(I imagine the short answer for many is “extensive mods,” but I’m on PS4 so my choices in that area are a bit limited.)
I got really into Skyrim when I was unemployed during the summer of 2020. I’ve probably put in close to 1,000 hours to date. I still love the game, but unfortunately I’m now so familiar with the questlines, enemies, dungeons, and dialogue that it’s hard for me to continue enjoying it. Even if I put it down for 4-5 months, I still find myself a little burned out because I know it too well by this point.
Some might ask, “Why try to keep playing, then?” and it’s a fair question. Basically, I still like the mechanics of the game. I still enjoy a good dungeon crawl. Archery is an incredibly satisfying combat skill and I haven’t been able to find another game that’s quite as fun for archery. And tbh, Skyrim has become a comfort game for me when I need an alternate world to slip into for a few hours. I want to keep enjoying it. I’m just not sure how anymore.
For other players who’ve logged a lot of hours, I’m curious to know: How do you keep the experience fresh and interesting for yourself? Are there different RP strategies that you take? Do you mod the hell out of your game? Do you just embrace and enjoy the familiarity?
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Mods. I know that’s not really helpful, but it really is how many of us continue to enjoy it. That said, there are still things you can do to spice up your gameplay on vanilla. The biggest one is this- try a different playstyle. Archery is incredibly effective, so try making a character who absolutely refuses to use one because his whole family was slaughtered by a rogue sentient bow that laughed at him while it did it. Recruit different companions and try to keep them alive in different situations. Be an absolutely evil sonofabitch and kill everyone the game allows you to. Try Oblivion, for a similar, but distinctly different (and in my opinion, slightly superior, despite Skyrim’s many advantages) experience. Or, most simply, stop trying to get blood from a stone, and put the game down until the itch actually returns, not until you feel like it should’ve. Best of luck to you.
Wonderful ideas! I’ll try some of them out. And I do have Oblivion but had forgotten about it — I’m glad for the reminder.
I don’t, I play other games instead.
Fair! I’ve been playing a variety of other games in various genres as well and enjoying them too. :) Sometimes I still get the Skyrim itch though.
Have you tried limiting yourself to specific mechanics or set arbitrary stipulations for a specific playthrough? Like a no HP increases play through or a right-hand only run stuff like that?
I start off that way sometimes, but I’m usually not disciplined enough to stick through it. I think next time I do pick up the game, I’ll challenge myself to develop a character sheet and actually follow through.
try a randomizer mod! or like, play morrowind
…Or Oblivion. Or Daggerfall. Probably not Battlespire or Redguard though, and I don’t know if you could get Arena to run on a modern computer. Daggerfall was a bit tricky; I think it bugged out for me before I got out of the first dungeon.
if you haven’t checked it out yet there’s the daggerfall unity port! ive played it a bit and didn’t encounter any bugs ^_^
I will definitely check it out. I’d love to see an open world game made now with the same kind of scale, but I don’t think you could. IIRC, it would ahve taken something like a year in real time to have your character walk across Tamriel.
Yeah! Skyrim is like watching a movie. Morrowind is like reading a book. They’re amazingly different experiences. :)
Enderall was pretty cool. Total conversion mod. Own story and everything. Much better than skyrim personally.
Currently working through enderall and enjoying it. It’s fun, new story, some mechanic chances, new world, feels like a completely different experience. Highly recommend
- content mods: there are mods that add new content to the game like new quest lines, companions, or even new regions to the game.
- new challenges: limit yourself to only using magic or not using potions/food items for healing, or using survival mods that require eating/drinking
- role playing: you don’t need to be the dragonborn every playthrough, try being a merchant or a mercenary, etc.
I asked someone this on the Fallout subreddit. Other than mods they just kept roleplaying different characters and doing different questlines. There are lots of different class and race combos you can try, but honestly, without mods it’s a lot harder to freshen things up. A mod called Live Another Life was great for a new start iirc.
Fallout: New Vegas is on the same engine and satisfies the dungeon crawl loop condition flawlessly. Additionally it’s one of the better written rpgs of it’s type with a ton to get invested in.
Oblivion is good if you can get around it’s mild clunkiness by today’s standards. Morrowind is supposed to be amazing if you can get around it’s clunkiness (though I’ve never been able to. maybe someday they’ll make a remaster)
All the modern Fallouts are great. While NV is my favourite, I can recommend them all to satisfy this gameplay style itch. That includes Fallout 76. Despite the onlineness of that title, the single player gameplay is pretty much identical.
Elder Scrolls Online is a bit more different and has more of an obvious MMO feel to it, but it still is a lot of fun for single player exploration. And the sheer size of the ESO world is insane. It’s really great for getting to explore the places we’ve only heard mentioned in the earlier Elder Scrolls titles. The single player quests are still quite well done. And if you enjoy doing dungeons with other humans, the dungeons are fantastic and have great lore. It’s one of the best MMOs out there. ESO will easily eat up a thousand hours. I loved the shit out of it and need to return sometime.
Oblivion is an amazing game that’s hampered by its horrendous level scaling. You basically have to run through the main quest as quickly as possible and try to keep yourself under level 5 or so, or it becomes absolutely impossible. After that, once the main quest is done, you can start really levelling and more fully enjoying things.
Morowind is an amazing game, but it’s incredibly unforgiving and takes dedication. It can take dozens of hours before you ever start feeling like you have a handle on it.
I’ve heard a lot about F:NV. Maybe it’s finally time to give it a try!
Warning: long comment ahead. Skip the first four paragraphs for advice on different roleplaying ideas.
I’m on PC and actually reached the same point as you, despite all the mods.
Took a few months, tried again a couple of weeks ago and got a few levels in before I got bored. Just decided to finish up a custom follower quest and be done with it. “Retired” to my home, put on regular clothes, sat in a chair, saved, exited the game. Canon ending for that character, then uninstalled.
I’ve done lots of different things, though. Custom races, muuuuuch better spell packs, overhauls to pretty much everything, and it’s just kind of… meh now. There are some fantastic custom follower mods, and that area is actually kind of flourishing right now, but eventually you try enough and they become a bit… not boring, but not as novel as they initially were.
ESO was a nice change of pace, but burned myself out on that, too.
Anyway, advice? If you really want to keep playing, mess around with different races and playstyles. Stay sneaky, but use daggers. I personally never play 2H, but maybe spellsword could work for you.
Vampire hunter, maybe? Get Dawnbreaker early on (you don’t need to find Meridia’s Beacon and have her summon you; just go to her statue and she’ll give you the quest to find it) and use that shit on every vamp you see. Restrict yourself to crossbows if you want to stick with archery, with the only traditional bow you use being Auriel’s and only with sunhallowed arrows or something.
RP as an Altmer exile who spoke out against the Thalmor. Kill literally every Thalmor you see, if possible. Or RP as a Thalmor yourself. Makes that one main quest a bit difficult, but rationalize is it as they’re sacrifices that you’re making in order to become a powerful Dragonborn who will lead the Thalmor to decisive victory.
Maybe a Bosmer who sticks to the Green Pact (I don’t know if it’s available on PS4, but Imperious is a nice racial overhaul that really leans into this for wood elves). Like, avoid crafting anything that requires wood. Don’t build a Hearthfire home and never chop wood. That means getting your arrows either from shops or scavenging. (Lore-wise, it doesn’t actually matter that you’re using Skyrim wood, but not out of character for a Bosmer to stick with the nature-protector thing.) Kill anything that lives, though. They’re your food. Eat every single human heart you find.
Skooma-addicted Khajiit (or drug dealer who sells it). Or be a moon monk who focuses on unarmed combat only (this is actually a lot of fun, despite the animations being shit). When I say “unarmed”, I really just mean no physical weapons. Magic and shouts can be used without issue to augment your “monk” approach.
Redguard who abides by their rules of not disturbing the dead. This one is difficult and nearly impossible because you need to kill a lot of undead no matter what. But do something like no grave robbery. Leave all urns, potions, miscellaneous items, chests, etc. untouched in dungeons (except main quest ones); they belong to their owners, even in the afterlife. Or roleplay as someone who’s trying to follow in the footsteps of the Ash’Abah; a Redguard who puts the undead to rest. You’re in Skyrim because you’ve been exiled due to being “unclean” for doing this.
(Like Bosmer, lore-wise it’s kind of fine to be killing undead in Skyrim as Redguards mostly care about their ancestors and those who die in Hammerfell, but it’s a change of pace regardless.)
Breton assassin who’s killed kings, queens, princes, and princesses, looking to liven things up in a new province like Skyrim. Makes the last Dark Brotherhood quest a no-brainer. Restrict yourself to using conjuration and other magic schools instead of regular weapons. Want to stick with archery? Train your conjuration a bit, build up some magicka, and learn Bound Bow. In the meantime, you’ve got Bound Daggers and familiars.
There are a bunch of others. This is just race stuff, and I’ve obviously left out a few. I just don’t care about Nords and I’m not familiar enough with Dunmer or Argonians to make any suggestions beyond “protect or kill Argonians as a Dunmer, kill all Dunmer and stay poor as an Argonian”.
Quick edit: there’s a channel on YouTube called “Skypothesis”. They have like a bunch of different RP build suggestions (strictly vanilla, so no mods needed) that might be worth looking at. It’s where I got the unarmed monk Khajiit from.
But honestly, I wouldn’t force it. There’s no rule that you have to keep playing and enjoy Skyrim forever.
Maybe play something a bit smaller and less overwhelming and come back to it later with fresh eyes. Or, yeah, go old school and play another TES game like Morrowind or Oblivion. The mechanics are different, though, especially Morrowind. Those aren’t really “inevitably become stealth archer” games.
Wow! I just bookmarked this comment. THANK YOU for the amazing suggestions!
No prob! Happy to help.
Also, here’s the playlist with all of the Skypothesis builds.
Be warned, there are a lot (38 as of now), but it’s extremely varied and might give you a good starting point. Everything from treasure hunters to battlemages to silent assassins.
Apparently there’s one called “The Wood Orc”. Looks like it’s stealth archer, but “sneaky Orc” is always funny to me. One growing up with wood elves and becoming one with nature is an interesting approach.
That is another way to roleplay, actually. Like, if you’re familiar with different cultures across Tamriel, find excuses for one race/culture to behave like another because of their upbringing or something (you can actually find this in the game with Brand-Shei, who was raised by Argonians, but they messed it up a bit by giving him the same voice as all the other male Dunmer).
Tbh archery is extremely OP in Skyrim and makes the game tons easier / boring. I try to stay away from it as much as possible or you just end up rolling through the game easily.
Maybe try to RP with the characters a bit more and set some limitations on yourself for what you can and can not use (kinda like how it use to be with the older TES games). I often feel like I get into the character more when I set these type of limitations and then need some creativity to get around things when playing.
Really good ideas, thanks! I do think archery is probably diminishing my experience of the game at this point. Maybe I’ll try a 2H or dual wielding playthrough soon… I did try 2H once and only got like 5 levels in because I didn’t like it, but I was also just coming off a level 60-something sneak archer (surprise!), haha.
In general: Modding. But more specifically, I find mods that allow you to skip/avoid major questlines (like the main one) really helpful. Playing as a bandit, pirate, lowly vampire, etc instead of the Chosen One every time can really spice things up from a role-playing perspective.
What mod do you use to avoid the main quest line?
My advice is only really applicable to PC, but don’t be afraid to cheat a little bit for QOL. Things like using player.additem for firewood when crafting arrows or a mod to bypass lock picking (if you hate the mini game) , things like that.
Normally for cheating like this I would say you’ll end up missing out on the way the game was meant to be enjoyed, but that kinda goes out the window when you’ve racked up 1,000+ hours.
I believe this youtube channel mentions mods, but their builds are vanilla I think. Sometimes I like to roleplay deeper when I want the familiar but a little different. Here’s the FudgeMuppet Skyrim Builds playlist, hope you scratch your itch!
Oh this is awesome, I appreciate your sharing!! I’ll definitely be giving these a watch for ideas.
Watching a few of the newest ones has almost had me playing vanilla myself! I love that they even tell you how to use some of the way the game’s left broken without the unofficial patch for a few of the combinations.
Have fun!
Same here, I haven’t played it for a while but it’s a kind of self-care game for me. I basically become an NPC. I pick a town and go there, then I make things. I use a small number of mods, most notably one that lets me order basically anything to be delivered to me to support my crafting. And when I get bored of crafting, I go gathering. There are so many chill parts of the game to enjoy. :)
