Hello,

I've put about 400 hours into Skyrim since I got it at the end of 2011. As you can imagine, after that time (which, I gather, is still a lot less time than many of you have spent with the game), the game has become a tad stale to me. I know almost every quest inside out, how and where to trigger them, and pretty much remember every dungeon I go into so that I can exactly find my way.

That being said, the game still paradoxically appeals to me. I've played Fallout New Vegas for the first time recently, and despite loving that game, and finding it has a lot of role-playing value and immersion, I still feel that Skyrim is more conducive to the imagination. I love the rustic, outdoor-y setting, and I love the detailed lore. Despite quests feeling bland to me - I still get the impression I haven't quite said goodybye to the game properly, or exhausted my desire to play it. I still feeling excited to fire the game up, only to get sidetracked or bored when I do, if that makes sense.

So, I was wondering; how do so many of you long term fans manage to keep the game fresh? I have downloaded tons of mods, and tried all sorts of character concepts, but none have caused me to settle long enough to properly finish the game and quench the desire to play it once and for all. If any of you would like to share your techniques for keeping going in the game, any specific combination of mods and characters, aesthetics, or even tell me how regularly you play, that would be fantastic. Just share your story as to why you keep playing, however you feel that'd best be expressed. I'm very interested to read the results and hopefully to feel inspired again.

I would suggest a read through the current http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1518243-the-skyrim-dead-is-dead-thread-xviii/ thread and previous ones. Lots of play styles talked about in those threads. And from my own personal experience I just started playing DiD on master with Skyrim Immersive Creatures, Deadly Monsters and Deadly Dragons and I can tell you the game is completely different and down right scary at times. Throw in the mod SkyTest (all recommendations from Neildarkstar) and you have a random mob spawning environment that never gets boring! Cheers!

That actually immidiately has me excited, thanks! Actually having to fully prepare for each fight, plan contingencies, and,using frostfall, stay mutliple days in each town would make the game really immersive too. I'm going to read that thread now, so thanks for the tip.

Roleplaying. All of my characters are different so all of my games feel different.

Personally, I don't think you need mods to keep the game fresh. All you need is imagination.

Thanks for replying!

I do try to roleplay quite a bit, but with my knowledge of the game, I still feel like my experience is artificial. Perhaps I think too big in the game, I seem to create a character and plan how they will interact in the world and which quests they take, rather than taking a more organic approach, which detracts from my enjoyment.

Do you have any specific examples of character concepts that have worked for you?

don't cheat.

don't fast travel.

take the game serious and like it was stg real.

get "random alternate start" or the likes.

get "eat drink sleep bathe" or the likes.

and, on a self advertising side note , get Cache Sacks to handle overweight loot without cheating, The Humblest Hut to feel at home, Chicken Fix to put the cluck back into Skyrim's chicken, and, by all means, get yourself a donkey

i mod.

One that I did quite a while back because like you I was just too much of a "know-it-all" for my character was to make an explorer that had never been to Skryim. This isn't easy, but every time I'd catch myself going off to do something I knew about, but my character obviously wouldn't I'd write it down as a reminder of something to do when my character came across it and not just because I knew about it.

The key to the explorer is to literally CRAWL all over everything around you with the HUD very much toned down so it's barely visible. When I did this I found for the first time a gem lying in the middle of the rib cage of a long dead animal. Something I'd never seen before in hundreds of hours of play.

Other examples are self-restriction plays. For example, I created a mage. He couldn't pick a lock if he wanted to, so with the help of Midas Magic mod he learned the Open Lock spells from Novice to Master. There's nothing more frustrating than coming across a locked chest and not being able to open it because you don't have that skill and you don't have a high enough Open Lock spell, BUT it does make for an interesting game. I use the mod Take Notes! to keep my own more detailed and meaningful journal and record where those chests are I was unable to open, so I can go back and see what's inside when I have the higher level open lock spell. My mage couldn't do much with a sword or mace or bow, they were just too much physical BS for him, so he stuck with a dagger, a staff for casting a spell of conjuration or raise dead (saving his magicka) so he could destroy everything with his destruction spells. Armors were just too heavy for him and he sought out a certain mage known to be good at flesh spells to teach him.

You get the idea. Restrictions can be anything from limiting your character to one craft skill, or not allowing a clunky warrior to sneak, etc. Each time you create a specific character concept.

My most recent one is a Battlemage/Paladin gone murderous due to the Thalmor having killed his parents. Truly going to be fun, because a new mod I'm using, Tel Nalta II (highly recommend) adds new Necromantic type spells that he will eventually be corrupted into using!

Hope that gets your creative juices flowing!

Go outside your comfort zone, and get freaky with how you normally play.

You bet.

Those are just a few of many

Use the console and type `sgtm 1.4 ( or `setglobaltimemultiplier 1.4 ). See how long you last in battle against forsworn. You will have to use the mod No Killmoves No Killcams No Killbites to stop the slowmo camera from resetting the game speed to 1. And you will have to sgtm again if you die because the deathcam resets everything. I haven't found any way to sidestep that. Now imagine increased game speed with a spawn increaser like ASIS.

Every one is different, I played for 3+ years on 360 the 1st 2 yr's daily for no less than 2 hrs. I used my imagination to the fullest, knowing all the quest lines in and out. I had decided early on that I would not go into any Dwemer ruin that a quest did not send me into OR to take a "side" quest that I knew would take me into on IE: The Only Cure. I still have not went into some. You see I had decided at some point I wanted to do a "Dwemer Scholar" and I wanted some "fresh" area's.

I have got a pc now and I plan out the "type" of character and some of what they will do examples below:

http://i.imgur.com/RKS9aUW.jpg, S & B, heavy, archery, smithing, speech. He was a "Dragonborn" character, he did MQ and http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/35841/?, add in Deadly Dragons and a couple of other mods. His story was rather simple. ( I was still figuring out the limits of my pc, so that is all I did with him)

http://i.imgur.com/yhGEzQw.jpg 1h, archery, sneak, light/cloth, speech.... was a Bard/ Assassin, I added "Become a Bard" ( which I think the Author is working on atm) but it along with two other "bard" type mods allowed her to "sing" and gain speech points for doing so. Add in a mod that put in a Sanctuary on Solstiem and http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/13608/? and she not only had a "job" but a cover as well. Because she travels on foot so much I had http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/141/? installed also ( with both ETaC and SFO loaded my FPS was lower than any other play through)

What I try to do is pick mod's that will add to my Role Play. I love Deadly Dragons, but I don't use it for all my characters.. my Bard was simply to much of a "glass cannon", where the Mod really enriched Adain's RP. Sarentia's weight was taken up mostly by clothing as she was a "cloths horse" , Adain carried loot and gold, til he hit town, then just armor and weapons ( gold he kept in his Keep...mod that gives weight to gold coins). Sarentia would have frozen to death constantly with Frostfall, Adain did freeze to death a couple times, turned it off for his play through and then on a test character found out what the issue was ( load order) .

I find that sometimes I will pick a play style that is almost opposite of what I usually do or those things I like the most and find a good RP to go with it. IE: I am really bad at "pure" mages, but I found a very RP centered story for my mage that would not just be about the CoW and getting as high as possible in skill's. It ended up being a very nice play through.

I'm in the process of starting a Dawnguard play through, but I can't quiet decide which way I want to go... Vigilant of Stendar or Farmboy adventurer turned Dawnguard. 2 different skill set's.

My (one and only) character played over 4000 hours in Oblivion between 2007 – 2014. In early 2014, we magically folded time and space to bring her to Skyrim – where she has been ever since, amassing about 2200 hours in game there so far. Neither she nor her game ever get old and I believe there are a couple basic reasons:

1. She is a close friend. Sounds simple but, like any close friend, the more time you spend together, the more time you want to spend together.

2. We focus on activities that can never be ‘completed’. Specifically, she spends most of her time either traveling Tamriel on her horse or clearing dungeons. We use the Convenient Horses mod which turns horses from a liability into an asset. We also use a mod that causes Skydungeons to respawn every three game days like the ones in Cyrodiil do. It doubtless helps that my character is both horse-crazy and a voracious dungeon diver so those activities are a pure joy for us.

I didn't do it too much with Oblivion(only a few I wrote something for, either outside the game or with a journal mod), but even when I first played Skyrim(I'd already seen Dawnguard, Dragonborn and half of the MQ in Let's Plays by that point - but that wasn't stopping me from playing even if I knew the stories, I wanted to play through them myself), I had already written an entire backstory for my character, before I even got the game. With almost every character I've created in Skyrim, I might not have a story in mind in full detail when starting the character, but soon after I've written something to get me to want to keep going with the character. Even with characters who have started off the same way(most of these with the Live Another Life mod), I've written their purposes and motivations differently. Mostly by using some or all of the details that the starts provide, but sometimes just ignoring the details, using whatever fits for the character.

Claudia, Jayce and Moria all started with the Camping In The Woods start, each of them having different stories. Claudia was briefly a member of the Imperial Legion, but left a year or two before she came to Skyrim, which proved to be a foolish choice on her part, considering the Civil War - which she did not want to involve herself in(and did not). For Jayce I have not ironed out the details yet, but perhaps she left Valenwood(as she has no wish to share anything with the Thalmor, even her own homeland) and drifted for some time before coming to Skyrim, hoping she could get some peace and quiet. Moira is a bit of a different story, given that I used the start for convenience to become a Vampire quickly, since the story is(I have posted this elsewhere on the forum) simply that she came to Skyrim looking for her brother, and she found out that he became a Vampire soon after he left the Legion proceeding the Great War, and he made her one soon after - in game this was a bit different, but the story does work, I think.

Jeune started with the Vampire start, the story being that perhaps a few years before the events of the in-game story, she lost her family and her lover, and rather than the Vampire killing her, he offered her Immortality. Weeks before the game starts, the group of Vampires she was with begins to hear rumors of the Dawnguard, and a few of their members never returned after leaving. After her "Sire"(Or whatever term fits in TES) takes a number of the group in attempt to find and eliminate the Dawnguard, he and the group were not heard from in over two weeks, and then Jeune finds a note and a pile of ashes outside Mara's Eye Pond, the pile of Ashes still having a Runed Axe stuck into it. The note describes that while her creator did find the Dawnguard, he and the rest of the Vampires he took with them where eliminated. This left only her, and two other members(fitting with the two in the game when you start) in the Pond hideout, and the note also said that the Dawnguard knew of the location. After she shared this information with the others, she eventually heard them plotting to kill her and leave. A night or two latter, she strikes first, killing them and leaving herself.(This pretty much being part of the game - and an excuse to get a set of the Vampire Armor). Oddly enough, her first motivation upon leaving? To find the Dawnguard herself, with the rumors she has heard.

While all this seems like it, for the most part, I don't exactly roleplay the game. In some respects, I do. But in others, I don't or just can't. Some of it has been helped by mods, which add the functionality so the roleplay is possible. Especially between Better Vampires and Moonlight Tales(especially so you can have a similar fur color to the character's hair) for these four characters. But in terms of story, I really don't like the idea that you want to "just say it happened". Like if you want a character to be completely unable to learn magic in the game, but the game has no such restriction, and it might not even fit with the lore. If modded in, then I think that works(even if I would not go with that myself), but otherwise, I think it's a unnecessary limit that is too arbitrary for me. Mostly, I prefer things being actually in the game, and don't really want to add it to the story if it isn't. If it is in the backstory or events that lead to the in-game ones, okay. But something during the events of the game? I would rather not.

Though a common trait I seem to be adding in some of these stories is a meeting at some point with a curious individual, which is pretty much one of my Oblivion characters, whose story is the same as the accepted canon for the CoC(though using his original appearance, instead of this game's depiction). Rather than something devious, he is basically pointing them towards their eventual fate, sometimes with interesting outcomes - like with Shan-Tae, who was a Scholar that was a bit into Necromancy, and when she came to Skyrim looking for a certain Alchemist, she was basically told it was suicide to try and follow that path, if not impossible. But then an unusual man sells her an interesting gold/bronze orb, which he suggests will lead her where she wished to go. The catch? Once used, it broke. She still foolishly kept going, and in finding who she was looking for, she nearly got herself killed.