Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Sheepherder]

Right but you can't kill Grelod undetected due to the old lady banshee wail?

[Sheepherder]

Incidentally, if you do that while stealthed Constance still freaks out.  Checks using the console (IsFleeing and GetDetected) reveal that she starts fleeing before she is aware you're there.

Q: If an old hag falls in the forest outside of Solitude in valiant combat with an Ancient Dragon does she make a sound?
A: Yes, and Constance can hear it.

[Ironwood]

 

[Sheepherder]

I'm trying to get screenshots of a dragon performing a kill animation on her, but she seems remarkably unwilling to close to melee with a dragon even with her confidence stat boosted to 4.  So most of the screenshots are her dying in a stream of dragon fire.

Oh, and after the dragon ruins her day you can travel the length of Skyrim, walk into Honorhall, and be greeted by Constance freaking the fuck out.  I tried checking if she starts fleeing right after the dragon finishes with Grelod, but the pointer returns null.  This might take some doing.

[koro]

So I started (another) new game with a new character, this time going the Two-Handed route. I'm sort of seeing where Sinij was coming from with the difficulty, even though I'm only on Expert and I've done pretty much every other character style on Expert with no real problems. I've been having a lot of problems with just normal everyday bandits, mainly due to my controls being oddly sluggish. My weapon will sometimes just stop responding to left-clicks and not swing for a second or two, and frequently blocking doesn't want to kick in. I have no idea what the deal is.

[Ingmar]

Are you sure you aren't accidentally playing Witcher 2? 

[koro]

No, even if my thief does use Triss's armor.

Edit: Go go Radiant quests. First mission my new warrior's sent on for the Companions? Clear out Shimmermist Cave. At level 3. 

[Sheepherder]

Is your mouse dying?  Are you using a dual monitor?  Got any mods running?

[koro]

No, no, and very few. No graphical mods. I get a pretty steady 40+ FPS.

[Sheepherder]

What mods are you running?

Oh, and back when I was screwing around with Grelod and Constance the pointer wasn't null, it just doesn't like leading zeroes.  Turns out the "go apeshit" AI package is enabled even if a dragon kills Grelod on the other side of the world, though IsFleeing still returns zero.  Fucking Bethesda.

[Ingmar]

Yeah, how dare they fail to anticipate that you would want to do something silly with the editor for no reason.

[koro]

What mods are you running?

A single armor model replacer (for the Dark Brotherhood armor for females), two extra smithing mods (Weapons of the Third Era and Lost Art of the Blacksmith), SkyUI, a mod that tweaks a couple magical skills' perk trees, and a mod that lets me convert dragon souls into extra perk points.

But I've had the non-responsive mouse clicks problem before I ever modded the game, and have talked with people who've had it as well. It also persists regardless of game settings, and Skyrim is the only game that has this problem.

[UnSub]

Skyrim's quest dialogue (in "A Night To Remember") has informed me that my lizardwoman is a lesbian (her fiancée was female, if I caught the dialogue correctly). Well, there you go.  

[Sheepherder]

Yeah, how dare they fail to anticipate that you would want to do something silly with the editor console for no reason.

Or, you know, saw off her head so she can't scream.  Or kill her when she's outside and Constance isn't around.  You know, basic Dark Brotherhood stuff.

I think I'll go back to an old save and try slipping a frenzy potion into her pocket next.  I wonder if she'll try beating the kids or go straight for Constance, whether Constance will try to flee outside, and whether the guards will get there in time.  The suspense!

[Sheepherder]

Koro, what do you have connected to your computer as far as USB devices?  As far as I'm aware the only problem with the mouse is due to V-Sync, but if you computer is detecting something as an input device it might default to that rather than your mouse.  Or you could have an USB port going, I used to run my mouse through a set of ports on my monitor until they crapped out, which caused intermittent button/movement issues.

EDIT: Again, I wish they'd release the construction kit soon.  There's only so much fun and/or fun facilitating shit you can do with the console.

EDIT2: Sinij was talking out his ass.  As far as I can determine NPC's aren't capable of critical strikes whatsoever (fucking with the console they don't seem to take perks), and regardless the damage bonus is something like 33-50% of the weapon's base damage (not skill modified).  My warrior unstealthed standing power attacks for north of 1000 damage and my crits are worth an extra 22.5.

Also, protip: ignore the sword/axe/mace weapons specialties through the trees.  They're pretty terrible most of the time.  Probably the bow critical strike one as well, though you need one point as a prerequisite.

EDIT3: The dual-wield and generic "increases damage by x%" perks are genuinely good, as near as I can make out.

Anyone using two-handers should abuse the hell out of the weapons reach to step out of incoming attacks, then step forward and drop a big fucking power attack on their head (if you have the stamina for one).  Don't get mobbed, it's fucking death, terrain and crowd control are your friends.  If you must, just go all out back-to-back power attacks and chugging stam potions to drop a fucker or two fast so you can resume the kiting technique.

[koro]

Koro, what do you have connected to your computer as far as USB devices?

Headset, mouse, keyboard. Skyrim is literally the only program I have on my PC that is sometimes failing to register mouse clicks.

And I'm aware of the crappiness of the axe/mace/sword perks. Things have gotten a bit better now that I have a couple more levels and I powered my Block and Light Armor up a tad. Once I can get Restoration to 40 for the Stamina restoration perk, things'll go a lot smoother.

[Rendakor]

Has there been any word on when the DLC for this is going to start to drop?

[Tebonas]

Even more content for Skyrim and I'll have to become a professional Skyrim player! 

[Rendakor]

Well I finished the main story, the guilds that made sense for my character, and finished up all the side quests that I ran into. I could roll an alt (and did for a while, but lost interest) but I'd really just like more stuff to do with my main.

[Tebonas]

My main is a Paladin who was ostracized for a little mistake, driven underground by a misunderstanding and then ultimately corrupted by Daedra lords. As soon as every Daedra has his hooks in him he will be corrupted enough for the Dark Brotherhood quests.

Yes, I didn't wan to restart either. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

I keep saying if you just playthrough the game in it's entirety you will be some sort of demi-god evil deity yourself for how much "evil quests" there are to do.  I'm actually attempting a 100% completion playthrough on my warrior/mage/thief/everything char and I think I'm the champion of at least four evil gods thus far and my companion is the head cannibal of one of their cults.

[Tebonas]

The DLC that I really want is the "What happens after I die" story. So far I have eternally pledged myself to three gods. I guess they will have to fight it out for my soul or something.

[koro]

272 hours spread over six characters. I really need to find something else to do.

[UnSub]

No dates on the DLC yet, with Bethseda saying they will be "meaty".

[Sheepherder]

Headset, mouse, keyboard. Skyrim is literally the only program I have on my PC that is sometimes failing to register mouse clicks.

And I'm aware of the crappiness of the axe/mace/sword perks. Things have gotten a bit better now that I have a couple more levels and I powered my Block and Light Armor up a tad. Once I can get Restoration to 40 for the Stamina restoration perk, things'll go a lot smoother.

Hmm.  Now that I think of it, I've had troubles getting shouts to fire before, but never melee attacks.  /shrug

The DLC that I really want is the "What happens after I die" story. So far I have eternally pledged myself to three gods. I guess they will have to fight it out for my soul or something.

Maybe you'll just give each of them a dragon soul and tell them to be pleased with what they get, lest you decide to contest the matter.

[K9]

I think the only logical way to play this game is as a murderous bastard.

My playthrough with my mage character has finally overtaken my first character (stealth archer) and it's pretty fun. The wall of destruction spells are fun because they don't hurt your pets or followers, so you can pull things into a hallway and fill it with fire and ice while Lydia does her tanky work. I am wishing they had been willling to put some of the fun perks with general use (such as the silent cast ability in the illusion tree, or the carry weight ability in the pickpocketing tree) a bit lower down so you had an incentive to broaden your specialisation. But that's a minor gripe.

[Sheepherder]

Incidentally, I think the first thing I do with the editor is removing/lowering the skill level requirements on perks.  Because you should get the paralyze power attack before it becomes possible to two-shot almost every enemy in the game.

[koro]

Bethsoft also posted an update on patch 1.4 and the Creation Kit. The latter is almost ready, and the former supposedly finally fixes the PS3 performance issues. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.

[Hawkbit]

I've had some clearing in my schedule, so I've been dumping some time in this game.  Part of me actually wants the world bigger, maybe with more space between everything.  But damn, they put together one large game regardless.  I played for two hours, just travelling from one city to another, still haven't seen 90% of the game. 

I had a random necromancer battle, after I killed him I found all these ash piles from before I found him.  Upon searching him, the only thing they had were chicken breasts.  So random necromancer was out killing 12+ chickens??  wtf.

[Rendakor]

Ash piles are usually indicative of raised undead; he was probably grinding up his conjuration. 

[Tannhauser]

With a couple of mods, I'm having a lot more fun in Skyrim.  Still quite satisfying to snipe enemies.  Plus, I had ebony drops last night for the first time but I couldn't carry them. :(  Just a great dungeon crawler and it will tide me over at least to Amalur and probably beyond. 

[Ironwood]

Um.

Ok.

I'll bite.  Which Mods ?

[Hawkbit]

Creation kit is being released very soon; its supposed to have a built in mod-loader that is going to make it easy to install/uninstall mods.  I think they were aiming for it being added in 1.4, which should release this week or next. 

I expect clownshoes from it, but if it works as they want, should be pretty nice.

[Sheepherder]

You can download the 1.4 Beta right now.  Official version should be today or tomorrow.

[HaemishM]

Um.

Ok.

I'll bite.  Which Mods ?

SkyUI is a pretty goddamn nice one. It takes the console UI for the inventory and makes it into one that makes sense on a PC with a mouse, adding categorization and filtering to the menu. There's a few I'm using for HD textures, better faces and a realistic world map with actual fucking roads on the thing instead of a jumble of cloud-covered icons.