The *playing* Skyrim Thread.

[doh123]

That is hilarious. When I lose lydia, i reload my game. I don't care how far back i might have to go. I won't want to ever lose her. She is my new best friend. seriously though, my real best friend went psycho and no one has seen her in days. She even left her kid behind. She has been posting on FB though... so we know she's still alive.

you could just use the console to res her instead of reloading...

 

[Ov3rlord Falc0r]

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So is this any good?

Because up to now I'm very partial to Morrowind when it comes to the Elder scrolls series. That game just oozed unique charm. It had so much character that I still played it years later with all sorts of mods.

Oblivion felt contrived and generic. High quality graphics, advanced physics, but the whole package looked and felt like some sort of generic Dungeons & Dragons schlock retooled as an FPS. That is, no charm. I put it down after about a week.

Anyone else feel me on this? I might be in the minority here but I think Morrowind was the best of the bunch.

I must say, though, that the view from the Jerral Mountains, with snow filling the air just after sunset, was really something. For me that was the high point of the game. In fact, that whole area up and around the Jerrall range was just fantastic. Bethesda really nailed the atmosphere. I was always looking for an excuse to head up there. Beyond that it felt like the standard RPG fare I've chewed through countless times. I found myself missing Morrowind.

Did Bethesda really need to include dragons in Skyrim? Really? It seems cheap and rather banal. Did they add a wicked witch, too? I'm quite suspicious, but hope my suspicions will prove unfounded.

Or maybe I really have outgrown all this.

LTD, I too am a huge fan of Morrowind! I put too many hours into that game. I do agree that Oblivion was watered down some but that isn't to say plenty of fun was had over Xbox Live parties when me and 3 friends are all playing.

That said, Skyrim (in my opinion) is more along the lines of Morrowind than Oblivion. It is still streamlined for people who don't usually play this kind of game but the exploration, storylines, and graphical prowess on PC is amazing. I'm almost 100 hours in and love every second of it. The storylines for some of the guilds and miscellaneous people are the caliber of some lesser RPG's (I'm looking at you Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild). So the fact that such quality writing and quest giving is impressive.

Dragons. Sure they might be "too much" to bring in. BUT in all the backstory and history the Elder Scrolls have created it makes plenty of sense.

 

[Huntn]

Oblivion was light years ahead of Morrowind when it comes to the environment and wandering at will. I never played Morrowind, but after playing Oblivion for a year, I installed Morrowind and for me, it could not cut the mustard. This is not to imply that Oblivion was overall a better game, just that technology had come so far that Morrowind could no longer compete no matter how good of a core game it is/was.

I've 3 games distracting me at the moment. I ordered the Skyrim Guide from Amazon for $16. I also ordered a Razor Naga mouse. Since I'll play this game on the road a lot I'm going to see if having 17 buttons on a mouse is adequate. I've set aside Skytrim until the Guide arrives (about a week). In the mean time, I'm playing SWTOR Beta, and Vampire:The Masquerade.

 

[*LTD*]

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LTD, I too am a huge fan of Morrowind! I put too many hours into that game. I do agree that Oblivion was watered down some but that isn't to say plenty of fun was had over Xbox Live parties when me and 3 friends are all playing.

That said, Skyrim (in my opinion) is more along the lines of Morrowind than Oblivion. It is still streamlined for people who don't usually play this kind of game but the exploration, storylines, and graphical prowess on PC is amazing. I'm almost 100 hours in and love every second of it. The storylines for some of the guilds and miscellaneous people are the caliber of some lesser RPG's (I'm looking at you Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild). So the fact that such quality writing and quest giving is impressive.

Dragons. Sure they might be "too much" to bring in. BUT in all the backstory and history the Elder Scrolls have created it makes plenty of sense.

Thanks for the response. I'm encouraged by this, I'll admit.

If dragons are indeed Elder Scrolls canon then I might accept the idea. Anyway, I'll need to play the game to see for myself.

I'm on older hardware, though, but I can BootCamp Win XP for this.

Early 2008 MacBook Pro, 15-inch
2.4 Ghz C2D, 6 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB

I'm probably well under system requirements.

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In the mean time, I'm playing SWTOR Beta, and Vampire:The Masquerade.

That looks really interesting.

Do you mean this?

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines/558109p1.html

 

[Ov3rlord Falc0r]

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LTD, I too am a huge fan of Morrowind! I put too many hours into that game. I do agree that Oblivion was watered down some but that isn't to say plenty of fun was had over Xbox Live parties when me and 3 friends are all playing.

That said, Skyrim (in my opinion) is more along the lines of Morrowind than Oblivion. It is still streamlined for people who don't usually play this kind of game but the exploration, storylines, and graphical prowess on PC is amazing. I'm almost 100 hours in and love every second of it. The storylines for some of the guilds and miscellaneous people are the caliber of some lesser RPG's (I'm looking at you Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild). So the fact that such quality writing and quest giving is impressive.

Dragons. Sure they might be "too much" to bring in. BUT in all the backstory and history the Elder Scrolls have created it makes plenty of sense.

Thanks for the response. I'm encouraged by this, I'll admit.

If dragons are indeed Elder Scrolls canon then I might accept the idea. Anyway, I'll need to play the game to see for myself.

I'm on older hardware, though, but I can BootCamp Win XP for this.

Early 2008 MacBook Pro, 15-inch
2.4 Ghz C2D, 6 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB

I'm probably well under system requirements.

----------

In the mean time, I'm playing SWTOR Beta, and Vampire:The Masquerade.

That looks really interesting.

Do you mean this?

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines/558109p1.html

Not a problem, glad I could be of some assistance.

Back when they announced dragons for Skyim I was a wee bit skeptical, thinking "oh great, let's play into every fantasy stereotype now". But after thinking about it, doing a little research, and playing oblivion again I realized that the dragons have always been apart of Elder Scrolls. They've been talked about, discussed, and even written about in the in-game books you can read.

That set up probably won't work too well. :/ I'm running on 9400m boot amp. I run it ok but defiantly not full time playable. I play on my 360. Just have the pc version to have a little fun with mods and stuff

 

[Huntn]

The / and ? key will pull up your skill perk page and ask if you want to raise magicka, health, or stamina each time you gain a level.

As far as I can tell, as a strictly a magic user, you (anyone) really want to focus using your one or two main area of damage dealing. For me, it's destruction magic. For others it will be their bows, one-handed, two-handed, conjuration magic, or whatever you like to use that takes down enemies. I initially wanted to master several schools of magic, but lately I've found that I only needed 2 schools of magic and have wasted perk points in things I don't need, because I was spreading myself too thin on the offensive side of things.

Also, if you look at the perks page, you'll see that alchemy, smithing, and enchanting fall under a specific area of skill (warrior/thief/mage). They're also adjacent to one of the areas that can lend strengths to that area. For instance, enchanting falls under the mage perks/signs. Both smithing and alchemy are adjacent to the mage skill areas. I've focused on enchanting, but I also use a bit of alchemy to brew health and mana potions. I highly recommend each class use their crafting skill associated with what they're character is trying to be, your archetype. It will make a big difference in your effectiveness. Thieves/assassins should be using a lot of poisons. Warriors should be improving their weapons and armor.

If you're spending too much time raising the skill level of other skills you don't use often, just to gain levels, you're doing more harm than good. Also, don't sit on perks unless you've got a good plan for them. Spend the perk points on what you use. I read somewhere that you can skill up your sneak to 100, but if you buy "all" of the perk points in sneak, your effective sneak can be 200. I don't know what they meant by all of the perks in sneak, but I doubt it means literally all of them.

For me, I use lightning bolt alot, even though I'm level 35 and have access to chain lightning, wall of sparks, frost atronarchs, and whatnot. My gauge is that I can take out thugs in 5-7 or so hits with just lightning bolt (I haven't given Jordis enough magic/spark resistence yet to not risk killing her with chain lightning). That seems fair to me and I think if you're taking longer to take out these common foes, then you need to work on your damage output.

I think my point is that you have the potential to conquer just about anything if you focus your skills with a plan. A jack of all trades with decent everything can help in any situation, but a master maceman with exceptional gear and a bunch of crappy potions or crappy heal spells can win in any situation. Role-play your character to an extent. What is it that your character has been training all of their Skyrim life to be good at? "Everything," shouldn't be an answer, because that's as ineffective in the game as it is in our lives.

Now I'm not saying you shouldn't try a fighter/mage/thief. I'm saying you're creating challenges for yourself that are additional to what the game presents you. Have a plan and stick to it. When you get bored, that's when you should branch out and test the waters with trying something new or just create a new character that fits your style.

Thanks for info and your insight! I'll be back to playing Skyrim after I've had a chance to pursue the Strategy Guide. I too will focus in a couple of areas. Just remember a Jack of Trades does everything but nothing exceptionally. In ES3:Oblivion you could make custom kick ass spells. I'm hoping that can be done here too, without too much trouble.

Yup, I remember that. Adversaries would get tougher based purely on your level, so if you levelled up without focusing on combat skills, you'd find the game getting much harder as you progressed.

So far, I think I preferred the Oblivion way of doing things (Attributes & Skills) rather than Skyrim's (Skills & Perks). For me at least, it was a lot clearer what 'grade' you were at in each skill (Novice, Apprentice etc).

IIRC, in Oblivion you could cast spells from within the menu, or am I imagining that? In mid-combat, you could bring up the menu and heal yourself - if you had sufficient Magicka, as opposed to equipping the spell and healing yourself, then re-equipping the weapon in Skyrim.

I think you are right. I remember a button that would pull up a circular menu at any time making it very easy to selected spells on the fly while in combat. But I forget how I scrolled around it. I think I was using my Nostromo's thumb wheel for this. I really dislike Skyrim controls. Is this what you get with a console port?? (I'm playing the PC version.) Having to equip the spell before using the spell is BS, because it is something you have learned, not a weapon held in your hand.

 

[TrulyYuki]

I didn't realize I lost my Lydia until way later and all the videos on youtube were just like wait a while. Well now I've played wayyyy too long to try to get her back so I'm just like argh. I'll find another, I guess.

Sorry about your friend...

Man, I would hate to lose her. And thanks.


Anyone hear or install the latest update? Most the time I get irritated when something is released with so many bugs but with this game, I get passed it. Except the crashes to desktop. That's kinda annoying.

 

[doh123]

That set up probably won't work too well. :/ I'm running on 9400m boot amp. I run it ok but defiantly not full time playable. I play on my 360. Just have the pc version to have a little fun with mods and stuff

the 8600m is quite a bit faster than a 9400m, so it might run decently for him.

 

[TrulyYuki]

Pink screen

 

[chaosbunny]

I love this game. The whole nordic/viking atmosphere is great. I don't like it when fantasy games are too colorful, solving mysterious quests on a bright day while walking through bright green grass? No thanks.

With all the books and backstories from the npcs they created a really lively world that's just so much fun to explore. I collect every book I find and put it in a chest in my house.

Many side quests have plots that are more exciting than the main plots of other games. I keep reading that the brotherhood quests are one of them, but I didn't want to kill any of the 3 prisoners but chose to kill Astrid instead. Even then a quest unfolds where you have to eliminate the brotherhood. All the decisions and different skill trees will make playing it through a second time very much fun too.

 

[Ov3rlord Falc0r]

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I love this game. The whole nordic/viking atmosphere is great. I don't like it when fantasy games are too colorful, solving mysterious quests on a bright day while walking through bright green grass? No thanks.

With all the books and backstories from the npcs they created a really lively world that's just so much fun to explore. I collect every book I find and put it in a chest in my house.

Many side quests have plots that are more exciting than the main plots of other games. I keep reading that the brotherhood quests are one of them, but I didn't want to kill any of the 3 prisoners but chose to kill Astrid instead. Even then a quest unfolds where you have to eliminate the brotherhood. All the decisions and different skill trees will make playing it through a second time very much fun too.

Hold up, wait a minute. If you kill Astrid in the room instead of one of the three prisoners you're tasked to kill the rest of the Brotherhood? Is it just one quest "kill everyone"?

This game continues to blow my mind...

 

[stevenpa]

Will buy the game after finals in a few weeks. Cannot wait!

To everyone on the newest MBAs, how smoothly does it run?

 

[antonis]

Having an npc to help you is that important in Skyrim on later levels ? I'm level 10 and I chose to leave the npc back in town for now. Some fights seem to be kinda tough, though.

 

[pionata]

I play the Cider port of the game on an i7 iMac and it works flawlessly. No need for windows...

check it out on The Porting Team.

 

[SidewaysTakumi]

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Having an npc to help you is that important in Skyrim on later levels ? I'm level 10 and I chose to leave the npc back in town for now. Some fights seem to be kinda tough, though.

I'm only level 14 but it sure does help on some of the tougher enemies. I'm still sad I lost Lydia. I also lost Sven somehow but I now have that girl from bannered mare that you fist fight with.

 

[cerote]

I have an odd glitch. The stable guy outside whiterun now has 3 of him. 2 normal ones and another that is sunk in the ground. So late at night when I was riding up there I was wondering what this family was doing outside the town at 3 in the morning. Still hasn't fixed itself.

 

[soLoredd]

Having an npc to help you is that important in Skyrim on later levels ? I'm level 10 and I chose to leave the npc back in town for now. Some fights seem to be kinda tough, though.

I never bother with having followers. I had Lydia for two quests and while she kicks ass, playing as a thief, she made it harder for me to get sneak attacks. One tactic I tried that was somewhat decent was to tell her to wait behind you, go and sneak attack and if you pull aggro you can run back to Lydia and she helps you out. But thats a lot of work.

Maybe in my next play through I'll give it a better go.

 

[cerote]

I never bother with having followers. I had Lydia for two quests and while she kicks ass, playing as a thief, she made it harder for me to get sneak attacks. One tactic I tried that was somewhat decent was to tell her to wait behind you, go and sneak attack and if you pull aggro you can run back to Lydia and she helps you out. But thats a lot of work.

Maybe in my next play through I'll give it a better go.

I don't use followers. Hard to be an assassin with a follower.

 

[chaosbunny]

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Hold up, wait a minute. If you kill Astrid in the room instead of one of the three prisoners you're tasked to kill the rest of the Brotherhood? Is it just one quest "kill everyone"?

This game continues to blow my mind...

Spoiler:

I killed Astrid and then got a quest to tell the town guards about it. They sent me to an imperial commander in an outpost close to the imperial capital city. He gave me a reward and the password for the brotherhood door, which he got from his agents. I then got the quest to kill everyone. Not epic but they sure thought of everything.

 

[antonis]

I see, so having a follower does help indeed. Although I'm not a stealth-type, I find it to be too much trouble to have to worry about. When things get crowdy, I manage to get through by taking advantage of the terrain/location. You know, run a bit back, find a narrow place where you cannot get surrounded etc.

Glad to know that a follower is not totally necessary. Thanks for all the replies and keep having fun with Skyrim.

 

[Ov3rlord Falc0r]

Spoiler:

I killed Astrid and then got a quest to tell the town guards about it. They sent me to an imperial commander in an outpost close to the imperial capital city. He gave me a reward and the password for the brotherhood door, which he got from his agents. I then got the quest to kill everyone. Not epic but they sure thought of everything.

Well its not "epic" but it is really really neat that they included that. In Oblivion you just ignored them or you just went on a killing spree and got rid of the for fun. Having it start another, albeit, shorter quest line is awesome. Makes the world that much more believable in the sense that some of the inhabitants want them gone...

 

[JackAxe]

I don't use followers. Hard to be an assassin with a follower.

I haven't used any either. Lydia stays in my Breezehome in Winterrun. Well, I did try to get her to follow me once and found she could not navigate through a simple stream area, so reloaded prior to asking her to come along.

 

[robertneville77]

So is this any good?

Because up to now I'm very partial to Morrowind when it comes to the Elder scrolls series. That game just oozed unique charm. It had so much character that I still played it years later with all sorts of mods.

Oblivion felt contrived and generic. High quality graphics, advanced physics, but the whole package looked and felt like some sort of generic Dungeons & Dragons schlock retooled as an FPS. That is, no charm. I put it down after about a week.

Anyone else feel me on this? I might be in the minority here but I think Morrowind was the best of the bunch.

I must say, though, that the view from the Jerral Mountains, with snow filling the air just after sunset, was really something. For me that was the high point of the game. In fact, that whole area up and around the Jerrall range was just fantastic. Bethesda really nailed the atmosphere. I was always looking for an excuse to head up there. Beyond that it felt like the standard RPG fare I've chewed through countless times. I found myself missing Morrowind.

Did Bethesda really need to include dragons in Skyrim? Really? It seems cheap and rather banal. Did they add a wicked witch, too? I'm quite suspicious, but hope my suspicions will prove unfounded.

Or maybe I really have outgrown all this.

AMEN! Absolutely agree with you!

Morrowind has a certain magic to it. It's unlike any other place, from it's weird 60 ft tall taxicab praying mantis like creatures to its crab home cities blowing with gray ash dust. Morrowind left such a huge impression on me. I still can remember leaving that boat, wandering around the wilderness, and seeing that wood elf dropping out of the sky.

To me, Morrowind seems to be the only unique game here. For example, if I took a picture of Oblivion or Skyrim and showed it to someone who's never played the game, they might say, hey, that looks like Lord Of the Rings or something. If I took a picture of Morrowind and showed it someone, they'd either know it's Morrowind or they'd be like, What the heck is that?

Skyrim is a little closer in line with Morrowind, but it you feel like you were let down by Oblivion, then Skyrim will feel the same. Don't get me wrong. Go out and play Oblivion and Skyrim. It's just that, dont expect that "Magic" to be there like Morrowind.

Again, I am not bashing Skyrim. I've bought it for both PC and PS3. By itself, and compared to Oblivion, it is a great game, technically speaking. The quests are very cool. I'm just saying, compared to Morrowind, the unique feel or awesome atmosphere about it is not there.

I hate to advertise here, but for those who have a hard time getting into Morrowind due to outdated graphics and physics, there's a project called Morroblivion, essentially playing the Morrowind game inside the Oblivion engine. You can check it out at Morroblivion.com. We're waiting for Skyrim's Creation Kit to see if we can convert Morrowind into Skyrim's engine. If that ever happens, that will be a glorious day, haha

And yeah, the dragons are canonical. The Nerevarine could actually be the dragonborn. It's mentioned in one of the Nerevarine prophecies that he has the soul of a dragon. Time also isn't a problem since he's technically immortal due to his corprus disease.

Wow, sorry for the huge wall of text.

 

[*LTD*]

AMEN! Absolutely agree with you!

Morrowind has a certain magic to it. It's unlike any other place, from it's weird 60 ft tall taxicab praying mantis like creatures to its crab home cities blowing with gray ash dust. Morrowind left such a huge impression on me. I still can remember leaving that boat, wandering around the wilderness, and seeing that wood elf dropping out of the sky.

To me, Morrowind seems to be the only unique game here. For example, if I took a picture of Oblivion or Skyrim and showed it to someone who's never played the game, they might say, hey, that looks like Lord Of the Rings or something. If I took a picture of Morrowind and showed it someone, they'd either know it's Morrowind or they'd be like, What the heck is that?

Skyrim is a little closer in line with Morrowind, but it you feel like you were let down by Oblivion, then Skyrim will feel the same. Don't get me wrong. Go out and play Oblivion and Skyrim. It's just that, dont expect that "Magic" to be there like Morrowind.

Again, I am not bashing Skyrim. I've bought it for both PC and PS3. By itself, and compared to Oblivion, it is a great game, technically speaking. The quests are very cool. I'm just saying, compared to Morrowind, the unique feel or awesome atmosphere about it is not there.

I hate to advertise here, but for those who have a hard time getting into Morrowind due to outdated graphics and physics, there's a project called Morroblivion, essentially playing the Morrowind game inside the Oblivion engine. You can check it out at Morroblivion.com. We're waiting for Skyrim's Creation Kit to see if we can convert Morrowind into Skyrim's engine. If that ever happens, that will be a glorious day, haha

And yeah, the dragons are canonical. The Nerevarine could actually be the dragonborn. It's mentioned in one of the Nerevarine prophecies that he has the soul of a dragon. Time also isn't a problem since he's technically immortal due to his corprus disease.

Wow, sorry for the huge wall of text.

Ha! What a great post.

I left this thread because my participation in the discussion is necessarily limited by 1) not actually having Skyrim, because 2) my system probably won't even be able to run it half-decently. Moreover, I don't have any computer purchases planned in the near future and I certainly wouldn't run this sort of game on a console, given that I'll probably start modding it little more than a month in. Bethesda games are great on their own (I'm not including Fallout 3, for reasons I've gone over a long time ago), but mods take everything to the next level. Mods made Morrowind more or less infinitely replayable. Now throw in the great graphics and sound enhancements - virtually entire overhauls of the game - and you've got a game that can provide fresh experiences indefinitely. Provided of course, that you like the game to begin with.

I won't slag on Oblivion and even less so when it comes to Skyrim - after all, I haven't played the latter. With Oblivion, I played it at a time when I had already been through the RPG-in-a-forest-with-castles-and-dragons schtick several times over - whether in the form of videogames or literature. I was done with that aspect of the genre unless I was given a truly fresh perspective on it. Oblivion just wasn't it. I considered whether playing so much Morrowind had prejudiced me against Oblivion so as to render my Oblivion experience doomed from the start. All things considered, I would have probably put down Oblivion just as quickly anyway. Plus, there were a few technical things about Oblivion that just clashed with the atmosphere and really broke whatever suspension of disbelief Bethesda were trying to achieve: horrible voice acting, weird close-up shots of characters speaking, among a few other niggles. Otherwise, in terms of technical sophistication Oblivion was quite above Morrowind, but without that charm and uniqueness I was looking for I found it to be little more than a nice tech demo.

This is all very subjective though. When it comes to games people like what they like. I found Morrowind to be an imaginative take on the RPG genre that didn't venture into immaturity or simplistic stupidity. Morrowind was a very "adult" RPG with a solid, intelligent storyline that was fed to the player in just the right amounts at the right time. In my view, anyway. Enchantment without schlock. Quite rare these days.

Thanks for the discussion.

 

[Dr McKay]

Did Bethesda really need to include dragons in Skyrim? Really? It seems cheap and rather banal. Did they add a wicked witch, too?

As soon as I read this, I had a flashback to my last dragon encounter, when it landed, a random Witch who happened to be walking by ran out and began attacking it....

As you previously mentioned about the dungeons, in Oblivion they felt so generic and recycled, in Skyrim they feel like someone has gone to a lot of effort to make it unique. Id definately give it a blast.

I'm not sure your current system would run it that well, even under the Dinosaur that is XP, I think it asks for a 512MB video card Minimum.