Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim [post-launch thread]

[konfeta]

Have you tried applying a brick to a house windows..?

[Ewokz]

Well you can upgrade them so their half decent, I was like WTF when I first walked into my house. Looked like a large abandoned shed, kitted it out now though

Currently played for 24 hours so for, out of the the last 48 hours. SHIT!

[Black]

How come this game has worse animations than Half-life 2 Episode 1, which came out a billion years ago? It really breaks the immersion when everything moves so unnaturally.

[Pocktio]

Do ore deposits regenerate? I found a mine and now have like 30 gold ingots of total uselessness.

It annoys me that I always manage to forget my pickaxe when I find rare shit like moonstone. Got to run through the entirety of Markath ruins for that one deposit now. Ruins that I reactivated Dwemer automated defenses in ~_~

Hmmmm.....I'm tempted to get non-specific perks in restorating. 50% magicka regen could be good....

@ Black - because HL2 was entirely scripted.....

So I just found up they put arbitrary restrictions on what enchantments work on what items. Totally sucky, I hope a mod fixes it.

[Vipey]

Soooo since the game's release I have only slept 3 hours. I'm already level 65, almost 65. I.... am.... so addicted to this game
http://viperslayer.net/Dovahkiin.png

I love the daedric armor.

[Kien]

How the hell do you get to the greay beards city up on the mountain? it's a part of the main quest and I have ran around that mountain from all directions and it's not possible to get there.

[FriendlyFire]

Sooooo I caved in anyways and bought the game. Download should be completed in a few minutes (quarter through at 2.5mb/s) and I'm rather excited to get in! I hope I can use Eyefinity in here.

[Thorno]

How the hell do you get to the greay beards city up on the mountain?

Stairs to the west of Ivarstead.

[tadamir]

Loving this game so far!

Loving the flame-hand/short-sword combo. I've gone as a Dark-Elf light-armour-wearer to start with and I think I'll stick with it.

I like catching bees and butterflies, and salmon (had a strange thrill of joy when I first saw them jumping up a waterfall and just knew I'd be able to catch them!).
I like having to first eat anything and everything to find out what it can be potion'ed into.

I've been chopping loads of wood to sell for easy money. (I'm resigned to always carrying my pick-axe and wood-axe).

I've been enjoying Smithing; making my own Steel sword then give it a good old sharpen. Killing heaps of wolves and a few foxes and Stags and then turning their hides into leather, then upgrading my armour. Feels like it's more 'mine' when I've made it all.

Sneak-shooting a poor little rabbit with my bow, it falling over the banks' edge into the river, me just knowing that if I jump in the water and swim down-stream I'll catch up to it for that tasty rabbit leg haunch. The water physics are fantastic.

Random Encounter of Joy!;
A 'fugitive' ran up to me and told me to hold this bow of awesomeness for him till the heat cools for him, and threatened me to not rat him out.
I think; "No way criminal!" and run after him and Flame/Slash him to death, loot him and leave him.
I head back down the hill and a hunter runs up and asks if I've seen any crims around; I say "uh, yeah, he went that way" pointing to the corpse behind me, and saunter off with a shiny new bow...

Sweet.


I love the fear inducing giant spiders, but they hate getting torched.

Speaking of torches, I like how they have been done; the first Mine I went into, I just stole every 'sconce-mounted' torch as I went, made the place nice and dark for my stealthy sneaky killing.
Torches now have a weight though, so I put most of them back when I'd cleared the place.

I'm really, REALLY glad that this time around, Empty crates/chests/whatevers are Marked Empty! That was one thing that really bugged me about Oblivion.


So far, really really happy. And can't wait to get work over and done with to play some more.

[DeafMute]

Anyone here know how the games Sync kills work?
Only way I can think of is during dueling if you take your enemies stamina heavily down and rush in with a power attack you trigger it.

yes/no?

[tadamir]

No idea, I just love'em when they happen. For me; I get my opponents health down a lot with flame-fist, then get in close and usually get a synch-kill with my first sword-swipe. Beautiful to watch.

As an aside;
With Oblivion, I got quite hung-up on trying to play the 'perfect' game; making sure I trained 5 times before each Level-up etc, this time around I'm not going to worry about all that so much, just enjoy the ride. Actually Role Play some more, and it's made the game so much more enjoyable for it so far.

[Nanaki]

With Oblivion, I got quite hung-up on trying to play the 'perfect' game; making sure I trained 5 times before each Level-up etc, this time around I'm not going to worry about all that so much, just enjoy the ride. Actually Role Play some more, and it's made the game so much more enjoyable for it so far.

I have to admit, that was probably the biggest reason why I liked Bethesda getting rid of the attribute system.

[Misiok]

To sync-kill you have to hold the mouse button for a charged attack. I don't think it works on full health enemies though, so you have to get them low a bit.

Also, I've just finished Dark Brotherhood questline, and it seems

Spoiler

it has an infinite quest reserve. They're basically go there kill that, mind you, but what would we expect from murderer guild, right?

And after finishing Mage College guild, I have to admit that Bethesda stepped up the act, and all the sidequests feel epic and big enough that I would easily take them for some minor-major quest events.

And, I think Lydia is dead, really awful because she was my trusty item carrying mule and had herself quite a nice equipment I got for her. Shame, as I don't know where she died. Or if she's dead at least.

[Starblade]

Fun fact, enemies get finishing moves too. You get held in place and get to watch your health go from 25% remaining to zero.

[Ewokz]

Thats started happening with disturbing frequency lately, dragons and 2 handed wielding bandits seem to be the worse :/

Btw is it just me or does it seem like dragons appear in a higher frequency than the shout symbols, I'm over flowing with unlocks atm for instance.

[cf_nz]

Sooooo I caved in anyways and bought the game.

I'm very interested in hearing your thoughts about it. I didn't really think much of Oblivion and it's put me off Skyrim.

[Busby]

I guess level 7 is a little low for going on the trek to Greybeards. Even with as many perks into Archery as I could get, my wimpy Imperial Bow and Iron arrows do pathetic damage to Sabre Cats (no honour among felines, it seems) and that one dam Ice Troll. And then I manage to get up there with excessive use of quick load and then I have to walk all the way back to the first city and back again for... something. So it seems that if there is any level scaling you still can end up fighting things much stronger then you are.

[FriendlyFire]

@cf_nz: The fact that I've grossly gone over the time I wanted to go to sleep at should be a good sign already

It's definitely a Bethesda game; don't go in expecting otherwise. Same kind of graphics style, same combat, etc. However, they have changed things about in such a way that the pitfalls of Oblivion are much less apparent. After going through the rather short introduction sequence, I was basically left to my own devices as in Oblivion, but unlike there, I immediately found something to do (in that case I just followed the NPC to a town). From there, I found yet more things to do, some tied by the main quest, some not. There's a good amount of variety to be had, lots of smaller quests (though the frequency of fetch quests can get a tad annoying) and dungeons to explore.

Generally I'm pleased with it. I think mods will iron out the few things I'd like to see changed, particularly the very console-ish UI, but it's nothing to stop you from enjoying the game really. The big, big point is that Skyrim doesn't feel like a wasteland/desert the way Cyrodiil did. There rarely is a bit of flat land without something sitting on it to break the monotony. Dungeons and hidden areas are in every corner of the map and towns feel like proper towns with the correct scale and feel. I already have a lot of goals to look forward to and I think I'll have for the many hours to come. Just going through the first few steps of the game took me around 5 hours.

So if you're still on the fence, I'd say go for it. I wouldn't go as far as saying it's the best RPG ever, but it's definitely one of the best open RPGs around.

[cf_nz]

@FriendlyFire

I appreciate the feedback. It's good to hear that you're not immediately disappointed and regretting your decision. I wouldn't say I'm on the fence, I'm intrigued, I have good memories of Morrowind and bad of Oblivion but I can't really remember why. I like the concept but I'm iffy on Bethesdas style.

I've been watching 'Let's play' videos, hopefully they'll give me a good idea of the gameplay.

[Trizzdog]

You know I'm still surprised unarmed has more than one special kill animation, considering punching doesn't even have its own skill.

[Rincewind]

Finally got to max enchanting for the dual enchants perk. I just put +25 frost damage and +25 fire damage on my sharpened glass sword and named it Frostfire. I am so in love with this game!

----------

Edit: Oh and I finally figured out that if you want some truly epic weapons and armour, you have to improve them at a workbench or grindstone. The higher your smithing skill, the better you improve stuff. I am currently making a set of armour and rings with just +25 smithing enchants on them for improving stuff.

[Pocktio]

I increased my smithing skill by like 10, using the ton of gold I mined to make a ton of jewellery. Combine them with the sexy sexy jewels I'd found a use for my pile of jewels. Now have a pile of 30 gold jewelled necklaces

Gonna travel across the land, selling my wares. May even enchant some for extra value.

Currently trying to enchant my Dwarven armour and elven battleaxe:

Dwarven armour (superior) +28 health
Dwarven helmet (superior) +30 magicka
Dwarven gauntlets (superior) +20% 2H damage
Dwarven boots (superior) +15 Heavy Armour skill

Elven battleaxe (superior) +20 fire damage


Then...rings! Rings rings rings, and a necklace. I am really really liking the crafting system. I've never been able to get into something so thoroughly so easily before.

Only problem with enchanting is I need to refill Azuras Star each time, which means going out into the wild to slay bandits. I then end up looting the whole place as I'm a compulsive hoarder. So it takes a while lol.

[Trizzdog]

So I had one of them random dragon encounters. It swooped down and owned a bandit fort before I could lay the hurt on it. But then it turned its attention to one badass orc chick that just happened to be in the distance. She fought back with fists.


Bitch took an amazing amount of punishment.


... She didn't last much longer though. Oh well.


I think she was trying to tell me something, but I quickly shut her up and looted her stuff before the flames destroyed it all. Found out she was packing a rather sizable stash of drugs. The dragon was strafing back to finish me off. I had other plans.


ORC BESERKER RAGE WHILE ON HUGE DRUG BINGE GOOOOOOOOOOOOO PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH


And thus the dragon became my bitch. With the power of PUNCH.

[Deionarra]

I shall drink to your victory fellow Ork dragon puncher!

I'm not one for being squeamish about video game violence but I certainly winced the first time I did the eye gouging finisher on someone. Still hoping there's an unarmed finishing animation vs dragons.

It's weird how unarmed is so much better in this than previous Eldar Scrolls games yet they no longer have a skill tree for it. I'd be happy if it just shared part of either the 1 or 2 handed trees. I'm probably leveling slower than most people because I'm not gaining skill points from killing stuff. Most of my increases have come from restoration magic which is my highest skill. I never liked the restoration school in previous games but the ward "magic shield" spell is my favourite spell in this game so far and works really well with punching people with one hand while blocking spells from those cowardly wizard types.

[Exsus]

Those sync kills have a random chance to happen if the target is below 15% health while you're preforming a power attack. Not sure what the percentage is for actually triggering though.

Shouting Icetroll off mountain, best way to fight them.

[Deionarra]

I'm almost certain that most of my hand to hand finishers have occured from basic attacks and not power attacks. I've also only had them happen for me so far while using both fists so perhaps it works differently for hand to hand or possibly dual wielding.

Also all the random dragon encounters I've had so far have been suitably epic, it was just the first scripted one that was a bit weak for me.

[Misiok]

Btw, someone said that he's getting more Dragons. Well, I think it is obvious that you're going to get more dragons the further you get into the main story line. I once had 2 dragon encounters, one started immediately after I murdered a dragon.

Oh, and does anyone remember the interviews about the dragons? Like, how they differ in appearance? Well, I don't really see the difference. I had hoped Bethesda would go with different Dragon representations but guess not.

Btw x2, Blood Dragons look awesome.

[Trizzdog]

I think punching might be tied to heavy armour, because you get the added fist gauntlet damage perk from that tree. Btw, said perk makes your punching damage go from comical to DEADER DAN WEPON with even just steel gauntlets. Then again, the only other weapon I use is my shankin' dagger, mostly to dole out awesome poisons while doing infinite damage from backstab.

[Wintermute]

Just got this game. Finally finished watching Game of Thrones a few days before. Is Skyrim a Game of Thrones... The Game... or is it just me?


Amazing so far even though I've only played 3 hours. I wish I didn't have so much work to do.

[Rincewind]

Sorry if I am sounding like a broken record, but I just have to say, again, how awesome enchanting is. I totally do not regret going for it and smithing now - because I just got both Heavy Armour and Block to 100 in a couple of hours. How? Simple, I made a set of armour with nothing but stamina and stamina regen on it, then I went to the very first mine I cleared just outside of Riverwood or whatever the first little village is called. Outside of the mine is a respawning bandit (think it is every 3 days), and because I met him at the start of the game he is forever level 2. Then I just blocked every single attack he made at me (with my huge stamina pool and regen rate) and watched my Block go sky high. I then made another set of armour, this time with nothing but health and health regen, went back to him and let him hit me for an hour while I browsed the net with my phone. Every now and then I healed myself but otherwise just had to stay put and let him smack me. It took me over 2 hours to gather the souls I needed for the enchants (kill one bandit/humanoid/beggar, go enchant in Dragonswatch, repeat) but was totally worth it. I can block almost all damage from enemies my level and the hits that get through are not nearly as bad as before.

[Kien]

I guess level 7 is a little low for going on the trek to Greybeards. Even with as many perks into Archery as I could get, my wimpy Imperial Bow and Iron arrows do pathetic damage to Sabre Cats (no honour among felines, it seems) and that one dam Ice Troll. And then I manage to get up there with excessive use of quick load and then I have to walk all the way back to the first city and back again for... something. So it seems that if there is any level scaling you still can end up fighting things much stronger then you are.

I got there at level 9 and I had big trouble with the frost troll, with the use of potions I managed to defeat him. When I got to the tombs and stuff all the enemies were simple skeletons weaker than the zombie nords even. As if you're supposed to be even lower level when you get there. But how then are you to beat the frost troll? Btw I met no great cats on my way there.

I'm still curious to find out what role mammoths has in the game.

[Zephyr]

It's sitting on my shelf. It is staying on my shelf until Monday when I've done my mid term exam... Damnit, I want to play :S I already have the poster blu-tac'd to my wall ^^

[Pocktio]

The frost troll, tooltip says, is the most fearsome troll. Not sure why Beth decided to put one in so early :P

I too, second what Rincey says. Enchanting and smithing is awesome. I don't really find that many useful items so it's brilliant to be able to craft what I want, then enhance it via more smithing and enchating. Then I have entire sets specialised to entirely what I want, rather than a mix and match of what I find scattered aboot.

Oh and if you plan to abuse them go the Shrine of Azura and GIVE IT TO THE ELF.

[Integrity]

Trizz more-or-less just sold the game to me.

rrrgh come around christmas sales

[konfeta]

Hm. Do you gain perks after level 50, and is there an enchant for movement speed or spell school effect.

[Shuma]

The frost troll, tooltip says, is the most fearsome troll. Not sure why Beth decided to put one in so early :P

Same reason Demon's Souls had a black knight in the first level. It's funny and by the way, the Dark Souls perk is obviously a nod to, well, Dark Souls.

@Misiok:

I think it depends on level, i haven't done anything in the main quest after meeting the Grey Beards and now i'm seeing dragons everywhere, and there are definitively different looking dragons. Also, this thread needs more screenshtos:

Spoiler

Some of the places i've been to in this game are really impressive, and some of the story behind some quests are really interesting, like the pale lady quest, that was a creepy one.

[Starblade]

I love some of the scenarios I end up in in this game because they sound like somebody describing a heavy metal album cover. "Dohvakiin fights the Necromage (this is a thing in this game) in the flooded ruins!" "A badass wizard shoots lightning out of his hands at a dragon as they fall down a mountain and into a river also they are both shouting fire at each other!" "Dohvakiin's dog bites a dragon on the nose as it torches it (good dog)".

[Rincewind]

Where do you get a dog?

I just hit smithing 100 after the billionth iron dagger. I made myself an awesome set of Dragonbone Plate, then equipped my 4x "fortify smithing 25%" items (gloves, robe, neck & ring) and turned it into Legendary Dragonbone Plate. Then I enchanted it with stamina, health, fortify one-handed, stamina regen... and named all the bits shield/armour/helm etc "...of the Dovahkiin". I have like 600 stamina and 550 health and my armour class is over 1000. My sword deals 150 damage per hit.

[Deionarra]

Yea Trizz having the iron fist perk really made a huge difference, wouldn't want to try beating up a dragon without it. Also the first perk in the heavy armour tree increases the gauntlet's armour value so every level in that makes punching stronger as well. I don't know if any of the other heavy armour perks help though as they all say they increase your overall armour when wearing a full set but it doesn't specificaly say if it increases all the individual parts by a bit or just adds an extra bonus on top that wouldn't apply to the iron fist perk. It doesn't really matter much to me anyway as I'm going to be wearing a mix of armour types and not any full armour sets.

Here's a couple of screen shots I've taken though my PC is bare minimum to run the game, everything still looks really great to me:

Screen shots

The sky and the lighting looks so good in this game.


Forget pandas, it's time for Kung Fu Orc

[Rincewind]

Argh! Skyrim has apparently killed my graphics card... I got a few "your driver has stopped responding" errors, now I no longer have any anti-aliasing in the game, no matter what I do. Not the only person to have this issue it seems, but I'm having it in other games as well. Need to investigate...

[Busby]

I got there at level 9 and I had big trouble with the frost troll, with the use of potions I managed to defeat him. When I got to the tombs and stuff all the enemies were simple skeletons weaker than the zombie nords even. As if you're supposed to be even lower level when you get there. But how then are you to beat the frost troll? Btw I met no great cats on my way there.

I actually managed to sneak past it on the way up and spam the new shout and sprint away from it on the way down. And your lucky you didn't bump into any Sabre Cats. Have you played Red Dead Redemption? Think of them as cougars, only the size of a bear. Even worse, they follow NPCs. I've seen a ghostly horsemen galloping along (and indeed, he was headless), followed by a Sabre Cat, and when the horseman passed the cat decided to kill me. And I've also had a random dude run up, throw a magic axe in my inventory, and just as he nearly finishes his sentence, big angry kitty jumps at him and kills him in one shot, and then kills me in two. :/

I think punching might be tied to heavy armour, because you get the added fist gauntlet damage perk from that tree.

Kahjit(sp) get nice little claws that deal additional damage when punching. I have no idea if it stacks with the gauntlet damage though.

[Starblade]

Where do you get a dog?

Outside some city's horse ranch. How do I make money in this game? I'm broke at all times and I'm smithing and enchanting like crazy. It doesn't help that I can't find any ore to smelt.

[Pocktio]

Whore yourself out.

But seriously, how the hell are you running short of money if you're a smithy/enchanter? Just enchant random things you find and sell them for massive profit. You can steal/loot the objects and if you have Azuras Star enchanting is just free but time consuming.

Or just do repeaty quests, talk to everyone. In Markath I got around 500 gold, three times, for talking to someone and taking their thing to another person in the city. 1500 gold in 10 minutes there. Repeaty quests like 'kill bandit leaders' or the stuff you can get from Companions are tiring but delicious. I get 150 gold for killing a wolf in a house from the Huntress. I occasionally get a totem quest but I dunno what's the deal with them.

I imagine the Mages college, DB and assorted 'membership' style places offer repeat quests too.

Dragon bounties usually pay well, unsurprisingly.

There. Go make money and bling yourself up.

[Ewokz]

Well I've just got my smithing and bartering to the point where buying orc ingots then crafting it in battleplates, then upgrading it to exquisite is making me a tidy profit while increasing my level a lot. Just been traveling the cities with forges to buy/sell ore and plates, I did the enchanting thing for a while to get to lvl 50 smith but after that its quite painful with all the quick traveling, profitable though if you need money. This way I'm leveling fast and making money

[Starblade]

Just enchant random things you find and sell them for massive profit.

Everybody else is broke as shit, my stuff sells for very little, and the ore/ingots cost more than the stuff sells for. If I could just find some deposits of ore I could cut a lot of that cost but I haven't found anything.

Or just do repeaty quests, talk to everyone. In Markath I got around 500 gold, three times, for talking to someone and taking their thing to another person in the city. 1500 gold in 10 minutes there. Repeaty quests like 'kill bandit leaders' or the stuff you can get from Companions are tiring but delicious. I get 150 gold for killing a wolf in a house from the Huntress. I occasionally get a totem quest but I dunno what's the deal with them.

Oh is that where the "radiant story" quests are? I've just been finding them off of innkeepers stating "hey go kill this guy in this ruin for us".

[Pocktio]

Just travel betwixt cities, visit general traders and smiths. On average they'll have between 500 to 2000 gold for you to abuse.

A basic silver, or gold ring will be worth about 100 gold average. Enchanting that with Auzras Star roundabout trebles its value, maybe more.

If you have smithing use silver and gold ingots to make your own rings/necklaces. Combine them with jewels to make valuable shit by default. A ruby encrusted gold necklace is worth around 500 gold, and that is BEFORE enchanting.

[Rincewind]

Okay so it is just Skyrim, not my other games... basically the game decided that Anti-aliasing is for pussies and that I don't need it. Textures look like something out of Half Life 1. Deleting the .ini files and letting the game re-create them didn't help.

[Afoxi]

So apparently i got drunk in whiterun, and woke up in a temple in the WEST end of Skyrim. Sometime later apparently i found out i had a lover (EAST side of Skyrim) and gave this person a wedding ring.

This is me retrieving this ring (spoiler).


What. The fuck.

[Pocktio]

Rincewind - it's karma for you getting dragon armour before me

I need to get drunk in Whiterun....that's a brilliant questline!

[Ewokz]

Yeh that quests awesome, hargreaves are also horrible as hell. Had 3 chasing me earlier, throwing fireballs at me. That part of the quest with the giant was hard as nails though, glad to say I only died once though