Gaming

Banj was clearly right about the north in Morrowind. I'm getting absolutely slaughtered by everything in Solstheim.
Research suggests that this area is for a much higher level player than me. It seems my desire to explore has got me in trouble again. I shall retreat to the safe south for softies and return to the main story.

PS. Found an Oblivion mod for steering horses with the mouse. No more equine tanks!

Valence wrote: Banj was clearly right about the north in Morrowind. I'm getting absolutely slaughtered by everything in Solstheim.

Is that the snowy island? I think I went as far North as was possible. Seemed fine to me

I believe that was where I found a fantastic weapon that turned out to just be there for show and couldn't actually be taken and used. It was massively disappointing after the effort I went to to find it.

Solstheim sounds like "home of sun" (well, if you ignore the t they put in there). Doesn't sound very northerly to me. And Val, maybe you should play the kind of games where creatures levels are displayed over their heads.... like Guild Wars That way you always know if you've explored too far!

I like the games where the baddies are levelled to whatever your character is at that moment. It allows the game to get progressively more difficult without punishing you for wanting to explore other areas.
For the most part, the Elder Scrolls games do that but Morrowind seems to be the one that does it the least.

Speaking of punishing, in Ark I took my raft all the way around the south west coast in search of proper metal rocks (not the round shiny ones that give you very little) and I found... lots of rocks that gave me no metal at all.
I don't think I'd recognise a metal rich rock if it was thrown at my head.
And then, as I sailed in close to what I hoped was a bit of potential metal, an angry Sarco got snagged on the underside of my ramp and proceeded to get angrier!
I couldn't attack it cos it was under the raft and I couldn't outrun it cos it was caught on the ramp so it just stayed there thrashing about causing all kind of damage. I watched my bed get destroyed and then realised that I had to do SOMETHING cos I was gonna lose everything.
So I circled the raft round and sailed very close to some more big rocks in the hope that the beastie would get stuck on them and leave me alone.
It worked but plenty of damage was done so I now have to return home (without much metal!) to do the repairs and fit another bed.

One positive thing that happened was a supply drop that fell nearby and gave me a new outfit of the hide variety.

I think you're better off spelunking than rafting if you want to find metal... Also, piranhas can probably help with things like that sarco :p Not sure how long it'd take them, but they dealt with two raptors for me...

Just had a little go on Tacoma, which is the latest Epic Freebie, and it's an interesting idea for a game. Reminds me of that bit in the movie Prometheus where they watch a recording of some aliens and try to work out what happened there. Didn't have enough time to delve deeper into the story because I wasted several minutes in Oblivion trying to fight off a tough Khajiit that wanted to rob me.

I didn't bother getting Tacoma, but tried the other freebie two days ago. Something Hero something? Completely pointless and your character (or mine, at least) keeps running "backwards" (it runs the ddirection you want but the face points in the opposite direction). I uninstalled it after only a few minutes.

Also tried Jotun which I downloaded when free, ages ago. Kind of fun with the icelandic spoken info and the norse mythology, but it wasn't exactly intuitive for me and after dying twice I gave up - for now. I kept the game, though.

Aaah, Venice.

One of the first things I like to do in the cities in Assassin's Creed is climb all the viewpoints so that I know what the surroundings look like and can see where all the quests are located on the map but how the hell do I get up this one?



I can get a considerable distance up the tower but the next handholds are juuust out of reach. Too many times have I plummeted to my death (this game isn't as forgiving as the later ones.)
So I gave in, looked it up on YouTube and discovered... I need to learn a special move that comes later in the story.


So having wasted too many minutes on an impossible problem I switched to Skyrim and was immediately attacked by a Giant?!?



When did they become angry baddies? They're usually quite peaceful IF you leave them alone. I guess that's an example of baddies leveling up with you.
Anyway we managed to kill him without being launched into space and I continued on my travels.
Having completed a lot of the stuff in Markarth (and been made a Thane of there too!) I've decided to make my way all the way down to Riften to see what havok I can wreak there.
I've planned the journey out so that I can finish off another couple of quests along the way and the first one takes me back to Ivarstead, the place at the foot of the big mountain.



And look, they haven't cleared up the bodies from the last time I was there.



Pesky Cultists. They deserved it anyway so let them rot.
Slowly.