Ulda Update - end of day one (12 hours ) level 13

Poor Ulda....due to the abysmal AR I forced through her character preference and insisted she wear a leather helmet....pretty sure she hated that. Due to the even more abysmal One handed rating, I took a leaf from the Mace Maiden's book and ended up trading a poor steel dagger for a more capable Orcish Mace.

So, how did she fair? Well it still takes about six swings to end a wolf and an Outlaw takes about 40 % out of her on each strike......so it's exciting and pants cacking at times. Bandit Thugs are due about now. Closest shave.....in the forest West of Falkreath Ulda and Lyds ran into one of those Thalmor Execution Squads. I didn't even try to fight it out. Ulda was baked in a flame jet on a par with Mirmulnir. I just high tailed it outta there...... Using Lydia proved a wise descision.....she runs interference and hits a lot harder than Ulda.

What has she done? BFB, Embershard, Mirmulnir, Knifepoint Ridge, built Lakeview Manor ( Base of Operations) and trashed a few bandit camps . Busy girl!

Next on the list.......finish Lakeview off, and then Get the Ancients Ascent dragon Soul and then get my fav shout from Autumn Watch towers. After that I guess it's TG in Riften time . Not looking forward to the long dangerous trek! Or dealing with Hewnon Black Skeever and his mate in the Ratway.

prognosis.......well as is predictable, the baddies are getting badder and the armour remains cack.....so the omens are not good. I think past level 15 it's a bit of a lottery! Cash generation is reasonable for the level, but so far it's all been eaten up by the Lakeview build and equipment upgrades. Right now I got under 300 Septims . But a very nice house

Asking Ulda to stand in for me was a good choice, she feels quite natural of course in this sneaky scouting role....sneaky bow work then rushing in with a mace to the face. Of course pure B&E is a different thing and remains to be seen.

The big problem with thieving straight off the mark is that you can't sell it until you get to a fence.....the inventory gets rapidly over filled with junk. However.......now I have Lakeview with 'Safe Chests' I have somewhere to store the ill gotten gains and the Purloining can Proceed

4am here in a good old Blighty.....time to turn in

Edit.....ok Glargg.....you know me well......a slight rattling WAS underway . That Better?

Weena is dead. Level 9. She made it through BFB, but then, out of healing potions, was killed by a stupid roadside Scavenger.

Sorry to hear it glargg! That scavenger is really one tough dude, and I tend to avoid him when I can. Aside from the two handed hammer he usually has, he's mean with a bow too.

***

Ri'Venj stood in the Bannered Mare drinking in the music, laughter, and her tankard of ale. She hoped no stray Whiterun guard came in and happened to see her before she was ready to leave. the last few days had been hectic, and she needed a few minutes to catch her breath.

Arriving in Riverwood she'd stayed at Alvor's house the first night. It had been pleasant having a safe place to stay, but... Well, Alvor had gone to the Sleeping Giant for a pint or two, and Sigrid had gotten a bit... strange. Hedvar had disappeared down into the cellar, and Sigrid had started telling Ri'venj how pretty she was.

It was late, and Ri'Venj had decided to go to bed and avoid whatever Sigrid was pushing toward, but no sooner had she laid down than Sigrid came, and snuggled up next to her in bed! It was very uncomfortable for the Khajiit, because she didn't want to offend Sigrid or Alvor. Then sigrid had started whispering in her ear, and petting her leg, but the last straw was when Sigrid started saying "Nice kitty..."

Ri'venj had gotten up, and headed out the door, but once outside was not sure what to do... So, she'd gone down the street, and broken into Sven's house to see what he had to drink in there. His mother was home, but asleep, so Ri'venj had picked her pocket, stolen an ale, and gone back outside.

The next couple of nights were more of the same, with some picking of pockets added in, but it was three days before she tried to sleep at Alvor's house again. That woman had almost immediately crawled in bed with her again! It was intolerable! So, she'd gone back outside for some air, and a cold voice from the shadows said "We're here to teach you a lesson!"

Silly humans, thought they could fight a Khajiit outside at night... in the dark. Just the thought made the Khajiit show her teeth in a wide grin. After that, she immediately had headed for Whiterun, where she was sent right back to Riverwood to fetch a rock for the Jarl's wizard.

She got the rock, and headed back for whiterun to give it to the wizard, but on the way she ran into a guard who threw her in jail for punching Embrys. Embrys had hired those three tough guys, and she STILL was not finished with him, She'd punched him, and he'd turned and ran into the Sleeping Giant and for some reason Sigrid had attacked her with a knife and saved the coward a just beating! That woman is crazy, that's all there is to it!

Anyway, Ri'venj did not like the bed in jail, so decided to leave and go someplace with cleaner better beds. She'd gotten out of her cell, but broke her only lockpick before she could open the chest holding all of her stuff. Once out of the guard barracks, she tried to borrow a bow and some arrows from a guard, but he'd gotten really upset! She'd ended up fleeing into the night, naked with no weapons, no money, nothing!

She'd found a place called "dustman's Cairn" and went in intending to spend the night, but dead Nords came crashing out waving weapons, so she'd left. Back outside, still naked, she'd wandered until she stumbled into a back door to some big fort. Once inside, she discovered the place was full of bandits, so she tried to borrow some stuff from them, but they'd gotten upset too. It seems Nords have no sense of generosity whether they are guards or bandits!

Anyway, back on the run again, but this time she had some studded armor and an imperial bow with a few arrows, and she'd returned to White run first thing in the morning. Wouldn't you know, THREE guards were waiting with weapons drawn just inside the gates, and it was back to jail for her.

She'd broken out of jail again, and found some things laying around, and finally acquired some lockpicks so she could go get her belongings. Now here she was, enjoying an ale in the Bannered Mare while half the guards in Skyrim were hunting for her outside... She wondered if she was ever going to manage to give the wizard his rock without somebody throwing her in jail...

Ri'venj is now Level 11

I barely have time to play and I have been having a lot of fun with my Vargr but I can't resist the lure of the competition!

Rafer Darksun
Roland
Breton
Male
Master

I hope to launch Roland tonight. He will be a pure trash dirtbag thief, with a sweet 70s mustache!

OFFICIALLY WITHDRAWS

thank you every one for all the fun time

but ..................thanks

I'm sorry to hear you say that Sah. Is it something we could or should talk about? Send me a PM...

After seeing how many Khajit are in this competition , I think the Nordstrom are right to not let them into the cities. Bad kitties!

Level 13

I've joined the guild and I've done the golden glow job and a heist job in riften. My other jobs are in Markath and windhelm, and of course whiterun for the "main" quest.

What's the politics about cancelling guild missions? Seems pretty easy to cancel everything to only get jobs in Riften but it also seems very cheesy. So far I haven't done it because it's not my way of doing things but I think that we need a clear rulling about it.

The story about the sabercat:

Sir Kaemrig was a nickname that the nords of windhelm had given him making fun of a frail old dark elf, he was way beyond taking a care and adopted the name.

When Sir Kaemrig started his journey to Riften, after hiring the help of a mercenary called Jenassa, he met a not very convincing guy on the way who asked for his help, as they cautiously followed the man they fell into an ambush. Jenassa made a quick job of the would be robbers while Sir Kaemrig showered them with arrows from the safety of a bush.

That's when things went sour, the last arrow sent the last man, the leader, falling into the river down the cascade. As he was the boss, Sir kaemrig thought that he was have been hoarding the most precious things and started to crawl down the mountain. But the cascades were neverending and Jenassa didn't feel like crawling on these ledges so she didn't follow him. Sir kaemrig gave up in front of a last huge cascade and started to walk back up a pathway, that's when he met the sabercat. He fought bravely, drunk all his potions and using all his poisons on his best arrows but the cat wouldn't fall, and Jenassa was nowhere in sight, smelling his death crawling it's way to him he took a deep breath and ran into the river falling down a cascade into.. a spider! He kept half running half swimming down the currents, somehow dodging the poison the was beeing spit at him and fell down another cascade, using his healing spell as much as he could all the while, and landed hard but breathing out of reach of the crazy animals. He found a shadowy spot where he hid and slowly healed himself. Eventually he started again cautiously on the road where Jenassa, nerevar bless her, found him and escorted him to Riften, killing a would be robber and a khajiit assassin on the way. Why would someone want him dead?

Hopefully we'll see you on another competition. Whetever you're facing, I hope that it'll turn out alright.

Personally, I think that's a cheat. I mean, if it looks like a cheat, and it feels like a cheat, it probably is a cheat, right? So let me give you a clear ruling... Cheating is against the rules, and canceling missions just to make sure you don't have to travel is cheating.

SAH.......WTF.......Nooooooooo Honey Noooooooo

Don't do this..........pleeeeeeeeeeese

I am shocked.......I don't know what to say.........

You REALLY hated the rule changes THAT much

Where's the Spartan spirit? Fighting when the odds are against you.......

Please calm down, don't be rash

I am devastated........SAH.......Honey!

I'm sending you a PM....

you train to run a Legendary super marathon, they tell you you cant wear a cap, use sun protection, or even eat & drink water......NO it appears Legendary is not enough.......you train hard for 2 weeks.......making plans on how to beat the system.......only told on the day of the race you have to do it bare footed......................this ones mind is now in the wrong space..........Some one please explain WHY?..............WHY?

I will try to get your head in the right place my love, please just give me a little while to compose a very special,PM. I have to re-read all the changes in your context.......you have a unique intellect SAH. A simple trite answer will not suffice for you.

My game is suspended.....

You will lose no ground if we can sort this out

Rick xx

Is it no carriage fast travel? That does make this round extremely tedious, given Riften's location and prominence in this competition. I am dreading every long, wolf infested walk myself.

Here's the problem with carriage fast travel... it's fast travel. The ONLY difference is that you have to pay for it. Clear back in the very first competition, nobody wanted fast travel, and fast travel was banned. It has been banned in every competition since then. Carriage fast travel was banned too, but I don't think everybody realized it. Carriage travel was only okayed for people who used the "touring carriages" mod, and that was because they sat in the carriage and enjoyed the scenery for the entire trip, and could be attacked in transit by things like dragons as they went.

Remember mods that make life difficult have always been okay, and frankly the slow travel carriage is a death trap. Imagine you're in an open wagon, and a dragon is blasting everybody in the carriage with fiery breath. Then imagine you decide you'd better fight before you're roasted, and it takes about 20 seconds to get the driver to stop the carriage, then you get up in slow motion (just like the first carriage ride in Helgen when you get off) and your hands are bound when you step off the carriage. You have to jump or something to get your hands free., and all that time you were standing right there in the open, unable to move with NO player control and no access to your inventory or potions. That's why carriage travel was okay, but not carriage fast travel.

All I did was put the rule back where it was supposed to be the whole time. Now, as to those wolf infested walks, well, I have to put up with them too (and buddy, I've got a great tale to tell about the trip I made to Riften last night). Everybody else has to put up with them too.

If anyone would like a suggestion, I'd say buy a horse. No, you still can't fast travel on the horse, but there are few things on the road that you can't outrun on a horse, or that can really harm you if you just start the horse running.

Aside from that, the problem with fast travel and fast traveling by carriage is this. You take a TG job, they send you to Solitude. You go out, pay the carriage guy, two minutes later you're in solitude. You go to your target's house, he's not home so you just walk in, grab whatever you're supposed to take, and go back to the carriage. Pay the guy, arrive back in Riften, go turn in your booty, and collect your 1000 competition points for a TG job well done. The whole thing took 20 minutes.Sounds like a good deal for somebody... High points, no effort.

...and that's the "why"...

SAH, I Will make sure to send you my PM before midnight Sydney time. Please please just keep holding on honey. Help is on the way.

Neil......I hope your in her PM space now m8. I don't know how to send you a pm other than as a reply.......so I'll keep this pithy. She is volatile and in pain right now.....please be careful.......Rick

Neil, I'm not complaining about no carriage based fast travel other than to state that it will be pretty boring walking all over skyrim, running from wolves, at least after a few level ups. But as we all have to suffer equally, I have no gripe about it. I just noticed that this seemed to be the rule change that Sah objected to. It could be something else, however. I do think that carriage based fast travel has always been allowed, though. I could be wrong, as I rarely use it and in most of the comps I died too early for it to matter. However, the one time I did do the thieves guild i was very happy to use it as criss crossing skyrim gets really old after awhile. Roland will be on a horse ASAFP!

Edit: I just checked the rules for rounds 2 and 3. It says "No map based fast travel (carriages okay)"

Anyway, thanks for being very clear on the rules and for simplifying the scoring system. It is a big improvement over the first system.

It could be a case of faulty memory on my part, I won't rule that out. I distinctly recall a rather lengthy discussion on the subject though while we were setting up the first competition, and I haven't used a carriage for fast travel in any of them as a result. I'm open to disussion on the subject if everybody wants carriage fast travel, but I'm really reluctant to change rules in mid-stream.

EDIT: I do have a question though... If all that everybody does is flit back and forth here and there by carriage racking up points, what dangers will anybody really have to face? What incentive is there to set foot outside of a city where there really is no danger at all?

That's a good point, Neill. Other than the hired thugs ( who I am terrified of ) there isn't a lot of danger on the TG side quests. The main TG quest is a different story. I have no idea how Roland will get through some of that quest line. As I said, this is a rule that will affect us all, not just certain builds, so I am fine with it. I just wanted to point out that this is a rule change for this round.

I just did a quick read through of all the Main DiD treads and the secondary ( discussion type) threads. The listed rules say no map based fast travel, but does not actually say anything about carriage travel... Now that said, there have been a couple discussions about using carriages and that they shouldn't be allowed as it made flitting back and forth to easy. Unless one used touring carriages. But it was never put into any of the "official rules"..

I have always thought that they weren't allowed, but as I rarely use them anyway.. it doesn't matter to me.

Edit: don't mean to stress ya Neil...

Rules be Rules and I'll abide by not only the letter of the Law, but the Spirit.

Yeah, I always thought they weren't allowed as well. But, that just illustrates what the problem was with having fuzzy rules.

I like the restriction on carriage travel for this event. Building a thief is challenging when you have to balance low combat skills with increasing level, and just using the carriage from city to city takes you out of the random encounter dangers. In this round you don’t even have to have dragons in your game or pursue the main TG questline, so with carriage travel it comes down to just hitting the carriage and Vex/Delvin buttons while the points rack up. I’ll keep playing either way, of course, but I think it’s much more fun this way.

I can see how this thief round does not suit a warrior/tank playstyle, but we’re all using the same rules. Part of the challenge of this friendly competition is matching your knowledge and experience to the new situations that arise in each one. I’ve only had a few hours to play so far (weekends are busy), but just reading the character updates from other people has been a lot of fun.

yes well, true very true.

As I said I don't much use carriages anyway, an my Thief and Assassin characters never...In my own RP it is for track-ability... if someone see's you, they may be able to figure out that you are the one doing it. The only Exception was my Bard Assassin, as she didn't kill in every town and did the "jobs" only on her regular round, not deviating much.

Even my DiD characters are RP'd to a great extent, but I'm not a competative person.

Is it okay to reload due to a senior moment? I left Helgen, went to Riverwood and like always I went through the "basics of smithing" without even thinking about it. I like to get that silliness out of the way. Then I realized I just crafted stuff at the forge, pfffft. So I reloaded my save at the exit from Helgen and made the trip to Riverwood again, exercising extreme self control and not doing the tutorial quests for smithing.

I did not ask for the no carriage fast travel rule but having played it for a while, I agree with the "why" you stated above. In past competitions I used carriages to instantly and cheaply pop from city to city to quickly complete certain quests and it felt very "grindy". I've had fun adventures so far in this competition from having to face the challenges that must be faced with road based travel.

No carriages may be a departure from prior rules but I feel like it is a fresh and welcome addition to the competition. I also like mixing up the rules so each competition is different, so I don't know if we need the no carriages rule every round. But I am glad the rules are clear and I welcome the restrictions imposed this round.

It sounds like some of us would prefer just to do "warrior" every round, perhaps with a few minor variations that don't upset their usual and preferred play style too much.

What I've enjoyed about this competition is that it does upset my preferred play style and forces me to try something different that I would not have done on my own. Just for a couple of weeks, in a fun setting with other good and fun people to share it with.