With the help of the Greybeards, I started gathering shouts all over Skyrim. Some were easily acquired from dragon lairs, while others were hidden deeper in various dungeons, caves and ruins. After a while, I started getting upgrades instead of new words, so I decided to ask the help of the almighty Google.

Skyirim - Throat of the World

Once more into the breach!

I quickly found a list of all the shouts and their locations, but I’ve also learned one other thing, which I should have known already. Four of the twenty shouts that exist in the game can only be learned throughout the main quest line. Now, I had learned twelve shouts in total by now, so I continued to learn the remaining four I still could. Once that was done, though, I had to tackle the main story on my second character. What follows is a list of all the shouts and their locations. I’ll put the words I learned and/or consider faster to get to in bold.

  • Animal Allegiance – Ancient’s Ascent, Angarvunde, Ysgramor’s Tomb
  • Aura Whisper – Northwind Summit, Valthume, Volunruud
  • Become Ethereal – Ironbind Barrow, Lost Valley Redoubt, Ustengrav
  • Call Dragon – taught during The Fallen
  • Call of Valor – taught during Dragonslayer
  • Clear Skies – taught during The Throat of the world
  • Disarm – Eldersblood Peak. Silverdrift Lair, Snow Veil Sanctum
  • Dismay – Dead Crone Rock, Lost Tongue Overlook, Shalidor’s Maze
  • Dragonrend – taught during Alduin’s Bane
  • Elemental Fury – Dragontooth Crater, Shriekwind Bastion, Statue to Meridia
  • Fire Breath – Dustman’s Cairn, Sunderstone Gorge, during The Throat of the World
  • Frost Breath – Bonestrewn Crest, Folgunthur, Skyborn Altar
  • Ice Form – Frostmere Crypt, Mount Anthor, Saarthal
  • Kyne’s Peace – Ragnvald, Rannveig’s Fast, Shroud Hearth Barrow
  • Marked for Death – Autumnwatch Tower, Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, Forsaken Cave
  • Slow Time – Hag’s End, Korvanjund, Labyrinthian
  • Storm Call – Forelhost, High Gate Ruins, Skuldafn Temple
  • Throw Voice – Shearpoint, all words together
  • Unrelenting Force – Bleak Falls Barrow, during The Way of the Voice, during Jurgen Windcaller
  • Whirlwind Sprint – Dead Men’s Respite, during The Way of the Voice, Volksygge

Additionally, it seems Dawnguard adds a few more shouts, so what follows is a list of those, in case it’s required for the future. Since I have yet to play the expansion, I can’t really say which ones are faster to get.

  • Drain Vitality – Dimhollow Crypt, Forgotten Vale, Arcwind Point
  • Soul Tear – taught by Durnehviir on each summon from Soul Cairn
  • Summon Durnehviir – learned after Beyond Death

Luckily, the main quest line is relatively short, and I was already familiar with it, so it wasn’t to hard to get through. During all this, I discovered a small detail I liked. You see, on my last character, a mage, I’ve dealt with the civil war before dealing with the dragons. On this run, the war was still on when I asked to trap a dragon in Whiterun, so the jarl demanded a peace treaty to be arranged until I resolve the dragon threat. I actually had to invite Ulric and Tulius to High Hrothgar and mediate the negotiations. I guess I’ll be discovering new things about Skyrim for a long time.

In any case, after a few more quests, I’ve learned the remaining four shouts and also reached level 54 along the way, meaning I got the final two achievements. Or so I thought…

Skyrim - Steam Achievement List

FML…

Apparently, in a recent update, they decided to add the Dawnguard achievements to Steam, meaning I will not see 100% next to Skyrim for a while longer. Since I won’t be getting Dawnguard any time soon, it might be quite a while indeed. However, I’ve finished the base game and cleared all of its achievements, so I’m considering this one 100% complete from now on.

With Oblivion Walker out of the way, it was time to tackle the final few achievements. Since Steam handles achievements separately from regular save games, I decided to take the easy way out with the Wanted and Master Criminal achievements. I saved my game to a separate slot and punched a guard. I was thrown in jail, and easily picked the lock, since my character is a rogue with well trained lockpicking.

I reloaded my game and started tackling the master criminal achievements. The problem was, I was so stealthy I had to actively make sure to be seen when killing someone in each of the holds. In case you aren’t sure, I give you the list of holds and their capitals. Don’t forget, if you kill the witnesses, your bounty is gone, so you need to kill a guard or civilian and then run away.

Skyrim Master Criminal Achievement – List of Regions

  • Eastmarch with the capital in Windhelm
  • Falkreath with the capital of the same name
  • Haafingar with the capital in Solitude
  • Hjaalmarch with the capital in Morthal
  • The Pale with the capital in Dawnstar
  • The Reach with the capital in Markath
  • The Rift with the capital in Riften
  • Whiterun with the capital of the same name
  • Winterhold with the capital of the same name

As I said, all that’s needed is to kill one person there and then run away. This is what I did, though I was interrupted by a dragon attack at one point, because I foolishly decided to go start the dragon “invasion” earlier. It took me a short while, and the achievement was mine. When it popped up, I reloaded my game from the earlier slot. It was simpler than going to each hold and pay the fines.

With both of these gone now, the two achievements left were Master and Thu’um Master. As I said before, I expected to achieve Master automatically, and this was getting closer, what with being 49 and close to 50 already. Thu’um Master, on the other hand, is going to take some time.

I was very much wrong about how Oblivion Walker works. There’s a total of 15 daedric quests, which all reward daedric artefacts for completion. However, a few of those give alternative ways of completion, which grant something else instead. This actually means the achievement is missable on a character basis. If you mess up on one character, the only thing left to do is to restart with a different character and try there. Technically, there is a way to exploit a bug in one of the quests, so you can make up for just one artefact, but other than that, you need to be very careful if you want to get this achievement.

Luckily, I didn’t get a chance to mess up yet and I did my research before continuing from last time, so I was ready. I have to say, I don’t like very much how this is working, though, because most of the quests involve you doing some very, very evil things in order to get the rewards. What’s worse, no one actually reacts to you doing any of it, and the game just moves on as usual. I would’ve preferred this to be handled differently, but I had to work with what I had.

In the end, I got all 15 artefacts and didn’t have to exploit the quest bug with Hircine’s quest to get both the Savior’s Hide and the Ring of Hircine. However, although I got all of them, I did not get the achievement. For a short time, I was afraid I wasted all this time for absolutely nothing, but luckily, I’ve found a steam thread which helped me get past the issue by using the console.

Skyrim - All of the Daedric Artifacts

I have them all!

Skyrim – How to Fix Hircine’s Quest

It seems Hircine’s quest has a tendency to not complete properly, so a console command was needed to advance it up to a certain point. I had no issues with using it, since I had the artefact in question, so I did, and the achievement was mine.In case anyone else encounters this problem, the command to advance Hircine to the right position is.

  • setstage DA05 100 if you got Savior’s Hide
  • setstage DA05 105 if you got Ring of Hircine

If you have an issue with another quest, you can use sqs to check what stage your quest is on, and then setstage to set it to the correct stage. What follows is a list of all the daedric quest ids as well as the stages they need to be on along with you owning all the artefacts, in order to get the achievement.

  • DA01 100 (For Azura’s Star) 110 (for Black Star)
  • DA02 50 (also maybe 100)
  • DA03 200
  • DA04 100
  • DA05 100 (for Savior’s Hide) 105 (for Ring of Hircine)
  • DA06 200
  • DA07 100
  • DA08 60 (also maybe 80)
  • DA09 500
  • DA10 200
  • DA11 100
  • there is no DA12, TQ09 is Nocturne and doesn’t count with the skeleton key
  • DA13 100
  • DA14 200
  • DA15 200
  • DA16 200

Link

I’ve completed Skyrim ages ago, but I still had incomplete achievements, so I return to the game every now and then to try and complete a few. For this purpose, I even started a new character, this time a rogue. I decided not to start the first dragon encounter until it’s absolutely necessary, which means I won’t be bothered by dragon attacks until I get to the Thu’um Master achievement.

Skyrim - Azura's Shrine

Azura’s Shrine

As of right now, I’m only missing 5 in total:

  • Wanted: I need to escape from jail. Easy, but I’m saving it for later.
  • Master Criminal: A bounty of 1000 gold in all the holds. Not too hard, though might take long. I’ll do this one last, probably.
  • Oblivion Walker: I need to collect 15 daedric artefacts. Since there are 15 shrines in total, this pretty much means I need to get each one. I already got the Dawnbreaker and I got Azura’s Star tonight. I’ll be focusing on this achievement, for the most part.I also have the mace of Molag Bal, but that one wasn’t shrine related, so I’m not sure if it counts.
  • Thu’um Master: Learn 20 shouts. This one, I’ll do among the last, since I just don’t want to be bothered by dragon attacks.
  • Master: Reach level 50. I’m 43 now, closing in on 44. I’m hoping I’ll get this one while I’m dealing with all the other achievements.

In any case, Oblivion Walker is my focus right now. I’m not sure which shrine I’ll do next. It will probably be whatever shrine I know the location of.

My gaming experience over the last couple of months has been mostly limited to the PC. And why shouldn’t it. I know a lot of people love to scream how the PC is dead for gaming, how all we get are crappy ports and how piracy is killing the platform, but honestly, I cannot disagree more.

The complainers are making one common mistake – they are looking in the wrong direction. Sure, a lot of the big dinosaur publishers and developers seem to be having a hard time. That’s because they are short sighted and narrow-minded. On the other hand, If you look at the indie scene, it was never this big. We get small and innovative games, we get big quality games, we get a return to the old, forgotten genres as well as the creation of completely new genres. There is literally something for most people.

This should in no way be a surprise. It’s just how the market works. If it looks like things are bad, it’s only a matter of time before a revolution happens. If people want a product, there will eventually come someone who can supply that product. So, don’t worry about the future of gaming on PC or on any platform. People love games and they will get them, the good ones as well as the bad ones.

And now for some concrete info…

Skyrim

Thanks to an extremely generous person on /r/favors, I got a brand new copy of Skyrim. Bethesda did not disappoint with this game. Sure, it’s a bit simplified compared to Oblivion, but so was Oblivion compared to some of the elements in Morrowind. There are other areas, however, where the games have greatly improved over their predecessors. The graphics shouldn’t even be mentioned. The Elder Scrolls series was always at the peak when it comes to that. The music, oh the music… Nothing needs to be said about that. Again, we have an upgrade of the traditional Morrowind theme. I never thought they could make it better than Oblivion, but they sure did. The Norse theme really adds to it, in the same way it adds to the story. Norse culture always intrigued me and while this is in no way the real thing, the elements it shares with it are more than enough to keep me hooked.

Of course, the gameplay is the critical part and no amount of atmosphere can make up for that. Luckily, this, also, is an improvement over Oblivion. The controls are just as good, maybe slightly better, the combat is the same style, but slightly more complex, the magic is greatly improved and the stealth element actually added some nice moves like proper backstab attacks, rolls, etc. As for the story, it’s classic, but it fits nicely and takes from the lore of Elder Scrolls enough to be interesting. SIDENOTE: If you’re not familiar with the Elder Scrolls lore, but love to read about a fantasy universe, go read up on it now – it’s one of the best and most complex I know of.

Two More Games

One of the games I should also mention is Sonic Generations. It’s been a long time since I played a platformer as awesome as this, so I won’t write much about it here. It, like Skyrim, definitely deserves more than a few paragraphs. This one, I also still actively play, or I would, if my gamepad wasn’t acting up. As for the PSP, It wasn’t used a lot, but I did play some Final Fantasy VII on it, simply for the sake of nostalgia. In short, the game is still as good as it ever was.

In any case, there will be more to follow on all of this. For now, you got a short recap.