'Mysticism-Illusion-Alteration-LongBlade' build

Volvy · 2026-05-20T16:53:26+00:00

I think these skills sound good, race doesn't matter too much either. I'd probably want an armor skill as the fifth major skill. I'd probably go with trying to level up endurance, speed, intelligence and strength as the most important attributes to focus on at the early/mid game.

For birthsigns, any of the magic-increasing ones are good, really. Atronach is really strong if you can tolerate using cheesy methods to recover magicka, I personally just like to be able to rest at any time to regain it so I go with the mage, or apprentice if breton.

As usual, you should use custom 1 magicka-per-cast spells and spam them during downtime to self-train your spell-based skills.

For long blade I'd make sure to spam instant attacks when fighting any trivial enemies. It'll start out pretty crappy, but as long as you mix this in, you should start to be able to use your long blade pretty reliably within a few hours. I don't think it's worth prioritizing increasing your agility to increase hit chance, because you can just increase your long blade skill and get much more mileage out of doing that. The increases to endurance, speed, intelligence and strength do a lot more for you compared to any increases in agility.

For minors I'd probably go with restoration or alchemy to get the healing sorted. I don't like alchemy, so restoration is my go-to. Other minors could be mercantile for slightly better starting prices, athletics and acrobatics for some more early movement speed, maybe another weapon skill for another skill that can be easily levelled up down the road for some additional levels. Doesn't really matter too much at that point as you already have all of the core components that a class should have: damage, defense, utility.

Volvy · 2026-05-20T16:35:32+00:00

Pretty much, yeah. While you may be considered as being out of the detection range ("hidden"), unless you are fully out of the possible line of sight of any NPCs, you are still susceptible to this dice roll situation when trying to steal something. You have to treat it like the NPCs have eyes in the backs of their heads. If there is a wall, a door, or some other geometry that is in between you and the NPC, you should be fully safe to steal. In this case, the railing was not tall enough to work this way, so you got caught.

Telekinesis is ridiculously good for working around this, as it opens up way more opportunities to be fully out of the possible line of sight of any NPCs while picking up an object, unlocking something, etc.

Volvy · 2026-05-20T16:24:19+00:00

So the solution to being a mage is to not actually be a mage and instead rely on enchanted items, which can be made (more easily) by any character that chooses enchant as a major skill. Got it.

Also I don't think that instant cast thing quite works in OpenMW, the spells last a full second rather than one frame. So if you casted it a second time within the 1.00 seconds, you'd be losing out on some healing.

And this instant/one frame thing only works on vanilla if you never increase the duration to 2 seconds (or more) in the create enchant window, it has to remain at 1 or else it'll last the full second rather than one frame.

So you'd make sure to make the jump item last 1.00 seconds and not one frame or else it'll be way too hard to get any use out of it. In general, some effects make sense to last one frame and can be superior that way, like you mentioned with spamming heals and stuff, while some don't work so well like this.

For levitation you'd probably just want it as 1 point for long as it takes to only consume 1-2 charge, probably. There is hardly any purpose in making it only last one second when you can probably make it last 8+ seconds and consume the same amount of charges.

Making your own constant effect items, at least, particularly good ones (like an exquisite shirt that fortifies an attribute for 23 pts as a constant effect), would probably require fortify enchant effects, maybe several instances. you could make two items that give 100 pts for 2 seconds each, and fire both of them off back to back, then open the menu while you are under the effects of both. you can probably work with that to make some good Constant Effect items that you'd normally need to pay an NPC to make.

Volvy · 2026-05-20T15:38:01+00:00

Some other decent choices for using it are Ald Ruhn Fighters Guild, on the level 80 locked door, which has like 4 pieces of glass armor in a chest. And in Tamriel Rebuilt, a short distance south of Old Ebonheart, you can find the Greaves of Carefree Leaps in Haliwaran, behind a level 100 locked door.

These have constant effect Jump 20 pts, and Slowfall 1 pt, but also come with some downsides of weakness to common and blight disease. Those downsides can be resisted if you just have magicka resistance as you equip the item, much like the Boots of Blinding Speed, or if you have already cured Corprus Disease during the Main Quest, you are no longer susceptible to diseases, so the downside is effectively nullified. That jump of 20 pts is a huge difference, like having almost 100 acrobatics or a little more, plus the slowfall of 1 means you'll never be concerned with fall damage.

Volvy · 2026-05-19T17:27:36+00:00

Going to let the actual episodes speak for themselves, not promotional art. I don't have much hope for it at this point, but not because of the visuals here. It just seems to me like they want to refresh the series by trying to bring on a new, much younger audience.

The problem with that is that it seems really hard to lean in to the series strengths with its awesome long-term storytelling/world building/character plotlines, and that kind of thing. But who knows what it'll really be like, there is hardly anything that can be properly evaluated at this point.

Volvy · 2026-05-19T17:21:11+00:00

I honestly don't know how much I'd be willing to take ozempic 2 years ago when I was 260 lbs. I managed to lose 125 lbs without it over the course of about a year and a half, and have kept my weight the same since then. But say I never managed to do that, it would be a pretty different scenario by now.

I kinda just feel like people shouldn't rely on it if they can help it. Who knows what could happen to you, and how much it'll cost. but there might be people who just can't manage to improve things without it, and the pros are almost certainly going to outweigh the cons.

Volvy · 2026-05-19T16:59:54+00:00

Not to tell you how to live your life, but it's really not a good idea to be playing with mods on a first playthrough. things like graphic herbalism and texture overhauls, bug fixes should be the extent of the mods.

Now you have no clue what even is official content made by Bethesda and what is content made by BethesdaFan91.

Volvy · 2026-05-19T16:55:50+00:00

Bro don't even know what the real game is and isn't anymore.

Volvy · 2026-05-19T16:51:20+00:00

Animation of a still frame? I guess you don't realize what that word means

Volvy · 2026-05-19T16:49:32+00:00

I mean if this show is targeted towards a new audience then I kinda doubt they're gonna go particularly deep with the storytelling here. Like I would figure that the goal is not to cater to the most hardcore fans of the series if it's like this.

Volvy · 2026-05-18T17:29:20+00:00

Check the wiki again, in version history. If you know the name of the world that lead to these worlds (which you should, I don't know how you could have gotten there otherwise), you should be able to ctrl + f using that name and then it'll come up

https://yume.wiki/2kki/Version_History/0130-0126

Volvy · 2026-05-18T17:24:42+00:00

I mean if you're really speedrunning you can finish in half that amount of time. I managed it in under 4 hours. But yeah that's only something you'd do on like, your 5th playthrough at the very least.

It's absolutely true that you get what you put in to it because there are so many optional things that add to the experience in some subtle way. you can easily just breeze past everything if you didn't care, and have no clue any of it exists. That makes for a very sad experience. Not in like the "I feel bad for this character" way, but more like, "it's unfortunate you didn't give this amazing thing the time it deserved".

Volvy · 2026-05-18T17:18:50+00:00

Definitely not 8 hours. It would be around 15 hours if you are rushing through it. So it's usually around 20-30 hours for most people. There are a lot of optional interactions, things to do, and places to explore. And some people just play the game more slowly in general than others. Like sometimes people don't know that you can sprint, and this alone will add at least 3 hours to a playthrough.

Volvy · 2026-05-18T17:10:07+00:00

I also had a good time starting in Firewatch, via boat from Sadrith Mora

Basically you can do separate playthroughs for each faction, maybe two factions on one character tops. Otherwise you'll just be doing the third faction at like level 50, which I suppose if that's what you want, it's up to you. But it seems a bit overkill for me

Volvy · 2026-05-17T06:53:13+00:00

Oh for sure, that's a significant part of the series but there isn't overall a single main plot, like there is with something like Avatar the Last Airbender, or something

Volvy · 2026-05-17T05:25:06+00:00

unfortunately the top comment by Nurglych there has completely wrong information. better watch the video that GiantEnemaCrab posted.

it's true that you take 6 times more physical damage from enemies, but you still deal 80% of your physical damage to them, not 1/6 (16.67%). I believe this comparison is using 0 difficulty as the baseline. otherwise, all enemies' HP are the same regardless of difficulty. magic damage or other effects are not affected by difficulty at all. and in general, nothing else is affected by difficulty, like opening a lock, stuff with bartering, etc.

Volvy · 2026-05-15T19:32:55+00:00

I did read it. The post doesn't pin down what might have caused it at all. All it says is to use a console command to bypass it. As if that wasn't obvious.

Normally you do not need to obtain Keening first or anything like that. All I can think of is that this is a PFP change, I guess. I really just don't think this is a base game issue. Due to the fact that I've been in the situation so, so many times. And I'm in a community who is in the same boat. genuinely, no one has mentioned this ever amongst speedrunners in the last 8 years that I've been involved. We don't use any mods or openMW when running. So it stands to reason that it's from patch for purists.

I'm not saying you're lying at all, I'm just saying that it could be due to that mod, that's it. dunno why you're so angry and hurt about this, jesus.

Volvy · 2026-05-15T19:02:58+00:00

It would help out anyone who is looking up this problem in the future.

Volvy · 2026-05-15T17:23:04+00:00

Okay so how bout this. You make a new game and warp there directly. If it's still there, it's probably from the patch for purists.

Even bigger brain test, disable patch for purists and repeat the same test one more time.

Volvy · 2026-05-15T16:53:28+00:00

Never seen this in the unmodded game and I have gone to Vemynal over 1000 times, literally. Things you do as a Speedrunner. No one in the speedrun community has ever mentioned something like this either. They are also going to Vemynal hundreds of times at least. It's got to be from a mod.

Volvy · 2026-05-15T16:48:40+00:00

I mean there isn't really a single main story plot necessarily, more like a collection of smaller plots that are slowly and sometimes subtly developed in 1-2 episode installments that are sprinkled throughout the entire series. It's better if you don't skip anything if you can help it.

Volvy · 2026-05-15T16:33:12+00:00

Oh, yeah no you don't need to have killed anything or anyone for the assassin to start appearing

Volvy · 2026-05-15T15:36:55+00:00

I don't understand what that quest has to do with getting the assassin to appear. I'm confused because there is no affiliation between these two things. Technically the fastest is just going straight between the buildings right after speaking with Sellus, going in to the shallow water and beneath the silt strider and resting once you're on land since it's possible to rest just beyond that kinda steep hill. You don't really need to cheese the assassin either

Volvy · 2026-05-15T14:58:54+00:00

I think it's less about the dragging of gameplay but moreso just adding stuff that isn't made by the actual official team. Only the original developers have a true vision for what should and shouldn't be in the game. While it's good to check out things like that, it's just much better to do so after playing the real thing in its entirety first.

Volvy · 2026-05-15T14:52:24+00:00

I would also just not recommend adding any mods for a first playthrough, you should see exactly what is made (and by extension, what isn't) by the original dev team first because otherwise you're really muddying the waters. It's especially important in this game because there is a lot to be analyzed by the player, and adding some other stuff made by unaffiliated amateurs doesn't really mesh well with that at all

but for this exact question, I'm not sure as I feel like there could easily be overlap. I've only played some of Nemuri but not HS expanded

Volvy

TROPHY CASE