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Skyrim Bandits call me the White Death

Oblivion hath no fury like a gamer bored. I returned to my bi-monthly Skyrim grind with a spark in my gullet: there be glory over yonder way, and by golly I'm gonna grab it by the throat. The playthrough is my attempt at an Iron Man playthrough, but with like all the hard shit removed so that its more akin to an Ironheart or Iron Lad. I restricted my primary gear to crafted stuff only, I decided that I can't hoard looted potions and can only use crafted ones, and I downloaded SimonMagus' survival mod to make it a bit more fun to freeze my balls off. My objective is simple: follow a clear path of progression that makes sense for my character, and beat the main questline in the process. No cheats, no shortcuts, no exploits - if I happen to know something about the game that could make things easier, I purposefully downplay it or avoid that change altogether. A true testament to my own skill.

And I immediately fell into mod hell. The vanilla start was buggy, and some fast-start mods caused Helgen's NPCs to avoid death like the plague. It was only returning to Old Reliable, the Alternate Start - Live Another Life mod that solved these issues. Probably because I only ever use the Camping start, which places me in a tent about two yards from Helgen as it burns to the ground. Look I never said I wanted a new start - I just wanted one that works, and I got it. My next course of action, after inspecting the charred remnants of a mountain village, was to descend to the nearby town and scream at all comers that the end was nigh. I also took the time to learn some introductory Smithing techniques from the local metalworker, avoiding the responsibility to my fellow man in this time of need as I explored a personal growth era of my own creation. I promise that you'll never find another like me, or so they say.

But oh no, the smithing crash course proved not the end of my insight tour. Next stop: Drugcraft. I took a good twenty minutes just gathering every fucking ingredient I could get my grubby little mitts on, and shoving it into the potion thingamabobber to see what worked and what didn't. I got maybe four solid potions out of it, but I have never been prouder because (as it turns out) I barely ever used Alchemy in Skyrim before now. I had absolutely no inclination to waste my time making homemade happy pills when I could loot much better ones off any bandit I happened to stumble across. Taking that option off the table puts the gameplay in a new light, removing some of the weight from the loot system and giving other crafting mechanics their own fair shake as a result.

Have I mentioned the lack of sizeable storage space? I probably did, but I'll run this by you one more time: getting materials for crafting sucks. Not because they're difficult to locate, but due to how many trips it takes back and forth between the nearest crafting station and my current loot pile outside Halted Stream Camp. I may have to rethink this strategy of hoarding gear to break down; the best course of action might be to figure out which items give the highest component yield and then specifically gathering those when I stumble across them. Otherwise, I end up with my latest kerfuffle in which I held onto three (heavy) steel greatswords in the over-encumbered state from Halted Stream Camp to Whiterun, then received a comically low yield of three steel ingots for my trouble. The late-game task of building my own home with Hearthfire will be both my greatest challenge and my greatest reward once it has been done. Every crafting station in one house? With multiple forms of no-respawn storage? And just about every other boon I could list here? How sweet those days shall be.

As of now, that is the most I have done in the game. I had a false start (ha) in which I completed Bleak Falls Barrow before realizing that Helgen was bugged, but besides that, I have a respectable two hours into the playthrough at this point. The reason that this post has taken me so long, and the reason that I have yet to get farther than two hours into my Skyrim playthrough, is a simple one: I finally installed Fallout London. It took two days of getting home from work and running the next steps of the process for multiple hours until they completed, but I got it up and running on...I want to say Tuesday. And boy howdy, have I been having fun. Aside from the insane loading times, which do put a sizeable dent in my enjoyment. Nonetheless, expect some content relating to Fallout London in the coming weeks. My posting schedule has fallen in and out of sync, but I'll be talking about FOLON by next Saturday at the latest. See you then, and have a great day.
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