Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[caladein]

Anyone else have high Smithing? I'm almost high enough to make Glass stuff, and I'd like to know what the materials are in advance so I can start stocking up from the vendors now.

Wiki says: Refined Malachite, Refined Moonstone, and Leather.

That said, I don't remember Elven stuff requiring Quicksilver which it lists on that page so take it with a grain of salt.

[Tannhauser]

Such a lovely quest....

[Lakov_Sanite]

Anyone else have high Smithing? I'm almost high enough to make Glass stuff, and I'd like to know what the materials are in advance so I can start stocking up from the vendors now.

Wiki says: Refined Malachite, Refined Moonstone, and Leather.

That said, I don't remember Elven stuff requiring Quicksilver which it lists on that page so take it with a grain of salt.

Most of the weapons require quicksilver.

[Quinton]

1. unlock cell (lockpicking++)
2. realize prisoner is a vampire (oops)
3. vampire dashes off distracting mages (bonus!)
4. set mages on fire while distracted by vampire (who dies)
5. loot vampire corpse for vampire dust (profit)

I love this game

[tgr]

You forgot to eat vampire dust.

[ghost]

The combat seems a little clumsy so far, but I'm not that far into it.  Does this improve?

[Draegan]

Im having trouble switching between spells.  Is there a faster way other than tinkering with the menu?

Also... I played 18 hours befor :oh_i_see:e discovering you can fast travel.   

[Rendakor]

You can set the spells as favorites, then when you open up the favorites menu you can bind them to numerical hotkeys. It's slightly less clunky than navigating the menu every time.

Edit:

Wiki says: Refined Malachite, Refined Moonstone, and Leather.

That said, I don't remember Elven stuff requiring Quicksilver which it lists on that page so take it with a grain of salt.

Thanks!

[Tannhauser]

For you mages, if you select a hotkey twice, the spell bound to it will go to both hands.

[Draegan]

Oooh I didnt know you could hotkey favs.  That makes my dual wielding conjuring mage easier.

[Sky]

Taking a nice stroll along a beach, big shadow passes over me. Before I can wtf, gout of flame lights me up. Lacking much in the way of ranged dps, I shout to interrupt the dragon's flame, he circles over the cliffs behind me. Repeat this a couple times, the third time he doesn't come back. I hear shouting, so I scale the rocks (climbing could use some help), dragon is swooping in on a necromancer. I resume the fight and the necro turns on me, so now I'm battling a dragon and a few undead. Eventually won but it was hairy. One of the better fights thus far, with use of the terrain, the two AI playing off each other and me, and several types of magic flying while I chop and bash.

[Quinton]

The random dragon encounters are kinda crazy.  It's like the land is infested with 'em!

[sinij]

Picked up a box today...

Mouse moves like through molasses, and I couldn't find a way to increase sensitivity.
Textures flicker all over place.

Overall - 10 minutes into the game and I am already annoyed.

[MuffinMan]

Taking a nice stroll along a beach, big shadow passes over me. Before I can wtf, gout of flame lights me up. Lacking much in the way of ranged dps, I shout to interrupt the dragon's flame, he circles over the cliffs behind me. Repeat this a couple times, the third time he doesn't come back. I hear shouting, so I scale the rocks (climbing could use some help), dragon is swooping in on a necromancer. I resume the fight and the necro turns on me, so now I'm battling a dragon and a few undead. Eventually won but it was hairy. One of the better fights thus far, with use of the terrain, the two AI playing off each other and me, and several types of magic flying while I chop and bash.

A couple more stories like this and I may be sold.

[Lucas]

So, first mods I've been using:

Enhanced Night Skyrim (made by the same guy who did it for Oblivion) :
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=85

Alternate Skyrim Cursors (menu cursors, not the crosshair. I'm using the one with the "embedded" time):
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=80

Main Font Replacement (using Centaur, no probs so far) :
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=95

Looks like Darn (Darnified UI for Oblivion and Fallout) is also back in action in the ES modding community for Skyrim. Good news :)

Finally, beside the usual INI tweaking fest, I'm finding that using FXAA (for Nvidia users who can enable it) with MSAA 4x is a more than acceptable compromise when it comes to visual quality if you don't want to go all out on 8x or 16X full AA. Don't know my exact FPS, but it's very smooth :)

My rig:
i7 920
6 GB RAM
Nvidia GTX 560
Win7 Home Premium SP 1

[tgr]

Picked up a box today...

And you're not in a frothy mess over the fact it's a steamworks game?

[Sky]

Overall - 10 minutes into the game and I am already annoyed.

You don't say. Shocking!

Lucas, I'm running at pretty much max settings on my i5-2500K/8GB 1600/GTX 460 1GB SLI I recently built. Only thing is at 1080p I don't see much need for serious AA, so I use 2x AA without FXAA (which I heard degrades the image slightly?). Everything but AA is at max settings and it looks amazing, runs smooth as silk. I was running lower settings before the SLI profile came out, but now it's awesome.

[Lucas]

Overall - 10 minutes into the game and I am already annoyed.

You don't say. Shocking!

Lucas, I'm running at pretty much max settings on my i5-2500K/8GB 1600/GTX 460 1GB SLI I recently built. Only thing is at 1080p I don't see much need for serious AA, so I use 2x AA without FXAA (which I heard degrades the image slightly?). Everything but AA is at max settings and it looks amazing, runs smooth as silk. I was running lower settings before the SLI profile came out, but now it's awesome.

Always forcing (or setting it in-game when possible) anti-aliasing is probably just a personal mania :D : in the previous post, I forgot to mention that I play it on a 24" monitor at 1920x1200. 

Yes, you can often read that FXAA makes everything blurrier, but personally I don't agree: If anything, I find the graphics more colourful and kinda glossy but in a positive way.

[tgr]

Personally I've switched AA off. at 2560x1600, I find I don't really need it, and all it does is slow things down. I have to say the most annoying things about the game so far is

1) the god damn UI. Who the fuck thought a PC-optimized UI wouldn't be beneficial?
2) whenever the FPS drops from 60 to 30, the mouse starts to lag. I could fix this by switching vsync off, but god damn I'd hate me some tearing
3) I always seem to "slide" off of places too tall to jump on to. vOv

Apart from that, I've begun to get good at sneaking and using the bow, and people seem to be dropping with one arrow now due the to 2x sneak attack bonus, but it's still hilarious to see people with 2 or more arrows in the face still walking around and fighting. Hardy people, these skyrimmers.

[Quinton]

Enjoyable story (with pictures) of life in Skyrim: http://imgur.com/a/IOuhL

[koro]

Personally I've switched AA off. at 2560x1600, I find I don't really need it, and all it does is slow things down. I have to say the most annoying things about the game so far is

1) the god damn UI. Who the fuck thought a PC-optimized UI wouldn't be beneficial?
2) whenever the FPS drops from 60 to 30, the mouse starts to lag. I could fix this by switching vsync off, but god damn I'd hate me some tearing
3) I always seem to "slide" off of places too tall to jump on to. vOv

Apart from that, I've begun to get good at sneaking and using the bow, and people seem to be dropping with one arrow now due the to 2x sneak attack bonus, but it's still hilarious to see people with 2 or more arrows in the face still walking around and fighting. Hardy people, these skyrimmers.

1. Made worse by Bethsoft's pre-release promises of a UI specifically tailored to the PC version.
2. I have vsync off, and I've noticed no tearing whatsoever.
3. Engine issue.  

So is it just me, or do skills seem useless aside from being what determines when you level up, and for gating perk unlocks? I'm sitting at nearly 50 Destruction at 14 (which, coming from playing TES games for ages, seems like a pathetic level for my primary damage at this level) and from what I can tell, the skill itself does precisely jack squat. Aside from the UI, the pointless skills is my second biggest beef.

[Selby]

The good stories are seriously making me think about picking this up...

[tgr]

Yep. I almost lost a fight just now because the spectral thingy I was fighting blasted me with a dragonvoice thingy, so I dropped all my weapons, which of course screws up my hotkeys. And trying to get things to work had me scrambling between i and q while furiously healing.

They really haven't thought this UI thing through. Christ I hope there's some sort of UI mod that unfurls this fuckup.

[sinij]

Texture flickering appears to be well-known issue with AMD cards. I will wait for a couple days to see if a patch or new drivers will resolve this issue.

[Rendakor]

Yep. I almost lost a fight just now because the spectral thingy I was fighting blasted me with a dragonvoice thingy, so I dropped all my weapons, which of course screws up my hotkeys. And trying to get things to work had me scrambling between i and q while furiously healing.

They really haven't thought this UI thing through. Christ I hope there's some sort of UI mod that unfurls this fuckup.

Speaking of disarm, I had a similar encounter with someone using that shout. First he hit my minion with it so she just ran up and started boxing him...then he disarmed me as well, and my companion stole my goddamn weapon! Frantically, I pulled out a trash weapon I had looted earlier and barely managed to finish him off, then spent a few minutes wandering around aimlessly until I found my companion's original weapon. It was one of the more challenging non-dragon fights I've run into so far, and I thought it was pretty cool.

Regarding shouts, has anyone found a second word for any of the shouts yet? I've found several different abilities doing sidequests, but I've only got more than one word for the Unrelenting Force since you get those as part of the main story quest.

[Der Helm]

Mouse moves like through molasses, and I couldn't find a way to increase sensitivity.

I think it's under system settings, not under controls.

[tgr]

Speaking of disarm, I had a similar encounter with someone using that shout. First he hit my minion with it so she just ran up and started boxing him...then he disarmed me as well, and my companion stole my goddamn weapon! Frantically, I pulled out a trash weapon I had looted earlier and barely managed to finish him off, then spent a few minutes wandering around aimlessly until I found my companion's original weapon. It was one of the more challenging non-dragon fights I've run into so far, and I thought it was pretty cool.

Oh, make no mistake, the disarm thing itself was hilarious, I got the appropriate "oh shit" moment as I proceeded to just box him for a few seconds, before I managed to grab the weapon and continue fighting. I'm not bitching about that, what I am bitching about is how, if you're in item mode, you can't go to the favorites list and vice versa, and you can't assign them to a number. And when the weapons etc got knocked out of my hands, they also fell out of that list. Add to that the fact that there's at least half a second between exiting a mode before you can enter the next, and ... yeah. It's just not well thought through, which is weird considering how much thought they've spent on the world itself.

[Ruvaldt]

Regarding shouts, has anyone found a second word for any of the shouts yet? I've found several different abilities doing sidequests, but I've only got more than one word for the Unrelenting Force since you get those as part of the main story quest.

I haven't, but it seems that new shout words are most common at dragon lairs.  I've cleared out two dragon lairs and have found another shout word at both locations.  Now that I can take them down pretty reliably I'm about to go on a draconic killing spree.

[WayAbvPar]

OK, finally got through the first quest dungeon (Bleak whatever). I am completely hooked now. That really felt like a dungeon crawl! Very cool. Wish the client wasn't so goddamned crashy, however.

[sinij]

Mouse moves like through molasses, and I couldn't find a way to increase sensitivity.

I think it's under system settings, not under controls.

I had to google it, called look sensitivity and its under gameplay.

Game is still unplayable for me due to texture flickering.

[Ginaz]

So, 6+ hours in and I'm loving it, with a few caveats.  Game play I would rate a 9 or a 9.5/10 but the UI is VERY clunky and reeks of consolitis and I've also crashed a few times.  Fortunately, the game auto saves frequently and I didn't lose much progress.  Its an awesome rpg but its hindered by its console ported UI.

[Rendakor]

Finally joined the Dark Brotherhood; loving their quests so far.

[Miasma]

I swear I fight more with the UI than actual enemies, it's just terrible and really detracts from the game.  I don't know what kind of gibbering idiot designed this or how it got past any sort of review.

I am tempted to just go straight two handed warrior so that I can simply mash mouse1 repeatedly and I won't have to switch between gear, magic, abilities etc.

[Bann]

I've put pretty much my whole weekend into it. Hating my ability to not carry the entire world in my packs and the menus (especially when trying to randomly brew potions to discover all the ingredient effects.) Loving pretty much everything else. I sort of wish I hadn't gone with a sneaky archer as my 1st character. Killing anything without a ranged attack at level 1 with a bow and some funky terrain might be a little cheesy, but once you do it once or twice its hard to forget about when you stumble across a giant camp or whatever. Then once you get the triple damage on shots from stealth you pretty much turn into the predator.

As for the shout question posted above, I found a second word for my dash power. the word is force. I think it might knock people back or something. I've never used it that way though, so not quite sure. I just dash if the odd bear or whatnot blindsides me.

[Rendakor]

Triple sneak attack damage is nice, but I really like the 50% stagger. I'm really debating just doing EVERYTHING on this character, rather than leaving some content for a second playthrough, simply because there don't seem to be multiple story paths for many of the major quests.