Skyrim EP29: Gimmie a Y!

By Shamus Posted Friday May 9, 2014

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 48 comments


Link (YouTube)

Why did Malborne have an iron mace? Do the Thalmor really let their bootlick bar-tending servants bring conspicuous heavy weapons to their fancy dress parties?

The dragon attacks in this game make me thing of the old Mitch Hedberg joke, “On fishing shows they always throw the fish back. They don’t want to eat them. They just want to make them late for something.” The dragons in this game don’t want to kill the dragonborn. They just want to waste your time.

Has there ever been an occasion where Josh shouted someone across the room and it wasn’t the Best Thing Ever? I think I’m finally done with Skyrim, but if the fever comes back my next character is going to be named Fus Ro Dah. And I’m going to introduce myself to everyone.

Also: The riddle this week is apparently: WHY DOES JOSH HAVE ALL THESE FLOWERS?

I assume we’re looking for out-of-character justification. Like, why did Josh spend time stealing deathbell?

 


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48 thoughts on “Skyrim EP29: Gimmie a Y!

  1. HiEv says:

    The obvious answer to why he has all those flowers is, rather obviously, that they weren’t nailed down. ;-P

    1. Ravens Cry says:

      Nailed Down Flowers would be a good name for a band or album.

    2. Danny White says:

      Were those the ones he stole from the Greybeards while they were trying to teach him how to shout?

      1. Duhad says:

        There- Dame it you beat me to it!

  2. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Why are weight limits binary in RPGs?Wouldnt it make more sense if they worked on percentage scale?Just add some gravity value there,and have every kilo of weigth reduce your maximum jump hight and running speed by that amount.

    1. bucaneer says:

      That’s how it worked in Morrowind. Or at least that’s how Rutskarn justified running around naked, I forget the actual mechanics.

    2. Destrustor says:

      Well, it’s like that (to a point) in Dark Souls (1 and 2):
      The speed at which you move and roll depends of the percentage of how encumbered you are.
      The most visible range at which this shows is the 70% mark. 69.9% of your carry weight and under allows you to roll lightly with very little delay between rolls, while 70% and up make your rolls slow, sluggish and a bit less responsive.
      Someone actually tested this extensively and found that 0%, 25% and 50% also cause very (veeeeery) slight differences in roll speed.

      1. Ringwraith says:

        Well, those numbers are right for II, the first game was <25% = fast roll, <50% = medium roll, 100%< = no roll.

        I'd be interested to see what else the tiers do in II though, like distance/invulnerability frames, though I do think they messed it up a bit with essentially removing the medium roll tier. Everyone just rolls around effortlessly in heavy armour, which just ain't right. Though the shift from 50 to 70 was so very much needed, I think (basically) 25 to 70 is a bit of overkill though.

        1. Kana says:

          There was also a “fatroll” at like, 75%. You’d pretty much cannonball the ground and try to breakdance back up. While rarely useful, it was at least hilarious to watch.

          Personally I prefer a system like this just because I can’t ever stop min-maxing. Having a soft cap that I can go over if need be is a better than freaking out over the extra 2% weight (which I’ve sadly been doing in DS2) dropping my performance. Though that is just how I feel about it, 2% is pretty much negligible (unless it’s over a hard cap to movement).

          Also, I think they moved i-frames to a stat. Adaptability or Agility or something, haven’t really started messing with it. Doesn’t feel like I had any more when I was running around naked (don’t ask) compared to having some light armor on.

          1. Ringwraith says:

            That also has an effect. It’s all hidden behind the scenes as per usual.
            I don’t mind the changes to some of the tiers, except maybe there needs to be a bigger jump between the 50-70 range, as it certainly doesn’t feel or look very ‘medium’.

    3. ET says:

      Somebody needs to code a video game with the tables/formulas from GURPS and DnD, stat!

      1. evileeyore says:

        You do realize there are far too many worthless games with D&D style rules already, yes?

        Oh yeah, I also mean worthless video games… :P

    4. Humanoid says:

      I’m glad for it, the last thing I want is another stat to micromanage. I loved the almost complete absence of inventory management in Shadowrun Returns and find myself wishing more games had a similarly minimalistic approach.

    5. Amulets and Armor had a nice gradient encumbrance. Of course the game was also kind of terrible. But that was nice.

    6. Eathanu says:

      Dragon’s Dogma does it in five “steps” that determine how fast you move. Then again, if you’re hard up for inventory space you can just offload it to your hired pawns and it’ll go straight to your stash when you de-summon them.

  3. Daemian Lucifer says:

    I think Mumbles would be the first to die in the case of an apocalypse,because everyone who knows her would know that she would eat them in their sleep,so they would preemptively kill her off.

    1. el_b says:

      I think that ruts would survive a lot longer than campster in a zombie apocalypse because his nimble frame Would ingratiate him with lord humungous and his creepy gay raider army, mumbles would actually be in disguise as lord humungous using her super cannibalism powers to keep them in line.

      I’d like to think that josh would transcend reality and actually become reginald cuftbert. spending his time sneaking up on zombies and exploding their pants.

      1. DIN aDN says:

        Hehe, Mumbles & Rutskarn can be like the bickering, bumbling Super-Antihero duo whose search for the increasingly unlikely components of the Water Device – For Water is constantly imperiled by the dark and mysterious Man Around Whom Explosions Seem To Happen A Lot For Some Reason.

    2. Viktor says:

      Shamus first, he’s got medical worries. Campster second, old nerd. Rutskarn third, young nerd. Josh fourth, he’s dangerous, creative, and has excellent reaction times. Mumbles dies last, she’s an evil cannibal and would be well-suited for any given apocalypse where other people survived.

      1. MichaelGC says:

        I’d like to think that Shamus is likely to be prepared better than, well, pretty much everyone else!

        Zombie Plan 1

        Zombie Plan 2

        Zombie Plan 3

        Zombie Plan 4

        Zombie Plan 5

        And beyond reckoning the rest of the crew would do pretty darn well too, I shouldn’t like to speculate further.

      2. ET says:

        Oh man, I think I’m a year older than Campster…I’m officially an “old nerd”. :P

        Incidentally, does anyone know a website out there, where you could input stuff and have it output your survival odds in various apocalypse scenarios?
        Like, weight, height, strength (bench press, number of chin-ups?), etc -> You die Xth in the apocalypse.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Well there is a quiz.

          1. Akri says:

            Friend of mine scored 90%. I know who I’m hanging out with when the zeds show up.

    3. Hitch says:

      I think she would get throttled to death for asking people if they can build her a “water device.”

      “What are you talking about, you daft woman? Do you want a bucket? Or a well? Or a Fallout 1 style vacuum tube based water purification chip?”

    4. Grudgeal says:

      Personally I think Josh and Mumbles would die first, having reverted to savage raiding to fulfill their dark desires and then being killed by Mad Max/Kenshiro for it. Shamus would become the kindly old wise man/teacher who would build a fragile monk-like society based around veneration of the lost gods of the ancient world (literary criticism and C++), living long enough to impact his programming knowledge upon the wandering hero (who needs it to disarm the nuclear bombs) before peacefully passing on when his medicine runs out. Campster would be his chief disciple, wandering the wastes and converting the ragged masses with his knowledge of literary deconstruction.

      Rutskarn would be the wise-cracking scrappy kid sidekick, and survive forever. Or get killed by the main villain in act III to empower the hero.

    5. Dragmire says:

      I see campster dying first, not for any practical reason, but I just see him rolling with a terrible luck stat. Any apocalypse that would happen, he would be too close to ground zero to get a chance at survival.

  4. guy says:

    There’s actually a quest in Riften to collect twenty or so deathbells, nirnroot, and some other reagent. This isn’t relevant to the question, I just thought it was interesting.

    1. modus0 says:

      Nirnroot, and it’s one of the little farmsteads near Riften.

      The owner is a former pupil of Sinderion (Nirnroot researcher from TES IV: Oblivion).

      1. guy says:

        That is a different quest. I mean this one. http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Ingun%27s_Task

        1. modus0 says:

          Oh, that one. I think I did that… once…

          I just saw “Nirnroot” and thought of the related collection quest; which was far less of a chore than the one in Oblivion.

    2. krellen says:

      The other reagent you need to gather for Ingun is nightshade.

      1. Tizzy says:

        Yup! There’s only one reason why Ingun likes alchemy, and it ain’t healing…

        1. newdarkcloud says:

          She’s as much of a bitch as Maven, only more subdued about it.

          1. Viktor says:

            I liked her. Creepy, evil, and, most importantly, not a bitch to ME. It’s amazing how low the bar is set for Skyrim NPCs.

          2. Hal says:

            She’s not so much a bitch as she is a serial killer in waiting.

            She hints that she’d like to join the Dark Brotherhood, but the game never lets you capitalize on that. She’d at least make a good wife for an assassin character, but she’s not able to be wedded.

            She’s just another one of those characters that could have been much more interesting, but wasn’t capitalized.

  5. Tizzy says:

    Not even 2 minutes in, and Josh is eating food rather than leveling up. What a waste!…

    1. ET says:

      Maybe he doesn’t know you heal at level up? I spent like…several weekends in a row playing nothing but Skyrim after the crew introduced it to me, but I never noticed that I heal with level up, until like the last time I played.

      1. Trix2000 says:

        Oh, he definitely knows – he’s used it for healing before. More likely, I think he forgot he had leveled and didn’t know he had the option.

        Though I like the explanation that he just wanted an excuse to EAT ALL THE FOOD.

  6. Henson says:

    Now that Josh has given his follower his junk, I don’t want to hear any cracks about Jenassa’s two jugs.

  7. sofawall says:

    I am almost certain that the deathbells, at least, were stolen from the Greybeards.

  8. MichaelGC says:

    Is there something odder than usual going on with the visuals or is it just me? (It’s late Friday night where I am, and the latter is not proposed rhetorically.) Ghosting through the Thalmor floor had a simple, obvious explanation*, and dragons are big flappy difficult physics objects, but what’s with clipping through the face** of that horse? Are we still on ‘FoV 85?’

    *Begins with ‘J’. Ends with ‘osh Viel.’

    **What’s wrong with your faaaace?

  9. djshire says:

    I think there should be more inventory management seen in the episodes.

    1. Tizzy says:

      Yes! And more diversity of objects. Actually, Slyrim should have way more types of lootable useless junk…

  10. It must be difficult to woo someone on a budget in Skyrim. Any flowers you pilfer from a graveyard (or barrow) would not only be guarded by drauger, the object of your affection would notice the bouquet was stolen and call in the guards to collect a bounty or toss you in jail.

    1. MichaelGC says:

      If all else fails, you can just forge an insulting note and ask a totally random stranger to hand it to your sweetheart. Job done.

      1. Grudgeal says:

        Which will have the exact same handwriting as every other note in the game so if you don’t sign it, your intended won’t know where it’s from.

  11. MadTinkerer says:

    Speaking of marriage, in my originally-sorta-parralel-but-now-I’m-level-38-and-haven’t-joined-the-legion playthrough, I decided to be very picky about who I was going to marry because last time I discovered that marrying one of your stewards causes bugs that are impossible to fix (as far as I know).

    So anyway: did you know that Skyrim has three lesbians, no gay men, and about a hundred bisexual marriage prospects? Although there are no explicitly non-straight couples in the game (that I’ve noticed), all of the marriage prospects do not care what gender you are. However, there are several Priestess of Dibella characters who are behind a locked door who will not allow you to do the Dibella quest (and therefore convince them to trust you) unless you are a woman. So although there’s no code that prevents them from marrying a male main character, it’s basically impossible to marry them unless you are female, which would make them lesbians. Since there is no equivalent gender-exclusive quest for male characters, there are no gay characters, but plenty of guys willing to swing both ways.

    This may not be 100% accurate given all expansions and such, but it’s what I’ve found so far.

    Also, incidentally, I apologize for claiming that mages are easy mode. Turns out I was relying on the Agent of Dibella (double damage against male enemies, and BTW all dragons seem to be male) more than I realized. OTOH, if you think playing a mage is too hard, take a trip to Markarth, break into the temple of Dibella, and convince the priestesses to give you the quest. High elf optional, female less optional.

  12. sdfq says:

    This is completely irrelevant to the episode in question, but this is officially the best skyrim mod ever made bar none.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8C4TCpdYlA

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