Top-Ten reasons to be done with Skyrim. Also: Done with Skyrim! (Probably!)

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Comedy Wolf insists I present:

The Top Ten SignsI Have Been In Skyrim Too Long

10. I stop at an Inn to quaff some snacks and harass the locals, then emerge and sprint deep into the forest. Two miles later, I finally realize I'm not riding my horse, which is standing back by the Inn lazily cropping grass.
11. The only time I ever sleep, ever, is when I'm in town waiting for the shops to open.
12. I'm repeatedly hurling myself into a spike trap, while perpetually casting a healing spell, because I want "one more skill point, damn it!"
    
13. The beasties now are so tough that Comedy Wolf can only get in one or two good bites before I have to summon her again.
14. Yesterday, I sat down on a rock and ate a wheel of sliced goat cheese, five heads of cabbage, ten raw potatoes, and a four-pound venison chop, then washed it down with seventeen bottles of Nord Mead - to make room in my backpack for a shiny broadsword I just found.
15. I'm carrying around eight enchanted necklaces of "fortify two-handed", while I wait for all the shopkeepers in Skyrim to scrape more money together for bartering. I think at this point the delay must be because they need to mint more coins.
16. One day, I picked up a skull in a dungeon because I thought it would look cool on my kitchen table. Now I can no longer sit at my kitchen table.
    
17. I took an arrow in the face and didn't notice for two days.
    
18. The game has taken out a contract on me.
    

and finally:

1. I'm swinging a two-handed "legendary" demonic war-hammer that I forged myself, using ore I smelted myself, leather I tanned myself from a bear pelt, and a demon heart I carved from a demon I killed myself, then enchanted using my own tools so that it drains the souls of my enemies. It weighs over 30 pounds and I named it "Smooshinator".

Yes, I recently 'finished' Skyrim -- that is, I finally went through the main plotline.

In honor of the accomplishment (it only took me five years), I present the play-by-play of the last "regular" Skyrim session I played, just before running through the final quest. This is about three hours of gaming time, and a pretty good summary of a typical Skyrim session.

Thank you Bethesda, for all the fun!

• Helped a farmer harvest Nirnroot, a glowing plant that looks like celery and goes "eeerrrreeeerrrerrooorrr" as you approach it.
• Accidentally paid a highwayman 200 gold. Clicked the wrong option! Tried to chase him down and slaughter him but he ran too fast.
• Delivered some stolen items to my boss. Crafted a few more rings, to use up the gold and gems in my pack.
• Grabbed a horse. It wasn't thievery because I'd already paid for it months ago. Rode it out of town and ran into Daft Wooley, my other horse, grazing by the side of the road. So that's where I left him! Time to change mounts.
• Got a quest to repair a magical phial to save some sick guy's life.
• I wandered into Driftshade Refuge, an old fort set back from the coastline in the snowy hills. A bunch of mercenary types called the Silver Hand were hanging around in there, pursuing their charter: Drink lots of ale, and capture and kill werewolves.
• As I ran through the place kicking aside empty bottles and slaughtering everyone, I observed that they didn't just kill werewolves, they tortured them, on some painful looking old-school equipment that they apparently never washed.
  
• That made me glad I was killing everyone. You just can't beat that nice smug everyone-in-here-deserves-to-die feeling.
• Found yet another horse, grazing by the road. Damn, I bought a lot of horses.
• Visited my homestead and built some furniture, an animal pen, and a forge.
• Sold some crap in town.
• Got a quest to recover an heirloom sword from a bandit cave. I didn't think there were any minor quests left in this game!
• Stole some powdered mammoth horn from a giant.
• Built a stuffed goat and a mounted goat head for my trophy room.
• Stole an ornate drinking horn from a wealthy woman's house and then had a friendly chat with her when she walked in. Sucker!
• Killed a whole lot of thieves and leveled up my block ability.
• Recovered the old heirloom sword.
• Killed a spectral mud-crab as some kind of rite; I can't remember the details.
• Visited my other house and found my missing assistant Lydia wandering around outside. I thought she was dead!
• Surprised a guy in the midst of looting a murdered woman. He ran away.
• Got into a fight with a dragon. It landed directly behind my horse so I had to get off and fight it, or my horse would attack instead and get slaughtered. Lydia pulled out staffs of lightning and paralysis and accidentally fried one of the castle guards who was also shooting at the dragon, so the rest of the guards got into a fight with her and began firing at my horse while it was attacking the dragon. I beat the dragon to death with my hammer, and while its life energy was pouring into my body in a huge arc of light, I got on my horse and fled downhill away from the guards until Lydia killed the rest of them. Then I looted their bodies, parked my horse outside the castle, and went inside. Nobody seemed to care.
• Forced to choose sides in the civil war in order to advance the stuck plot, I chose the Empire side and made Saved Game number 589.
• Ran across the map to a dungeon and recovered a thorny crown. Ignored every other thing in the dungeon, as I was following my rule, "Don't pick up anything that isn't worth at least 100 times it's weight."
• Returned the heirloom sword to the dude in the pub.
• I pursued an insane bandit into the depths of a dungeon, attempting to reclaim a stolen sword. The bandit was being tormented by a ghost named The Pale Lady, and he knew that if he could just return the sword to her crypt, she would leave him alone.
  
• The bandit got within reaching distance of it, but spectral form of The Pale Lady materialized and struck him down. I dashed over, took the sword from his corpse, and slapped it onto the crypt. The Pale Lady screamed, and vanished.
• Out of curiosity, I picked up the sword again. The Pale Lady re-appeared in a burst of light and went "WooooOOOO!" I dropped the sword. The Pale Lady screamed, and vanished. Grab the sword: Presto, she was back. Clank! Poof. She was gone. Swipe. Bang! Clank. Scream! Poof. ... Wheeee! Eventually I stopped when Comedy Wolf bit my ankle.
• Looked around my old first home. It's basically a workshop littered with a fortune in gems and rare artifacts - worth more money than the exists in the entire outside world. At what point did this become an obsession? Or was it always an obsession?
• It would be cool to move these fancy weapons over to my other house and hang them on all the weapon racks there in the front hall... No wait, no it wouldn't. I've already decorated three houses. It's time to stop decorating.
• Collected a bounty for killing some miners.
• Killed a dragon that had previously roasted a wagon team. Checked out their burnt corpses with Comedy Wolf.
• Ambushed a few witches who were in the process of tearing out a guy's heart and replacing it with some kind of glowing flower.
• Jumped my horse off the "Bard's Leap" cliffs about 300 feet into the pool below. The horse survived it just fine.
• Blew up a bunch of witches in their cave.
• Smooshed a bunch of creepy blind elf-like creatures with my hammer in another cave.
• Rode to a nearby city and barged into the tavern.
• Agreed to deliver some ashes to some burial dude keeper across town. The keeper walked into the bar a minute later, and I handed the ashes over. He handed me some cash and asked me to fetch a journal he lost in a cave about fifty miles way. Typical Skyrim.
• Bought some property and built most of a house until I ran out of iron ingots. Damn; I was supposed to stop decorating! Okay, that was the last time, I swear.
• Went west and fetched the journal, by immolating a bunch of bears.
• Returned the journal and explored the shops. One guy is selling goat horns! Finally, some goat horns. Now I can make wall sconces for my house. And that's the last decorating I'll do, I swear. Really!
• Rode my horse up to the house and made some more furniture, then road north to the capital city and emptied every shop of gold by selling useless potions and jewelry.
• Rode north again to my other house and bought more wall sconces, then ordered my bard to play music and played tag with my adopted child, because hey, gotta use every feature at least once, right?
• Rode west, to my other other house, bought a few more things, dropped off the rest of my building supplies. Whoah hey wasn't I done with this? Stop already!
• Killed a giant and stole a book from him, for a random College of Mages quest.
• I killed a roadside thief who had no sense of judgement. Well, technically, I didn't do anything, and he killed himself. "Give me all your money!" he said. When I refused, Daft Wooley - who had been standing right behind him - reared up and whinnied. The bandit turned around and got a plate-sized hoof in his face. Then before I could draw my sword, my assistant shot him with lightning and his body flew off the hillside and landed in the swamp with a kind of reverse-sucking sound. I had to search for a while to loot the corpse.
• Climbed up to the town of Solitude and learned some speechcraft skills from the Bard's College.
• Forged a whole bunch more enchanted rings and armor, for the hell of it.
• Delivered the "Crown of Bone" to the captain of the city. He handed me an envelope and ordered me to deliver it across the country. Great, now I'm the postal service. Before I left I confronted him about declaring a truce with his enemy, so we can all deal with the dragons menacing the countryside, and he reluctantly agreed.
• Great! The main plot is finally unstuck.
• Emptied all the shops of gold! Just doing my duty.
• All right! Time to take on the last quest...

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hey!
I laughed way too hard at this (especially #3. WAUWxD), I'm an avid Skyrim player myself, but that's currently on hold because university. Speaking of the latter: I have a question regarding your online BEM test, namely; how are the test scores calculated? I wanna know because my group wants to know because we would reeeaaally like to use it for our research project.
Would you please email me? :) My email address is misserthana@gmail.com (ok, not really my "pro"-email, but it is my least personal so I'm okay with putting that somewhere on the web).

Thanks in advance!

PS: I've only started playing Skyrim last July, but it's good to know it's totally normal to get sidetracked all.the.time ;p