. I was getting dangerously close to that with Skyrim. It was time to let go and I hope this changes the way I play these games in the future. Don't obssess over making the ultimate character build. The best thing about Dark Souls was that there was no ultimate build and that game would mess you up no matter what. That's how it should be. Every battle encounter should be life or death. When you cover your character in health regen gems it ruins your enjoyment (which I did in Armalur, thanks Jeff!).

So I jumped back to my pre-'console commands hack save' where Thor had decent armor with some decent enchantments earned through honest means and the fun started to return. Then I started playing with the Creation Kit but I think that is something for another post. If you read this, thanks and I wish you merry Skyriming.

Ok, I know what you're thinking. Mighty Thor has to be a Nord with a gigantic hammer; that would make sense right? Wrong. Mighty Thor is an Orc with a hammer because orcs have no doubt the best race power, Berserker Rage. This power mixed with a set of heavy armor and a badass hammer equals clobbering time. The resulting double damage output and half damage received is a great daily power and the only one I have really used that often.

Mighty Thor is the first character I have made on the PC version of Skyrim. This means from the get go I loaded up a few mods like improved skyforge and bag of holding. Nothing that will greatly change the experience, just enough to make things a little better. I stand by the fact that the console versions still look amazing and I commend Bethesda for that, but that said the PC version shines the brightest and looks real nice. Loading off a SSD is pretty great too.

For the first 10 or so hours with Mighty Thor I was having a great time. Crafting my own heavy armor and completely ignoring enchanting. Then I made a poor decision. I was at about level 22 and thought it was about time to max enchanting and make some badass armor. Little did I know that patches seem to have made enchanting take forever to level past 60 skill. It is no longer worth the time it takes to (a. collect 100s of soul gems and (b. sit in that menu enchanting 100s of crafted iron daggers. I got it to about 80, gave up and just console commanded my way to some ultimate armor that would have taken at least another few hours of grinding. Then I took him out for a spin and realized the foolish mistake I had repeated for the second time.

Once you craft and enchant an ultimate armor set there is no point playing the game anymore. You can't die and you one hit everything. This is what happened with my first character I made on Xbox. I obsessed over making the most overkill armor: enchanting armor that boosts smithing then smithed up some uber armor so I could then enchant while drinking enchanting elixirs so after that I could make armor that improved my damage output to over 300% of what it would normally be. If you survived that last sentence then you know what horrible spiral I fell into. This is one I fell into again with Thor and then I realized what I had done!

This isn't World of Warcraft, I'm not raiding with this character so what does it matter. I hated that obsessive part of WOW, aka grinding for the best loot so that you could raid for the best loot so you could get better loot blah blah blah. Who cares, it's all BS really. There's a point where a game becomes a job that your not being paid to do. I was getting dangerously close to that with Skyrim. It was time to let go and I hope this changes the way I play these games in the future. Don't obssess over making the ultimate character build. The best thing about Dark Souls was that there was no ultimate build and that game would mess you up no matter what. That's how it should be. Every battle encounter should be life or death. When you cover your character in health regen gems it ruins your enjoyment (which I did in Armalur, thanks Jeff!).

So I jumped back to my pre-'console commands hack save' where Thor had decent armor with some decent enchantments earned through honest means and the fun started to return. Then I started playing with the Creation Kit but I think that is something for another post. If you read this, thanks and I wish you merry Skyriming.

A great cautionary tale. Munchkins never win.

@Harpell: No they don't.... wait what?

While this is mostly true, I did the exact same thing, but was still able to enjoy playing the game. Mostly because a Frost Troll had managed to kill Shadowmere while I was running around shortly after forging the ultimate armor, and I have made it my mission to hunt down and smite all Frost Trolls with unholy weaponry and fiery vengeance. Incidentally, if you have any ideas where Frost Trolls tend to pop up, please let me know.

I love running up to giants and killing them with a swift slash to the shin. It makes up for all the time I spent kiting the bastards until they died.

@BraveToaster: You can take giants head on at a fairly low level with Berserker Rage I found. But I'd walk away with a scrap of health. I took out two mammoths with it, I was just about dead and then their Giant came at me for revenge so I ran. He was just about to catch me when a dragon came out of no where and started breathing fire on his ass. I healed and finished off the victor. I wonder how scripted stuff like that happening is or if it's all random.

Getting stronger over time is one of the mechanics that makes RPGs fun. That said, it's just one of them, and a small one. It might matter more in Diablo, where there are precious few other points to playing. It barely matters whether you can one-hit everything or everything can one-hit you, it's besides the point. The point is setting interesting goals for your current character and then stopping either when you achieve them or it no longer interests you.