Am I doing it (Skyrim) wrong?

wax

Background Story:

I'll be honest with you guys, in the past I've only played Morrowind and Oblivion to benchmark my PCs and look at pretty things. Every other time I played game like these (including Fallout), I'd go around trying to steal all the things and murdering all the people in town. This would usually fail miserably and I'd say "fuck it" and quit.

This time around:

For some damn reason I couldn't stop playing yesterday! I've made it to High Hrothgar and I'm a level 15 Khajiit thief (throwing points mostly in sneak, pickpocketing, light armor, 1h weapon and archery). I started using a 1H sword (not knowing kitty claws were better) and shield and haven't really stopped. I was splitting my level ups between Health and Stamina but my last few levels have gone to Health since I'm dying way to quickly and owned by stronger mobs. Luckily the mobs usually bug out on my later attempts to kill them so I wear them down with my bow. I've been trying to sneak up on my targets as much as possible for the bonus ambush damage but it doesn't always work.

The questions:

I'm sick of dying so much. What the hell do I do focus on leveling skill wise? Am I too far ahead in the game for my level?

Thanks!

Snarkasm

Are you using any armor? What is your health at?

(I am also Khajiit, though I haven't left Winterrun yet. Are the claws really better than a sword? I'm using the cold sword from the first dragon shout tomb.)

wax

Using a sword right now because i have no idea where it shows what my current claw damage is.
Light Armor, 180 Health 185 Stam (Modified by some item)

Snarkasm

Are you doing enough side quests? Sounds like you might just be fighting above your level if you've got that much health and are still dying a ton.

fatcat

Dungeons get locked to your current level the first time you enter them, So while some beasts in the outside world may be higher than you, you should be fine for dungeons

I-need-a-better-name

Sounds like you're trying to continue too far in a single quest line or entering dungeons that are too hard for you.
In Oblivion you almost couldn't enter a fight you couldn't finish if you were leveling right but in the tundra it's not so simple. You have to gauge if they're too tough for you and, in some cases, turn and run. Luckily, there's no lack of quests, some of which will be quite easy so slow down and find some simple stuff to accomplish.

wax

Sorry for the late update. After a few more levels and getting better acquainted with my character, I am one-shot backstabbing everything minus dragons! WOOO WOOO !

Fitzkrieg

Sorry for the late update. After a few more levels and getting better acquainted with my character, I am one-shot backstabbing everything minus dragons! WOOO WOOO !

YES! JOIN ME IN THE WAY OF POKEY STABBINESS!

How are you setting up your character? My setup is here.

Snarkasm

Potential different kind of doing it wrong:

The thing I'm struggling with in Skyrim is that I don't have a driving sense of anything. I don't know what I'm working towards. People keep asking me to join their shit, but since I don't know anything about them, I don't. (Why should I join the Legion? or the Companions? or anybody?) I know I'm supposed to go see these Greybeards, but whatever, I'll get to them eventually.

It's not like THE WORLD IS ENDING AND ONLY YOU CAN STOP IT or anything, so I'm just kind of... moseying around. Couple that with the stifling realization that there are probably 400 side quests in this epic and I'm sometimes tempted to just peace the fuck out and do something else. I crashed to desktop sometime around 8:15 tonight and didn't bother going back in. I had just finished a random quest and was going back to Whiterun. Why bother?

Maybe it's just me. It's quite possible I'm looking at the whole thing the wrong way.

primesuspect

That's kind of the thing with Elder Scrolls games though. I'm in the exact same situation. I PTFO the main quest; actually I never really even started it. I'm level 12 and until last night had never even been to Whiterun. I finally moseyed over there last night, fought a bard in the bar who was picking on a local woman, and then the game crashed and I didn't bother to go back in.

Jokke

Snarkasm wrote:

(Why should I join the Legion?)

Legion? You're supposed to join the Stormcloaks, because the Legion is, like, oppressing the people, man.

Join a questline. It will suck you in and never let go (until you finish it). That's what keeps it going. Also, I do feel like the world is going under, because there are dragons everywhere. And they attack villages at random. And if you don't stop them, everyone will die. Everyone.

Snarkasm

Haven't seen any dragons outside of the one outside Whiterun yet. That's kind of what I mean, I guess.

Jokke

Oh, my.. I've had like 8-10 random encounters with the beasts so far..

Snarkasm

I will grant that I've restarted a bunch of times, so I'm probably only 7-10 hours in game in actual play time thus far. All my quests have only led me to one dragon, though.

Dunno. Gonna sneak around and finish the rest of my Whiterun side quests and then go to High Hrothgar and see what it does for me.

At what point should I be going to Windhelm, Fitz? Immediately? After High Hrothgar? Doesn't matter?

I-need-a-better-name

I kind of had the opposite experience. I went straight into a few quest lines, saught out the mages guild and stuff and zoomed through that until (I think) the final quest whereupon I discovered that I'm not at all ready to take on the enemies in that dungeon. Now I have to derp around and act like I'm interested in other stuff and level up a bit. The right way might be to derp first with the bandit camps and early stuff right around Riverwood getting the lay of the land and then start getting into quest lines appropriate to your character.
For Primera there was never any doubt she'd join the mage's column. For my next characters there'd be no doubt that joining the legion would be the right choice or summoning the Dark Brotherhood would be correct but I have to do some character building first so I'm already a bad ass warrior or a murderer first. I think I was just in too much of a hurry this time. I mean, I'm level 12. That's still early game and I thought I was worthy to be arch mage?

shakospeare

Here is the problem we've been having: Derek (my hubby) will be playing and I'll plug his phone into the charger. His HTC syncs with his computer every time it's attached to charge. This has been messing with Skyrim. So he's had to disable one thing or another to avoid crashing the game. It's my fault, really...I have an Angry Birds addiction and often drain his phone's battery...

Fitzkrieg

At what point should I be going to Windhelm, Fitz? Immediately? After High Hrothgar? Doesn't matter?

I was level 8 when I went to Winhelm to initiate the Brotherhood quests.

That said, I'm currently level 29 and have only just recently been to High Hrothgar.

Screw the main quest, I'm having fun in the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood.

I-need-a-better-name

shakospeare wrote:

Here is the problem we've been having: Derek (my hubby) will be playing and I'll plug his phone into the charger. His HTC syncs with his computer every time it's attached to charge. This has been messing with Skyrim. So he's had to disable one thing or another to avoid crashing the game. It's my fault, really...I have an Angry Birds addiction and often drain his phone's battery...

My HTC has an option for 'charge only' so it won't try to sync when plugged in. Or you could use the wall outlet.

kryyst

One thing you need to be careful of in all the Elder Scrolls games is to not power level 1 skill through some cheap method. For example you could get a bunch of Iron and Leather strips and power level your Smithing to 100 in about 5 minutes. That would put you up probably about 25 levels in the process as well since selling those daggers back will also increase your speechcraft as well.

Which sounds like maybe a cool way to level up quick. The issue is that all your other skills that you really need to survive will be ridiculously low. However all the monsters you walk into will be geared towards a level 30 character. Which means you've just artificially made the game significantly harder for you then it should be.

Skryim works much better if you just level up naturally. But damn it's tempting to power level some skills, specially smithing.

Snarkasm

Just power level 5 at a time.

But yeah, that's what happened to me when I got to 100 sneak overnight. Got completely dominated by the first guy in the first Word of Power dungeon.

Slow and steady wins the race.

I-need-a-better-name

Yeah, I had to grind and derp around a bit since I had the mages guild in a state where I couldn't finish any of the quests since nobody would talk to me. I finally got strong enough to finish Labrynthian and shit will get real.