Might be time to back off Skyrim a little.

[xaq_the_aereon]

Recently I started a new character on Skyrim, a Dark Elf focused on Destruction magic, and started her along the Winterhold College questline.

Last night, I had a dream involving the college, but rather than my new character, it focused on my avatar/dream-self, Wilren, who was an instructor in the arts of Enchantment. The first scene involved Ancano, a Thalmor agent that snoops around the school, who was asking why I was building a blacksmithing forge in my classroom, which was otherwise filled with Arcane Enchanters and little else; what purpose could I have for crafting weapons and armor in such a place?

First, I explained, the room was deathly cold, and the heat from the forge warmed it rather thoroughly. More importantly than that, however, was the fact that if I was going to teach enchantments, my students were going to need stuff to enchant; this was also the reason I'd harvested a huge quantity of small, near-useless soul gems and strips of tanned hide off of the local, overpopulated wildlife. And so, his curiosity sated enough to get out of my face, I set back to the Skyrim player's favorite means of cheap-boosting their Blacksmithing skills...crafting lots and lots of iron daggers. (For the curious, by the time I was done I'd gained 3 levels.)

The next morning, with my first group of students gathered, I set about my method of giving them all a quick start in the arts of enchantment. At each Arcane Enchanter was a supply of un-enchanted daggers and soul gems, as well as a single dagger bearing a different enchantment. I asked the class if any of them had any idea why I was having them each learn a different enchantment rather than having everyone learn the same one at once. One student, an Argonian, took a stab at it, guessing that if he learned one enchantment, his classmate learned another, and then they traded enchanted weapons, they'd both learn 2 in a shorter amount of time. I was quite pleased with him; got it in one!

My students spent the first hour of class learning how to use the AEs to learn the enchantments on the weapon in front of them and putting it on a new one. Once that was done, they all cycled around to the next table and repeated the process. Things went slow at first, but by about the 4th table they were all progressing quite quickly, and within 3 hours they were each fully skilled in how to use the device, and knew a sizable library of weapon enchantments.

With that, I dismissed the class, told them to keep up their practice, and that when we met 2 days later we'd be going over armor enchantments.


...And then I woke up. o_O

So yeah, maybe I should ease off this game a little.

...

...

Naaaaaaaaaah.