More Skyrim hilarity.

[theweaselking]

You can tell that whoever designed the water-powered sawmills in Skyrim has *never been to* a real sawmill.

(Or cut wood with a saw. Seriously.)

They've seen PICTURES of a sawmill, you can tell - but they have *no* conception of how much power the water delivers, how fast the blade moves, how much noise it makes.... or what a sawmill actually does.

(Hint: Sawing through the middle of a big round log produces lumber that's no good for anyone.)

Level 43, maxed out Smithing and Pickpocket because those two skills TOTALLY just grind themselves when you're not looking.

Comments

[xomox.livejournal.com]

I only made a single level (16th) all evening; had to run to Riften to find the thieves guild, and then it was all blah blah blah and inspecting 500 containers.

[falconwarrior.livejournal.com]

I haven't been picking enough pockets. Haven't been making enough gear either; didn't seem to be much of a point to it once I got the Dark Brotherhood gear.

Though I have found that quests requiring stealth and non-lethality are made much easier with the correct application of buckets.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Just remember, pick for VALUE, and stay low until you get a few Pickpocket perks under your belt, then start going after nobility and their 300-value necklaces and 800-value gemstones, and watch your skill skyrocket.

Eventually you get some really fun stuff: a bitch of bitchy Thalmer were bitchy at me, so I pickpocketed away all their stuff. All of it. Including their clothes. They walked away naked still yelling at me for being a dirty non-elf.

[spartonian.livejournal.com]

How much does pickpocketing net in the early game? I haven't even tried it yet.

I'm in the low 40's for Blacksmithing, I now have a shiny Exquisite Dwarven Sword, and I haven't finished the quests around Whiterun yet.

[stormfeather.livejournal.com]

I haven't leveled pickpocketing, since I'm playing (for once) a fairly non-thiefly character. Except she does lockpicking a lot (up to almost 50 I think?), but hell, that's almost all from dungeons, bandit chests, etc etc.

Also haven't even close to maxed smithing, whether I'm looking or not. :p I use it, but not enough to raise it that much. I probably should max it enough to at least be able to take the perk for making/fiddling with elven armor, but one of my problems is I'm using enchanted items, and I can't improve them after they're enchanted. And I can't craft better than I already have so... yeah, I've been making a few things out of the materials I get and selling them, but it's not enough to raise my smithing that high/quickly.

No, my "these skills will max themselves before you notice" skills seem to be enchanting and alchemy. Well, and lockpicking. My enchanting's somewhere above 50 so far (my overall character level is around 20-ish I think?), and alchemy's probably in the 40s.

One-handed and light armor are also pretty up there.

(Oh, and I'm with you on the sawmill thing. I had it saw one log just to see what happened, and was thinking "how long is this going to take, yeesh? Wait.. that's like butter! How...?")

[kjn]

Thank you for reinforcing my stereotype that all Canadians are lumberjacks.

(Though I must admit that I've worked in a sawmill. A small, very local, tractor-powered sawmill, and only for two or so days, but still.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Parks Ontario actually uses one of the original water-powered saws to cut all the lumber used in all the parks.

It's a museum piece - literally, it's in a museum - but it still runs, and every spring they drop a pile of trees next to it and then run it all year for the visitors.

[reyl.livejournal.com]

Geez, had they never even been to Upper Canada Village?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The worst thing is all the details they got *right* - the log-moving hooks, the dogs at the end to hold the log steady, the motion of the blade - they've obviously seen a ton of good PICTURES of a water powered saw mill. And then the blade goes up and down about as fast as a reasonable "hand-saw-cutting" pace, and the log zips through the process with a hand-saw's recorded noise.

Bonus pain: the saw-moving-through-wood noise only happens on the downstrokes. On the upstrokes, it's silent.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]