My view of the world

I’m trying this new versionof OOO, and have run into a small glitch. When you’re doing the Mage’s guild quests and you have to go to Vahtacen, there’s a chest with the necessary scrolls. The problem arose, when it told me, I couldn’t lock-pick during combat.
Just an odd glitch, I got enough gold and bought “open average lock,” then I cheated by going into god mode, to give me enough magica, casting the spell to open the chest, then returning to normal mode to finish the quest. My advice is to save just before each quest and at least two time during each phase of the quest.

In Nornalhorst, there are lots of vampires, I went in as a level 3 and they chewed me up, spit me out and pissed on the pieces.
In Smoke Hole Cave, I got to see my first Spectral warriors, Ghostly warriors and spectral wolves, DO NOT TOUCH any of the warriors or their weapons, you will get frost damage, the wolves just give you ectoplasm. Lightning seems to work best on these warriors, because fire seems to be resisted.
The UESPWiki discribes this dungeon as having lots of jewels and gold and undead. Understatement, I guess they haven’t seen the new improved version.
,As to the end result of my entering the cave, see my Nornalhorst comment.

Out near Gwenden Farm, near Anvil, there are two Ayleid ruins, that are inhabited by seriously hostle folks, who wear braided armor and use braided weapons.
One of the ruins is pitch black, fortunately, if you’ve done the mages guild quest, where you have to get the wood for your staff, you’ve picked up a number of staffs that cast light and have zero weight, you still don’t see very much, but they sure help, this way you get to see who just killed you.
I entered one of these in god-mode, killed everything that moved, looted everything I could find, sold it all, and wound up with more than 50k in gold, so they are worth exploring.

The thing I ran into, was the number of friendly’s out in the boonies, you can no longer assume that anyone out in the bush is hostile, so I can no longer use one of my favorite tactics, which is to throw a fireball from way out and even the odds.
What do they mean, kill ‘em all, let god sort ‘em out, is no longer a valid approach to the game?

There’s a bunch of new weapons, armor and critters. The Elvin night armor is about the same as glass armor, but it’s black. There are protectors, in light or heavey armor, which are staves, for use in place of shields.
There are three sizes of wolves, at least two sizes of boars and deer, and the crabs and rats come in at least two sizes.
You’ll also find a large number of chests that you need to open with magic, including some with, very hard locks, that I haven’t been able to find a spell, to open. Not that I have enough magica, I just want to find out, where I can buy the spell.

So far the game is fun, but, my motto has become. “Run away, run away.” Bravely run away.