Skyrim: Mods

I've really been enjoying the Skyrim posts that emerge on the blogs around me. Eldaeriel, Rakuno and Ocho and I have been forming this small group that loves to write and read about each others adventures in Skyrim - at least, in my silly mind! They also all have written about their favorite mods for this game and I obviously can't stay behind!

There's an amazing amount of mods available for Skyrim, and many of them will greatly improve the game. Tiger and I use over 50 mods (seriously, I don't know how the game survives it) and use the Nexus mod manager to keep them in line, which works well so far. Here are the ones I enjoy the most, sorted by type.

1) Game mechanics

Skyrim is an amazing game, but some things could've been done better. The Convenient horses mod shows this: with it, you can allow you to interact with your environment while riding a horse (talking to NPC's, picking flowers). It's pretty ridiculous that you normally can't, if you think of it! The mod also allows your companion to ride a horse, so they don't have to run after you all the time, and you can summon your horse with a horn. Plus it introduces more intelligent modes for your horse, so it won't break you out of sneak. A great mod if you like to ride. Another mod I like is Auto Unequip Ammo, which means that you don't keep the arrows on your back all the time when you swap between weapons. Finally, I really recommend SkyTEST - Realistic Animals. It makes animals hunt and generally act smarter. It's crazy if you see what this mod does.

2) Utility

Some mods give better utilities, such as Better sorting, which renames potions and other items in a logical way so they sort better and allows you to decrease the weight for potions. I know weight decrease is kind of a cheat, but I spent so much time getting rid of junk that I wasn't enjoying playing anymore. Couldn't live without this one! Another nice utility mod is Categorized Favorites Menu, which sorts your favorite weapons, spells, potions, shouts, armour etc into categories. I can't even imagine what the game would play like without these. The categories really make it easy to find your important stuff fast in mid-fight. I also have a Quality world map installed, which shows the roads more clearly. Lastly, I use Unread books glow, just to make it a bit easier to keep track.

3) Visual improvements

We use Countervibe ENB, and I simply love it. It's a complete overhaul of the game graphics that makes it look fantastic, while still looking authentic. I'm not exaggerating if I say I can't play the game without it anymore. In addition, I have small extras installed that makes the environment look more realistic, such as Birds and flocks, Better Dynamic Snow, Skyrim Flora Overhaul and Lush Grass. I found W.A.T.E.R. - Water and Terrain enhancement reduce better looking than Pure Waters (tried them both).

4) Character looks

To have some extra options with the character creation, I installed Apachii Sky Hair, which adds about 80 new hair models. I also use Better females to improve female faces. They don't look like barbie dolls, but just have a bit more detail.

5) Fun things

Some things aren't very useful, but just a lot of fun. Footprints falls into this category. Both you and NPC's will leave footprints while walking in the snow, which is how it should be. More morbid mods are Enhanced blood textures and Realistic Ragdolls and Force, which makes NPC's and - if you're unlucky - you, die in a more realistic way.

More mods to try

After all this mod fun, I finally took the time to carefully read the mod posts of my fellow bloggers:
Casual Aggro: The Modification of Skyrim: Top 10 Skyrim Mods
Shards of Imagination: [Skyrim] Adventures with Mods! 
StarShadow: Skyrim: Mods and Build
I recommend to read them if you're into Skyrim mods. They're all excellent posts.

I selected the following mods from them and installed them. I want to try these the coming days:

• Amazing Follower Tweaks & Better Followers: Is supposed to fix followers so they won't trigger traps and won't equip heavy armour if they're mages etc. Seems useful for Ravereth.
• Build your own home: Ravereth is a wood elf, so she doesn't want to live in the city. A house in the wilderness sounds just about right! Am also just curious how this works, so want to try it out.
• Lanterns of Skyrim: The roads can do with some lighting, in my opinion.
• Wearable lanterns: Allows you to wear lanterns on your belt, so you can still equip weapons. Seems handy.
• Skyrim HD (2k textures): Skyrim should look even better with this.

Let me know if there's a vital mod I missed!

Skyrim: Small adventures

When I had just gotten Skyrim, I asked advice on which type to play in Skyrim, and of course I got mixed answers, most favouring either the hunter or the mage type. I've played until level 20 on Ravereth the hunter since, but today I've been a bad girl, felt the itch and succumbed to mage. Now I play Ravanel, I notice how much I've missed roasting things (as demonstrated on the picture above)! I also like learning new spells, and discovering new tricks. The mage feels a bit more versatile than hunter, as I keep mixing different spells, while as a hunter you... well... just keep shooting arrows at things. I also was getting a bit tired of having Lyria running after me all the time. I've build Ravanel with a bit more health than Ravereth and she should be able to survive on her own. Theoretically.

Eventually I'll want to try out other playstyles, such as that of my two-handed warrior, as well. I'm not sure yet which character I will stick to in the end. Perhaps I will hopelessly keep switching between them all the time!

Adventures

One of my favorite things about Skyrim is the random factor. Of course there are quests with set scripts, but there's also a chance that something unexpected happens. If I'm wandering around, there are always these little adventures I run into, and sometimes I won't be able to repeat them on another character. Here are some:

Freshhh fish

Ravereth discovered a cave called Darkwater Pass and took a peek inside. It was very dark, but there was a lot of water, and I could hear the splashing of fish. All of a sudden, she was found by a strange goblin-like creature (of which I later learned it was called a Falmer) that attacked her. It was relatively though to fight, but she managed in the end. When she looked on his body, she found a freshly caught fish. He had been sitting at the edge of the water in that cave, catching fish. A Gollum reference? Either way, the cave freaked her out, so she quickly returned to the outside world and continued her travels.

Orcish delight

Ravanel had to pass a certain region in the mountains, wherein she got harassed by two sabre-toothed tigers. They're such a pain! There was no way she could get past them while sneaking. She also couldn't kite them, as they leapt from the shadows right on top of her, and run very fast. On top of that, it was night and she couldn't see them well at all. I nearly got a heart attack each time they killed poor Ravanel. So she gave up and spent the night at a bedroll in some nearby camp, and dreaded the next day to come.

However, she found them both dead the next day by the hand of an old orc. She didn't tell him, but you can imagine her relief! The orc asked me if she please could kill him in a duel (for some weird orcish reason he wanted to die), but considering his recent victorious involvement with the sabres, I passed.

Very protective

Ravanel usually runs around in her gothic necromancer's robes, but carries some light armour with her as well, for the rare cases when she's not allowed to use magic (for instance in bar brawls - oh yeah, I'm totally into those!). Today she looted some new light armour that had a much higher armour rating than her previous. I was a bit baffled when she put it on, though. How exactly does this protect me? If I encounter an enemy, will it be... 'distracted' by my looks or something?!

I hope you enjoyed these stories. Have you had similar adventures as well? Or am I the only one who experiences Skyrim like this?

LOTRO: Lore-master legendary items

Recently, H asked me for advice on how to customize his lore-master's legendary items (LI's). Since I get this question more often, and that particular thread is starting to get a bit lengthy, I thought it best to give the subject the space it deserves and write a post.

First off, I don't consider myself "the expert on LI's" or something, I'll just go with what I found to be effective myself. I should also tell you that I built my lore-master mainly for PvE (and specifically for raiding), and my LI's reflect this. My optimal choice might not be the best for you if you have a different playstyle (EM comes to mind).

Warning: nerdy content follows! I assume that you to know how the legendary item system in LotRO works. If you don't, it might be an idea to read an external guide like Legendary Items 101 first. You'll probably be bored to death by this post anyway.

My setup

I use five different LI's while playing. Five?! But I thought you can only equip two at a time? That's correct, but I like going for maximum efficiency, and there simply were more legacies than would fit on two items. I also like to get crazy and swap staves and books mid-fight. That doesn't mean you can't get away with a (slightly less efficient) build of just one staff and one book, don't worry. And while I do recommend at least a separate raiding book if you're serious about raiding, you certainly don't have to swap LI's mid-fight.

Lore-master books

I have three of these, mainly because I'm crazy and the legacies I wanted didn't fit on two. To the left my support book, to the right my DPS book.

Priorities

Support book
Tactical healing rating maxed out
Signs of power durations
Healing from Beacon of Hope
Target resistance (debuffing skills)

DPS book
+5% fire skill damage title
Fire damage over time
Pulses legacies
Target resistance (damaging/fire skills)

While the Target resistance legacies are no more than an extra bunch of skill type specific finesse, lore-masters don't get that much finesse from gear, so I do recommend to take those legacies if you can. For raids, it is important to have so much finesse that your debuffs never get resisted.

A common misunderstanding  is the the thought that the legacy Signs of Power durations only prolongs the duration of your stun immunity. However, it prolongs the duration of all Signs of Power buffs. The main reason why this legacy is absolutely vital on a raid book is because it allows you to keep up Sign of Power: See All Ends on the target 100% of the time (in combination with Force of Will, the Ancient Master capstone). A must for every serious raiding lore-master.

My third book is a pet book ("Creatures of Middle-earth"), which I use to to apply a Sign of the Wild to my pet. When I equip either my support or DPS book, the improved buff on the pet stays. I also swap it in if I need to use Bane Flare.

Tips: if you're making a separate DPS and support book, you don't have to spend any points in tactical healing rating on your DPS book (= more points to spend on legacies). If you have the luxury of a first age symbol that you don't need to spend on something else (I would spend one on a staff first), your book will get an extra amount of tactical damage (1-5%) as a passive. Otherwise the age doesn't matter apart from the available amount of points to spend. If you have a second age symbol available, I would prioritize a second age book for your support book over that of your DPS book, as second age books (and first age books) have a higher outgoing healing rating than third age books. Tactical healing rating affects your healing (including Beacon of Hope and Share the Power) more than any legacy. 

Lore-master staves

I have two staves: a support staff (left) and a DPS staff (right). As there's only one legacy important for a support staff, you can combine it all on one staff as well, if you wish to do so (but you'll have less points to spend on DPS).

Priorities

Support staff
Share the Power Increase
Nice passives

DPS staff
Damage title (e.g. Beleriand)
Tactical Skills Direct Damage
Fire Skills Critical Multiplier
Burning Embers Initial Damage

Sometimes someone comes to me and says something along the lines of: Hey, look at my new legendary item, it's great! It got Ents go to War and Lightning Storm all maxed out. Uhm, yeah. Thing is, Ents and Lightning Storm are great burst damage skills, but they got long cooldowns. If you want to increase your sustained DPS, and arguably even your burst DPS (because often, these skills will be on cooldown), you're better off with the other legacies I've posted above. Another thing to remember, is that your fire damage gets insane buffs from both the Master of Nature's Fury traits line and legacies. Since the vast majority of lore-master damaging skills consists of fire skills with short cooldowns, it rewards your DPS to focus your legacies on these. That's why I like buffing fire skills through legacies more than, say, taking Light of the Rising Dawn damage (light damage doesn't get many buffs, reasonably long cooldown, mostly useful for the stun) or Storm-lore damage (lightning damage doesn't get many buffs, long cooldown, weak damage).

It's a different story in the Ettenmoors (PvP), were the fights are short and burst damage is great. This article is aimed at a PvE reader public.

Tip: if you're making a separate support staff, it doesn't matter what age it is, because you don't have to spend many points, nor will do DPS with it. You can see that I even kept my level 65 third age staff, because it doesn't matter that much (apart from not being able to use good relics if it's really low level) and I haven't been able to find a level 75 one with equal passives so far. For your DPS staff, though, you do want the earliest age you can afford of the maximum available level, because these have a higher DPS rating, plus more points to spend. Just like with the books, the DPS rating pretty much affects your damage output more than any legacy.

Relics

There are different needs to be served depending on if you provide support or if you DPS. In hard (T2) raids, everyone will take damage, and it will often be tactical. That's why I look for tactical mitigation (tip: title on your book), in-combat power regen and morale on my support relics. In normal group content, the lore-master is usually the lowest on the threat list, so you don't need to stack loads of morale. That's why I go for crit and tactical mastery on my DPS items. If you suddenly do need morale while DPS'ing (e.g. soloing), you can always slot mitigation and morale virtues and swap in jewellery with more morale - all much easier than swapping your relics.

DPS lore-master tip: I like the Settings of Ending: it's the only thing that increases your devastate magnitude, and crit is pretty good for a DPS lore-master.  

Updates

I've looked at the upcoming lore-master changes with Riders of Rohan and don't expect many changes on how to build your lore-master legendary items - apart from that we'll have to get them up to level 85, of course. I might keep this post up to date with my new LI's when the time is there.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions or did I do it all wrong, feel free to write below and I'll try to answer. Let's talk lore-master!

SWTOR: It's world boss time!

Just some quick pictures of Saturday night, when I spent until 3 o'clock in the morning traveling space with guildmates, hunting down world bosses. For no reason, really, just because we could.

For those who don't know: almost every planet in SWTOR has a world boss that can be found somewhere in the landscape and needs to be taken down by a large group of people. They are known to drop nice items. We killed quite some of them for fun, although many on low level planets dropped only useless low level items. Sadly enough there didn't seem to be an achievement for killing all of them.

Above you see world boss Snowblind on Hoth, looking rather cute and innocent, although he did have the ability to blind our sight and deal damage if we weren't cuddled up. What would you do if you're just enjoying your Saturday night wandering through your favourite icicle wood and you suddenly get attacked by eight savages with lightsabers?

Hoth apparently was one of the few planets with two world bosses, so we also visited Snowblind's colleague Gargath (again, with deadly consequences). Reason for a party!

We found out that there was some sort of achievement after all, and that was to kill four of the hardest world bosses to get an err... 'very pretty' purple speeder (picture on top of this post), among which Snowblind and Gargath. The third was the Primal Destroyer on Belsavis, and that one too we sought out. Orokeet was also allowed to help in the form of moral support.

On this one I had to get awake and actually heal people. We lost one person, but made it without a wipe. Hurray! Sadly enough, the fourth world boss for the speeder is the Nightmare Pilgrim, for which you need 16 people with full Rakata (= very good) gear and a special item in order not to get one-shot. We don't have enough people with that gear in my guild yet, but I surely hope to do it one day. Until then, I'll keep the speeder quest in my log.

TL;DR

Hunting world bosses is not particularly challenging or rewarding, but it can be a fun way to spend the evening with your gaming friends.

SWTOR: A Tiger on Steam

Introducing Tiger

Yesterday, I read an interesting discussion following a post from Rowan of I Have Touched The Sky called My Lovely Bride. Several well known bloggers were discussing how to mention your 'significant other' in blog posts, and it was fun to see what solutions they came up with. Many were using nicknames for themselves and for their partners. It also raised the question of how I should call my own boyfriend, as I remember that he once mentioned he didn't like the distant 'my boyfriend' after he read a post. So I asked him. Response:

"Yeah, I don't really care. Can be my first name, but a mystery name is okay too."

"What mystery name did you have in mind?"

"Tiger?"

...

"You do realize that sounds like a stage name, right? I mean, like, one of the wrong kind of performer."

No response.

So there we go, 'my boyfriend' will now officially be replaced with 'Tiger' and we'll see how long I can keep it up with a straight face.

On the pictures: Tiger rocking on Jedi guardian Rheiya in SWTOR.

SWTOR on Steam

So, um, 'Tiger' has fixed something for me, namely: I can now play Star Wars through Steam! I first had a workaround set up that would launch Origin through Steam and say "Star Wars: The Old Republic" instead of "Origin" when I'd click the icon, but it meant that I had to type in passwords three times instead of two times, and the Steam chat overlay didn't work. Tiger searched the internet and found a way that makes it work correctly after all, and I thought I should share it with my fellow SWTOR players:

Freefrag forum: How to get SWTOR to work with Steam overlay (advanced users only)

Warning: deployment of nerdy boyfriends/girlfriends may be necessary. Enjoy!

Edit (January 2013): this has been fixed so you don't need to create your own file anymore, now you need to run Steam as administrator and use Launcher.exe in your Library.

LOTRO: On the menu

Random picture of today (above, working on 5.): who needs a flashlight if you got a lore-master?

There's a few people online in my kinship, but there's not that much happening in LotRO during the day: it's the traditional quiet before the launch of a new expansion. Understandable, since gear you win is going to be outdated within 20 days, and that's not very motivating. Still, there is enough to gain that will keep it's value. What will I be doing before Riders of Rohan unleashes? 

1. A virtue-a-day

Virtues now go up to 14, and while my lore-master has been taken care of, my captain and rune-keeper are hopping behind, having their virtues in between 10-14. It's not too bad, but grinding virtues is just so damn boring. I know I won't have the patience for it once Riders of Rohan is there, so I can better do it before. If I complete one deed a day, it should be doable. I already started well today on my captain by getting lost in the Fanged Pit to complete the Eastern Durin's Way exploration deed.

2. Skirmisher deed

Skirmish marks are useful and I'm sure they'll come in handy when we need new empowerment scrolls with the Riders of Rohan. Besides, since there was a deed introduced for killing all encounters in all skirmishes, I've been wanting to get it done on my lore-master. I've done so many skirmishes with her during the Rise of Isengard time back when there was no end-game yet, that it shouldn't be too much work. I should look up which encounters I still need, make a list, and get this going.

3. Role-play a hamster

There's a dutch verb, 'hamsteren', and it means gathering supplies in advance (because you think the world's going to end and the grocery shops will be empty, for instance). Guess that tells something about us dutch people. In this case, I think hamsteren would be appropriate: the needs of a leveling character are high and I want to spend all my available time on enjoying the new content. So I'll be stacking iXP runes in my vault and will try to get at least one empty bag on each character - a new expansion also means new junk. I'm already busy with crafting guild symbols in expectation of a new crafting tier: a kinnie did that a year ago with the Rise of Isengard expansion, got kindred with Westfold right away and could craft us new guild recipes the first day. I thought this was smart, as you need crafted stuff especially while leveling - in end-game, you'll mostly be looking for drops anyway.

4. Craft away

It would be good to at least get that westfold farmer's tier over with, the last incomplete crafting tier of my three raiding characters. And that's even on my main character, Ravanel the lore-master! Crafting a stack of barley each week should do the trick and will even help my supplies for 5., because last but not least...

5. Take down Saruman

...we need to take down Saruman! We have cleared everything on T2 now apart from Saruman, and although the fight is very though, I do think it is possible. I believe the Tower of Orthanc raid is/was a bit too hard, as I don't believe many kinships worldwide have completed all the challenges. Fire & Ice challenge, for instance, is still believed to be impossible without two burgs even after the nerfs to the fight. Given the difficulty of this raid, I'll settle for clearing everything on T2, but no less!

With these five points taken care of, I should be totally ready for the Riders of Rohan expansion. What do you want to achieve before the 5th of September?

Girl and Nightfury

To stick to the topic of dragons: here a drawing of the dragon Nightfury plus girl I made today, inspired by "How to train your dragon", the cute children's movie with even cuter dragons. I've been drawing things now and then on my Wacom tablet, and I guess I'm more or less okay with this result. Nightfury looks a lot... scarier than it actually is on this picture, but that's sort of fun.

I'm still frustrated with Photoshop. Perhaps I'm just bad at browsing, but each tiny thing I want to do requires half an hour of searching the internet. Sometimes I just really can't find it. How do I get colours to shift gradually, as is so easy to do with real pencil and paper? How do I get a line that looks as if it's made by a real pencil? How do I use the fill bucket tool? Things I still haven't been able to find. So here's two things I learned from making this picture, for future personal reference (and who knows, it might help someone else out as well):

How to create a circle:

• Change the main colour to what you want you want to be the colour of your circle
• Select the shape tool (press U / 7th icon from below on the left bar)
• Right-click on the icon and select the Ellipse tool
• Hold shift while dragging to create a perfect circle instead of an ellipse

I don't know the official way for not filling the circle automatically, but I'm glad I didn't need that option for this drawing.

How to change the background colour:

• Change the main colour to what you want to be the colour of your background
• Select the background layer
• Click alt/option + delete

Remember, this is how it works on Photoshop CS6 13.0 on a Mac. It might work different with another version and  there might be better ways. These are just simple solutions that work for me.