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Yes, it really shows that Zenimax has put quite a lot of effort to the ambience and "feel" of different places. It even extends to NPCs. Their animations are surprisingly natural and how they behave in some situations adds to the illusion of reality. For instance the lack of combatants in battle quests was compensated to a large degree by the aftermath: how they celebrate the victory or guard POWs, or any such thing soldiers do after fighting. As for natural sights, I can't wait to get outside Morrowind to see all the different locales in other provinces! At the moment I'm too engrossed in the Ebonheart Pact alliance storyline, though. They wrote too exciting quests

And this wasn't even entirely a joke. Now that I've played through the Stonefalls questline, I'm seriously impressed. I've had some evenings stretching too long into night just because I couldn't stop myself from doing "just one quest more", a feeling I've missed for some time. Especially nice is how you meet characters from previous quests now and again. It was a great moment when, completely by surprise, I ran across Captain Rana in Kragenmoor and also met other Bleakrock people there. And it wasn't even a part of the current quest, but just a chance meeting with some friendly chit-chat. This kind of thing gave the game a surprising amount of depth somehow, made it feel like the NPCs do have lives on their own. The writing really is much better than in Skyrim. Practically the only thing I'd wish is more choice and consequence, since most quests are linear. Some do give choices, though, so this isn't a big complaint.

Also, I've figured out a rather easy and probable way to solve the gold problem. I'll just join a trade guild with small or no requirements and start selling pewter dust, better quality improvement materials and recipes. Those are always in some demand and can net tidy sums (even the pewter dust seems to be in 40-60 gold range per piece). Plus, I already have to make ore farming runs just to get materials for blacksmithing. Pewter dust is found hassle-free as a sideproduct, since the add-on I use has the same markers for ore and pewter nodes. Also, all kinds of recipes are found practically everywhere and the prices can range from anything from dozens of gold to tens of thousands. So the whole selling thing shouldn't take much more than an hour or two a week in order to gather some kind of decent income. I'll gather some starting inventory and then will give this strategy a try. I would not even need that much gold, but I want to be able to buy either crowns or crown stuff with in-game gold since I don't like spending real money more than I have to.

In summary, it was a really good idea to buy this game. Even wholly soloed this far it's been a blast.

Well, here's just a few thoughts.

The Plus:
**It's so cool to see all of Tamriel, and how much of a variety of landscapes and cultures. After being locked to Skyrim, it was so interesting to see somewhere like Northern Elsweyr, or the jungles of Murkmire.
**It was also neat to return to a few old places like Vvardenfell, Eastmarch/The Rift/West Skyrim and Cyrodiil, too.
**The Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood core roster are a lot more likeable then Skyrim's equivalents. No [&@%!] like Dirge giving you grief when you come back is a much welcome change.
**Some of the way they handled weapons and armor was quite interesting. While obviously not to the extent of this game, being able to craft weapons in your own culture's motif would be cool for ESVI.
**There is A LOT to do. Even if a zone can be deceptively small, there really is fun stuff, like world bosses, delves, and more. Still, I think there should have had every zone be big, like Murkmire, Clockwork City being smaller then others.
**In comparison to Skyrim, the basic NPC's actually are friendly! Like the guards compliment you for your deeds, citizens are happy to see you. And the Altmer aren't Pointy-Eared Nazi Germany yet. I felt like there were so many [&@%!] NPC's in Skyrim, especially if you were a Khajiit or Argonian.

The Negatives:
**The combat system sucks. The basic light attack might as well not even be needed, as it doesn't hurt *anything*. Meaning you're locked to the class and weapon special moves. And it feels much harder, as a result, to kill enemies in comparison to other games.
**Inflexibility for solo players. If you happen upon a world boss, and no one's with you, don't even bother. You could have beaten Molag Bal at Coldharbor, Nocturnal at the Crystal Tower and Kaalgrontiid at Dragonhold, but even going back to somewhere like Stonefells, an overgrown Dreugh can hand you your ass no problem if you're alone.
**Locking the Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood storylines into leveling up the skill lines, because it means a lot of grinding radiant missions and that got boring fast.
**I wish there was an option to turn off the PVP environment for Cyrodiil and Imperial City. I just want to explore, I don't need your civil war.

**Light attacks are actually very powerful if utilised correctly. Weaving is required for endgame content.
**Gotta get good before you take on a group boss solo.

Ugh!! Even thinking about this makes me sad