So there I was, looted up to the gills and feeling somewhat triumphant at clearing Knifepoint Ridge of its myriad bandits and, in the process, retrieving
some lost item for
someone. As my eyes adjusted to the blood-orange hue of the setting sun, I could see commotion off in the distance. Making my way to a vantage point overlooking the affair, I found a host of bandits in battle with Legion soldiers.
“That’s not my fight,” I said to myself and decided to head off in the other direction. Unfortunately I came across a bear who aggressively pursued both myself and my adventuring partner, Lydia, so that we ran right back into the thick of the aforementioned battle. Wolves also soon joined the fight and things became pretty messy.
Our petty struggles, however, were majestically overshadowed, literally, by the onset of a
dragon. The huge winged beast blocked out the sun on its first pass overhead, and the battlefield stopped as if frozen in time.
Both man and beast alike stood rigid before the dragon’s presence, and when it landed at the centre of our fighting stage with an enormous thud, a single unyielding cry of camaraderie erupted throughout the combatants; no longer fighting each other, but this hulking ancient creature whose return to the land of Skyrim has left its denizens in a state of uncertain despair at what the future may hold.
Once slain, the previously occupied field of battle was now littered only with corpses, man and beast alike. The dragon’s flesh burned instantly from its skeleton, and its essence entered me, powering “The Way of the Voice” - an ordained gift that has long been lost to the world of Skyrim, and man’s only true weapon against the dragons, according to the old legends.
The sun set and I made my way to Half-Moon Mill to settle in for the night, empowered in the knowledge that tomorrow I would be one ancient, powerful dragon soul closer to taking Skyrim back for my Nord race and saving it from the onslaught of the dragons. It would be a good day.
The above really is just a few minutes out of my some 40-odd hours with Skyrim prior to posting this review, and like pretty much any Bethesda Game Studios game, said 40 hours really just isn’t enough. You don’t
play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you
experience it. And experience it, I have.
Honestly, there just aren’t any games in the videogame landscape that even come close to this, save for the games the team have made prior. And scope aside, even they’re at a stretch to keep up.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is, in my humble opinion, a perfect game. It’s the first game in nearly 14 years as a videogame journalist I’ve ever given a perfect score to, and despite its flaws (of which there are a few), it delivers on so many varying and engaging levels, it really is unparalleled. Simple things like moving from one destination to another quickly become a day-long event in the real-world, because you’re constantly peaking over each knoll, tree-line or riverbed to make out whatever it is that’s invariably caught your periphery. Moreover, almost all of these points of interest become major moments in the game, from a player’s perspective, in that whether or not they have anything to do with the main quest-line is irrelevant. What matters is the exploratory experience, and this is something Skyrim has in absolute spades.
The best way to express any of this though, is to simply relay the event. One of the best non-spoiler examples I could muster came in the way of talking to a priest in the town of Falkreath who was conducting a burial in the town’s graveyard -- the biggest graveyard Skyrim has to offer, apparently.
Talking to him lead to me asking the others at the service what they were there for, and it turns out a little girl who’d not yet “seen her 11th winter” had been ferociously attacked and mutilated by a man who was now being held in the town’s jail, located in the barracks. That’s it. There was no quest-line given, no on-screen prompt to do anything save for a tantalising piece of information: said murderer was locked up. I decided to investigate further. Upon doing this, I learnt that the man suffered an infliction many of you know as werewolvism, and that there was a chance I could help cure him of his burden and maybe, just maybe, bring some relative justice to the young girl’s death. The rest of the tale, I actually cannot tell you for pure spoiler reasons. But I can tell you it’s not even remotely clear cut and dry; you’re forced to think for yourself and the characters around you, and make decisions that will impact the whole affair. And this is just one small example.
If you’ve played either Oblivion or Fallout 3 though, you know that this is what Bethesda do best. They tell stories from
your perspective. But what’s really changed since 2005? We played the game on Xbox 360 in an effort to get it early, but even on this ageing platform it looks amazing. Given there’s so much world streaming at once, alongside so much action in both what you can see on-screen and the algorithmic behind-the-scenes department, it’s an amazing feat in an of itself Skyrim even runs on a console to be honest. But it does, and does well.
The game-world around you is infinitely more detailed than either of the team’s last efforts, thanks in large part to experience first, and the new Creation Engine second. On Xbox 360 there was still minor amounts of pop-up and even a little slow-down here and there, but much of these issues can be optimised by doing a full HDD install. Otherwise, PC players with a decent set-up (likely most of you post-Battlefield 3) are definitely going to get the best visual representation of the game. Animations are also much better, as we’ve discussed in the past, thanks to the team opting for Havok’s Behaviour animation system, but I will say they’re still not quite where they need to be, but it’s definitely enough for me that I’ve switched out of playing the game in the first-person for third-person.
On a fundamental level, you don’t really have a character screen to check out anymore. You’re now managing yourself through three basic menus: Magic, Level Up and Items. Level up takes you to a celestial HUD where you can apply new perks to your character, and level him or her up in either Magic, Health or Stamina. It’s wonderfully streamlined, but still carries with it a large amount of depth. This is also managed through in-action use of certain abilities. So, using your bow, for example, will incrementally increase your Archery skill, then each time you level up, you’re allowed one Perk point to add to any skill-tree from either Warrior, Thief or Wizard nebulae. However, perk points will require a certain level for whatever skill it is you’re attempting to perk, which encourages players who like to play a certain way to focus on directing their growth in the appropriate areas, as opposed to arbitrarily adding points to areas you wouldn’t normally use.
A lot of this has been lifted from Fallout 3, though I’d argue it’s a far better system in Skyrim, given you have a greater sense of character growth and player-choice. But there’s also still enough fresh from Oblivion that it’s not completely alien. It’s like they essentially took the best of both worlds and married them together, then amplified the experience by allowing things like dual-wielding with magic and weapons, and then combinations of both. Then of course, there are shouts.
Shouts were revealed to us earlier in the year by Bethesda out at the BFG event AusGamers attended, and at the time we learnt that there would be something in the vicinity of 12 or so shouts, each with three tiers or progression. At the time that seemed like a really small amount for such a huge game, but in my play-time I’ve only learnt three in total, and only one of those has the second tier unlocked. You will come across dragons often, which means you can stockpile your dragon souls to empower shouts down the track, but actually learning or expanding shouts is a feat not easily accomplished, and like so much of the rest of the game, will take you some serious time to conquer.
The level cap, as we’ve revealed before, has been lifted to 50, and at the time of writing this review, with my 40-odd hours under my belt, I was only sitting at 17. I’ve also discovered a lot of the world-map, but I’d venture it’s well under 50 percent, and I’ve rarely even looked at the game’s main quest line. There’s just so much to do. You can travel with companions from the game’s early goings, buy houses and kit them out (replete with bookshelves to actually place individual books upon), buy horses and even find, rescue, recruit or buy dogs to aid you. If you’re versed in conjuring, you can also bring to life a Familiar or maybe a Fire Atronoch alongside your companion and dog. Hell, even your horse will fight for you. It’s just that complex, but there are no specific systems in place. You don’t need to overtly follow a set of rules in order to gain someone at your side or by your heel, it’s player-choice at its absolute best.
And the truth is, that’s what Skyrim boils down to: player-choice. The world shifts and dances around you; day and night, rain and sun, snow and blizzard, but how you choose to interact with it will shape your game and your destiny. That what you have available to do within the game-world is so compelling is an added bonus to the freedom at-hand, but these things would be nothing if your hands were tied to a specific gameplay agenda, and Skyrim does little in the way of telling you what to do or how to play. The game’s base setting and the amount of content available for you to
discover is its strongest point, and you’d be hard-pressed finding any other game on the market now, or even in the near-future, that can match what’s here.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a game that will keep hardened gamers playing for months, maybe longer if Bethesda’s expected DLC is anything to go by, and right now I can’t see myself walking away from the game with anything less than 200 hours of gameplay under my belt. For newcomers, it’s an amazing entry point because it doesn’t force the series’ lore down your throat and has a streamlined interface that’s easy to manage, but difficult to master (you can also just brush up on said lore through the game’s massive library of game-world books). And it’s easily the best looking and feeling of the developer’s lineage and just a thrill to play, really. I can’t sell it much more than that.
If you can only buy one game this holiday season and want your absolute money’s worth, there’s no looking past what is arguably the industry benchmark for sandbox and emergent gameplay, with player-choice at its helm - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. A work of sheer genius.
Posted 09:29am 11/11/11
Posted 09:31am 11/11/11
Posted 09:32am 11/11/11
Posted 09:33am 11/11/11
Posted 09:57am 11/11/11
Posted 10:03am 11/11/11
Game crashed at startup over and over, but if you downgrade windows speaker settings it works, for some reason.
A little bit in, story/gameplay/design are all pretty good. Dual wielding is awesome. Trawling through s***loads of cups and stuff on desks for the ones with the highest value is classic elder scrolls...
PC migration has s***** mouse responsiveness and the UI is a pain. Can't exit menus with escape (just opens up another layer of menus over the top). For some reason the 'favourite' key doesn't seem to work consistently, and the only way to drop things seems to be to favourite them, then unfavourite them, which always drops them for some reason. There is a drop key, but it does nothing. The mouse on the UI is an imprecise pain, better to just use the arrows since it's made for a controller.
Performance is really good. Load times are pretty fast.
-----------
edit: When looting, I can't figure out how to exit the screen unless I loot all (not an option if nothing's there), or change the camera? Anybody else know how to do this? Am I just noobing it up??
Posted 10:03am 11/11/11
Posted 10:05am 11/11/11
Posted 10:13am 11/11/11
Posted 10:16am 11/11/11
Posted 10:17am 11/11/11
Posted 10:23am 11/11/11
Posted 10:25am 11/11/11
That would be why Nerf. My default keys are tab is journal, R is drop, E is take.
Posted 10:37am 11/11/11
I'll give it a go for sure.
Posted 10:44am 11/11/11
Change camera
Exit Menu
Favourite (by virtue of being the change camera key)
----
Spells are far better in this iteration, more magicka-like where you can go nuts making flamethrowers and combinations.
Posted 10:49am 11/11/11
Posted 10:50am 11/11/11
Posted 10:55am 11/11/11
Posted 10:59am 11/11/11
Dead Island has MP.
Posted 11:06am 11/11/11
Posted 11:06am 11/11/11
Posted 11:13am 11/11/11
Posted 11:14am 11/11/11
lol, yeah but Dead Island lost some review points when it won the award for "Best Butchering of an Australian Accent in a Video Game"
Posted 11:24am 11/11/11
Posted 11:29am 11/11/11
GMG may get my monies yet >< Are the GUI issues (consolisms?) workaroundable or is it a controller works best deal>
Posted 11:30am 11/11/11
PC control problems are pretty annoying though, and the 3rd person switch is often non-responsive for some reason.
Posted 11:32am 11/11/11
Might get back into it tomorrow but I can't see myself finishing it.
Posted 11:34am 11/11/11
Can't wait till exams are over so I can just sit and enjoy it.
Posted 11:45am 11/11/11
And because you can do this
Posted 11:49am 11/11/11
Don't get so hung up on the numbers think of it as a five star game if that makes it easier. Its not saying "This game is technically perfect in every aspect and has every feature ever", its saying, as an experience, the game is f*****g awesome and lives up to all of its potential and then some.
Posted 11:51am 11/11/11
Posted 11:57am 11/11/11
Skyrim's review according to the AGN rating system means that it is better than almost any other game ever released, doesn't it? How else are we to interpret it when BF3 gets a 9.8 or whatever it was?
Posted 12:05pm 11/11/11
As per usual, you take reviews as one person's opinion. And you always reserve the right to disagree, I just happen to think this game won't be topped for gameplay in a very, very long time.
Posted 12:08pm 11/11/11
Posted 12:09pm 11/11/11
You can't compare every game with each other and you also can't really compare different reviews in a single publication with each other either because they generally written by a variety of people with a variety of tastes and a review is an opinion afterall.
Posted 12:10pm 11/11/11
Posted 12:16pm 11/11/11
Posted 12:18pm 11/11/11
Posted 12:21pm 11/11/11
prolly gonna buy this game tonight.. was gonna wait till the price came down but f*** it, i wanna shoot some arrows at monsters @!#!@ :D
Posted 12:24pm 11/11/11
But thats like saying whats better, an awesome piece of cake, or an awesome pizza? You can't really compare the two, and it comes down to personal opinion a lot of the time anyway. If you like cake, then you're probably going to take the cake, if you like pizza then you're probably going to go with the pizza. If you like both, well then you have a dilemna on your hands! Or you'll just buy them both and get fat. Ok, might have stretched the metaphor too far now.
Posted 12:26pm 11/11/11
Please never become a game dev.
Posted 12:27pm 11/11/11
The score compares the products by default. A 10/10 game is comparable to a 5/10 game, otherwise what is the point of a score?
Maybe Ausgamers needs to pioneer a new system that doesn't have traditional scoring (and I'm not talking carrots). A 10/10 is a perfect game, it cannot possibly be any better, you can't have 10.1/10
Posted 12:31pm 11/11/11
I actually agree with Rev, the controls could be more fluid, and WoW is an example of an amazingly fluid pc experience with super flexibility. Can spin around the camera while running and everryyythingg.
Posted 12:31pm 11/11/11
get it off GMG for $54
Posted 12:32pm 11/11/11
Posted 12:33pm 11/11/11
I don't see how its our fault for comparing scores when they are posted on the website .... if you don't want people to eat your bread then don't bake it ?!
Posted 12:33pm 11/11/11
To give you a quick at-a-glance indicator of the quality of the game? Why is everyone so hung up on it being an absolute scale and comparing every game with every other game. At the very least, limit it to comparing to games within the same genre, but I wouldn't even go that far, I'd say just compare it to itself. Compare the real, released version of Skyrim to ideal "The best Skyrim experience I could want". Does the reality match up to the dream? Does it surpass it? Thats what a 10/10 means to me.
Posted 12:38pm 11/11/11
Posted 01:07pm 11/11/11
Posted 01:30pm 11/11/11
Because its there. Because its a metric, and metrics invite comparison.
You don't personally see it that way but lots of people see it differently obviously. If there was a 5-star system where every game that was over 9.5 in the current system received a 5 star rating we wouldn't have this discussion because the system would be doing what its apparently supposed to (the quick glance summary thing). You could even add a special gold stamp or something if the reviewer thought it was GOTY material.
Instead we have games ranked all the way from 9.5 to 10.0 via a decimal scale which as noted invites comparison and discussion. Its easy for AGN to stop publishing reviews with 0.1 difference if they don't like what that does, but being frustrated at the readers of the site for wondering (not ranting, just wondering and discussing) why one game gets 9.7 and another gets 10.0 seems silly to me.
Posted 01:29pm 11/11/11
Posted 01:32pm 11/11/11
If it is an arbitrary system, why bother using numbers or a scale of 0-10? Why not just say it is a superb game, an excellent game, bit of a dud and so forth? I would think that if the numbers don't really mean anything, why not use something that does?
Posted 01:34pm 11/11/11
Posted 01:35pm 11/11/11
This is already far better than Oblivion, the imperials are the imperials again, and not same lame generic fantasy knights. :D
Posted 01:36pm 11/11/11
I entirely, 100% agree. This same argument comes up in nearly every single review, and I've agreed with it in the past. But numbers from 1 to 10, or a percentage out of 100 is what we have, so I work with it.
Posted 01:50pm 11/11/11
Just bought the f*****g thing.
Will be back later tonight / tomorrow to rage about controls on PC. Maybe someone can do that photoshop pavey was talking about :P
Edit: actually I didn't buy it, GMG website f***ed up and took the money but didn't respond to the paypal url so I didn't get a key. FFS. Rageface.
Posted 01:43pm 11/11/11
Name me one other art form graded numerically. It is a stupid system. Star ratings if you must, otherwise an entertaining informative discourse on the subject would be better.
Now, onto skyrim, I played morrowind an awful, awful lot and oblivion for about 3 hours before I realised I didn't give a s***.
With that in mind, will I like skyrim? Opinions please.
Posted 01:52pm 11/11/11
The uselessness of a score, or a review for that matter, is that it is entirely subjective and people have different opinions on things that are "good" and "bad" when it comes to art (or anything else in which things like goodness and badness are completely subjective things and there's no actual quantitative way of measuring them).
The fact that this game got 10/10 for me here or anywhere else is utterly useless to me, because the game for me is a zero - or probably more accurately, it would be "N/A" - because the game doesn't have multiplayer and I am really only interested in multiplayer games. The score, and the review, reflects one person's judgement on the game.
Posted 01:52pm 11/11/11
Seriously, the only people who will care if game A gets 9.x and game b gets 9.y are the folks in marketing or the industry. These forums and many others have been full of fanboys crying because game A scored less than game B or vice versa, who gives a flying fork, 0.whatever makes not a lick of difference, is it awesome? Steve's 10 says yes and so I am buying it.
Posted 01:59pm 11/11/11
Howard Stern understood this and used a guy in the KKK to rate movies about black people with nooses and burning crosses. What does it mean? F*** all, he's a crazy racist, let's laugh.
Posted 02:06pm 11/11/11
Posted 02:17pm 11/11/11
Posted 02:20pm 11/11/11
Posted 02:23pm 11/11/11
Screenshots for all.
http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/9225/tesv2011111023422225.jpg
http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/3426/tesv2011111023450725.jpg
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/4779/tesv2011111023465149.jpg
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/677/tesv2011111023501705.jpg
http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/9581/tesv2011111023551608.jpg
http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/2687/tesv2011111103461654.jpg
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/6084/tesv2011111103464126.jpg
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/1992/tesv2011111103473211.jpg
http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/1406/tesv2011111104020380.jpg
Also, Has anyone worked out how to move objects? the Z button in Oblivion did that. I want to move stuff around.
Posted 03:22pm 11/11/11
Skyrim map is so beautiful, and rendered in real time to.
Posted 02:48pm 11/11/11
That is ingenious, reminds me of FO3 I believe where you could pick up the items and put them in a bucket then walk away with the bucket and take the items once you were out of sight.
Posted 02:55pm 11/11/11
ASIF it is clearly 3 stars, 2 nebulae & 14923746127341083411 hydrogen atoms!
Posted 02:56pm 11/11/11
Posted 02:56pm 11/11/11
Posted 03:42pm 11/11/11
Posted 03:48pm 11/11/11
Posted 03:52pm 11/11/11
After several hours I've finished one quest, and a few side things, it's pretty rad.
Hold down e on the item for a sec.
I loved Morrowind, was pretty underwhelmed with Oblivion (though did enjoy it for a little bit), Skyrim is, so far, absolutely f*****g fantastic. :D There's the slightest hint of Oblivion'ishness in the way people move, but it feels a lot more like a sequel to Morrowind. There's no undiscovered quick travel either, which is nice.
Posted 04:21pm 11/11/11
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Posted 04:39pm 11/11/11
Posted 04:46pm 11/11/11
Posted 04:47pm 11/11/11
I bought the game today on the back of this review. Still into Dark Souls and BF3..so much digital goodness!
Posted 04:49pm 11/11/11
*taps fingers on desk*
Posted 05:05pm 11/11/11
Posted 05:21pm 11/11/11
Should I get this for PC or PS3?
Posted 05:24pm 11/11/11
Posted 05:36pm 11/11/11
Posted 06:00pm 11/11/11
last edited by 3dee at 18:00:18 11/Nov/11
Posted 06:05pm 11/11/11
Posted 06:11pm 11/11/11
* headsplosion *
Posted 06:18pm 11/11/11
Posted 06:27pm 11/11/11
Posted 06:30pm 11/11/11
I'm rocking a destruction/conjourer build mage. Can make my own sword to attack with and then summon a flame antioch to help me attack so thats awesome. Currently looking for a better companion though so i'm starting to trek to other cities to look for help. Still getting a few random CTDs though.
Posted 06:43pm 11/11/11
One has scored higher than the other. Does that mean the higher scoring game DEMANDS your attention, despite it not being part of the genre you love? Frak no, it means you read the pros and cons, weigh it up against the overall TONE of the outlet you're reading from (and yes, we have a tone here), and make the same informed decision I mentioned earlier. Using the same example, what you might learn is that Red Dead Redemption is so good, despite your usual (for sake of argument) dislike to said genre that it requires some attention from you and may, or may not, open an entirely new door.
As a videogame product, and yes, there is a broad brush stroke and as a gamer you should be well aware one exists, I stand by my score. As an RPG, it's for the hardcore, as an action game, see the point prior... and so on
Posted 06:47pm 11/11/11
Haha I loved that bug.. in the weapons shop in New Vegas there were 12 dudes standing around while I looted the lot!
Posted 06:54pm 11/11/11
last edited by 3dee at 18:54:19 11/Nov/11
Posted 06:54pm 11/11/11
Seriously Rev you have to stop comparing things to WoW. I bet when you finally lose your virginity you'll compare it to WoW and say it wasn't that good.
Posted 06:56pm 11/11/11
(oh snap! sorry Rev, it was there for the taking)
Posted 07:07pm 11/11/11
Posted 09:36pm 11/11/11
This game is looking to be really frikkin massive and endless, just spent ages hunting butterflies - and I don't even know what they do, there was just so many of them.
Posted 07:41pm 11/11/11
Seriously I have exams, so none of that! :)
Posted 07:51pm 11/11/11
Posted 07:58pm 11/11/11
Posted 08:05pm 11/11/11
My awesome looking lizard mage (it's the helm that does it, worth like 3000g too!)
Posted 08:14pm 11/11/11
yes and nope
Posted 08:22pm 11/11/11
Posted 08:26pm 11/11/11
No, it's just your glowing personality.
Posted 08:27pm 11/11/11
Posted 08:34pm 11/11/11
My character is a High Elf Mage/1 Hander, loving the Nord weapons, sooooo cool.
Posted 08:37pm 11/11/11
finally found a guard that would arrest me and paid a fine.
Posted 08:46pm 11/11/11
Posted 09:06pm 11/11/11
Posted 09:31pm 11/11/11
This is a screenshot my GF took, quite amazing.
Posted 09:27pm 11/11/11
Mouse Lag ftl.
Posted 09:36pm 11/11/11
It's very different than dragon age. Bioware games are about the characters/tactics(if any)/story/epicness.
This is about voiceless character roaming and exploring.
Ohh, I'ma try that.
Posted 09:59pm 11/11/11
TES games have always been about the core RPG experience, stats, roaming, exploring, quests, characters, epicness, story, dragon slaying, amazing scenery, everything is going about it's own business etc.
If you like old school RPG's, then Skyrim is definitely for you. If you like Fallout 3 or New Vegas, you'll like this, as it's similar, and has a magic twist to it.
Posted 09:59pm 11/11/11
Playing as a cat-man-stealthy-magic-archer guy. I like dual wielding spells. Don't like the weapon selection but getting used to it.
Just got to the first town, so hoping for some epic random questing and forgetting about the main story until much later. :D
Posted 10:40pm 11/11/11
Posted 10:46pm 11/11/11
I had mine set higher, since changing to that I haven't had any crackling. However I havn't stepped into any crowds of more then 4ish people talking since changing it though.
P.S. tweakguides is doing up a guide.
Posted 10:53pm 11/11/11
Also no one commented on my video :( their tales are moving when dead!!!!
Aside from a few things, it is a awesome game.
My Nord Sneaky-1hand-some magic guy.
Posted 11:01pm 11/11/11
Posted 11:16pm 11/11/11
Graphics are still quite breath taking. They have done things well with background scenery, and especially the lighting. It's absolutely gorgeous to look up at a mountain, and see swirling storms of wind and snow.
Quests are brilliant. Very engaging storylines, interesting and well thought out. NPC's are hilarious with their dilagoue and at the same time moving and threatening. Stats are thought out, simple yet important. The skill trees are amazing. So much detail has gone into making everything unique. It will be very hard to get anyone similar to you, it's just that diverse.
Overall, I am glad I bought this game, as I was initially going to pirate it, as from what I had seen, it looked very "consoled". But boy was I shown otherwise. Bravo to Bethesda for making a very, very engaging RPG.
Posted 11:24pm 11/11/11
Posted 12:03am 12/11/11
Posted 12:43am 12/11/11
I can't find a good key mapping that I like which also allows me to map favourites. :/
Had completely forgotten about the previous TES's 1-9 usable buttons, holy shizen why don't we have those? It'd be much better imo. Now I know why I'm struggling to switch between blades and bows, I used to just have 2 and 3 mapped to those.
Posted 12:51am 12/11/11
Posted 12:55am 12/11/11
Posted 12:57am 12/11/11
One thing I've noticed though is that the left & right seem to be mixed up - am I just a muppet or does the game map the left button to the right hand & vice-versa?
Posted 01:05am 12/11/11
Posted 01:31am 12/11/11
Spoiler:
Loving it so far, I still haven't got to the first village. I killed some chick bandit boss, burned the crap out of her while she was in her bed haha. Walked away with some pretty phat loot for such an early part of the game.
Posted 01:37am 12/11/11
Spoiler:
Also, I like that the hard enemies are... hard. I stumbled upon a frost troll or whatever it was and I couldn't make a dent. Same with some giants. They didn't attack me, but when I shot at em, one smack and I was flying 50 feet in the air.. Dead.
Posted 02:24am 12/11/11
Posted 02:28am 12/11/11
Posted 04:45am 12/11/11
It took me a while to get the mouse feeling right, I had to tweak the ini file to turn off vsync and turn off mouse acceleration, then I had to play around with the ingame sensitity to find which combination of ingame sensitivity and mouse dpi felt best. I started off with the dpi on my mouse up really high, and the sensitivity in game down really low, and that felt good while running around, but the menus seem to have their own sensitivity and don't use what you set in-game so whenever I was in a menu my mouse was way way too sensitive. Ended up using a pretty low dpi on my mouse, but the sensitivity in-game on max and thats feeling pretty good.
A couple of odd things I've found so far, is everyone in that first town you go to (the river one) keeps telling me I look sick when they walk past and they're like "Are you feeling ok? You look terrible" and stuff like that, EVERYONE is saying it. But to the best of my knowledge, I'm not sick at all. I dunno if its cos I collected a whole s***load of different herbs, berries and parts of animals and then ate them all to see what would happen, maybe its given me aids or something.
The other thing was a rather interesting exploit that I took full advantage of. The guy in the first town who can teach you archery, if you do a quest and stuff for him and get in his good books, he'll join you as a companion. And when you have a companion, you have full access to their inventory and can take whatever you want out and put it in your inventory, and vice versa. So I waited till I recruited him as a companion, spent 2k training archery, went into his inventory and got my 2k back :P
Posted 05:23am 12/11/11
Has anyone noticed the lack of stats in this.. such as no acrobatics and stuff.. they reworked the system which kinda pissed me off.. can you never max acro anymore so you can jump onto roofs and stuff??
Posted 06:57am 12/11/11
I went into the second town and set off on the quest to get the Golden Claw
Bloody awesome game, my girlfriend said to me last night "Oh are you playing Skyrim, I heard there is like 400+ hours of gameplay and you can't finish it..." Was that her telling me "noooooooooo"
Posted 09:34am 12/11/11
thanks for the spoiler d*******
how are you supposed to know where to go for misc quests? markers never show up on the map and the quests are very vague on what to do.
last edited by ravn0s at 09:34:42 12/Nov/11
Posted 09:52am 12/11/11
Heh yeah I stole his bow too... That being said, I discovered last night that I could also pickpocket the money from just about anybody, and got a few hundred off him. Pickpocketing is insanely overpowered, and is raising my levels like mad too.
Posted 10:07am 12/11/11
Posted 10:09am 12/11/11
I don't give a rats ass if people say the graphics aren't amazing. I have never been so amazed at the scenery, or been so breathtaking.
Posted 10:11am 12/11/11
"o Hi, sweet magical bow. I'm going to take it from you now. o what you noticed, I'm going to kill you now and take it, I would have done that first but I didn't want to waste my time killing all the other town folk because I want to go and walk into a random encampent and slay all those there because I think they might have something shiney."
"O, btw, when I'm done there I might come back here and steal everything"
Posted 10:49am 12/11/11
I get the same, are you playing as a Dark Elf?
Posted 11:16am 12/11/11
There are also werewolves. I've come across one who gave me a ring to decurse and long story short, I chose not to kill him. But if I HAD I think I would of been given the option to become one as the ring is still in my inventory and says "gives more changes for werewolves".
Also I found an old man mage who will become your companion if you help him clear out a town of the source of its nightmares. I chose to betray him and take the item at the end. So far i've found 3 real companions not counting the ones you can buy or win over in fist brawls. Warrior, Mage and now I learned about that Archer guy.
EDIT - OH and while I remember, I cannot recommend enough getting conjurer up to at least 40 so you can take the "soul drain on bound weapon hit" perk which is only 3 levels in. This makes attacking with a summon weapons cast soul drain on your target every hit, so you will capture their soul when they die if you have a big enough soul gem. Just pick up every one you see and you will soon have a near infinate source of enchanted weapon recharges!
I'm using this on my conjurer/destruction mage and you have no idea how awesome it is that I have like 20 filled soul gems.
last edited by DM at 11:16:46 12/Nov/11
Posted 11:30am 12/11/11
Not happy, probably won't use them again. The dodgy russian guys refunded my money already ><
Posted 11:47am 12/11/11
you sure you're not sick? they only say that if you're diseased. go to i think magic and then affected to see what's wrong. you need to use a potion or shrine to cure diseases.
Posted 12:25pm 12/11/11
when you become vampire of werewolf if there is a quest line about a blood feud going on between them. That would be awesome
Posted 12:53pm 12/11/11
Posted 01:17pm 12/11/11
Posted 01:21pm 12/11/11
Posted 01:24pm 12/11/11
Posted 02:11pm 12/11/11
Oh and if you shoot a dragon DIRECTLY in the eye with a bow, it dies instantly. WOOH
Posted 02:16pm 12/11/11
Posted 02:16pm 12/11/11
Posted 02:23pm 12/11/11
Posted 02:41pm 12/11/11
But maybe something else is going on.
Posted 02:50pm 12/11/11
Posted 02:55pm 12/11/11
http://www.gamespot.com/showcases/elderscrollsV/images/index.html?image=72&image_id=1566614&overridePid=615803
Posted 02:56pm 12/11/11
Also, everyone, YOU CAN HOTKEY! Go into your favourites, and click 0-9 on whatever you want. Ta da!
Posted 02:59pm 12/11/11
pcgamer has posted some tweaks for the game.
Posted 03:12pm 12/11/11
I've only just finished AC2; I tried Prince of Persia Forgotten Sands, and it was s***, and I'm only slightly more impressed with Arkham City.
I think I'll be picking up Oblivion from the bargain bin before Skyrim.
last edited by Raven at 15:12:15 12/Nov/11
Posted 03:38pm 12/11/11
Posted 04:31pm 12/11/11
---
I've barely even made a dent in this game, which is bad bad bad. Must get back to work now.
Posted 04:39pm 12/11/11
And mad props Eorl, thats an awesome tip
Posted 04:56pm 12/11/11
Yeah I am, maybe they just don't like Dark Elves?
I think some of the achievements are glitchy too, cos I completed that Barrow den with the golden claw in it, and it even says its cleared on my map, but never got the achieve for it.
Posted 05:00pm 12/11/11
Might be other stuff, as I've got the same thing.
Posted 05:14pm 12/11/11
Posted 05:18pm 12/11/11
Posted 05:35pm 12/11/11
Posted 05:40pm 12/11/11
Also, you'll get the Achievement for Barrow Den after you speak to the Mage in Winterrun because there is another quest in there, but you likely already picked up the item on your first venture through
Posted 06:09pm 12/11/11
Posted 06:45pm 12/11/11
Posted 06:47pm 12/11/11
I had one pop up when I was running around like an idiot chasing butterflies (unfortunately no joke) and I kept firing at it but it just circled around a few times got bored and flew off. I was a bit disappoint.
Posted 07:45pm 12/11/11
Posted 07:58pm 12/11/11
clicky
Skyrim is doing very well in the sales department it seems.
Posted 08:29pm 12/11/11
Posted 08:36pm 12/11/11
yep that's a disease. i had the same thing and i used a cure disease potion and it went away.
Posted 09:45pm 12/11/11
I'd agree with Khel, but the intention is to sneak a game of Oblivion in before playing Skyrim ruins it forever perhaps?
Posted 10:08pm 12/11/11
Posted 11:09pm 12/11/11
Dunno what you do with the scales and bones, they are starting to drag me down with the weight.
Posted 11:16pm 12/11/11
Posted 11:25pm 12/11/11
Posted 11:32pm 12/11/11
Posted 11:58pm 12/11/11
Posted 12:58am 13/11/11
Maybe I need the prima guide, I can buy the online version for $26.99 USD. Have not come across any Vampires or warewolves.
Posted 01:30am 13/11/11
You can buy them in books, specifically from the court mage guy in the big hill city place with a court mage.
I'm trying to get up that hill, and keep getting distracted along the way, and am now level 26... I think I've done maybe two actual quests...
I tried to be anything but a sneaky rogue, since it's what I always am, and made a nord for the warrior win, yet now I am a sneaky bow and arrow killing machine again somehow, because it's just too awesome.
Posted 01:33am 13/11/11
Conjurer gets Bind Bow so you can go mage and get summonable elementals as well as bow attacks which come with free arrows, free soul drain on attack and later get auto kill/turn undead on attack as well for your weapon. Not sure if it links with archery perks but add onto the already OP spell the 100% damage, crits and all the other stuff you get, thats a winner.
I have my mage which is Lv 21 or 22 and is a conjurer/destruction and is the Arch-Mage of that college. Right now i'm leveling a Lv 14 kitty thief and going dual wield. Not using any companions just yet so it's going well. Lots of backstab action. If I ever feel the need to make another character it'll be an Orc 2H'er who has some healing spells on him.
last edited by DM at 01:33:10 13/Nov/11
Posted 01:39am 13/11/11
Highly recommend seeing the old farts, they teach you a bit about dragon shouts that can be handy.
I noticed that if you get to 100 in smithing you can make dragon armour, might hold on to my dragon bits for awhile yet.
Posted 02:39am 13/11/11
I think I will start again, Being rogue-ish does not seem to be useful. I am thinking Spell/heal warrior in Plate, Sword and Board. Dual weilding would be better if you could actually block attacks like normal. I dislike the newer dual system, Mouse button 1 should just attack in a pre-determined way and mouse button 2 should block.
Posted 02:41am 13/11/11
I'm using destruction magic and a 1h melee weapon, with light armour and sneaking and bows. Seems to be working out well and its quite fun. Most of the other magic I don't really care about, healing magic is for pussies, I just wanna blow s*** up.
Posted 03:48am 13/11/11
Posted 07:58am 13/11/11
Posted 09:19am 13/11/11
Nord Warrior I arrived at the second village and decided to start again and give something that wasn't so generic a crack.
Dark Elf Destruction mage, I was running around with a dagger and flame until I discovered you can equip dual spells, very powerful stuff and is my favorite character so far.
Just created a Wood Elf going to go with the whole Archer/Thief class so I will see how that goes.
Also on the second play through I didn't realise Spoiler:
You have a choice with the Stormcloaks or Imperial pretty awesome.
Overall I'm addicted to this game I love how the Race you choose isn't as constricting with the relevant class as Oblivion was ie a Orc found it hard to be a warrior, where in Skyrim any class can be anything it's just the race attributes that help such as a WoW class.
Posted 10:00am 13/11/11
Posted 10:10am 13/11/11
my archery is level 40 something. it's awesome 1 shotting enemies from the shadows.
when you go into sneak mode, they go into sneak mode too. also you can just tell them to wait there while you go ahead to scout.
does sneak level up just by being in sneak mode, or do enemies have to be around?
Posted 10:33am 13/11/11
So far i've had both assassins and a group of thugs come after me.
Sneak levels up when you are sneaking around people, stealing while in sneak mode and attacking again while in sneak mode. Mine is up around 46 and looking forward to 50 as daggers will do 15x normal damage.
Posted 10:46am 13/11/11
Now that I'm using higher level spells and have invested in making those spells cheaper through the perks, I have a lot more pew pew power.
Posted 11:04am 13/11/11
My character is finding it a little tough to beat people up without exploiting the AI. I have to jump up a mound and take pot shots/hit and run while they run around the long way, then jump back and forth.
Those 3 thugs I couldn't take on alone. Granted I was using a stock Iron Sword at the time because I'm a tight arse and don't want to use resources grinding up a nice blade.
Also how to you smelt ore? Got a stack of ore and metal bars, maybe I'll perk up smiting and enchanement for lols.
I figure you need some sort of smelter but can't seem to find one.
I've got the location of a dragon/shout I found from a book, going to explore that soon. When I beef up a little. I don't think I cant take a dragon alone if I cant take on 3 thugs.
last edited by Tollaz0r! at 11:04:36 13/Nov/11
Posted 11:21am 13/11/11
Posted 11:29am 13/11/11
Rather than this being a metric of the games quality, perfection, features etc, think it of a recommendation value.
If he gives it a 10/10, it means he is wholeheartedly recommending it, that he thinks it's worth purchasing, and that if he bought it he would have no regrets about spending the money.
While the value given can reflect the other considerations indirectly this is in my opinion the essence of the scoring system.
If he gives a full 10 to 2 different games, it doesn't mean they both have equal framerate, perfect controls, an amazing story, or incredible cinematic footage (for example). It means they are both games he would 100% recommend to you if you walked up to him and asked him about them. Am I on the right track?
Posted 11:35am 13/11/11
the world is just soo lush... i haven't really been following the main quest... just wandering around finding random encounters & clearing them.
the alchemy is a bit weird. there doesn't seem to be any way of detecting what ingredient goes with what & ya end up wasting half your ingredients trying combos out. well i did :P
i went wood elf archer... i was gunna go argonian but they have lost their water-breathing & poison immunity it seems. that was the reason i went argonian in oblivion. loving the archery + sneak... just like i did in oblivion :D
Posted 11:51am 13/11/11
Posted 12:04pm 13/11/11
...I HATE YOU GUYS D:
Posted 12:32pm 13/11/11
lol same!
Wicked game so far. Ive rolled a Dark Elf with single handed/Archery/Alteration/Illusion/Alchemy
F*****g amazing how it all works. I didn't give a s*** about the whole nordic cilvil war s*** and went off to find my place within the Dark Elfs and weirdly enough met a random in the middle of nowhere who pointed me to this massive ancient dark elf Statue hidden in some mountains. Once reaching the place after an epic hike, there was one hooded dark elf preist who told me some s*** like 'fate had brought here and some story about my destiny" .. I'm sold.
Now.. to rise up to take over the world..
(damn thing is so time consuming though.. I'm planning this campaign to go over atleast 2 years :P)
Posted 12:55pm 13/11/11
If you eat them you find out at least one of their effects, and theres a perk in the alchemy tree that lets you find two effects when you eat something. Of course, you then stand the risk of giving yourself parkinson's disease like I did.
Posted 01:51pm 13/11/11
Posted 02:06pm 13/11/11
On that does the Story quests adjust to your level, so it is always a challenge?
Posted 03:48pm 13/11/11
Posted 05:23pm 13/11/11
Posted 05:25pm 13/11/11
o_0
Posted 05:43pm 13/11/11
Posted 06:05pm 13/11/11
There's no improvements from MW1 to MW3, still holds the record as a shortest SP FPS game. 3hrs on regular, 4 hrs on veteran and so on. Battlefield 3 is better in every aspects, graphic, sound, gameplay, multiplayer mode.
Posted 06:18pm 13/11/11
Posted 06:37pm 13/11/11
Posted 06:55pm 13/11/11
Going Sword and board for the most part but time will tell where I end up.
Bonus image http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/840/tesv2011111303381449.jpg/
Posted 07:24pm 13/11/11
Posted 08:07pm 13/11/11
Yeah that happens to me with every house i go in.
Posted 08:13pm 13/11/11
As for my characters my mage is still 21 and havn't played him today. My thief which was 18 is on a bit of a halt, I made an Orc who is a 2 hander beast. Nothing he can't destroy in seconds. But while he is lv 15 or so I made YET ANOTHER character and this time going full archer and going to turn her into a vampire. Anyway here are 2 pictures.
Check out this f*****g awesome sword (on my mage, not a conjured item)
This is my Orc 2H'er.
Posted 08:31pm 13/11/11
Posted 08:32pm 13/11/11
Posted 09:08pm 13/11/11
Posted 09:34pm 13/11/11
Usually for 'classless' games there is still the warrior,theif,mage type set up and if you deviate you find yourself with a sub-standard character that cant use any of the good items in the game and ends up just plain sucking compared to if your 'classless' character went the full wairror route and so on.
I'm hopeing that Skyrim doesn't punch me in the nuts for not going a full mage/thief/warrior type character in later game.
Posted 09:34pm 13/11/11
Also, found this on Reddit, explains from some guys perspective why Skyrim is better then Oblivion, which I agree with: http://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/ma6y2/8_hours_in_here_is_an_anecdote_to_illustrate_why/
Posted 09:44pm 13/11/11
Posted 10:05pm 13/11/11
Yes, if you actually click the 'Tab-Exit Conversation' in the lower right hand corner with the LMB it will clear the conversation.
Posted 10:58pm 13/11/11
Posted 11:00pm 13/11/11
wait how did he have lydia help him kill the first dragon when you only get her as a companion after you kill the first dragon? i think he confused her with the dark elf chick
Posted 11:43pm 13/11/11
Posted 12:19am 14/11/11
Posted 12:43am 14/11/11
Halp.
I haven't been keeping up with this thread I only searched for the name lydia to see if it came up. because i'm not far i don't want to spoil stuff.. i wasn't even going to buy it but one of the less reputable cd key sites had a good enough price.. PS: She's at full health...
Edit: nevermind fought some troll and after she got attacked she stood up.
Before this point i rested more than 24 hours, in an inn, gave her some potions and stuff, cast courage on her.. but yeah then she just stood up after she got hit in the face..
Posted 01:02am 14/11/11
Posted 01:45am 14/11/11
Awesome game, having a great time so far. Took a while to get the mouse sensitivity sorted, but no crashes or major bugs.
Posted 03:10am 14/11/11
Recorded this on my first character.
Posted 03:55am 14/11/11
Posted 07:41am 14/11/11
Posted 08:43am 14/11/11
Posted 08:50am 14/11/11
Posted 08:57am 14/11/11
People that respond to you when you walk near them usually are. As in, if they pipe up saying "hey you, dragonborn, got something of interest". Or if they are talking to another NPC, they'll say they are having a problem or something.
Posted 09:21am 14/11/11
I'm with Khel. Skyrim makes it better to be multi-skilled, though I need to work on my magic skills more. I'm pretty good with a sword/shield and really good with a bow.
How well do you take down trolls and giants by the way? I'm not sure what level I am, but I have to look around for surrounding ledges and high points to be able to take them out and it usually takes a lot of arrows and if they can hit me, I'm usually dead pretty quick. I have a (fine) Nord bow thing, with nord and orcish arrows and a skill of about 50 something.
last edited by 3dee at 09:21:06 14/Nov/11
Posted 09:21am 14/11/11
Posted 09:34am 14/11/11
This stumped me for ages until I noticed that you need to push R on the shout you want to buy when you have a dragon soul. Each shout costs 1 soul.
Posted 09:51am 14/11/11
Oh yeah, then it crashes if I try to leave the hall. What the f***...
Posted 09:54am 14/11/11
Posted 09:56am 14/11/11
Posted 10:03am 14/11/11
do you have a previous save? you should always have multiple saves for these types of games.
Posted 10:05am 14/11/11
Posted 10:13am 14/11/11
should i play this game?
Posted 10:13am 14/11/11
Haven't fought a giant but with my first troll, the one on the path to the Greybeards, I was only like level 7 and didn't have any of the higher perks that really increase your damage. After dying close to a million times trying to get past him by trying to bow him down I found out if you melee him you can just kind of bob back and forward between his big attacks and wear him down.
Now I just cheese it and shoot them from a distance, 3-4 shots and they are down.
Posted 10:14am 14/11/11
Posted 10:36am 14/11/11
i had that happen once in an undead dungeon & one of the crypts exploded when i walked into the room & sprayed bones all ever the place... scared the crap outta me :D i didn't realise it was a bug & did a s***load of searching around to try n find out what caused it.
i had some trouble with that ice troll near the greybeards. i was lvl9 & first 2 times it killed lydia & i. 3rd time i gave it everything.. poison, fireballs, sparks, arrows, buffed up on health n stamina, melee'd with a flaming 2-handed sword & i still used 11 minor health potions :P~
in some random undead dungeon i can't remember i encountered this undead that looked pretty much the same as a regular draugr but it was super tough !@! it killed lydia & i about 8 times then i decided to leave the dungeon n come back with more levels under my belt.
sneak archery sniping (with the zoom perk) rules. :D lovin' the whole game so far n i've only touched on such a small part of the map. fell off that huge mountain the greybeards are on & died a few times. game needs a wingsuit for gliding off that huge mofo :D
Posted 10:43am 14/11/11
Yes.
...wait, No.
...err, then Yes.
Yes and No.
...Maybe?
Posted 10:41am 14/11/11
Posted 12:47pm 14/11/11
Too right. I kept looking at the mountain thinking... hmmm, I should scale that thing when I get to a high level or something. Then every starts telling me that the big noise I heard was just my pager going off.
Uhh... righto, so you want me to climb that thing right now? Off I go then!
Edit:
Yeah I've had this happen a few times - the physics engine can be pretty glitchy. First time scared the crap outta me, but most often now it's some annoying thing that keeps rattling around in the room while I'm trying to talk to an npc.
I've also walked past what looked like a human femur floating about 50m up in the air outside of Whiterun. No way to confirm what it was because I couldn't get close enough, lol.
Posted 12:31pm 14/11/11
Posted 02:13pm 14/11/11
I plugged my xbox controller in (which disabled KB & mouse) and it worked as you would expect. Key binding is not what I would call well supported.
Edit: Seems I'm not alone, already a mod to fix it.
Posted 03:24pm 14/11/11
Posted 03:43pm 14/11/11
Posted 03:50pm 14/11/11
Posted 05:24pm 14/11/11
Posted 05:28pm 14/11/11
Posted 05:33pm 14/11/11
I've only finished the first dungeon and killed the first dragon but wow, great game. And this is coming from an rpg noob (my wow yrs dont count imo).
Can't wait to keep exploring. This game is huge!
Posted 06:02pm 14/11/11
Lydia and I killed a giant....she got smashed and went rocketing up into the air. I kited the giant around some trees and killed it. Was not really worth it though. Died a few times to kill it.
Currently on my way to see the old farts now.
I have found weapons floating above a bandit I killed a few days before.
Spoiler:
I found some Silver Hand dudes who really don't like warewolves. They had a bunch dead in their castle thing. One live one that I unlocked the cage door for, it attacked me so I killed it.
last edited by Nathan at 18:02:51 14/Nov/11
Posted 06:03pm 14/11/11
Posted 07:14pm 14/11/11
Before
Linky
Posted 07:22pm 14/11/11
Posted 05:04pm 24/11/11
also
last edited by ravn0s at 19:27:53 14/Nov/11
last edited by trog at 17:04:43 24/Nov/11
Posted 07:30pm 14/11/11
Posted 07:36pm 14/11/11
Also screw the glitch, just type player.additem F #ofgold and your done.
Posted 07:41pm 14/11/11
The voice acting is f*****g horrible, the graphics, while the landscape & dungeons look great, character animations & graphics arent quite up to scratch.
The writing also isn't keeping me engaged.
I think the witcher 2 is the better game.
Posted 07:57pm 14/11/11
Also, dragons like horses. F***** stole my horse, there goes 5k gold.
Posted 08:05pm 14/11/11
That dragon must have been from Hammerfell
Posted 08:28pm 14/11/11
can't browse my precious internetz without seeing skyrim everywhere, looks very awesome :(
Posted 10:52pm 14/11/11
Children aren't swords!
Posted 11:00pm 14/11/11
Ridiculously awesome game.
Posted 11:53pm 14/11/11
Also WTF on giants!? Like one hit and I'm dead.
What FOV are people playing with on monitors? I've got a 24" but heard the default FOV is designed for bigger TV's so want to change it but am not up on FOV's.
The game world is pretty immense, I'm level 12 but haven't gone up to the greybeard's yet.. doing NPC and Brave Companion quests.
last edited by Viper119 at 23:53:30 14/Nov/11
Posted 12:55am 15/11/11
Posted 01:05am 15/11/11
Posted 01:07am 15/11/11
Witcher 2 for the f*****g win, the dialogue, writing, graphics, everything, is better, in the witcher 2.
The only advantage skyrim has is an abundance of content.
Posted 01:39am 15/11/11
Posted 05:33am 15/11/11
Also quality: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/11/14/
Posted 08:30am 15/11/11
Posted 09:02am 15/11/11
This game needs outfits, I'm collecting all these different sets of gear but it's such a hassle to switch between them for different occasions. Like +speech gear for speaking with merchants or +stealth gear for creeping or +bow gear for sniping, if I could favourite entire outfits and hotkey them it'd be a lot easier.
That said, I'm loving the minimalistic approach to the HUD. That and the natural way of acquiring quests without people having a big ! above their head is really helping to suck me into the game.
Posted 09:09am 15/11/11
Also, here is a really helpful guide to getting Skyrim looking absolutely amazing http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=451616
Posted 09:10am 15/11/11
Posted 09:11am 15/11/11
Posted 09:35am 15/11/11
Posted 09:43am 15/11/11
Lydia my tank died in the process, but I can't be f***ed reloading and doing that fight again. Time to find someone else!
Posted 09:46am 15/11/11
Hey Fixah,
I'm loving Skyrim but don't think it'd be for you. There is action but it's still a very slow paced/involved game. Some get caught up in the fantasy and others find it boring. You won't be finishing the game in 15 hr or less.
Posted 09:54am 15/11/11
I just joined the Empire side and got their gear which should help me questing around the place done stuff all of the main quest chain
Posted 10:01am 15/11/11
Found a random place up in the mountains, near the Skyforge, massive Labryinth, it's sooo cool. It's amazing how much depth they have put in. Haven't even seen the Greybeards yet, just doing so much more.
Posted 10:15am 15/11/11
there was also a cave i passed n there was an eerie moaning sorta noise in the air & the mouth of the cave was surrounded by mammoth & giant bones... didn't go in there either :p i hammered a giant with arrows n spells for ages from a vantage point on a cliff face where the giant couldn't get me & it regenerated it's health faster than i could take it off :(
Posted 10:19am 15/11/11
Posted 10:28am 15/11/11
Posted 10:48am 15/11/11
There is a new shout, and 4 magic staffs, each worth between 200-1500 gold, and some items in the corners of the labryinth, including a crown that decreases magic cost on all magic classes. Also at the end, when you fight the illusion dude, he drops a mysterious wooden mask.
Also, been enchanting a heap of stuff, just have to find better soul gems to get more bang for buck. Renaming stuff is handy, got Steel Armour of Destruction and Steel Boots of Magic etc. Nice to put your own touch on things.
Posted 10:53am 15/11/11
it's nice how once you've fully cleared a dungeon/encounter it marks it as "cleared" on the map. coz i've passed over about 5 so far but it's nice n easy to see later which ones i need to revisit.
Posted 11:18am 15/11/11
I wonder why Bethesda did away with Leg Armour. I want leg armour back. Also would not mind the ability to choose my stats to level up and not just Magika Health and Stamina.
Found another 2 companions.
Spoiler:
In the banned mare in Whiterun there is a women with plate looking armour, she says she can not be beaten in a fight. Fight her and if you win you can ask her to join you. In the Drunken Huntsman there is a Dark Elf woman in leather, you can ask her aswell.
Posted 11:43am 15/11/11
I actually find it a bit annoying that you can't really customise your companion, you can give them gear to wear but you can't fiddle with their stats to make them stronger in a particular area that your own character is weak in. Or even have them level abilities that they use a lot while questing with you, for instance my sneak is to a point where I can stand almost on top of someone and they won't spot me but they spot Lydia from a fair distance out. That and when she engages an enemy she will always stand in my line of sight and then complain when she gets shot in the ass.
Posted 11:56am 15/11/11
Yeah, I love that too, cos I discover heaps of places but don't necessarily go inside and do them right then and there. Theres a couple of places though that I'm sure I've been all the way through, that aren't marked as cleared on my map, so I wonder what thats all about. Maybe it means theres a quest in there to come back and do later?
Posted 11:59am 15/11/11
Man am I so badass. Made my full set of Elven gear, holy crap is it amazing, and so light! Now to enchant it with destruction increase and magicka increase.
Posted 12:06pm 15/11/11
Posted 12:39pm 15/11/11
Spoiler:
That Wooden mask can be used in a certain area (which I believe is in the labrithine area but not actually INSIDE the building). Pretty sure it's where you find it and it teleports you back in time to a room you can't leave but is FILLED with empty chests so you can store stuff there. Good for horders who dont have a home yet.
Companions can die yes if they get hit hard and fast enough. Usually they drop to the floor and say I yield and the monsters will run after you but some give zero f**** about this and will continue to beat on them until they are corpses then you are f***ed.
Spoiler:
There is a companion you can find at the entrance of a ruin on the way to that town before the greybeard 7000 step climb. Also there is a mage guy up in Dawnstar who will follow you after you do his quest. I'm using him since he is a mace/firebolt/flame guy. Even carries a torch when it's dark!
finishing the mage college quest line gives you armor and a necklace so good you'll never need anything better as far as I can tell. Anyway here are my 3 characters.
Posted 12:55pm 15/11/11
heh, i didn't even know you could use a companion as a pack mule :p i had Lydia cop it sweet a few times but she always got back up once i killed the beastie. after i killed the 3 frost trolls i went over to Lydia's body n i'm like "poke poke... c'mon get up!" but she was totally dead ;) i lol'd.
i love funny bits like that... like i was in this tomb with some guy who was complaining a necromancer was in his family tomb... we find his dead aunt who had gone in to stop the necromancer & after looting her corpse i am having a bit of fun swinging the corpse round & round & the dude is looking at me & says "i hate to think how that necromancer is DEFILING THE BODIES OF MY RELATIVES !@#!" lols
so... dual heal spells you can heal your companion? i didn't know that either! :p
Posted 12:52pm 15/11/11
I want to get enchanting up as well so I can make better chants for my gear but I can't really part with the perk points at the moment.
Yep, they have their own gear and you can't see what that is but as long as what you give them is better than what they have they will equip it. But it also counts towards the weight they carry as well if you are using them as a pack mule. Now that I have my own place in Whiterun I have a place to store my s*** so I decked out Lydia in some plate steel armour. She also returns to your place if you ditch her anywhere so you can pick her back up there which is handy.
Posted 12:56pm 15/11/11
I'm on the last quest for the Brave Companions I think, still haven't visited the greybeards.
Have found some random places, ranging from bat s*** crazy witches to those green leaf tree monster things.
Posted 12:56pm 15/11/11
Then the game would be silly. They'd be more imposing than a dragon, hence the game would make no sense.
Although that said, it was easier killing dragons than it was killing a giant. Even though I specced hard into mage fire, i still find it hard to kill trolls, and frost trolls especially so.
Posted 01:10pm 15/11/11
Posted 01:35pm 15/11/11
Also found some Ice Wraiths which were pretty awesome, but they owned me till I had the bright idea of using fire magic on them instead of the shock magic I normally use, and they didn't like that at all, b****** went down hard.
Posted 01:52pm 15/11/11
This surprised me as well. Basically when they hunch down the mobs will stop attacking them, and once out of combat they will get back up. But if they get hit really hard or take damage while hunched down, its lights out :/
Posted 02:07pm 15/11/11
viper : labrynthian is up in that huge mofo mountain that the greybeards are on... but it is more towards the northern slope... kinda on the other side of the mountain from the greybeards. there are about 3 paths up that mountain that i have found & one of them you have to go through labrynthian.
this game totally deserves is stevey 10 rating :D
Posted 02:24pm 15/11/11
Posted 02:33pm 15/11/11
The labyrinth is near the Skyforge quest, kind of in the middle of the map, I'll get a screenshot.
Posted 02:41pm 15/11/11
Spoiler:
Oh, did anyone else just smash the first dungeon all the way down the chamber with the first Word, rather than go back to town as soon as you killed the spider and got the Golden Claw from the thief?
Mage dude was all WTF MANS when I already had the Dragonstone on me, I was expecting the usual get-quest-talk-again thing with maybe a leave room and come back added in for good measure. Thought this was pretty smoothly handled by the game :)
Posted 02:52pm 15/11/11
That's complete balls though, I think someone at Bethesda is laughing right now. :/
wrt Inventory management though and making your companion a pack mule, do companions have a weight limit? If so I haven't reached it yet.
Penny Arcade 'Thulsa Broom' nails it as usual - how does everyone else deal with the plethora of bulls*** items to pick up?
I'm a pack rat so I've found myself falling back on the old habit I had in Oblivion, doing a rough calculation dividing the coin value of an item by the weight of the item and at the start of the game if it wasn't more than 10 I'd just leave it there, but constantly increasing that ratio, so by the end of the game I reckon if the value wasn't 50:1 it wasn't worth picking up.
Edit:
Spoiler:
Yeah Hog, I just kept going right down as far as I could go in that dungeon. At some point I think lust for smashing through Draugr's made me forget why I was even in that dungeon in the first place. It was handled pretty smooth there - there's a later dungeon where you face a similar claw & puzzle, but you get stuck and have to go back to the surface halfway through the dungeon and speak to someone to get the claw though. :(
Posted 03:14pm 15/11/11
I laughed cos I imagined my character saying it like Gob from Arrested Development and pulling the Golden Claw out with a flourish.
Posted 04:46pm 15/11/11
Posted 04:50pm 15/11/11
Spoiler:
Later on there is a another quest with one of the keys but this time you are with a group and one of them tells you to look at the key for clues and it was facepalm time
Posted 04:53pm 15/11/11
By reading fpot's helpful poast!
Posted 05:25pm 15/11/11
I took this approach:
there were 3 lots of 3 animals. 3x3x3 looked like too many combinations. Strike out every combination which would involve two or less animals showing up, in other words, only tried combinations which would use all three.
I got it on the third guess.
Posted 05:50pm 15/11/11
Spoiler:
"the answer is in the palm of your hands"
last edited by Nathan at 17:50:37 15/Nov/11
Posted 05:49pm 15/11/11
I did the same, until you find a similar quest later where this isnt true - the combination has two of one animal.
After Googling to see Spoiler:
you're supposed to look at the key itself via your inventory, I found the solution to be much dumber than what I tried based on the artwork in the room.
Posted 05:52pm 15/11/11
Posted 05:53pm 15/11/11
Posted 06:11pm 15/11/11
i never bothered to reload to get Lydia back. she died... i got over it ;D i kinda prefer to wander alone anyway... sometimes Lydia would spook the deers when i was trying to snipe them. damn woman should be in the kitchen.. not f*****g up my hunt ;p
Posted 06:59pm 15/11/11
Hmmm...Doh!!
Tada!
Posted 07:00pm 15/11/11
Posted 07:20pm 15/11/11
Hated Oblivion and barely managed to finish fallout 3 but I am LOVING skyrim. So much effort put into the story of quests that I can be bothered to run through them and the whole world just feels rooted now instead of some weird empty place with static NPCs. Next on the list for beth should be the combat system and copying rages animation and enemy environment interaction and then they will have the best game ever made IMO.
Speaking of the combat, although melee feels pretty unrewarding and jittery, archery is really good. Having a blast luring enemies into traps in dungeons then setting them off with an arrow. (using the throw voice dragon shout)
Posted 07:24pm 15/11/11
sounds like sheogorath
Posted 07:33pm 15/11/11
Claivicus Vile
Posted 07:34pm 15/11/11
Heh, yeah I usually roll up a mage in RPGs but I'm having a blast with archery. Loving the fact that arrows just don't disappear into thin air when you fire them like they do in other games. When you search dead bodies you're likely to get some arrows back as you'd expect & you can go and collect misfired arrows if you're inclined to.
Posted 07:37pm 15/11/11
Posted 07:48pm 15/11/11
I find that it is a huge grind just chipping away at it, hiding, healing, chipping and so on. That is without a tanking companion.
Posted 08:53pm 15/11/11
oh and of course plotting for world domination.
Posted 08:03pm 15/11/11
run to a local town or camp and let them get killed while i shoot it with arrows.
Posted 08:53pm 15/11/11
I'm lvl 15 and am a werewolf! :/ Haven't yet found the quest that leads me on the cure.
I found another dungen in Iverhart that needs the sapphire claw!?
Sweet I'll go see the greybeards and check out this labrynthian.
I've hit weight limit on Lydia, didn't seem like a lot.
Posted 09:09pm 15/11/11
Always excited when there are some giants close by when a dragon spawns... its funny how there are all these giants wandering around with the power to take over the world but are just happy chilling with some mammoths and pottering about the plains.
Posted 09:20pm 15/11/11
I'm only lvl 7 so I might go and do some miscellaneous s*** tomorrow for a bit and get some levels before trying again, he pretty much 2 shot me.
Posted 09:26pm 15/11/11
I keep a stack of healing pots but also like to have resist pots, pots that increase regen rates and damage and also use poisons. The Frost breathing dragons are definitely the hardest to kill for me, they drain your stamina as well as health and the last one I fought would do a killing move on me whenever he got in close enough for melee.
As soon as it's on I hit tab, equip my best arrows, pot up and maybe cast a spell for good measure. I've started Shout hunting by finding the dragon roosts around the area which all have a dragon circling around so I'm getting pretty good at taking them down but I still die enough to keep me from bragging about it in town.
Posted 09:37pm 15/11/11
Posted 09:38pm 15/11/11
Posted 09:42pm 15/11/11
This is why I miss lans ...
Posted 09:56pm 15/11/11
I have yet to really continue with the main story, still have to go see the dudes at the mountaint about my voice. Just chilling, kicking ass, and playing hide and seek with the kids in villages.
Posted 09:56pm 15/11/11
I'm level 5 and also got dealt by that ice troll. Was even worse because I didn't save and had to leg it from way way back :( But I ended up Spoiler:
killing him by equipping flames / healing and just kite him.
Posted 10:03pm 15/11/11
Also, Spoiler:
if you go up above the Jarl in the first village you find, you'll see a map, look at it to update your map with all the locations, helps.
Posted 10:07pm 15/11/11
Posted 10:19pm 15/11/11
Posted 10:53pm 15/11/11
Posted 11:48pm 15/11/11
Do the horses have different speeds based on age/price?
Posted 11:50pm 15/11/11
Spoiler:
Found a wooden mask, seems to transport you BACK in time, if you stand on the little altar in the hut at the Labyrinth ruins area. Your shown 8 little dragon faces, and you can put some thing on them. So went walking about, was doing a quest to kill a bandit, and after doing that wandered around onto a mountain nearby, and found 1 random dragon, and then another dragon in a actual dragon area. Killed the frost dragon, bloody hard though. Afterwards, go to get my new shout, and some dude bursts out of a crypt. Name is Krosis, and he dropped a mask called Krosis' Mask. 20% increase to Archery, Alchemy and Smithing. This got me thinking though, this looks an awful lot like the wooden mask, and I remember being teleported to that shrine area, where you could place things on the dragon faces. So, quick travel to the hut, chuck the mask on, and lo and behold, Krosis had his own statue. What it does? No clue. Will have to find more of these dudes, took all their names down so I can hunt them. They seem to be near dragons though.
Posted 08:23am 16/11/11
Posted 08:59am 16/11/11
Posted 09:05am 16/11/11
Come to think of it, it's no wonder so many games companies are going bankrupt - noone can afford to buy the massive library of awesome games that are being released lately.
Posted 09:27am 16/11/11
Posted 09:32am 16/11/11
Posted 10:02am 16/11/11
Posted 10:08am 16/11/11
also discovered that in crypts with the skeletons, the skeletons that come out of the walls/alcoves are always wearing armour. so i just look out for them and 1 shot them with a stealth attack before they 'wake' up.
Posted 10:14am 16/11/11
Posted 10:17am 16/11/11
Wait, can you possibly be implying that reputable media outlets might only skim a few hours of gameplay and write a comprehensive review based on that brief time playing the early parts of the game? Surely that would never happen!
Posted 10:23am 16/11/11
It's TES after all, they could play the thing solid for four weeks and still only be a small fraction of the way through.
Posted 12:02pm 16/11/11
Posted 12:20pm 16/11/11
Assign item to favorites with F key
Open favorites with Q key
Scroll to the item you want
Press the number you want to assign it to
Posted 12:25pm 16/11/11
Posted 12:31pm 16/11/11
Posted 12:34pm 16/11/11
Posted 12:42pm 16/11/11
Posted 12:44pm 16/11/11
It's random I believe. When they kneel down I've found I go up to them and just use normal swing attack, works.
Posted 12:48pm 16/11/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9UYcD32goA
Posted 01:42pm 16/11/11
Posted 01:48pm 16/11/11
Posted 02:03pm 16/11/11
I'm currently doing the coolest dungeon ever, reminds me of Indiana Jones waaay to much. So many traps, so many skeletons, and so much loot. Spoiler:
It's the haunted barrow near the bottom of the Greybeards, Ivarstead I think. You start a quest up to investigate why it's haunted, and you get another claw at the end of the quest, which you can then use to open up a huge maze of crypts. Still going now, and had boulders chase me, swinging spiked gates, spiked walls pushing in, poison darts and the best one, stealing a golden bar off a platform, and then being set on fire for doing it.
Posted 02:37pm 16/11/11
Skull of Corruption
Spoiler:
I got it near Whitehold on some quest. Was pretty cool, voices in my head telling me to kill him.. So I did lol. item worth is 1800 I think.
Speaking of impossible fights, I cam across a Deugar Overlord of some sort and it would 1-shot me with a bow. I ended up shouting it down, running in and looting the chest then busting a move out of there, got some phat loot. A glass axe amongst it.
Posted 02:41pm 16/11/11
I love the 1h weapon + shield instant kills. I was fighting some bandits and stabbbed this dude right through the chest and he is like "i've had worse" which made me think of that black knight. Another one just then when I was fighting a ghost I stabbed him through the neck and he says to me "I don't want to hurt you" and i'm all, b**** I just stabbed you through the neck, you aint hurting me.
Smithing is incredible with how strong your weapons can become. I found an Ebony Sword which @ Lv 15 is doing 25 damage for me, mind you I have 40% bonus to 1 hand weapons.
Posted 02:43pm 16/11/11
used beast form and smashed them bad. I particularly love how the first hit tends to send them flying across the room!
Posted 02:50pm 16/11/11
Don't use that when fighting
Spoiler:
The Silver Hand, their silver weapons smashed me. I'm not sure if they were simply high level mobs or if it was because I was also in beast form.
Posted 03:09pm 16/11/11
FYI, Arena and Daggerfall are both freeware now. They are... quite dated however :)
Posted 04:00pm 16/11/11
They have Silver weapons which are more effective against Warewolves and I assume Vampires.
Posted 04:04pm 16/11/11
Posted 06:07pm 16/11/11
Added to that I occasionally get a complete client crash when 'fast traveling' from one area to another. In summary, from a pure client perspective, a blizzard game, it is not. And that is a bad thing as blizzard still make hands down the best game client on the planet.
HAVING SAID ALL THAT: the game is really good, gameplay itself is excellent, depth of content and engagement is superb, I love the skills system, the perk system allows for plenty of perks to be able to go down a few skill trees without feeling like your missing out, and the natural progression of skills based on use while definitely not unique I really do feel should be used in any RPG ever. I'm only still level 16 destruction mage but still feel I've got heaps of the game I'd like to play and want to check out some of the other trees so look forward to that. Highly recommended providing a truely crap client and GUI doesn't irritate you to the point you cant ignore it and just enjoy the game...
Also, a few of us bought wireless 380 usb things for pc today as we're keen on checking out the game on a 360 controller, might allow me to look over the more flaky aspects that are due to it being a console port. I support the 10/10 notion, not perfect by any aspect but if your going to drop that much cash once a year and you enjoy the genre this is the game to use it on.
Posted 06:16pm 16/11/11
Hope these points make sense, pretty hastily / poorly written brain fart but thought a impartial view in the commentary would help other players decision making, rather than omgitrulz
Posted 06:40pm 16/11/11
My Wood Elf Archer/Thief is level 10 at the moment I have completed a couple of Empire missions and did a few side quests, during which I found a stack of Iron Bars in someones house so I killed the owner and took everything..
Posted 07:08pm 16/11/11
We will have little werewolf children together.
Posted 05:00pm 24/11/11
last edited by trog at 17:00:51 24/Nov/11
Posted 08:31pm 16/11/11
Posted 08:56pm 16/11/11
Also, Archery is awesome.
Posted 08:57pm 16/11/11
Posted 09:36pm 16/11/11
Posted 09:21pm 16/11/11
Posted 09:57pm 16/11/11
Posted 10:13pm 16/11/11
Posted 10:25pm 16/11/11
It'd also be good if favourites are sorted between shouts, spells and weapons.
Posted 10:34pm 16/11/11
how do you see what diseases n s*** you have?
Posted 10:41pm 16/11/11
Posted 11:18pm 16/11/11
confirm/deny?
Posted 11:21pm 16/11/11
Posted 11:41pm 16/11/11
Posted 11:47pm 16/11/11
Yeah I get that mouse glitchy crap too.
Posted 11:50pm 16/11/11
from below
walking the plank
nice view
also i've got 3 new shouts and i've killed 2 dragons since getting them but they still haven't activated. dunno wtf is going on.
Posted 11:59pm 16/11/11
Posted 12:08am 17/11/11
talk to the greybeards and be taught how to upgrade shouts. Infidel, any companions will be in their "area" that you found them. So Lydia is in your house, Faendal is at the first village etc.
Destruction is perfectly fine for me. I've heard a lot of complaining because people, but the majority of the time they aren't using a variety of spells, and just sticking with flames. There is firebolt, fire rune, ice rune, frost, frostbolt, frost spike, sparks, lighting bolt, lighting chain etc. There are a s*** load of spells, and the Destruction skill tree is amazing, albeit takes a bit, as the next set of nodes past the "increase shock/fire/frost" needs a skill of 55 or 60 I believe, which takes a bit, as you have to predominantly use Destruction spells.
Also, holy crap does Candlelight help heaps. Need to see in a dungeon? Pop a Candlelight, ta da, see s***. Magelight is okay, but it doesn't broadcast the light enough to really make it as useful as Candlelight.
Also Rav, that jump looks an awful lot like Assassins Creed. Oh yeah, I recommend these three mods for anyone who wants the most out of their game. First one unlocks the game to use more then 2GB's of RAM. Don't know why Bethesda program like that, but anyways get that here.
Next one is enhanced blood textures, makes it look much cooler when slicing and dicing, get that here.
And last but not least, a graphical mod that increases the saturation, making it look more cleaner and less "steamy", not that it doesn't look awesome before, but give it a shot and you'll see the difference, you can even press the pause key to toggle it on/off. Get that mod here, and choose the low saturation setting, the high saturation makes everything look like Outlands from WoW.
Posted 12:18am 17/11/11
Yeah, I didn't see your reply before I typed my post, I was agreeing with all the other people who posted before you :P
Posted 12:24am 17/11/11
[url=http://postimage.org/image/ndnzx8qx7/][img]http://s9.postimage.org/ndnzx8qx7/Nocturnal_Wallpaper.jpg[/img][/url]
Posted 12:32am 17/11/11
http://i.imgur.com/JmvY6.jpg
Posted 12:38am 17/11/11
How do you learn new spells? Do you need to find the book or can you be trained?
I'm going to try out some of those mods Eorl.
Has anyone found Frostflow Lighthouse? It's near Darkstar or WinterHold.. totally random mystery quest.. was great! Spoiler:
First run-in with the Thalmer and some crazy bug monster things
last edited by Viper119 at 00:38:10 17/Nov/11
Posted 12:38am 17/11/11
Posted 01:13am 17/11/11
Posted 01:23am 17/11/11
Posted 04:01am 17/11/11
Posted 06:46am 17/11/11
apparently the imbal doesn't become too apparent until later levels. it doesn't appear to be game breaking as in you can still play and beat the game with char with destro as the primary damage dealing skill and have a lot of fun but you can't get anywhere near the damage output of arch or melee supposedly (melee/arch damage rises with skill level, gear quality/smithing and enchants - magic damage rises with skill level? can't purchase/craft better versions of spells, no +dmg enchants, only +mana regen?): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOSw36zv7YI
i think what some people are a bit ticked off about is that as one of the primary damage skills (1h/2h/arch/dest) it appears to be by far the least effective and generally doesn't give the player much incentive to use it. having not played myself yet though it's hard to know whether it's spastics qq'ing or a genuine problem.
i imagine there will be some balance patches sooner or later if it's that much of an issue though
Posted 06:27am 17/11/11
As someone mentioned there are no UI indicators of a targets level, It almost has a MMO feel when you can not even fight something because its too high level and youre better off flighting low level enemies instead. There are no specific areas where lower level things are and Higher level things are as far as I can tell. The more I play it the less enjoyable it gets......or I could be retarded and am just playing it wrong which is a possibility.
TL;DR - New npc level system is crap, bring back Oblivion's.
Posted 07:47am 17/11/11
Posted 09:04am 17/11/11
Posted 09:39am 17/11/11
The NPC levelling of Skyrim is much, much better. When I get better, I can take down things I couldn't before. I'm taking down a wolf with a single arrow instead of 3 when I started off.
last edited by 3dee at 09:39:04 17/Nov/11
Posted 09:43am 17/11/11
Posted 09:43am 17/11/11
Viper, learning spells you just press e while hovering over them in the books section of the inventory. Then go to spells and favourite/equip. Simple as that.
Mos, soul gems are used by pressing T when your hovering over a weapon that needs to be recharged. To get souls into the gem, you need to either have a weapon that does it, i.e. my bow will drain a soul if in the 7 seconds that it's tagged, it dies. There are a different range of gems starting from petty to grand I believe. Each one can contain certain NPC souls. So a wolf gets a petty gem, where as some badass troll gets giant gem.
Rav, haven't noticed it gimping me yet then. If someone is playing pure destruction, they are doing it wrong then. Skyrim allows for so much uniqueness. I'm currently running as a archer who uses 1h swords and shield and also dual wielding destruction magic with the use of conjuration in sticky situations or for light sources.
Posted 09:44am 17/11/11
Bonus Image of my character
http://s8.postimage.org/zcoc8ys7p/TESV_2011_11_17_07_36_41_56.jpg
Posted 09:45am 17/11/11
Posted 09:50am 17/11/11
Really? Cos I was actually thinking the opposite, people seemed to be going pretty overboard with the spoiler tags in some cases. I guess it depends on your definition of a spoiler, but I don't really care if someones talking about an ability I don't have yet, or a dungeon I haven't been to yet, its not like it somehow robs me of the fun of doing it myself.
Posted 10:24am 17/11/11
Posted 10:25am 17/11/11
There's dragons!
Posted 10:37am 17/11/11
And swords!
Posted 10:43am 17/11/11
I haven't even bothered to take on a giant since I'm getting crushed by trolls. The only things I can kill are bandits. Starting to feel s*** at this game :(
Posted 10:46am 17/11/11
Out in the open where you can kite them they should be easier.
I was able to take down a bunch of Bandits and a Chief or two standing in the outside area of Fort Dunstad with relative ease, but down below where there's about 5 of them in close quarters they keep ripping through me.
Posted 10:47am 17/11/11
Posted 11:16am 17/11/11
Posted 11:16am 17/11/11
They telegraph their swings and you can easily step back out of the way and move in for your own attack. If you are trying to play some kind of soak character that can just stand there and take hits then you will find it very hard to do at low levels without plenty of points in armour and block.
When you have trouble with a certain enemy you just have to look at what you have at your disposal. Use pots, cast protection spells, use scrolls, use poisons, don't stand still, use your stagger shout to get a bit of breathing room and always use F5 before a fight. Took me a lot of deaths to get past that troll by trying to kite using the only method of combat I had been using at the time. I eventually worked out you simply have to try everything, got him down and hit F5 so many f*****g times to make sure I didn't have to go back.
They aren't even a challenge any more, I two shot trolls but I still die to a bunch of different enemies if I'm not careful.
Posted 11:27am 17/11/11
It's such a tiny space, with around 4-5 dudes right inside the door.
Posted 11:38am 17/11/11
Posted 12:24pm 17/11/11
Posted 12:47pm 17/11/11
Posted 01:30pm 17/11/11
Posted 01:32pm 17/11/11
Posted 01:34pm 17/11/11
Posted 01:43pm 17/11/11
Argh yeah that s**** me so much.
Workarounds as follows:
1. Move further into the room and the companion takes one more step inside the door
2. Initiate the talk menu and select the option "I want you to do something"...then target somewhere distant and click "Wait there"
3. Open a ready stance and then switch back and try to jump over your companion before they do too (not much success with this one but it helped in one instance)
4. Whirlwhind sprint the stubborn f***** into next week. (Disclaimer: May or may not cause guards to get angry, YMMV)
Posted 01:59pm 17/11/11
I've finished the brave companions quest line, got the best shield I've seen yet at the end Spoiler:
Shield of Ysgramor, plus I'm rocking the skyforge steel sword I got off a dead companion, 26dm yo!
Thinking I might follow the college questline now to get some magic up in the hizay.
Posted 02:17pm 17/11/11
Posted 02:25pm 17/11/11
lol s***, forgot you had to press r to unlock shouts.
only problem with doing that is you stop getting achievements if you're into that sort of thing.
last edited by ravn0s at 14:25:32 17/Nov/11
Posted 02:25pm 17/11/11
Can I shoot things in the face : (Check)
Can I stare at the pretend peoples boobs : (Check)
If I hit people the right way do they gib : (Check)
Do the NPCs steal my armour like Frogbot : (No)
9 out of f*****g 10... needs more rally stages in the carts.
Posted 02:50pm 17/11/11
If you had smithing up high enough you could improve that quite a bit. My Skyforge sword does 47 damage.
Posted 07:30pm 17/11/11
- First of I used this tool to mod my game to allow more than 2gb ram used at a time. Why bethesda didn't think of this who knows. Got quite a FPS boost I must say and stopped all CTD I was having.
- Next up in documents/my games/skyrim/skyrim.ini changing iPresentInterval=1 to 0 disables vsych i've been told. Did it myself but didn't notice any difference.
- Over in SkyrimPrefs.ini if you change both
bTreesReceiveShadows=0
bDrawLandShadows=0
To 1s you get a graphical increase with no fps hit really.
- Also change bMouseAcceleration=1 to 0 for obvious reasons. Gets rid of that stupid super high vertical look but slow horizontal movement thing.
- Finally this shader set unlike the last one I posted doesn't change any of the saturation and make things stupidly bright but rather just eleminates that white film that seems to be over everything and make things much better looking at night I feel. No FPS hit at all for this.
Posted 08:04pm 17/11/11
I was doing a quest for the red guard chick in town and had to talk to a guy who was locked up in the dungeon. So I went in and thought I'd steal all the keys from the guards so I could go talk to him, turns out you can't get the right key for the door but you can talk to him through the door, but by now I'd stolen all the keys anyway. So i paid off his bounty for him so he would talk with me, and after i got the information he called for the guards to release him and they replied "Sorry, it seems I've lost my keys, you will have to wait till I find them.".
Not sure if he says that even if you don't steal the keys but it was pretty awesome.
Posted 08:24pm 17/11/11
ffs. did this and got the error 51 message so i validated the files like the site said. it came back saying2 files didn't validate so i have to download them. now i need to download 4 f*****g gig.
Posted 08:33pm 17/11/11
Posted 08:48pm 17/11/11
and it's downloading at 50kbps
last edited by ravn0s at 20:48:43 17/Nov/11
Posted 09:03pm 17/11/11
Posted 09:49pm 17/11/11
Posted 10:26pm 17/11/11
Posted 11:31pm 17/11/11
I was going to install the memory mod, might try to validate the files first! Did you lose your saves Rav, or does Steam keep them?
Posted 01:02am 18/11/11
You can't improve orcish weapons if you went light armor skills only. Skyforge weapons you get from the companion quest, i'm not sure about or what it's classed as. I just know that I went light armor smithing, had 72 points on it including magical item skill and was able to.
The easiest way to level smithing is to buy as many leather strips as you can (and/or buy leather and strip it) and buy as many iron ignots as you can. Whiterun is good as there are 2 smiths who don't have linked inventory right where you spawn. Each day they refill and have about 15 leather, 20 strips and 20 something iron bars each. Make iron daggers until you are 100. That simple.
Posted 09:15am 18/11/11
better not have lost my saves, otherwise i wont be playing the game again for a very long time. screw playing the same 30hrs again.
Posted 09:31am 18/11/11
I'm up to 1.5GB for my save folder for Skyrim.
Posted 09:34am 18/11/11
wow. i feel sorry for ps3 players. the game starts f*****g up for them if they have over 6mb of save files.
Posted 10:11am 18/11/11
95% of the time, a giant will hit me so hard that i'm dead before i hit the ground.
It's obvious i'm dead before I hit the ground, because if I hit the ground before I'm dead, my body lies crumpled on the ground.
If I die before I hit the ground, my body bounces into the sky, and the skybox is impressively high.
Posted 10:17am 18/11/11
Also I was attacked by a frosty dragon and it fkn crushed me :S
Posted 10:39am 18/11/11
haha keato i lol'd so hard when i read that 2nd line coz last night playing skyrim...
shot all those f**rs in the FACE @!!@# ;D
i am lvl12 atm... wood elf majoring in archery, stealth & destruction. i phear no frost trolls! just burn them with my flames whilst smashing them in the face with my flaming orc mace. killed 6 frost trolls so far but only 3 dragons. i had one dragon hassle me when i was stuck in this enclosed courtyard... i took it down to about 1/3 of it's health with arrows n the f**n thing flew off & i couldn't chase it coz i needed to talk to an npc to get out of the courtyard :(
Posted 01:44pm 18/11/11
also do you need the third word for the force push shout (cant remember name) to blow enemies away? ever thing i use it on only pushes them back a few feet.
last edited by ravn0s at 13:44:33 18/Nov/11
Posted 01:45pm 18/11/11
Link
Won't link a 1920x1080 photo. Anyway Lv 28 sneak based assassin character who is a badass smither. Wearing full Jester costume (0 armor all the way!) which lets me do 30x damage sneak attacks with my 27 damage +10 HP steal dagger. So far i've yet to find someone who lives after a backstab. Hell I even have an Epic Ebony bow which does 50 damage, + the 10 arrow damage.
My follower is a daedric worshipping priestess who I recruited after a quest line. Won't say where but if you want to know, you can see the name and look it up. I made her the ebony suit and she tanked a frost dragon that landed 10 minutes ago and would 1 shot me in melee range. She's a bad ass, has all Lv 2 destruction spells as well as Ice Storm that I know of, and can summon flame antiorchs if needed. Best follower i've come across so far which is a shame since my character's playstyle is suited to being a loner relying on stealth.
I always laugh when I shoot some poor dude right in the side of the head, he falls over dead, and his alerted pal after 20 seconds says "must of been my imagination". Yup his imagination shot him in the head with an arrow.
Posted 01:47pm 18/11/11
Posted 01:49pm 18/11/11
Posted 01:52pm 18/11/11
Posted 05:03pm 18/11/11
Posted 05:21pm 18/11/11
they start off with the highest sneak (+10). my character is a wood elf so only started with +5 sneak, but my sneak is 60 i think.
Posted 05:54pm 18/11/11
I have two Housecarls now, b****** love Thanes.
Posted 06:16pm 18/11/11
Posted 06:47pm 18/11/11
Heh yep, I just love playing khajit because it helps me in my goal of stealing anything that's not nailed down. I was in Solitude last night and ran into the first lot of thugs sent after me from someone in Eastmarch.
Was hiring three dudes to schlep halfway across the continent and beat me up because I stole a few tomatoes a great ROI? ...really?!
Posted 06:56pm 18/11/11
Posted 07:03pm 18/11/11
Posted 08:40pm 18/11/11
Posted 09:14pm 18/11/11
Posted 09:28pm 18/11/11
Posted 12:11am 19/11/11
just got the nightingale blade in the thieves guild quest line. nice looking sword.
Posted 12:38am 19/11/11
Posted 12:40am 19/11/11
Posted 12:50am 19/11/11
Thanks, DM, that was an easy level up to 100 :) Though I'd recommend three additions:
1.) when your vendor runs out of iron ingots, use the leather and leather straps to make Hide Bracers, easy XP without iron,
2.) travel between Whiterun, Riverwood and Markay, four good blacksmiths between them means little waiting for inventories to respawn, and
3.) if, like me, you've collected a lot of crappy low level soul gems by now, take some of your iron daggers or hide bracers you just made to an enchantment table (there's one in the Jarl Hall in Whiterun) and level up enchantment as you go. The resale value on the items you made will be way higher, and you learn another useful skill, as well as leveling up.
Posted 01:01am 19/11/11
Tip to those doing smithing, get some +Blacksmith enchants. Even at 100 skill, if I wear my blacksmithing gear I can increase the damage of weapons and armour of gear beyond what I would normally get.
Speaking of vendors, since the light dragon armour doesn't use any bones I had about 20k worth to sell. That took some god damned time, I even made some of the heavy armour but none of the vendors had enough cash for it as it vended for about 1800 gold.
Another hot tip is find yourselves the Lovers Stone, it increases the rate you learn for all skills
Posted 01:08am 19/11/11
Posted 01:55am 19/11/11
Anyway I blundered and my auto save triggered 3 times in a short period, so i couldn't autosave dismiss him and then go, because as usual some random dragon showed up and instinctually, in the middle of the fight over guards, I auto saved after the dragon (if my hp/mana or stamina guages run low, i just press back/a and then im at full hp and autosaved... great for dungeons for save healing). Long story short i didn't notice one of my companions was missing until a couple of saves later i realised she wasn't catching up.
Found her corpse and I can't exactly carry all my own loot i dumped onto her. :S
My losses:
Dragon claw necklace
about 8 quests, separated into 3 main quest lines..
loot and armour
about 9 new places I added to the map
Couple of caves cleared
Alternative is otherwise is losing the companion.
Not ideal to lose her because she's my tank. I'm a caster so i tend to stand back or sneak fireball things.
Either way enough of that game, i might come back and play the quests i lost again or decide to stick with the completed quests and ignore the lost companion. Time for a break.
Posted 09:08am 19/11/11
Posted 09:20am 19/11/11
Posted 10:32am 19/11/11
How do the guards know who shot the arrow straight away? GOTY?
Posted 10:51am 19/11/11
Posted 12:52pm 19/11/11
Posted 12:02pm 19/11/11
Posted 12:13pm 19/11/11
Posted 12:36pm 19/11/11
Like a boss
Posted 01:02pm 19/11/11
That horse one reminds me of the opening scenes in Oblivion when Patrick Stewart as Uriel Septim comes to visit me in the dungeons - he's talking, talking, then suddenly falls completely through the prison cell floor and disappears. I'm like, "...uhh...ok" and now there's nothing to trigger the game to start.
Thankfully it was a re-roll so I knew if I didn't exit and start again I'd be waiting for a very long time.
Posted 01:57pm 19/11/11
Posted 02:13pm 19/11/11
Posted 04:14pm 19/11/11
Posted 04:41pm 19/11/11
Posted 04:44pm 19/11/11
Just rocking around doing sidequests now, found this Lllia chick in a crazy backwards tower. Was creepy as f***. Anyways, only gotten through the second bit of the main quest, Greybeard part. On my way to Riften at them moment, apparently there is a bounty for a dragon's head.
Posted 05:09pm 19/11/11
Posted 05:11pm 19/11/11
Weird, maybe they gave you a buff or something. Go tab > magic > effects and see if there is a buff that is doing it. Otherwise restart TESV.
Posted 05:11pm 19/11/11
Posted 05:24pm 19/11/11
Then why are you trying to learn to become a mage?
Posted 05:34pm 19/11/11
I'm messing around with a illusion/conjuration mage who has sneak secondary spells. So far it's going very well. Frenzy/Calm people until a body shows up I can raise and then all hell breaks loose. Dragons may be tough but I have some 1H skill for that. I love raising animal zombies to help me out and it's funny as hell to see a rabbit attacking. It's a very fresh break from the standard destruction based mages.
EDIT - Just walked into a room with lydia, this guy and my rased draugar guy and I just sat there doing nothing. I have a small army thanks to this play style. Necromancer Illusionist ftw!
I'm doing this quest in a ruin with a guy following me to help clear it out. I sneak up to a door, open it and see a body I can raise to get the ball rolling. Turns out it's 1 of his dead family members and he is going to this big speech about how he shouldn't of let her go in alone. Meanwhile she is standing next to him going uuuuuhhhhhh in zombie mode. many lols were had.
last edited by DM at 17:34:03 19/Nov/11
Posted 05:39pm 19/11/11
Posted 07:13pm 19/11/11
i'm not. i need to get in there to finish some quests.
Posted 07:31pm 19/11/11
Ahh I see then. Try a potion that increase Magicka points by ~20 points. I haven't gotten to any guilds yet :P Still farting around.
Posted 07:32pm 19/11/11
Posted 07:39pm 19/11/11
Posted 07:55pm 19/11/11
how much gold does everyone have? i have over 30k. i should probably buy a house or something.
Posted 07:59pm 19/11/11
Felt like it. I spent a solid hour trying to figure out why people were attacking me. Thought I was triggering something in the dialogue for them to attack.
Posted 09:13pm 19/11/11
Posted 09:56pm 19/11/11
I haven't bought a horse yet but I seem to have one spawn near me every so often when I port somewhere but I prefer to whirlwind around the place.
Posted 10:00pm 19/11/11
I'm finding some of the bosses to be complete b****** to kill, in comparison to the difficulty of the monsters in the dungeon.
One particular boss would two-shot me, and my average spell would take off about 5% of his health. I basically had to cheese my way through the fight by using the shoddy AI to my advantage.
Posted 10:49pm 19/11/11
Dragon Lords are f*****g hard. But worth it.
Posted 11:00pm 19/11/11
i got my horse from a quest in riften. his name is frost.
Posted 12:29am 20/11/11
Seriously I think my girlfriend left a week ago I haven't seen her since I stuck my G35's on my head and got lost in Skyrim.
Posted 12:33am 20/11/11
Posted 01:09am 20/11/11
Is it weird that my lighting spell does way less damage then an arrow from a bow? I think I must be doing something wrong.
I think I want to go warrior or something where I am not constantly kiting like a b****
Posted 01:16am 20/11/11
dont look at screenie
the emperor of skyrim
Posted 02:17am 20/11/11
Elven armor is light, need to go dwarf path for heavy.
Really loving stealth archery.
Posted 02:24am 20/11/11
And yes elven armor will be less protective over steel since it comes after you can make elven on the skill list.
last edited by DM at 02:24:17 20/Nov/11
Posted 07:50am 20/11/11
Posted 08:18am 20/11/11
Posted 09:10am 20/11/11
does your armour have +magicka regen or +magkica? I'm a destro/conjurer and i just find all the good mage buffs are on cloth. im mainly using quest rewards from the mage college quest line.
if your spells are feeling weak, make sure you check back at a vendor to see if you can get the next level of spells. they only become available on vendors when you get high enough level to use them.
Posted 09:36am 20/11/11
Posted 09:47am 20/11/11
Posted 10:36am 20/11/11
I recommend getting a friend to tank for you as a caster. Makes the lower levels a lot more doable. Just make sure you don't flame them :P
Posted 10:49am 20/11/11
Posted 10:53am 20/11/11
Posted 05:01pm 24/11/11
last edited by trog at 17:01:43 24/Nov/11
Posted 02:56pm 20/11/11
My illusionist sneak mage had to come to an end because I forgot that while this build is awesome against humans, animals and later undead and everything else, it sucks balls against dragons. I can't do any damage to them and it's pointless playing a class that can't fight them. Back to the drawing board. Right now I'm planning on taking this new character on a illusion/archery build which seems better. Can incite rage on everyone and then switch to bows.
Oh and there is a killable children mod on skyrimnexus which lets you not only kill them, but has a side effect of letting you PLAY as a kid. So f*****g funny (I had way too much fun with this, and was laughing so much) to sneak around towns casing Frenzy on the children and watch them be slaughtered. When it's 1 child against an entire town guard, jarl's bodyguards as well as the court mage it's just hilarious to listen to them yell "I'LL HAVE YOUR HEAD".
Posted 03:35pm 20/11/11
Posted 03:55pm 20/11/11
Posted 06:40pm 20/11/11
"With regards to the idea of enemies always being at the player character's level, Oblivion did that (and the system was hated), but Skyrim does not. Rather it uses bracketed scaling... which means that, for instance, a lowly bandit can only develop from levels 1 to 5, whereas a cave bear can level between 9 and 15 (not actual figures). So when you're level 7, you'll think bandits are easy and cave bears are hard. The goal is to ensure each type of enemy has minimum and maximum limits, so that the player can fully explore the world while finding easy enemies as well as difficult enemies in a good balance."
Courtesy here, http://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/mhwo2/skyrim_leveled_loot_andor_enemies_your_opinion/c313euk
Posted 06:45pm 20/11/11
last edited by Sc00bs at 18:45:32 20/Nov/11
Posted 06:55pm 20/11/11
Posted 07:15pm 20/11/11
Posted 07:32pm 20/11/11
leveling is getting kind of slow atm. if i started working on the skills that i don't use, it would pick up.
last edited by ravn0s at 19:32:54 20/Nov/11
Posted 07:50pm 20/11/11
Posted 07:51pm 20/11/11
Posted 08:20pm 20/11/11
Your bloody lucky then. I have to seek them out, and will only find them if they are guarding shouts, or once when one attacked a village.
Posted 08:22pm 20/11/11
Posted 08:26pm 20/11/11
Posted 08:33pm 20/11/11
I respeced my char last night, it was tedious but I got it down. You need to do it via the console. But yea being able to get perk points back some how would be awesome.
I've not had 1 random dragon yet. Not that it would be a problem, they seem pretty damn easy to kill. I'm more worried about bears than dragons.
Although since I respeced my char from archery to melee I wonder if they will now be a challenge.
Posted 08:30pm 20/11/11
have you seen the greybeards? i don't think you start getting random dragon encounters until you have.
Posted 08:33pm 20/11/11
Nope, that would explain that. Thx.
Posted 09:00pm 20/11/11
Dragon Overlords are bloody hard.
Posted 09:09pm 20/11/11
Yes! I reckon the Thief series kinda lost the plot in the later installments, but Skyrim is making up for it.
Posted 09:15pm 20/11/11
Posted 09:53pm 20/11/11
Posted 10:21pm 20/11/11
I've had a s*** load of dragon encounters, got a dragon slayer achieve but not sure how many I have killed in total as it doesn't seem to be listed in the stats. 2 in Solitude and one just outside but mostly I meet them at random. Then again I tend to spend most of play time wandering. I set my mind on going to a quest zone but end up trying to discover every location that hits my radar and find so many cool things that the quest never ends up getting done.
So far I have encountered a couple of named dragons (I won't say how for spoilers), a bunch of "Dragon" dragons, heaps of Blood and Frost Dragons and a couple of Elder Dragons. I've unlocked a s*** load of shouts while exploring, the cooldowns are kind of stupidly long for some of the early stage shouts though as they are not very effective.
Posted 10:45pm 20/11/11
Posted 11:03pm 20/11/11
My magicka, health and stamina are all around 150.
Posted 11:06pm 20/11/11
Its kind of hilarious because the skeletons all drop in on the road in when I show up ...
Posted 11:09pm 20/11/11
geez :P been playing it none stop matt haha
im switching between this, saints row and bf3. This seems to be getting my attention more so lately as im 50% through saints row and have only played a few hrs of it :/
Posted 11:35pm 20/11/11
The one I use.
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15
Another one.
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=365
Posted 12:06am 21/11/11
Posted 12:14am 21/11/11
Been playing for an embarrassing number of hours, figured I'd get it over with quickly in a few days but it somehow doesn't end. Have nearly maxed out everything and haven't finished a single major questline, except a few daedric and town ones and maybe the thieves guild, but still have an achievement to get for that... Have yet to do anything for the imperials/stormcloaks/companions/brotherhood/most-of-mages... f*** me. Haven't even been to 3 of the major cities yet, just trying to clean up quests in local areas as I move through them.
And holy s***, that skyrim under skyrim that I only discovered last night... spent like 3 hours there thinking that I just needed to map it out, before realising how endlessly huge it is...
Posted 12:22am 21/11/11
Posted 12:25am 21/11/11
Tried to find a clip of mercer from the thieves guild, best I could find was this.
Have also gone after about a jillion dragon shouts, but there's always more to find. I can do so many amazing things now, but apparently not all the things...
Posted 12:33am 21/11/11
You have to use console commands to do it might disable achievements. But you type in player.addperk "perk id"
Get the perk id by typing help "first word of perk name" 4, page up/down if it returns many results. Multi-ranked perks can be a pain as they have several id's, trial and error really. This may be helpful to some extent. In order to remove a perk type player.removeperk "perk id". It will be tedious but doing this you can shift around your perk points, if you're only shifting a few in smithing it wont take long.
Posted 12:35am 21/11/11
Given the way every part of the game feels hand crafted for the most part its truly f*****g epic. Any other game would string together 10-15 of the sidequests and call it done, for the most part they don't really fee like side quests, just extra game that doesn't fit into the main questline.
This is one of those games that if you're not playing it now in 5-10 years when its dated you will feel like you missed the f*** out because everyone is still raving about it. Get on it if you haven't already, top time waster over Chrissy!
Posted 12:36am 21/11/11
Posted 12:43am 21/11/11
Posted 06:28am 21/11/11
Posted 08:41am 21/11/11
Posted 09:05am 21/11/11
Posted 09:23am 21/11/11
Yeah, Spoiler:
you won't appreciate that side of him at the end of that side quest.
last edited by StopShootingMe at 09:17:20 21/Nov/11
*EDIT* And I have to say the Dark Brotherhood were disappointingly easy to wipe out. Didn't even take any damage in that quest. Ancient assassin cult should go down harder and involve a chase backwards and forwards across the world with attempts on my life in my sleep and so on. It occurs to me that I would have made a better head of the Dark Brotherhood than the Thieves Guild, what with my fondness for backstabbing. But the Dark Brotherhood's HQ looks like arse compared to the Thieves Guild, so meh.
I also got made head of The Mages Guild, was way too easy and I didn't want the job. Might have to slaughter the lot of them.
last edited by StopShootingMe at 09:23:29 21/Nov/11
Posted 09:28am 21/11/11
Posted 09:29am 21/11/11
Posted 09:34am 21/11/11
Posted 09:53am 21/11/11
They look pretty similar to Oblivion, with the obligatory Skyrim graphics upgrade. There's a quest given by someone in the Blue Palace at Solitude that involves clearing out a vampire cave.
Posted 10:05am 21/11/11
Posted 10:24am 21/11/11
Also the Dwarven stuff could use a re-texture. I am sure it will be sooner or later.
Posted 10:23am 21/11/11
Also if you want a free house + epic 1h mace do this quest I stumbled upon in Spoiler:
Markarth called "the house of horrors"..
Posted 10:24am 21/11/11
better be good
Posted 10:58am 21/11/11
Being a vampire is fun if you want to play a sneak based character since they get a 25% bonus to sneak among other bonuses. However if you don't feed at least once every 3 or 4 days you will turn feral and everyone will attack you on stop regardless, and I have no idea how you feed.
Despite being a sneaky character I went heavy armor spec in smithing for my new guy because I have the spell Muffle which lets me move silently I can wear whatever I want and it won't effect my sneak, and also that heavy armor gets stronger bows in the long run.
last edited by DM at 10:58:33 21/Nov/11
Posted 10:59am 21/11/11
Posted 11:14am 21/11/11
Yeh I'm rolling full elven with Krosis Mask. Will switch to Dragonscale once I get smithing high enough (80 or so now).
Krosis was a complete b**** to kill, ended up perching up on the mountain and cheap shotting him down.
Posted 11:17am 21/11/11
Posted 11:32am 21/11/11
Posted 11:34am 21/11/11
Posted 11:52am 21/11/11
Posted 11:58am 21/11/11
i dunno why but i get really bored with talking to the npcs to get quests. they start on some ramble about the backstory & i tab on thru the convo & look at the mission in my journal later. i've got tons of quests i've never even started. lately i've just been wandering around the map looking for dragons guarding shouts & killing them.
Posted 12:13pm 21/11/11
Posted 12:14pm 21/11/11
Posted 12:16pm 21/11/11
thought your character had to get the death blow for it to work, or is it just whoever has a gem?
Posted 12:20pm 21/11/11
Was cruising a dungeon and one-shotted this chick into the wall with a sneak shot. I remember it being really satisfying because she got completely smashed into the iron grate right when she was saying "I guess its my imagination" while standing over her dead friend with an arrow in his eye.
Anyway, 5 minutes later I activate a chain pull to open the grate ... she gets ragdoll-launched into the air and is left hanging in the doorway, my arrow had pinned her by the wrist to the grate. You may have had to be there but it was awesome :)
Posted 12:36pm 21/11/11
I have my smithing up to 63, trying to get some Orcish stuff now. Speaking of Elven Armour...
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=785
I like the look of it. Its a nice change from the dirty golden elven armour.
Posted 12:36pm 21/11/11
that is the stuff that makes skyrim awesome :)
like when you pick up a dead body by the head n raise them up so their feet are off the ground & start walking till the body is swaying then just stop but keep holding the e key down. the body sometimes starts oscillating from side to side until it goes over the top & starts spinning n then flings off at high speed. much hilarity :D
or when you get off a horse in a tight spot on the map & as soon as your feet hit the ground the horse shoots off across the landscape :p it's also cool to ride a horse into deep water... it's like your own little boat.
Posted 12:43pm 21/11/11
Posted 12:45pm 21/11/11
It's not a huge deal I guess as an improved Glass weapon still does a lot of damage but it's just a little annoying that you could be doing more.
I keep having an imperial soldier run up to me at random when I fast travel to an area. I think he is going to talk to me but then he just turns around and runs off...
Posted 01:17pm 21/11/11
Get the ebony bow from the labyrinth (best bow in game) and the dagger from the museum quest (at minimum very, very good backstaber), problem solvered :)
Posted 01:31pm 21/11/11
My hourse can do the following:
- climb over impossibly steep (near vertical) mountains,
- glide/fly over impossible jumps
- 4WD over impassible terrain
- rock climb up cliff over-hangs
still finding more every day.
Posted 01:42pm 21/11/11
Posted 02:09pm 21/11/11
I can improve a glass bow well beyond what I can improve an Ebony bow, I'm hitting 190 with glass bows and only 160ish with improved Ebony. If I could improve Ebony to Legendary like I can with Glass I reckon I'd be hitting 200.
Posted 02:19pm 21/11/11
the mage feels uber powerful now with the 2 pieces of 100% magika replenish gear from the quests.
Also does AI scale as you get more powerful? Or is it certain quests have certain difficulty level?
Posted 02:36pm 21/11/11
Posted 02:39pm 21/11/11
Have to leave work now and level enchanting!
Oh yeh I forgot about upgrades, that blows. They need to implement Dragon weapons ><
Posted 03:05pm 21/11/11
Linky
EDIT - Until you use it. Runs like s***. I retract everything I said.
last edited by DM at 15:05:34 21/Nov/11
Posted 03:35pm 21/11/11
would destroy the mask though
Posted 03:36pm 21/11/11
Yeh but I wear the mask for its effect, not much else! Can stick it on other things :D
Posted 03:44pm 21/11/11
also do you need a quest to do the labyrinth? i have the quest to visit the museum so might do those 2 tonight.
Posted 03:51pm 21/11/11
You're after Lost Valkygg for the bow.
Posted 03:55pm 21/11/11
Posted 03:57pm 21/11/11
the ebony bow? i think my nightingale bow is made of ebony so might not be worth doing it.
Posted 03:58pm 21/11/11
Posted 04:02pm 21/11/11
(although Nightingale may be bugged for stealth archery at medium range ...)
Posted 04:02pm 21/11/11
Would you look at that! Go to 00:40.
Posted 04:02pm 21/11/11
I've since turned expert mode off simply because it forced to cheese too often. I'd rather smash through enemies too easily then have to cheese my way through, I wish there was a setting between.
I killed the dragon using up my Dreams in the Staff of Corruption and a few pots then ran towards the words and BAM! I was fighting this bad ass with bugger all pots and average equipment.
Posted 04:42pm 21/11/11
Posted 04:45pm 21/11/11
A big f*** you to monday too. I need to be in a dark room with Skyrim and I'm in a well lit room with a safety audit.
Posted 04:51pm 21/11/11
When sneaking
Stats
Good thing is that this poison damage only triggers on people who are enemies and are aware of you. So a oblivious bandit wont get hurt.
last edited by DM at 16:51:29 21/Nov/11
Posted 05:20pm 21/11/11
I have 4 masks so far, one is the wooden mask, another has 100% magicka regen, then another with +20 carry weight, +20% merchant prices and water breathing (very useful mask!), the other is the same one you have. I keep them all handy and you can also improve them with blacksmithing.
Posted 05:36pm 21/11/11
Picked up a couple of archery / bow helmets anyway, they'll do (going to perk into armor so I need to be a set I think).
Speaking of essential, mucking around off-save the other night I decided to murder a High Priest of Talos and see if I could get away with it :) Turns out I could (he was crawling around waiting to die and I was stealthed still) but he was essential so wouldn't bloody die.
No way to steal his 5000gp, 0% pickpocket staff of awesome :(
Posted 05:47pm 21/11/11
Posted 06:14pm 21/11/11
yep on the loading screen sometimes you will see some sort of pedestal thing with all the masks on it.
Posted 08:09pm 21/11/11
TL;DR - faster mana regen, changed perks such as novice level spells are free, BIG damage increase with overcharge casting and big mana increase to balance it
Link
last edited by DM at 20:09:09 21/Nov/11
Posted 08:23pm 21/11/11
you mean in a cold room on -20
now that would be atmospheric
Posted 08:32pm 21/11/11
Posted 08:46pm 21/11/11
got the lockpikcing one, sick of wasting time breaking picks
the blood one, makes blood look awesome
glowing ores, makes ore deposits vein glow
yay for pc's and mods
Posted 08:48pm 21/11/11
Posted 08:54pm 21/11/11
blood one looks awesome :)
much easier to pick locks
finding ore = much easier
Posted 08:55pm 21/11/11
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/
i've been thinking about getting detailed bodies and faces.
Posted 09:11pm 21/11/11
EDIT Mods i'm using
-Killable Children
-Lockpicking with cheaty bar turned off
-Some improved textures such as water ripples, signs, water and snowflakes
-FXAA injector with only a slightly colour correction mod on to get rid of the blueish green film over everything.
-Large Awareness patch
-ENB dll file to fix some graphical errors, crashes, glitches and so on
last edited by DM at 21:11:40 21/Nov/11
Posted 09:18pm 21/11/11
Posted 09:57pm 21/11/11
I just had a random encounter with a dragon while punching on with some ice mages and I haven't gone to see the greybeards yet. s*** was epic, I hid under a bridge and filled it's ass with arrows.
also, you guys using the lockpick thing are softc****, it's just like Fallout maen. I prefer the method from oblivion, that s*** actually seemed as tedious as picking a lock :P
Posted 10:00pm 21/11/11
Posted 10:48pm 21/11/11
just got that knife from the museum quest. i like the effect "on hit, chance to instantly kill".
Posted 11:20pm 21/11/11
I also found an awesome samurai looking dragon slaying sword, if only the things would land next to me so I could use it.
Posted 12:19am 22/11/11
Posted 01:48am 22/11/11
Smooth as silk... and UBER high res.
Posted 03:04am 22/11/11
I'm on ultra settings with 2x AA and Anisotropic filtering.
Posted 07:11am 22/11/11
Posted 08:46am 22/11/11
Posted 09:18am 22/11/11
Posted 10:01am 22/11/11
Posted 11:07am 22/11/11
Posted 11:12am 22/11/11
Posted 11:20am 22/11/11
Posted 11:39am 22/11/11
Edit:
Okay, found a fix. Go to your Skyrim directory, and right click TESV.exe, go to Properties, and then go to Previous Versions. You will see one or two copies of TESV.exe, choose the latest one, and copy it to the Skyrim directory in Steam, this will stop crashes, as it reverts back to the old .exe. There wasn't actually any other fixes with this update, Bethesda just made the .exe encrypted through Steam for some bizarre reason.
Posted 11:46am 22/11/11
Posted 12:00pm 22/11/11
Posted 12:01pm 22/11/11
no previous versions show up for me
Posted 12:02pm 22/11/11
Posted 12:06pm 22/11/11
http://www.mediafire.com/?xyp1u3weayt41lx
Just unrar then paste in Skyrim section.
DM, try this http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11
Posted 12:22pm 22/11/11
Posted 01:32pm 22/11/11
Posted 01:59pm 22/11/11
Posted 02:11pm 22/11/11
EDIT - Thanks Eorl, thanks to your old .exe file and patch i'm back to playing without CTDs every 5 seconds. Time to turn off auto updates for this me thinks.
EDIT 2 - Here's an awesome video as a thanks
last edited by DM at 14:11:53 22/Nov/11
Posted 02:12pm 22/11/11
Posted 02:14pm 22/11/11
Posted 02:19pm 22/11/11
Posted 03:12pm 22/11/11
Posted 03:19pm 22/11/11
Posted 04:25pm 22/11/11
Posted 04:46pm 22/11/11
Posted 06:45pm 22/11/11
Posted 06:50pm 22/11/11
Posted 03:09am 23/11/11
So I just got jumped by a Thalmor patrol, I was pissed because I thought it meant that a previous attack of mine on them was coming back to haunt me even though I made sure all witnesses were dead, turns out they will issue assassination orders to kill you on sight and you can pick up that note and read it after you kill em. Kinda cool.
Posted 03:15am 23/11/11
Similar notes found on assassins in the Fallout games too Trauma. Good old Bethesda.
Posted 09:47am 23/11/11
I also found my first treasure map last night had fun trying to find it.
Spoiler:
I did a quest for The Companions last night, I was not expecting a Werewolf to appear!
Posted 09:50am 23/11/11
Posted 09:56am 23/11/11
Posted 10:33am 23/11/11
Posted 10:57am 23/11/11
Yeah I'm obsessive with the books - you get skill upgrades the first time you pick up specific titles, but also they're just awesome reads. I saw somewhere that there's 8 novels worth of text to plough through if you searched out every single book in the game? Not sure if that's accurate but it sounds pretty cool!
There's one book that recalls the entire tale of a great adventurer that saved the empire from daedric armies and the realm of Oblivion 200 years ago... :D
Posted 11:01am 23/11/11
What would be really awesome would be if it linked to an old save game and inserted info about the character, name, and choices.
TES VI maybe? :)
Posted 11:46am 23/11/11
Posted 11:53am 23/11/11
i sold a bunch of dragon bones n scales to the alchemist in whiterun thinking i can buy em back later if i need them... but now she doesn't have them anymore :(
Posted 12:11pm 23/11/11
Posted 12:12pm 23/11/11
6 dragon corpses at Dawnstar now, should be 8 but the game crashed after I killed 2 at once the other day (seriously, wtf). 2 Dragon corpses at Shearpoint, f*****s are respawning.
Posted 12:19pm 23/11/11
hogfather : ahh swoit. :D i have killed 8 dragons so far i think.. first blood dragon last night. i am concentrating on caining the smithing & enchanting atm so my mule (janessa) is chock full of ingots & smithing stuff :D
Posted 12:26pm 23/11/11
All that work for nothing, there is no soul to absorb
What a hot stud, who wouldn't want to marry this guy?
I modded the arch-mage robes. However I think I did something wrong with the files
Done.
Posted 12:27pm 23/11/11
You only need dragon scales for light armour and both bones and scales for heavy and I think that is the only use. You'll want a bit of a supply as you will probably want to make a couple of sets once your enchanting also increases so I suggest buying a house in one of the cities and storing your s*** there.
I had a CTD last night but I don't have mods running. I seem to get them shortly after an autosave when I zone in to an area so they have never had a big effect and I usually use it as an excuse to take a break.
Posted 12:30pm 23/11/11
Hot.
Posted 12:41pm 23/11/11
you make heavy armour from the dragon bones and light armour from the scales.
Posted 12:50pm 23/11/11
As previously noted though you need a few scales as well as bones for heavy, but just scales for light.
I'm glad I didn't sell many bones though as I'm switching playstyle a bit and using NPC tanks more, who will need bones.
Posted 01:05pm 23/11/11
just kidding.. was a cool story though right?
Posted 01:47pm 23/11/11
i remember going down that road and wondering why there was an invisible wall blocking me.
top image is the imperial city in oblivion. bottom image is the landmass in skyrim
last edited by ravn0s at 13:47:52 23/Nov/11
Posted 01:58pm 23/11/11
Posted 03:24pm 23/11/11
Posted 03:34pm 23/11/11
Posted 03:43pm 23/11/11
Posted 03:44pm 23/11/11
The amount of content required to fill an area like that would be mind boggling, but at the same time the achievement would be outstanding.
Posted 03:47pm 23/11/11
Posted 03:47pm 23/11/11
Posted 03:53pm 23/11/11
if they were going to do that they may as well make it an mmo.
Posted 03:58pm 23/11/11
Posted 04:50pm 23/11/11
I don't particularly want to go to the wiki and spoil everything, so I thought I could get a specific answer here.
Posted 04:55pm 23/11/11
If you want to level enchanting as well (and you should want to do this to make awesome armor) then you should enchant the daggers you make before selling them to vendors.
Posted 04:55pm 23/11/11
Posted 05:00pm 23/11/11
Where do I learn enchanting, and where do I learn mining?
Posted 05:01pm 23/11/11
Enchanting can be helped by the mage dude in Dragonsreach.
Posted 05:08pm 23/11/11
I just used the materials I had on hand and made some daggers, got the smithing up to 31. As a rough guide, if you know at all, how high would it need to be for the dragon armor?
last edited by kr0wb4r at 17:08:17 23/Nov/11
Posted 05:08pm 23/11/11
Posted 05:14pm 23/11/11
100
Posted 05:16pm 23/11/11
also i think around 5 daggers = 1 smithing level.
Posted 05:20pm 23/11/11
so ur not always overweight with stuff ur saving up for smithing/ disenchanting etc
Posted 05:20pm 23/11/11
Posted 05:55pm 23/11/11
Posted 05:59pm 23/11/11
Where is the 3rd? I know the skyforge, and the warmaiden, but can't find the 3rd for the life of me.
Posted 06:19pm 23/11/11
Posted 06:57pm 23/11/11
Daggers will give you a level every 5 or so made but that only lasts until about Lv 50 or 60, when it starts growing and caps at around 8 or 9 per level. If you buy all your leather/leather straps/iron bars you're looking at around 4 - 5k to get smithing 100. You can either sell the daggers back to the vendor for money, do it 1 at a time to increase your speech skill or keep a bunch for enchanting which will then sell for 50 - 100g each instead of the 5g or so you'd normally get.
This game... seriously. Over 160 hours played and I havn't gotten more than 6 main story missions in on any character. Plan on doing them the rest of the night.
Posted 07:08pm 23/11/11
Posted 07:16pm 23/11/11
Posted 07:20pm 23/11/11
I have enchanted chest, ring and neck with +smithing and have notch's pick which increases it a bit more and then use a blacksmithing elixir which increases it by 30-40%... Now that I have my Daedric bow I've got like 230 damage on it. I'm not too far from maxing out enchanting either but I need a couple of levels for the perk points.
I don't see the point of alchemy any more. Early on it seemed cool to be able to make your own health pots and such but you find so many that eventually you just end up with a huge amount of weight in your pack. They are a good money earner though once you get over the need to hoard them for the "just in case" scenario.
Posted 07:23pm 23/11/11
in your steam client go to the library page for skyrim. tells you the hrs there.
Posted 07:30pm 23/11/11
Posted 05:02pm 24/11/11
last edited by trog at 17:02:12 24/Nov/11
Posted 09:21pm 23/11/11
Posted 10:46pm 23/11/11
Posted 11:09pm 23/11/11
The game is starting to bug out after tons of play. Whenever I fast travel to a town or wait, none of the npcs are set to their time-correct positions, and start walking to them from wherever they are (if I wait until 4am, everybody starts walking home, I'm 95% sure that at the start, everybody would be in bed). A dragon randomly fell out of the sky and died. Loot scaling is kinda lame, but not game breaking. Overall still one of the best games I've ever played.
Posted 11:21pm 23/11/11
still dont know how to enchant s***
Posted 11:23pm 23/11/11
This is me (kitty cat stealth archery and conjuration magic) and my tank!
Not sure if I'll bother perking into the heavy side now, this is probably buff enough :)
Posted 11:37pm 23/11/11
Posted 11:48pm 23/11/11
Posted 12:49am 24/11/11
Daerdric armor actually has a slightly higher rating over dragon armor so take that perk if you want but I don't think it's much. All up about 30 or so points I think.
Another dragon attacked me in riverwood tonight and it was about 3am when it did so everyone was asleep and only 1 guard helped me out. After killing it and fast forwarding to 9 in the morning everyone was croweded around it going "wow where did this come from" and s***. I couldn't resist, everyone was so close so I saved and started burning my max level destruction scrolls and sent people flying.
Oh and also I was walking down the steps of the whiterun palace and this kid was walking up them. Yup had to do it. Saved and shouted that b**** which sent him flying through the air and smack into a building which I guess people didn't like. Reloaded save and lydia wouldn't stop saying "you'll not get the best of me" until I loaded into a new area. Strange.
Posted 01:08am 24/11/11
Yeh, I considered going the dwarf side rather than elven but I wanted to play through in light armour (really want that stamina perk) and figured I'd spend a long time in Elven / Glass, though as it turns out I skipped glass :P
Bit of a bummer that glass weapons aren't as good as the other side though.
Finally got my Black Star tonight at level 27 .. you do NOT want to wait that long! The daedric mages are really awful at higher level, ended up just charging past them to kill Malys and got yoinked out by the quest guy before the mages could roast me. Was worried I'd need to chant some gear with FR or something!
41 hours in. No real end in sight atm, was about to go to bed and wandered into a cave full of Falmers so I spent an hour sniping them ><
Posted 08:31am 24/11/11
I did my nude smithing last night, no one in the town thought it was strange :(
Posted 08:34am 24/11/11
Really? Doesn't have higher stats on my smithing menu. Maybe it depends on your perks though as I have a few point spent in light armour so the light dragons scale is actually better than the Daedric heavy armour.
My Daedric bow is up to 240 though, I can 2 shot sneak attack bosses but it can bug them out so I can't loot them probably because they haven't activated properly before they are dead.
Posted 09:11am 24/11/11
LOLWUT, you can't be working or study or anything.
The game has been out for 13 days, 312 hours, you've played over half of that time.....
Posted 10:08am 24/11/11
those guys he summoned that shoot the fireballs were f*****g annoying. i managed to kill one then i just hid behind a spike that would stop the fireballs hitting me but i could still shoot the mage dude with my bow.
Posted 10:10am 24/11/11
Posted 10:12am 24/11/11
Posted 10:18am 24/11/11
how do i know if i'm too heavy and am getting detected because of it? Also what is classed as 'light' armour, is it banded/leather etc?
so far my character can carry 300 capacity, if im like over 150/300 will i start to get detected more?
Posted 10:23am 24/11/11
mouse over the armour in your backpack to see what type it is. it will list light or heavy armour in the top left of the armours stats window.
Posted 10:28am 24/11/11
Posted 11:06am 24/11/11
Posted 12:05pm 24/11/11
Lmao,I've played an amazing 8 hours, and 2 of those hours were my daughters taking it in turns to walk around discovering places for me, they go to their Mum's on the weekend so will rack some time up, yay.
Posted 12:34pm 24/11/11
Other than that, no complaints so far.
Posted 12:39pm 24/11/11
Get off the road and cross the continent on foot overland ;)
Posted 12:42pm 24/11/11
Posted 12:59pm 24/11/11
Posted 01:10pm 24/11/11
Posted 01:26pm 24/11/11
But I do have dragonscale armour now :D
Posted 01:34pm 24/11/11
Posted 01:39pm 24/11/11
Just buy a house, there is one right next to the smithy place in Whitefall for $5000 totally worth it.
Horses with their crazy climbing skills are totally worth $1000. Not sure about the more expensive ones, they also serve as a meatshield.
Posted 01:44pm 24/11/11
Posted 02:16pm 24/11/11
Posted 02:53pm 24/11/11
I found a horse that was un-owned.
Posted 03:20pm 24/11/11
Posted 03:46pm 24/11/11
AI will also choose to help or hinder you in battle, I had a bear attack my dragon once, was nice of him. Also, items will stay anywhere you drop/place them. It's exactly like any of the previous current-gen titles Bethesda has released (Fallout 3/NV, TESIV).
Oh yeah, I've racked up 71 hours.
Posted 03:47pm 24/11/11
2.) Become arch-made and get free house
3.) ???
4.) PROFIT!
Posted 03:48pm 24/11/11
Posted 03:52pm 24/11/11
Posted 03:55pm 24/11/11
Posted 04:01pm 24/11/11
i played with that archer chick you get in the begining for ages with my other character and now i have the archer trainer from riverwood as the npc with my new char, where do u get tanks etc?
Posted 04:05pm 24/11/11
i call it the mysteri cave
i only go back to my brotherhood sanctuary to threaten babette with my phallic spear
Posted 04:04pm 24/11/11
i use the barrel outside the trading shop in riverwood and a barrel next to the smithing place in whiterun. I do have enough money for a house but the barrel system is working fine at the moment :P
Posted 04:10pm 24/11/11
Posted 04:50pm 24/11/11
Posted 05:07pm 24/11/11
Hhaha someone posted that on yahoo Answers
Posted 05:35pm 24/11/11
5k isn't hard to raise!
Edit: Every now and then I do a run through Whiterun off-save to see how many people I can murder etc before going down. Golldir (henchman reward from this quest) and I are now stronger than all of Whiterun combined, only the essentials left standing and only for a few seconds every time they stand up :P
Posted 05:44pm 24/11/11
Posted 08:05am 25/11/11
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/23/tweaking_skyrim_image_quality/1
Posted 09:13am 25/11/11
Posted 10:45am 25/11/11
Yeh, but at 80 you must be using a smithing item to get Legendary? Pretty sure raw improvement at 80 is Epic?
You'll probably get better quality Legendary if you go to 100.
Posted 11:14am 25/11/11
Posted 11:17am 25/11/11
Posted 12:49pm 25/11/11
yeah i wore gloves that gave a 20% boost to smith improvements. might get smithing to 100 over weekend to make some dragon armour.
did a pretty fun quest last night. had to infiltrate a bandit camp/mine and had to kill everyone without being seen. it's awesome seeing 30xdamage at the top of the sceen as you one shot someone in the back. at the end of the quest i got a full suit of ebony armour off the leader.
Posted 01:16pm 25/11/11
Posted 02:58pm 25/11/11
Posted 03:46pm 25/11/11
Was walking to somewhere and a thief stepped out in front of me. Told me to hand over my stuff so I stabbed him. Stole all his stuff. Showed him.
Posted 04:39pm 25/11/11
I also just learnt that you can sprint, until then I thought sprinting was just normal running.
Posted 04:41pm 25/11/11
Posted 04:49pm 25/11/11
i see them all the time in riften, probably because that's where the headquarters are. guards are always chasing them down and killing them. i just walk up and loot the bodies.
Posted 04:51pm 25/11/11
Posted 04:54pm 25/11/11
my horse Frost is a beast. he tanks dragons like a f*****g champ.
Posted 05:13pm 25/11/11
Posted 12:01am 26/11/11
Posted 10:10am 26/11/11
guide.http://www.primagames.com/blog/black-friday-sale-50-all-eguides?ref=email_prima_enewsBFMainad
Edit: I tried buying the guide but it seems like I need a VPN/proxy to do it :(
Posted 10:36am 26/11/11
Posted 11:05am 26/11/11
Oh warning though: ugridstoload command by default is 5. When you increase this higher you get more of the world to load but this also increases your chances at crashing. It goes up in odd values so 5,7,9,11. 11 looks awesome but I don't recommend taking it past 9.
Also once you set the ugridstoload setting higher than 5, it locks it into the saved game so going back from a 7 to 5 value will crash the game. so use this command only if you know the commands to reset it if you start entering crashville.
last edited by DM at 11:05:43 26/Nov/11
Posted 02:58pm 26/11/11
Posted 03:02pm 26/11/11
Posted 09:10pm 26/11/11
Posted 09:15pm 26/11/11
Posted 09:22pm 26/11/11
Posted 09:50pm 26/11/11
Posted 09:54pm 26/11/11
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1521
Its not a party unless its a communist party lol
Posted 10:12pm 26/11/11
Any suggestions on what perk order I should be getting? Enchanting sounds very nice and so does conjuration.
Posted 10:17pm 26/11/11
- 1st one had no idea, was 2handed warrior guy got boring quick (and didnt realise alt was run, or fast travel by clicking on locations on the map)
- 2nd character was a mage/archer: mage is hard at the begining because of weak spell etc, sort of got the hang of it but was also boring.
- 3rd char started 2 handed sneak guy that just destroys people, and i figured out what the sneak button is and does when combined with backstab/ arrows etc.
I'd b hitting up smithing to make some cool gear, enchanting to enchant gear and alchemy is pretty good aswell for potions. Just pick up ingredients as you go and eat them to find out their effects, then make potions and mix and match a bit :)
So good when you get - magic dmg potions and - frost/fire/shock dmg potions against a pack and mages and they cant touch you as you slice them down with your 2 +12hp drain daedric daggers :P
Posted 09:23am 27/11/11
Spoiler:
I've been pumping through 'The Companions' quest chain lots of fun I finished a cave before where there were 10-12 Silver Hand guys to kill slaugterfest.
I'm playing as an Orc 1H / Shield lots of fun just run in and charge, been playing for hours on end and still only doing the White Run quests...
Posted 11:28am 27/11/11
But I'm getting heaps of conversation bugs where the NPC isn't giving me the conversation options. There are a few quests that I collected the items for already and they are in my inventory, I can't drop or destroy them but neither can I complete the quest and give them to the NPC because the conversation option isn't popping up.
I got my amulet of Mara and can't marry the widowed queen. Which is complete bulls*** because I can tell she's into me! So I looked up a list of people you can marry and it seems the legendary Dragonborn, Thane of Everywhere can only marry filthy peasants. Apparently you get the option of living with them or them living with you, so you can shack up in their little peasant shanty or you can have them move into your mansion filled with treasure and a personal armed guard so they can embarrass you in front of the royal court with their country bumpkin manners.
1 Mask to go!
Posted 12:22pm 27/11/11
Posted 12:57pm 27/11/11
npc.fatherinlaw.setshotgun 1
Posted 03:23pm 27/11/11
Posted 04:00pm 27/11/11
I'm enjoying my character, enjoying the world, the exploration and the freedom. Then I started to think about it, a little more and asked myself am I REALLY enjoying it. Sure it's exciting and fun but it was being a little bit like a chore for me.
Quest - fast travel - do thing - find another quest or 'exciting thing- fast travel...Hrm.
I think I put my finger on why I wasn't having a great tie and it comes down to the combat. I'm finding the combat really dull now. Sure there's some freedom there to do what you want and build your character - but after 30 hours I find that freedom is less relevant and I just want to do cool s*** - most of which the game doesn't support as I have a core couple of spells that I use. Is it possible for the combat system to be so open - but also so shallow and lack any depth!??
As I said I really have enjoyed the game, but I'm stuck at this 30 hour mark and I just don't have the will to keep going anymore....The luster of the world and it's openess is gone and now I'm left " Elder Scrolls : The Fast Travel and 2 Spell Edition".
Posted 04:37pm 27/11/11
It also has a PDF version you can then print out.
Posted 04:56pm 27/11/11
Posted 05:06pm 27/11/11
Posted 05:10pm 27/11/11
Sounds like you found an OP class mix, I'm at a similar stage and find combat challenging.
Stealth archery is good for assassinating trash but doesn't one shot bosses so I need to work with summons and henchmen to tank tough encounters. I have a weakness vs casters like the dragon priests so am looking at making some resist gear and pots.
I deliberately didn't perk into the 60x dmg or whatever ridiculous backstabbing you can get.
If the dungeons were not challenging at all or were too ha I would have given up ages ago.
Posted 06:56pm 27/11/11
Indeed.
Level 3: "Dragon!? Oh S***!" pew pew pew..heal heal heal...pew pew pew...heal heal...pew pew. OMG!
Level 30: "Dragon!? Bah, how annoying." *ZOT*
Posted 07:16pm 27/11/11
Posted 07:44pm 27/11/11
I have. It was all good except for the civil war quests, which were the worst in the game for some reason. It's literally just: talk to annoying one person who teleports everywhere, get told to go kill some random soldiers out nowhere, repeat.
Posted 08:27pm 27/11/11
The Dragons also go up in stages, I think it goes plain old Dragon, then Blood Dragon, then Elder Dragon and I'm up to Ancient Dragon now. I still get random low level Dragons spawn though, although you don't get the tougher dragons until you level it seems you will always get the ones below so they may seem easy.
I think the main problem with the level scaling is that if you focus on one fighting style and max out your blacksmithing and enchanting early on you will end up doing a lot more damage then I think they intended for that level. There are no level restrictions on items, I've been using Dragon Scale armour since level 16ish and I'm now 40ish, same goes with the weapons. I'm using a Daedric bow but I'm only just starting to see Ebony stuff drop and when hunting and imperial bows were dropping I was using a maxed out Glass bow so clearly I'm using gear well beyond what they are expecting for my level.
Posted 08:38pm 27/11/11
The intro to the Dark Brotherhood quest line was ultra smooth also.
I think it was similar in Oblivion but done even better this time around. >:-)
Posted 09:29pm 27/11/11
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/catalyst-1111b-performance.aspx
Posted 09:45pm 27/11/11
Posted 11:47pm 27/11/11
Posted 01:00am 28/11/11
However for ATI users with single card systems here, you might want to try and download this which came from this guide about skyrim tweaking. I didn't notice any difference but it's not ment to really work for xfire cards. There are 2 conflicting methods for using this so try both and see if they work. Some people report 20 - 30 fps boost outdoors.
- unzip it into your skyrim directory and load the game.
- if that doesn't work, rename the file to atimgpud.dll and overwrite the previous one (having backed it up of course).
For 6000 series cards to the new 11.11b drivers work rather well for me too. Try them if you want.
last edited by DM at 01:00:32 28/Nov/11
Posted 02:47am 28/11/11
Yeah I was basically killing ancient dragons with 4 steel arrows. :P
Man, every crypt thing that I go into, just has endless elite drauger things that take like 7 arrows to the face to kill. If I stealth it reaaalll carefully I can kill most of them while they're still sleeping with an arrow to the head (sometimes it just does about 80% damage even then), but my hours on that game was getting embarrassingly high and so that became less of an option. :P
Posted 04:54am 28/11/11
fail game.. would rate it 7/10
Posted 06:27am 28/11/11
Posted 07:22am 28/11/11
Posted 08:51am 28/11/11
It can take a while though so sometimes I hit T to wait for 1 hr and she'll just appear.
Posted 09:10am 28/11/11
Posted 09:12am 28/11/11
Posted 09:34am 28/11/11
Posted 10:42am 28/11/11
Posted 12:23pm 28/11/11
Everytime i press the final button and it starts loading up to send me back to statue it crashes :(
looks like ill just have to skip that mission :'(
Posted 01:11pm 28/11/11
Posted 08:48pm 28/11/11
This s*** isn't acceptable. Yes I know most arrows are baddly drawn in but when someone has an arrow shot at them, they shouldn't go back to idle after X amount of time. They should ALWAYS be in alert state at least.
last edited by DM at 20:48:39 28/Nov/11
Posted 10:32pm 28/11/11
Posted 10:33pm 28/11/11
Posted 10:38pm 28/11/11
I remember hearing about Metro 2033 and it's revolutionary AI, and apparently the devs had to turn it way down, or else the NPC's have practically finished the game for you before you even get out of the first area.
Posted 10:41pm 28/11/11
Posted 11:05pm 28/11/11
I'm playing on expert and that's hard enough for me lol. I might try master tonight for awhile see how badly I get raped.
When the creation kit comes out for skyrim I can only hope that AI tweaks start appearing to stop enemies going back to being oblivious. I shot you in the arm, you should be in pain, disabled and on the floor screaming... not stairing at the wall.
I'd like to see an AI system where the enemies can read the surroundings and take a guess where an arrow may of come from. In a cave with mostly 1 direction to come from it should be impossible to stay hidden after shooting someone. Outside though they should freak out and get cover best they can.
Posted 11:18pm 28/11/11
High level stealth is also a little OP, they need to be better able to detect you when close and you're not hidden in a corner.
At lower stealth levels they do approach the area that you shot from. Maybe sitting in one position should erode your stealth ability or something? That way you could do a couple of shots and have to move?
Posted 11:19pm 28/11/11
Posted 11:30pm 28/11/11
The computer program tasked with keeping track of my position in a virtual world is able to present the impression that it isn't tracking my position in aforementioned virtual world?
Say it isn't so!
Posted 08:34am 29/11/11
Posted 08:49am 29/11/11
Uhh... I think you're outmatched there Mr. Ed.
Posted 01:29pm 29/11/11
Posted 11:42pm 29/11/11
1 - I get a lag type effect where me, my companion and enemies are just darting around maps or inside caves. This can hurt me too because it doesn't just teleport me but rather snap me through any objects in the way.
2 - Entering a room or reloading a quicksave will send every object in the room not nailed down rocketing around like a poltergeist is in the house. Scary s*** sometimes when it nearly kills you
3 - When at the doorway of those ruins where you need a type of claw, sometimes when turning the symbols I will be teleported through the door if i'm too close. The f*** is with that? My companion just does a casper and walks through it too but I can't get back out.
Anyway here are some shots before and after mods. Texture pack to increase saturation a bit along with a FXAA injector to darken things up and add a coldish feel to the place.
Off
On
Off
On
Lastly this is a terrifying Kaajit. Happened more than once
Posted 01:27am 30/11/11
Also, a plug for a free iOS skyrim maps app coming:
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/11/29/dragon-shout-app-brings-interactive-skyrim-map-to-ios-soon-for/
Posted 11:40am 30/11/11
Posted 12:47pm 30/11/11
Posted 12:58am 01/12/11
Posted 01:27am 01/12/11
The Dragonborn Comes - Skyrim Bard Song and Main Theme Female Cover
Morrowind/Skyrim Theme Piano Violin Medley with Lara
Posted 06:37am 01/12/11
"I was a singer once to, until I took a guitar to the knee..."
Posted 08:38am 01/12/11
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-30-skyrim-patch-1-2-has-resistance-breaking-bug
Posted 08:40am 01/12/11
Posted 09:12am 01/12/11
Posted 11:08am 01/12/11
Posted 08:13am 02/12/11
Posted 09:19am 02/12/11
Posted 09:55am 02/12/11
Posted 10:25am 02/12/11
Posted 10:39am 02/12/11
i'm still loving the glitches. that troll one rocked dm :]
i got my smithing to 100 last night... tonight i gotta scour the land for the materials to make all my s*** flawless. anyone know of some good ebony / malachite / moonstone mines? :D
Posted 11:09am 02/12/11
Posted 11:16am 02/12/11
Posted 12:09pm 02/12/11
Posted 02:37pm 02/12/11
Posted 05:57pm 02/12/11
Anyway so I reloaded, made my way back and pulled out a scroll i'd found. Undead up to Lv 75 are set on fire and flee for 30 seconds. That made things easier when he can't attack back. Got an ebony bow out of him and 2000g worth of loot from the chest he was guarding. There was also a giant hole you can drop down to another area. Oh cool maybe this is a new word I can learn. Fall down and... ah f***... another one. Well I can only say lucky he got stuck going up the stairs or I would of been dead so fast. No word after all and wasn't guarding anything. Ebony warhammer though. Shame I can't use them and lydia is going sword and board spec.
Posted 06:12pm 02/12/11
Posted 06:21pm 02/12/11
suss out the myoll(?) lioness girl in riften, shes 2H companion after you grab her sword.
Posted 06:26pm 02/12/11
Posted 10:10pm 02/12/11
Posted 10:26pm 02/12/11
I killed her straight away and everyone else lol
Posted 01:58am 03/12/11
Been too busy at work to play in the last 2 weeks, will have a crack this weekend and see if its broken thanks to these patches!
Posted 02:44am 03/12/11
Woke up in Markath with a shaved head, a face tattoo, and a capuchin monkey on my shoulder!
Posted 10:26am 03/12/11
Posted 11:06am 03/12/11
Posted 11:11am 03/12/11
Posted 12:53pm 03/12/11
Posted 01:16pm 03/12/11
Posted 01:37pm 03/12/11
Posted 03:05pm 03/12/11
Posted 03:00pm 03/12/11
Posted 03:14pm 03/12/11
Posted 03:36pm 03/12/11
Posted 04:44pm 03/12/11
- Near riften there is a quest you can get in a tower which has you fight your way up to the top of said tower. Reward is a follower who is a strong ice mage as well as a fire wall staff. Spits out gobs of fire which burns for 15 - 30 seconds or so and does damage to anyone who walks over it. Again a good ass reward as you only need 1 or 2 little patches of flame to do ton of damage.
Posted 08:52pm 03/12/11
Oh yeah, the STEP (Skyrim Total Enhanced Project) guide for Skyrim modding has been updated, heap of awesome mods been added. http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11
Posted 11:12pm 03/12/11
Posted 02:16am 04/12/11
Posted 09:58am 04/12/11
They funnily enough do have great servers. Just last night they were getting hammered for some reason.
Posted 11:50pm 06/12/11
Posted 12:02am 07/12/11
Posted 12:05am 07/12/11
Posted 03:50am 07/12/11
Posted 04:31pm 07/12/11
Posted 07:31pm 07/12/11
Posted 07:59pm 07/12/11
I had visions of making an awesome powerful almighty orc but after a while I just started playing like a sneaky arrow shooting homo. It just feels odd doing that s*** with a full suit of dwarven armor and a big ass axe hanging off my back.
Posted 08:06pm 07/12/11
Posted 08:43pm 07/12/11
Posted 08:49pm 07/12/11
Posted 08:51pm 07/12/11
Posted 12:19am 08/12/11
He flys around, gives me a look and then takes off into the sky. Suddenly there is a huge crash behind me and I turn around to see a 3rd, NAMED dragon who starts spitting fire at everyone. So we have a fire and frost dragons tag teaming us. Wasn't easy but about 50 arrows later both are dead.
EDIT - Jesus, 30 seconds over the hill I run into an elder dragon. The f*** is going on. I must have dragon bait on me somewhere.
last edited by DM at 00:19:37 08/Dec/11
Posted 12:59am 08/12/11
Posted 01:23am 08/12/11
Posted 10:20am 08/12/11
you should at least get the horn because then you get the third word for the unrelenting force shout. it fun shouting enemies off cliffs.
Posted 10:19am 09/12/11
I killed the Khajit.
Posted 10:20am 09/12/11
Spoiler:
killed them all
Posted 10:37am 09/12/11
Posted 11:38am 10/12/11
Posted 01:03pm 12/12/11
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/12/skyrim-bacon-baconborn/
Posted 01:09pm 12/12/11
last edited by 3dee at 13:09:06 12/Dec/11
Posted 01:32pm 12/12/11
Posted 01:45pm 12/12/11
Posted 01:48pm 12/12/11
Posted 01:58pm 12/12/11
I was the other way around. In oblivion, I only discovered dark brotherhood because i accidentally killed someone in cold blood whereas in skyrim I had a quest starting the chain off.
Posted 01:59pm 12/12/11
Heh yeah, gotta stop talking to people.
I've had loads of fun already so last week I said to myself I'd just start wrapping the big quests up and then move onto another game. The entire weekend spent slogging through and around 20 stages of the major quests completed later...
Friday night quest log: 10 quests
Sunday night quest log: 10 quests
When NPCs say things like "My father's heirloom sword is lost in that cave two towns over! Please help me!"
At the start of the game the response was something like "I can help with that, no probs!"
Now, the response is something like "Sorry, can't help you... why? ...uhh... I'd like to but I took an arrow in the knee."
Posted 02:56pm 12/12/11
Posted 10:42am 21/12/11
Posted 11:05am 21/12/11
Posted 11:27am 21/12/11
I had to stop myself one day after tracing the royal bloodline from Titus Mede all the way back to Tiber Septim.
It's just as bloody bad as tvtropes.org
Posted 12:46pm 21/12/11
Agreed it's a very impressive wiki.
I've still got Morrowind installed and to be honest with all the HD mods and what not it's still a very remarkable game too. I really like it's semi-unique lore and history of and cannot wait until the TES construction kit for Skyrim is released!!
Posted 12:09pm 24/1/12
damn.
Posted 12:19pm 24/1/12
Wut? Where did that come from?
Posted 12:29pm 24/1/12
Posted 12:31pm 24/1/12
Why in the world would you not run AGN forums with the QGL skin?!
Posted 12:40pm 24/1/12
this
30 f*****g days?
Posted 02:49pm 24/1/12
Posted 11:00pm 11/2/12
Posted 09:33am 12/2/12
Posted 09:43am 12/2/12
Posted 10:08am 12/2/12
started again with an argonian & tried to concentrate on enchant & smithing... but he was too weak so once again i pimped the archery & sneak. now i am lvl25 & it's getting really easy again. i still enjoy it but i think i've seen most of the content.
Posted 10:49am 12/2/12
Posted 11:01am 12/2/12
Posted 01:50pm 12/2/12
I have a level 54 warrior in full daedric with all 3 of the daedric 2H weapons. Every item has double enchants. Typically increased 2H damage + increased health or stamina. Daedric 2H battle axe with two damage enchants on it. With my destruction mage follower I usually two shot dragons.
I also decided to continue leveling everything else so I grabbed a few health regen potions that I crafted (100 alchemy) and found some giants. First I just went afk and let a giant whale on me until my armor was at 100 then I went semi afk and held down block until that was 100. This gear I have is over powered.
Then I rolled a destruction mage which is currently level 40 in dragonscale armor with 100 enchanting and 100 alchemy. I discovered that at that level if you enchant two items with "destruction spells cost XX% less to cast" that I actually have 112% less to cast which makes them completely free. Damn shame that I didn't know that at the start, I would have struggled early but rather than creating a massive magicka pool I would have gone for a destruction mage in heavy armor with huge stamina and health and free spells.
Posted 02:16pm 12/2/12
Just started my second run and trying to do it the same way hopefully the windhelm quest works this time because that's the reason I'm starting again.
Posted 03:00pm 12/2/12
Try playing on master diff, actually just leveling your skills as you use them, then try and pop a health regen pot and get whaled on by a giant..
Posted 08:18pm 12/2/12
Please point to where i used a leveling "exploit".
Simply put if I did not bother trying to level block etc, from where I was my level would not have changed more than 3-4 levels for the rest of my Skyrim experience. There was also no noticeable difference between level 50 and 54 so finishing off blocking and heavy armor (which was already 80 odd) made no difference at all.
You gain a player level for every 10 levels of a skill, so if I just ran around doing all my quests using my 2H weapon with heavy armor no matter if played another 10 hours or 200 hours my level would have stayed the same because they were already at 100.
Note: if you're confused by my phrase "everything else" I hope it is clear that that only included blocking (from 35ish) and heavy armor (from 80ish).
Posted 09:18pm 12/2/12
I think...
Will you marry me?? Holy F*** I have never laughed so much in all my life.
Posted 02:37am 13/2/12
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Posted 09:15am 13/2/12
Posted 09:16am 13/2/12
Posted 09:26am 13/2/12
Posted 12:39pm 13/2/12
Posted 12:59pm 13/2/12
Posted 01:22pm 13/2/12
Posted 11:21pm 13/2/12
Open it up and under [Archive] paste HighResTexturePack01.bsa, HighResTexturePack02.bsa, after Skyrim - Textures.bsa,
you need the commas and spaces. should look like
[Archive]
sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, HighResTexturePack01.bsa, HighResTexturePack02.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa
sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa
Posted 05:47am 19/2/12
Posted 10:45am 28/2/12
Posted 09:27am 01/6/12
Anyone used that ENBseries fx mod? Anything anyone can recommend a particular config?
Posted 02:19pm 02/6/12
Posted 07:13pm 03/6/12
http://www.youtube.com/user/MMOxReview/videos
http://www.youtube.com/show/skyrimmodsseries/videos
Posted 07:43pm 03/6/12
Posted 08:17pm 03/6/12
Posted 05:26pm 08/6/12
Anyone else been having issues recently?
Posted 08:20pm 09/6/12
Conflicting mods? s***** CPU? No RAM?
Posted 09:27am 10/6/12
Posted 11:59am 10/6/12
Posted 09:59am 01/7/12
Posted 10:23am 01/7/12
Posted 06:30am 22/8/12