# Elder Scrolls : Skyrim



## Sutekh (Nov 11, 2011)

Hi,

I was surprised to not see a thread in here on this subject yet.

My local gaming store broke release date and i got this yesterday (the 10th) although was of course hamstrung by Steam who let me get the goodies at 9pm last night.

Ive played perhaps an hour tops, just hit level 2. The game looks really good (esp outside) and while Ive only travelled to town Im noticing some similarities to fallout in terms of WHAT things look like (how trees/rocks are drawn) and the lockpicking mini game.  Ive also been collecting roadside ingredients.

What are other peoples impressions so far?

Matt


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## Janx (Nov 11, 2011)

Does the rubber band stealth training trick work? basically rig the controller to sneak and move into a barrier so you build skill.

Can you make custom spells and items?

Can I get 100% invisibility or 100% Reflect Damage?   Those were game breaking things in Oblivion.

I think the wife is heading out today to aquire a copy.  Then she'll be playing that non-stop...


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## Janx (Nov 11, 2011)

The wife has returned with Skyrim and is playing now amidst complaints that the dog is trying to help.

She is not a FPS player.  So watching her run through the intro section brings back memories of Oblivion and watching her flail about staring at the floor or sky and licking the walls while danger lashes her backside.

practical yet tactical advice:
keep your back to the wall, not your face.  Walls don't attack, whats in open spaces does.

angle your camera to mostly match the incline you are on. Going up, look up.  Going down, look down. 

if you can't figure out where to go, follow the perimeter in a consistent fashion, like always going left.  It will also keep a wall on your side, which is one less direction of threat than running around in the open trying to figure out where the Keep is.


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## CrimsonReaver (Nov 12, 2011)

Sadly, I think I need to upgrade my computer before I can play Skyrim, and that will likely have to wait until next year.  Though, the advantage to that is, by the time I'm able to play, they'll hopefully have patched any of the more crippling and frustrating glitches.


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## Kzach (Nov 12, 2011)

CrimsonReaver said:


> Sadly, I think I need to upgrade my computer before I can play Skyrim, and that will likely have to wait until next year.  Though, the advantage to that is, by the time I'm able to play, they'll hopefully have patched any of the more crippling and frustrating glitches.




This is me. I have minimum specs for the game but IME minimum specs means that even when you have all options turned to low, the game will still be jerky and slow; on top of that, though, it will also look awful.

I'd rather wait until I can run it with full specs and there's some patches, a character editor and forums I can go to for answers and some DLC, etc.

Until then, I can run SWTOR.


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## Janx (Nov 13, 2011)

CrimsonReaver said:


> Sadly, I think I need to upgrade my computer before I can play Skyrim, and that will likely have to wait until next year.  Though, the advantage to that is, by the time I'm able to play, they'll hopefully have patched any of the more crippling and frustrating glitches.




This is why by the late nineties I quit playing games on PC and switched to console.  Sony sticks to their 6 years between generations, and MS seems to fit their xbox between that.

FPS have been done very well at this point.  And  Elder Scrolls being a top title (game of the year winner EVERY time).

A console won't satisfy everybody I supposed, but they're not to be sneered at.  They certainly have a better longevity for support to cost ration ($300-$400) for 6 years of being the "current" rig.  Contrast to annual more frequent and more costly upgrades to keep playing the latest games on PC.

But back on topic, Skyrim on the 360 is pretty good.  The menus are a bit laggy to open up or accept an initial accept response, though.

Arrows have zero weight, so no worries about clogging up your inventory.

I like the Oblivion world map UI a bit better, and the character management menu too.

Graphics are nice though.  And it is fun.  Dual Wielding is fun, especially dual-casting.

Money is a bit tight.  Shop keeps buy your stuff from their coin pouch.  Meaning, they may run out of money to buy your stuff.  This makes it harder to bulk sell loot to build up cash to buy your first house to stash supplies.

Also, since you level up automatically, you can't wait to level up so you can go buy your 5 trainings per level.  You'll basically fly by opportunities to train before your ready with the money to do so.  In Oblivion, since you controled when to level, you could earn the XP but not level, get the gold, train up, then sleep to level.  Thus ensuring you did not miss the opportunity to boost your PC by buying training each level.


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## CrimsonReaver (Nov 13, 2011)

Janx said:


> This is why by the late nineties I quit playing games on PC and switched to console.  Sony sticks to their 6 years between generations, and MS seems to fit their xbox between that.




There are a lot of games I'm content to play on consoles, including many first-person shooters where, previously, I never would've played them without a mouse for aiming, but there are definitely those titles that I'll only play on a computer.  Elder Scrolls is one of them.

I've read in a couple reviews and heard from a few people now that the loading times, particularly when entering buildings in town, get to be extremely frustrating.  Even if it's only a 10-second load time, that'd quickly get on my nerves as I try exploring the towns.  Constantly have to wait for the new location to load, having my game experience interrupted as I move through what should be a seamless environment, would just ruin the experience for me.

Plus, I find menus, like inventory, are typically handled better on PC than consoles.  Just a personal preference.  And given the number of releases coming out this time of year, there's a large enough selection of games I can and will play on the consoles that I can easily afford to wait for Skyrim.

Besides, I also want to upgrade my computer to make sure I can handle the highest settings for The Old Republic and Diablo III.  (Though, Diablo III probably won't require much, since Blizzard tends to ensure their games to run on the lowliest of systems, never pushing the limits for processing or visual requirements.)


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Nov 14, 2011)

Downloaded it Saturday morning, spent all Saturday afternoon surfing forums trying to figure out why it had no sound at all and hung shortly after the title sequence (directX problem it turns out - it ships with directX 11 but I had to download the end-user whatsis direct from Microsoft to get it to work).

Played it all afternoon today.  Never played any other Elder Scrolls games but did play the hell out of Fallout 3 (which was my first entry into that series) so the experience is very much the same.  In fact, it uses the identical lockpicking widget.  I could nitpick (as one could Fallout 3) but so far it's been fairly fun and gives me a second game to play outside of City of Heroes.


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## frankthedm (Nov 14, 2011)

Got it for Xbox 360. Because my 360 is old and  near the end of it's life, I have to install it to the HDD to not murder the motor. Unfortunately this means the graphics suffer do to a bizarre glitch. Xbox News: Dev fixing Skyrim 360 installed texture glitch - ComputerAndVideoGames.com .

Also got the two hours of infinite magicka glitch after going to the mage guild.   I didn't do too much with it, though it was the only thing that let me _live_ running through the one way "Sightless pit". Didn't clear it out, just ran my squishy mage through _constantly_ healing with Falmer ice casters freezing my buns while making my escape.

Fought a second dragon so far but I only won due to having a convenient tower nearby... again. I'm REALLY worried about having to fight one of those thing in the open with my squishy mage.


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## LightPhoenix (Nov 14, 2011)

Playing on the computer, my specs aren't great but not terrible, the game runs on Medium pretty well.

The UI is not great, which surprised me a little.  I'm hoping this will be focused on for the next patch.

My character is mostly a sneaky assassin - focused on Archery/Sneak, dabbling in Alchemy/Conjuration.  I just hit level 12 and found a second Shout.  I've only fought one dragon thus far.  I'm much happier with the character here than in Oblivion.

Training is both (IMO) overly expensive and not terribly worth it, though that may change at higher levels.  I've found myself gaining skill ranks fairly easily as I explore.  You can't really game the skill system any more, but I haven't felt like I needed to.  In the natural course of play my Sneak is high 40s and my Archery is low 40s.

My one complaint with the skill system is that the skill trees are a little too uneven.  Archery, for example, is pretty great.  Sneak, on the other hand, I'm finding rather lackluster.  So I've found myself hoarding perks until my Archery ranks get higher and more perks in that tree open up.


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## Agamon (Nov 15, 2011)

Wow, I'm really enjoying this game.  I'm playing a Nord...rouge, I guess.  Not really an assassin, not really a thief.  I like that the game is classless now, dabble in whatever you want.  Got to L17, I've killed 4 dragons, and only one with any help.  That frost resistance helps with the ice breathers.

I love that you can throw your own twists into the quests.  I go along with some of the more unseemlies as they try to complete what turn out to be pretty awful missions and then turning on them when oportunity strikes.  Worked well once, and I was rewarded for it even though the quest showed as uncompletable.  Not so much the other time, though.  I'll keep it nonspecific: dude had a lot tough friends that I had to escape by running through the city I was in at night.  Pretty chaotic with the guards and my persuers and the very confusing streets of this city.  I have a 1000 gp bounty on my head there now.  Weeeeee!


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## Janx (Nov 17, 2011)

Questions du jour:

does anybody know how to stack books in the book shelf?

I saw one reference elsewhere that a shelf on a bookshelf acts like a container and will auto-stack books.  But it's not obvious how to get it to accept a book (you can't search a bookshelf)

Also, how do you get a weapon recharged?  My wife has been running around trying to figure that out with a drained weapon.

has anybody noticed that quests are kind of long?  I did the Companions trial quest and it felt like it took forever.  Mainly, that the dungeon was just kind of long.  it took about 4 hours on sneak, including 3 trips back to town to sell.  I've no doubt somebody could race through it in far less time.  i was more struck by how long of a walk it was in the dungeon.  Which in turn taking a cautious approach made worse.

Its not the only dungeon quest I've seen like that.  I guess I don't expect a simple fetch mission to require a long dungeon crawl.


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## frankthedm (Nov 17, 2011)

Janx said:


> Also, how do you get a weapon recharged?  My wife has been running around trying to figure that out with a drained weapon.



There is a prompt for Recharge [RightBumper on the 360] on the weapon in the inventory screen. This lets you select a Soul Gem (Filled) to feed the item. I recommend using Gems filled with Lesser Souls & Common Souls because stronger ones are better for making items for yourself and IME the Petty Soul Gems still let you make High Damage, low Charge weapons to sell to venders. IF you have no filled Soul Gems you'll Need a Soul Trapping weapon or a Soul Trapping spell to fill your empty soul gems. When filling soul gems try to keep plenty of low power soul gems in your inventory or you will get a Petty Soul in a Greater or Grand soul gem.

Some more info here...
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Soul_Gem


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## Agamon (Nov 17, 2011)

Just bought my house, so book stacking, I'm not sure.

I only know how to recharge weapons on XBox, select the weapon in the inventory and hit RB, then pick the filled soul gem you want to recharge with.  The PC version should say what you press when you select the weapon.

I haven't thought the quests were overly long.  Though if you stay in sneak mode, yeah that could get tedious.  I've got around 15 main quests and 25 side quests done in 28 hours play time, and my PC is sneaky, so I'm not sure what to say.  I learned in Fallout 3 that sneaking too much is a waste of time.

I'm starting to get a bit over my head with my jack-of-all-trades PC.  Need to start focusing a bit, I met a leader last night that could 2-hit both me and my companion.  That was a tough fight.


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## Janx (Nov 17, 2011)

Agamon said:


> I'm starting to get a bit over my head with my jack-of-all-trades PC.  Need to start focusing a bit, I met a leader last night that could 2-hit both me and my companion.  That was a tough fight.





Yeah, it seems that unlike Oblivion, NPCs/monsters in various regions may be of significantly higher level than you.  Such that you can get into dangerous territory.  In Oblivion, you could pretty much handle any given threat because they all leveled with you.


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## Agamon (Nov 17, 2011)

Janx said:


> Yeah, it seems that unlike Oblivion, NPCs/monsters in various regions may be of significantly higher level than you.  Such that you can get into dangerous territory.  In Oblivion, you could pretty much handle any given threat because they all leveled with you.




I don't mind that at all.  Just like I tell my pnp players, if a fight is too tough, maybe you should rethink it, I realize you need to do that in this game, too.  I almost just left to come back later, but tried one more time with a different strategy and just got past him.

Fallout was built this way, too.  You want to go downtown at Level 3, go right ahead.  Have fun dying. 

One nitpick I have so far, I cannot for the life of me hit a flying dragon with my bow.  Damn things flutter around like butterflies.  Last one I saw, it was night and heard the roar, so I sent a good 30 arrows into the night sky not hitting him once.  And he never saw me, so I just carried on. lol


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## Janx (Nov 17, 2011)

Agamon said:


> I don't mind that at all.  Just like I tell my pnp players, if a fight is too tough, maybe you should rethink it, I realize you need to do that in this game, too.  I almost just left to come back later, but tried one more time with a different strategy and just got past him.
> 
> Fallout was built this way, too.  You want to go downtown at Level 3, go right ahead.  Have fun dying.
> 
> One nitpick I have so far, I cannot for the life of me hit a flying dragon with my bow.  Damn things flutter around like butterflies.  Last one I saw, it was night and heard the roar, so I sent a good 30 arrows into the night sky not hitting him once.  And he never saw me, so I just carried on. lol




In a CRPG, the handy thing is, if the monster is too tough, you can always reload and go do something else.  In a PnP RPG,if you're dead, your dead, possibly with no way to come back.

The difference being, less foreshadowing is needed in a CRPG that certain things are more deadly than others.  In a PnP, its almost critical that there be clues that downtown is very dangerous.

I always find things to think about from the Elder Scrolls game as applied to PnP RPGs.


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## Felon (Nov 17, 2011)

I started playing for a few hours. After getting to a whopping level 3 (mostly just pickpocketing and sneaking around the starter town) I'm not sure I get the perk and leveling system.

So, if I raise a skill up, does the skill actually improve in any way, or does it just allow me to meet the prereqs for perks that improve the skill? Does a guy with 90 One-Handed Weapon skill attack more effectively than a guy with 20 if neither invested in the appropriate perks? Does 90 Sneak evade detection better than 20 Sneak without perks?

Also, I see that the perks can be taken multiple times. For instance, One-Handed has a perk that increases one-handed weapon damage by 20%, and it can apparently be taken five times. Now, do I get a 20% bonus every time I take the perk (ramping all the way up to +100%)), or does the perk not unlock at all until I take all five ranks?

Anyway, how is archery working out? I never got anywhere with it in Oblivion because it was so slow that it was only good for a single shot against an unaware target.


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## MrMyth (Nov 17, 2011)

Felon said:


> I started playing for a few hours. After getting to a whopping level 3 (mostly just pickpocketing and sneaking around the starter town) I'm not sure I get the perk and leveling system.
> 
> So, if I raise a skill up, does the skill actually improve in any way, or does it just allow me to meet the prereqs for perks that improve the skill? Does a guy with 90 One-Handed Weapon skill attack more effectively than a guy with 20 if neither invested in the appropriate perks? Does 90 Sneak evade detection better than 20 Sneak without perks?




I'm pretty sure high skill = higher benefits, but that's mainly an educated guess; I'm a newcomer to the Elder Scroll games, and the one thing the game could really use is a bit of transparency. 

I've definitely seen a benefit in higher skill with crafting and with pick-pocketing. I would assume there are similar benefits with all skills, but I don't know for sure if that is so or what those benefits are. (Does higher weapon skills = more damage, more accuracy, etc? Higher magic skill = more damage? Or are they there, as you suggest, just to let you qualify for higher perks?)



Felon said:


> Also, I see that the perks can be taken multiple times. For instance, One-Handed has a perk that increases one-handed weapon damage by 20%, and it can apparently be taken five times. Now, do I get a 20% bonus every time I take the perk (ramping all the way up to +100%)), or does the perk not unlock at all until I take all five ranks?




This I'm sure of - every rank boosts it by 20%, in cases like that.


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## Janx (Nov 17, 2011)

Excellent questions.  I will endeavor to answer:



Felon said:


> I started playing for a few hours. After getting to a whopping level 3 (mostly just pickpocketing and sneaking around the starter town) I'm not sure I get the perk and leveling system.




In Oblivion, the "perks' unlocked automatically when your skill level reached the required level.  So you got x6 backstab for free.  In Skyrim, you can be really sneaky (hard to detect) and never spend the perk on backstab, and thus NOT get x6 damage.



Felon said:


> So, if I raise a skill up, does the skill actually improve in any way, or does it just allow me to meet the prereqs for perks that improve the skill? Does a guy with 90 One-Handed Weapon skill attack more effectively than a guy with 20 if neither invested in the appropriate perks? Does 90 Sneak evade detection better than 20 Sneak without perks?




Spending points on skills, improves your chance of success.  The perks usually don't impact the skill, but the skill level is required for the perk.

Sans perks, a guy with 90 on a skill is better than a guy with 20 on the same skill.  It's kind of like there's a die-roll for each attempt to use the skill.

Case in point, Sneak.  Sneak gives you skill/2 = % as your chance of detection (per time the computer checks).  So, with 100 sneak being max, the best you can get with skills is 50%




Felon said:


> Also, I see that the perks can be taken multiple times. For instance, One-Handed has a perk that increases one-handed weapon damage by 20%, and it can apparently be taken five times. Now, do I get a 20% bonus every time I take the perk (ramping all the way up to +100%)), or does the perk not unlock at all until I take all five ranks?




Continuing the example about Sneak, there's a Perk you can take 5 times to improve your sneak %.  The first time improves it with 20%, the next time improves it to 25%.  I don't know what the next bumps do, but if you had maxed your sneak points to 100, you'd have 50%.  Buying the perk twice would add another 25% to get you 75%.

I suspect they did the math such that it is VERY hard to get 100% hidden, so as to avoid the invisibility problem Oblivion had (I could get 100% chameleon, and I had maxed Sneak, NPCs could be angry at me and never see me to attack).




Felon said:


> Anyway, how is archery working out? I never got anywhere with it in Oblivion because it was so slow that it was only good for a single shot against an unaware target.




In Oblivion, higher levels of Archery would let you Zoom in (left trigger) while you've got an arrow drawn (right trigger).  It was like running a sniper in Call of Duty.

I'm not certain of the other perks in the Archery chain.

I highly recommend the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Wiki for looking this stuff up.

If you plan on picking locks, the Lockpicking tree has perks to make Novice, Apprentice, etc level locks easier.  This seems to mean that the vibrate lightly when you are about to break them, rather than vibrate hard and break easily.

For spells, the first perk makes novice spells use less magicka(the default spells you have being novice destruction and healing spells).  It's a good buy if you cast any spells during combat (heal hand, sword hand strategy would be nice to use less mana while fighting)


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## Janx (Nov 18, 2011)

I just found this cracked article about 5 personality flaws Skyrim reveals.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-personality-flaws-skyrim-forces-you-to-deal-with/

It was funny


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## Banshee16 (Nov 18, 2011)

Janx said:


> Yeah, it seems that unlike Oblivion, NPCs/monsters in various regions may be of significantly higher level than you.  Such that you can get into dangerous territory.  In Oblivion, you could pretty much handle any given threat because they all leveled with you.




That could be a good thing.  The annoying thing about Oblivion was how closely creatures level with you.  You never felt like you'd gained any power...

Banshee


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## LightPhoenix (Nov 18, 2011)

Felon said:


> Also, I see that the perks can be taken multiple times. For instance, One-Handed has a perk that increases one-handed weapon damage by 20%, and it can apparently be taken five times. Now, do I get a 20% bonus every time I take the perk (ramping all the way up to +100%)), or does the perk not unlock at all until I take all five ranks?




Most of the introductory perks can be taken multiple times, but further ones usually only have one rank.  The exact math depends on the perk - Archery and One-Handed go +20/40/60/80/100%, but Sneak is 20/25/30/35/40%.



> Anyway, how is archery working out? I never got anywhere with it in Oblivion because it was so slow that it was only good for a single shot against an unaware target.




Archery is _vastly_ improved over Oblivion, mostly in that the damage isn't terrible and speed is slightly better.  That said, in the beginning you will need a melee weapon as a backup until you develop ways to deal with approaching enemies.  If nothing else, you earn an ability that's very handy for this fairly early on in the main storyline.

The Archery perk tree is, IMO, one of the best in the game.  You'll want to grab the perk to zoom (Eagle Eye) as soon as you hit (IIRC) 30 Archery, but it does drain Stamina.

As far as skill synergies go... Alchemy will let you make poisons which you can apply to a weapon for an effect (I don't know if they're one-use or limited duration).  I believe you can make stronger bows with Smithing, but I haven't played around with that.  Enchantment will let you craft different bows for different targets; Shock for mages/Frost for warriors, for example.  Destruction has the "trap" spells, but you'll need a hand free to cast.  Similarly, Conjuration will give you some degree of tanking.  Heavy/Light armor is really a preference choice, although Light is more mobile.  Sneak is obvious for the assassin type character.


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## Jhaelen (Nov 18, 2011)

Janx said:


> Yeah, it seems that unlike Oblivion, NPCs/monsters in various regions may be of significantly higher level than you.  Such that you can get into dangerous territory.  In Oblivion, you could pretty much handle any given threat because they all leveled with you.



Wow, they finally got rid of the auto-leveling monsters?!

This might be the first Elder Scrolls installment worth looking into, then!

[MENTION=8835]Janx[/MENTION]: Thanks for the link to the Cracked article! Particularly #1 was absolutely hilarious! 
Unfortunately, I can't give you xp again, yet.


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## frankthedm (Nov 18, 2011)

Jhaelen said:


> Wow, they finally got rid of the auto-leveling monsters?!



Skyrim:Leveling - UESPWiki There is some scaling, it just isn't as bad as Oblivion.


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## Felon (Nov 18, 2011)

Janx said:


> In a CRPG, the handy thing is, if the monster is too tough, you can always reload and go do something else.  In a PnP RPG,if you're dead, your dead, possibly with no way to come back.



"Always"? 

Roguelike?

Or, more contemporatively, Demon Souls?



Banshee16 said:


> That could be a good thing.  The annoying thing about Oblivion was how closely creatures level with you.  You never felt like you'd gained any power...



This strikes me as an odd sentiment. In D&D, If my character is 15th level, why should I not expect 15th-level challenges? I need to lord over a 1st-level creature to feel like meteor swarm is a powerful spell? Won't it also feel powerful when cast on a dragon or balor?


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## Janx (Nov 18, 2011)

Felon said:


> "Always"?
> 
> Roguelike?
> 
> Or, more contemporatively, Demon Souls?




The # of games that don't have a means to reload are much fewer than the ones that do.  And if you run in a VM, take regular snapshots, even death is bypassable, no matter how the programmer coded it.

The point still stands, the next random encounter in Skyrim might kill you, but if it does, it's only a nuisance to have to re-do some work.

In D&D, if the next random encounter kills you, you might not get to play that PC anymore.  If there were no clues that the monster is tougher, that might suck.  

Note, I'm not talking about bad dice rolls/tactics.  Just raw "the next monster is tough enough to kill you easily, Surprise!"


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## Alan Shutko (Nov 18, 2011)

Felon said:


> This strikes me as an odd sentiment. In D&D, If my character is 15th level, why should I not expect 15th-level challenges? I need to lord over a 1st-level creature to feel like meteor swarm is a powerful spell? Won't it also feel powerful when cast on a dragon or balor?




Hmm... Did you play Oblivion?  

The challenge with their leveling system was that EVERYTHING leveled with you.  You didn't just see bigger monsters.  Those bandits at the bridge threatening you with rusty iron swords in level one?  They're still threatening you, but now they have glass swords and daedric armor.  Huh?  If they've got thousands of gold of equipment, why are they hanging out by a bridge?

It also made it hard for you to beat some quests.  Say you happen upon a quest that's too hard for you and you run away.  Go off and level and now you can handle the quest, right?  Nope, the quest may have leveled with you!  (Oblivion tried to tack down the levels of the monsters when you first visited the quest, but that didn't work on things like "go collect 10 random things from daedric towers".)

The final big problem was the way leveling worked.  You leveled automatically when you slept after your major class skills advanced to a certain level.  If you let your major skills advance faster than your minor skills, you'd lose opportunities to train them and you would become less and less capable as you leveled.  Eventually, you'd get to the point that you were so far behind the power that you should be at the level that you couldn't actually complete the quest.  It turned out it would be better to pick a class with major skills that you never wanted to use, so you could train the hell out of your minor skills.

All of this boiled down to making it somewhat desirable to play the entire main quest WITHOUT EVER LEVELING because it was easier to win that way.

As for me, I enjoyed Oblivion and all the side quests, but because of the leveling problems the main quest got so hard I couldn't make it through a tower even just running past the guards, so I just quit.


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## Janx (Nov 18, 2011)

Alan covered it pretty well.

On the 360, they had DLC for a wizards tower, so you could skip the wizards guild and make your own items and spells.

A friend of mine had the strategy to stay at level one, and break the game by making 100% chameleon or 100% Reflect Damage armors.  Then you could play the game without being challenged.

Additionally, just playing the game at level 1 and never leveling, you basically faced wimpy stuff, even on the main quest.  It was like Alan said, put your primary skills as stuff you will never use, and you could control the difficulty of the game quite easily.

What I see in Oblivion and Skyim is a demonstration of sandbox and difficulty level ideas.

Some areas should be tougher than others.  You should be able to level up and actually see that areas that were hard are now easier.

With Alan's comment about bandits, it makes sense that certain things stay at certain levels.

I'm also pondering if level should be a factor of proximity to civilization.  A town should be keeping the wilderness back (scaring it off?), but also since Elder Scrolls is a simulation, you don't really want the random encounters getting to be high level and killing off the town.


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## Felon (Nov 18, 2011)

Janx said:


> In D&D, if the next random encounter kills you, you might not get to play that PC anymore.



In 4e? It's just money loss. 



Alan Shutko said:


> Hmm... Did you play Oblivion?
> 
> The challenge with their leveling system was that EVERYTHING leveled with you.  You didn't just see bigger monsters.  Those bandits at the bridge threatening you with rusty iron swords in level one?  They're still threatening you, but now they have glass swords and daedric armor.  Huh?  If they've got thousands of gold of equipment, why are they hanging out by a bridge?
> 
> ...



I'd say most of that was less to do with auto-leveling than with other quirks or defecits in Oblivion's structure. For instance, Oblivion's solution to handling difficult quests was to...well, lower the difficulty setting.

Oblivion's leveling system was simply defective. I went and did all the thief guild quests early on, and when i was done with them, I found I couldn't fight my way out of wet paper bag in other quests, which were more heavily combat-oriented. But that's not a reflection on auto-leveling enemies, just the lousy leveling system. 

My point is, I think it's great for the challenge to evolve as your character evolves. Batman: Arkham City provides a fine example, with packs of thugs appear in deadlier configurations as Batman racks up upgrades. Compare to Assassin's Creed, where Ezio where enemies never evolve, and Ezio is essentially killing the same three types of guards from start to finish. I could kill them off in droves with no upgrades, so why do I care about receiving upgrades?


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## Janx (Nov 18, 2011)

Felon said:


> In 4e? It's just money loss.
> 
> 
> I'd say most of that was less to do with auto-leveling than with other quirks or defecits in Oblivion's structure. For instance, Oblivion's solution to handling difficult quests was to...well, lower the difficulty setting.
> ...




my wife got stuck in Oblivion playing a wizard, and leveling too fast where the monsters became tougher than she could handle.

I played a thief and did the assassins guild first.  From there, taking a stealth approach to everything, I had no problem with any of the other guilds.  I don't think I even cast any spells (except the default heal) during the wizards guild quests.

So for me, Oblivion's leveling system didn't get in my way, as I could sneak and assassinate every enemy, I seldom had straight on fights.


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## Wereserpent (Nov 19, 2011)

Playing a High Elf caster-type. Mostly focusing on Destruction and Conjuration. I have found the Atronach summons very useful, especially when I can summon them into a narrow area to create a bottleneck strategy with enemies, or summoning them where they can attack enemies who have not noticed I am there yet and so will sometimes just stand there and get fireballed to death by my Flame Atronach.


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## frankthedm (Nov 20, 2011)

Fount an amusing glitch on the 360, _telling_ a follower to *take all* from a container lets them go past the weight limit and can be done multiple times. Used Lydia to mule 1400 weight units from the Mage College to my new house. However, the game seems like it is still tracking ownership of the container based on the follower, so if they take from a container owned by even the player, the items get a stolen flag. I do have the first update, but that was from a few days back, so maybe it has been fixed.



Galeros said:


> I have found the Atronach summons very useful



I find them required to keep on living for my squishy mage. I had wanted to use more undead, but the dead body requirement means relying on them in the MASSIVE overworld is impractical. To say NOTHING of how often allies drag their asses or fail to understand how to hop over an obstacle. 

I'll still animate any big honking monsters I find for fun, but ranged support from the hottie in burnt bone bedwear or dropping the mighty glacier into melee just seems to work better.

Another bug happens when a follower using a soul trapping weapon and it somehow fills multiple soul gems from that single soul. Seems to be random. Can be useful, but can also put sucky souls in a grand or black soul gem since the next souls will go to the next highest gems.


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## Banshee16 (Nov 21, 2011)

Felon said:


> "Always"?
> 
> Roguelike?
> 
> ...




My games have usually been more simulationist.  If my players had their characters enter Borovia, and heard from a villager about Strahd von Zarovich was a really dangerous vampire lord who ruled the country and stole the villager's daughter, and that the last 10 champions who tried to take him down were slaughtered, they'd be silly to try and go after him.  I'd obviously give in game warnings......but if you're level 1 and you decide to try to conquer Menzoberranzan on your own, your character will end up dead.  

I don't make the habit of scaling *everything* in the game.  Instead, there are challenges that I set up via foreshadowing, for later in the campaign.....but I then also provide paths to level appropriate challenges.  If they insist on throwing themselves against the BBEG for the end of the campaign arc, before they're ready, their characters would not succeed "just because they're the PCs".

DragonAge is a good alternate example.  You don't take your characters against the Arch Demon right at the beginning....you take your lumps, level up, gain information, gain allies, get better equipment etc. and prepare, before taking that challenge on.

Make sense?

Banshee


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## Banshee16 (Nov 21, 2011)

Alan Shutko said:


> Hmm... Did you play Oblivion?
> 
> The challenge with their leveling system was that EVERYTHING leveled with you.  You didn't just see bigger monsters.  Those bandits at the bridge threatening you with rusty iron swords in level one?  They're still threatening you, but now they have glass swords and daedric armor.  Huh?  If they've got thousands of gold of equipment, why are they hanging out by a bridge?
> 
> ...



This is the problem I've run into in Oblivion, which I didn't have in Fallout 3 to the same degree.

I never actually played Oblivion when it was released.  I've had it since 2006, and played the intro probably 10x, but just couldn't get into it and kept putting it aside any time a more story focused game came out.

Now I've been playing it, so I could at least getting my money's worth before buying Skyrim, and I'm finding some of the exact problems you're mentioning.

Enemies continuously scale...to the point that there are areas of the map that I don't want to go, as the rewards those enemies drop aren't worth it, given the amount of resources I have to expend to get by them.  Goblins near Skingrad, for instance.  I'm lvl 13 at the moment, and went into a cave inhabited by goblins, and they're all super touch......and they DESTROY my armor and weapons....such that I'm burning through all my cash just repairing my armor and weapons over and over.....and all they drop is lockpicks.  I have to go to other areas inhabited by human opponents (who have also leveled up), just because they at least drop good armor etc. which I can then sell for gold.

And everywhere I go, enemies have scaled the same way.  It never feels like I'm getting tougher.  I had a quest to kill slaughterfish when I was lvl 4, and despite having better equipment, and 9 more levels it's still difficult to beat them, as now that I've gone back, the fish have leveled up.  WHY?  IMO, that's just bad design.

Incidentally, I'm wondering if Skyrim has fixed several of the factors from Oblivion that have really led to me never finishing the game.

1-Carbon copy NPCs.  EVERYONE seems to have pretty much the exact same conversation options.  In fact, if I talk to someone about a topic in the Imperial City, and I then go to Charrol, an NPC there has the EXACT SAME topics to speak about, and those topics are greyed out because what the new guy has to say is exactly the same as what the guy from the first city has to say.

2-Cardboard animations...people are.....stiff.  Including having a lack of "weight" to objects....if someone steps off a ledge, they don't "fall", they just kind of float down.

3-Very few conversation options.

4-Impossible to aim ranged attacks in 3rd person view.

5-Broken leveling system.

6-Overly perceptive guards.  One thing that really really annoys me is going to talk to a shopkeeper, trying to click on him, and accidentally clicking on an item on the table in front of him.....which causes me to involuntarily steal it....and triggering a Terminator (er....City Guard) who proceeds to kick my everloving butt around the whole campaign map.  I've even tried running away from a guard, and he literally followed me all the way from one city to another.  Just for giggles I tried running through monster infested areas, thinking maybe something would kill him, and instead he slaughtered every creature that locked onto us, and then, when I finally got bored/frustrated and stopped running, he killed me in two hits.  And then, because I hadn't thought to save my game before talking to that shop keeper, I had to replay everything leading to talking to him, which was also very annoying.

The same thing has happened with things like where I got told to look for someone in the  mage guild but they were behind a locked door, so I picked it to complete the quest.  As soon as I left the mage's guild, everyone fled from me, except the guards (who hadn't been *in* the guild) who somehow magically knew I'd picked a lock inside the building, and then wanted me to pay 250 gp to avoid a prison term.

Are the guards, and the whole lawbreaking system a little more balanced?

Another one..last night, when walking to Charrol (can't afford a horse yet), I came across a monk (on a horse) getting attacked by a bandit.  Before I could save him, the bandit killed the monk, and I then killed the bandit.  The horse was just sitting there.  Everyone else was dead.  So I jumped on the horse.  All fine.  Road it to Charrol.  Fine.  Got off the horse to talk to an NPC, and then got back on the horse.  Instantly a guard declared I was a thief and attacked me (with similar results as above).  So, how come I wasn't a thief when I road the horse into the town?  Only when I got off the horse, and then tried to climb back on.

7-Empty cities.  In Oblivion, you go into a city with these massive, tall buildings, and there are 2 people on the street.  It doesn't feel "alive".

Does Skyrim change any of those things?  The graphics look much better.....but I wonder about gameplay.

As background, Oblivion is the first Elder Scrolls game I *haven't* played to death....I played the original Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, and Morrowind, and enjoyed most of them.  Maybe my memories are flawed, but I just don't remember getting this frustrated with them.

Banshee


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## Argyle King (Nov 21, 2011)

@ Banshee... so far, it's been my experience that the guards are not as perceptive; however, some NPCs will run to the guards and report you if they see you commit a crime.  Also, not all villages share the same legal system.  You can be a wanted man in one place and have no bounty at all somewhere else.




So far, I'm loving Skyrim.  I'm playing an Imperial, and I suppose my character would be best characterized as a death knight.  I wear full plate, use a sword as my primary weapon, and alternate between a shield and conjuration magic (focusing on raising undead) in my left hand.

Skyrim fixed one of the two major complaints I had about Oblivion; that being that you couldn't give followers better equipment.  (One a side note, I've discovered that I can also equip my undead with weapons and armor.)  You still cannot fight from horseback - my other main complaint about Oblivion.  Still, I'm having a blast with Skyrim.


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## Janx (Nov 21, 2011)

[MENTION=26438]banshee[/MENTION], sorry your experience with Oblivion was  a bit rough.

I do agree, that the cops are flagged way too easy for things nobody witnessed.  I'd envisioned a messaging system for NPCs to carry info (like news of the death of a guy that I KNOW nobody has found where I left the body).  Basically, NPCs need to pass info, not simply have it available.

ownership in morrowind was a bit looser as I understand it.  You could kill a guy and move into his house.  I think Oblivion moved it the other way.

Skyrim seems to be balancing it in the middle better.

Oblivion can still be fun.  I focused on the assasins guild stuff first.  So I got sneaky lethal early on.  Makes every other quest easier to sneak and assasinate your way.  Also, for Money, once you learn about vampire hunters, go mop up at Memorial Cave on the east side of the imperial city.  Mucho Money off of vampires, and you get paid for the dust.  I funded several houses, and if you could have kids, I would've put them through wizarding school.


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## Banshee16 (Nov 21, 2011)

Janx said:


> [MENTION=26438]banshee[/MENTION], sorry your experience with Oblivion was  a bit rough.
> 
> I do agree, that the cops are flagged way too easy for things nobody witnessed.  I'd envisioned a messaging system for NPCs to carry info (like news of the death of a guy that I KNOW nobody has found where I left the body).  Basically, NPCs need to pass info, not simply have it available.
> 
> ...




I'm always leery around vampires.....I found a cave full of them near Skingrad (Bloodcarved Cave, or something like that), and killed them all....they had lots of great gear.  However, I kept my saved game from right before I sent in there, because I was paranoid of turning into a vampire..  I remember that happened to my character in Daggerfall, and it took awhile to get cured.....only to then get infected by a werewolf.  That one I thought was rather cool, so I stayed a werewolf for awhile.  No werewolves in Oblivion, that I'm aware of.

I haven't tried the assassin's side of things yet.  I accidentally got flagged and had the guy come to me when I was sleeping, to get me to join....but I don't see my character as a murderer.  I was flagged one time when I was out on the road, and saw a traveler being attacked by an imp near Skingrad.  I tried to jump in and help him, but I'm playing a Spellsword, and my marksman skill isn't the best.  I used my bow, and I guess the guy killed the imp, and stepped into his space, just as I loosed my arrow, and then hit him.  He got pissed off and attacked me, and I defended myself and killed him.....then the dude showed up the next time I rested, saying I'd proved myself a cold blooded killer. He gave me a dagger and asked me to kill someone else, but so far I've avoided it.  I'm not sure if I should ditch the dagger or not.  It doesn't seem to be worth anything, but it also doesn't weigh anything.

Right now, I'm noticing the lack of Levitate spells.....I'm having difficulty saving up enough gp to buy a horse (the cost seems to keep going up, now it's 2500 gp), as between repairing armor, trying to upgrade, buying spells to retain ones powerful enough for my level, and buying training to try and improve support skills, I rarely have more than about 1200 gp at a time.  Consequently, there are areas of the map I can't seem to find, that I need to progress on important quests.

In Morrowind, I would just fly to an area I was having difficulty reaching.  Doesn't work here.

Banshee


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## Agamon (Nov 21, 2011)

Banshee16 said:


> Right now, I'm noticing the lack of Levitate spells.....I'm having difficulty saving up enough gp to buy a horse (the cost seems to keep going up, now it's 2500 gp), as between repairing armor, trying to upgrade, buying spells to retain ones powerful enough for my level, and buying training to try and improve support skills, I rarely have more than about 1200 gp at a time.  Consequently, there are areas of the map I can't seem to find, that I need to progress on important quests.




You think the horse is expensive, wait until you se the cost of the barding. *rimshot*

I had a funky encounter in Skyrim recently.  I'm heading to a new hold and just outside it, a dragon attacks.  Thing is he starts with me and a couple NPCs out side the city, but then flies away and starts attacking people on the other side of the wall in the city.  Does that a couple times and then comes back to me and I kill him.

But taking care of their problem didn't seem to go well with the guards as I was attacked upon trying to enter the hold. I took down the one guard that attacked, got at 1000 gp bounty on my head, decided to head in the other direction.  Sheesh, that's gratitude for ya.


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## Janx (Nov 21, 2011)

Banshee16 said:


> I'm always leery around vampires.....I found a cave full of them near Skingrad (Bloodcarved Cave, or something like that), and killed them all....they had lots of great gear.  However, I kept my saved game from right before I sent in there, because I was paranoid of turning into a vampire..  I remember that happened to my character in Daggerfall, and it took awhile to get cured.....only to then get infected by a werewolf.  That one I thought was rather cool, so I stayed a werewolf for awhile.  No werewolves in Oblivion, that I'm aware of.
> 
> I haven't tried the assassin's side of things yet.  I accidentally got flagged and had the guy come to me when I was sleeping, to get me to join....but I don't see my character as a murderer.  I was flagged one time when I was out on the road, and saw a traveler being attacked by an imp near Skingrad.  I tried to jump in and help him, but I'm playing a Spellsword, and my marksman skill isn't the best.  I used my bow, and I guess the guy killed the imp, and stepped into his space, just as I loosed my arrow, and then hit him.  He got pissed off and attacked me, and I defended myself and killed him.....then the dude showed up the next time I rested, saying I'd proved myself a cold blooded killer. He gave me a dagger and asked me to kill someone else, but so far I've avoided it.  I'm not sure if I should ditch the dagger or not.  It doesn't seem to be worth anything, but it also doesn't weigh anything.
> 
> ...




Horses are a bad investment.  You can run faster than a horse, and it'll improve your stats.  At least until you finish the Assassin's Guild and get Shadowmere, the unkillable horse.  You can actually attack Shadowmere and when he falls, search him, and deposit loot.  Then when he recovers, ride him to the next dungeon.

You should be able to travel just about everywhere in Cyrodil.  I've circumnavigated the map, zigzagged it to discover all the waypoints.  Mountain climbring requires some strategy and determination, you may have to start way off in the foothills miles from where you want to go, to get onto the spine so you can actually walk across the peaks.

The Feather spells are how you increase your carrying capacity.  Generally though, you learn one of those so WHEN you hit limit, you cast it and then head back to town.  Don't cast it so you can load up further.

You will have to make multiple trips (I once strip mined all of Kvatch of anything worth a septim)  Patience is the key.

On disease, EVERY time you get back to town (which should be frequent because you are full of loot), swing by the temple and get blessed.  It takes 3 days for vampirism to set in, fast travel will get you there in time.

As for being Evil, hitting al 9 wilderness shrines will reset you infamy to 0.  At least if you have the Knights of the Nine add-on.

Which is a good idea:  if you don't have the GoTY edition, you can buy the add-on CD for Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine.  On the 360, then get the other DLC packs for the theives den, fighter stronghold, wizard's tower and Vile Lair.  They have a lockpick training chest, sparring partner, magic-making lab, and vamprie feeder respectively.

On the PC, the wiki shows where to get the Unofficial patch, and there's more add-ons, including one to change the leveling behavior (lots of people dislike it).

It never bothered me.  I took a career path that didn't run into trouble.  My wife had to restart her first PC, because she maxed out her magic skills which hyper-leveled her (but only having newbie spells/gear), so everything was lethal.

Stay away from theiving until you join the thieves guild.  There's no help for a lone thief without the support network to clear bounties and fence goods.


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## Banshee16 (Nov 21, 2011)

Janx said:


> It never bothered me.  I took a career path that didn't run into trouble.  My wife had to restart her first PC, because she maxed out her magic skills which hyper-leveled her (but only having newbie spells/gear), so everything was lethal.




I think this is what is gradually happening to me...I hit lvl 13 last night, and I've got main skills that are in the 45-52 range (Blade, Destruction, Restoration, etc.)....but my minor skills (light armor, armorer, lockpick etc.) are in the 9-15 range, and I'm finding some opponents hard.

It's a little off.  Against humans (like bandits etc.) I can get in a fight with 4 or 5 at once, and kill all of them.  Spellcasters, like cultists etc. summoning daedra are more difficult.  Then, like last night, I went into a new cave, and within steps of the door, got attacked by 4 trolls all at once, and was dismembered and eaten.  Tried several times, and couldn't get past them.

Getting swarmed by enemies is one of the things I have difficulties with.  I understand there are followers, but I'm not sure how to get them.

I know I can beef up my speed.  Every few levels I do that.  But my understanding is that horses help you get over steep mountains etc. that you can't normally walk up.

Banshee


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## Banshee16 (Nov 21, 2011)

Agamon said:


> You think the horse is expensive, wait until you se the cost of the barding. *rimshot*
> 
> I had a funky encounter in Skyrim recently.  I'm heading to a new hold and just outside it, a dragon attacks.  Thing is he starts with me and a couple NPCs out side the city, but then flies away and starts attacking people on the other side of the wall in the city.  Does that a couple times and then comes back to me and I kill him.
> 
> But taking care of their problem didn't seem to go well with the guards as I was attacked upon trying to enter the hold. I took down the one guard that attacked, got at 1000 gp bounty on my head, decided to head in the other direction.  Sheesh, that's gratitude for ya.




That's the kind of thing I don't understand....why would you get a bounty on your head?  The dragon was attacking the people, and you helped stop it....you'd think they'd be grateful.

Banshee


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## Banshee16 (Nov 21, 2011)

Janx said:


> Which is a good idea:  if you don't have the GoTY edition, you can buy the add-on CD for Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine.  On the 360, then get the other DLC packs for the theives den, fighter stronghold, wizard's tower and Vile Lair.  They have a lockpick training chest, sparring partner, magic-making lab, and vamprie feeder respectively.




On PC I've got the collector's edition original release plus Knights of the Nine.  On XBox, I've got the GotY edition.  I tried and tried on PC, and for whatever reason couldn't get into it....of course, at that time, there were several other games I was into...Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, World of Warcraft, The Witcher, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Oblivion just kept getting superceeded by other games.....now The Witcher 2, Drakensang and others have taken more time, and just make Oblivion look dated by comparison.

Given I've paid for the game twice, I made the decision I have to at least *try* to play it before moving to the sequel....I'm fairly confident once I try Skyrim, I won't try Oblivion again.

I was very surprised to find that the GotY edition *didn't* include the Wizard's Towe, Spell Tomes etc.....given they came in the Knights of the Nine expansion pack.

Admittedly, now that I'm trying it on XBox 360, I'm getting more interested in it.  Maybe I just need to try it on PC with a controller....I just find the whole mouse and keyboard thing not as fun as it used to be.....at least with respect to Oblivion.  The other thing is that on PC you really have to know which mods to use...I modded mine up with several things, and just found some of the mods a little glitchy...weird graphical artifacts and such.  And overall, walking around is *sloowwww* on my PC.  Not as in low FPS....but just that it seems like walking around outside takes forever..to the point it's annoying.  On the XBox, it just seems like I get places quicker.

I'm not sure if Skyrim will run on my machine.  I'm hesitant to buy it and then find out it runs like crap.  I have The Witcher 2 running at pretty much high settings, and it runs fine.  But I put my video card into a Google search and saw someone say it would let me play at low settings.

Phenom II X4 955 Processor, 3.2 GHz
16 GB RAM
Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium
ATI Radeon HD 5770 w/1 GB ram

Banshee


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## Felon (Nov 21, 2011)

I'm not looking for major spoilers, just general confirmation or denial, but I gotta ask: is there any way to sell stolen items without joining the thieves guild? I've traveled to differend holds across the countryside and still can't seem to find vendors that will buy purloined goods. Still toting around that imperial bow I lifted off some mook tend levels ago.


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## Agamon (Nov 21, 2011)

Banshee16 said:


> That's the kind of thing I don't understand....why would you get a bounty on your head?  The dragon was attacking the people, and you helped stop it....you'd think they'd be grateful.




Well, I did kill the guard.  That would do it.  She started it though. 

Why she attacked me in the first place is the puzzling part.  I've heard rumors in game that not everyone is happy about the return of a dragonborn, but outright hostility against someone that saved the city from attack is odd.


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## Agamon (Nov 21, 2011)

Felon said:


> I'm not looking for major spoilers, just general confirmation or denial, but I gotta ask: is there any way to sell stolen items without joining the thieves guild? I've traveled to differend holds across the countryside and still can't seem to find vendors that will buy purloined goods. Still toting around that imperial bow I lifted off some mook tend levels ago.




Doubtful.  If they are known to be stolen items, looks like you'll need to fence them.  If no one catches you stealing it though, anyone will buy it.


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## Janx (Nov 21, 2011)

Banshee16 said:


> I think this is what is gradually happening to me...I hit lvl 13 last night, and I've got main skills that are in the 45-52 range (Blade, Destruction, Restoration, etc.)....but my minor skills (light armor, armorer, lockpick etc.) are in the 9-15 range, and I'm finding some opponents hard.
> 
> It's a little off.  Against humans (like bandits etc.) I can get in a fight with 4 or 5 at once, and kill all of them.  Spellcasters, like cultists etc. summoning daedra are more difficult.  Then, like last night, I went into a new cave, and within steps of the door, got attacked by 4 trolls all at once, and was dismembered and eaten.  Tried several times, and couldn't get past them.
> 
> ...




I don't think a horse can go where I can't.  maybe I never pushed Shadowmere hard enough....  He's fun, but I zoom around the map well enough...

The real danger of the skill systems is your major skills level you up, and if they go up, the danger level goes up.  if those skills don't help you fight, you're hosed.

So, for a pure fighter, Blade + Light Armor + Armorer would be great skills because when they go up, u level, and they help fight fight the leveled bad guys.

Whereas, maxing out Persuasion as a major skill will get your butt creamed because you've leveled, but you have no practical ability to resist dying...

If you want to get control, make a custom class, and put the major skills into what you will NOT be using.  In this way, you will advance more slowly, and effectively be able to control the difficulty level.

Persuasion and Light or Heavy Armor (the one you are not going to wear) are good candidates.  Persuasion will go up when you sell, but that's OK, as it will get you better prices over the life of the PC.

With this in place, if you game the system to train your real skills, it won't pump your level up artificially.  Thus, you can practice healing, sneaking, etc without finding the monsters are nigh unbeatable.

PS.  Craft the BurnHeal and HealBurn spell which does +/1 1 HP respectively.  This will train your destruction or healing skill respectively (if I recall, last spell effect wins).  Also, when walking, use your illusions or summons, to work up points in those skills.

I don't exit the dungeon without 50 Sneak, when I start Oblivion.

Obilivion has a lot of fun quests and neat things to see, if you're not struggling with the engine.

Lastlty, when in doubt, crank down the difficulty level.  The point is to have fun and see what there is to see and do.


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## enrious (Nov 21, 2011)

Agamon said:


> Doubtful.  If they are known to be stolen items, looks like you'll need to fence them.  If no one catches you stealing it though, anyone will buy it.




There's a way by using two skills in the Speech skillset.



Also, would you guys mind splitting off the Oblivion talk into its own thread?   I didn't play Oblivion and I'm totally confused by roughly 90% of the posts in this Skyrim thread because I don't know what game you're discussing in a given post.  I can't be the only one.


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## Alan Shutko (Nov 22, 2011)

Agamon said:


> Why she attacked me in the first place is the puzzling part.  I've heard rumors in game that not everyone is happy about the return of a dragonborn, but outright hostility against someone that saved the city from attack is odd.




I'd guess that you accidentally hit her while taking out the dragon.


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## Felon (Nov 22, 2011)

Agamon said:


> Doubtful.  If they are known to be stolen items, looks like you'll need to fence them.  If no one catches you stealing it though, anyone will buy it.



The use of "doubtful" and "looks like" gives me the impression that this is supposition. Am I mistaken?

I'm never caught stealing, but the loot is apparently unsellable anywhere I've been. Which is disappointing, because the Thieves Guild in Skyrim seems like no more than a bunch of lowlife thugs and assortd losers (as opposed to the likes of the Gray Fox in Oblivion). So, if I'm the classic, romantic thief with a heart of gold, I still have to go out and bully shopkepers for protection money just so I can eventually fence goods. 

Kind of feel a similar way about having to trap souls in order to power up any magical gear. Trapping someone's eternal essence and using it as fuel is about as evil as it gets, but everyone's supposed to be doing it.


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## Alan Shutko (Nov 22, 2011)

Felon said:


> I'm never caught stealing, but the loot is apparently unsellable anywhere I've been.




One of the perks on the Speech tree will let you sell stolen goods to any merchant you've invested in (a previous Speech perk).


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## Agamon (Nov 22, 2011)

Alan Shutko said:


> I'd guess that you accidentally hit her while taking out the dragon.




Except that she was to far away to even be in the dragon attack.  And she didn't attack me until I tried to enter the city.  So I dunno...


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## Agamon (Nov 22, 2011)

Felon said:


> The use of "doubtful" and "looks like" gives me the impression that this is supposition. Am I mistaken?
> 
> I'm never caught stealing, but the loot is apparently unsellable anywhere I've been. Which is disappointing, because the Thieves Guild in Skyrim seems like no more than a bunch of lowlife thugs and assortd losers (as opposed to the likes of the Gray Fox in Oblivion). So, if I'm the classic, romantic thief with a heart of gold, I still have to go out and bully shopkepers for protection money just so I can eventually fence goods.
> 
> Kind of feel a similar way about having to trap souls in order to power up any magical gear. Trapping someone's eternal essence and using it as fuel is about as evil as it gets, but everyone's supposed to be doing it.




Yeah, it is supposition.  I haven't stolen a whole lot yet that isn't cash, keys or information, so I didn't realize that. Like Alan said, there is a perk.

There's also a perk that lets you suck the souls of non-people to automatically repower weapons.


----------



## frankthedm (Nov 22, 2011)

Felon said:


> The use of "doubtful" and "looks like" gives me the impression that this is supposition. Am I mistaken?
> 
> I'm never caught stealing, but the loot is apparently unsellable anywhere I've been.



While the guards are less psychic in Skyrim than in oblivion, Merchants still are. Criminal bounties can be avoided simply by ensuring no witnesses get away, a stolen item is forever marked by the god(s?) of justice. 

Also watch out for thugs hired by those you steal from. I don't know if those psychicly trigger or if they are based on you being SEEN near items that are later stolen.







Felon said:


> Which is disappointing, because the Thieves Guild in Skyrim seems like no more than a bunch of lowlife thugs and assorted losers (as opposed to the likes of the Gray Fox in Oblivion).



It makes PERFECT sense though. Skyrim has a heavier social emphasis on honor, plus the land is a harsher place than Cyrodiil with less wealth to go around {plot wise at least]. That means those who are willing to make a living off of others have fewer targets who can "afford it" and thus those who stay thieves are likely to be scummier people.


Felon said:


> Kind of feel a similar way about having to trap souls in order to power up any magical gear. Trapping someone's eternal essence and using it as fuel is about as evil as it gets, but everyone's supposed to be doing it.



Only monster's souls go into the normal soul gems; Petty, Lesser, Common, Greater & Grand.

Living people's {playable races] souls can only be trapped by Black Soul Gems and VERY few people deal in those. Even vampires still count as people so their souls only go into black soul gems or the Corrupted version of Azura's Star. I'll admit though it is surprising the peaceful giants were not given people's souls.


----------



## Agamon (Nov 23, 2011)

Yowza, I fought two Frost Dragons at once tonight.  That's gotta be the toughest fight yet (aside from the giant, who can still one-shot me at L28...)


----------



## frankthedm (Nov 23, 2011)

Horses can be mounted while over encumbered and can still fast travel while the rider is over encumbered. This works at least on the xbox360 even after the first patch. Saved me an hour of lugging my mage-dorm junk back to White Run. With a weight of 2400/400 I'm surprised the horse didn't break in half...

Still took an hour and a half to sort it all out. 

Speaking of Horse, the horse stone is better than described. It seems ANY heavy armor / jewelry worn does not add to encumbrance points like the late game heavy armor perk. That is in addition to the heavy armor not impacting your movement rate and the 100 free encumbrance points the horse stone is stated to give. {again xbox 360 even after the first patch}. [sblock=Horse Stone location]It's up by the Solitude  / Thalmor Embassy area. [/sblock]


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## frankthedm (Nov 23, 2011)

Agamon said:


> Yowza, I fought two Frost Dragons at once tonight.  That's gotta be the toughest fight yet (aside from the giant, who can still one-shot me at L28...)



Yeah, frost dragons seem common in the late 20's early 30's. Cold resist is practically mandatory around then.


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## Felon (Nov 23, 2011)

Alan Shutko said:


> One of the perks on the Speech tree will let you sell stolen goods to any merchant you've invested in (a previous Speech perk).



Skyrim's perks represent a whole lot o'good ideas. However, that particular high-end perk assumes two things: A) you're already sufficiently wealthy to go around investing in merchants, and B) Speech is high enough to meet the requirement. Bearing in mind that raising Speech is primarily a side-effct of selling high-cash-value loot, it seems safe to conclude that perk just lets the rich get richer. 



frankthedm said:


> While the guards are less psychic in Skyrim than in oblivion, Merchants still are. Criminal bounties can be avoided simply by ensuring no witnesses get away, a stolen item is forever marked by the god(s?) of justice.
> 
> Also watch out for thugs hired by those you steal from. I don't know if those psychicly trigger or if they are based on you being SEEN near items that are later stolen.



The hired thugs are yet another interesting idea, although the implementation is insane (in typical Skyrim fashion). The thugs can be hired over petty theft, by characters who seem unlikely to have the means to do so (farmers, hermits, and in some reported instances, children).



> It makes PERFECT sense though. Skyrim has a heavier social emphasis on honor, plus the land is a harsher place than Cyrodiil with less wealth to go around {plot wise at least]. That means those who are willing to make a living off of others have fewer targets who can "afford it" and thus those who stay thieves are likely to be scummier people.



Hate to be reductive, but y'know, anything can be said to make perfect if you try hard enough. I could likewise contend that it makes even more sense for thieves guild to be especially honorable. In the end, however, everything serves the needs of gameplay, and in this case Skyrim doesn't really seem interested in providing a morality system. Of the four main guilds, two are expressly neutral, and the other two expressly sinister. Normally, I'd consider an organization of diplomats to be patently absurd in a video game, but in an Elder Scrolls game I could actually see such a thing working out.

In the case of Skyrim's thieves guild, what they're going for in terms of gameplay is to put the player in a situation where he builds a criminal empire from the ashes of an old one. Of course, you're building it the Bethesda way: even though the player is ostensibly the boss, he's not calling the shots, merely carrying out the plans presented to him. Nonetheless, the premise appeals to me sufficiently that I'll turn a blind eye to the racketeering and extortion tactics, which I don't really consider to be very thiefy.


----------



## Janx (Nov 23, 2011)

Felon said:


> Skyrim's perks represent a whole lot o'good ideas. However, that particular high-end perk assumes two things: A) you're already sufficiently wealthy to go around investing in merchants, and B) Speech is high enough to meet the requirement. Bearing in mind that raising Speech is primarily a side-effct of selling high-cash-value loot, it seems safe to conclude that perk just lets the rich get richer.




Occupy Skyrim!


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## Felon (Nov 24, 2011)

Bwahahaha!


----------



## Janx (Nov 24, 2011)

Where'd the Kahjit caravan camp outside Whiterun go?

My wife has noticed their camp is gone.


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## Agamon (Nov 24, 2011)

There is one?  Never seen it.  Didn't even meet a Kahjit until L25.

This is probably one of those random things that makes everyone's game different.


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## Janx (Nov 24, 2011)

There's. A camp outside whiterun, winterhold and riften that'll sell 35 lockpicks each.  My wife didnt know that and just started using them, and then they were gone.


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## Agamon (Nov 25, 2011)

I walked all around Whiterun when I first got there, didn't see a camp.  I did see one at Winterhold.  Is there a chance they move around?  Would make some sense...


----------



## frankthedm (Nov 25, 2011)

I've seen the Kajhit merchants walking on the road before selling stuff, bought my first soul trapping weapon from one of those groups. 

Also ran across a few non Kajhit Skooma dealers way off on the backroads. Can't resist murdering the Skoomapushers for their Moonsuger to make Elsweyr Fondue.


----------



## Agamon (Nov 25, 2011)

Yeah, I've seen them moving between holds, too.  I don't kill them, I just take their stuff when they aren't looking.  Satisfying to be able to do that to a gypsy-type.


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## TarionzCousin (Nov 26, 2011)

I just traded Lydia for Illia. She's a mage but wants to use the two-handed axes I give her to carry. She also won't wear the mage robes but loves the leather armor and steel helmet. Is this normal for magic-using followers?




frankthedm said:


> Yeah, frost dragons seem common in the late 20's early 30's. Cold resist is practically mandatory around then.



My character is level 14 and has fought 5 dragons. They all seemed identical. How can one tell them apart?


Here's a great short video on how to defeat Giants with your bare hands. Very entertaining:
Skyrim: Defeating a Giant With Fists. - YouTube


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## Agamon (Nov 26, 2011)

TarionzCousin said:


> I just traded Lydia for Illia. She's a mage but wants to use the two-handed axes I give her to carry. She also won't wear the mage robes but loves the leather armor and steel helmet. Is this normal for magic-using followers?




That is odd.  I still use Lydia, but she compliments my PC well.  She did use a shock staff when I gave it to her, which I thought odd.




TarionzCousin said:


> My character is level 14 and has fought 5 dragons. They all seemed identical. How can one tell them apart?




Regular Dragons are the easiest and the ones you first encounter.  Higher level they start getting different names.  Aside from the named dragon I've fought, I've also seen Blood Dragons and Frost Dragons.




TarionzCousin said:


> Here's a great short video on how to defeat Giants with your bare hands. Very entertaining:
> Skyrim: Defeating a Giant With Fists. - YouTube




What a great way to start the day.  That was awesome!


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## Felon (Nov 26, 2011)

Had some Khajiit merchants help me kill a dragon outside of Riften. Actually, I suspect they did most of the heayv lifting, I tend to think. Then they moved on.

Also, a dragon flapped about and seared a hillside just above Morthal. Never came down into the city proper (which would be tough for it, I suppose, as the city is built around a lake). By the time I got up there, he had scarpered off. Punk!


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## frankthedm (Nov 27, 2011)

TarionzCousin said:


> I just traded Lydia for Illia. She's a mage but wants to use the two-handed axes I give her to carry. She also won't wear the mage robes but loves the leather armor and steel helmet. Is this normal for magic-using followers?



As far as i can figure out the game uses some sort of sorting algorithm to chose what a follower will wear. Lydia kept putting on a steel plate helm when she had been previously been wearing a glass helm that had a far higher armor rating.

BTW, how are the magic using followers in the friendly fire department? Do they often hit the player? I've had my dog try to kill a plot based ally over a fireball the dog charged into, so I've been leery of taking caster allies.


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## TarionzCousin (Nov 27, 2011)

frankthedm said:


> As far as i can figure out the game uses some sort of sorting algorithm to chose what a follower will wear. Lydia kept putting on a steel plate helm when she had been previously been wearing a glass helm that had a far higher armor rating.



Illia stayed naked instead of putting on Magicka regenerating robes. Go figure. 



> BTW, how are the magic using followers in the friendly fire department? Do they often hit the player? I've had my dog try to kill a plot based ally over a fireball the dog charged into, so I've been leery of taking caster allies.



Illia fires ice bolts that stick around for a while. I've had a few stuck in my character. Friendly fire happens. 

I just wish she would stay back and cast spells; when she charges in to melee I have hit her a couple times on accident. Then she complained as I was standing there with an ice bolt in my chest.


----------



## TarionzCousin (Nov 27, 2011)

I didn't start using spells until my character was level 15. I have been casting Healing and Sparks all over the place, as soon as my Magicka regenerates. But I don't think my skills are increasing. 

Do magic skills not increase outside of combat? 


There is a neat skill builder here, if you want to try before you buy: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Skills Builder - IGN


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## Agamon (Nov 27, 2011)

I don't think any skill increases if it's not actually being used for something.  Sneaking in middle of nowhere doesn't help, but there's usually something or someone around to hear or see you.  But just casting spells doesn't seem to help any more than swinging a sword around will increase one-handed.

A tip for when you have an NPC with you that's not a follower.  Unlike followers, when you accidentally hit them, they attack you.  You just have to transition between areas and all is forgiven.


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## frankthedm (Nov 27, 2011)

TarionzCousin said:


> I didn't start using spells until my character was level 15. I have been casting Healing and Sparks all over the place, as soon as my Magicka regenerates. But I don't think my skills are increasing.
> 
> Do magic skills not increase outside of combat?



Restoration builds if you are healing damage, so taking fall damage and then healing it should work.

Destruction does take a while to build since you need enemies. I don't even think allies count UNTIL you turn them hostile. You are going to want to get gear that cuts down casting costs if you plan to rely on destruction magic. Even after you start casting Destruction spell for free, it will take a *while* to build the skill to max.

Illusion has the Muffle spell that you can spam yourself for leveling.

Conjurations can be spammed, but i think you get more XP if the summon actually dies. I was nuking my own zombies for a while and my conjuration built MUCH faster than my destruction.

Block can be built VERY fast... *If* you can survive sparing with giants. It will probably give your restoration a workout too.


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## LightPhoenix (Nov 28, 2011)

frankthedm said:


> Restoration builds if you are healing damage, so taking fall damage and then healing it should work.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


----------



## Goodsport (Nov 28, 2011)

Since this game is a sequel to _The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion_ (or at least the next game in the series after it), should I get _Oblivion_ first (which I'm sure I can buy at a reduced price, although its official strategy guide is now undoubtedly nowhere to be found ) and finish it so that I could then understand the story and past game references in _Skyrim_?

Also, is _Skyrim_ played only in first-person view or does it also have a third-person view option?  The only type of game I can't use a controller with is the first-person shooter (I _need_ a keyboard & mouse for that).  However, I can currently only play _Skyrim_ on my PS3 as my PC is _way_ too underpowered for it (as it was even when _Oblivion_ was released in my PS3-less days, though it previously handled _Morrowind_ okay).


-G


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## Alan Shutko (Nov 28, 2011)

Skyrim is set several hundred years after Oblivion. There are some references to help tickle the fancy if you've played previous games (including Morrowind, and the older ones) but it's certainly not necessary to play.  I never finished the main quest in Oblivion because it got grindy but the side quests were fun.

You can choose between first and third person, and switch between them as you wish.


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## Agamon (Nov 28, 2011)

There are PS3 (and Xbox) mouse and keyboard peripherals.  They seem to work well enough by the sound of it, but console games aren't optimized to mouse look, of course.

I didn't play Oblivion a whole lot myself, and Morrowind hardly at all (Daggerfall a whole bunch though...that was a while ago).  Anyway, yeah, it's just the same world; that's the only real connection between games.


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## Janx (Nov 28, 2011)

Agamon said:


> There are PS3 (and Xbox) mouse and keyboard peripherals.  They seem to work well enough by the sound of it, but console games aren't optimized to mouse look, of course.
> 
> I didn't play Oblivion a whole lot myself, and Morrowind hardly at all (Daggerfall a whole bunch though...that was a while ago).  Anyway, yeah, it's just the same world; that's the only real connection between games.




Yeah, the Elder Scrolls series is more like playing in a GM's world where past campaigns have been run.  Plenty of references to old stuff, but enough game time elapsed between so that your PC is not expected to know about past events.

As for controllers vs. mouse...  I advise forcing yourself to use it and over time you will get used to it.  I know PC FPS guys claim the mouse/keyboard combo is the bomb.  But from a human interface perspective, it's not very intuitive.  I  suspect it's only better because it is practiced (and any speed bonus is because the UI lets it be fast).

For perspective, I used to play FPS on keyboard only (no mouse in the quake/doom days).  When I switched to FPS on console, I configured the controller so that I could move/turn on one stick (so I could drive with one hand, like you can on keyboard).  When I hit a game that didn't let me reconfigure, and it became apparent the new default standard for console FPS was Left=forward/back + strafe, right=turn & pitch, I switched to that.

It totally sucked for awhile as I moved jerkily and couldn't lock in on targets fast enough.  But eventually you get used to it and are able to zoom around just as well as before.


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## Banshee16 (Nov 28, 2011)

Janx said:


> Yeah, the Elder Scrolls series is more like playing in a GM's world where past campaigns have been run.  Plenty of references to old stuff, but enough game time elapsed between so that your PC is not expected to know about past events.
> 
> As for controllers vs. mouse...  I advise forcing yourself to use it and over time you will get used to it.  I know PC FPS guys claim the mouse/keyboard combo is the bomb.  But from a human interface perspective, it's not very intuitive.  I  suspect it's only better because it is practiced (and any speed bonus is because the UI lets it be fast).
> 
> ...




I agree....I used to be PC only, and laughed at consoles.  Then I dipped my toe in via the original XBox so I could play Jade Empire and Ninja Gaiden, and liked it, and then moved to the 360 and you get used to the controller.  I can target pretty well now.

And there's something to be said for being able to relax on your couch and play a game like Oblivion or Skyrim on a 50" screen with full surround sound etc.  It's more immersive than trying to get proper surround sound out of my 5.1 PC system....there's just not enough space on a desk (even a big desk) to get good sound separation (IMO).  And I say that *as* a PC fan.

I've been able to get alot further into Oblvion on XBox than I ever could on PC.....it's just more comfortable at this point.

I understand the graphics aren't as good etc.  But they're "good enough"....and my PC could likely only play it on low to medium settings anyways, so the graphics advantage of being on a PC is lost to me anyways.

Banshee


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Nov 29, 2011)

Skyrim humor:  Twenty-Sided -- the Adventures of Elfman the Man-Elf.


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## Janx (Nov 29, 2011)

Found an article where somebody has exported all the books in Skyrim to an ebook format so you can read them outside the game.

The Escapist : News : Take Every Book in Skyrim with You

Seems like a fun way to read all the books on my iThing.


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## frankthedm (Nov 29, 2011)

*Patch incoming!*

Skyrim 1.2 update | Bethesda Blog

Improved occasional performance issues resulting from long term play (PlayStation 3)
    Fixed issue where textures would not properly upgrade when installed to drive (Xbox 360)
    Fixed crash on startup when audio is set to sample rate other than 44100Hz (PC)
    Fixed issue where projectiles did not properly fade away
    Fixed occasional issue where a guest would arrive to the player’s wedding dead
    Dragon corpses now clean up properly
    Fixed rare issue where dragons would not attack
    Fixed rare NPC sleeping animation bug
    Fixed rare issue with dead corpses being cleared up prematurely
    Skeleton Key will now work properly if player has no lockpicks in their inventory
    Fixed rare issue with renaming enchanted weapons and armor
    Fixed rare issue with dragons not properly giving souls after death
    ESC button can now be used to exit menus (PC)
    Fixed occasional mouse sensitivity issues (PC)
    General functionality fixes related to remapping buttons and controls (PC)



Banshee16 said:


> And there's something to be said for being able to relax on your couch and play a game like Oblivion or Skyrim on a 50" screen with full surround sound etc.



I thought many newer TVs worked with computer outputs?


----------



## Man in the Funny Hat (Nov 29, 2011)

frankthedm said:


> I thought many newer TVs worked with computer outputs?



Oh they do, they do.  But TV's generally go on the wall or on top of a stereo stand.  Easy to plug an xbox in underneath.  But a PC is generally mean to be at a desk so connecting output to a TV monitor means things tend not to be in the right places together playing nicely with others.

Before I started buying decent monitors I once hooked up my PC to my 42" plasma.  Had to buy a 12' video cable to do it.  Then sat down on my couch with a wireless keyboard and mouse to play WoW.  It was sort of impressive just to see the game screen so LARGE, but it really did squat for the graphics.  And then as I was playing I realized I really needed a custom desk sort of surface to be comfortable while using the keyboard/mouse seated on the couch - which meant I used it for about 30 minutes and then went back to my desk.


----------



## TarionzCousin (Nov 29, 2011)

I joined the *Thieves Guild* in Riften because I needed access to the Lockpicking trainer. She wouldn't train me unless I was a member. It has been interesting.

For one, most of the jobs don't involve killing. In fact, most of them forbid killing. 

Second, they have lots of gold and lockpicks lying around in chests, freely available to guild members. You can also take other stuff from the guild area (as long as you aren't "stealing" it) and immediately sell it to the local fence--conveniently found in the Thieves Guild area.

The guild armor is great, too. Good enchantments for light armor and better than anything comparable I had found adventuring. Of course, one of the Riften guards said to me as I ran past "I recognize Thieves Guild armor. You're not fooling anyone." Hah!

Finally, if you are wandering around outside in Riften at night and see the guards subdue a Thief, just wait until they kill the punk. Then loot his body. I got some great gems (my first diamond) this way.


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## LightPhoenix (Nov 29, 2011)

frankthedm said:


> Dragon corpses now clean up properly
> Fixed rare issue with renaming enchanted weapons and armor




Of the whole list, I've only ever really run into these two, and maybe the ammo one.  I was hoping for something a little bit more substantial than this.  For example, companions not leveling up properly, or errors in the PC interface display between mouse input and keyboard input.

Ah well, still having fun.


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## Agamon (Nov 29, 2011)

I've only seen the non-fading projectile.  Lydia had an icicle stuck in her for a good part of a commute to a dungeon.  Oh, and the dragon not attacking.  I just thought he couldn't see me in the dark and snow.  Then it happened again during the day when it was raining.

What does "dragon corpses don't clean up" mean?  Does the ash and bruning and swirling soul stick around?  The not giving souls after death bug sounds huge.  Glad I haven't encountered that.  Then again, I've had a 8-10 soul surplus for the past 15 levels.

And the only problem I've had with renaming enchantments is my dumb ass forgetting to do it....


----------



## LightPhoenix (Nov 29, 2011)

Agamon said:


> What does "dragon corpses don't clean up" mean?
> 
> And the only problem I've had with renaming enchantments is my dumb ass forgetting to do it....




Literally, dragon corpses don't disappear.  Not so bad and actually kind of cool when they're in the middle of nowhere, but not so cool when a bunch of them are in the same place.

Renaming enchantments I've only had happen once, and seems to me like another GUI issue.  It simply wouldn't let me edit the name.


----------



## Agamon (Nov 29, 2011)

LightPhoenix said:


> Literally, dragon corpses don't disappear.  Not so bad and actually kind of cool when they're in the middle of nowhere, but not so cool when a bunch of them are in the same place.




Ah, yeah, I saw that as a feature, not a flaw.  They make good landmarks.  I even considered leaving some loot on a corpse and come back for it later once.  But I found a better spot, not trusting I'd find the corpse again or that it'd hang around.


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## Alan Shutko (Nov 29, 2011)

Agamon said:


> What does "dragon corpses don't clean up" mean?  Does the ash and bruning and swirling soul stick around?  The not giving souls after death bug sounds huge.  Glad I haven't encountered that.  Then again, I've had a 8-10 soul surplus for the past 15 levels.




I had an encounter once with a random encounter dragon, and one of the dragons near a word wall at the same time. Killed them both, and the word wall dragon burned up and gave me the soul, but the random encounter dragon just sat on the ground flapping in the wind.  I'm guessing that's this bug.


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## TarionzCousin (Nov 30, 2011)

This was entertaining: 100 Ways to Die in Skyrim

For #47, does he jump on a bird? I can't see the bird under his feet. I don't know how he did this.


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## TarionzCousin (Nov 30, 2011)

For those of you with an iPad, there's an app for annotating a Skyrim map.

An article about it can be found here.


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## frankthedm (Nov 30, 2011)

Alan Shutko said:


> but the random encounter dragon just sat on the ground flapping in the wind.  I'm guessing that's this bug.



Had one of those happen two nights ago. Was a base vanilla dragon. The body failed to skeletonize.

I've seen a few dragon skeletons fuse into the scenery so they become unmovable / tethered. Thank the Nine you can just walk through them. Still I do like using spells to send dragon skeletons catapaulting into the next Hold.


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## Banshee16 (Nov 30, 2011)

frankthedm said:


> *Patch incoming!*
> 
> Skyrim 1.2 update | Bethesda Blog
> 
> ...




Many do...I think.  Mine has a bunch of HDMI inputs as well as computer inputs.....but it's in our living room, which is in the basement, whereas the computer I have that may be capable of running Skyrim is in my office on the second floor, and it's housed in a tower casing, so it's honestly a pain in the butt to move it around just to play a game.  And a laptop that could play it would likely be ginormously expensive.  My laptop's an ordinary Toshiba Satellite business computer with onboard video....definitely not sufficient for gaming.

Or use the XBox 360 or PS3 I have sitting down there 

Banshee


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## Goodsport (Nov 30, 2011)

I finally bought _Skyrim_ (PS3 version) and its Official Strategy Guide on Monday, though I only finally had time to start playing it in earnest the following day.  It's pretty good so far, and I've found myself mainly playing it in third-person view.  I suppose I'm fortunate that I had the latest v1.2 patch downloaded and installed prior to playing the game for the first time. 

It's still too bad that I didn't get a chance to play _Oblivion_ when it was first released, as reading about its events still won't be the same as having lived (played) them.  Though I technically could still buy it now and play it, that'd be that much more time (limited already as it is) that I then wouldn't be playing _Skyrim_. 


-G


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## Banshee16 (Nov 30, 2011)

frankthedm said:


> *Patch incoming!*
> 
> [*]    Fixed issue where textures would not properly upgrade when installed to drive (Xbox 360)
> 
> ...




I just got Skyrim yesterday and tried it last night.  Fantastically immersive when compared to Oblivion.

However, that bug fix references installing textures to XBox.  I take it there's a bug with that?  I just put the disk in the drive and started playing.  Is there something like in Battlefield 3 where there are high res texture packs you can install to make the game look better?  Or is it just that some players install the game on their HDD so that the drive isn't always spinning?

Banshee


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## frankthedm (Dec 1, 2011)

Banshee16 said:


> Or is it just that some players install the game on their HDD so that the drive isn't always spinning?



This is the problem. Installing lets one save lots of wear and tear on their system, a critical thing with just how tempting it is to keep playing the game for HOURS on end. The bug means the game won't look as good when installed.


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## Agamon (Dec 1, 2011)

Hmmm, I hope the patch fixed at least some of the issue as advertised.  Last night I decided to install the game now that they fixed the texture issue, but water looks pixelated now.  Also, I finally saw the dead-dragon-no-soul bug after 3 hours post patch, but not in the 75 hours I played pre-patch.


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## Banshee16 (Dec 1, 2011)

Agamon said:


> Hmmm, I hope the patch fixed at least some of the issue as advertised.  Last night I decided to install the game now that they fixed the texture issue, but water looks pixelated now.  Also, I finally saw the dead-dragon-no-soul bug after 3 hours post patch, but not in the 75 hours I played pre-patch.




I'm thinking I'm going to just leave mine on the DVD, and take my chances.  I have a spare 360 if it comes down to it.

I'm honestly awestruck when I turn the game on....compared to Oblivion, the graphics are just night and day.  Character models are much better, the environmental effects, sound effects, the wind blowing gusts of snow around, the rivers, the way Draugr pull themselves out of crypts to attack is just way, way cool.  The whole idea of having a coffin sitting there, and you touch it, and presto, the monster appears and attacks has always been part of the technology limitations.  But to see that corpse laying in a niche in the wall, and to see it literally pull itself out, straighten up to standing, and then shamble after you is just....woah.  That's a level of immersion I haven't seen in many RPGs at all yet.

Now I kind of feel bad I haven't finished Oblivion.  I was finally getting into it, but I'm not sure I can go back now 

Banshee


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## Kaodi (Dec 1, 2011)

If I may engage in some hyperbole: I do not know how I am ever going to survive without getting to play this game someday. Between exploration, scavenging, crafting, combat, and immersion... Ugh... Why did I ever quit games?!


----------



## Felon (Dec 1, 2011)

TarionzCousin said:


> I joined the *Thieves Guild* in Riften because I needed access to the Lockpicking trainer. She wouldn't train me unless I was a member. It has been interesting.
> 
> For one, most of the jobs don't involve killing. In fact, most of them forbid killing.



Indeed, many don't really involve sneaking, pickpocketing, lockpicking, or other thiefy skills. Much like how wizards guild quests don't necessarily require strong spellcasting.



> Second, they have lots of gold and lockpicks lying around in chests, freely available to guild members. You can also take other stuff from the guild area (as long as you aren't "stealing" it) and immediately sell it to the local fence--conveniently found in the Thieves Guild area.



I pickpocketed every single member of the guild as soon as I was inducted, and had no trouble fencing their items. It was my best score of all time, actually.



> The guild armor is great, too. Good enchantments for light armor and better than anything comparable I had found adventuring. Of course, one of the Riften guards said to me as I ran past "I recognize Thieves Guild armor. You're not fooling anyone." Hah!



In terms of protection, the guild armor is nice for leather, which is to say, bad overall. The flawless-grade scale that I can bang out trumps it. The bennies they grant are nice, but they count as magical properites, so it take 60 smithing plus a perk to improve them.


----------



## Krug (Dec 2, 2011)

Playing an Argonian warrior and joined the Companions. 



Spoiler



Slightly miffed that you HAVE to become a werewolf to continue the questline. Uh.. what would a lizard-werewolf look like?


----------



## CAFRedblade (Dec 2, 2011)

While I'll be waiting for the Game of the Year Edition, I have enough other games to keep me occupied.  
This animated take on Skyrim, fused with the D&D cartoon is awesome. 
The Elder Scrolls Adventures Re-envisions Skyrim as a 1980s Saturday Morning Cartoon


----------



## Janx (Dec 3, 2011)

CAFRedblade said:


> While I'll be waiting for the Game of the Year Edition, I have enough other games to keep me occupied.
> This animated take on Skyrim, fused with the D&D cartoon is awesome.
> The Elder Scrolls Adventures Re-envisions Skyrim as a 1980s Saturday Morning Cartoon




Some tough competition came out this year, especially all about the same time.  Might not be a sure thing


----------



## Alan Shutko (Dec 3, 2011)

Janx said:


> Some tough competition came out this year, especially all about the same time.  Might not be a sure thing




It seems every big game releases a GOTY edition. I thought that there were just so many awards that everything managed to win it?


----------



## frankthedm (Dec 3, 2011)

Alan Shutko said:


> It seems every big game releases a GOTY edition. I thought that there were just so many awards that everything managed to win it?



Win it or buy it, there are PLENTY of them to go around.

Game of the Year - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


----------



## Agamon (Dec 4, 2011)

According to Metacritic, it should be the actual GOTY.  Leo Leporte posted on G+ he thought it was Game of the Decade.  I agree.


----------



## Janx (Dec 4, 2011)

free Tip:

don't do the Dark Brotherhood missions when your wife is watching. You'll just get whined at about how mean you are for killing the nice people of Skyrim and that's its wrong.

In Skyrim, more of your targets are "good" people.  Unlike Oblivion, where most of the targets have it coming.  This time around, you really are the bad guy.


----------



## TarionzCousin (Dec 5, 2011)

I returned to the priestess of Azura to give her Azura's broken star. After fast-travelling to the spot, I thought "I barely survived my first dragon attack at this wide-open place. It would really stink now that I don't have a follower if another dragon came along right now."

It did. 

I peppered it at range with firebolts, managing to hit once in about 25 tries. For some reason, it decided to fly off at that point. I guess it knew it couldn't take me in a one-on-one fight.








Earlier in my game, another dragon landed near the stables in Winterhold. It breathed fire and incinerated my innocent horse that I had stolen fair and square (Frost, if you need to know).


----------



## Agamon (Dec 5, 2011)

Yeah, I've had a few dragons ignore me post-patch, too.  Thought they were fixing that.  The installed textures look fine now, so I guess that worked after all.

Interesting part of the main quest, which I'll spoiler-block:

[sblock]During "Elder Knowledge" you have to harvest the blood of an orc and each of the three different elves.  I'm playing a good-hearted thief-type, so killing people to harvest their blood made me a bit upset.  Then over the next hour or so playing, I run into a group of witches and one is a high elf.  Then a dark elf passes me on the road telling me he's going to join the imperials (I'm a stormcloak).  Then I run into a couple poachers in Whiterun land, where I'm a thane, one is a wood elf.  Well, geez, now I just need the orc blood, that was easier than I thought...[/sblock]


----------



## frankthedm (Dec 5, 2011)

Agamon said:


> Interesting part of the main quest, which I'll spoiler-block:



That 



Spoiler



blood collection


 is not part of the main quest. It is closely related, but once you have the 



Spoiler



Elder Scroll


 you can continue with the main quest.


----------



## MarkB (Dec 5, 2011)

Anyone here playing Skyrim on PC on low specs?

My system is pretty much on the nose in terms of the minimum requirements - 2GHZ dual-core processor, 2 GB RAM, recent but not very high-end ATI Radeon graphics card (I can't remember the exact model). I'm just wondering if it'll run the game at anything like acceptable quality.


----------



## TarionzCousin (Dec 6, 2011)

UESP has a great overview for beginners that I found useful, even after having played most of the Elder Scrolls games and a couple weeks of Skyrim.


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## TarionzCousin (Dec 6, 2011)

Has anyone seen two dragons fighting?


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## Felon (Dec 6, 2011)

Agamon said:


> Yeah, I've had a few dragons ignore me post-patch, too.  Thought they were fixing that.



Sometimes dragons are not present for the specific purpose of attaching the player. They'll have the red icon on the compass if they're gunning for you. Otherwise, bumping into them is just a happy accident.


----------



## Janx (Dec 7, 2011)

Yet another interesting link.  How to break Skyrim...

Breaking Skyrim: The best tricks, secrets, and exploits | VentureBeat

Note, I only advise reading this if you want phenomenal cosmic power, and don't mind spoiling the challenge of the game.


----------



## Jhaelen (Dec 7, 2011)

Janx said:


> Yet another interesting link.  How to break Skyrim...



I'd argue that's the whole point of playing Elder Scrolls titles: Trying to find ways to beat the system and exploiting the ever-present bugs. 
At least that's the only part that I ever considered fun in this game series...

To me Elder Scrolls games consistently prove that pure point-buy systems can never be properly balanced.


----------



## Agamon (Dec 7, 2011)

Felon said:


> Sometimes dragons are not present for the specific purpose of attaching the player. They'll have the red icon on the compass if they're gunning for you. Otherwise, bumping into them is just a happy accident.




Oh, yeah, I get that.  But they are the only potential enemies that might not attack you for some reason.  All other creatures attack you on sight.  Humans may give you a warning to back off and then attack if you don't.  If I shoot at a human and miss, they respond.  They dragon won't unless he's already in attack mode.

If it's intentional that dragons don't always attack and sometimes just want to fly around and roar, they probably shouldn't state they are fixing that in the patch...


----------



## Agamon (Dec 7, 2011)

Janx said:


> Yet another interesting link.  How to break Skyrim...
> 
> Breaking Skyrim: The best tricks, secrets, and exploits | VentureBeat
> 
> Note, I only advise reading this if you want phenomenal cosmic power, and don't mind spoiling the challenge of the game.




The game is fun and very engaging, but it's hardly difficult, so I'm not sure what the purpose would be.

Now, the same thing for Dark Souls would actually make that game playable.


----------



## frankthedm (Dec 8, 2011)

Janx said:


> Note, I only advise reading this if you want phenomenal cosmic power, and don't mind spoiling the challenge of the game.



Dual wielding Absorb Health weapons seems to do that pretty well. After I saw how impractical Master Destruction spells were around level 45, I switched to Dual wielding and Ginsu-ed through everything. The one time the heath regain wasn't enough was when I stood face to face with Alduin's breath, but that fight still didn't take more than one or two Ultimate Healing potions.

Enchanting also is easy to break the game with. *Lots* of cash can be made off a petty soul gem with the Turn Undead, Paralyze or Banish enchantments on a junk weapon. All the while building enchanting up to max leading to _complete energy Resist_ and _cast spells for free_ gear sets. Though if you ask me, the damage output of the Destruction school kinda feels like the game devs kept it low because they knew you could eventually cast them for free.


----------



## Felon (Dec 9, 2011)

Agamon said:


> Oh, yeah, I get that.  But they are the only potential enemies that might not attack you for some reason.  All other creatures attack you on sight.  Humans may give you a warning to back off and then attack if you don't.  If I shoot at a human and miss, they respond.  They dragon won't unless he's already in attack mode.
> 
> If it's intentional that dragons don't always attack and sometimes just want to fly around and roar, they probably shouldn't state they are fixing that in the patch...



Well, quite a few mobs don't attack on sight. Pretty much all animals have a safe distance. And of course, the giants make it clear when you're invading their personal space. 

Dragons are different from other creatures--and in this respect, easier to fight--in that they relent even when they're still healthy. Any other creature in aggressive mode never stops advancing until its near death, and maybe not even then. Dragons will fly off and come back, which is generally a losing proposition for them, and quite possibly the source of some dragon-specific behavioral bugs.


----------



## Agamon (Dec 9, 2011)

Felon said:


> Well, quite a few mobs don't attack on sight. Pretty much all animals have a safe distance. And of course, the giants make it clear when you're invading their personal space.




Yeah, I meant the more aggressive ones.  Wolves and bears pretty much attack as soon as they spot you.  You can walk right past a horsker though.  And giants are obviously in the game as obstacles to sneak around, not fight.  But if you fire an arrow at anything, it will defend itself.  Maybe the dragon just knows that it's hard to attack because it can fly and screw the little peon down there, but I'm more inclined to it being a bug.



Felon said:


> Dragons are different from other creatures--and in this respect, easier to fight--in that they relent even when they're still healthy. Any other creature in aggressive mode never stops advancing until its near death, and maybe not even then. Dragons will fly off and come back, which is generally a losing proposition for them, and quite possibly the source of some dragon-specific behavioral bugs.




Maybe, but I think it would be next to impossible to kill one if they just took off at 1/3 health, which would go against the idea of the game.  Obviously they lose the abilty to fly once they take a certain amount of damage, so they pretty much need to fight to the death at that point anyway.  And given how much damage a bite can do, it's a pretty good plan.


----------



## Felon (Dec 10, 2011)

Agamon said:


> Yeah, I meant the more aggressive ones.  Wolves and bears pretty much attack as soon as they spot you.  You can walk right past a horsker though.  And giants are obviously in the game as obstacles to sneak around, not fight.




I've had bears just sit and growl at me, but it does require a good deal of safe distance. As to giants--well, I've seen quests to slay them. They drop those ridiculous toes.


----------



## Banshee16 (Dec 18, 2011)

I haven't found giants that difficult to kill.  They move relatively slowly, and I just back away and keep nailing them with spells.  I find mammoths more difficult to kill because they move fast enough I can't get space to work.


I did see a flying mammoth the other day.  I was sneaking up on it and all of a sudden it lifted off like a rocket, shot into the sky, then fell back to earth and died.  I then looted the body.

Banshee


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## Krug (Dec 18, 2011)

Finished the Stormcloak vs Imperial questline. It was kind of fun storming forts with a group, which made a nice change from dungeon crawling. 

Been getting Words of Power quests from the Greybeards. The Dungeon crawls do get kind of tedious, especially when I can only find time to play during the weekend. 

Still, kudos to Bethesda on creating such a deep world. Well thought out, with every city having its own unique qualities.


----------



## frankthedm (Dec 19, 2011)

Krug said:


> Finished the Stormcloak vs Imperial questline. It was kind of fun storming forts with a group, which made a nice change from dungeon crawling.



Yes, was fun, though the fight for the last fort managed to lag my 360 something fierce.


----------



## Janx (Dec 19, 2011)

Krug said:


> Finished the Stormcloak vs Imperial questline. It was kind of fun storming forts with a group, which made a nice change from dungeon crawling.
> 
> Been getting Words of Power quests from the Greybeards. The Dungeon crawls do get kind of tedious, especially when I can only find time to play during the weekend.
> 
> Still, kudos to Bethesda on creating such a deep world. Well thought out, with every city having its own unique qualities.




Which side did you fight for? The Imperials?  Or Ulfric ElfHater?


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## TarionzCousin (Dec 19, 2011)

The very last scenario in Act I has you interrupt Alduin resurrecting a dragon. You're supposed to arrive in Kyneshold (?) with an NPC. Another NPC runs out and says "Don't go there. There's a dragon attacking." You are supposed to follow your NPC ally up the hill and do battle.

First, my NPC wasn't there when I arrived. 

Second, it was snowing so hard I couldn't tell where to go and I overshot the pathway. I ran around for five minutes, hearing the dragon talking, attacking, mocking me, etc. I couldn't find it. I finally stumbled across my NPC, knocked down (she would have been dead but she is unkillable) and locate the new dragon. I killed it easily.

But for a long time I thought I would fail due to extreme weather conditions. 

The Dovhakin can slay many dragons, but he is as a newborn babe against the mightiest foe of all: snow.


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## Krug (Dec 19, 2011)

Janx said:


> Which side did you fight for? The Imperials?  Or Ulfric ElfHater?




Stormcloaks. Ironic since I'm an Argonian.


----------



## Banshee16 (Dec 19, 2011)

I have a question...

Given the open world nature  of the game, in theory anything can happen.

But I had an odd event the other day.  I was on the A Night to Remember storyline, and woke up in Morgaz or whatever that city is in the far west side of the map.  Anyways, after picking up some quests, I walked out of the city to go home.  I set my feet on the road, and decided to walk back to Whiterun, instead of fast traveling, as I figured I may as well walk it the long way so I can see what there is to see in this wide world.

Anyways, on my way through the outskirts of the city, I passed a farm, and stopped to chat up the farmer.  Turns out, he was very disappointed in his son, who had moved away to another town, and never visited anymore.  He gave me a letter to bring to him, in which he said how disappointed he was in his son.  I was thinking, "harsh, but ok...maybe they'll have a reconciliation if I bring the letter".

Interesting premise for a quest.  So I got to walking again (apparently I didn't bring my horse with me on my drunken night of debauchery, but I *did* bring Lydia).

I crossed the bridge outside the city, and am climbing the foothills when I hear a roar echo off the mountains.  I turn around, and see a dragon flying in.  It blows a jet of flame with me, and I drive it off with some lightning bolt spells. And the dragon flies at the city.....right at the farm.

And all the guards swarm in to fight him off, and I'm on foot running back across the valley while the dragon is torching the farm and everything else it can see.

I get there and finish killing the dragon, and while looting the body, I find the crispy fried corpse of the farmer who just gave me the quest.

In the end I did give the letter to the son....but now it's a letter from a dead father, saying how disappointed he is that his son doesn't visit more often.  But the dad's now dead....which the game doesn't seem smart enough to recognize.

This leads me to the question.....what if this had happened with a main quest line?  Where I was supposed to bring something *back* to someone?  And they got torched?  Does that cause a bug?  Does the quest just automatically fail?  Or are NPCs in such a position unkillable?

Also, if my horse, my wardog, or my retainer Lydia die, are any of them replaceable?  So far my horse is the only one who hasn't died, and he's taken on dragons.  I've traditionally had those instances as the only places that I load a saved game, as I'm not sure if they can be replaced.

Banshee


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## Alan Shutko (Dec 19, 2011)

Banshee16 said:


> This leads me to the question.....what if this had happened with a main quest line?  Where I was supposed to bring something *back* to someone?  And they got torched?  Does that cause a bug?  Does the quest just automatically fail?  Or are NPCs in such a position unkillable?




Quest NPCs are marked essential for the duration of the quest, so they can't die.  The only exception is if keeping the NPC alive is part of the quest.  



> Also, if my horse, my wardog, or my retainer Lydia die, are any of them replaceable?




You can get more horses, war dogs, and retainers. You can't get specific ones back. (Well, except for one particular horse obtained via a specific quest line.)


----------



## Agamon (Dec 19, 2011)

TarionzCousin said:


> The Dovhakin can slay many dragons, but he is as a newborn babe against the mightiest foe of all: snow.




There's a app shout for that.


----------



## Agamon (Dec 19, 2011)

frankthedm said:


> Yes, was fun, though the fight for the last fort managed to lag my 360 something fierce.




Yeah, me too.  That and wow, was it easy.  I'm standing there fighting 8 guys at once and laughing the whole way.  I even wore the vastly inferior stormcloak officer armor for the end of the quest, for kicks.  Not that that's a bad thing.  It's nice to kick a little bum once in a while.


----------



## Agamon (Dec 19, 2011)

Two pieces of news make me happy:

1. The undeveloped environment of both Morrowind and Cyrodiil are in the game (just not yet accessable by the player).

2. Bethesda has said that DLC will be released less often, but more "meaty," than with Fallout 3.

Skyrim isn't going to be just Skyrim for long...


----------



## Agamon (Dec 19, 2011)

Finally, if you do the White Phial quest, there's a glitch where everytime you empty the phial, it leaves you with an empty one that is 2 pounds and 0 gp.  If you get rid of all of those before it refills the next day (making a new one), you lose a pretty cool unique item.


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## Felon (Dec 20, 2011)

Alan Shutko said:


> Quest NPCs are marked essential for the duration of the quest, so they can't die.  The only exception is if keeping the NPC alive is part of the quest.



Yep, just like followers, they will hunker down and beg for mercy for a minute, then they get back up. This can be annoying if you get one mad at you.


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## frankthedm (Dec 20, 2011)

Felon said:


> Yep, just like followers, they will hunker down and beg for mercy for a minute, then they get back up.



Followers can at least die if they get hit by the player in the 'fallen down' status. I had to do a modest amount of reloading saves due to my crappy aim and careless fireballs.

I just wish Skyrim would have let you storm the Jarl's palaces and take over, if you were powerful enough to win, no quest needed.


----------



## Felon (Dec 20, 2011)

frankthedm said:


> I just wish Skyrim would have let you storm the Jarl's palaces and take over, if you were powerful enough to win, no quest needed.



Well, in order to facilitate the gameplay, the various jarls are ridiculously accessible to the player. Castles shouldn't just freely admit outsiders to come before their rulers sporting their full panoply of death-dealing gear. And if they do, they should probably have more than a couple guards on hand. Heck, they should think twice about allowing them to roam freely within their city walls. Spies and assassins have an easy go of it in Skyrim.


----------



## Krug (Dec 22, 2011)

Finished the main questline (Level 37 2H axe warrior) on what I presume is the easy setting. The Big Bad went down in a few blows. I got a little bored with the FedEx quests and just collected Words of Power, courtesy of the Greybeards. In terms of questlines I've only done the Companions and the Imperial/Stormcloak questlines. So still a lot of game to be played. 

Great story and I like how 



Spoiler



you have to make decisions and choose sides, such as whether to kill the Dragon at the Throat of the World.



So far this game has been racking up the game of the year awards, and it well deserves it.


----------



## Janx (Dec 23, 2011)

Felon said:


> Well, in order to facilitate the gameplay, the various jarls are ridiculously accessible to the player. Castles shouldn't just freely admit outsiders to come before their rulers sporting their full panoply of death-dealing gear. And if they do, they should probably have more than a couple guards on hand. Heck, they should think twice about allowing them to roam freely within their city walls. Spies and assassins have an easy go of it in Skyrim.




true enough, there are some houses more seriously warded than the Jarls.

It seems like it would have been trivial enough to build the quest lines so the jarl house is not welcome, but courriers from his aides would seek you out, then later actual aides when your in town, until you get a proper invite from the jarl to attend court.

But these skyrim folk are pretty informal.


BTW, who here has seen Skjor rise from the dead and heard his words of wisdom?


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## Felon (Dec 26, 2011)

Janx said:


> true enough, there are some houses more seriously warded than the Jarls.
> 
> It seems like it would have been trivial enough to build the quest lines so the jarl house is not welcome, but courriers from his aides would seek you out, then later actual aides when your in town, until you get a proper invite from the jarl to attend court.



Yeah, think about fallout new Vegas and the effort it takes to get into new Vegas to see Mr. House or to get into the fort to meet Caesar.


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## Zelda Themelin (Dec 28, 2011)

I got this game but I don't like it.
I hate steam. Didn't know it would have it, aargh, next time I will be reading more sources.

I dispise first person view, did new patch bring some cure to that and does it require re-start?

Since I do got it I'd love to play it still at least for while. So what is easiest class to get into? And what is best way to follow some flimsy "plot". I don't like "free world" games at all, they have bored me sinse darklands. But I wanted to give this one try because it was so pretty. Well it is pretty even with my graphic card, but I am not used at first person view now for years and I truly hope there is some cure for that.

I don't want to give up the game without proper try. It might even be fun.
So what would be super easy way to play?
What skills and char class to get etc? I have trouble with viewing angles so I don't want to make combat very challenging for me. 

Despite sounding whiny not my intention, I would just really like to have some advice before I give it another try.


----------



## Nagol (Dec 28, 2011)

First person isn't a requirement (at least on PC), mouse wheel moves camera back.  I find aiming in 3rd person a bit difficult though.

The walls around "classes" is weak; very weak.  You CAN be a generalist, though be careful letting your main combat skills (offence and defence) lag behind other skill gains; the  game somewhat levels the world to your level and makes no allowances for level increases from non-combat skills.

I find one-handed weapons gives a decent starting weapon choice as you can use the other hand for shield, spell, or 2nd weapon.

An easy place to start is to pick a side in the civil war.  Escape the initial situation with the representative character and follow that up after your escape.


----------



## Krug (Dec 28, 2011)

Zelda Themelin said:


> I got this game but I don't like it.
> I hate steam. Didn't know it would have it, aargh, next time I will be reading more sources.
> 
> I dispise first person view, did new patch bring some cure to that and does it require re-start?
> ...




Wow dude I don't think this is the game for you if you don't like Free World style games. Best option is to choose what you want to specialise in; combat, magic, thievery.. there's even an assassin and bard questline.

There's third person view, which I use. 

Novice setting is pretty easy. You'd have the boss down in no time.


----------



## frankthedm (Dec 29, 2011)

Zelda Themelin said:


> So what would be super easy way to play?




Drop Difficulty
Avoid building levels too quickly. Enemies still level scale, though not as badly as Oblivion.
Get Follower
Avoid following main quest at first {don't talk to first Jarl, just talk to his mage to buy petty soul gems and use his enchanting alter}
Get dog
Max Enchanting using petty soul gems to make  Paralysis / Turn Undead / Banishment weapons.
Sell those weapons to get more petty soul gems and PLENTY of cash on the side.
Max Smithing {Heavy armor path gets the better weapons]
{ optional ]Max Alchemy to make tons MORE money
Dual Wield Deadric Swords of duel enchanted Fire damage + Absorb Life using Grand soul gem.
Make gear of Energy resistance and Magic resistance {If you are a breton, your magic resistance should stack and possibly  make you immune to energy attacks].
Make a duel enchanted Fire and Cold damage Deadric Bow for dragon hunting, continue with main quest.


----------



## Zelda Themelin (Dec 29, 2011)

And to not liking free world games is that most of them were very bad. And not so pretty, Skyrim kinda have hope for me, that I might starting to like them too. I re-installed it and now "f"-key (for pc) works to change between views. Dunno why it didn't work with my prior install asked friend and he told me it should, so this apperently cured it for me. LIke the game much better now. Thanks for advice.


----------



## Janx (Dec 30, 2011)

Zelda Themelin said:


> And to not liking free world games is that most of them were very bad. And not so pretty, Skyrim kinda have hope for me, that I might starting to like them too. I re-installed it and now "f"-key (for pc) works to change between views. Dunno why it didn't work with my prior install asked friend and he told me it should, so this apperently cured it for me. LIke the game much better now. Thanks for advice.




Hope you start having fun with The Elder Scrolls series.  Their design plan has always been to create a single player sandbox D&D world.  Each version gets better at it.  They always win game of the year awards.  This is as about as good as it gets.

That said, keep a tolerant atittude on the bugs.  Most of the bugs are scripting errors, not code.  That makes little mind to normal people, but the difference is, the developer didn't screw up, the scripter did.  Fixing a script is a lesser magnitude problem to fix, so they can be fixed more readily in subsequent patches.


----------



## SteelDraco (Dec 30, 2011)

I was very frustrated by the game's controls. I'm left-handed, and use the keypad for all my movement and control. I've played Fallout extensively with this setup and never had any trouble. For some reason, though, the keys don't remap properly so I can play the way I'm used to. 

I found a mod that mostly solves my problem, but there are still keys that don't remap. It's ridiculous.


----------



## Zaukrie (Jan 3, 2012)

My youngest son, who generally likes more realistic games and not games and movies base on fantasy, cannot stop playing this game. It might be the game that gets me to learn how to use this new fangled PS3 thing in my house (says the curmudgeon).


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## Krug (Jan 11, 2012)

Giant mudcrab attacks Skyrim: 
Skyrim - Giant mudcrab attacks Whiterun - YouTube


----------



## Kzach (Jan 12, 2012)

Serves me right for believing the hype.

The controls suck and it is NOT the sandbox you're looking for. There is the illusion of a sandbox but in reality there are invisible walls everywhere that lead you by the nose towards each goal. The story is terrible, trite and confusing to say the least. Even though the environment might curtail exploration and lead you in one direction, the story most certainly doesn't, so you're often left wondering, "What the hell am I meant to do now?"

Combat is just awful. You're left blindly flailing at whatever you can manage to keep in front of you for more than a second. Everything moves too fast on the screen to keep accurately hitting. This is one of those disconnects between 'realistic' combat and the physics of a computer generated environment. The simple fact is that people and objects just DO NOT move that fast or that smoothly. This is why I've always hated driving games. In a real car, you feel resistance, you have feedback on where you're going and the effects of your steering. But in driving games there is no resistance or environmental feedback, so you end up oversteering or understeering. The same happens in a game where you're trying to hit someone with a sword but everyone moves as if gravity and friction don't exist.

Meh to the whole game. I'm pissed I spent $60 on it. Fallout New Vegas and Mass Effect are FAR better than this heap of crud.


----------



## Janx (Jan 12, 2012)

Kzach said:


> Serves me right for believing the hype.
> 
> The controls suck and it is NOT the sandbox you're looking for. There is the illusion of a sandbox but in reality there are invisible walls everywhere that lead you by the nose towards each goal. The story is terrible, trite and confusing to say the least. Even though the environment might curtail exploration and lead you in one direction, the story most certainly doesn't, so you're often left wondering, "What the hell am I meant to do now?"
> 
> ...




I can't say much about youyr comment on controls and fighting.  melee is the hardest to do right, because NPC movement puts them out of your view so quickly, and unlike a real fight, you can't sense where they are, causing more flailing.

But my wife likes it and she hates FPS games.  She also kicks ass at melee.   Sounds like a PEBKAC situation.

As to not-really a sandbox?  It's more of a sandbox than other sandbox computer games.  You really can sneak and bypass your way through the plots.

I just finished all of HalfLife 2 from the Orange Box.

That's a frickin railroad.  The puzzles are clever, but EVERY place is a railroad.  Walking through the city to escape, there is only ONE route you can take through it.  every other door is locked or blocked.

I can't make you like it.  And you do raise valid points.

But I don't think they add up to Skyrim = $60 piece of crap.


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## Agamon (Jan 12, 2012)

Kzach said:


> Serves me right for believing the hype.




Hype and universal praise are not the same thing.



Kzach said:


> The controls suck and it is NOT the sandbox you're looking for. There is the illusion of a sandbox but in reality there are invisible walls everywhere that lead you by the nose towards each goal. The story is terrible, trite and confusing to say the least. Even though the environment might curtail exploration and lead you in one direction, the story most certainly doesn't, so you're often left wondering, "What the hell am I meant to do now?"




I'm not sure what to say here.  It's not a sandbox, it leads you by the nose?  As opposed to what?  Fallout?  I've played both, I don't see what your getting at.  Nothing forced me to go anywhere in either game.  The only walls were the real ones.  I see something I want to check out, I can.



Kzach said:


> Combat is just awful. You're left blindly flailing at whatever you can manage to keep in front of you for more than a second. Everything moves too fast on the screen to keep accurately hitting. This is one of those disconnects between 'realistic' combat and the physics of a computer generated environment. The simple fact is that people and objects just DO NOT move that fast or that smoothly. This is why I've always hated driving games. In a real car, you feel resistance, you have feedback on where you're going and the effects of your steering. But in driving games there is no resistance or environmental feedback, so you end up oversteering or understeering. The same happens in a game where you're trying to hit someone with a sword but everyone moves as if gravity and friction don't exist.




So your complaining that a video game doesn't completely simulate real life combat.  Sure, that's too bad, but it is a video game.   



Kzach said:


> Meh to the whole game. I'm pissed I spent $60 on it. Fallout New Vegas and Mass Effect are FAR better than this heap of crud.




Fallout uses the same physics engine.  And there's no realistic recoil to the shooting either, dammit. lol

But to each their own.  Too bad you don't like it, it's a great game if given a chance.


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## Kzach (Jan 12, 2012)

Janx said:


> I can't say much about youyr comment on controls and fighting.  melee is the hardest to do right, because NPC movement puts them out of your view so quickly, and unlike a real fight, you can't sense where they are, causing more flailing.



The lack of peripheral vision is a big thing too. I think maybe that's one of my weaknesses with real-time combat sims because I have weak frontal vision and rely a lot on peripheral vision for my awareness of my environment so when faced with just one view in a game, I barely know which way is up.



Janx said:


> Sounds like a PEBKAC situation.



I don't deny that, I just use it as a reason to not like the game 





Janx said:


> As to not-really a sandbox?  It's more of a sandbox than other sandbox computer games.  You really can sneak and bypass your way through the plots.



Really? 'cause so far I've only ever experienced having one route to go through most encounter areas. Sure, from one map area to the next you can go all over the place (although even then there are loads of invisible walls), but it's no more sandbox than Fallout is and given the hype, that's what I expected.



Agamon said:


> Hype and universal praise are not the same thing.



I think you underestimate the effect of marketing on people's (and your own) psyche. Done well and you can essentially TELL people your product is awesome and they'll do the marketing for you. Doesn't always work because it's not always done well. People rarely, genuinely, think for themselves or form their own opinions based on fact and evidence; it's easier just to borrow someone else's and claim it's an original thought.

Now, I'm not saying you're a sheeple or that you didn't formulate a genuine, objective opinion of the product, mainly because that would get me banned, but try this as an experiment: approach the game as if you'd never heard anything about it and you had simply come along to a console and picked up a controller and started playing. Take away all your excitement and interest and prefabricated knowledge of the game and play it with a clean slate and try to objectively formulate an opinion based on your 'new' experiences.

It's a challenge, to be sure, since there are things you just can't unlearn, but if you can manage it, you'll learn more about the game and yourself and the way the world operates and become more cynical, jaded, bitter and misanthropic: like me.



Agamon said:


> I see something I want to check out, I can.



I'm glad you used Fallout as an example since they suffer much the same problems, probably because, as you pointed out, they use the same engine.

Try climbing a mountain.

In Fallout New Vegas, for instance, there are TONS of invisible walls that prevent you from going anywhere but where you're intended to go. Not many people run into them simply because not many people explore as extensively as others. There are also tons of graphical walls presented as mountains or boulders or blocked paths or numerous other things to fool you into believing 'that's how things are meant to be'.

This reminds me a lot of World of Warcraft. When it was first brought out, there were entire guilds of explorers who did little else but run around the world finding mountains to climb and forests to delve. And it resulted in them going to all these places where they weren't meant to be able to go. They found glitches in the Matrix that allowed them to see things like the original Ironforge, the airstrip, entire mountain tops without any graphics, forests that just ended in black space, etc. So what did Blizzard do? Put up invisible walls everywhere.

The games have the ILLUSION of being a sandbox because 90% of people don't explore very much and tend to follow roads and logical paths. Go off those paths and suddenly you find that the world is very much designed for you to go in one direction and not another. If you question this, then have a closer look at the fully detailed map overviews and you can SEE the designed lines and roadblocks.

Now, on the whole, I don't have a major problem with this but the fact is that the game was hyped/advertised not to have such blocks and to be extensively explorable. To people who don't challenge that assumption by pushing the boundaries, literally and figuratively, of the gaming environment, this may be true, but to those of us who do, it's just another broken promise.



Agamon said:


> So your complaining that a video game doesn't completely simulate real life combat.  Sure, that's too bad, but it is a video game.



No, actually the opposite.

A video game, IMO, should NOT try to approximate real life combat because inevitably they do it badly.

This is why I like games like Mass Effect or Fallout where you have stylised combat with a pause function. This makes it a GAME rather than an exercise in learning twitch responses and micro movements. This type of gaming is fine in combat oriented games like Call of Duty, but in a roleplaying sandbox game, it's a detraction because you have to be physically able, rather than just mentally.

I fully agree that it's a PEBKAC situation as mentioned earlier. I just disagree that I should have to learn an element of games that I avoid (ie. your Call of Duty's and the like) because I don't enjoy them, in order to play a genre of game that traditionally doesn't have such elements. Fallout, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, etc. all had some sort of turn-based  or pausing element.


----------



## Janx (Jan 12, 2012)

well, [MENTION=56189]Kzach[/MENTION], this should be a good conversation based on your last response.

On FPS melee, you clarification sounds like the source of the problem.  In FPS, I track movement very well, spotting it on the left or right edge and predicting its location.  As a result.  I can zoom past an area, then crank back and start shooting the NPC, only having to correct for aim.

My wife, sort of like you, can get flustered struggling to figure out where the attack is coming from, turning the OPPOSITE direction of the attack, soley because she didn't notice the NPC as a small blip.  I've watched it happen, and even said, dragon on your right, and she'll turn left, and then by then the dragon has closed in and is doing pain.

In ranged combat, distances are such that almost everything you need to see starts off in front of you and can be kept in front of you (backing up or circle strafe).

In melee combat, because the enemy is right there, a simple 5' step to the right or left and they are beside you and offscreen.  The effect is basically amplified, due to the proximity.

Since Fallout is mostly gun-based, it is thus easier.  melee based FPS games have always struggled with this.

On Sandbox play:
out doors, you can go darn near everywhere.  I've climbed just about every mountain in Cyrrodil, and hit quite a few in Skyrim.  This typically means you can approach enemy forts & camps from above, which lets you snipe out most of the troops before you do final mop-up and treasure grab.  Can't do that in HalfLife or Halo.

In doors, it does depend on the dungeon or fort.  In halflife, it was terrible.  I swear the Combine personally locked every door EXCEPT the route the resistance would need.  In ElderScrolls, it is not that bad, though the natural shape of the dungeons, ultimately forms a line with some loop backs.

That said, there's usually room for different approaches.  You can stealth your way in and backstab everything, one enemy at a time.  Or brute force it.

Some number of quests give you the option to betray or change sides.

I guess this aspect might depend on what you mean by sandbox.

While a dungeon is often held as the example of a microcosm sandbox, I see it the opposite.

it is inherently a place where what you will do next is predictable, as is where you will go next.

You will either advance or retreat.
If you advance, the enemies are hostile and you will probably kill them.
the fact that you can do it quietly or loudly is a matter of preference.
because NOT fighting them is boring, it is irrelevant.  It's not a choice you will write home about.

Now being able to parley with enemies, pay them off, bribe them, that would add some choice.  But otherwise, I don't think any game with a dungeon is going to really expand on a DungeonCrawl yet.


So, I could agree that a dungeon crawl in most games is not really a sandbox.
But within the scope of Skyrim vs. most other video games, your viable choices are far greater.  Heck, Super Mario Bros, you can't even go backwards.


----------



## Agamon (Jan 12, 2012)

Kzach said:


> I think you underestimate the effect of marketing on people's (and your own) psyche.




What?  I didn't expect a lot from this game, personally.  I thought it'd be good, but I thought Portal 2 and Arkham City would be better games this year.  Then I turned it on and played it almost non-stop for two days, something I haven't done with a video game for decades.

I suppose I did that because I was a hype-machine zombie, a prescient one,  too, as I hadn't read anything on it yet...it's okay to not like a game that is universally liked, but you don't have to make up stuff about how everyone else is crazy or dumb to justify it.



Kzach said:


> It's a challenge, to be sure, since there are things you just can't unlearn, but if you can manage it, you'll learn more about the game and yourself and the way the world operates and become more cynical, jaded, bitter and misanthropic: like me.




 Okay, after that, the above makes more sense now. 




Kzach said:


> I'm glad you used Fallout as an example since they suffer much the same problems, probably because, as you pointed out, they use the same engine.
> 
> Try climbing a mountain.




Tough, but not impossible.  Reminds me of Mass Effect 1, with enough determination, you really can go anywhere.



Kzach said:


> ..stuff about F:NV and WoW...




I'll take your word for it, haven't played those.



Kzach said:


> The games have the ILLUSION of being a sandbox because 90% of people don't explore very much and tend to follow roads and logical paths. Go off those paths and suddenly you find that the world is very much designed for you to go in one direction and not another. If you question this, then have a closer look at the fully detailed map overviews and you can SEE the designed lines and roadblocks.
> 
> Now, on the whole, I don't have a major problem with this but the fact is that the game was hyped/advertised not to have such blocks and to be extensively explorable. To people who don't challenge that assumption by pushing the boundaries, literally and figuratively, of the gaming environment, this may be true, but to those of us who do, it's just another broken promise.




Okay, maybe I shouldn't be taking your word for anything after all.  You don't like the game, so I assume you haven't played it too much?  Because this is pretty much all false.  Yes, there roads.  Of course there are roads, it's civilised.  It would be weird if there weren't any.  But you can go off-road.  In fact, I ignored them a lot, myself.  But when I did follow them, it was clear that, just by following roads, I could go to any location I wanted to (a couple notable exceptions, but it sure isn't prevalent).

Sounds like you'd only be happy with a featureless plain that let you literally walk anywhere.  There'd be no where to go, but heck, you'd get there. 




Kzach said:


> No, actually the opposite.
> 
> A video game, IMO, should NOT try to approximate real life combat because inevitably they do it badly.
> 
> ...




Ah, so it's not turn-based, I see.  Yeah, that I can see that being annoying if that's what you prefer.  It does let you pause to change weapons/spells, drink potions, use scrolls, etc, but it doesn't let you "target", so that is something to get used to.  Elder Scrolls has always been a real time combat game, so it's tough to expect to not be that in Skyrim.


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## Agamon (Jan 12, 2012)

Also, there are a number of quests where it seems like the game wants you to do a certain thing.  I thought, "What if I did this instead?"  And, what do you know, the game not only allowed it, but acknowledged it.  Saving people you are supposed to kill or vice versa, keeping something you're supposed to fetch, etc.  And that's just the "invisible open-ness", a lot of quests give you the option of talking, sneaking past, or killing NPCs.  All of them?  No, side quests are generated by an algorithm, so that would be tough to randomly generate.  But the quests are incredibly complex, to the point that it's hard to believe.

It's like being upset that the universe isn't big enough.  Possible, I guess, but not very logical.


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## Janx (Jan 12, 2012)

Agamon said:


> Ah, so it's not turn-based, I see.  Yeah, that I can see that being annoying if that's what you prefer.  It does let you pause to change weapons/spells, drink potions, use scrolls, etc, but it doesn't let you "target", so that is something to get used to.  Elder Scrolls has always been a real time combat game, so it's tough to expect to not be that in Skyrim.





Good point, And on that note, when some folks in other threads talk about RPG immersion, pausing the game is a big killer for me.

As part of my mutant ability to track off-screen targets that i only saw a glimpse of, I'm pretty immersed in the environment.  So that I can get startled when a monster jumps at me (because I was not aware it existed).

Pausing the game constantly would wreck that immersion.

Heck, it bugs the stuffing out of me when I watch my wife play.  She hits search on every body she kills, the moment the cross-hairs toggle to "dead body you can search"

this totally kills the feeling of fluid combat, and interferes with my NPC tracking ability in the environment.

I don't even like the interruption when they do the kill-shot cam.

I also hate 3PS view mode, where you see your own character.  I do not want a % of my vision obscured by my PC's ass the entire time.

Clearly a difference in preference.  But I suspect my preference mirrors what some folks like [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION] refers to as wrecking immersion in a TTRPG.


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## Kzach (Jan 15, 2012)

Janx, you mentioned playing this game with your wife; do you play at the same time, using the same screen? If so, how do you do that? Does it just require two controllers or do you have to network two Xbox's? Is it one of those Xbox Live Gold things?


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## Kzach (Jan 16, 2012)

So, now that I've spent more than five minutes playing it, I quite like it.

I had to adjust the speed of turning down a fair bit but I'm fairly comfortable with it now. I've tried out a spellcaster which is fun but a bit slow, an archer-sneak which has potential but I think requires a much more skilled player than I, a sword and board fighter which is kinda meh but could be good with more practice as I like the idea of hiding behind a shield until the exact right moment to do a power attack, and finally my favourite one so far which just hit 7th-level, my two-hand hammer wielding orc beserker smith. I love the fact that he kills almost anything in one hit. I charged the big spider and smacked it right between the seventh and eighth eye and almost killed it with that one blow.

Companions are a bit useless, although I ended up with Sven instead of the archer, which I would've preferred. I told him to wait whilst I undid a trap and he disappeared. Wonder if he'll be back at the village with all my gear...


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## Janx (Jan 16, 2012)

Kzach said:


> Janx, you mentioned playing this game with your wife; do you play at the same time, using the same screen? If so, how do you do that? Does it just require two controllers or do you have to network two Xbox's? Is it one of those Xbox Live Gold things?




we have to take turns.  Sadly, it's a 1 player game.  She plays a lot.  She really likes elder scrolls.


I'm glad you've given it a second chance, some extra tidbits of knowledge:

followers return home if you tell them to wait here for too long.  Home being wherever they hang out, not your actual house.

each follower has a different max level (basically they match your level, until they cap out).  There's a kajit wizard in the college of magic who's max is the very max of 80-something.  Plus, as a caster, he is less likely to run in front of you.

followers are supposed to be flagged as semi-essential, so they would only die if YOU kill them.  that seems to be broke, and they can die quite handily on their own (as well as rushing in front of you to get whacked in the back).

PErsonally, I like to work alone.  My wife almost always brings a follower, she's just careful about how she uses them in combat.


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## Banshee16 (Jan 16, 2012)

Agamon said:


> Also, there are a number of quests where it seems like the game wants you to do a certain thing.  I thought, "What if I did this instead?"  And, what do you know, the game not only allowed it, but acknowledged it.  Saving people you are supposed to kill or vice versa, keeping something you're supposed to fetch, etc.  And that's just the "invisible open-ness", a lot of quests give you the option of talking, sneaking past, or killing NPCs.  All of them?  No, side quests are generated by an algorithm, so that would be tough to randomly generate.  But the quests are incredibly complex, to the point that it's hard to believe.
> 
> It's like being upset that the universe isn't big enough.  Possible, I guess, but not very logical.




Yup.  I was doing the murder investigation quest in Markath......tried a few different things.  When I got framed for crimes I didn't commit, and the guards came to arrest me, I protested my innocence, and when they refused to listen, I fought back.  It turned into an epic fight with the entire city guard.  I burned them all to a crisp, then walked out of the city, and would have been able to resume my other quests.

Then I reloaded my save, allowed myself to get arrested and thrown in their prison.  The guy down there that you're supposed to cooperate with was a pretty vile person.  He wanted my character to murder another prisoner, just because, in order to be included in an escape attempt.  My character was innocent of the original crime, and realized the guy was bad news, so instead of going  along with the quest line, my character turned into werewolf form and ripped him apart.  Then looted his body, found the directions to the escape tunnel, and walked out.

There were multiple ways to complete that quest......the *only* thing that could have made it freer would have been to allow me to use my  negotiation skills to avoid arrest in the first place.

Banshee


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## SteelDraco (Jan 16, 2012)

I've gotten into this game quite a bit - I found a third-party mod that allows me to remap the keyboard so that I can play left-handed. Not being able to do that was a dealbreaker for me, and mods are why I play these games on a PC (the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games tend to develop a huge modding community).

I'm playing through as sort of an orcish artificer - he has a good smithing, enchanting, and some defensive spells, but mostly he's running around in heavy plate killing people with a two-handed sword. I'm having quite a bit of fun with it. I've decided my character left his stronghold in order to learn more about smithing and enchanting, in particular wanting to find out more about the dwarves and what made their stuff work before they all disappeared. I haven't picked a side yet in the Stormcloak/Imperial conflict - I've not yet talked to the Imperial General, but from what I've heard he's not a bad guy, and I might end up going that way, despite starting off going with the Stormcloaks. The Nords are all pretty racist, which makes my orc not want to help them - even if they're decent to orcs now, it's clear they won't be if they have all the power.

I'm surprised at how easy the dragons have been so far. I'm mostly able to just take cover until they land, then berserk and charge them. A couple of power attacks with my greatsword and they bite it. I'm assuming that later dragons get more interesting to fight, with different special abilities and stuff? I hope so. I'm 15th level or so now, and just got to the College of Winterhold to pick up some new enchanting skills.


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## Kzach (Jan 16, 2012)

Went to sleep after just hitting 10th-level last night. Just started up the game again and... somehow the Xbox has managed to completely wipe my USB memory stick with all my saved games.

I knew I couldn't rely on MS to do anything right.


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## Banshee16 (Jan 16, 2012)

SteelDraco said:


> I'm surprised at how easy the dragons have been so far. I'm mostly able to just take cover until they land, then berserk and charge them. A couple of power attacks with my greatsword and they bite it. I'm assuming that later dragons get more interesting to fight, with different special abilities and stuff? I hope so. I'm 15th level or so now, and just got to the College of Winterhold to pick up some new enchanting skills.




I think the dragon difficulty is situational.  They tend to follow a pattern.  If I'm rested, and mobile, they're a long fight until I can bring them down, but doable.  That having been said, though they could be more difficult, it doesn't bother me that much....just being in the fight, hearing their shrieks echo off the mountains, seeing them strafe people as they fly by....it's pretty immersive.

I do find an annoying tendency for them to appear just after I get out of a quest area, like a dungeon, when I'm loaded down with loot, and walking really slowly.  Then, they're more difficult.  The big danger is if they land, and walk over to you and bite....I've been winning fights, and have the dragon down to maybe 20%, but I'm loaded down with loot, and the dragon walks over and eats me.  Fight over.  That's annoying.  Since that bite attack is so lethal, any time they start walking towards me, it's a bit of a panic to get out of the way.

Banshee


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## Kzach (Jan 16, 2012)

The three hardest combats I've had so far were against two giants (took four attempts to finally kill them both at 9th-level) and a mammoth (the one mammoth isn't so hard, but attack one and you quickly have the herd on you making it impossible to kill even one).

The hardest, however, has been a chicken in Riverwood. Yes, that's right, a chicken. I had three hired goons come to 'teach me a lesson' in the middle of the village and couldn't figure out why I was dying to them all the time until I realised that I kept using my shout and it kept hitting the damn chicken which aggroed the entire village on me. Apparently, chickens are extremely valuable.


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## Stumblewyk (Jan 17, 2012)

Kzach said:


> Apparently, chickens are extremely valuable.



 At least they can't report crimes like the chickens supposedly could during early beta versions of the game.


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## Kzach (Jan 17, 2012)

Stumblewyk said:


> At least they can't report crimes like the chickens supposedly could during early beta versions of the game.




Stealing is one thing that is annoying me in the game. It's WAY too easy to accidentally steal something because just about everything, everywhere in a town is 'stealable'.

I stole a bottle of mead (accidentally) from my room in Riverwind (how do I steal something when it's in my ROOM?!). And for that, Orgnar sent a bunch of hired goons after me. It's a bit ridiculous.

I was happy, though, to later get revenge on him and beat him into submission for Falkas and the Companions.


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## Alan Shutko (Jan 17, 2012)

Kzach said:


> I stole a bottle of mead (accidentally) from my room in Riverwind (how do I steal something when it's in my ROOM?!).




That's just the early version of charging you five bucks for the bottle of water on the pressure sensor in hotels now!


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## Stumblewyk (Jan 17, 2012)

Yeah, it can be easy to accidentally steal something.  That's why you get in good with the Thieve's Guild, and then you can just bribe guards to leave you alone if your bounty is low enough.  



Spoiler



Or in the case of the civil unrest I caused in Markarth, the guards just ignore my bribe attempts, and all try to kill me on sight while I attempt going about my business in their miserable, crapsack city.


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## Kzach (Jan 18, 2012)

Here's another legitimate drawback: I'm levelling faster through smithing than I am through anything else.

Completing quests, even, gives zero XP. But make a few iron daggers and WHOOSH! you level like crazy. I'm up to 70 Smithing at level 19 and I'm only up to Whiterun 0.o

The drawback comes from the fact that all my other skills are low. I'm having to stand and let wolves attack me for a good 15-20 minutes in order to keep my Heavy Armour skill up to speed. I'm spending even more time struggling to keep my Two-Handed Weapons skill up by running and around and hunting wolf packs and bandits.

Then again, I do have flawless orcish armour and a flawless dwarven warhammer


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## Stumblewyk (Jan 19, 2012)

Kzach said:


> Here's another legitimate drawback: I'm levelling faster through smithing than I am through anything else.
> 
> Completing quests, even, gives zero XP. But make a few iron daggers and WHOOSH! you level like crazy. I'm up to 70 Smithing at level 19 and I'm only up to Whiterun 0.o



 See, I don't see that as a drawback - it's simply another aspect of the sandbox/simulationist properties of the game.

You're a 70th level blacksmith.  Probably one of the best smiths in all of Skyrim.  Very definitely in the upper echelon, because you've taken the time to become a great smith.  But you're a lousy adventurer, because you've taken the time to become a great smith - at the expense of swinging your large warhammer and crushing bandits and wolves out in the wilderness.

If you want to be a better warrior, spend less time smithing, and more time killing. 

As to quests or killing enemies giving zero XP, more sandbox/simulationism - what makes you better at being an adventurer?  Killing baddies and rescuing princesses, or the ACT of killing guys and rescuing princesses by getting more experienced with your weapons and armor, and casting spells, and unlocking doors and chests?

It's just a different approach to rewarding your actions - you're rewarded for doing the actions making the thing possible, not just doing the thing.

And it's not like this is a system new to Skyrim - this is how every TES game has worked.  Personally, I jumped in back in the Morrowind days, and thought it was brilliant, but to each their own.


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## Kzach (Jan 19, 2012)

Stumblewyk said:


> See, I don't see that as a drawback - it's simply another aspect of the sandbox/simulationist properties of the game.




Stop making sense; it's becoming super annoying.


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## Agamon (Jan 19, 2012)

Kzach said:


> Here's another legitimate drawback: I'm levelling faster through smithing than I am through anything else.
> 
> Completing quests, even, gives zero XP. But make a few iron daggers and WHOOSH! you level like crazy. I'm up to 70 Smithing at level 19 and I'm only up to Whiterun 0.o
> 
> ...




Doc, it hurts when I do this.

Then stop doing that.

*rimshot* 

My first play through, Smithing didn't get over 70, I had other stuff I'd rather do than stand in front of that forge.  My buddy did that though, 100 smithing by L25.


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## Kzach (Jan 20, 2012)

Actually, the point I was trying to make but got lost because of my absent-mindedness, is that it's FAR easier to level (and get levels) smithing than anything else.

Take my orc. He's got a relatively low Heavy Armour skill because he hardly ever gets hit because he kills stuff so quickly (pretty much one hit kills on everything bar dragons, giants, that sort of thing). And yet, despite this, his Two-Handed Weapon skill is also very low (perhaps because he doesn't need to swing it very often?). Yet compared to how much time I've spent hitting things to how much time I've spent in the forge, my relative return is about 1,000% higher.


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## Stumblewyk (Jan 20, 2012)

Kzach said:


> Stop making sense; it's becoming super annoying.



 Sir, yes, sir!


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## Goodsport (Jun 1, 2012)

Official trailer for the upcoming _The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim: Dawnguard_ game add-on (DLC for consoles, Expansion Pack for the PC):


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PjBSicSVqI]The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim: Dawnguard - Official Trailer[/ame]​


Scheduled for Summer 2012 (no exact date given yet), but with one caveat: it will be released exclusively for the Xbox 360 for thirty days, after which it will then be released for the other platforms. 


-G


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## Goodsport (Jun 1, 2012)

"Mounted Combat arrives in 1.6 Skyrim Update" (Thursday, 5/24/12)


-G


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## SolitonMan (Jun 5, 2012)

I'm still enjoying Skyrim, it's opened my eyes to the main advantage of a pc game over a console game - free mods!   The SkyUI mod is a must have for anyone who hates the standard interface.  It allows for sorting and filtering, which is great when you get to higher levels and have to find that one Shout or Spell and your list is very long.

The load times are much, much faster on my pc than my Xbox.  I can wait anywhere from 20 - 30 seconds to just leave my house on the Xbox, whereas the longest I've waited on the pc is about 15 seconds, but usually only wait 5 - 6 seconds.

I like the Magicka Sabers mod which provides the player with effective light sabers of various colors.  Wielding the sabers while wearing the Nightingale armor gives one the look of a Dark Jedi.

Some of the monster mods (Skyrim Monster Mod, Deadly Dragons) are pretty good, too, and add a nice variety to the game to supplement the repetitiveness of the existing monster set.

The Levelers Tower is a "cheat" mod that adds a tower to the game near Helgen.  The Tower is a kitchen-sink of a residence, with an entry area containing many storage units to house specific content (e.g. - daedric weapons, daedric armor, food, dwarven items, gems, etc. - many, many containers) and with a simple button to immediately sort out those items from your inventory and store them (and clean them of the "stolen" tag); a map of Skyrim with teleport links to major sites; and teleport pad to other areas of the tower.  The basement contains all the necessary crafting stations, a practice dummy that can help build skills, a skill cheat area where you can click a button to gain a skill rank, and many other features.  My favorite area is the arena, in which you can summon creatures to face yourself, or pit them against each other.

I've barely scratched the surface of the mods that are out there.    I'm still loving this game, and I'm sure once I start adding new quests that kind users have created I'll be more entertained still.  

Anybody have any mods to suggest?  I'm always looking for something fun to play!


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## JDBrockin (Jun 19, 2012)

JDBrockin on deviantART


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## Janx (Jul 1, 2012)

I started playing Dawnguard on my xbox this weekend.

For those totally out of the loop, it's a vampire storyline.  go hunt or join the Vampires.  This was pretty much public knowledge, so it's not a spoiler unless you deliberately deprive yourself of any knowledge about the product before you buy it. 

It's wired up for 10th level or higher (you won't hear about it until level 10).  Any city guard will mention the initial quest, and that'll get it going.  I had to look it up after I bought it, because it wasn't obvious while I was finishing up an existing quest.

Enough about that.  Here's my observations in a hopefully non-spoily way.

They've worked harder on NPC dialog in this new DLC.  I suspect they're emulating DragonAge, which seems chock full of NPCs who won't shut up.  It's still not to that level, but they tried to be a bit more varied, and they now tend to have multiple responses to questions from NPCs.

The Vampire Lord powers are cool, and they setup a seperate Perk advancement track that doesn't seem to interfere with your normal track.

Kinect + Dawnguard = broken, I had to disable Kinect commands.  apparently, there's no voice recognition on the new Vampire powers.  So you have to manually hit the Power button (normally RB).  With Kinect commands enabled, this button doesn't actually do anything (it won't use the enabled Shout or transform).  Oddly, it will do the Bats power (new Vampire Lord power).  As a result, you can't transform into a vampire lord or back with Kinect commands enabled.

Here's the extra delicious part.  I despise 3rd person mode.  I also tend to press down hard on the thumbsticks while in combat.  So the default control arrangement would have me popping in and out of sneak, and 1st person mode constantly.  So I swapped those to Run and Power on LB and RB, which are much less harmfull in the heat of combat.  With the Kinect's disabledment of the Power button, because I could just say the name of the Shout, it was perfect.

Now, the combined effect of all this with Dawnguard, is I get stuck transforming into a Vampire Lord in the heat of combat AND it's a forced 3rd person view.  There's nothing I like more than loosing a second of attack and circle strafing while my body transmogrifies itself while my enemy is trying to chop my head off with a greatsword in large Hit Point doses.

I haven't seen anybody else mention anything about the Kinect = Dawnguard effect (and yes, I tried restoring the buttons to their original configuration).


Overall, I like the new content.  I just hate the mechanical difficulty with Kinect.


I will give one more spoiler with regard to choosing sides and getting Vampire powers (namely because it could be confusing)
[sblock]You have to do the initial Dawnguard quest to get the ball rolling.  That will lead to your real choice of which side to take.  Regardless of which side you choose, you will get a chance to become a Vampire Lord, sooner, or very later.  Just so you know that you CAN try the goodies AFTER being a good guy.[/sblock]


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