2000 AD
Prog 2442
Tuesday, 11 November 2025
Video Games
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
Obviously.
That said, I did intend to be brief with it today (well, don't I always) — I want to crack on with Foolish Mortals (though achievements are coming to GOG "soon", so maybe I should wait and start over once they're there?), and I also have an episode of Critical Role to watch (which takes a significant chunk of time, always). What scuppered my plans was... loot.
I set out to complete a specific dungeon to complete a quest. On the way, I wasted time hunting for treasure, which was tricky to find even with a map. Then, on the way to the dungeon, I got distracted by multiple other landmarks — the disadvantages of fast travel are it's immersion-breaking and you miss random encounters, but an advantage is fewer distractions of the latter kind. I made it in the end, completed the dungeon quite quickly... but then had way more loot than I could carry. And I like loot because I can sell it for gold, and having gold feels useful.
That was when I broke another rule. When I started playing, I swore never to use fast travel — as I just said, you miss stuff and it breaks immersion. I'm not a full-on "pretend this is a living world" kinda guy, but teleporting around the place was a step too far. Time does advance when you fast travel, as if you had run there, but that doesn't really do anything (except possibly change whether shops are open, etc). Anyway: I realised I could stash loot in chests by the dungeon until I was light enough to fast travel, teleport to the nearest shops, sell what I had on me, teleport back, repeat. Turned out I had so much stuff I had to do this three or four times, which also meant waiting overnight at one point so the shop was open again.
Yes, in "game time", I spent about 36 hours running back and forth between an empty bandit campsite and the nearest town. And this is why I used fast travel, because I'd be damned if I was actually going to spend my time jogging all the way! And it took long enough in real-world time even with fast travel: I played for 3¾ hours today. Sure, some of that was actually playing the game, but the most tedious part by far was all the... well, not cheating, but it does kind of feel like cheating. I think fans call it "exploiting" — using the game's systems in ways they weren't intended to gain an advantage.
Of course, I don't have to do any of that — I could abandon loot and just get on with, y'know, playing the game. Maybe I will. Maybe I don't need so much gold. (Also, I've got a tonne of stuff that weighs a tiny amount on me. Individually, insignificant, but I do wonder if the sheer volume of it is prohibiting the good stuff. Even when I'd dumped most of my armour and weapons, my carry capacity was somehow about two-thirds full. Hmm.)
Obviously.
That said, I did intend to be brief with it today (well, don't I always) — I want to crack on with Foolish Mortals (though achievements are coming to GOG "soon", so maybe I should wait and start over once they're there?), and I also have an episode of Critical Role to watch (which takes a significant chunk of time, always). What scuppered my plans was... loot.
I set out to complete a specific dungeon to complete a quest. On the way, I wasted time hunting for treasure, which was tricky to find even with a map. Then, on the way to the dungeon, I got distracted by multiple other landmarks — the disadvantages of fast travel are it's immersion-breaking and you miss random encounters, but an advantage is fewer distractions of the latter kind. I made it in the end, completed the dungeon quite quickly... but then had way more loot than I could carry. And I like loot because I can sell it for gold, and having gold feels useful.
That was when I broke another rule. When I started playing, I swore never to use fast travel — as I just said, you miss stuff and it breaks immersion. I'm not a full-on "pretend this is a living world" kinda guy, but teleporting around the place was a step too far. Time does advance when you fast travel, as if you had run there, but that doesn't really do anything (except possibly change whether shops are open, etc). Anyway: I realised I could stash loot in chests by the dungeon until I was light enough to fast travel, teleport to the nearest shops, sell what I had on me, teleport back, repeat. Turned out I had so much stuff I had to do this three or four times, which also meant waiting overnight at one point so the shop was open again.
Yes, in "game time", I spent about 36 hours running back and forth between an empty bandit campsite and the nearest town. And this is why I used fast travel, because I'd be damned if I was actually going to spend my time jogging all the way! And it took long enough in real-world time even with fast travel: I played for 3¾ hours today. Sure, some of that was actually playing the game, but the most tedious part by far was all the... well, not cheating, but it does kind of feel like cheating. I think fans call it "exploiting" — using the game's systems in ways they weren't intended to gain an advantage.
Of course, I don't have to do any of that — I could abandon loot and just get on with, y'know, playing the game. Maybe I will. Maybe I don't need so much gold. (Also, I've got a tonne of stuff that weighs a tiny amount on me. Individually, insignificant, but I do wonder if the sheer volume of it is prohibiting the good stuff. Even when I'd dumped most of my armour and weapons, my carry capacity was somehow about two-thirds full. Hmm.)
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