Gaming

Yes, I think Orc leader Ghunzul is still "dead" at my first stolen home although I don't think he's sat in the chair anymore.
I haven't been back to that place in a long, long time so I might check in later tonight to see if I can pose his body again.

And I should point out that although I'm gloating about Lydia and Anise still being alive there are still a few NPCs that have ...erm... "gone away" in my story. Dear old Balbus with his famous fork, poor Mulush who perished in a rather large "incident" in Markarth and some more that I felt the need to personally remove from existence for spoiler story reasons.

EDIT:

Yep, after three years, Ghunzul is still there and still dead. I even got him up in the chair again.

 

I guess it's cos the location doesn't reset/respawn (that's why it's a good "home" with safe storage.) The generic anonymous baddies get removed but the more important NPCs ... linger.

Anyway. Off to do some more important stuff now.

Well, I just left the embershard mine over encumbered, thinking I could manage the walk to riverwood anyway, and right outside there was a thug... and one more... and just as I was reaching for the tab button to take a healing potion, he killed me. Just like that!

Edit: Of course the game reloaded right there with me exiting the mine and the thug closing in. But at least I was mentally prepared this time and - with the help of quite a few healing potions - I managed to defeat them all and drag myself into Riverwood where I could at least sell enough loot not to be over encumbered anymore. 
 

Btw, I'm not crazy about that leaky roof in Breezehome... (And I find it odd that it doesn't look leaky from the outside) so I am considering skippig that and getting one of the others, such as the one in Riften (I've only seen outside pics of the others, not sure what their advantages and disadvantages are, but the one in Riften looks OK and is relatively cheap...). What's it like, though? Does it, too, have a leaky roof?

All the houses are a bit run down when you get them. You just have to keep paying extra to get them refurbished. Just recently I paid the extra gold to get the little garden done in the Riften House. And if you want the buildy house (the first one is Lakeview) you have to go to Falkreath and do some quests there before that land is offered to you, but all those resources eat up more gold. I do think that Breezehome is the nicest one to start with. And that dead orc one of mine (Cracked Tusk Keep, also near Falkreath) is definitely one of the best locations to steal after you've killed everyone inside.
When I return to Solitude I should be able to get Proudspire Manor too but it's sooo expensive that I think I'm gonna pass on that one.

Anyway I'm not there at the moment. I'm currently off trying to kill a Giant and...

 

...there he is with two mammoths acting as bodyguards.
But look! There's a dragon over in the distance.
Do you think I might be able to tempt them all together so that they kill each other and make it easy for me?

Let's have a go....

Good luck with that...

and yes it did look nicer once furnished but I'm pretty sure the roof was still leaky...

I haven't spent much time in my Riften home and there are still a few rooms not decorated but I have done the main bedroom and there are no gaps in the roof there. Even the cat agrees...

 

...also the garden still looked a bit rubbish so I must need to do something else, or maybe I just didn't save after spending that money.

(EDIT: Also the Riften house has two entrances. One inside the city walls and one outside by the water, which is nice if you want to enter quickly without going through the usual way. But I still can't get my garden to work there.
Thankfully I can grow whatever I like at Lakeview. )

(EDIT2: Apparently the garden thing is a bug/glitch, you probably won't have that problem seeing as you have the special edition, but after a quick google I found a console command that fixes it and the garden looks very nice.
One downside is that you don't get to choose what can be planted there like you can at Lakeview.
And after switching the rooms around I think the Enchanting Lab looks much better than the child's room. )

The Markarth House is pretty nice inside and there are definitely no leaks cos virtually all of that city is built into rocks so you have a lovely stone finish...

 

...and you get Argis to wander around with...

 

But like all of the places in Markarth it's tricky to get to and I often get lost on that awkward little climb up the path and end up in the guard tower.


PS. Cats are mods.

Meanwhile...

Valence wrote:

Do you think I might be able to tempt them all together so that they kill each other and make it easy for me?

Let's have a go....

Well, that didn't go to plan but it was certainly some high quality entertainment. Surprising, scary, exciting... and I can't really tell you about it for spoiler reasons.
And I got so many good screenshots too!

But after all that... the Giant is still alive.
I'll try and get him next time.

Don't worry about spoilers, it'll probably take ages for me to get there. Not as many ages as for you, possibly, but still

I guess I might get the Whiterun house after all. It's rather a long way to Riften. And as for Markath I saw a pic of it embedded in rock and it looks cool but I keep thinking "no windows". Then I looked at your Riften interior and realised I don't see any windows there either. And come to think of it I think Breezehome only has a couple of "pretend windows" in the kitchen area.

When it comes to the DIY homes, I'm guessing they still will only look in a pre-decided way. It's one thing I think is a shame about the game, that we can't furnish our homes as we want...

Today I planned to do some work on my Halloween mod which, at my current pace, runs a very real risk of not being done for this year's Halloween either... But I keep second guessing myself, feeling what I'm working on is a bit too detailed.
I also discovered that I had quite forgotten about Sanditon being released one episode week so I watched one episode and have one to go.

But, I couldn't resist going back to Skyrim. Thought I'd clear out that smuggler's den just beneath/north of Whiterun. I'm *almost* there when I see a shadow across the grass and hear a roar. DAMN DRAGONS! (And yes, yes, I know I could have waited but I didn't want to carry that heavy stone slab around...)

I ran straight back inside the walls of Whiterun and seemed to have lost the dragon. And Lydia. I oonly just brought her with me! But after a bit of waiting and watching for a dragon that never came, at least Lydia did show up again. As an NPC she just had to take a longer route than I did, I guess...

There are no windows anywhere in Skyrim!
It's just the way the game engine works, it treats interiors and exteriors as different "areas", that's why you get little loading screens during the transition. I guess that's the price you pay for the high level of interaction. Some other open world games have better, seamless transitions to interiors but the number of buildings you can actually enter in them is much, much smaller and those worlds can seem strangely empty (LA Noire is the worst for that.)
All of which makes it more surprising when you start building your own Skyrim home and suddenly have to buy some glass from somewhere.

If you don't want to walk all the way to Riften you can take a carriage from the stables to all the major cities. For money of course.
I think the Markarth/Riften journey is the longest in the game and took me several days (REAL days. ) but I do enjoy the slow travelling and it felt like a pilgrimage or Rite Of Passage.

And I'm sorry to inform you.... the Dragonstone tablet was "A Quest Item" and therefore didn't contribute to your carry weight.