Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim [post-launch thread]

[DoomKnights]

Yea when I let both go (as the skill states will overcharge the spell) it just instant ash's anything I'm trying to raise from the dead. Well I know now if I find some NPC that uses raise dead over and over, just to turn them all to ash real quick lol.

[Pocktio]

Steel <3

All superior Steel equipment and a skyforge steel greatsword....

Is currently better than fine dwarven. So sexy.

Fuck frost trolls. Even my mighty steel failed to destroy it

[Harper]

Grr, the UPS guy needs to hurry the hell up lol. I wants my cloth map.

[Rincewind]

Okay, I found my niche - light armour, archery, sneaking and one hander + shield. Snipe people from hiding until they notice you and then take out your sword and board, shield-bashing someone and then decapitating them is absolutely hilarious and very effective. Remember to time your blocks, kids, since holding down the block button wont work this time around.

[DoomKnights]

No make your own customer spells. This saddens me greatly. We get more time to play, but less options. I want to make my own spells darn it! If I'm powerful enough to kill dragons, I want to be able to bring that dragon back from the dead. Or heck how about a hellball(cause fire,ice,lighting,acid all at once)?

[darkelf]

Anyone else found the spell to transmute iron -> silver -> gold? That's a rather handy thing to have, until you run out of Iron and need to craft some iron stuff :P

[Rincewind]

Darkelf, I found that in the mine that is part of the Companions' initiation chain. It's useful but annoyingly slow on a non-mage as it eats 88 magica per zap.

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Obvious hint - don't level the first 10 levels with alchemy and smithing because the enemies will rape you and there will be nothing you can do about it. Had to lower the difficulty for a bit until my combat skills catch up.

[Misiok]

I just realized I'm playing on expert or the hard difficulty, and it is rather easy to slaughter stuff. That said I am a mage that shoots lightning bolts left and right like crazed Palpatine. I also have a nice and good looking (FOR ONCE) female companion that takes up the damage and melee.

[Pocktio]

I am finding human enemies, as a general rule, are fleshy wheat to my steely scythes. When I stormed the barricades at Whiterun there were dozens of Guards and Imperials. It was entirely satisfying to cleave my way through them. I relish the power as it is kind of expected. I am a Dragonborn kitted in superior armour and huge weapons. I rarely find enemies in heavy armour, I expect my greatswords to butcher everything in sight. Any human worthy of my attention is swiftly dealt with ludicrous power strikes! If need be alteration can be used to enhance myself.

Magical shit however, really fucking hurts. I have to slaughterise them immediately as their destruction spells really hurt. Anything with stamina damage especially. As a two hander specialist I need it to swing doomblows all over.

And then there are non human enemies. Anything larger than a wolf deserves great caution. I can strike down sabrecats in two power blows but in that time they give me an awful mauling. Talos forbid there are more than one. Suddenly, sabrecats! .... Is not a good thing. I have yet to take anything truly monstrous in a fair fight. Giants squish me in a blow and trolls shred me like I am made of wet paper.

I think it makes enough sense really. I enjoy the variation in difficulty.

Though it is luls that a troll is more of a challenge than a dragon. Dragons are just flying treasure pinatas kept aloft by the willpower of terminally ill children.

[Starblade]

Holy shit this game is amazing and fighting dragons is awesome. I'm exploring an already cleared out area, and a dragon torches me, blinding me. Throwing spells randomly, I chug any potion I have to keep myself alive. As it finally lands, I hack into it with my sword in one hand and healing magic in the other just barely keeping me alive. Finally, I blow the rest of my potions and two-hand a lightning spell, bringing it down. As the fight throws us off a mountain and knocks me into a river, blinded again by fire and night, a stray bolt hits it in the head, slaying it. The goddamn theme song was playing the entire time.

[Afoxi]

...christ is it morning? Have I really been playing this for 8 hours?

[OhJohnNo]

I thought only Minecraft did that to people.

[Heretic]

My viking warrior princess is doing well. Loved by the villagers, hated and scorned by cityfolk because they love Imperials and I love to butcher them. So far, I put out the fire of the lighthouse in Solitude, ran an Imperial tradeship aground, killed all the Imperials along with some Marauders and then the Marauders wanted to keep all the loot for themselves so they attacked me. I butchered them all to the last man and crazy lizardmen.

Oh and I hunt trolls. I have only fought one dragon so far and I've been playing for nine/ten hours. I keep doing miniquests. And exploring. And hunting. I love this game.

[Grabnutz]

Anyone been sky-clobbered by a giant yet? (Is that meant to happen?) Pissed myself the first time (and promptly reloaded the save to do it again and again...)

[Rincewind]

Spoilers, people. At least for main quest stuff, please.

For those who are wondering, you can find a Soul Trap enchanted dagger (for disenchanting, so you get Soul Trap) in a cave just north of the Golden Claw cave. Now if I only had some good soul gems.

[CommissarRezail]

On a scale of lame to awesome how Skyrim shaping up?

[Rincewind]

9/10. Awesome game with just minor Elder Scrolls gripes that will get fixed quickly with mods.

[CommissarRezail]

Woooo, I know what i will pick up on black friday now .

[DeafMute]

Someone mind explaining how the quickslots work? dont seem to find any info on it ingame.

[Deionarra]

I'm trying to play my character as an Orc Monk. I knew I'd got off to a good start when the first thing she did after the tutorial bit was catch a butterly out of the air with her hand and then eat it.

So far I'm finding hand to hand a bit hit and miss, punching the stuffing out of people seems to work well though some of the ones with large weapons can be pretty tough. It's pretty much worthless against larger creatures though like the spiders and even a mudcrab forced me to pull out my hammer instead.

However, i've not been able to pick the perk that gives you damage from gauntlets yet so that may make it work a lot better. I kind of wanted to be an unarmoured fighter and use alteration spells for defence, not sure yet how that will work out without being able to use the iron-fist and mage armour perks together though.

Punching people doesn't seem to be increasing any weapon skills either, I'd heard before release that it was supposed to count as one of the weapon skills. Not sure if it'll use any one/two handed perks and it's just not giving skill increase or if it just doesn't have anything to do with the weapon trees.

[Brenil]

All right, so I've been playing it for about three hours and my impressions thus far are pretty damn positive.

Overall, the game really hits me with a Morrowind vibe more than anything else. The combat system is definitely a refinement of Oblivion's, but everything else seems to be a refinement on Morrowind. This isn't a bad thing at all. The environment, racial designs, interactions, and history seem to convey Morrowind's feel of Elder Scrolls more than Oblivion's more generic approach. As much as I love Oblivion, vanilla Oblivion was much like everyone said, generic fantasy setting 2.0. Skyrim is what I would like to call Morrowind 3.0. Instances of this I've notice include:

- Imperial Legion going back to their Roman-esqe appearance, tactics, formations, and ranks.
- Racial traits and appearances along with their voice work are all unique. Elves have a very alien look, beastfolk and orks are savage looking, while Bretons are regal, Imperials are snooty Imperialists, and Nords are... Vikings of sort.
- The conversation system is robust again.
- Religion is a primary catalyst for all kinds of conflicts, once again. The whole Eight Divines and Talos debacle is interesting and a throwback to the older games.
- The 'new' Empire is much like the old Empire in their dealings with the provinces. It is no longer the unified Super Empire of Oblivion, but the fractured barely holding on, Empire of Rebellious Nations.

That's just what I've noticed thus far, but like I said, this game is far more a sequel to Morrowind than Oblivion.

As for the gameplay itself, I'm playing a Dunmer Mage that I'm trying to make into a Telvanni-inspired character. So far it is working quite well and I'm happy that finally you can play a straight mage from the outset instead of relying on weapons to not die horribly. The perk system seems to cement this by making your chosen 'profession' much more viable in most combat situations. I do have some problems with the inferface, however. I keep trying to find a way to stop the dual wield magic system when using one-handed weapons, but short of deselecting the spell in the spell menu, I cannot. This creates a problem as you cannot apparently block while dual wielding anything. So anything that gets in your face tends to rip it off unless you out damage them first. The inability to use hotkeys to deselect spells is my biggest beef with the game so far. I've countered this in the short term by using a two handed weapon as my fall back melee tool against tougher or fast enemies. But I'd really like to use a one-handed sword and parry when not using magic. Thus far, I cannot find a way to do this without navigating the damn menus.

In short, with some exceptions, the game is fantastic so far. I do still wonder if there are actual joinable factions like in previous games though. Given that those factional quests were usually the best in the series, it is somewhat critical to the longevity of the game to have a variety of actual joinable factions. Thus far I've discovered you can in theory join the Imperial Legion, but having not done this yet, I don't know if it is truly a joinable faction or just a quest series. Time will tell on this, I suppose. I do hope the College of Whispers, Synod, Dark Brotherhood, Thieve's Guild, and assorted factions make an appearance. Perhaps even some Dunmer Great Houses too? That would be a wet dream come true for me. I do so miss the badass Telvanni.

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Someone mind explaining how the quickslots work? dont seem to find any info on it ingame.

Select an item/ability, hit F to favorite it. Exit the menus, hit default Q for the Favorite list, highlight one of your favorites and hit 1-8 to add it to a hotkey.

[Ewokz]

Well it's only eaten 9 hours today ...

For some reason I'm really enjoying the smithing side of things over most other things, I do have a problem at the moment though. Where exactly can I store my stuff? I've yet to afford a house and my dragon bones/scales and Armour is taking up damn near my whole inventory, was forcing me to be over burdened with items while using my horse to get me about quickly. (It didn't end well though, was ambushed by a crazy wild women who promptly murdered my hoarse In retaliation however I did spend the next 20 minutes murdering both her and her entire group that was taking residence within some castle ruin. The mage dude at the top was somewhat powerful but my sword of embers messed him up eventually, good loot up there too, couple of pieces of enchanted jewelry).


BTW where is this iron>steel>gold spell? I could really use it but I don't recall picking anything like it up when I went through the Carn with my shield-brother-companion-dude.

[Pocktio]

You can join the Legion or you can join the Stormcloaks.

Once think I really really liked about my first set of stormcloak quests, culminating so far in a spoilerific quest I shan't mention. Needless to say it put me in a strange mood, I genuinely felt guilty for what I was doing. The whole Empire versus 'true' Nords leaves many people in the middle. At first I was thinking, 'you weak fools! How dare you let these secular twatbags take over without a fight!' but after the surrender I am not so sure about my decision. Not so sure at all. I LOVE that I am feeling so conflicted. It's nice to be in a murky grey puddle of moral ambiguity.

Following and supporting what the Brenil said I am getting a much better vibe from this as a fantasy game than Oblivion ever did. In TES4 everything was the same, it was generic. It didn't matter what someones face looked like or what colour it was, as they all spoke and acted the same. Same with the countryside, it was all the same. Dungeons too. I think the whole disappointment was from that nothing had it's own unique feel.

In Skyrim each race has it's own visual themes, voice themes and so on. Redguards are swathed in robes and be-capped with turbans, Khajiits are covered in furs and strange armours. They talk of their homelands in strange, purry accents. Then you have the bulk of the population; Nords. Vikings in every respect, and as well all know, which is fucking awesome.

Not seen any Argonians, seen a few Elves.

Environments are the same. From the snow-capped peaks that can be blanketed in howling blizzards, or thunderstorm choked green-gold valleys. It reminds me greatly of Cimmeria from Robert Howards works, and their visual representations in Age of Conan. As they were my favourite areas in that game I am very much in love with Skyrims bleak landscapes. Throw in hardy Northerners/Nords/Vikings and you have me gripped. Dungeons, ruins, taverns and cities are all excellent. So far they've avoided the repeato-dungeons from Oblivion. You'll see spider infested caves covered in webs. Witch infested caves have strange idols and totems strewn around, mist covering the floor. In one I saw a crack in the ceiling cavern gave an eery blue luminescence which contributed great to the ambience...

I would go on, but I could be playing so I'm gonna go do that!

[Misiok]

So there was I, doing Mage College quests. I go after a long dungeon visit and enter my room, depositing all the shitloads of book I've accumulated through my travels (over 500 in weight) and the AI in room are all herpy-derpy. At first I thought they're playing/training and one of them (the older guy) is a dragon and the youngsters try to best him. Heh I think and laugh a bit, AI got retarded or brilliant? Anyway, I go outside and THERE'S A FUCKING RANDOM ENCOUNTER DRAGON LANDING RIGHT IN THE FUCKING MIDDLE OF COLLEGE GARDEN. THE FUCK. Then I NOMNOM it's soul. Fun times.


The quests are really good. I'm doing sort-of half of the main story and half of the sidequests (mage college at this time) and wow, I could easily believe that the mage college quest-line might very well be a main-quest line instead. Or a DLC at the very least. That's how good and interesting it is. I'm still surprised by the changes Skyrim has over Oblivion. Like, instead of 'go do xxx, fetch xxx in dungeon xxx at xxx' you're 'go fetch xxx talk to yyy go to dungeon xzc and then follow me while I talk while I walk and then I interact with something and you can help me but don't have to. I mean, really, this is such an improvement I'm still caught off guard over how sexy this feels.

[Afoxi]

Saw a flying... uh... just look. Anyway, it's a good thing i recorded it.

[TESB]

My impressions, so far:

the game is really great, but it has some serious balance issues. i simply cannot understand why Bethesda is so bad at this (although it is much better than vanilla oblivion in that regard) considering that there are a lot of oblivion mods that do this right.
I defeat dragons like they are cliff razors, but if i meat just two saber-tooth cats i nearly die. Or when i run into bandit camps i nearly one hit most enemies, except for a very few bandits among them that can take a ton of hits, although they were the same equipment and have the same names as their comrades. Also damage absorption of heavy armor seems quite low.

currently i am playing a character with a two handed sword + heavy armor + smithing + enchanting as the skills were i put all perks into. smithing is currently my highest skill (i can make ebony armor very soon) by far and i have highly upgraded orc armor, yet some monsters deal way too much damage, while most monsters, including dragons, deal next to none at all. The weird thing is you cannot tell the dangerous monsters apart from the trivial ones. For example the frozen "ghost snakes" (whatever they are called) in certain regions nearly kill me, while in other regions i can kill them even if there are 4 or more.

I just hope that either Bethesda fixes this or there will be mods soon to remedy this problem.
My next character will certainly be some kind of battle mage, or spell sword. currently i use magic only for soul traps and healing.

[Grabnutz]

7000 steps to the Throat of the Mountain, they weren't kidding... Damn my personal distaste for fast travel, got to climb back down the bastard now (avoiding the ice troll that I had to climb around last time on account of it wtfbbqing my arse quite comfortably).

Also this thread needs to be renamed to FUS RO DAH! because dragon shouting is freaking immense, and a great ringtone!

Have to say though;

Spoiler

The grey beards were a little underwhelming after that climb, felt a little anti-climactic?

I'm enjoying the gameplay a lot, but kind of missing the ability to cast magic regardless of what's in your hands, Oblivion style. I likes my sword and shield and in Oblivion i'd always love going slash-slash-FIREBALLMOTHERFUCKER-slash-slash but ah well. Game as a whole more than makes up for niggling gripes, it's brilliant, total immersion (apart from the weird stiff-backed NPCs when they turn around like they've got an anthill lodged between their thighs..)

[DeafMute]

I agree dragons are abit too easy compared to the likes of mammoths. giants. Havnt came across trolls yet.

Im playing a Male Orc Warrior hybrid.
Giong heavy armor tanky with shield and a 1 hander. Ive no idea how the soul stone system or enchantment system works in this game btw. any advice?
Current armor is at 219. Just got myself the Orc armor set from 50smithing. Aiming for dragon teir armor. Which is at 100.
-edit

my orcy

[Starblade]

I'm trying to smith and craft but I absolutely cannot find any ingots or ore. Where are you getting it Deafmute? Also holy shit that looks awesome I'm definitely going heavy armor.

[Pocktio]

You get ore from mines. You get dwemer metal from dwemer scrap metal.

Anyone found where you get steel ore? Also I find the system unintuitive. Moonstone upgrades some elven weapons, I recently got a set of steel plate that is no longer upgradeable by steel ingots but needs some um ending ingot.

Still, found an ebony, orichalum and something else mine so far. None of which are useful, one of which was infested with monstrously overlarge spiders *shudders*

[Deionarra]

So I just faced my first dragon and the fight wasn't quite as epic as I would have hoped. However, shortly afterwards I ran into a highly entertaining random encounter.

A witch with a flame atronach ambushed me on the road, spell casters are annoying to deal with hand to had so I was expecting a difficult fight but as it turned out the flame atronach was hitting the witch in the back and killed her for me. "Silly summoned .. oh, it's not a summon and now it's comming after me. Crap!"

So I started duking it out with the atronach, this mainly just consisted of me trying to dodge and deflect streams of fireballs with my ward spell and trying in vain to get close enough to try and punch the fire deamon that just kept backing up and kiting me. Eventually I got fed up and decided to just try and charge right at it and hit it as hard as I could with my fist. I managed to connect with it at last but I still don't have the iron fist perk so I barely scratched it. On the other hand it was still trying to back away from me and my fist knoked it back even more sending it toppling over a cliff edge I hadn't noticed was there. The flame atronach fell right into a river and died from being extinguished.

I followed it's body as it got carried down stream to find a huge pack of mudcrabs swarming over it, devouring the remains.

Edit: Pock; Steel is an alloy of Iron and another ore. I forget the name of it in the game but it begins with a C and is sort of bronze colured. Not played the game enough to know where you find the ores of that though.

[Misiok]

So, this is how my Dunmer mage looks like. I actually like it because it reminds me of Soul Reaver's Kain.

[3DMARINE]

First, I love how badass the khajit and argonians look.
Second. Bows are amazing now. They actually deal damage instead of annoy enemies.
Third. Stealth actually works. Enemies don't instantly know where you are, which really makes bows brutal in close quarters. Peak around a doorway, one shot a guy, and then one shot the dudes who come over to see what happened. It's like Splinter Cell: Fantasy edition.
Fourth.

Spoiler

Werewolves

Fifth. Being sync-killed by a dragon. Latched onto my head, shook me around like a squeaky toy, and then flung me off a cliff.
Sixth. The multiple ways you get led to ....Bleakhaven Barrows? I've found the main way to get there, but also another side quest that leads there I only found because I exploring a town. They both make sense. Actually, the quests are just sooo much better now.
Seventh. Art design. Characters look awesome. Armor looks awesome. Everything just looks awesome, and I'm only running it at Oblivion graphics levels.

[DeafMute]

@Starvlade.
I think how the games system works is the further u lvlv up the more content becomes open.
This also includes ore.

Im lvl 13 atm and only recently was I able to purchase orichalcum ignots from the 2 blacksmiths I frequent.
1st being the first village u come across then the 2nd small city place.

Blacksmither for both under the misc section when purchasing from them.
That and I wouldnt rely on mining ores to lvl up smithing.
Mining to me in Skyrim is the smallest of bonuses during inbetween dungeon combat sessions.
Youll gain most of it during trades.

Killed 2 dragons.
have the force push starter and a lined fire breath push out.

[Brenil]

I love how the Dunmer look. They really have the downtrodden look of a people who were shat on by fate, the gods, the beastfolk, and everything inbetween. The story from Oblivion to Skyrim is really great and changes the universe nicely. I do hope they have some sort of Dunmer Enclave or add Solsteim (the last Dunmer stronghold, according to the lore) as DLC or an expansion pack. Right now I'm roaming around towns looking for my lost kinsmen. The only Dunmer I've run into so far was that rat bastard Alvren or whatever who tried to run off with the Golden Claw. Not the best reunion when he had his head bashed in by a Draugr as I was chasing him down.

[CommissarRezail]

Oh man Skyrim looks like awesome, first thing i'm going to be is a fast ninja killer assiassn guy of doom.

[Pocktio]

There's a fair few around. The housecarl of the Jarl of Whiterun is Dunmer. There's also a few running the Riften meadery. Plenty inbetween.

I've been killing them as I go, there's no room in this world for those who look different to me.

Levelling up smithing is taking a while, is there a trainer I can pour money into?

[DeafMute]

@CommissarRezail
Thats how I started out playing but soon had to change to heavy armor.
Atm. Without being lucky in the gear department. You would be better off doing a standard yet stable starter build then expanding from there.
Straight up assassin type will have you dead more times then you should be.
Im talking strickly melee type.

Havnt tried the bow but others have said the bows great.
Could work for you afterall.

[DoomKnights]

Still no one having issues with the double fist summon spells? Bah.

Can't wait to play this. Marriage Anvs today so that goes totally out the window.=\

[Pocktio]

I find the bow incredibly useful even without perks. I am contemplating sinking points into it, though I am trying to save myself and focus on only a few trees...

So far lots into 2H, then armour. Lockpicking has some nice 50 skill perks which I am gonna grab, increased gold and chance to find phat lewtz is too tempting for a pack rat like me. Small investment in restoration too. Where else have I dumped points....

Could probably afford some points in archery but I dunno. I regularly save perk points till I have the required skill level.

[CommissarRezail]

Well yeah, bow plus assassin = good times, in Eldar Scrolls i was able to knock back trolls with the bow XD.

[Starblade]

I think how the games system works is the further u lvlv up the more content becomes open.
This also includes ore.

Oh, I thought you were mining it.

By the way this game's physics are hilarious. Shoot an ice blast at a guy and watch the body fly!

[Ewokz]

Any know where I should store my goodies? I'm too poor for a house and the dragon bones and scales of 3 dead dragons are seriously weighing me down.

[DeafMute]

what about the starter village? same house with the guy u escaped with. within the house I just drop w/e I dont need in the chest at the end of the bed.

[Jianaran]

So I'm playing as a stereotypical High Elf, sneaking around and one-shotting everything with stealth longbow shots. And all was going well until I found a coven of vampires, and was midway through killing them all when NO JIANARAN, YOU ARE THE VAMPIRES and so now I'm completely combat ineffective during the day (although pretty awesome at night).

This game is great

[Rincewind]

If you're going for a stealthy character, I recommend doing the very easy Dark Brotherhood initiation ASAP, maybe even before you go to the Jarl. You get a full set of light armor that gives you huge bonuses, including silent running, making life soooo much easier before you get that pesky perk.

[Maktaka]

How are people leveling up their pickpocket skill? I tried sniffing through the pockets of the starting townsfolk, but they would regularly catch me stealing mere housekeys and then generally won't back down from attacking even though my weapons are sheathed. That blacksmith hits like a mother. I was just figuring I'd pay some bounties to clear my name while I work at the skill a bit, but there aren't any guards to pay the bounties to.

[konfeta]

Pickpocket only when unseen, check at the trader regularly for a +15% pickpocket amulet, level up the skill a bit by pocketing the highest % success items.

[Akranadas]

Wheres the Dark Brotherhood?

[yetanotherplayer]

If it's at all like Oblivion they find you when you rest in a bed after you kill an innocent.