Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim [post-launch thread]

[Rincewind]

Dwarves, or Dwemer (Deep Elves) disappeared ages ago. I doubt we will be seeing them in Skyrim.

[Malachi]

Dwarves (Dwemer) in TES are long gone. They all literally disappeared during the Battle of Red Mountain (with the Chimer, who are currently the Dunmer - dark elves), when their engineer Kagrenac tried to use the heart of Lorkhan to create a new god. No one knows what happened to them.

[edit:] Ninja'd. There's a whole lot of stuff that could be added in an expansion or DLC for Skyrim. I would love to visit Solstheim, the last Dunmer stronghold, which somebody already proposed in this or the previous thread.

[Jonny]

Who'd love it if they came back though eh? A whole race of techno-magic engineers and underground cities. It'd be awesome, especially if you could end up building your own centurions.

[Rincewind]

In other news, turning off AA and using FXAA seems to make the game playable for me, but I would still love to know why the fuck the game decided suddenly to stop using "normal" AA and switching to low-res textures after working great for 36 hours.

[Nalkor]

Turns out the game is like Morrowind in terms of set encounters! Went into the mountains after grabbing a bounty and the dragon head icon was called Shearpoint Ascension or something. Got too close and out popped some kind of floating Lich, took one whack at it with my Dwarven Waraxe and I did next to no damage. I instantly realized it was like a beefy mage version of Morrowind-Umbra and reloaded, discovered the spot again and fast-traveled away.

[Starblade]

I love how combat in this game has a sense of timing. You could just flail around wildly, but if you pulse and time your magic attacks and swing your weapon rhythmically while dodging you'll do tons better. It's nowhere near Dark Souls about it or anything, but it's a lot more fun than just hacking away as fast as you can hammer the button.

[Malachi]

Installed... Now probably gonna spend the next two hours in the character creator, getting my Dunmer's appearance right, LOL.

[DeafMute]

i too have noticed the same starblade.
Take double handed magic for instance. you can ofcourse do the combined attack but you can do the timing and fire off shots from the hip, rotating hands.
I noticed you fire off quicker too.

[Nalkor]

Damn do I love getting sync kills on my waraxe and warhammer. It's hilarious when a wolf leaps at me and I time an attack perfectly, my argonian (histskin saved me from a vampire and vampire thrall random encounter, yay tenfold hp regen power) just hefts the wolf up and slams his warwaxe into the wolf's ribs. Then there's bringing down a warhammer on some poor bandit's skull even when they're at full or near-full health and hearing that sound.

[SquidDNA]

Nalkor, I've got alchemy for elemental resistances.

[Kien]

I love how combat in this game has a sense of timing. You could just flail around

Speaking of flailing.... in this age should we not be able to have flails? In morrowind it was said to be physics problems, which I don't understand since it's just animation of the model. Why don't we get flails? Daggerfall have flails. (daggerfall also had nice looking magic weapons)

@Nalkor
You would love greatswords too, cutting heads off.

edit: Just read on the official boards that betheda apparently has shadows rendered from the CPU and not the GPU. If that's the case, it's a colossal fuck-up that's screwing with my enjoyment.

Well that's good for me. I bought my intel7 a few weeks ago.

[Malachi]

Another question: what difficulty are you guys playing on? I tend to play most story-driven cRPGs like DX:HR or ME on hard, and still find them a bit too easy. I played Fallout 3 and NV on normal, but only because I disliked that otherwise shooting people continously in the head didn't kill them.

[Starblade]

Speaking of flailing.... in this age should we not be able to have flails? In morrowind it was said to be physics problems, which I don't understand since it's just animation of the model.

I just realized Dark Souls doesn't either. No (modern) RPG does! Too bad, you could almost play as the Witchking of Angmar if there was one.

Also I play on normal, since there are enemies of varying power in here. Lots of weaklings then some particularly chufty dudes thrown in with them.

[Rincewind]

I'm more annoyed at the lack of spears. I loved my Legionaire outfit in Morrowind.

[Nalkor]

@Kien - I just made a Dwemer Greatsword and have seen several sync kills with it, one type on bandits, impaling them and lifting them up at the same time, and another against Drauger, a slice at both the knees and then down onto the shoulder-neck area. Also, after updating my nVidia drivers and re-enabling SLI, I can no longer see the webs that have to be cut, nor the graphics for spells being cast.

[Starblade]

I'm more annoyed at the lack of spears.

I love using lances and spears in games but I don't really find myself missing them in Skyrim. If there's a spear mod I'd probably use it though.

[Nalkor]

Found out the reason some particles were missing was due to not installing 3D vision and the drivers. Also, hit a brickwall in the form of that Draugr Wight Lord immediately after getting the first part of FUS RO DAH. Even my dwemer stuff didn't hold up well due to lacking skills and perks. Oh, and when I opted to try hitting him with my warhammer, he hit me with that damned disarming shout mid-swing, promptly turning me weaponless, he would do entirely too much damage and I could do essentially none in return. I couldn't heal because like in Morrowind, Powers don't recharge after a day, oh no, it's gotta be after whenever you rest, even if for one hour. Kinda disappointed with how weak poisons are, and they go away after one hit, 2 with a high-end perk.

One thing that really grates me is the hideously long respawn timer for caves and such, it's like what, 200 days or something? That makes building weapons, skills, and certain magic skills much harder than they should be.

[Kien]

If there were spears I would make one with the construction set when it's out. I would make it a narwhal tooth.

[Starblade]

Powers don't recharge after a day, oh no, it's gotta be after whenever you rest, even if for one hour. Kinda disappointed with how weak poisons are, and they go away after one hit, 2 with a high-end perk.

Huh? Yes they do. I've rested once, ever (no point as a werewolf) and I've always gotten my powers back.

Also I want a mod giving my dog an iron helmet so he can be Dogvakiin.

[sang]

Has anyone been able to marry Lydia yet I have herd that there is a quest you have to do but nobody seems to be able to tigger it

[DeafMute]

Btw how many of you are checking out being an archer?
Its damn awesome. headshotting pretty much anything makes it fall over.
About the only creatues to take a beating are liches and the more powerful creatures.

Also an slightly confused as to why I cannot equip 2 rings. 1 for each hand.
Blance blah blah but Id prefer to have abit extra stat wise.

Also. Ive 20%magic resist on my necklace. Is this universal towards the 3 schools of magic or just lightening?
And dragons truly are a joke.
Took 2 on at once. Normal dragon and a Blood dragon.
5 shots each with my bow and its GG.
Dunno what im supposed to do with these extra dragon bones and scales.
Already have the dragon armor set.

[Misiok]

Caves/instances should get repopulated in 3-5 ingame days.


To marry anyone you have to

Spoiler

go to the Temple of Mara in Riften and talk with Maramer or w/e his name is in the temple or the taven (jelly bee or something, it has a fishhook sign) and ask him about marriage. To actually propose you need to have Amulat of Mara equipped and talk with your chosen virtual love.

[Rincewind]

Seems like my graphics card has died and/or been grieviously wounded. If my computer would be Skyrim, the GPU would be trying to yield right about now. I'd appriciate it if you guys could take a look at this thread:

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthre...post1045314852

[Malachi]

Gah. I seem to be having the same issue as with the Witcher 2 - every time I restart my computer after playing Skyrim, it black screens on me after the Windows loading animation, and I need to use the startup repair function to get it working again.

It's a recognized bug since Vista 64 with 64 bit systems apparently (I'm using Win 7 64), can't believe they haven't managed to fix it yet.

[Langy]

Do all you people use blades? I have the feeling that no one here uses axe or mace. o.o I tried some warhammer use but too slow for fun. I assume the big axe/sword/hammer balance each other out with speed and damage.

Where can I find someone to enchant my weapon?

And how does armor work``?

My Nord battleassassinmage uses Axes for close-up work and bows or destruction magic for farther-away stuff. Generally going more for Destruction magic now, though; I'm almost level 30 and my highest skill is only 57 or so (but I have, like, ten of them at 40+, and five at 50+). Being a jack of all trades really makes you level up way too fast, and Destruction levels up too slowly:/ I'm thinking I'm gonna go to the College and start paying people to train me, and then pickpocket my money back.

Also: You have to enchant items yourself. Armor works by you putting it on and then physical damage against you being less.

[Malachi]

To people who have problems with bugged arrows permanently stuck in their bodies (or ice spikes in heads):

sexchange - Changes the gender of the player's character (Helpful for getting stubborn arrows relieved from the body)

Anyone know a command to show current FPS?

[Master Chief]

Planning on getting this game tonight when I pick up Halo Anniversary, probably gonna go Heavy Armor/Zweihander Dark Souls run because super huge knight with super huge sword is super cool.

[Pocktio]

Whoa I can pick pocket my money back from trainers?

[Busby]

So I had that "here, take this" encounter again. The guy gave me some gloves of sure grip with +20% 2H damage. The person he stole them from ran up to me, started dialogue, then ended it immediately to shoot the thief with a single arrow. So I just dropped my old Dwemer gloves of massive weight and happily went off to hand in some quests. Speaking of the fact that Dwemer gear weighs as much as a mammoth, I've found a use for warewolf; bypassing weight limits and running around very fast.

Edit: Oh, is Dragon Bone used for anything? It weighs a crap ton and I want to get rid of it and I'm too far away from my home to store it away safely.

Ah, the wiki finally loads and I want to dump the scales, because light armour sucks.

[Rincewind]

Dragon bone and scales are used for crafting stuff at smithing 100. Feel free to sell them in the begining of the game, there are a crapton of dragons in the game.

[Nalkor]

So, I finally caved and used the console to kill a bandit thug who in iron armor or steel armor (I forget which) could take a dwemer greatsword to her body while I managed to use it as a sneak attack, and how some orc bandit chieftain just two rooms over could keep sync-killing me when I was at 75% or so hp when all he had was steel armor and boots with an orc greatsword. No problems with god-mode after my 5th death due to shitty balancing by Bethesda.

I am rapidly getting sick and tired of how some bandit wearing iron armor, iron ffs, can take a bunch of blows from my Dwemer two-handers, yet them using an iron weapon can knock chunks off my guy covered in Dwemer armor. I look like an evil Dwemer centurion for god's sake. Once again Bethesda has shown me they lack any real knowledge on how to make enemies difficult beyond simply beefing up their hp and damage that in no way reflects their gear, or profession for that matter. An Ice Mage, a fucking ice mage can take far more damage than that bandit chieftain I mentioned earlier. I got the drop on that mage too (this was an hour before going to Uttering Hills Cavern) and saw no stoneflesh or anything get used, yet that normal ice mage (not a novice or apprentice) is somehow magically tougher than my tank.

This is what made Morrowind so damn fun in comparison. If an enemy was sporting shitty gear and not a mage, you knew they were gonna drop fast. If an enemy was sporting powerful gear or happened to be an Orc named Umbra, you knew that you'd be in for a hell of a fight (bar alchemy or enchanting min-maxing). Here, I have to wait until the health bar shows me that I am not fighting some fodder bandit, but some chump who must be popping Tamriel's equivalent of steroids when I'm not looking.

Oh, and the bizzare menu system is starting to get to me. I have to use my WASD keys to move around the skills and perks? Really? Not to mention that getting to the right perk to select it isn't easy because hey, my game thinks I must want to check out something one tree and three tiers over. God I can't wait for mods to try and correct this. Done with my rant, I enjoy everything else so far, it's just the whole Underground Monkey crap and clunky menu system that I can't stand.

edit: YAY! Happy looting times! Picked an adept level lock chest and managed to snatch a flawless amethyst, some gold, and a gold diamond necklace too, woohoo! I'm holding onto that little baby until I get enchanting up to 100, get some enchanting boosting gear (if such an enchantment exists) and then have that necklace act as a powerful well, necklace. Oh, why only one ring this time around? Makes no sense.

[Shaitan]

Anyone know if there's a limit on the number of dragon souls and thus dragon shouts you can have?

Also, nalkor, maybe you're having trouble cause you've done a lot of leveling from enchanting instead of fighting, but I could totally be wrong. Also, is there any benefit from enchanting a diamond necklace vs, say a silver necklace with the same enchantment? I guess the diamond necklace will be worth a bit more, but that's it isn't it?

[Misiok]

I currently have about 9-10 dragon souls, and I'm yet to spend them.

Nalkor, you can favourite items/potions/spells by pressing F on them, and then ingame press Q to open the 'quick' menu. It stops being quick when you have a shitload of stuff cramped over there.

[Nalkor]

@Shaitan - I mentioned enchantment because that's something planned for later. I've gained maybe 10 or so ranks in enchantment. Mostly it's been just heavy armor, block, 2 hand, and one hand. At level 14, it's kinda disheartening to die over and over to a dude worse equipped than me. I even tried a warhammer and for whatever reason, it did less damage than a war axe, yet my 2 handed outranked 1 handed at the time (by very little, but still.)

@Misiok - Yes, I know about the quick menu, I use it only for shields, weapons, spells and powers, I find it quicker to use tab for potions because manually scrolling down that list isn't my idea of quick.

[Ewokz]

My dragon loot hording has finally paid off, 3 set of full heavy dragon Armour and 1 set of scaled Armour Damn level 100 smithing has taken its time, getting on with the main quest now.

[Jak.]

I"m running as a longsword and fire breton. I'm already in the legion, bards, companions, mages guild, albeit only doing the initiation quest for the legion and bards. I chose imperial at the start, partly because my friend chose rebel, partly because I like their amour better. Currently at level 44 smithing out of level 13 overall, it's nice finally being able to start turning a bit of a profit from smithing. I have lost over 10,000 to smithing.
I am aiming for the dark brotherhood soonish, probably by killing that person who runs the orphanage. I immediately hated their guts.

Spoiler

I'm probably going to continue going legion, because the rebels seem a bit racist.

[Nalkor]

I'll have to get Pick Pocket up enough for the extra 100 carry capacity, some more in speechcraft for better prices (more profit) so that I can get even more out of the iron ore I buy/find and transmute into gold ore to be smelted into ingots for jewelry.

By the way, do mineral veins respawn? I know it sounds odd, but I'd prefer a bit more self-sustaining after a while. Like with Steel Armor and such, if you find the ores, have enough in smithing, and kill a few wolves/foxes/sabre cats/bears, you've got the leather/leather strips needed and not one bit of money spent on shopkeepers, ensuring pure profit.

[Heretic]

So my Viking warrior princess, totally not based off of Olga Kurylenkos' character in Centurion is doing quite well, apart from my terrifying experience earlier: Was enroute to Kathspire when I came across a nice pretty mill in the middle of a pine forest, by a lovely river with a lovely stone bridge on it. Then suddenly, a wild Blood Dragon appears. It was resistant to my frost bow...and I ran out of arrows. I decided to cower under the bridge until it gave up. This took ten minutes, I then got out, ran down the road and the dragon spotted me again. Chasing me, spraying ice at me. Then, I hear the wings of another dragon. That one starts chasing me. The road led me up a canyon and then a mountain, where a sabrecat saw me. Then across a river - hordes of mudcrabs. And finally, bandits. All of which were chasing me when I finally found Kathspire. And the Forsworn. EVERYWHERE. So this was it, I was to die in battle against hordes of foes. No, I shouted most of them off a cliff. And ran into a cave and carried on with the quest with the dragons waiting outside.

[Richter]

BOUGHT THE GAME YESTERDAY. I LOVE IT.

Except when the sync kill on my first dragon turned into an animation nightmare. But goddamn it I love sync kills. And becoming a human flamethrower when facing trolls. Tis awesome.

[Ammon Ra]

I hate sync kills when the AI manages it on you, and you suddenly go from 75% health to DEAD instantly.

Went for the sneaky light-armoured bosmer archer type with a bit of crafting.

btw: why are wildlife (DEER/ELK/GOATS) telepathic? Sneaking in some bush waiting for 3 goats to pass by, one comes near, and no sooner than i move an inch to get a better view does it run off into the distance, while i facepalm for the 420th time. Sneak skill >40, sneak icon never changed at all, etc. Its like they use an entirely different system.

Not only that, but deer/elk also love to sit frozen at the edge of the draw distance (after they start to run away) where they wait till you get close, and then run away again, essentially kiting YOU. :-|

Also, typical bethesda food/ingredients balance: goats only give one leg per animal (1?), and i had antoher goat give me zero legs... but wait, see that model? yes? it shows two goats legs. :-|

Mining rocks, harvesting food, those things get visual changes, but animals? nope.

this is just a minor nitpick though, otherwise i'm LOVING this game. game cause a bit of eye strain at times, though, and i'm blaming the frequently excessively noisy with similar noisy normal-mapped textures.

p.s. I was expecting galloping over a wooden/stone bridge with a horse to generate a thunderous noise, but i was starkly disappointed (iron/*steel horseshoes)

[Grabnutz]

I fought a random dragon on the plains near Whiterun, only it got bored of me, and flew north to chew on a mammoth. yeah the Giants didn't like that much, never seen a dragon's hp drop so fast! I had to run from a distance to catch up, all I saw was the dragon flailing while a giant was stamping nonchalantly on it's head! Of course I couldn't get near enough for long enough to absorb the soul without the giants doing my own cranium a similar service...

Didn't know about that marriage stuff, although has to be said Aela the Huntress is pretty hawt. Then again the ever dependable Lydia is currently sat (uninvited I might add, not so much as a by-your-leave...) upstairs in my fully furnished Whiterun home. Maybe she want's to House my Carl if you catch my drift ahohoho.

[Malachi]

Ehh... Gone for a first real quest (The Golden Claw) and apparntly it's bugged?

Spoiler

When I cut Arvel down and he runs away, the rest of the web blocking the passage remains in place and apparently is indestructible, making the passage unpassable, and thus preventing me from going further into the dungeon.

Tried loading a save but it doesn't work.

[Starblade]

Load up the console "~" and type in "TCL" (toggle collision), that should let you noclip through.

----------

No problems with god-mode after my 5th death due to shitty balancing by Bethesda.

That's intentional. Orcs can go berserk, and different enemies have wildly different stats in different locations. If its impossible to progress you shouldn't be there. Also, you're not supposed to try and block a warhammer power attack from an orc boss without the right perks, and even then I still wouldn't (all sync kills are power attacks, by the way, except dragons, though their bite might count as well).

Here, I have to wait until the health bar shows me that I am not fighting some fodder bandit, but some chump who must be popping Tamriel's equivalent of steroids when I'm not looking.

Actually enemies follow a hierarchy of sorts. Bandits are invariably the weakest, followed by Bandit Outlaws, Highwaymen, Chieftains, and what-have-you. You can guess how easy they are to kill based on that, and its almost always true. I can kill every single bandit in one firebolt now, for example.

This is what made Morrowind so damn fun in comparison. If an enemy was sporting shitty gear and not a mage, you knew they were gonna drop fast.

This happened in Morrowind too, and far more often. The first Nord with a warhammer in the starting cave can literally one-shot you, and until you completely break the game this trend continues (not to mention the mages which dump their magicka load all at once to obliterate you). Morrowind's combat was terrible.

I'm not going to defend mages though because what the fuck? They're just annoying because they have infinite magicka (or magicka regeneration) and just keep spamming ward spells.

[DoomKnights]

Loving the game. It seems though I might have just caused myself to get some future problems. I love exploring, what I didn't know at the time was the new Leveling system for the monsters/dungeons. When you first enter a dungeon the game marks your lvl. The monsters in that dungeon will match yours. It's locked and they will re-spawn AT that lvl. The problem? I have already mapped out nearly all the dungeons and I'm only lvl 17. So I have now locked all those dungeons down to a lvl that in the future means I can't enjoy. Great! I feel like I got punished for exploring...=\

[Langy]

I"m running as a longsword and fire breton. I'm already in the legion, bards, companions, mages guild, albeit only doing the initiation quest for the legion and bards. I chose imperial at the start, partly because my friend chose rebel, partly because I like their amour better. Currently at level 44 smithing out of level 13 overall, it's nice finally being able to start turning a bit of a profit from smithing. I have lost over 10,000 to smithing.
I am aiming for the dark brotherhood soonish, probably by killing that person who runs the orphanage. I immediately hated their guts.

Spoiler

I'm probably going to continue going legion, because the rebels seem a bit racist.

To enter the Dark Brotherhood, you have to actually do a proper quest; you can't just randomly murder someone. Talk to barkeeps about rumors until someone mentions the Dark Brotherhood.

[Malachi]

Zoning in and out helped with the bug. Playing on expert and damn is it lots of fun. I die a lot, but never twice at the same encounter, so it's simply due to uncarefulness. Sneaking is great, not ridiculus like in some games where they can't see you in plain sight, but useful and rather realistic.

[tadamir]

So glad to finally buy Breezehome and have somewhere safe to dump all my loot. Lydiamule helped out nicely there.

I really need to resist my compulsion to acquire at least one of everything in the game.

Afoxi- that dude with all the brooms, that's me, sadly. (I miss my Oblivion Bag of Holding).

But I'm determined to change my ways and just leave stuff, even shiny stuff that could be sold, because I'm always constantly at my encumbrance threshold. :P

[Akranadas]

I have a thing for collecting books, regardless of value. Have gotten a few quests from them though

[Malachi]

Also... immersion. I can fully see not coming near the progress some people here have made already within a month. When invited to stay at night in the first village, I spent like an hour of gameplay reading books and searching for salt so I can cook a soup for supper. I also didn't take a single thing from the nice Nords' house (except the stuff to cook the soup)... I mean, you've got to have some dignity, right?

[Nalkor]

@Starblade - Goddamnit did you have to remind me about that Nord waiting in the cave near Seyda Neen? Not the one with three dunmer, but the other one. I am noticing the 'tiers' so to speak, and I guess it makes sense. It was an orc greatsword, not warhammer, but like Ammon Ra said, it's still annoying when it happens to you. I know that if I struggle I'm not supposed to be there, but that's just it, right up until that Bandit Thug and Bandit Chieftain, I wasn't struggling at all, hence the term 'brickwall'.

Further update, killed two bears, the outdoor variety that can't climb rocks.

Spoiler

I have Numina's ring now, after leading the priest of arkay in Markath to Reachcliff cave as part of a daedric quest. He lays down on a very obvious sacrificial alter, mind control is being used on him. You can either leave or eat him and the other followers of Numina are happy if you do, and it nets you the ring. It gives +50 stamina and gives increased health and health regeneration whenever you eat a corpse.