Based on your adventures, decided to try DiD play style, and have to say thanks ... it makes the game much more suspenseful, even just on expert. After too many deaths around level 10 it started to frustrate me, but it would be difficult to go back now.

For those who want the advantages of DiD with some of the edge off, you might try this modified way: earn your lives. Save right outside of Helgen. Go back there if your character dies as your reroll (the intro quest gets tedious). Every time you do this, you get # of lives = number of times you've restarted.

You'll still hate losing lives, but your character will be able to progress a little further, too.

So can you clarify your DiD rules again?

• Playing on Master
  
• Reroll on Death
  
• Disabled Compass
  
• Disabled Crosshairs
  
• Map not allowed
  
• Don't reroll when death due to invisible trap or out of the nowhere one shot

Anything else?

I can understand everything except the map. While quality maps were expensive and rare in medieval times, the only other option is to draw it by hand... which would ruin the game for me. Maybe there's a happy middle ground... perhaps a screen capture of the Dragonstone map, photoshop'd a bit, and printed? You could keep track of your quest locations on there, by hand? Look on the map quick when someone updates your map for you, mark it down on your paper map, and then play no-map? Just throwing out suggestions. There's a fine line between tedium and challenging. :-p

Yes, I might cancel the no map thing, don't know yet... Maybe I can use the map on the table at Dragonreach.
I never encountered an invisible trap yet, a lot of traps caused me near deaths but I should and could have seen them.
And a one shot usually drains health so I'm able to press "menu" and use potions.

I also have the etiquette of not killing without reason, and I don't steal at all.
Also, I don't use fast travel because it doesn't make sense.

I think the compass, fast travel and the full blown easy to navigate map for free, are 3 big things that take away from the "immersion" (can't stand the word immersion, seen it to much )

• Playing on Master
  
• Reroll on Death
  
• Disabled Compass
  
• Disabled Crosshairs
  
• Map not allowed (or maybe when it's really not possible, only once a day...)
  
• No fast travel
  
• Only one enchantment and one smithing upgrade per weapon. (but haven't used enchanting yet)

I think a "Dungeon Master" (Bethesda) should be cruel and harsh, THAT gives the flavour of mysticism and obscurity in an rpg most of the times.
So because Bethesda has to be the dungeon master of a lot of people, including young kids, it is a very mild game...

So why not add some static rules yourself?

It's an awesome game... But the "Dungeon Master" was to mild because otherwise some people might return the game or get fed up with it, or it would hurt the sales or something.

I agree that there are levels of difficulty, and each persons' tolerance is different. This is a fine way to tune the game to your desired difficulty.

Not killing for no reason and not stealing are roleplay choices. I enjoy thieving, and I'm not going to completely ignore the Thives Guild and Dark Brotherhood questline on all my characters.

I'll likely pick this up for my next character, and use most of your rules. I think the No Map + No Fast Travel is overkill, so i'll likely keep the map but use it sparingly. If someone is going to take the time to mark a location on my map, I should be allowed to look at it. It's not like I'm magically discovering a location from nowhere. Likewise, while I can't Fast Travel, I'm going to allow myself to use Carriages. Just because I'm ignorant doesn't mean everyone else is too.

My next character is going to be a mage-type that uses conjured weapons, so they wont be a smith either way. I don't see any reason to disallow the double-enchantment either; it's a 100 point perk. Maybe adjust that limitation to 'only allowed to put perks in one crafting skill'? As for adjusting the crafting leveling mechanics, maybe forbid all component purchases. Enchanters must collect their own gems and gather their own souls, smiths must mine their own ore and leather, and alchemists must gather their own ingredients. This would force a realistic progression in the crafting skill, and combined with the crafting perk limitation of a single tree, would feel like a real profession. Also, it wouldn't as restrictive as saying you can only use one profession... you can use all 3; just only put perks in 1.

How do you feel about the pause functionality? Wouldn't it make more sense if potions were a favorite of some sort, so you had to use them in real-time? Or is that a bit too much?

So my adjusted ruleset for my game would be:

• Playing on Master
  
• Reroll on Death
  
• Disabled Compass
  
• Disabled Crosshairs
  
• No fast travel
  
• Only one crafting profession can be perked.
  
• No fast travel; Carriages ok.
  
• Only use potions / food / abilities that are favorites; no pausing in combat.

He said before that he has no problem with pausing the game to use potions, but it's kind of your own deal. I don't feel like these rules would be fun because I would be frustrated too quickly with them. I play games to get away from the tedium of my regular world and this just replicates them. I respect his choice just like I'm sure he respects mine because playing games is all about what's fun for you.

I guess what I'm saying is, play however you want. If you decide your rules are too harsh, you can edit them. If they are too easy, add more limitations. This game is basically the hippy aunt that accepts everyone the same with no judgement.

Nod. I agree with that sentiment. I'll be on my 5th character soon, so I was looking at other ways to play. I was mostly trying to start a dialogue on the various options for changing the feel of the game.

I've been reading these boards for months. I'm usually the informational absorption type, rather than the genesis of content; however, you are such a rooster gobbler (don't want to get the banhammer on my first day!) that I had to register. Here is a gamer, doing something different, difficult, interesting AND including all of us in it, and clearly YOU too are interested, because you were reading the post. Then you with your sad sad small world had to come in and S*it on it. Wow, there are so many people like you in the real world too, hey go pop the next can of Cheetos in your moms basemant, and troll on little man, troll on.

Ok, I need your help...
I don't want to reroll when it's clearly a glitch when I die...
There are some glitches where you can lose half your hp (or die?) due to some rocks or a wheel-carriage.

Never had a "glitch-death", until now, maybe...
I was going down next to a waterfall on rocks, I slided just a little bit and suddenly, bam, dead...
Not even fall damage.

Does this happen sometimes? Guess I'm making excuses not to reroll...
What do you say?

-edit- Never mind... I reconstructed it, and it was indeed a death... I supposed you can always slide on anything.

So laziness killed me at level 1.

I was trying to swim all the way to windhelm to get a very powerful companion... and I will do that next run, hehehe.

That actually sounds like a pretty legit glitch. If you fell less than your own height and died then it definitely is. I know sometimes when I come up on Dwemer ruins and am sniping bandits camped out among the buildings I sometimes slide a little bit. I guess you just have to be aware of how fast you're moving and how far you might fall.

I'm not sure if this is a valid death. It's one thing to underestimate a height and die from the jump down. It's something else to be instagibbed due to faulty geometry. If you fell less than 3x your character height, you should have been hurt, but not killed. The judgement call is your to make, but I say Live On. DiD is an exercise in not being stupid; not punishment for every physics glitch in the game.

Nah, it really was a dead, but thanks for your remarks!

I speedran past the first dragon, you can really run by him very quickly, jumping past his head/running past his wings, before he breathes fire...

I grabbed all the potions in Helgen and ran past all the imperial soldiers, killing a few by walking backwards with flames.

Ran past the spiders and the bear... accepted the main quest follow up and immediately followed the river towards wind helm...
I'm kind of fed up with the intro section but I still feel that I have to do it otherwise it "doesn't count".

But anyway, I killed some bandits on a bridge on the way to Windhelm, grabbed some loot, and burst flamed (does the most damage per magicka) the bandit leader to death, while taking a few bottle's of wine to stay ahead of his two hander...
LoL: "Need to sprint harder, drink wine"...

Anyway, right before arriving at Windhelm I saw a group of imperial soldiers with a stormcloak captive.
One imperial soldier said: "Imperial business, be on your way" (something like that)
And he immediately drew his sword after that...

Arriving at Windhelm seconds after that, the temptation to be "pro stormcloack" was firmly nestled in my head in an instant...

"Hey, this city looks so mythical, grandiose and so rectangular..."

Yep... that was it... the stormcloack mindset grabbed me and wrapped me up...

"AHHH this wintery wonderland of purity... Hey wtf are these elves doing here!"

Nay... I will not allow this in my mind...
I won't belong to stomcloacks and I won't belong to Imperials...

My body is mere animated dirt from the ground, and my soul doesn't belong to them. lol

The Stormcloaks get a bit of a bad reputation because they're tolerant of ignorant racists, but 90% of them seem to be ok. There's always a bad apple. That said, the lady that almost cut your head off in the intro was also an Imperial bad apple. So, choose your poison, really.

Good luck on your challenge, I'm currently doing a DiD playthrough myself. Though not quite as hardcoe as yours because I use compass/map/fast travel. I think the hardest part of playing DiD is walking through the forest >.>.

Have you banned yourself from the pathfinding spell?

Technically this is called Clairvoyance. I was curious about this myself. It would address the no map within the spirit of the OP's 'rules'.

I'm particularly interested in the player who is in the no kill zone. I didn't think the game was doable under that stricture.

Dunno... I think I don't really like it...And it makes it very easy...
I enjoyed having to search a little for the beginning of "high Hothrar"

As a spell it doesn't make sense at all, if you think about it.

How would a magic spell be able to know which quest you are on, and how to find the road towards it..
Even in fantasy, a pathfinding spell is absurd in my opinion.

I always assumed it was time magic, and it was just showing you the desired path from one of many multiverses. :-p

No, it does make sense if you remember the spell is called Clairvoyance which is the ability to see the future or sense things not normal able to be sensed. So you ask yourself, which of these many paths will I take in the future to lead me right? And you see the future. The spell isn't 'lead me in this quest'.

Anyway, I've used it to get out of dungeons or find the shortcut door I couldn't otherwise see.

pretty far fetched but that's just taste, I guess..

Anyway, to my joy, I found the quest location for the quest after you visited the bearded men.

It's on the map that is lying on the table in Dragonreach, Winterhold, etcetera.
So that one is also do-able without a map.

I doubt a map is needed... It is ofcourse much easier and more comfortable... But the harsh environment of Skyrim in combination with a gps like map, nah...(in my opinion ofcourse)

I actually like the "non fantasy" UI and menu's...
But the map should have been brown and more "ingame" if you know what I mean.

I know what the spell is called, i withheld the info incase he wanted to find it out for himself insted of being helped

If you could negate your person marker frOm the map it would make it a usable item