Carry Weight Survival Mode

[DISCOCYCHO]

I'm new and going in blind in Skyrim, Expert difficulty and survival mode. Level 17 right now

It's cool you know? sometimes I get annoyed a little especially when dawnguard just makes me go to the opposite right of the map then the next dawnguard quest is literally at the far opposite left of the map. Really? Why?

Anyway, I'm more annoyed at the carry weight. With the survival mode it reduces ur carry weight by 150, OK that's fine, I found out about backpacks. But here's the big problem; I recently got vampire royal set and it looks quite dapperly-scrumptious. But the leather stupid adventurous-look of the backpack RUINS the look, and I no longer look good. I can remove the backpack, but then I'm going with like 170 carry weight? That's not even enough for my base necessities. So what do I do to solve this carry weight problem? I can't rely on Serana or Lydia, they both SUCK. They can't carry more than 4 dragon scales/bones which I was planning on saving later because it's probably gonna be a cool important item upgrade but NO I just sold them.

ALSO I initially thought of going Greatsword build like all of the games tht allows me to, but I thought of making a 1h sword + spells build, it sounds great! experience both worlds, YEAH! but it SUCKS poogly-doo! it's so underwhelming, and I have a massive health problem I can't take on against mini-bosses on my own, so I LITERALLY rely on Serana/Lydia and my necromancer spells to take all of the hits and when Serana taps out or my necromancer spells dies out, I'm left on my own and I just either DIE in 1-4 hits or I'm near-death and have to either spam hp pots or wagooly restoration spell which is really awkward. WHY is it so underwhelming? I can't go against Frost Trolls,Giants,Dragons,That Vampire on Dinner Invitation Quest,And multiple fodders (more than 6+), etc.

WHY is my build so underwhelming? I regret it, I should've gone greatsword. Atleast I would feel badass there, I thought spellsword would be badass but NOPE it's awkward restoration spell or spam hp pots or die in one hit. Is it because I'm underlevelled? or am I underestimating the Expert diff? or am I just wishing too much early-on? Honestly having thoughts on deleting my first run of 18 hours of playtime just to go Greatsword.

Hey are you here looking for a TL;DR? : P

[Wushiba]

Originally posted by cycy?:

sometimes I get annoyed a little especially when dawnguard just makes me go to the opposite right of the map then the next dawnguard quest is literally at the far opposite left of the map. Really? Why?

It's so you have a bigger chance encountering with the new world encounters that they added with the DLC. Also to extend the playtime, probably.

[MechBFP]

Originally posted by Wushiba X .. X:

Originally posted by cycy?:

sometimes I get annoyed a little especially when dawnguard just makes me go to the opposite right of the map then the next dawnguard quest is literally at the far opposite left of the map. Really? Why?

It's so you have a bigger chance encountering with the new world encounters that they added with the DLC. Also to extend the playtime, probably.

That chance is zero when you use fast travel, or ingame fast travel.

[Halliwax]

For carry weight you count enchant some fortify carry weight gear, if you level your alchemy and enchanting high enough. Or you could just grind level and pick stamina to boost your base carry weight. There's also the Extra Pockets perk in the Pickpocket skill tree, or the Steed Stone (both are nerfed a bit by Survival Mode).

Then there are tricks to getting your companions to carry more. Followers can be told to loot containers and this will bypass their weight check, so you could load up a container and have them carry it out rather than trading directly. Sometimes this has a side effect of making your items marked as stolen though. If you have the Dead Thrall spell, you can put items on a body and then revive it to be your pack mule. If you have Anniversary Edition (AE), you can get Dead Thrall very easily through the Staff of Worms in Gallows Hall. Also in AE, you can get some pets to carry things for you. Hilda in Rorikstead and Skritch in the Ratway have the most capacity.

As for your build, mixing sword and spells can be a problem for two reasons. First, destruction magic is just underpowered in Skyrim. The only thing that boosts its damage is fortify destruction potions, and only for 30 seconds. Everything else just goes toward mana costs. Second, you're splitting between two damage dealing skill trees. You'd be better off focusing your perks, enchantments, and potions all in one. At higher levels you can afford to diversify your skills, but early on you kind of need to pick a strategy and stick to it.

[DISCOCYCHO]

Originally posted by Halliwax:

For carry weight you count enchant some fortify carry weight gear, if you level your alchemy and enchanting high enough. Or you could just grind level and pick stamina to boost your base carry weight. There's also the Extra Pockets perk in the Pickpocket skill tree, or the Steed Stone (both are nerfed a bit by Survival Mode).

Then there are tricks to getting your companions to carry more. Followers can be told to loot containers and this will bypass their weight check, so you could load up a container and have them carry it out rather than trading directly. Sometimes this has a side effect of making your items marked as stolen though. If you have the Dead Thrall spell, you can put items on a body and then revive it to be your pack mule. If you have Anniversary Edition (AE), you can get Dead Thrall very easily through the Staff of Worms in Gallows Hall. Also in AE, you can get some pets to carry things for you. Hilda in Rorikstead and Skritch in the Ratway have the most capacity.

As for your build, mixing sword and spells can be a problem for two reasons. First, destruction magic is just underpowered in Skyrim. The only thing that boosts its damage is fortify destruction potions, and only for 30 seconds. Everything else just goes toward mana costs. Second, you're splitting between two damage dealing skill trees. You'd be better off focusing your perks, enchantments, and potions all in one. At higher levels you can afford to diversify your skills, but early on you kind of need to pick a strategy and stick to it.

I did google that you can get pets and for some reason they can carry your stuff aswell. Do the dawnguard pets work? I'm halfway into finishing it.

For the build, I'm not using destruction spells. I'm using Necromancy spells. See the thing is I was thinking to do that but with confrontation against minibosses or so I just fold and die. So I just switched to Necromancy with the idea to summon things to be the bait and take all of the hits. There comes the problem; I initially thought of this spellsword build to be badass and cool but for me not being able to be confrontial/to not be able to live on my own without my necromancy/followers is what bothers me. It's not cool, and it's not badass. Any other tips to mitigate my health/squishy problem?

[Rainbow Dash]

survival mode is trash. i turned it off on a XX hours save i had it on the last time i played. it's poorly balanced, the all the bonus suck and fade out before they could be useful anyway, and clearly don't make up for the huge negatives. the way it is doesn't integrate well with the scale and overall mechanics of the game

you have to eat all the time and spend even more buying food and resources from vendors to craft some more yourself. you'll travel for 30 seconds and go from well fed to hungry and from warm to freezing (and i tried it with a heavy fighter with high warm value armors)

i had to craft and enchant with +carry weight several gear pieces to make up for the loss. it gives some utility to it, but at the same time it's too much hassle to manage (even with skyUI and keybinds to swap sets of gear)

the backpack is a paid mod included in the anniversary edition. it looks dumb and unfitting with the game, especially many armors. a simple solution for not using it since you do it because you need it is to not need it and disable survival mode

i'm not sure how you have an hard time in expert mode. legendary is dumb but doable and i played vanilla legendary on that save with survival on with a sort of paladin with melee+shield and some restoration. expert would have been very easy in comparison. you have to get a good armor and weapons and, if you can, improve them as a blacksmith

as for combat itself it's very useful to trick the mobs and take advantage of terrain. don't expose yourself too much, especially in front of several enemies if they are ranged, and instead force them to follow you around safe corners, doors, anywhere where you can take them 1 on 1, run and jump around heights (they usually won't be able to jump around so they would take a lot of time to turn around to reach you, so you can kite them infinitely). use block and block+strike to bump them and cancel their attacks and/or stun them and create an opening for a strike they won't be able to block. basically you'll want to dodge attacks as much as possible and find ways to time the fights and find and use advantage points

it should become better as you gain better gear and perks. if you really can't bear it you can lower the difficulty and increase it later

[Wushiba]

Originally posted by MechBFP:

Originally posted by Wushiba X .. X:

It's so you have a bigger chance encountering with the new world encounters that they added with the DLC. Also to extend the playtime, probably.

That chance is zero when you use fast travel, or ingame fast travel.

You can't fast travel to unexplored locations though. At first most dlc locations should be undiscovered. Also, I thought fast travel and ingame fast travel are the same things? Is there an out of game fast travel too which I didn't know about?

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by cycy?:

I'm new and going in blind in Skyrim, Expert difficulty and survival mode. Level 17 right now :demoticon:

It's cool you know? sometimes I get annoyed a little especially when dawnguard just makes me go to the opposite right of the map then the next dawnguard quest is literally at the far opposite left of the map. Really? Why?

Because Dawnguard was created long before they even thought of Survival Mode, and for some reason they thought that random locations for some quests would make it less repititive.

[XanE]

Get a horse, use the roads, ignore every unmarked location you come across and gallop away from encounters, you can traverse the map in a couple of game hours.

Don't carry everything, use the storage sites to stock up stuff, especially potions and uber-arrows, you don't need 90 lockpicks on you, pick food that is low weight and high nourishment (rabbit, salmon, pheasant).

One shot kills are annoying but that's par for the course on your difficulty.

[DISCOCYCHO]

Originally posted by XanE:

Get a horse, use the roads, ignore every unmarked location you come across and gallop away from encounters, you can traverse the map in a couple of game hours.

Don't carry everything, use the storage sites to stock up stuff, especially potions and uber-arrows, you don't need 90 lockpicks on you, pick food that is low weight and high nourishment (rabbit, salmon, pheasant).

One shot kills are annoying but that's par for the course on your difficulty.

I mean, my main purpose as to why I went Survival Mode is for me to never skip encounters/unmarked locations. Also, I do use horses but I always lose them LOL and I also get annoyed due to the fact that my companions are like 5 miles away from me when I use a horse so when I get into a fight they are not there.

I suppose I could use the Steed Stone so that I don't have to use the backpack so my fit looks good, are death hounds able to carry items? or is it only the dawnguard huskies?

[Ace]

Nether's follower framework (mod) for managing followers. Use one of them to carry stuff in their "extra follower storage." You can also add horses to companions with it so they ride with you. Companions will also teleport to you if they get to far behind after so much time. Serana follows me around and usually have to unload 1000 in weight or more every time I head back to the Legacy of the Dragonborn (LOTD) museum. Also LOTD has a 200 carry weight backpack that you can hide with a LOTD official patch. Might be a mod for other creation club (cc) backpacks out there to hide.

If you are going to play with magic best to go to winterhold and join the college. If you have the coin you can always level up one of the skills 5 pts each level from one of the trainers located at the college. Great way to level up magic or any skill you don't use a lot. If your dying a lot try focusing on restoration and healing your companions (healing hands should be the low level spell, undead healing version - i.e. Serana - should be picked up where you got her).

Melee combat is designed around heavy armor users, stealth for light armor, and cloth for magic users. The trolls auto regenerate health so use fire. Giants will flat out kill you if you don't dodge at most levels. Dragons are suppose to be the most difficult random encounter you can face. Don't forget you can block with weapon/shield or get out of the way. You also have shouts or other skills you can use with "z" assuming you are using the keyboard.

If your not playing with mods its good to know that many creatures and people have specific levels and may just out level you early in the game.

[steventirey]

Originally posted by Wushiba X .. X:

Originally posted by MechBFP:

That chance is zero when you use fast travel, or ingame fast travel.

You can't fast travel to unexplored locations though. At first most dlc locations should be undiscovered. Also, I thought fast travel and ingame fast travel are the same things? Is there an out of game fast travel too which I didn't know about?

I believe he means fast travel using the map, and fast travel using carriages (ingame fast travel). Carriages cost money and have limited places they can go, but can take you someplace you have never been before. (The Hearthfire carriages have more locations they can take you, and are free. Required building a house and hiring a steward, however. And there are only 3 of them,)

And fast travel won't cut out all the random encounters. Just most of them, as you still have to walk to your actual destination.

[DISCOCYCHO]

Originally posted by Ace:

Nether's follower framework (mod) for managing followers. Use one of them to carry stuff in their "extra follower storage." You can also add horses to companions with it so they ride with you. Companions will also teleport to you if they get to far behind after so much time. Serana follows me around and usually have to unload 1000 in weight or more every time I head back to the Legacy of the Dragonborn (LOTD) museum. Also LOTD has a 200 carry weight backpack that you can hide with a LOTD official patch. Might be a mod for other creation club (cc) backpacks out there to hide.

If you are going to play with magic best to go to winterhold and join the college. If you have the coin you can always level up one of the skills 5 pts each level from one of the trainers located at the college. Great way to level up magic or any skill you don't use a lot. If your dying a lot try focusing on restoration and healing your companions (healing hands should be the low level spell, undead healing version - i.e. Serana - should be picked up where you got her).

Melee combat is designed around heavy armor users, stealth for light armor, and cloth for magic users. The trolls auto regenerate health so use fire. Giants will flat out kill you if you don't dodge at most levels. Dragons are suppose to be the most difficult random encounter you can face. Don't forget you can block with weapon/shield or get out of the way. You also have shouts or other skills you can use with "z" assuming you are using the keyboard.

If your not playing with mods its good to know that many creatures and people have specific levels and may just out level you early in the game.

LOL are u serious? I use light armor so no wonder I'm so squishy. Is there a way to switch points ingame? cause I have 50 light armor and 28 heavy armor so it would be very bad to switch now.

[smr1957]

You cannot switch points from one skill tree to another - so you cannot exchange light armor points for heavy armor points or vice versa. And the same applies to any other skills. The points you have are only for the skill tree you earn them in and cannot be exchanged.

[steventirey]

For pets carrying things, I believe most people would be talking about the Creation Club item. It adds several pets, each with a special ability. The goat being the one with the most carrying capacity. They all also have a 0-cost summoning spell, so you can leave them at home and only summon them when needed. (Leaving them at home is best, as they tend to block passages. Good at keeping the enemy away from you, but also blocking you in. And unlike with NPCs, you can't push them out of the way.)

For skill transference, there are methods of getting perk points back. If your skill level is 100, making it Legendary resets the skill to 15, and refunds all the perk points. There is also a point in the Dragonborn DLC where you can spend a dragonsoul and refund all the perks in a given skill. regardless of skill level. Skill experience, however, can't be transferred.

[Ace]

A low level trainer for heavy armor is at the companions house in Whterun, that'll get you 5 pts per level. Smithing will also increase armor assuming you have the associated perk unlocked and is fairly easy to level. Alchemy/enchanting/blacksmith make an overpower build pretty silly due synergy, though not recommend. Skill for heavy/light will increase as long as you have one piece equipped so fairly easy to level. Could always just go get beat up by a mudgrab and heal yourself with resto too to boost armor.