On the Road to Riften (Skyrim Episode 2)

On the Road to Riften

Day 2

When the morning came, Liddie went off to the blacksmith to forge herself a new suit of leather armour from the pelts she, um, borrowed late last night. The road to Riften is fraught with danger, and a little protection can go a long way.

It was early in the morning when Liddie left Riverwood behind, heading North and passing the corpse of the snow fox she had hunted earlier along the way.

On the way there, Liddie stopped a moment to enjoy the view of the valley below.

As she made her way up the mountain, she reached the ruins of Helgen, lying on the road to Riften. Seeing the destroyed town, Liddie felt a pang of sorrow; she had seen death before, but never at this level.

Just past Helgen was a pass through the mountain, one I (the author) unofficially named Haemar's Pass after a vampire-filled cavern that can be found about midway through the mountains.

The pass is usually devoid of any kind of life, save for the occasional goat, but today Liddie met a nice hunter. The hunter felt the need to verbally defend his actions, claiming that his poaching didn't hurt anyone, and that the jarl could hardly eat all the deer. Our thief protagonist wondered what he was going on about, since she herself wasn't much of a law-abiding citizen.

Walking past the hunter, Liddie found what she assumed to be the hunter's horse.

Now, what kind of a thief would she be if she passed on this opportunity and kept on walking? Not a good one. With a horse now sworn to carry her burdens, Liddie made her way out of the pass in no time.

As she trotted along the road to Riften, she came across a rundown shack along the side of the road, filled with alchemical ingredients. She was going to be relying on her bow and daggers, and crafting poisons would certainly help with what I am assuming will be a fairly low damage output (compared to larger, more intimidating weapons).

The shack contained a small journal and some ingredients useful for poisons.

Heading out, I noticed something was off, missing. Indeed, the horse that Liddie stole seemed to have run off! (or got killed by wolves)

We were back to walking.

At about lunch time, the map indicated that we were about half-way there.

Figuring it would be about lunch time, Liddie set off to find some berries or a small animal to devour. She came across a small rabbit, which she caught and beat to death - why waste an arrow on something so small - before eating raw. After all, salmonella doesn't exist in Skyrim.

She stayed on the road as much as possible, and still encountered some hostile wildlife...

 ...which she discouraged from further attacking her.

A few hours later she came across two Alik'r warriors harassing a lone redguard woman. Since she had decided that their scimtars were pretty and worthy of being in her possession, she shot an arrow at the first man before quickly slashing down the other.

Of course, murder is kind of illegal in Skyrim, and the previously-harassed woman didn't seem to appreciate Liddie's... altruism. Sadly, she was cut down before she managed to reach a guard. With the last witness dead, the world moved on as though the crime never happened.

Finally, in the mid-afternoon hours, Liddie finally made it to Riften's backdoor... only to be denied access by a guard.

She attempted to intimidate the guard, but with no success.

With no other choice, Liddie circled around the town, wasting about a half-hour. Once she reached the North Gate, she entered the city... haha yeah no. Another guard harrassed her, demanding that she pay a visitor's tax.

Liddie, however, is no fool, and saw straight through the man's pathetic shakedown attempt.

After confronting the man, who is now drenched in sweat from all her death threats, she strolled into the city like she owns the damn place. And hey, who knows, maybe one day she will...

Liddie the Thief (Skyrim Episode 1)

Skyrim is the kind of game that gives a lot of freedom in how to play; almost any character archetype is viable. Last night, I started Skyrim up again, intending to continue exploring the world with my main character (since I haven't quite done everything yet), but thought of something else: what if I roleplayed a thief? I've played warriors, wizards, and warriwizards before, but I never explored the sneaky assassin character type.

In this Let's Play, I will be playing as the dark elf Liddie (based on an old character I used to write about), a thief-slash-assassin who came to Skyrim seeking to profit from the civil war.

Now, before we get started, I want to outline a few arbitrary rules I made for myself in order to either increase the challenge or enhance the roleplay. Or because I'm a masochist, I'll let you decide:

• Liddie can only wear light armours; can't have a thief sneaking around in chainmail.
• Liddie can only wield daggers and bows; no hammers, maces, swords, or even shields. (I break this rule in the beginning, but that's because I came up with this rule later in the playthrough.)
• Liddie must stop and eat at least one portion of food per day and must drink at least one non-potion liquid per day, preferably at least two. This can be broken a few times, as long as I realistically make up for it; she can't fast for a month and then binge on thirteen cheese wheels.
• I must never break character with Liddie, and she must act like the master thief that she aspires to be. That means taking the evil option whenever I think a narcissistic, greedy thief would take it.
• Liddie cannot fast travel, or use carriages. After all, there wouldn't really be anything to tell if she just zapped around from one place to the next.

Finally, the playthrough will end when one of the following occurs:

• I break any of the above rules (except for the weapon one in the first episode, as explained above).
• This series becomes stagnant, uninteresting, or downright boring. This is to keep me from hating this playthrough.
• Liddie has amassed 100'000 gold pieces, AND has a fully decked-out house.
• Liddie dies.

That last one might make this seem like this is another permadeath run, but in this case I allow myself to reload if Liddie dies due to incompetence (accidentally attacking a guard, falling off a cliff, etc.). However, if she dies in combat, that's it. Dead.

Without further ado, let's get to it!

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Skyrim: Liddie the Thief

Day 1

Luck had recently run out for Liddie the Thief, or so she thought. She had been caught crossing the Skyrim border illegally - lacking the required passports I assume - and was about to be executed along with a few Stormcloaks. Luckily for her, a dragon attack allowed her to escape custody. She was helped briefly by some imperial, but as soon as she was free she ditched him.

Having borrowed some weather-appropriate outfit from a friendly local (don't mind the arrow jutting from his mouth there), she made her way to lovely Riverwood.

Liddie realized that fur armour, while thematically appropriate, would not confer the protection she would require to reach Riften, the rumoured location of the local Thieves' Guild chapter. After crafting a pair of leather boots from the three wolves that attacked her earlier, she set out to find more pelts.

Walking along the rocky road North of Riverwood, she finds a snow fox simply minding its business. A single arrow was required to dispatch it.

It was getting dark, but Liddie was not done yet. As she walked further up the path, she found a small camp hidden along the cliff side. A man was waiting there, weapons drawn. "Probably a local," thought Liddie as she carefully approached.

The man, as it turns out, was a bandit, and had a friend along with him.

It didn't take much effort to dispatch the men.

Making her way back to Riverwood, Liddie realized that the snow wolf pelt she had skinned earlier would be far from enough to craft a whole set of leather armour. She would have to gather the rest of the materials the way she prefers: by taking it from others.

When walking into town, she noticed a wood elf by the name of Faendal. He was carrying a bow and some arrows; perhaps he was a hunter? If so, his house is bound to be filled with the much-needed pelts.

Liddie waited until deep into the night to infiltrate the wood elf's house. Once she picked the lock and walked in, she noticed the elf sleeping on a nearby bed.

The place was filled with useless junk, but her eye caught the real prize; two sets of saber cat pelts were sitting on a nearby shelf. Naturally, she snatched her loot and snuck out of there.

As it was getting late, she walked in the local tavern, the Sleeping Giant Inn. There, she rented a bed and bought some food both for the night and for the trip tomorrow. That evening she enjoyed a meal of cooked beef, and washed it down with a bottle of ale.

After eating, Liddie then retired for the night.

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Well, that's it for Episode 1. I wanted to make it longer, but it's already stretching out a little, so I'll stop here. As usual, please leave your comments in the comments section; let me know what you think, and criticism is appreciated. Thanks for reading!

Elite: Dangerous Feels like Coming Home

Happy New Year, dear readers! I wish you all health, joy, and everything nice.

Fasten Your Seat Belt, Pilot

Let's kick off the new year (I'm a few weeks late, I know, just bear with me) with a recent discovery of mine: Elite: Dangerous (or ED for short). ED is a space simulation video game... thingy, and probably the best of its genre I've played so far.

I used to play Freelancer way back when, a game that I still consider as one of my favourites (top 3 no doubt), and I've been looking for a game that would inspire that same sense of awe and adventure ever since the Freelancer servers closed up. I looked around and tried a few, including the popular X series, but none managed to satisfy me; they were either too restrictive, or so complex as to be inaccessible to new players. I feared that I would never again experience a game like Freelancer, and I started to wonder if I was maybe remembering my own undertaking through rose-tinted glasses. Then I learned about ED (I swear I ain't talking about the other ED).

The Sidewinder Mk. I is a good ship to start, but you'll want to replace it as soon as you can afford something more specialized for your needs.

In ED, you take on the role of YourFirstnameHere YourLastnameHere, commander and pilot of a brand-new Sidewinder Mk. I, a small multi-purpose ship capable of trading, exploration, combat, and even mining... if you outfit it properly. You're thrown into space and from there, the galaxy is the limit. No, seriously. ED takes place in our own Milky Way, and contains approximately 400 billion procedurally-generated star systems along with many (can't find a number on that) real systems, such as our own Sol.

Let that sink in for a moment. The game contains approximately 400'000'000'000 systems to explore.

Get Ready to Crash... A Lot

ED is a hard game, and the initial learning curve is probably the biggest obstacle any new player will have to face. I would compare the type of difficulty to that of Dark Souls, although not nearly as intense. New players find themselves at the mercy of an unforgiving universe, and the game will hand your ass to you on a platter if you don't respect its difficulty.

The first time I got destroyed was while undocking my ship from the starting station.

Pictured: a successful undocking procedure. NOT what I'm about to talk about.

The game leans heavily on the "realism" side of the "realism vs fantastic scale", and some rigorous protocols need to be followed sometimes. As I learned later, the reason I was destroyed was because I was loitering around the landing pad after I had been cleared for launch. This is illegal, as it keeps other ships from docking, potentially keeping a distressed pilot from getting some much-needed aid. To be fair, the game gives you 5 minutes to clear up the pad, but I was still figuring out the controls at that point (since I stupidly chose to skip the "pre-flight check" tutorial).

The second time I got destroyed was coming out of a space station. At that point, I had a few hours of flight behind my belt and I felt confident in my skills (once you understand pitch, yaw and roll controls, flying becomes somewhat easy) and accelerated quickly to leave. However, another quite large ship was coming into the station, straight in my path. I panicked, veered out of the way and straight into the station itself, destroying my ship.

And don't get me started on docking.

It can take some time to get used to the faster-than-light travel; more often than not, you'll end up going too fast and overshoot the target. A tip for beginners: try to keep the "estimated time remaining" value between 0:07 and 0:08, decelerating if you get below that value and accelerating while above.

When you'll die - and you will - you get sent to a screen with the option to either restore your ship (at the cost of 5% its value - your ship is insured so you won't have to pay the whole thing) or start over with a free Sidewinder Mk. I. This may seem steep, but if you plan your things properly there is no reason why this would be a threat to you; even by playing stupidly I never lost a ship because it got destroyed. Despite this, when you're speeding away from a large ship you "accidentally" pissed off and your cockpit is bathed in blinking red lights, you'll always worry about whether you have enough to pay your insurance premium and will end up losing your ship.

From Trader to Miner to Bounty Hunter in under 10 Minutes

In ED, you don't have to commit to a job like in most other MMOs - oh, did I forget to mention this was an MMO? I'll get back to that in a bit.

Like I was saying, you don't have to commit to playing a certain way. You want to be a miner? Outfit your ship with a mining laser and a refinery. Mining too zen for you and want to move on to trading? Replace your mining laser by a basic weapon and your refinery by some cargo space. Since you're already passing through unexplored systems, why not add a discovery scanner to your ship and become an explorer? Want to become a pirate? Just attack passing traders... but not with your trading-slash-exploring ship, that would be suicide.

Planetary rings are a great place to mine minerals, hunt pirates, or be a pirate.

While some actions, such as accruing a bounty, will limit your options in some systems, it is always possible to change how you play the game with relative ease. There is a lot to do in ED, and not much keeping you from doing it.

The Galaxy Is a Shared Playground... Or Not

As I hinted at earlier, ED is, at heart, an MMO.

WAIT COME BACK

Those familiar with the space exploration genre might feel turned off by that fact, as multiplayer has never been a big selling point for most flight simulator-esque games. ED, however, was designed with multiplayer in mind, and the whole thing feels pretty seamless, at least for me. I'm the kind of player who enjoys losing myself in my games, and so far I have yet to find another player who broke that immersion for me. Most of the time I don't know if I'm dealing with another player or an NPC, regardless of the situation (if it wasn't for the "this is a player" indicator I would never even know).

Sights like this are not uncommon as you roam the galaxy.

If you still feel intimidated about exploring a galaxy in what amounts to a steel coffin while being surrounded by people who want to kill you, and no amount of convincing on my part will change your mind, then fear not! The game includes a solo (not offline) mode, which - as the name implies - allows players to roam without other player intervention. The twist is that the universe is still the same whether you play solo or online; any effects online players have on the economy, for example, will be reflected in your solo session (and vice-versa) so you're never truly alone.

Take Me down to the Paradise City

In short, Elite: Dangerous is a good game. In fact, it's probably the best game of its genre I've played so far (as for Star Citizen, Chris Roberts' narcissism project, I may or may not share my thoughts at a later time), surpassing freelancer in scope and things to do. The game is hard, but not inaccessible, the galaxy is big, and the only limits present are those you impose on yourself. For someone who has been looking for a game just like this for years, ED feels like coming home.

On my way to do some miner protection (bounty hunting on pirates) aboard my Eagle Mk. II.

As for myself, I may end up writing more about my adventures in this universe; if there ever was a game which would allow for a fanfic-like "captain's journal", this would be it. Hell, I think I'll write about my epic journey trying to reach our own Sol.

Pictured: not Sol.

That's it for now. As usual, let me know what you think in the comment section. Take care, fly safe, and I'll see you later!

TS4: For Auld Lang Syne (Part 23, Finale)

The Sims 4: For Auld Lang Syne

I expected Myllenium to be affected by Nosco's death, but to the point of being suicidal? Not long after Nosco died, she started standing next to the fireplace for no discernible reason, but I'm assuming she was hoping to catch fire again. It wasn't long before something did.

The fire was dealt with swiftly, but Myllenium was still as sad as ever. Lilith joined her in front of the television and began comforting her, when suddenly...

Oh wait this looks familiar...

Wait, another heart attack??? This is bizarre, considering how healthy she was. (Also, Lilith is doing Jack Shit to help.) I'm thinking either the shock of losing Nosco has gotten to her heart, or perhaps this is the default "old age" death.

Fun fact: Myllenium passed away about 8 in-game days after Nosco, or approximately 2 years later.

Is it time for another life-flashing-before-your-eyes montage? You bet it is!

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Finally, when her heart beat its last, Old Grim showed up to collect his due.

As was what I assumed to be her wish, Myllenium was buried in the family graveyard aside her husband, which she has now been reunited with in death.

And so ends the story of Myllenium Sabruka. May she rest in peace.

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With that, the matriarch and patriarch of the Sabruka clan have died, leaving Lilith in charge of perpetuating the bloodline. I feel a weird sadness in seeing those two die, partly because they were based on myself and my spouse, and partly because they were the first sims I brought all the way to old age and death. I've had a lot of fun with them, and am looking forward to fleshing-out Lilith's story.

But I guess you'll have to wait for season 2 for her own adventures. Until then, have fun, stay safe, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

Cheers,

Sabruka

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