This game is so engrossing. I’m only dimly aware of the passage of time today.
I’m about level 12, but I haven’t spent any talent points so far. I don’t want to feel like I’ve wasted any, and there are so many “tax perks” (e.g. a perk that makes your potions stronger feels to me like “your potions will be weaker until you sink points into this perk”). What if I sink points into a skill I won’t use much later in the game? I’d better spend my points soon, though, because things are getting tougher. There I was wending my way up that big mountain, following the main plot, when I stumbled across and ice troll. I tried fighting it a couple times, but I was clearly outmatched. I guess that’s a good sign in terms of how level scaling works.
Q about the levelling system - have they fixed the odd design where having high toughness to start meant that you were always super-tough later, but that becoming super-tough didn’t work on levels earned previously, so you have fewer HP?
You mean how you gained one-tenth of your endurance score in health each level-up, with no retroactive benefit for increasing your endurance? Yeah, they changed that. Now you increase either your health, magicka, or endurance (a.k.a. fatigue) by a flat ten points when you gain a level.
Played my character for a few hours tonight. Much fun! I got my lightning in one hand and my fire in another and I blast away!
Did hit a bug though. I was fighting a giant spider and I hit some combination of keys that froze the top half of the screen and opened a console at the bottom. No matter what I typed I couldn’t exit the console so I ended the task. But my save was right before the spider so no harm
Also I am embarrassed to admit how long it took me to fix it so that the right mouse button controlled my right hand spell and the left hand button controlled the left because the default is the opposite. I understand why (so your swords and such are controlled with the left button) but when you’re a two-fisted bad-ass spell jockey it was little counter-intuitive so I swapped it.
You probably just hit the tilde key (~). You can do fancy things in there like turn off clipping and change your field-of-view (type FOV 90 ferinstance).
Holy fuck do I love this game. Played it yesterday and for 3 and a half hours today, and just stopped for lunch because my stomach was digesting itself with hunger. And now I’m going back in to play some more
Did you try adjusting your sound settings in the tip someone posted earlier upthread? I had one CTD early on, tweaked my sound settings, and haven’t had a hitch since.
Other than that infinite magic bug I’ve had no hiccups.
Must say I’m finding it a lot tougher than Oblivion, perhaps because I knew Oblivion inside out and what spells to use on the exact enemy. Now it’s a painful process of trial and error, but I’ve settled into a routine of shooting off fireballs then using a poisoned blade to finish off survivors, seems to be working well.
I’ve had my arse handed to me a few times, the College quest in the Dwemer ruin, Dwemer centurions, spiders, traps, those poison-spitting things and Falmer made life very difficult.
Been saving up my perks too. Want some of those higher level Restoration ones.
Yup, and I killed it. Well, actually, my handcarl mostly killed it. I shot some arrows while she tanked. And that was after it killed me about 10 times. Scary, indeed! Especially since it was snowing really hard and I could barely see.
The interface is annoying, I had to adjust the FOV and turn off mouse acceleration before I could enjoy it. It’s a lot simpler than Oblivion with less skills, less stats, no spellmaking…
I love it!
It feels much more like Morrowind than Oblivion. Every time I go out exploring I find something different and exciting. So far I have no feeling of copy/pasted dungeons/caves. For all the simplification it’s just so much more fun too. It’s a perfect game to relax with after playing Football Manager…
I’m playing as a stealthy archer/illusionist (need to work on my illusion skill). There is nothing sweeter than one-shotting a bandit or a deer (sometimes) from two miles away.
So far I’ve met two dragons. The second dragon seemed more interested in attacking wolves and a giant than me. The giant wiped the floor with his ugly scaly face, I like to think I helped…
I don’t have a super powerful PC but I whacked everything on ultra, turned up the view distances and I’ve yet to experience any micro-stutters or low framerates. The graphics are nice, certainly better than Oblivion, but not quite as good as some of the Oblivion texture packs (especially the distant terrain textures). I can’t wait until the modders get their hands on it!
So I saved up and bought a horsie, and almost immediately got a slave er housecarl. Is she going to be able to keep up? Or will I lose here in the wilderness and never find her again?
One annoyance is that sometimes too many things happen at once. I was in an early plot quest, a seriously “shit’s going down” situation, but as I ran through White Run, the townsfolk were all, “So, how 'bout them plot hooks?”. I wanted to yell at them, “Did you not hear that dragon right outside the city? I don’t have time for your childish feud!”
Just now I was walking along the road, and run into some bandits. Fine. I kill one or two, and then see a dragon swoop down nearby. Bandits immediately go on the back burner. I burn through a bunch of the handy poisons and potions I’m lugging around (Mental note: Make more frost resistance potions. They’re very handy sometimes.), and wound the dragon enough to get it to land. Then I notice one of the bandits is still attacking me. I dispatch her, and then charge in and finish off the dragon. As I’m absorbing the dragon soul, a couple of wolves attack me and kinda ruin my Highlander moment. I head back up the road to loot the dead bandits, and a couple of arrows whizz into my fine dwarven breastplate. I look up, and there’s another prick with a longbow. I’m like, “Seriously, bitch? You saw what I just did to the dragon, didn’t you?”. I use the final bandit for fireball target practice.
In short, it would have been nice if some events would have a “center stage” effect, where other encounters need to wait in the wings for a few minutes.
