halcyontwilight

46. When you instantly make a beeline for flowers and mushrooms whenever you see them while walking around outside

@DukeT: Hircine's questline is one of my favorites too, and so far I think it's one of the better daedric quest lines.

The one involving Barbas and Clavicus Vileis pretty good too. Barbas annoyed the living daylights out of me as he barked and pushed me around Skyrim, but his interaction with Clavicus is pretty interesting, and actually got me interested in the lore behind the daedric prince. Plus the voice acting in the quest line is comedy gold.

Early on enemies will kill you pretty easily, but if you aren't completely wasting the points you're getting for perks or are screwing up your magika/health/stam allocations, enemies should become manageable as you level up. If you're running into trouble (probably with magic casters more than anything else), use potions, wards, summoned allies, or followers. Magic resist potions, stoneflesh, wards, and scroll of call to arms are all useful in tight situations.

Ranking up enchanting/smithing/alchemy also helps out a lot, as you can make some powerful items to help you live longer and kill faster using those three crafts. Just don't overdo it and grind them all to 100 early on, as the game will get really boring.

Don't be afraid to change up your strategies when the situation demands it. As a melee character, I found myself against a asshole-teleporting-dragur-boss that would disarm me with shouts and summon two copies constantly that also shot arrows into my face. After getting rolled a couple times, I changed up my strategy and dodged the disarm shouts by ducking behind a rock while I took care of business with a bow and a firebolt spell.

Part of the fun in the game is to jump into different situations and different fights, so being flexible and cunning helps out a ton.

Just remember that apparently the followers don't level up with you. They are set to your level when you first meet them. As you level up, some of the enemies in parts of the world you haven't been to will level up as well, so the follower that you started out with probably will start to be come less useful as you progress. I'm not sure why Bethesda did this, but they probably wanted you to try out different followers as you went through the game.

But if you're playing this on PC like me, just open up the console commands to remedy this annoying little issue. Note that these console commands won't affect your Steam achievements, as I've still been getting achievements after doing this. Just follow the instructions that i found in the UESP Wiki below:

If you have an attachment to a certain follower and wish to continue to use him or her after he or she has become obsolete, you can update his or her stats by dismissing the companion, then opening the console, clicking the follower in question, typing "disable" and then typing "enable" without the quotation marks, then ask them to rejoin. The follower's inventory will remain unaffected, but his or her stats will all be updated to match the player's current level.

@Matfei90: A mage-mage team is very viable. You'll probably kill a majority of the enemies before they reach you, and whoever survives will have a small army of raised undead and atronachs waiting for them. If you've spent enough points in the conjuration tree and can summon daedra lords, then things become even more ridiculous.

@RhombusOfTerror: Because followers don't level up with you, Lydia probably won't be useful once you hit the mid-game or so. You can give her some good armor and weapons to make up for that (or if you're on PC use the console commands), but IMO there's better melee characters. Like in other TES games, every character in the world has their own stats and specializations. From my experience Lydia tends to act like a thief in heavy armor, and I don't think her stats really allow her to do a ton of damage or take a ton of damage. She can sneak better than other melee followers, but just remember she is wearing heavy iron armor by default, so she will get spotted when enemies get closer.

The first summon familiar spell you get is surprisingly useless. Whatever you summon usually dies in one or two seconds from normal enemies, so it's not even worth the magicka or the time to cast it.

@Matfei90: I found that Uthgerd the Unbreakable is a better tank than Lydia. Give her a one-hander and a shield, and she'll be an A-class meat shield. Plus she comes with steel plate armor, which is decent in the early game and is better than Lydia's default armor. She will follow you after you win a fist-fight with her in the Whiterun pub.

Honestly though, if you're a mage having a tank follower might not be the best in the long run. It's really easy to accidentally burn/freeze/fry your follower in the heat of battle when they're surrounded by enemies, and this becomes a bigger problem once you get the higher-level AOE spells.

Try some followers that prefer ranged attacks such as Fanadel or Aela, as they can distract enemies enough for you to launch a few extra spells, and you'll won't have to worry as much about accidentally killing them. Or you can get a mage follower from the College, as some of them are ranged and they can summon atronochs or familiars if you give them the proper staves. Having a small army of atronochs and familiars can be pretty awesome.

I switched the M1 and M2 functions as well. I also remapped sprint to left shift since it's awkward to hit the left alt key. Plus it also stops me from getting confused whenever I try to sprint in BF3.

@Grillbar said:

same here but still i tend to run alone.wish there was a command button. so i could take them with me and at a start of an instance i could tell them to wait without talking to them, basicly just to use them as a mule

You can tell your follower to wait for you. Just talk with them and select the 'Wait Here' option. Or if you want them to wait in a specific location, you can select the 'I want you to do something' option and select the area you want them to wait at. They might leave and go back to where they were before if you leave them waiting too long, but that hasn't happened to me yet.

I'm using Uthgerd the Unbreakable atm, but I'm going to switch to Aela soon since Uthgerd tends to stick out like a sore thumb in all the ebony heavy armor that I got her, and I'm playing a stealthy character. Uthgerd does tank most enemies really well since I gave her a shield and a nice one-hander, but I've reached the point where I've sunk enough points in light armor and health to where I'm not as squishy anymore.

Thanks for the heads up man. Got my free 240 points, and left some feedback they'll hopefully act on.