Rating Wars

 I got my first rating on Fox and Hounds. I also got my first 1-star rating. On Fox and Hounds. I await with mixed interest to see if there will be a review, or if it is just a drive-by.

As it only has the one at current, it really doesn't look good.

The Japan book is moving slowly. I've reached the stage of trying to marshal the material into scenes and groupings. My latest analogy is level design for games. In many games, one "zone" (which may be several different technical levels) will have a particular theme, decorative style, gameplay element to highlight, etc.

At the moment the only zone that is coming together for me is the action sequence leading up to the climax; somewhere in snow country, pretty much all reindeer games against hired security or similar. Outdoors and snow and snow-related stunts (including driving a snowmobile, for which I am willing to drop a few bucks and get out to Tahoe to "research.")

And this is also a bit of a psychotic break for Penny, with her separation from family over Christmas and the holidays and the cold weather and her sort-of-betrayal by Ichiro and overload of both over-commercial Christmas and being in a foreign land isolated by culture and language...anyhow, this is the "Here's your damned 'Christmas Cake'" sequence.

At least that's what I'm planning.

There is also something about Old Kyoto, the old Geisha district, staying at a Minshuku, visiting the Fushimi Inari shrine, trying on kimono...and I'm not sure how or if this ties into Osaka Castle, the Toei Studio Park, and what I'm currently calling the "Ninja Club."

And even more nebulous is the "Tokyo hotspots with the flamboyant Ichiro, and some sort of Oceans 11 thing."

***

Probably why I gave up trying to work last weekend and went back into Skyrim.

There is an exploit I'd been hearing about for a while. The first part is the there is a potion that buffs Restoration spells, but due to the way it works it also causes items and potions that improve skills to improve them more.

The second is the Enchanting/Alchemy carousel. You make a potion of Enhanced Enchanting, then enchant an amulet of Enhanced Alchemy.

Well. It turns out the latest patch fixed the exploit. Restoration no longer changes the skill enhancements. That means that even with maxed-out enchanting and alchemy, you get stuck around 17%. You can't make gear powerful enough to make a potion powerful enough to advance to the next percentage. Not with the highest normally achievable skills.

So there are various ways in the vanilla game; quest objects that apply a buff that can lift your skills above 100. 

Or you can use the console to artificially pop your skill levels up. And it turns out having a base skill of 200 is vastly more effective than any combination of gear and/or potions achievable without exploits or hacks.

So much for my Alchemist build. The best potions you can brew in vanilla game are vastly outpaced by the skills you were intending to buff with them. The nastiest poison is maybe 24 points of extra damage, and an early-game bow does that already (Imperial Bow 12 pts, steel arrow 12 pts.) And that's before stealth bonuses, or the regular bonuses of the Archery tree.

There is no easy way to build a character who has ordinary iron weapons and beginner skills and achieves necessary competence through the potions they brew.

On the flip side, though; once you are over the threshold (around 40%) the carousel works fine and you can end up making potions that increase your enchanting 10x base. At least that's where I stopped. The way the skill buffs work, though, by the time I could wear a diadem that let me make potions 10x stronger, I could take that same enchanting skill and make a weapon that delivered six hundred extra points of magical damage.

So not really balanced in favor of potion-making.

And also really unbalancing anyhow. I tried going out with my 600-damage bow and armor that was tank round proof and it was, well, boring. 

Although I do want to open up the game again, punch up some potions into the 1000x range, and see just what wacky side effects can ensue...