Headscratchers / The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim 7

• The Main Quest, Dragons and being Dovahkiin
• Major questlines: Companions, College of Winterhold, Thieves' Guild, Civil War
• Other side quests
• The Aedra, Daedra, creatures and people encountered
• The Thu'um and Magic
• The DLCs: Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn
• Lore and History of the Elder Scrolls
• The meta: questions about gameplay mechanics (you are here)

Words in the main theme

• There are some words in the main theme that I've been puzzling over for some time now. Specifically, the chants in the beginning and end. Just after the first few measures of drum beats, the "barbarian choir" begins chanting a three-syllable phrase that continues until the main chorus (''Dovakiin, Dovakiin, etc.). Likewise, after the second iteration of the chorus, they chant something else until the soprano comes in at the end. Anyone have any ideas as to what they're saying?
  • You mean "Huh, whoah, huh!" and "Hyah!" that keeps coming up? I'm fairly certain those aren't actual words, but just kind of... I don't know what to call it. Using your voice as an instrument? Singing along without words? Kind of anologuous to what Edwin Starr did. "War! Huah! What is it good for?"
  • Not exactly. This is the translated version of the ending chorus, as well as the original Draconic and a slightly different english version.
  • Um, but we're not discussing the chorus. It's pretty easy to figure out the lyrics for that. What I'm referring to are the parts immediately before the first chorus, and the part immediately after the second chorus. You can hear the raw vocals of the second part at about 2:43 of this video. With regards to the second poster, it certainly sounds like they're using actual words of the dragon language, but I can't figure out exactly which.
  • Ah, right. Wasn't quite sure which part of the song you were refering to. Here you go, full song translated up. Well, into english. Though if you don't understand written english, you should probably be commended for getting to this site.
  • Hmm, perhaps some clarification is needed. I'm not concerned with a translation of the lyrics (though that would help in discerning the draconic wording), I'm trying to understand exactly what words comprise those chanted segments of the main theme. I'm afraid "huah" and "heh" are not words in either draconic or English, so that video is of little help, sorry to say. The closest I've been able to find for the chanted bit at the end of the song would be "Huzrah nu," which would translate as "Hearken now!" But again, I'm not sure if this is really what's being said, and I haven't a clue as to what they're chanting at the beginning.
  • Hmm? Well, if your talking about the chanting from the start of the song to 0:35 and from 2:45 to 2:53, then no. Those aren't words. The second poster pretty much pegged it then.
  • The correct term would be "vocalising." Happens a lot in most singing traditions when you've no words to go here but you want to keep the flow going. How many pop songs do you know that have "oh" in them a lot? Same idea.
  • Also, it's possible that the version we're hearing is a sort of war-song version, and that is meant as a rally call for ther fighting forces, as a sort of intimidation to their foe. Think of it as similar to things like the Spartans of 300 with their roar, or the Wakandan soldiers chant of "Yibambe!: "YIBAMBE!"

Funny mass and weight

• How can a Wolf Pelt (weight rating 1) or a Fox Pelt (weight rating 0.5) be crafted into a piece of Leather with a weight rating of 2? Shouldn't it work in the exact opposite direction, getting lighter as all the fur, fat, and unusable hide are cut away? Or does this actually happen in real-life leather tanning?
  • Most crafted items weigh several times more than the sum of their components. Look at Daedric Armor: Weights 50, composed of 5 Ebony Ingots (Weight 1 each) 3 leather strips (Weight 0.1 each) and a Daedra Heart (Weights 0.5) for a total of 5.8. Meaning Daedric Armor weights 8.6 times more than the stuff its made out from. Even the Iron Dagger as weight 2, weights double what its components weight (One Iron Ingot weighting 1 and a leather strip weighting 0.1). IRL, Tanned leather is lighter than fresh pelts due to the removing of the fur , fat and lots of moisture.
    • It seems like the "weight rating" is more closely tied to general encumbrance. So, the components of the armor "weigh" less than the full suit due to how much bulkier the full armor is than the component pieces.
  • Heck, when one thinks about it, smiting can be really odd. So using a single gold ingot, one can't make more than 2 golden rings? The ingot alone, if their relative game sizes are any indication, should be able to give us several dozens of rings. And those gold ring weight exactly a quarter each the weight of the ingot? These must be some very dense rings then! And yet Madesi in Riften says a single chunk of gold ore (You need 2 to make an ingot) should provide him with enough gold for several rings. Maybe the Dovahkiin, even with maxed out Smiting, is a terrible jewelry maker and incapable of re-melting leftover gold to make more stuff.
    • That jewelry is a work of art, you uncultured milk-drinker! (More seriously, smithing a pair of gold rings gives you something like 50 XP; if you were able to make realistic amounts of rings from a gold ingot—even a chunk of gold ore—smithing (and levelling up) would be way, way, way more broken than it already is.)

Hitbox detection

• Is it just me, or do the hitboxes of distant targets simply not register arrows? Because I had one assassination target who I decided to try and snipe from the top of a cliff. I fired at least 10 arrows at him and never got a hit in, then crept a bit closer, aimed at the exact spot I had previously been aiming, and killed him. When I went up to loot the corpse, I found my 10 "missed" arrows stuck into a wall right where he had been standing. Was I just missing, or is this an actual thing? If hitboxes really don't register arrows, then why is this?
  • The same thing has happened to me a few times. I think its a glitch, but (For me at least) it doesn't happen often. Of course, i can't be 100% sure that i didn't just miss, but i think the hit boxes just don't work properly at certain distances.
    • It's actually because arrows will only register to a certain distance. For example, say 300 is the limit. 300 = dead enemy, 301 = arrow traveling through them with no damage. It isn't known exactly why this is, but the most common theory is to prevent archers from dead zoning the AI. In previous games, Mages and Archers would stand still and trry to shoot you, in Skyrim they are programmed to dodge and rush you. At the limit for arrows, you will more than likely alert any nearby enemies when you fire. Much further past it and you won't, they will run to the body and stare at it.

Whiterun fast travel

• More of a development/programming question I guess: Why isn't there a fast-travel icon for the Companions headquarters in Whiterun? There's an icon for the Thieves Guild hideout and the College of Winterhold, but not one for Jorrvaskr. Considering how often you have to come and go from that place if you're following the Companions questline, this seems like an odd thing to leave out.
  • There's only one fast-travel location inside any city, and that's to the Jarl's palace in question. Those locations are centrally-located enough that you only need to run for a few moments to reach whatever area of the city is relevant.
    • Incorrect. Riften has a fast travel location to the Thieve's Guild entrance in the graveyard, which is closer to Mistvale Keep than Jorvasker is to Dragon's Reach.
  • It also might be to fix any bugs that might happen if you fast-traveled to Jorrvaskr during, say, the Battle for Whiterun.
  • Additionally, even with the fast travel point, entering the thieves' guild is a bit of a pain if you want to get new radiant quests (because you get them in the bar, which requires passing through two loading zones.) It would have been even worse without the fast-travel icon; possibly, that icon was added because testers complained.
  • I was quite disappointed by the Heroes Guild sidequest compared to the Thieves Guild Quest, and, by gum, every single sidequest involving a Dwarven ruin. Anyway and however, now that I think about it I think the main reason Jorrvaskr did not have a fast travel the way Riften did . . . ugh, sigh . . . the reason Riften had a fast travel point but Whiterun did not was due to the dynamics of the environment in Riften. I have zero tech knowledge, but it would seem since Riften had mutiple tiers AND a LOT in common with other features found in the wilderness areas it was less of a hassle to squeeze a fast travel point in there. Sure Whiterun had a little stream running down from Dragon's Reach, a little dungeon for thieves, a gigantic ark for the Heroes Guild, but Riften had a major water way running throughout the town and out into that honeybee keeper's property, AND the sewer tunnels and cistern housing the Thieve's Guild. Programming-wise, Riften is technically larger and more complex than Eldergleam Sanctuary complete with the "underdeveloped" Jarl's quests. Kind of leaves no excuse for Solitude and Morthal though, given the Solitude's can sometimes drop you on the cobbled road some ways ahead but there is a fast travel to that tower right next to Morthal.

Icon filters

• Another development/programming question: Why isn't there an option to filter which icons appear on the world map? Once you've discovered a lot of locations the map starts to get a bit crowded and it makes it hard to find the quest arrow sometimes. It would be nice if I could make some of those icons disappear temporarily.
  • You'd need to write a script that interfaces with the map and filters out those icons. From what I'm aware of, those icons are fundamentally built into the Skyrim engine as part of it's quest generation functions and location identification. Adjusting the interface to filter them out would likely be very difficult to implement without mucking about with the engine's underlying code. I know that when modding, you can choose to assign a location marker and fast-travel location to each location you create, but I'm not so sure about removing them from the map interface mid-game. The few mods I've seen that offer both locations with markers and without markers do so with separate .esp files that have to be enabled before launch, so I believe that in order to change from having a visible marker and no marker is something that has to be loaded into the game at launch as part of a plugin file. It can't be changed mid-game.

Useless Items

This has been bugging me since the first ES game I ever played. Why are there so many utterly useless items in the game? Embalming tools, linen wraps, various bits of dwemer junk (I know some of these can be smelted into ingots, but most of them can't), musical instruments, and my GOD all the buckets, baskets, and miscellaneous tableware and kitchen items (tankards, bowls, etc.). They're only worth a tiny amount of gold so there's no use collecting and selling them. Why do these things exist as "grabbable" items? Why aren't they just part of the scenery? I can't possibly count the number of wooden plates I've accidentally stolen while trying to scoop up a bunch of loose gold or alchemy ingredients off someone's dinner table, and it frustrates me every time. Is that what these items are for? Are the developers just trolling me?

• Because there's more stuff in the world than just things that are explicitly useful to player characters.
• Verisimilitude and role-playing (and an Unpleasable Fanbase which would complain if the items couldn't be picked up) are why most items can be obtained. I, for one, carry around a cup and wooden bowl (the same cup and wooden bowl, assuming a first-in, last-out system) even though I don't actually need them to eat. I see a lot of complaints about "why didn't the game's makers code the game precisely to my own preferences?" (such as, in a forum, a very capitalized "Why do they even put money in burial urns? I never look in burial urns because there's never more than a couple of gold in them! It's just a waste!"), although I'm sure everyone's had a complaint like this even if they didn't voice it (for example, I posted [paraphrased] "What's the deal with leaving unobtainable mammoth tusks all over the place?" higher up on this page). I think it was pruent of them to make so many things obtainable- not just "I like it" but "the people who complain about it have less of a point than if people complained about only the super-important things being obtainable" (and I'm quite glad that they didn't make it necessary to have an empty wooden bowl for every bowl of soup you make, and a spoon to eat soup. Just because I like roleplaying minor things like that doesn't mean I like the game forcing me to roleplay minor things like that).
  • The problem I have with the verisimilitude argument is that by making some of these items obtainable it only calls attention to many other items which are not obtainable. Why can I pick up a small table fork, but not a large iron fork? Why can I pick up a jug, but not a candlestick? Why can I pick up a skull, but not a rib cage?
    • Simply put: some items are background props that can't be interacted with to save memory. An interactable object eats up a lot more space than a static one, as the interactable object uses more physics code and thus eats more memory, even when it's not moving. If Bethesda could have made those objects interactable while still coming in under the space constraints that had been set by their project leads, they would have.
    • A quick way to demonstrate this on PC: use the console to drop about fifty or a hundred of a particular item on the ground, and then use Unrelenting Force on it. Unless you've got a beastly PC or ENBoost, you're going to see some serious slowdown.

Returning to Skuldafn

It's always bothered me that there's no way to return to Skuldafn (and Sovngarde) outside of the main quest. The inability to go there earlier in the game is well-explained, but once you do obtain the means to travel there, it's not like it ever goes away. Odahviing is still on your side, and you can call him to your aid whenever you want. If you could say to him, "I'd like to return to Skuldafn/Sovngarde. Can you please take me there?" I'm sure he'd be happy to oblige. But you can't go back there, seemingly for no better reason than a missing dialogue option. And that's not even getting into the additional options the Dragonborn DLC should give you.

• For PC players, there is at least a Game Mod which adds this option; you can get it here.

Breezehome is a poorly-made death trap

• I'm not 100% sure where to put this but this is a stock player home, not a Hearthfire addition so... from outside one can see a chimney letting out smoke. Inside is an open fire pit in the middle of the living room with no protective grating around it, centered in a a wooden floor. Shortly above it is the player's bedroom floor, made of wood. No visible chimney anywhere inside. This place should burst into flames if not be a serious liability to residents with 75% of the entryway & living space on fire. Who designed this house?
  • Two different people, one who designed the exterior of the Whiterun cell and the one who designed the Breezhome interior cell. Discrepancies between the outside of a structure and the inside are very, very common in videogames, even when they're not separate cells.