The Glade 4.0

I'm at level 24 on my first character, which should put me slightly under halfway through the exploration of my first faction. I still haven't found time to try out pvp! Every time I log in, I want to see what happens next with the quest lines and stories, and explore the area some more, and keep putting Cyrodill off.

I'm up to 4 characters now; 1 of each class. I'm a little unimpressed with the Dragonknight and not sure yet on the Templar. The Sorcerer and the Nightblade seem more my speed; The Nightblade allegedly has a lot of issues but it seems really flexible and powerful to me. Stealth has gotten a lot better with a few more levels too.

I still haven't worked tradeskills a great deal, but I did experiment with alchemy some. It seems easier to advance than blacksmithing or enchanting.

I still have not bought a horse. I'm saving my money until I can afford one of the good horses. I could just barely afford a basic horse now, but I'll wait. Some people have complained that they're too expensive, but I suspect that it's a very important money sink. Gold amounts are REALLY high in this game; at level 24 I have about 18,000 gold and that's after purchasing several fairly expensive bank and backpack space upgrades.

Speaking of bad complaints, some of the reviews out there really don't seem to have made any effort at all to ascertain how the game actually plays. For example, one reviewer complained that the quest markers make it feel "like WoW" and that he could explore "like he did in Skyrim". Never mind the quest markers in Skyrim, and Oblivion for that matter.. or that the game settings allow you to turn the quest markers off if you don't like them.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

some other little things, in no particular order:

They recently must have buffed the rate that Aspect runes (red) appear in the world. They used to be very rare, but in the last week all of a sudden I'm finding them just as often as green or blue.

I'm not a huge fan of the Fighter's Guild questline. It's not a bad questline in and of itself, but it seems like it should have been one for a temple faction or something like that, as do the Fighter's Guild abilities.

There is a very sudden change in leveling pace at level 7. To get from level 7 to 8 is much, much slower than the previous leveling, which is quite quick. It seems to stay slow (relative to the level you're at) till about level 15 or a little before. After that, the pace is slow, but steady and satisfying, at least up to the high 20s.

Skill lines also have an abrupt dropoff in acquiring new skills in them. I got the first 3 abilities in each line pretty quickly, the 4th seems to take much long, and 5th longer still.

Deconstructing items takes no skill points in crafting, raises crafting skill pretty rapidly, and yields items needed for improvement of existing items. Therefore, even if you don't craft it's a good idea to deconstruct to get the stuff you need to improve your gear.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."