Anyone with a tendency towards motion sickness playing this, or Oblivion? I bought Morrowind back in the day and found it triggered motion sickness within 15 minutes of play, and I was never able to play the game. Very few games that I’ve played will do this; really Morrowind and parts of EverQuest (the basement in Plane of Mischief, and a few similar very twisty areas) are the only ones I can think of right now.
I’m just wondering if this one is any better in terms of not being a motion sickness trigger.
It seems like if you level smithing and alchemy you hit a tipping point around 50 or so, after which you can turn a very good profit at it. Forging orcish armor and above is decidedly profitable. I spent much of today compulsively running between cities buying ingots from the smiths. I’ve capped smithing and alchemy, and selling what I’ve made has brought my speech skill to around 70 (which I hope will help me in the main plot).
Protip #1: Even at high ranks, making iron armor gives very good skill-ups.
Protip #2: Don’t waste your daedra hearts on potions.
Protip #3: When making armor for profit, remember to upgrade it before selling it; you get a very good return on the the extra ingot.
Protip #4: You can level enchanting fairly quickly if you snag filled petty soul gems from merchants and burn them to place crappy enchantments on your for-sale armor.
Is it just me, or are dungeons huge compared to previous games? Most of the caves and forts and whatnot that I’ve cleared seem to take hours (mind you, my sense of time has been screwed up this weekend).
Interesting, I may have to investigate OOO. Fallout 3 was my first Bethesda game. After it I tried Oblivion after reading that so many people called Fallout 3 “Oblivion with guns” but I found so much of it, well, “wrong”. The user interface for a start and I found it really strange that I could fast travel to places I hadn’t been to yet, something you couldn’t do in Fallout 3.
Well those have both changed. The UI is vastly improved in Skyrim, although I can’t say I am too fond of the map or the perk tree. I don’t like “swoopiness” in UIs as it tends to get in the way of actually being able to do what you want. The map isn’t that bad but the perk tree is a masterclass in poor UI design. The rest of the UI is good though, just a bad, bad perk tree. Yes it looks nice, bit it is an arse to use. Browsing it to try and decide which perk to go for is way too irritating.
I’ve been enjoying the game but constant RL distractions means I haven’t had a chance to really get into it so far.
The dual-wielding feature is tres cool and I do hope it gets into the next Fallout game, but so far I’m just enjoying wandering around and experiencing the world while I work out how to proceed with the quests.
I’m loving this game to bits, even giving up on a sex-certain date yesterday to play. However, I have some comments:
Sneaking is ridiculous, or at least, the AI of the enemies with regards to stealth is. I shoot an enemy right in the face, and after a while searching for me, with an arrow sticking out of his eye, he decides that ‘there was nothing afterall’. He even assumes, when his mate drops dead to the floor next to him, ‘that it was probably just the wind’. Really? Pretty strong gust there then.
Distances between quests are too long. I don’t mind a huge world that takes for ever to travel through, but why let me walk all the way to the Greybeards? I actually like the fast travel system that lets you travel to locations that you only have heard about. Why not? You could assume someone has told you the way and the dangers of the roads to it.
Another one who doesn’t like the perk UI. It’s pretty, but not very clear.
It’s also not entirely clear to me in what way Magicka, Health and Stamina relate to other skills. Or of they do at all. If I improve Magicka, will my spells be more powerfull too, or can I only cast more of them?
I’m also a bit disappointed in the way the world is interwoven with itself. I was led to believe that every action has some repercussion, with the example that killing a miller will result in the town being short on bread. Maybe my expecation was unrealistically high, but I don’t see much of that in the game. AI is not much different from Oblivion really.
I’m also not a fan of how one has to scroll one-by-one through your skills to get the perk you want to examine or level.
A few of my own thoughts so far:
–I’m really liking smithing and enchanting thus far. It’s just that…well, I never seem to have the ingots I need at any one time. I found a place to mine orthicalum (sp?) ore, but didn’t have anything to use it in. Meanwhile, I can’t find steel or charcoal.
–Beast form is fun, but one note of caution with it: If you shout while in beast form, your companion will run away in terror.
–The dragon fights are truly epic. I’ve killed three of them now. The last one was a fire-breathing type. By sheer chance I’d just bought a spell tome of blizzard, otherwise I never would have survived the encounter. I was able to freeze the dragon until my magicka ran out, then have my companion Lydia kite the dragon around while I hid behind a wall to recover. Finally the near-death dragon landed and meleed. I froze the dragon with my remaining magicka, then with the last swing I had left I performed a power attack. When the dragon was dead I had no magicka, about 10 health, and no stamina. Then I absorbed the dragonsoul and when the flash receded there was Lydia standing on the other side of the dragon staring at me in awe. I think we have to get married now.
–Not sure I like the Fallout 3/NV style “slow motion victory” animation. Just doesn’t seem to fit.
–I’m hoping there’s a patch for the horse glitch soon. Ride your horse under any roof or overhang and you’ll see what I mean.
–How the fuck did someone get to level 50 less than three days after launch? Geez.
–I love to make stuff in this game. I’m hoping there are new recipes, armor plans, etc. that can be found. Since I was able to buy a recipe of restore health, I’m thinking there will be.
–Overall, it is a great game to play out of the box. I’m looking forward to mods, though. I can already see some ideas for interface mods, especially with regards to the skill interface.
When I bind a spell using the hotkeys, it defaults to my left hand. I read that I can bind an item to my right hand by hitting shift + number. I have two questions:
a) When I want to equip that item, do I then have to hit shift + number again to equip it in my right hand? and
b) Is it possible to assign spells to left hand via hotkey 1-8 and then assign spells to right hand via shift + hotkey 1-8, thus giving me a total of 16 hotkeys?
I’m at work right now, so I can’t mess with it until I get home, but if anyone knows the answer, there’s a bottle of Nordic mead in it for you.
I guess they haven’t released a mod took kit for the game yet(?), but looks like Nexus has a mod site up and running for Skyrim, with a few mods already available. You can see it here.
According to one of the links on the page, Steam had over 230k connected users playing Skyrim on the first day…breaking the previous record for MW3 (at about 80k).
Upon some googling and experimentation, I’ve discovered that this is in fact not a bug; it’s a timed bonus for completing that quest and goes away on its own. The description does seem buggy however; as I recall it’s listed twice for some reason in Active Powers under Fortify Magicka; the description was Drain Magicka +25 with a time-to-expiration.
Your solution while it does eliminate the power apparently causes various problems, such as setting to default a lot of your character’s appearance and deleting extras you’ve bought for your house.
Well, according to this, Skyrim had around 230k concurrent on the first day, and MW3 had 80k for MP and 43k for SP. Any way you look at it, Skyrim seems to have been a huge success for Bethesda, which bodes well for the official DLCs for the game at any rate.
I played maybe 40 hours in the game since Friday and I’ve hardly scratched the surface as far as I can tell. I could see another 200 hours just in the plain vanilla game easy at this point, just to complete the main quest line and explore the map and try and find all the locations.
Has anyone else bought a house yet? I finally got mine last night (and decorated it eventually with everything you can currently get, decorations wise). It’s pretty cool, but a bit cramped. I’m hoping someone does a mod for a tower or castle of your own, sort of like a vault of your own in FO3/FONV.
Haven’t bought a horse yet, though I’m thinking of getting one soon. Not sure if it’s worth getting though, as with fast travel I can pretty much get to everything I’ve previously scouted out…and if I haven’t gone there yet I’d rather be in stealth mode anyway, since that’s how my character is built.
Speaking of fighting dragons, I killed two while I had the semi-infinite magicka power running, although I didn’t realize until afterward. The first time it was me, the dragon, and several Ice Wolves the dragon got in a fight with. The second was while I was looking for Fellglow Keep, that was just me and Lydia; I suspect I would have lost except that I could just keep pouring on the power.
It was at some place called Shearpoint, with one of those Shout rewarding walls. However when I tried to approach some badass named boss appeared and proceeded to stomp me flat. My magic barely hurt him; definitely someone to deal with later.
I only just figured out how to make Raise Zombie work; it didn’t occur to me that you actually need a dead body to use it on. I assumed it just conjured one out of nowhere like usual. For extra coolness, if you use it to raise a human they mutter zombie appropriate dialogue like “Must…kill…rrrrrr”.
Interestingly, I’ve run into several significant looking spots that didn’t produce a map marker or name like usual. One was a rotating pillar and lever puzzle in the middle of nowhere.
Yes, the one you can get for 5000 in Whiterun. I haven’t bought anything extra for it yet; I mainly wanted an owned chest that I could stash heavy stuff I didn’t want to sell without risking it vanishing. I see on the Wiki page that there are several different residences you can get; some much bigger than that little cheap house.
Same here. I freed up 100 units of weight for carrying more loot by stashing the stuff I wanted to keep but not have on me at all times. That came in useful when it came to emptying a dungeon of loot that I made about another 2000+ gold from. There was a lot of tooing and froing, but I got a horse and a load of spells out of it.
How bizarre, wish they’d told me “by the way, enjoy the limitless magicka!”. Fortunately I know the console inside out from Oblivion, checked all my stats before and after and I definitely look the same.
Still having trouble picking Legion vs. Stormcloaks. I feel my neutralness is blocking a lot of game content. I’m thinking of going Stormcloak, even if they are racist arseholes at least they aren’t toadies for the Thalmor, who are gunning for “Biggest Arsehole Award” in a world full of them.
*A prince must know how to handle foreign relations. Situations will surely arise where a prince must choose sides in a war. It is not wise to remain neutral because both parties will despise the prince who does not take sides. The prince must have the wisdom to choose the least risky option and then pursue it courageously. Win or lose, the prince will gain respect and honor for being decisive. *
I’ll probably upgrade in the future if better and larger houses become available (I seem to have plenty of coin in this game so that shouldn’t be an issue). I bought all the extras simply because I wanted to see what they did (and they were all between 200-500 gold, and I had the extra coin to spend). If you get the plain vanilla house it comes with (IIRC) 3 storage areas (chests, drawers, etc). I think you get 2 extra trunks if you buy all of the decorations…might be more though, I didn’t really search everything as I bought the stuff just before shutting down last night.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Interestingly, I’ve run into several significant looking spots that didn’t produce a map marker or name like usual. One was a rotating pillar and lever puzzle in the middle of nowhere.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve seen that a couple of times. There is a ruin with a bunch of those spinning pillars that you have to figure out the alignment. Once you figure out the pattern (looking around will show you what face needs to be turned out) it opens a small space that you can walk down too, with a body, a chest and some scattered weapons. It’s not on the map even after you find it…I figure it’s too small to warrant a map placer. Just a small puzzle and small reward.
So far in the game there have been several places that I can see but can’t for the life of me figure out how to get too. One is that broken bridge in Shroud Hearth Depths, and another one is in a dungeon I stumbled on last night (don’t remember the name now). You could look down into a grate and see someone down there, and some stairs up into a small room…but I couldn’t figure out any way to get down there.
For anyone interested, GameSpy has some tweaks to the game here, including how to set numbers for your favorite weapons. I just use the Q key myself, but I know a lot of people like hotkeys.
Once you get used to hotkeying from the favourites menu it isn’t that bad, although I’ll be damned if I can figure out how to hotkey two swords. For some reason when switching to spells in both hands my right hand doesn’t appear, even though I can use the dual casting function. Odd.
[QUOTE=Mr. Kobayashi]
Still having trouble picking Legion vs. Stormcloaks. I feel my neutralness is blocking a lot of game content. I’m thinking of going Stormcloak, even if they are racist arseholes at least they aren’t toadies for the Thalmor, who are gunning for “Biggest Arsehole Award” in a world full of them.
[/QUOTE]
The only group I’ve joined so far is the Companions, and I guess if I do all their quests I’ll have the option of being a werewolf at some point. I’m staying neutral (for now) in the Stormcloaks vs Legion thingy, but I have a quest to try and free some guys brother from the legion, so, assuming I do it that might tip me into making a choice at that time.