Unexpected discoveries that truly fascinate. Rare creatures, : V - Skyrim

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 2:06 am

[OP...]

Spoiler

Today, despite years of playing Oblivion, I stumbled upon, for the first time, Lost Boy Cavern. If it had been full of punk teenage vampires it would have been an awesome nod to the old 80s film, but what I found was almost as good and very intriguing. Deep within the cave. . . the cave turned out to be an underground fortress. And in the fortress was a necromancer's lair, but this lair had a story to go with the enemies. A lich named Erandur was plotting against the mages guild (this Archmage destroyed him of course, with a little help from a Xivalai friend), there were letters detailing his intent to attack the guild, and praising the ruin of Kvatch. There were also notes from a former friend of his who had sought aid in winning Erandur back from evil from The Mages Guild and had not received it, and who had latter fought Erandur and tried to escape, but had failed. And in a secret throne room at the back of the fort, there was Erandur himself, by name. If he he'd had a special skin (as the last Ayelid king should have) it would have been AWESOME!
Does anyone know if Erandur is tied to a quest that I haven't unlocked, by the way>?

And then there is the giant slaughter fish beneath the undersea caverns that lie beneath the lair of the Daedra binding wizard Fathis Arnen. . . a cave which DOES have a tunnel that leads to the open sea.

So all this to ask and say, before this thread is erroneously moved to Oblivion's thread. . . who else LOVES finding the unexpected when exploring. When the forts are not just arranged differently and inhabited by different factions of the generic monsters and semi-hostile NPCs, but where some of them have distinctive histories all their own that can be read and seen! When they have rare creatures, or are themselves rare oddities or forgotten relics?
WHo else loves stumbling upon a hidden plot against a major guild that no member of the guild has given you a quest to foil?

Just saying.

Little late on this, but I just wanted to say that this is an example (of the far too few) of rewarding exploration without monetary gain, and was much more heavily used in Morrowind than Oblivion. Hopefully, with more level designers on the project, we'll have some more instances Ibar-Dad's and (can't recall name, the Ruins you find Skull Crusher in), though, such exotic and wonderful locations are really, believe it or not, lost without contrast of "Basic Tomb" "Basic Fort" etc. Again, I say it all the time, but contrast prevents the world from becoming stale. Even if the overall experience is phenomenal, without something "Less enthralling" to reground yourself, it willbecome stale.

» Wed Oct 06, 2010 11:44 pm

Careful. If he becomes too famous, Hircine might send someone after him. And that would be bad.

for the person doing the quest yes

they would be flat as a leaf in no time at all. unless hircine himself thinks the pale one a prey worth hunting personally then yeah the old bull dont stand a chance

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 2:24 am

Yeah I love random encounters, like the 1 where once in awhile in a dungeon you would run into an Orc Adventurer exploring and looting also, stuff like that tho little can really ad feeling to a game, even if it has no story to it, and is so much better when there is a story attached.

» Wed Oct 06, 2010 11:12 pm

Little late on this, but I just wanted to say that this is an example (of the far too few) of rewarding exploration without monetary gain, and was much more heavily used in Morrowind than Oblivion. Hopefully, with more level designers on the project, we'll have some more instances Ibar-Dad's and (can't recall name, the Ruins you find Skull Crusher in), though, such exotic and wonderful locations are really, believe it or not, lost without contrast of "Basic Tomb" "Basic Fort" etc. Again, I say it all the time, but contrast prevents the world from becoming stale. Even if the overall experience is phenomenal, without something "Less enthralling" to reground yourself, it willbecome stale.

Unlike the spells, I think I can agree with you completely here. And mind you, in the title, I did say rare creatures, hidden plots, secret ruins etc. All of these would need to be the exception not the norm. Not UNIQUE in some cases (though some should indeed be unique), but not the norm by far. I would say something like 1 in 4 things will be a little outside the norm. 1 in ten or 1 in twenty will be something really worth writing a post about. 1 in 40 or so will be amazing discoveries to astound the mind, and then you have a handful of things that are utterly unique, 1 alone out of the 120 and (is it 90?) places of interest in the game.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 4:09 am

I only want to see this

You're climbing a huge mountain by night, fighting a blizzard, it's just you and the mountain, and en epic sountrack, after climbing for a while the blizzard ceases, from the distance you can see godrays coming out of the horizon, the sun starts to rise and the clouds start to dissipate, you reach the top of the mountain, you can hear the wind hissing and snowflakes fall in front of you, you made it, a new city lies in the distance, and now you must get to it *adventure continues*

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 6:21 am

Little late on this, but I just wanted to say that this is an example (of the far too few) of rewarding exploration without monetary gain, and was much more heavily used in Morrowind than Oblivion. Hopefully, with more level designers on the project, we'll have some more instances Ibar-Dad's and (can't recall name, the Ruins you find Skull Crusher in), though, such exotic and wonderful locations are really, believe it or not, lost without contrast of "Basic Tomb" "Basic Fort" etc. Again, I say it all the time, but contrast prevents the world from becoming stale. Even if the overall experience is phenomenal, without something "Less enthralling" to reground yourself, it willbecome stale.

Couldn't agree more. Sometimes a bandit hideout is just a bandit hideout. Though sometimes even that can be awesome. I don't know if its just because it was my first Morrowind experience, or what, but that first cave just off of Seyda Neen still has a special place in my memory. Nothing but a handful of low level Dunmer brigands with a slave pen, but without a jot of extra text or dialog it all told a story.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 3:10 am

Theres gonna be some cool finds in Skyrim. That is certainly something I love when a game has those kinds of elements in it. Ive barely discovered all that Skyrim has to offer myself.

That's really good to hear.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 12:21 am

Even on a much smaller scale than all that id at least like to see more secret entryways/passages.....like the secret way into ebonheart where there was the secret door in the stone wall.....or how in the house redoran you find that guys son behind the secret door hidden behind the tapestry.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 11:57 am

Even on a much smaller scale than all that id at least like to see more secret entryways/passages.....like the secret way into ebonheart where there was the secret door in the stone wall.....or how in the house redoran you find that guys son behind the secret door hidden behind the tapestry.

Ahh, the little things,. Yes, they too, definitely have their place.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 10:21 am

YES. Again, I really hope Beth played New Vegas, Obsidian did a very good job with this sort of thing.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 9:39 am

I love stumbling across things like this.

As a person who doesn't ever play the main quest, these are the things I play the game for

» Wed Oct 06, 2010 10:54 pm

if there are too many rare things, they become common. And I would not want that. I prefer my rare creatures weapons and surprises rare.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 8:48 am

if there are too many rare things, they become common. And I would not want that. I prefer my rare creatures weapons and surprises rare.

If there are too many of the same rare thing, yes they do become less rare. And, indeed, if every other thing is rare or unique, it devalues it.

But I merely mean a good number of them. Say, out of the total forts in the game, something like 1 in 10 is a real intriguing rarity, or has a rare being, set of beings, cult, plot or creature/creatures within.

If the game has 120 dungeons, that means about 12 of them are something to really write home about.

To many rarities can devalue finding such things/beings etc. Too few, on the other hand, makes the standard seem ubiquitous, repetitive, uninspired, and takes away from the verisimilitude of the game and from the feeling that you are really in a living world with history, and a vast host of histories, cultures and creatures.

The lore in ES is extensive. It makes us belive there are many things in its cosmology, and logic suggests that we should expect to find many rare things in Skyrim. I hope the game lives up to the marraige of logic and the lore.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 11:46 am

I really hope all of the hidden/rare ruins,creatures or weapons aren't tied to quest.
Imagine you find a strange looking sword that is hidden inside hollow tree. You have no idea what that is until you read from the book that the sword is long lost deadric artifact. That would be so cool.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 5:13 am

I really hope all of the hidden/rare ruins,creatures or weapons aren't tied to quest.
Imagine you find a strange looking sword that is hidden inside hollow tree. You have no idea what that is until you read from the book that the sword is long lost deadric artifact. That would be so cool.

Agreed. I would say, it would be great if about 3/4ths of the rarities were tied to quest, but all the rest, a full one quarter of them, were allowed to simply exist, like so many mysteries and oddities in life.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 11:30 am

Would love to see many secret little story-lines and thins. As long as there's one ruin with generic bandits where I can I stop at every few days to get my payout. :whistling:

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 11:23 am

Would love to see many secret little story-lines and thins. As long as there's one ruin with generic bandits where I can I stop at every few days to get my payout. :whistling:

Lol. Indeed, we want them to feature a fair number of rare and unusual beings, ruins, secrets etc. We don't want them to leave out the commonplace. Yet I doubt we have to worry about the latter, anyway.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 10:34 am

This made me think.
What if you were doing your dungeon crawling thing, and you stumble upon a unique bit of information? And later on, you find something that connects to it. You go to some random town, and you buy a book that was mentioned in a note you found the second time. This leads you to a ruin in the crater of a dormant volcano or something, and inside it, you find something very very neat. Somethng like a quest that you take on yourself, that you aren't told how to do it. Maybe eventually confronting some villian or fighting a Daedra Lord in his realm or something.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 6:30 am

OB had disapointingly few actually interesting places... but yea I do love stuff for exploration

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 4:51 am

There are over 100 points of interest.

Doesnt make them all interesting and unique. I hope we see more of what OP described, a tiny tiny backstory to some cave makes exploring it all worth it and is not that hard to implement.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 3:02 am

Doesnt make them all interesting and unique. I hope we see more of what OP described, a tiny tiny backstory to some cave makes exploring it all worth it and is not that hard to implement.

I can RP anything I want.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 6:51 am

I can RP anything I want.

Im at a lose of words to this argument.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 1:33 pm

One of the cooler aspects of games like FO3 and RDR...in fact, I spent a lot of my time in Red Dead finding, tracking down, and hunting hard to find animals such as mountain lions and bears. It was awesome.

I fully expect Skyrim to have similar elements that I'll thoroughly enjoy.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 12:17 pm

OB had disapointingly few actually interesting places... but yea I do love stuff for exploration

There were a few, but I agree, not enough, and the payoff usually wasn't substantial enough for how rare they were (and I don't mean payoff as in loot, I mean as in sheer wonder of discovery).

But I feel encouraged by the words from he art/character dev. who chimed into the thread a while back.

» Thu Oct 07, 2010 12:28 am

I read somewhere that there aren't any Falmer ruins.