Why The College Of Winterhold Is Laughably Incompetent
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- Magic is a wonderful thing when used correctly. Lets spend the next fifteen minutes of our lives not doing that, because the College Of Winterhold should have been shut down years ago. If ever there was an example of what a real Hogwarts would look like, its this.
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Also they’re like *barely* a college? It’s mainly a castle where 6 or 7 mages do their own personal projects without being bothered. Tolfdir is the only one that even acts like an actual professor.
And every third sentence out of him is “I have no idea what’s going on”
The lore accurate winterhold is half the size of hogwarts
this made me laugh lol
It’s been 200 years since oblivion and these guys haven’t figured out how to make their own spells
I think here was a spelling error somewhere along the lines. It's less of a *college of mages* and more of a *collage of mages*
They had to put the eye in the hall where they did, because they had no other aesthetically pleasing storage location and it really helped to tie that big empty space together quite nicely.
Tbh I feel like they must have designed the room with the eye in first, then later decided to have the eye be something more than just a decoration
Putting this here so I’ll be seen
A thalmor agent being at the school works under the theory that the stormcloak’s leadership is corrupted with thalmor agents. Someone at a high level granted safe passage for Ancano. Ulfirc might know about it, he might not.
@@nur1_ch Considering that half the events around the eye are connected with non-linear-time mages, they probably did design it for the eye.
Pretty sure there was supposed to be a lot more to that quest and that the Auger was likely involved.
it's for the aesthetic
Moment of silence for our lost brother: Mysticism
Lest we forget, Thaumaturgy
Literally my favorite school. I was MAD when I learned that mysticism doesn't exist in Skyrim
@geenoix2357 Meh, Thaumaturgy was pretty redundant and we got Conjuration in its place, which is way cooler and far more unique.
Mark, recall, intervention and levitate spells are sorely missed. RIP
@@Orange-StarKnight Levitate was iconic
The College of Winterhold is more of a club than an organization. Half the caves in Skyrim have as many necromancers as the college has members, and one province has as many higher level necromancers as the college has teachers. And until the Dragonborn comes along, the necromancers seem to be more successful.
I'm sure the Civil War plays a critical role in the success of necromancers. The war means less manpower devoted to security which means more crime. More bandits, more witches, more vampires, more victims, more everything. Combined with the destruction of Winterhold and the disbanding of the Mages Guild, Necromancers have everything they need to thrive.
@@Copperkaiju War also means more bodies the necromancers can raise to train their skills and bolster their ranks.
@RaxusXeronos Oh yeah, I forgot to include that. That's literally what the necromancer at Meridia's temple was doing.
If it wasn't for the Dragonborn the whole of Skyrim would probably fall to Alduin who would probably use the necromancers to replace his dragon priests.
@ With the small populations of towns in-game, I think necromancers and bandits outnumber regular citizens. Each cave as as many of them as there are soldiers at the major civil war battles. I think you'd need to assume the "real" population of Skyrim is 100x what the game shows in order to support that many bandits. The armies are also obviously scaled down, but I don't know if the minor factions are also supposed to be larger than they show you.
That sounds the Falkwreath region if I remember correctly. They got werewolves, vampires, and all types of crazy mages. 😂
"Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic and don't let anyone tell you otherwise"
But enchanting tho💀
"right? RIGHT?"
@@redkaiox2096Bro enchanting is probably the most useful form of magic lmao
People dismissing healing magic is the equivalent of modern day conspiracists rejecting modern medicine
If they actually offered it to anyone outside the college, they might even fix their reputation.
Every faction in Skyrim is a shit fest, the difference is that the college is supposed to be filled with smart people, but has staff that is criminally incompetent.
It's intentional, Skyrim's overal theme is that it is in a state of decay.
@@someonesilence3731 yeah... they leaned to hard on that one...
@@someonesilence3731No. There isn’t any overal theme at all in Skyrim. Bethesda just didn't bother to think about their writing and if it makes any sense.
@ Wrong, look it up it's quite a fascinating subject and very noticeable once you become aware of it.
@@someonesilence3731 No man. I mean it's cute you thinking like this but it's headcannon at best. So little thought was put into Skyrim that it's just painful to think about it.
The unpleasant side effects on potions, ironically enough, worth more money. A potion that buffs something but causes violent diarrhea (flavor text I give my stamina poisons) is more valuable than just the buff on it's own. I imagine that was accidental on bethesda's part, but it's very funny.
It's not like they polish out all the problems with these games or anything.
"Stamina potion of purging"
I never take the perk that removes negative sides from positives an vice versa because it decreases the value of potions. Not worth gettinf
@@rus0004 You can run fast to the outhouse!
Its because the potion has less effects......the fact that some are negative effects is secondary @tj-co9go
The college of winterhold, where you can literally never cast a single spell (if you have a staff to cast ward) and get arxhmage. At least the thieves guild has you have to steal stuff even if youre the loudest burglar of all time. Same with the Brotherhood and Companions, you might be the absolute worst at their preferred path but you still do something along their lines. College (Bard and Winterhold) both have you as the campus fixer more than anything
A common complaint, but one that makes a lot more sense when you lay out what utter clowns the people running the place are. Maybe the Arch-Mage who has casted zero magic in his life IS a better fit for the job than the moron who did nothing and died.
Using Spellbreaker or the Warlock's Ring(from the Fishing creation) gets you through the ward part without needing to touch a nasty staff.
I am the arch-repairman
The only way to fix hard college is Legacy of the Dragonborn, Becoming a Bard, and Amorous Adventure.
@@isenokami7810 That makes a funny amount of sense. You're there to smack people upside the head whenever they poke what should not be disturbed
Two big things make me hate this faction.
1. The player can get 3 elders scrolls and they do NOTHING.
2. They magically bring back keening a pinacle dwarven tool, and they do NOTHING.
all they talk about is how cool it would be to have (insert thing) and they do NOTHING.
Even the companions weren't that shallow.
The Keening part is especially egregious. Just some guy TRYING TO REPEAT THE EXPERIMENT THAT LITERALLY CAUSED ALL DWARVES TO DISAPPEAR WITH NO EXPLANATION.
Like what the actual fuck, dude
@@seeinred imagine if he actually succeeded, studently all Bretons just go poof without explanation... everyone be like: A WIZARD DID IT!!!
@Not quite, it IS a new experiment. It was hitting the heart of Lorkhan that made all the dwarves vanish, asking "What if I hit a different thing?" Is a perfectly valid line of scientific inquiry. And there was a different outcome, as it only vanished one individual rather than all Bretons. This suggests that the power of the thing you hit has an effect on the result.
@ While you are not necessary wrong, it has the same energy as "so that one time people fcked up and ended up blowing nuclear reactor, what if we use something different in place of granite?".
I.e., extremely dangerous and ludicrously arrogant.
Tonal Architecture is an esoteric form of magic, manipulation of sound to change reality. The only non-dwarven user of this craft was just this one small fella, really nobody, called SOTHA SIL, ONE OF THE GODS OF TRIBUNAL.
And the Kagrenac's Tools are the most important of tonal artifacts that were ever made.
Literally nobody knows how to operate this sort of arcane craft, let alone with the instruments that were tied to the heart of god.
There are thing you just don't "f*ck with". Especially in the middle of College of Winterhold, not that far away by still populated city.
This thing should've been studied for years, before trying to attempt any sort of experiments with it, and even than those experiments should've been attempted in remote, lifeless locations, by participants clearly understanding that they could just vanish or worse.
Yet we have Dragonborn, who has a larger-than-life responsibility of killing Alduin, just sitting there, as if nothing bad COULD happen, while literally ANYTHING could have happened.
I imagine the story of entire world would went slightly in different direction, if Dragonborn just vanished because of the moron who decided to play "press the button" with overclocked nuclear reactor.
@@seeinredtbh a lot of people used to do pretty dangerous experiments that could go horribly wrong on a whim before the advent of modern safety standards on experiments
I play a mage on almost every playthrough of Skyrim, and it's always disappointing to see how pathetically incompetent everyone at the College is. Like come on guys, you're supposed to be Skyrim's elite wizards, I could wander off in a random direction and find a nameless warlock more competent than anyone on the campus!
An adept Ice Mage at a random ruined tower would decimate the current college professors. The only one that actually does any research just deletes himself in experimentation. Then there's the enchanter which sends you across Skyrim to pick up items, to just, never return them to their owners, apparently.
Kinda wish we could just keep training under Neloth.
And I'm not fond of Neloth. Boring AF owner of Sadrith Mora in Morrowind and arrogant S'wit in Dragonborn.
So you too understand the deep pain of having to repeat the College quest line over and over? Tell me I’m not the only one 😢
And I bet the hundreds of mage bandits are not related to collage at all. They could at least try to be helpful by providing holds some magical law enforcement or even healing services to holds or armies.
Or is that supposed to be a immersive realism. Go to university only to find out your possible work postitions are the 7 posts as court mage. Then you youst become park chemist brewing potions for bandits or crazed necromancer aka independent researcher
The college was so inept that the psijik order decided that a brand new recruit who has only been in the college for a few days would make a better leader than any of the tenured mages. That... says a lot.
Everyone when the player enters: "All hail the new guy. ALL HAIL WHAT'S HIS NAME!"
Ill always remember at Solsthiem when going to Tel Mithryn, the home of Master Neloth (a master wizard of morrowinds wizard house) and tell him about the college of winterhold he's generally unimpressed and even if you tell him your arch mage he'll say to you to see him when hes done training his apprentice. The most biggest blow is when you meet his apprentice you see he is A MASTER CONJURER WHILE STATING HE JUST COPIES OFF NELOTH'S NOTES!!! Dudes an even better spell merchant then any one of those goobers in the entire college.
Neloth is actually competent. He tells you where the black book is and how to unlock them and even fights alongside you. Savos kinda just wishes you die on his wild goose chase
@@pachicore "Could you greet Hermaeus Mora when you see him"
Telvanni mages are built different
@@springheeljak145 They're built superior to all other mages.
also you forgot a VERY important detail about Savos: he KNEW where the Staff of Magnus was and didn't say anything until it was too late.
you never tell him "The staff is in Labyrinthian" just "i know where to find the staff" but, SOMEHOW, he leaves the Torc of Labyrinthian to Mirabelle BEFORE you come back to the college with the news, knowing you would need it.
He could have given you the key right after you visited the augur but noooo, let's send the player after the Synod to learn something we already know and waste precious time.
If he had given you the Torc immediately, Mirabelle would still be alive (and maybe himself too, but who cares about him?)
At the bright side, they manage to bring a giant floating ball through small doors. I'm sure some people would want that magic.
And they're free, I guess
I really should look up what exactly do they mean when they say Nords hate magic.
Since hating magic entirely is kinda like hating guns or modern medicine because magic is at least that real in ES.
They definitely don't hate Shouts, and I think they don't have a negative view on Healing magic. Not sure about the rests though.
@ They're fond of enchanting, guards will ask you to enchant their swords for them. Nords are just direct, they like hitting things, and a magic sword that hits things harder is cool in their book. All their great heroes had magic weapons, after all. They're just not fond of sneaky things like illusion or conjuring things to fight for you, particularly necromancy. What Nord would avoid a fight like that?
@@Hell_O7 "nords" in skyrim hate magic, because they're trailer trash "nords" who stand around talking about their glorious ancestors without ever having any real connection to them. They worship imperial gods, and in point of fact, start a civil war with the empire over the worship of Talos, a breton who became an imperial god, while entirely ignoring any actual Nord theology, except the vauge idea of "Sovengarde". Even the GREYBEARDS call Kyne "Kynareth," despite belonging to an entirely Nordic cult on a mountaintop, presumably without real interaction with the rest of the world. Ysgramor brought at least one "Clever-man" (Nord Wizard) with him when he returned from Atmora with his sons and the 500 companions to end the Falmer. SHOR HIMSELF is described as constructing Sovengarde "with his clever magic long ago..." (in "The Road to Sovenarde") Modern Nords presumably know nothing about this, because they're just paler imperials with frost resistance instead of social skills. Nords have their own cultural history of magic, not just shouts (arguably not magic), but specifically the manipulation of Magicka, but nords hate magic now, I guess, and even the hardcore, xenophobic "skyrim for the nords" Stormcloaks probably couldn't name 3 Nord gods, even ones that are shared with the imperials under a different name like Kyne. They have come to embody every steryotype racist Dunmer in Morrowind attach to them, because the writers at bethesda refused to read any of the material in their own games.
Tl;dr: Nords hate magic, because committees of soulless bureaucrats can't make art.
@@DAethrys One of the mages on the College even offers enchanting services to the people and sends the dragonborn out to carry the things back and forth.
@@HappyBeezerStudios but if the arch mage dragon born asks him for enchanting services he just tells you to do it yourself.
You don't understand, I have to haul an entire alchemy supply warehouse around with me because if I don't buy out the entire store the alchemist can't afford to buy one of my potions.
Potion seller, I am going into battle and I need only your strongest potions
You can’t afford my strongest potions
Would have been great if the College of Winterhold questline centered around rebuilding Winterhold and bridging the divide both literally and figuratively between the natives and the mages.
that would’ve been 10x more interesting than the story we got
While everything you've said here is true, the similar points could be raised about EVERY SINGLE FACTION of skyrim.
Like to the point of actual absurdity.
1) Thieves Guild? Literally got robbed by their own master, blindly trusting him and claiming to know him for no reason.
2) The Companions? Proud cast of warriors, imbued by a dark pact of lycantropy with an eldritch god of hunt... who just allow some guys to enter the city and slaughter their boss. While being supremely armed, and in the literal center of main city hub of the region, just few steps next to the palace.
3) Dark Brotherhood? ONE SINGLE INSANE JESTER almost managed to assassinate their leader, when said leader was prepared and highly paranoid of him. Said leader also had a 200 iq idea of cutting the deal OF THE MAN WHOS SON IS MURDERED BY HER OWN COMMAND. The word "idiocy" doesn't even begin to cut it.
4) Vigilantes of Stendar? Ignored several warning about the vampires and got slaughtered in their own hall. I should remind you, that this is a faction who's main shtick is to FIGHT DAEDRA, LITERAL CREATURES FROM HELLISH DIMENSIONS. Icant-
5) Bardic College is non-entity, so i'm not even going to attempt talking about it.
6) The Blades first idea after barely re-establishing their base and begin the lengthy and painful process of rebuilding? Let's go kill that old-ass dragon patron OF THE MOST REVERENT FACTION IN ALL OF SKYRIM. Like what the actual, livid f*ck? The moment graybeards find that out, they don't even have to do anything, just cry murder. Such event could re-ignite civil war if it wasn't already burning bright.
7) The only faction who ISN'T that, is Dawnguard, but only IF you are playing for them. So you might as well consider them just plainly unfit for the challenge, if nothing else.
The reality is, there's only two ways of looking at it. Either Elder Scrolls world is just a cartoon filled with archetypal incompetency, or the lead writer of this flustercluck is just typewritter monkey.
And even ignoring mountains of evidence for the latter, i would still prefer to think it's just bad writing over "this is how things are in this world".
Luckily, Bethesda yet to implore the same "argument" that they used to demolish Fallout - "It always has been silly, don't you get it?".
*Yet.*
Honestly it has to be the writing. Skyrim as a game feels like an incomplete beta of what its supposed to be. The writing is not compelling, the RPG factor is mostly non-existent. The world isnt as immersive as it could be. It makes you wonder what they spent most of their time doing. The civil war arc isnt that spectacular. Skyrim deserved better.
@ I assume they spent most of the time on the "scale" of the world, the infamous "see that mountain? you could walk all the way...".
They also had release date set in stone - 11/11/2011. As a former game-dev myself, i can concretely say, that NOTHING is as devastating to the development of the game, as set in stone for arbitrary reasons release date.
Skyrim deserved better. TES deserved better. The only saving grace of this game is the existence of incomprehensibly talented modding community. Enderal is a shining example of that.
Well put 🙂If you've got a moment, how well would you rank Morrowind's factions in comparison? (and I know, Morrowind is a different game with different focus...)
To join the Oblivion mages guild, you have to travel to every single city and do a job for the mages there. Every single branch in every city has about as many different named characters as the entire College in Skyrim and they usually have more interesting characters too. You have to do a quest for every city guild, which already nets you more quests than the entire College does and they are much more varied and interesting.
Then, you get to join the Guild and actually start the Mage questline.
This is what people talk about when they say that Skyrim already was on a downward trend in terms of quality.
Not helping, when every protagonist of Elder Scrolls can manipulate time and fate
I remember only coming here to get more spell books to learn then leaving immediately. Can't have myself weighed down by knowledge I got stealth archer things to do
If Farengar was allowed to sell Adept, Expert, and Master spells, I wouldn't even bother joining
@@LibraritheWizardOfficial exactly
@LibraritheWizardOfficial i support my local mages not these scumbags that made winterhold somehow more shittier than Morthal
IMO the theme of skyrim is decay. Everything USED to be better, and now it's worse. Winterhold used to be a great city... then 90% of it fell into the ocean. The empire used to be great, and now it's a vassal of the Thalmor. The companions used to be noble warriors and now their werewolf mercenaries. The Blades are just an old man and the worst woman ever... Etc Etc.
Every faction is a terrible shell of what it's equivalents were in Morrowind and Oblivion... and that's purposeful. You're meant to see Skyrim as a failing country in need of rescuing.
all they had to do was make every floor of the arcaneum its own seperate building and put 10 or so random NPC students and it would’ve helped SO much
I have to admit that the College of Winterhold is definitely the most disappointing faction in the game. Allowing an obvious Thalmor spy to have any influence in a place like that is just asking for trouble. And just leaving the Eye of Magnus out for anyone to look at or mess with is just stupid as hell even without the obvious Thalmor spy in the mix. Having a place of learning for people gifted with magic is not a bad idea, but the way they run things at the college is just dumb.
Thieves guild too
@@manuelfuica-martineau4940 Yeah I knew there was something off about Mercer the first time I played the game. And Brynjolf claims to know what kind of person Mercer is? When he was the one talking about sizing people up? Never made any sense to me. As soon as you first meet Mercer he just comes off as a complete scumbag who would murder his own mother and sell her corpse to a necromancer for some extra cash.
@@Rendous that aside. I really hate how without mods. Becoming guildmaster and restoring it to its full glory is a long slog and tedious task.
Oh. And the members always treats you like trash even as their new boss who saved their asses
@ OMG yes! Those damn radiant quests! The mod I'm using for that is a must-have for every single new game that I play. I cannot join the Thieves Guild without that mod because that process is so freaking long and tedious without it because they decided to randomize which locations you need to go to. So dumb!
@@RendousThe Thieves Guild radiant quests (and to a lesser extent the Companions’) are actually the only case where I’d maybe go up to bat for them. The distinction being that they work for roleplaying the Thieves Guild being your job: I do feel more like I’m part of a guild when I’m getting jobs and getting paid for it. I can see them being a pain if all you want is the proper influence quests for Guildmaster (especially if you only have one left and just get no jobs for that hold), but even then I feel like there’s good justification for working up to that. The Companions radiants have some of these traits too, but aren’t handled nearly as well (in particular not doing the job of spacing out real quests clearly meant to be spaced out).
Keep in mind that I’m not advocating or defending radiant quests in general. I am highlighting one application-facilitating roleplay of a faction role as how your character makes their living-where I think they work. In practice, this isn’t how Bethesda tends to use them in the rest of Skyrim, let alone what came later. There’s a difference between “I’m taking on endless heist jobs because I’m part of a bandit guild and this is what we do” and some rando sending you on endless fetch quests when you have better stuff to do.
The College of Winterhold is one of the most immersive parts of Skyrim. It perfectly captures the energy you feel when attending a community college where maybe only three of the faculty are actually eligible to teach, and most of the students don't even really want to be there.
7:13 "And discover a bunch of students who have vanished and died in horrific fashion with no one really caring that much."
Going by the video you are referring to the batch of students who died in the Midden, involving the gauntlet shown at 7:15.
But there's also that other batch of students who went out into Skyrim to do independent studies and all died as well. The conjuration teacher mentions them to you, and you can find their bodies (identifiable by their personal possessions). Like, when you have to specify *which* group of students went missing and died horribly, you know you have problems.
And the students who went on independent studies are still warm, so they lost half their students so recently, one of the corpses is still glowing from the fire spell.
I interpreted it as the fire spell being way too hot that it was still burning in tht very cold, snowy area where the student went to experiment. @@HappyBeezerStudios
The College of Wintergold are the types of guys who would make a deal with Tzeentch or one of his Greater Daemon just to test out a new magic and end up creating a giant monster out of nowhere to tear up the region out of sheer negligence.
Lore changes I would make:
1. Nord Magic would be more Scientific oriented reflecting their Theology. (Jhunal)
2. If Nords are distrustal of Magic, it should be Non Jhunal magics.
3. Remove the Elitism of the College, instead the Mages would be Advisers to Jarls and Kings. Alongside being teachers to common folk.
4. Winterhold is not devasted, if anything it was damaged but protected.
5. The Jarl of Winterhold must be a high ranking Mage of the College.
6. The majority of Winterholds populace are well taught in magic.
7. Duelling Practices in Winterhold is Magic orientated.
8. The different Schools of Nord Magic would have differing Runes.
Lol convincing a hold of nords to practice magic😂
@@Angelo-nd4lg well if we remove devastation winterhold or at least significant mitigation of the event.. Then its possible.
Interesting and sensible lore??? Not in my Bethesda game!!!
Is the college really elite? "Prove you can cast a spell" seems like an easy entrance exam
A conflict between the College of Jhunal and the Imperial Mage's Guild would've been great.
Honestly, Skyrim really should've been about the civil war, with the native factions coming in conflict with their imperial equivalent. So the Stormcloaks oppose the Legion, the College opposes the Mage's Guild, the Companions oppose the Fighter's Guild, and something Stuhn inspired opposes the Thieves' guild.
I need his opinion on the stealth factions (brotherhood and thieves) because the biggest thing that bugs me about both of them is that they have uniforms while the others don’t. Very counter productive for stealth to wear something that eliminates anonymity.
The thing that always gets me is those magic anomalies attack winterhold, and Arniel just... punches them. Like, a college trained mage is like "attack this problem with spells? Nah, my uppercut can do it."
Ancient nord magic.
Allows to turn enemies unconscious and even makes one lose time.
He's a muscle wizard
The most ancient and basic magic spell of all time "Catch these Hands".
"I CAST FIST!!!" 😆
Hey I stand with my man Hamelyn, let the man build his rat army.
I particularly enjoyed the description of the augur of dunlain as a magic 8 ball
Winterhold's jail is just a cage "guarded" by frost atronachs. I'm sure the college had something to do with that. I believe the guards call it the chill.
All criminals need to chill.
J'zargo and Colette would've saved the day
"something something college irl same"
I’m inebriated as shit rn ang i got the notif on my phone, i just wanna say you have a very good voice for these kinds of videos
Same man same
Godspeed my good man
Hope you made it home safe.
@ I was already at home but thank you!
@@OneStrangeLittleFish Lol not you, silly. The drunken OP.
not even IMPERIAL respects magic.
during the mission to assassinate Gaius Maro, if we showed a magic trick like calm or oakflash to him, he'll say "a wizard. hmph. should have ban your kind long ago"
The Elder Scrolls hasn’t really gotten the whole magic faction thing totally right yet, but at least in previous games you actually felt like you needed to know/use some magic. You can beat the college of winterhold without even casting a single spell. I wonder how it will be in Hammerfell, another province known to be kinda hostile towards magic and all things magical
There is one point where afire spell needs to hit a door.
But that spell neither needs to come from the player, nor cast by hand. So any aggro'd NPC with a staff in the room could do it.
10:30 - Come on, that's a bit unfair. I'm sure we've all, at some point in our lives, helped a future serial killer attain magical powers required to revive his sister from the dead. It happens, ok.
You think the College of Winterhold is bad? You should see Hogwarts. They do things like send 11 year-olds into a dark forest to hunt down monsters, allow students to bully others at their leisure even to the point of allowing ethnic slurs to be thrown around with death threats, allow children to play a super dangerous sport without the permission of their parents, and keep all the students in the school instead of informing parents and guardians so they can take their kids home when a mysterious chamber opens and some monster begins petrifying students.
And I could go on and on. That school is a bloody deathtrap! No halfway decent adults would ever let their children attend!
youre makink an assumption that mages in Harry potter universe are:
1) decent people;
2) sane and have common sense.
Said monster also supposed to KILL students. The fact that in second book nobody dies is purely by chance of not meeting the killer gaze directly, only via proxy.
it’s a posh british boarding school. frankly i’m surprised worse stuff didn’t happen to the students
To be fair, the 7 years when Harry Potter is there are unusually action-packed and dangerous, there aren't giant snakes and murderous dark wizards running around all the time. Iirc in Chamber of Secrets they say that the ministry was going to shut down the school before someone is killed and some students were taken home by their parents so there clearly are limits even if they are beyond what would be acceptable IRL.
When it comes to the broom sport (I forgot what it's called in English), I imagine they have some sort of failsafe magics cast on the players so they aren't killed if they fall off the broom, in which case it isn't more dangerous than some real life sports like American football (and I don't think you need parential permission to play football IRL)
@@Treasure_hunter_21
I never said that I thought either of those things. You know why Lily Potter was the only person who ever protected her child from the killing curse with the magic of her love? Because no other parent in Harry Potter loves their children, that's why!
The comedic timing of an ad for some quacko health remedy right before you were about to say the word "Restoration" (around 2:35 or so) sent my sides into Aetherius
Compared to this, the monastery of 3H is fucking Harvard
6:14 that's a good question. With all of the other problems I have with the college questline and the way magic works in general in Skyrim compared to previous elder scrolls games, it slipped my mind that Winterhold was a Stormcloak city. Ancano isn't a particularly powerful mage on his own, how'd he make it to the college alive?
Winterhold doesn't have as much military presence as some of the other Stormcloak cities, he probably ran into some resistance, but not enough to be an issue. They likely never pursued him at the gates. They probably thought pursuing him beyond the gates would draw the ire of the mages. It's funny, imagining stormcloaks requesting they hand Ancano over and the college mages, who also hate him, just giving him up.
@@nicholasmorgan7609nah, Bethesda just didn't bother to think about it. 3/4 of things are like this in skyrim. Devs just didn't bother to analize their shitty writing.
@@Atok1111 obviously, just doing some mental gymnastics for fun
@@Atok1111 I shall dub this Pagliarulo's Razor
How long has Ancano been there...
I was just there today, Installed the Winterhold city expansion, My PC is burning.
Magic in elder scrolls make magic in dragon age look like a tea party, since one screw up or intended action brings a 200 foot demon into the world you can stop without a dragonborn sacrifice, where in dragon age a city can blow up with little killable demons spawn afterwards
10:45 lmao at the thought falion simply thought the college was "cringe" and left
great video
Seemed weird when they made me the Archmage, me being a warrior and all...
you know it’s a shit show when my nord barbarian build w heavy armor and warhammer was arch mage after a few hours
I wish theyll return attributes and attribute requirments for joining and advancing in guilds.
They want the player to be able to complete every faction quest on one character because a lot of people don't play the game more than once. Don't expect to see skill or attribute requirements return in the next game
@@exantiuse497I don’t even expect it to be good.
@@exantiuse497 it's fucking sucks. It's funny considering how much replaye value there is in skyrim only because of mods.
"I want everything to be completed in one single playthrough, I don't have time to play games!" This is the actual argument most people make when you suggest that, as if we who like actual RPGs don't have a job
@ 👍
I totally agree, but it also left room for modders to make some of the most amazing overhaul mods ever for it. My heavily modded college actually feels like a haven for mages and I love it, I also have a majorly huge expansion to the Midden. I love the loop of doing some research and sitting in on a class or two before I delve into the Midden and explore it till late at night. Then I gotta get back to my room, gotta get to sleep and catch those classes in the morning 💯
With a storm cloak victory the college could be moved to the old thalmor embassy which would serve as a much better location for the practice of magic.
ah yes the great college that has…. 2 identical dorms and 1 lecture hall/library
how is this place operating w 3 students?
You may knock restoration all you like but that healing has saved my horker ass on MORE than one occassion.
So yes, Restoration is indeed a valid school of magic.
Especially great for a non-wizard.
Even if you're not trained in the arts, having a simple healing spell can save your dungeoneering. It has no carry weight, and you're not using that magicka for anything else anyway.
Thanks for making your next video!
looking forward to it hearthguy!
im so excited for it !!
HI AEGIS
I blame you for this.
@@TheHearthGuy😇
Does anyone else get Discworld Unseen university vibes from this lot? I think the members of the two organisations would really enjoy a meet and greet considering they have a similar level of (in)competence. As well as a pension for ignoring safety standards and generally causing problems. While it wasn't the Unseen university wizards, I could totally see the College of Winterhold crew try to fix a drought by creating their own rain cloud only to find out it's too heavy after they hurled it off the roof. Likely causing property damage and a hilarious bit of bodily injury in the process when it fell on Winterhold due to someone deciding to give it a magical push.
Why yes, I would like to watch my 20th video about how bad College of Winterhold is.
It is also funny that Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind has the most competent guilds for magic.
Meanwhile the Mages Guild in Oblivion is just outright horrifyingly bad (And they are supposed to be the Seat of Rules and Regulations of Magic in all of Tamriel), so it is no surprise that the college in Skyrim is bad.
We can’t be locked in their bathroom because there's no bathroom.
9:20 Jzargo could probably figure it out if given the same opportunities as the dragon born, he’s kinda built different
He’d prolly ask the college for unlimited access to everything and the position of archmage, thus becoming a greater threat to Tamriel than Ancano ever was through his relentless pursuit of destruction
J'zargo: Hey, can I have magical powers beyond mortal comprehension?
College: Only a spoonful.
*J'zargo proceeds to pull out a comically large spoon*
My idea for rebuilding the city of Winterhold (which happens after the following goles have bean reached 1: finish the college story and become the archmage. 2: finish the civil war, which side only changes which Jarl you talk to and how some people act around you or what clothes and armour others wear. 3: become Thane of Winterhold) involves the Jarl asking you to aid it its rebuilding as you have the funds, connections and the ability to help people the city after all the trouble caused during the story, and with, feeling even if the collage didn't cause the collapse, it still put the people in danger whith the Eye, so you gather a bunch of new characters to help rebuild the city and allow some soldiers to study magic to aid in future conflicts wile having a representative of the Stormcloaks or Legion keep an eye on everything, the Jarl gets a new castle to live in, a new stair case is constructed to allow people to get to the sea for traid and fishing, you get the old Jarl's house as a new home and a housecarl who's one of the characters you meet.
Nice idea, but:
1) The Current Jarl is actually right, the college did sink most of winterhold into the sea (see: Malyn Varen's Grimoire)
2) The Jarl and his family will absolutely not work with you should you don the mantle of Arch Mage; they're far too deep in their hatred of the College to even entertain the idea.
@billy65bob I just checked the book, it says absolutely nothing about the College being responsible for the collapse, I checked it and I double-checked it and still nothing, and even if you reveal your intentions to join the college, the Stormcloak Jarl still interacts with you and still makes you a Thane, so your points are moot at best.
@ Read the last paragraph carefully:
We had been conducting a few minor experiments before our exile, *some of which led to the disruption of the island,* [...].
I interpret that to mean the peak where the College rests.
@billy65bob if that's the case the the college itself would have fallen, it still doesn't prove anything.
What sort of characters, and are any other rewards?
There's a bunch of necromancers in Illinalta's deep (you go there as part of Azura's Quest). The journal of the head guy there pretty much explicitly confirms them as exiles from the college, and they were exiled for the crime of sinking most of winterhold into the sea (the Jarl was right!), and you cannot bring that up with anyone!
It's the worst thing about Bethesda, they have crafted these tools that are perfectly tailored to making amazing RPG worlds, but they just fail at exercising any of its potential.
Are you sure about that? I've played Skyrim several times and I don't recall that piece of lore. If you are right it has huge implications for the Lore.
I have no option other than go and see it myself.
Figured that out immediately after talking to the Archmage 😅
people argue over what actually caused winterhold to fall into the sea, but it wasn't a storm that washed over the region that did it or red mountain. it was from godd that came a wave of laziness and lack of ambition or passion that destroyed winterhold. it drowned winterhold in such apathy that the city couldn't even be bothered to exist and so as if it zero-summed, it never did. the college managed to survive but only by sacrificing most of magic itself.
"I'd hate magic too if the equivalent of a frat house with lightning fingers was hanging out on the corner of the map" sums up why people hate AI pretty well actually
Winterhold College: The Arch mage is a Barbarian class. LOLs
You do have to understand mages are just like that, though.
The Bretons are some of the least insane magic-aligned groups and they literally tore TIME ITSELF a new one SEVEN TIMES, SIMULTANEOUSLY, by controlling an ARTIFICIAL GOD.
The same artificial god that, just to recap, had by then:
-Been created by the Dwemer using the heart of the dead god of Nirn itself
-Qualified as a Tower. (Deep lore stuff.)
-Promptly bluescreened the Dwemer when they tried to activate it.
-Been used by the Tribunal, not long after witnessing the Dwemer disappear themselves, to become living gods. This would ultimately doom their rule and lose Azura's favor.
-Been used by Tiber Septim to conquer Tamriel, found the second empire, and make him a god. (This, too, ripped Akatosh a new one.)
-All of these are very strongly connected. In the case of the Dwemer, these outcomes are all fairly predictable, expected, even, and in the case of the Tribunal and users following, the thing had already been used before.
With all this in mind, is it any surprise that this thing would see at least one more use attempt? We've only seen the Eye of Magnus once, and it was only misused by a deranged Elf-stapo official. The Eye was nothing; weaksauce, even.
excited to see your thoughts on xander :)
HI SUN
I experienced a bug with tolfir where I had my ward raised for like... a second cause ward spells are INCREDIBLY, and STUPIDLY expensive on Magicka, so he still thought somehow it was up, then proceded to target and kill me. One of the "wisest" (heavy quotes there) magic teachers in skyrim just casually killing their student thinking they still have their ward up...
The collage is one of the most insane places where replacing the leader with a brain dead barbarian who hits people he doesn't like... Would be considered an improvement.
Which is saying something considering the thieves guild is pretty messed up and the assassin guild has its own mess of crazy problems.
I get in and my first class is livefire like what the heck even Harry Potter waited a class or two to tods a spell at a guy
Just today I was pondering that everyone is born with at least a small measure of Magicka, but you don't see anyone using it apart from those who are clearly studying the discipline for its own sake. That seems weird, but I guess the gatekeepers are really effective at this ONE thing.
Everyone is born with muscles, but not everyone goes to the gym. Same principle.
Besides, I don't think most people would genuinely have enough magicka to cast anything useful. I imagine most mages are either descended from the Aldmeri (Altmer, Breton, etc.) or were born under magic related birthsigns such as: the Mage, the Apprentice, and the Atronach.
"Thanks to you Ancano has been stopped and WInterhold is saved! YOU will be the next Archmage!"
"My brother in Talos, i'm a bruiser clad in dragon bones, i've only cast 3 spells in my whole life and i joined the college YESTERDAY!"
The Auger of Dunlaine’s unused in-game model is a half-hagraven and he could have something to do with the Great Collapse.
for the xander video i know you're DYING to make
HI EZE
@@dimsumboi420_ HI DIMSUMBOI420_ ARE YOU ALSO EAGERLY AWAITING THE VIDEO ??
@@ezephryix YES HIT TH-cam USER EZEPHRYIX I AM EAGERLY AWAITING THIS NEW HIT THEHEARTHGUY VIDEO
The best part is, that the Dragonborn can become archmage by using apprentice spells. That should say everything,
So skyrim is what dragonage would be without Templars. Maybe they are right
the College feels like it needed more than a few quests to make more sense. how long does it take for the Dragonborn to finish every quest BEFORE the Ancano fight? a week? maybe less? there's no real sense of progression, the closest thing we get to a test or maybe even a graduation are the "Ritual Quests" unlocked by reaching lvl 90 in a certain school, but even then, it's theoretically possible to get them the moment one finishes the first quest. at least it has lectures... well, one per teacher, almost, not really. honestly, my 2 main drives of going there are to get more spells that I'll never use and complete my quest journal
There's a reason the College is one of the few places in the game I feel no guilt or reticience in stealing from.
It seems like they make anyone who shows up and solves the puzzle rooms their archmagus leader, so...
As someone who mostly just wonders around randomly finding things that I can kill while trying to avoid the things that can kill me and therefore knows next to nothing about any of the quests, I still found this highly amusing.
I’d love to see one of these for each hold or faction. This is a great video!
Te companions talking trash after you’ve completed the civil war and the main quest line bugs me. “I’ve never even heard of this outsider” Shut up Vilkas, yes you have. The bards have. I was here in your city guarding the gates as you were being bombed. Milk-drinking werewolf.
If it’s a college then where’s all the beer pong tables? Why’d they build a massive stone tower in a horrible area instead of larger single story facilities. The tower might be ok but it’s so skinny. Towers are hard it just doesn’t make sense from an engineering or economic or strategic military standpoint.
it was built into a city, there was no room to spread sideways.
The older games had more schools of magic like Thaumaturgy and Mysticism but Bethesda has dumbed everything down.
I accidentally spit some of my copenhagen out when he said "old as sin" haha
I mean there is one good thing about going to college of winterhold and that it is free. imagine going to college put you into crippling debt.
Windhelm is the only city in Skyrim with the most Altmer who aren't directly related.
A lot of people give bethesda shit for cutting mysticism, but i don't really care since it was always a poorly defined school whose spells were shifted to and from it even before it was removed. Not to mention that you can feasibly move every single spell that was in that category into another one (assuming you didn't just remove half of them). Also because classifying magic is always hard, especilly when you try to game-ify it with stat boosts for particular schools, even though it really wouldn't make sense why a mage who can turn their skin into rock (oakflesh & similar) would be inept at turning the air in front of them into a barrier (ward spells). Though if you want a truly terrible example at classifying magic, just look at D&D. In fact, classifying magic into a single category is super hard anyways, and many spells could be justified into requiring a mix of skills to pull off (telekenisis is alteration, but shooting other projectiles is destruction?).
oh well, i'll just tack on another 50 mods to fix it, and hope that elder scrolls 6 doesn't just remove magic alltogether and replace it with dragon shouts 2: electric boogaloo
Unpopular opinion: All guild quest lines are bad in Oblivion and Skyrim. I never played Morrowind, but in Daggerfall I recall you join a guild, you do grunt work until you get noticed. None of this, "Oh, I joined the mage's guild. Let's do a quest... *Three hours later* Oh look at that, I'm the arch mage."
Becoming the AM in Morrowind involved a lot of questing for your various superiors as you slowly ascended the ranks, it also required you to level up the appropriate skills and attributes to even progress the rank though that wasn't particularly difficult to do.
A large part of the problem with the college of winterhold is actually the fact that skyrim doesn't have a magic system. A game like 2 worlds 2 has a magic system, skyrim just doesn't. The system it does have is more of a first person shooter system, with the ability to also activate certain combat stimulants and flashier health potions. The most magical thing they have is probably the summoning, which to be fair does allow you to summon up to a mighty 2 fellows, and is very useful, but realistically the same approach could be achieved by just rousing up a local village and leading a team of a hundred warriors wherever you want to go. The game doesn't let you do that but the point is that, in terms of giving a "magical" feeling, you can't make something magic just because you don't allow something mundane.
For example, if you made it impossible to sit down, and then made a "sit down" spell, it would not constitute a magic system. It would just constitute a very convoluted movement system. Whether it cost mana points would be redundant.
The worst thing though is the fact that theres no level of knowledge that matters. Firebolt has better mana:damage efficiency than all other similar attacks, but lightning bolt is easier to aim with, and neither of them have any possibility of variety.
The thing that is necessary for a magic system to thrive is for you to be able to feel like doing experiments upon live test subjects would be worth while. What I mean by that is that you should be able to have a spell crafting system that is limited by 4 things: skill, magic power, knowledge and resources. Skill should come from correctly assigning your skill points or from completing challenges, or just through a combo-based system (thought thats not necessarily always great for magic). Magic power should come from how you assign your attribute points, and using fortification effects on your magic points related attribute. Knowledge should be useful because two combinations of things should sometimes create something different (like perhaps a normal combination of elements will create just a blast of multiple elements, but using a particular order and combination of the right elements and effects would create a resurrection spell). Then, a college could teach you about useful spell combinations, but hide dangerous ones for higher tier or exclusively the highest tier of mages.
Due to there not being a magic system, a magic college can only be cool via its quest line and the games innate combat system. If skyrim did have a magic system, that'd be very cool too.
I give College of Winterhold a lot of slack. Besides the Thieves Guild. At least we see the college try to perform its duties and slowly fix its reputation.
Based off the books and questions i did for them, my head cannon is Savos was trying to fix his past mistakes. Which were huge.
And thats the only reason the Thalmor agent got as far as he did. Time ran out for the old boy.
The worst thing is they clearly know how to write competent wizards. Master Neloth? Now that’s an elf I wouldn’t mess with.
Great video, love the humorous way you put into words the way I have always felt about the mage college. And I mean, is every fictional magical place of learning an absolute shithole/circus? Hogwarts, the clocktower, the dragon age one, etc.
I'd say the Psijic Order (spelling?) is a proper college but... if anything it's The Elder Scrolls' own SCP Foundation.
"Discount Dumbledore" im 💀🤣.
Well obviously they are the red headed step child of Mage colleges. They are literally squatting in the ruins of a big self inflicted magical "Oopsie", in the worst corner of a land where mages are seen as wimpy milk drinkers. Funding has been inexistent for decades, mortality rate among students is about as high as Hogwarts and the only applicants are weirdos and wackos. Hell, if you want to learn magic you might as well go and hang out with the Foresworn, they seem to be at least competent...
They wish they had the mortality rate of Hogwarts.
There are three "former" students that you can find across the area, one of them still burning.
When you arrive the class consists of three students, meaning the college had lost 50% of it's students just within the current month.
Plus the guy who left, but not without raiding the library.
In the Archmage's defence, things DID sort themselves out in the end. It just took the Dragonborn rocking up and doing all the hard work, then taking over the school, all (in my case, at least) without casting a single spell beyond the bare minimum and without using any magic at all beyond having made and enchanted their own gear.
The College of Winterhold questline feels like an entirely separate DLC.
The college wasn’t always incompetent. During the first era they were the capital city of Skyrim and the most impressive magic faction on Tamriel.
Seriously though, this is a good presentation. I was locked in the whole time.
there should have been a quest to help out the town of Winterhold. like attempt to restore it back to a functional town. the mages seem to be rich in resources and funds.
One of the big problems here is one common to all Todd Howard designs: it's minuscule and rushed.
You join any group, and it doesn't take more than 2 quests max for you to be revealed as their savior of prophecy, there is no development and involvement.
For the College, the lack of size means there are no large classrooms with many students, and the lack of time means there is no actual learning to understand the lore and experiment. Hey, here's an idea:
Inject SPELLCRAFTING in the College's curriculum. But make it gradual and involved, and absolutely forbidden and harder outside of the College - Spellcrafting should depend heavily on material from the Arcanaeum for reference, meaning you can try Spellcrafting outside, but there's nearly no material outside and the game HAS TO REQUIRE SOURCE MATERIAL. Can't just start a new game, find a Spellcrafting Study, and cook up a Hellstorm Ritual just because you've read the recipe out-of-game.
After a few missions that could be accomplished with as little magic as using one beginner level scroll, these absolute morons elect my chatacter, who doesn't use magic at all and has no clue about it, as their leader. I think this speaks the most of their incompetence.
My guy, you're criminally undersubscribed, this is high level content!