Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[bhodi]

Dumb question from a person who is dumb:  if I download this via steam, is it still easy to mod later?  Or does steam try to ruin your fun?

Just as easy to mod. The thing you have to watch out for is that it doesn't auto-patch. Disable patching in the game options from within steam and you're all good. You'll have to reinstall mods once you patch the game, but you'd have to do that without steam anyway.

[Cyrrex]

Awesome, thanks!

[Quinton]

My understanding of the way level scaling works in Skyrim (based on some little quoted snippets from the developers and observation of stuff in-game) is that:
- dungeons and encounters have a base level of sorts
- that's modulated a bit by your level when you first encounter them (as someone points out earlier, there's a dungeon encounter with a bunch of draugr that includes a skeletal undead dragon if you're big enough -- the undead dragon was fun)
- once you visit a dungeon, the difficulty is "locked" to the level it adjusted to when you encountered it (so if it's hard, you can go level up / adventure elsewhere and return later better equipped to handle it)

It seems like small-fry encounters like bandits don't scale as much (I now encounter bandits that I'm much more powerful than), but major dungeons have a bit more flex difficulty-scale-wise so that they're not too easy.

[NowhereMan]

As a for instance, a little while after getting out of the tutorial dungeon I chased a deer down to kill it and ended up chasing it back to Helgen. It was kind of creepy being back in the abandoned, burned out town. Now at lvl 15 I went back and the town had a small group of bandits living in it. I felt obligated to clear it out, y'know, out of respect.

[KallDrexx]

Image (stolen from Ars Technica's Skyrim article ) comparing Skyrim's interface to Morrowinds

[NiX]

Vampires do not burn in daylight in Skyrim; I know because I had a quest to go kill one. Normally for assassinations I wait until nightfall then murder them while they sleep, so for Mr Bloodsucker I made my way to his house and waited until noon. I started to sneak up when I saw him out, chopping wood in broad daylight. 

Really? I did a quest involving one and she would sleep during the day. Weird.

[NowhereMan]

On the topic of UI: I've given up on my normal ESDF button config and gone back to WASD simply because too many things simply didn't work. Moving most of the buttons over one meant I couldn't drop items from the inventory screen or put them in chests, the movement buttons also seem to randomly stay the same or match up to the remapped character movements in different parts of the UI. This is without even going into the early 2000 assholery of not remapping the instruction buttons at the bottom to match the remapped ones. I can understand why they went with the UI system they did, I don't think it was a good choice but it was clearly aimed at console players and done somewhat poorly in an effort to look good. Why the fuck they included the ability to remap keys without seeming to have actually tested the effects of it is a little confusing though.

[NiX]

So before I gain too much light armor xp how much of an impact does heavy armor have on sneak?  A few people have said there is no good reason to go light...

So, can anyone confirm if I can wear Dwarven armor and sneak without giant repercussions?

[Ingmar]

Vampires do not burn in daylight in Skyrim; I know because I had a quest to go kill one. Normally for assassinations I wait until nightfall then murder them while they sleep, so for Mr Bloodsucker I made my way to his house and waited until noon. I started to sneak up when I saw him out, chopping wood in broad daylight. 

They do get debuffed in some way though - max health decrease maybe? Also if you haven't fed in a while you become really obvious looking and people try to kill you.

[Pezzle]

I think you get - stamina and health, yes

[Paelos]

Image (stolen from Ars Technica's Skyrim article ) comparing Skyrim's interface to Morrowinds

Yep, this is exactly what I anticipated. Although comparing a shitty UI to a shittier UI isn't exactly great. You know why the paper doll is so effective, Elder Scrolls? Because it lets people know WTF is going on with their character, and they don't accidentally sell all their shit. It's something that almost every other successful RPG game in history has seemed to grasp except you, which just makes you ridiculous for wanting to be a unique snowflake on the issue.

Why the fuck would I want to zoom in on a carrot btw? That's a feature? Is it impossible for this multimillion dollar company to actually look at some of the mods for UI their users have made and maybe hire one of those guys?

[bhodi]

So before I gain too much light armor xp how much of an impact does heavy armor have on sneak?  A few people have said there is no good reason to go light...

So, can anyone confirm if I can wear Dwarven armor and sneak without giant repercussions?

If you have sneak 60+, you can sneak around in whatever armor you like. The chief problem is that armor makes "Noise" while you're moving, so you can cast Muffle, get the talent/perk to be silent, or just have moar stealth. Or walk using shift.

[Xilren's Twin]

Just found a spell to transmute iron ore to silver ore, and silver ore to gold.
Cha-ching!  Gold plated toliets here i come!

[Riggswolfe]

According to this, if you're playing with mouse/keyboard and disable Xbox controller in the options, you get a significant performance boost.

What? Is this the case even when you haven't got a 360 controller connected to the PC, or is it just if it is connected?

Read the thread. It's on by default as it was built with the 360 in mind. Switching it off if you're not using a 360 controller is said to improve frame rate significantly.

All I can say is this: That one simple change made it much easier to go through my perks menu and I no longer selected the same dialogue 15X while trying to select the one above or below it. Awesome find!

[NiX]

If you have sneak 60+, you can sneak around in whatever armor you like. The chief problem is that armor makes "Noise" while you're moving, so you can cast Muffle, get the talent/perk to be silent, or just have moar stealth. Or walk using shift.

So I can just wear my dark brotherhood boots with the rest being dwarven and be fine. Sweet!

[caladein]

Why the fuck would I want to zoom in on a carrot btw? That's a feature?

Moving an item around to look for special markings is used in a couple of quests.  Also, they could have picked a spell with a less obvious effect than Muffle, just look at your feet, like minute-duration potions which are pretty tedious.  (A recurring theme with those.)

Really, the ten-foot style of the interface works well in magic and inventory I think whereas it completely falls apart in dialogue and on the perk screen.  Some extra sorting options would be nice, but I pretty comfortably live out of my favorites menu.

[Sky]

Last night I did a bit of the rebellion quest line, but I also spent about an hour just hopping around in the extreme north killing bear, wolves and walrii and mining quite a bit of ore. I saw a bunch of cool little areas I want to go back and explore, this game is just so chock full of distractions it's boggling.

[Kitsune]

Vampirism is on a sliding scale in these games, the longer you go without blood the worse you're affected by daylight and fire and the stronger you get.  So it's possible to be a vampire and sunbathe as long as you make sure to nip into someone's house for a drink that night.

[kaid]

Image (stolen from Ars Technica's Skyrim article ) comparing Skyrim's interface to Morrowinds

Yep, this is exactly what I anticipated. Although comparing a shitty UI to a shittier UI isn't exactly great. You know why the paper doll is so effective, Elder Scrolls? Because it lets people know WTF is going on with their character, and they don't accidentally sell all their shit. It's something that almost every other successful RPG game in history has seemed to grasp except you, which just makes you ridiculous for wanting to be a unique snowflake on the issue.

Why the fuck would I want to zoom in on a carrot btw? That's a feature? Is it impossible for this multimillion dollar company to actually look at some of the mods for UI their users have made and maybe hire one of those guys?

Well you may not want to zoom in on a carrot but I have already had a key item that if you zoom in you can see the symbols that are needed to unlock a door so the feature is used.

[Ingmar]

Plus this will make it easier for someone to clone Ace Attorney Investigations in the engine. 

[NowhereMan]

Well you may not want to zoom in on a carrot but I have already had a key item that if you zoom in you can see the symbols that are needed to unlock a door so the feature is used.

It doesn't do much to dispel the main complaint though. Those quests feel pretty clearly intended to be there as a reason for having the feature and frankly they could have had a 'Zoom in to check out our awesome models!' option without making it the default that the model takes up half your screen at a time.

Also having chests and other storage devices only sort objects alphabetically almost feels like a fuck you to pack rat types that like holding on to bits and pieces. When it takes 10 seconds to scroll down to collect the steel ingots I've been storing in my chest I start to feel pissed off. The game is amazing and I reckon I've got days (as in sets of 24 hours rather than just till the end of the week) worth of playing it left before I want to take a break but goddamn does this UI act like a constant irritation every time I need to do something that isn't cleaving a dragon's head from its neck. The fact that neither I nor the UI can seem to make up our minds about whether I should be selecting things with the mouse or keyboard buttons doesn't help. "I know I've left the cursor hover somewhere near the dialogue selections but I started scrolling with the keyboard. Why when I hit use do you assume I mean the one the cursor seems to be vaguely closest to if you squint and maybe assume I was going to continue moving it around a bit?"

I know it sounds like the UI is the worst thing in the world but I think the biggest reason it's really, really irritating isn't just because it's bad but because it feels like it's getting in the way of an awesome, awesome game. Some small part of me just feels like Skyrim is something that could be improved by just doing away with the UI for everything except the settings menu. It'd diminish it a lot but at least I wouldn't feel like I was fighting with it every time someone spoke to me or I wanted to pick up a carrot. Alternatively someone mods in a few basic fixes (get rid of the models by default, adds extra columns with icons, sets lists to fill columns by default and makes the skills tree another column style page) then I'll be happier about it.

[Ironwood]

I didn't today.  Didn't get time.

Still want to.  You chaps haven't posted enough show stopping bugs yet.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I didn't today.  Didn't get time.

Still want to.  You chaps haven't posted enough show stopping bugs yet.

I thought I ran into a severe bug when my bow stopped being magical but I didn't realize you have to recharge magic weapons.

[Kitsune]

I thought I ran into a severe bug when my bow stopped being magical but I didn't realize you have to recharge magic weapons.

Magic clothes are permanent, magic weapons are charged and need to be fed soul stones.

[kildorn]

I didn't today.  Didn't get time.

Still want to.  You chaps haven't posted enough show stopping bugs yet.

I have a quest chain I can never complete because I'm told to return to dude. Dude has obviously been murdered as part of the quest plot (his corpse and the cops are there), but the lead cop just asks me about joining the Legion instead of whatever he's supposed to be talking to me about <3

[AcidCat]

Playing on the 360 I have no problems with the UI other than I do miss the paper doll, I really can't understand why it wasn't included.

[stray]

Getting a little annoyed at the usual Bethesda stable of three voice actors for the entire game. Surely they could have found more than one out of work Swedish actor?

Heh. Maybe it's a small stable of actors who only get work in RPGs.

I noticed some random guy chopping wood was Fenris, from Dragon Age II. Except he wasn't an elf. He was a lumberjack.

werewolf is freaking awesome!

I barely used it myself. I just finished the quest line that cured Kodlak, and I decided to cure myself while I was there. I was hoping that I could cure all of the Companions, but I don't seem to have the option. I was thinking of romancing Aela the Huntress (so far, the best npc for my warrior I've found... she keeps her distance), but that's just bad roleplaying. I can't sleep with some stinkin' werewolf.

Also, is there a way that I can make Lydia my sex slave?

[CmdrSlack]

I am torn here.

My PC will run this game, but my monitor is very small compared to my TV. If I get it for the XBox, I can never run mods. If I invest in a wireless mouse and keyboard, I can treat myself to hassle whenever I want to move the PC across the room and connect it to the TV.

I suspect that I will end up waiting for it to come to my house via Gamefly and get it for the XBox.

[Ironwood]

Playing on the 360 I have no problems with the UI other than I do miss the paper doll, I really can't understand why it wasn't included.

Wait, no paper doll at all ?  Not even a piccie ?

[Bunk]

Also, is there a way that I can make Lydia my sex slave?

Not sure. I'll ask Molag Bal once I'm finished running his errands. That seems to be up his alley.

[Nija]

I am torn here.

My PC will run this game, but my monitor is very small compared to my TV. If I get it for the XBox, I can never run mods. If I invest in a wireless mouse and keyboard, I can treat myself to hassle whenever I want to move the PC across the room and connect it to the TV.

I suspect that I will end up waiting for it to come to my house via Gamefly and get it for the XBox.

Get a long HDMI cable from monoprice. Get a long TOSLINK cable as well just in case HDMI audio doesn't work. Get an xbox360 wireless receiver for PC.

[Zar]

To those asking about console vs. PC, I eventually got it for PS3 after ascertaining that it would not run acceptably on my aging PC (*cough* bittorent *cough*).  As others have said, the UI makes perfect logical sense on consoles.  I've also experienced no crashes or other bugs that I can detect.  It's also pretty glorious playing it on my big screen TV (yes, yes, I know about hooking a computer up to the TV, but this is a lot easier for that).

As for modding, I never did any modding with any of the previous TES games, so I figure I can get by without it here.  That being said, I may very well buy it for PC once I get a new rig that will run it.  I can wait for some $10 Steam sale and then install all the mods I want from what should at that time be a mature modding community.

[CmdrSlack]

It would have to be a long-ass blue-plug monitor cable because my card has that, DVI and S-Video as outputs. My TV has a monitor jack w/ a separate jack for PC sound (minijack....fancy!).

The more I think about this, the more it sounds like an XBox purchase. I guess we'll see if I get a bigger monitor for Xmas.


Edit -- I think perhaps I'm going with Zar on this one.

[NiX]

You'd be surprised how much you start playing on your computer once it's hooked up to a TV or, in my case, to a home theatre system.

[stray]

I'm playing on xbox as well. No complaints really. I'm sure it'd look awesome on PC, but it isn't worth the upgrade (to me at least).