Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Quinton]

Can I obtain the Riften house by cozying up with the Thieves Guild or do I need to impress the Jarl like elsewhere?

Now I wish I could rent out my other house! 

[rk47]

I gotta say though, as much as I initially liked the self-crafting content, I find it absurd that the tavern never sold ready to eat beef stew / well-cooked food.
And blacksmiths not being able to refine armor and enchanters mages not being able to enchant. Alchemy shops gets a free pass because high grade healing is available.

As for enchantment and smithing:
I do not like leveling from these crafting - and the sense of craft 40-50 daggers seems to be the only option to get further refinement in my gear. There should be alternative, a more expensive one but less time consuming. I should be able to pay shop owners to get my steel gear improved. Maybe different smiths have different competencies, I just don't want to grind my smithing skill up, earning the level up just to polish my sword.

Hopefully some modders will take note and fix this.

[lamaros]

I've got them both around 60 at the moment, and while I have made a few daggers (60? maybe) and enchanted (30?) them it hasn't really felt like a huge grind for me. I've been constantly upgrading my fighting daggers and bow as my skill and enchants have gotten better though.

There are some things around to make levelling these go a bit faster, but I would mention for spoiler reasons. I'm sure you can find them if you're inclined.

Re Riften House:

[vex]

Reading that write up it sounded pretty terrible. I guess I can give it a shot though since it's actually worth a damn. Fencing is such a chore in this game that it's made me avoid stealing.

Doing those special quests will also open up more fencing options.  There is also a separate miscellaneous quest that Tonilia gives you that will open more.  It's all very worth it.

[Amaron]

My current game actually feels a bit ruined thanks to enchanting.   It's horrible for pure mages until you get it to a really high level.  With anything less than 100 enchanting you basically can't outdo certain items thanks to the shitty way they did it.   So now I have this basically worthless skill that I can force myself to grind to 100 and essentially overlevel myself EVEN MORE or just let it sit there.   I was already forced to invest heavily in paying a trainer to level destruction just so I could use some of the perks I had sitting around.

[rk47]

I've got them both around 60 at the moment, and while I have made a few daggers (60? maybe) and enchanted (30?) them it hasn't really felt like a huge grind for me. I've been constantly upgrading my fighting daggers and bow as my skill and enchants have gotten better though.

There are some things around to make levelling these go a bit faster, but I would mention for spoiler reasons. I'm sure you can find them if you're inclined.

Re Riften House:

I don't want to level these up. I just wish the game gave me an option to utilize enchanting and smithing options by simply paying the respective business owners / craftsman to do what their profession is supposed to do. Because the notion of buying a basic sword and sharpening it myself seems a bit silly, why don't the smith do it instead?

[Ironwood]

Small thing I dug up looking at the Wiki.  I've spoiled it, in case anyone doesn't want to be tempted, but it seems awfully strong and overpowered.

 

That seems a little awesome.

[koro]

My current game actually feels a bit ruined thanks to enchanting.   It's horrible for pure mages until you get it to a really high level.  With anything less than 100 enchanting you basically can't outdo certain items thanks to the shitty way they did it.   So now I have this basically worthless skill that I can force myself to grind to 100 and essentially overlevel myself EVEN MORE or just let it sit there.   I was already forced to invest heavily in paying a trainer to level destruction just so I could use some of the perks I had sitting around.

Yeah, pretty much all the Magic perk trees are kind of poorly designed, even though Enchanting is probably the least bad of them since it provides some measure of convenience before 100 skill, letting you put half-decent enchants on your own stuff, instead of relying on luck of the RNG to find magic stuff that happens to be what you want.

The way I look at it, if a skill doesn't do enough on its own to justify taking it to 100 with zero perks invested in it - relying instead on needing to take perks to bring the skill up to some base level of functionality - then I feel either the skill or the tree for it is badly designed.

Small thing I dug up looking at the Wiki.  I've spoiled it, in case anyone doesn't want to be tempted, but it seems awfully strong and overpowered.

 

That seems a little awesome.

It is indeed awesome, but the problem is that at higher levels (30+) it becomes practically a requirement instead of a fun bonus if you are playing a pure mage who uses Destruction as his primary means of attack, due to the insane mana costs of spells at Expert and above combined with the ever-growing HP pools of enemies.

And yeah, it makes pretty much any fight utterly trivial. But it still doesn't hold a candle to what you can do to melee weapons and bows if you add in Smithing with the Enchanting.

[K9]

My firm conclusion after playing to level 32 is that trying to 'build' a character is mostly without merit in this game, you are far better off just playing however you see fit and let the skills come as you need. With only a few exceptions I have never found my gameplay impeded by a lack of a certain skill that I have needed to train up or powerlevel. Overall, I think this is a good thing.

Also, I think Lydia may be my favourite companion from any of Bethsoft's games. For a long time I thought her silent presence was judging me for all the terrible things I have done (murders, thefts, betrayals etc). Now I have decided that she just doesn't give a toss.

Level 32, feeling pretty mighty as a archer/DW 1H toon (yeah, I realise magic is a lot gimpier). What amazes me the most is that I still have around 40% of the map entirely unexplroed, and I haven't set foot in 2-3 of the major cities. Of the 60% I have explored I have probably only cleared about half the sites. This game is huge, and has a set of convincing narratives that keep you hooked in.

[caladein]

My firm conclusion after playing to level 32 is that trying to 'build' a character is mostly without merit in this game, you are far better off just playing however you see fit and let the skills come as you need.

The only thing you might want to plan out are your perks, especially if you'll be branching out into multiple areas.  But if you're playing on PC, you don't even need to worry about that much anyway.

[Tebonas]

All I want is a reset of my Perks to redistribute them. I feel really dumb having bought those two Haggling Perks now that I am swimming in money. 

[Ironwood]

Christ, you've been playing RPG's for how long ??

You KNOW you always end up swimming in bottle tops, no matter what.

It's like people who take the 'bigger inventory' knowing that, at the end of the game, they'll have a favourite weapon, armor and maybe a wee cuddly keepsake, like Dark Iron Baby Booties.

[Paelos]

Christ, you've been playing RPG's for how long ??

You KNOW you always end up swimming in bottle tops, no matter what.

It's like people who take the 'bigger inventory' knowing that, at the end of the game, they'll have a favourite weapon, armor and maybe a wee cuddly keepsake, like Dark Iron Baby Booties.

You can NEVER have too much inventory. To believe otherwise is folly.

[Yegolev]

It's like people who take the 'bigger inventory' knowing that, at the end of the game, they'll have a favourite weapon, armor and maybe a wee cuddly keepsake, like Dark Iron Baby Booties.

Hoarding.  It happens.  But you do have a strong point.

[K9]

My only regret is the 'get more arrows back from chaps you kill perk' but you have to take that one to get further up the tree.

[Tebonas]

Those problems are actually connected. I wanted the money for my first house FAST because my hoarder instincts drove me to fill up my inventory.

I always take bigger inventory as well. Yes I'm an RPG game hoarder.

I had about 1000 Stimpacks, 400 Weapon repair kits and over 100 Caravan lunches in Fallout at the end. I acknowledge it is a problem, but as long as I keep it contained to RPGs, I will be somewhat fine.

And yes, I'm oldschool enough to know better. Still, I had the same issue in Pool of Radiance. At the end I could have crushed every enemy by taking all my magic wands and dropping them on him from a great height.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I don't mind 100% free mana, at some point in these games you ARE supposed to be an unstoppable god of destruction.

[Sky]

YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU'LL NEED THAT STUFF

Hell, I've got a barrel in the Whiterun house that's just vendor stuff that the vendors can't afford yet. Like 40 suits of elven armor for starters. I've been getting ornery on the Thalmor bastards.

[Hawkbit]

I have not verified this to be true. 

Apparently the entire continent land mass is beyond the borders of Skyrim, albeit with significantly reduced textures and missing content.

http://ppsh-41.tumblr.com/post/13145143504/entire-tamriel-landmass-built-into-skyrim

[Bunk]

Thats pretty cool actually. It's not like putting the basic data for the land masses in there would take up noticable resources, so why not? In Oblivion you could clearly go beyond the boarders of the map with a simple cheat, and they had huge areas of unused land, but I have no idea if those areas corresponded to the lore the way this appears to.

I wish you guys hadn't posted those pictures, its far too tempting to try. Just have to decide what type of item and what to fill...

[Stormwaltz]

It looks to me like the old, low-res 3D landscape data from Morrowind and Oblivion. I'd be surprised if there "all of Tamriel" is actually there.

[koro]

Someone did a video flythrough of the unfinished landmasses. Apparently it all abruptly ends at certain points, like just east of Red Mountain and right at Wayrest in High Rock.

In other news, I just discovered that if you get the perk to do the Shatner roll while sneaking, you can do the roll automatically as long as you hold down the button if you have your weapon out.

I'm pretty much rolling along the wilderness like Toon Link.

[slog]

need moonrock.  much enhance elven armor and weapons...

[Sky]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQB4wkmKOv8

From:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-skyrim-timelapse-world-in-motion

I find it odd they found it unplayable at ultra/1080p on an i7/GTX 580...maybe the beta drivers are that good? I'm running ultra/1080p on an i5/GTX 460SLI. It amazes me that I'm level 31 or 32, 50+ hours into the game, and there are numerous major locations I haven't even been to, let alone explored. What they were able to do with that aging dx9 engine visually, the sheer amount of content and world detail....what the hell happened over at Bethsoft. The Elder Scrolls went from a decent but waning rpg franchise that arguably peaked over a decade ago to an amazing rpg experience that gives me so many 'this is the vibe I got playing AD&D in the 80s' moments.

Major kudos to Bethsoft. (But really, fix the LAA thing, shades of boot disks to work around 640k)

Updated favorite moment:

[tmp]

I find it odd they found it unplayable at ultra/1080p on an i7/GTX 580...maybe the beta drivers are that good?

Keep on mind thanks to the intrawebs hyperbole effect "unplayable" can vary from person to person so much it's quite meaningless -- it can well include "i'm getting less than 60fps" or "there's few miliseconds of delay between my input and the reaction in game".

[NiX]

They did say they were running SSAO and mods. It's possible they tweaked the INI entirely for visuals because they only needed a certain amount of frames per second.

[stray]

I don't know if I would have called Elder Scrolls "waning". It seemed extremely popular... (something I could never understand btw). I think Oblivion sold massive amounts too.

They've just stepped it up is all. Or learned some things. Either/or.

[MuffinMan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQB4wkmKOv8

This game sure is beautiful. When I left High Hrothgar and looked into the sky at the auroras I must have stood for 5 minutes just looking around.

[Rendakor]

I don't know if I would have called Elder Scrolls "waning". It seemed extremely popular... (something I could never understand btw). I think Oblivion sold massive amounts too.

They've just stepped it up is all. Or learned some things. Either/or.

Agreed. I had never played the first two, played a bit of Morrowind but liked Oblivion a good deal more. Skyrim is a still a big step up for me.

[MuffinMan]

Daggerfall is what turned me from a console gamer into PC. I put more hours into the demo that I got in PC Gamer magazine than I've put into most games. It felt like a century until Morrowind released.

[Sky]

I don't know if I would have called Elder Scrolls "waning". It seemed extremely popular... (something I could never understand btw). I think Oblivion sold massive amounts too.

They've just stepped it up is all. Or learned some things. Either/or.

Waning in quality, not sales. Independent factors.

They put a hard reverse on that trend. Clean up the UI and TESVI is going to be bonkers.

[stray]

I don't know if I would have called Elder Scrolls "waning". It seemed extremely popular... (something I could never understand btw). I think Oblivion sold massive amounts too.

They've just stepped it up is all. Or learned some things. Either/or.

Waning in quality, not sales. Independent factors.

They put a hard reverse on that trend. Clean up the UI and TESVI is going to be bonkers.

Fair enough.

I don't think they've made a hard reverse in quality though. More like, they've executed what it seems like they were aiming for all along. I mean, it still feels like Oblivion. Just better.

[Jimbo]

Hey what wiki site or spoiler site do you all use when stuck or lost?  I'm okay until I try and find some of the trainers I've been to, would be great if I could add notes to my map, like Whiterun has 1hand, alchemy, and smithing, and who teaches it, and where they are on the map.  I can't do a mod, since we bought it for xbox, may have to grab the book for the maps.

[Morfiend]

Sice we are now talking about the graphics. Does anyone have any ideas how I can fix my shadows? They will look fine for a bit, the they all like jitter and sort of vibrate for half a second. Its not bad from far away, but its sort of immersion breaking when it does it.

Currently running shadows on high with my nvidia 570. 4xAA and 4xAnistropic.

[tmp]

Does anyone have any ideas how I can fix my shadows? They will look fine for a bit, the they all like jitter and sort of vibrate for half a second.

Try to put

fSunShadowUpdateTime=0.0
fSunUpdateThreshold=1.0

in your skyrim.ini

The shimmer happens during the animated transition of the shadows, whenever the game recalculates them over time. These settings will cause the change to happen instantly, instead. It will cause visible jump, but that's easier to swallow/miss than the prolonged shimmer.