Hours 5 - 7: The Road to Riften part 1

I set out early in the morning from Whiterun. I haven't mentioned before, but I'm specialising in heavy armour, block, and one-handed, and am currently sporting this awesome set of steel armour which I murdered a sellsword for, an Orcish shield, and an Elven mace:

I'm currently level 4. I pass Valtheim Towers just down the river from Whiterun, and clear out all the bandits. I feel bandits are probably a bit too aggressive and homicidal in this game.

A little later, I experience an awesome encounter. A Stormcloak soldier and a mage are travelling just ahead of me, by a bridge. Suddenly a rabid river troll jumps out of the bushes and attacks them, slaying both in a frenzy. I rush to engage it and try to bring it down, but it seems impervious to my blows, and when it strikes me I suffer a lot of damage even when blocking. Just as I think I'm about to die, the troll explodes in a violent burst of flames. It was incinerated by a passing wizard!

I press on further and reach Darkwater Crossing. After mining some ore for the farmer there, and agreeing to take a message to Windhelm, I speak to Anneke who asks me to clear out a nearby bandit cave. I agree (checking what direction to head in is one of the few times I'll use the map). The cave itself is huge and impressive, with branching bridges leading out from a large central cavern:

There are a couple of bandits in hete who give me trouble, and I die a few times. Fortunately, the scariest one is off in a room by himself, so after trying and failing to kill him several times, I just left him alone. He wielded some kind of life-draining weapon that always managed to kill me no matter what I did.

After killing the bandit chief (another tough fight, where I had to resort to a bow for the first time), I return to Darkwater Crossing and tell Anneke. She agrees to accompany me on the rest of my journey.

Together, we continue on the road to Riften, getting into a few scrapes with thieves, bandits, and a giant spider. She proves useful and picking off enemies at range with her bow. We eventually come across a group of what appear to be hunters camped near the road. I speak to them and one of them says that bandits have his family hostage in the fortress of Treva's watch. I agree to help him, and battle my way through the fort. Whilst inside, I find a room with his family in, all murdered.

After clearing out the bandits and opening the main gate for him, he asks me if I found his family in there. The only option I have is to say no! That sucks! I did see them. I decide that in order to save him the pain of finding his dead family, to kill him and his whole entourage. It's a friendly killing in a way. It turns out that he and his followers have some really great gear too, and tons of health potions. Yoink!

Anneke and I walk a short way further as night begins to fall. I find an empty tent near the river and bed down:

There's still a long way to go before we reach Riften, and the journey so far has filled up a good 3 hours of game-time.

Hours 1 - 4: The Plains of Whiterun

Upon starting a new game I was taken straight to the character creation screen. I made an Imperial named Decimus.

I should have named him Calvus...

After finishing, I was asked to choose whether I want to follow the Imperial or the Stormcloak. Obviously I chose the Imperial. I fought my way out of Helgen without much difficulty, although combat is immediately more thrilling, as I'd hoped. A good bit dispatches my foes with ease, but a couple of blows that they land on me very nearly kill me.

Upon exiting Helgen through the cave, I was greeted by this glorious sight:

Incredible! So much brighter and more intoxicating that vanilla Skyrim. Without my compass, I start to follow the road to Riverrun. I remembered there was a mine around here somewhere. But without my compass telling me every single thing that's nearby and how close I am, I had to... explore! I suddenly had a rush of contentment - the forest looked different to how I remembered it, nothing was spoon-fed to me, and I'd actually have to look for roads and signposts to navigate around.

I found the path that lead to Embershard mine, and began my adventure.

I cleared the mind without trouble, although every encounter carried with it the threat of death, so when I eventually dispatched each foe it really did feel like a proper fight in which I got the better of them, rather than two Team-america puppets flailing at each other. Archers proved somewhat bothersome, as their arrows did a lot of damage. I made use of terrain, and a technique of advancing towards them like Jon Snow when he tackled Ramsay Bolton. Sprint forwards, raise shield just in time to block arrow, repeat, then shield bash and an axe to the face.

After clearing the mine, I headed to Riverrun.

Wow! Finally, Skyrim is more beautiful than Cyrodiil! Why didn't the original designers go with this brighter, more 'fantasy' palette? Cos frost and cold and teh bleakz I guess. Well I can already feel myself starting to fall in love with Skyrim again, after years of maligning it.

I got the usual Golden Claw quest, but headed to Whiterun first. It's even more beautiful than Riverrun, and I spent a while just walking around and looking at things, marvelling at the changes and refamiliarising myself with the place.

I obtained a bounty for the leader of the Silent Moons camp, so I roamed the plains near Whiterun for a while and discovered the camp. I was slain almost immediately by a powerful mage. I tried a few times, but nothing I had could overcome her magic. Dejected, I started to head back to Whiterun, but I happened upon a Dunmer mage, who agreed to follow me! With his mighty magic we managed to clear out the camp (I let him do most of the fighting).

As I roamed the plains on my way back to Whiterun, marvelling at the brighter landscape, I spied a castle in the far distance, which I didn't recognise

You can't really see it in that picture but it's in the mountains straight ahead, wreathed in fog. I headed over there and it turned out to be Fort Sungard, which I cleared of bandits.

I took a southerly path back and ended up in Falkreath, which was far prettier than I remembered, no doubt on account of the mods. I spoke to the Jarl there, who asked me to bring him some Black Briar Mead.

I travelled back to Whiterun via Helgen and Riverrun, without much incident. At one point I encountered a fort filled with bandits who were far beyond my ability to tackle, and at another time I was slain by a wandering Necromamcer and had to reload and make sure to avoid him. I arrived back at Whiterun and pondered what to do. I didn't really want to have dragons showing up everywhere as I find that quite immersion-breaking. The Jarl's request sounded interesting; a journey to Riften would be a mighty and epic quest indeed.

Onwards, for honour, glory, and mead!

First Things First

I decided to fire up Skyrim again for the first time in several years, but within a few minutes became bored of the same old places, the bleak and drab aesthetic, and the stale combat. I longed for the verdant forests of Cyrodiil and the feeling of being lost in a vast fantasy domain. This time, however, I had the Special Edition on PS4, so I decided to see if some mods might be able to spice things up a bit.
Here's a list of mods I installed:

Graphics:
Enhanced Draw Distance
Lively Graphics Overhaul
Epic Enhanced Console Graohics
ELE Interior Lighting Overhaul
Surreal Lightimg
IA92's Enhanced Aqua Blue Water
More Blood and Gore!

Summary: The world should be a lot more vivid and closer in colour to Cyrodiil, with a slight tinge of the Shivering Isles surreality for good measure. Interiors will be darker and more atmospheric. Draw distance is increased so you can see buildings and landscapes which are very far away, as you would in real life.


Things:
Whiterun: A City Full of Life
New Grass / Green Skyrim
Dense Grass
The Great Cities
Increased Population: Towns & Cities
FOS - Forests of Skyrim
Bridges of Skyrim
Fortified City Exteriors
Magical College of Winterhold
Point The Way
Fallen Trees
Immersive Patrols
Diverse Creatures and Bosses
A bunch of individual city tweaks

Summary: This should make the world look substantially different. Forests will be denser, and there will be grass instead of miles of plain shrubland. Fallen trees will be scattered here and there. Some bridges will look different and more interesting. Towns and cities will have tweaks to make them less stale, and there should be a lot more people in them generally.

Gameplay:
Quick Start - Skip New Game Intro
Hardcore Difficulty: No Milkdrinkers
Phenderix Magic Evolved
Immersive Travelling
Immersive Citizens AI Overhaul
Guard Dialogue Overhaul
Immersive Movement
Better Combat AI
Effective Blocking
Carriage Driver Overhaul
H.A.S.T.E
Rich Merchants of Skyrim

Summary: I intend to play on Legendary mode, and these tweaks mean that instead of enemies doing 3x damage and the player doing 0.25x damage in Legendary mode, we *both* will do 3x damage. Much better and more thrilling! It makes no sense and is very immersion-breaking that hitting someone in the face with an axe repeatedly just chips away slightly at their health in normal Legendary mode. Combined with the changes to AI and the increased effectiveness of blocking, this should make fights tense and cagey encounters, with one or two good hits making the difference between triumph and disaster.


In order to increase my enjoyment of the game, I will play without fast-travel, will have no HUD (that means no compass markers, no crosshairs, no text ever coming up on screen to say what things are or where doors lead, and no health / mana / stamina bars, although I can pause the game if I really need to check those) and will not look at the map unless I really need to (wish there was a mod to disable it on PS4 but there isn't).

Yes, this will make things a lot slower, but I'm not playing for the story. A journey from one side of the map to the other will be an epic and perilous quest. Oh and one of the mods increases the cost of carriages to about 1500, so if I really need to use those I can, but it will be limited.

Time to get started then!