One other quick note, when it comes to interacting with stuff in your inventory? This may or may not be common knowledge by now, but someone on another forum just mentioned they were tearing their hair out over it...

You can manipulate/zoom/rotate/examine stuff in your inventory.



I'd hate to picture anyone doing the "trial and error" method like someone just ranted about, because I cannot imagine a worse way to waste time, prematurely age myself, and learn to absolutely hate a game. No wonder he hated Skyrim, he'd been raging about those doors for a long time.

Steam has a Midweek Madness sale on Skyrim, 33% off ($40 rather than $60). I took advantage, and it's downloading now.

So... it'd be like playing Myst?

Just ended my first session of Skyrim. Initial impression: basically similar to the other games built on the Oblivion engine, only prettier. Mind you, that's not a bad thing. Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas were tons of fun in my opinion. I've just gotten to the part where you fight the first dragon (I don't think the fact that you fight dragons is really a spoiler), and it killed me the first time. I'm downloading the free high-resolution textures DLC, and then I'm going back in.

My character is a female Nord. I'm taking a "what feels right at the moment" approach to character building, so I don't know a lot about her at the moment. She likes Destruction magic, one-handed axes, and heavy armor, knows her way around a forge, and so far is motivated mainly by treasure.

Inspired by a recent Ars Magica campaign that started up, I made a loyal Imperial combat mage. He opens with Lightning Bolt and Sparks, then wades in with his sword and shield once he's out of mana. I'm grinding Enchanting so he can start adding Shocking damage to his weapon and some good bonuses to his armor (gotta stick with Imperial Armor, but need to give it some real help to keep it competitive)...so far, so good. It's my first playthrough going Imperial instead of Stormcloak, too, so I'm looking forward to some new quests and stuff.

As of yet I haven't gone stormcloak. I cannot get over my dislike of Ulfric. I have decided go stormcloak with my current character, an altmer maye. I just have to keep reminding myself that it's for Talos and not Ulfric.

I actually wish my horse gave more of a shit. She's gotten herself killed by a saber cat (had to reload shortly after that, due to getting myself killed by a different saber cat, so I have a horse again), and honestly is kind of an obstacle in combat. I've seen her pursue a fleeing wolf, which shattered my suspension of disbelief into an arbitrarily large number of bits.

I went Stormcloak with my first two characters just because, well, they weren't the ones that had been trying to cut my head off (plus one of my guys was a Nord, so it just felt right).

That said, the further I got with each of them, the less and less I liked the Stormcloaks. I think they just set it up like that on purpose -- there's truly execrable stuff going on with each faction, so that you're basically picking what is (in your opinion, if not your character's) the lesser of two evils, no matter what. I think they were out to make it less clear a distinction as, say, the New California Republic vs. The Legion, in Fallout: New Vegas, and they were trying to present both sides as full of some heroes, some villains, and a lot of everyday people.

In my opinion, they might have overdone that a bit, as you may end up not really liking either side, which feels a little weird. But at least it wasn't as blindingly obvious a "good guy/bad guy" choice as F:NV, which I suppose increases replay value and such.

I also wish Lydia would swallow her damn pride and get on the horse with me. I feel like a weapons-grade jackass making my huskarl run behind me.

Anybody know how to take screenshots?

I find that more... gritty and realistic. Hell, look at our elected officials these days. Don't we usually end up picking the "lesser of two evils"? Everyone has skeletons in their closet, after all.

Tanegar - I think that through Steam the default Screenshot key is F11 or F12. Check your steam overlay to make certain, you can re-bind it as well.

Yeah, I certainly agree the end result was more gritty and realistic. It's just also led to disappointment with some people, because they wanted epic fantasy, instead. It can be irritating to keep finding those skeletons, in a game universe where you're actively killing people and stuff in order to keep someone in power. I don't mind a bit of moral bankruptcy -- hell, I play Shadowrun, it's par for the course -- but particularly when the "gritty realism" of various sides tends to involve great big chunks of ethnic cleansing, racist fanaticism, religious intolerance, yadda yadda yadda, some folks really get their buttons pushed and don't want to support either side.

Option 3 would have been nice in this situation, like the FOURTH option in New Vegas.

Oh, heck yeah. "Fuck it, I'm the Dragonborn, I want to be king" would've been a lot of fun.

They could have done that at least as well by making both sides likeable. They both have legitimate causes: the Imperials are trying to hold the Empire together, while the Stormcloaks want to hold on to their native traditions, and the only things making those two goals incompatible are the White-Gold Concordat and the Thalmor. IMO, there really should have been an option to unite the Imperials and the Stormcloaks against the Altmer.

Damn straight!

Oh yes - After the Embassy fun and games I made it a point to kill any Thalmor patrols I found wandering...often by "accidently" bringing a dragon over to reduce my chances of getting a bounty. That, and head-shooting any Stormcloak messengers I saw running about.

It's a real pity you can't use your awesome skills for the forces of good in Skyrim, just the forces of <mandatory plot line>.
And having the guards say something else about my character (Like, "Oh, good afternoon to you, Archmagister..." when I walk by, followed <sotto> by, "Yeah, keep walking...damn mages and their magic") or recognise that I single-handedly stormed the assassin's guild and stealth-killed the lot of them (apart from the spider.)

....Or that most of the Reunification quests WERE accomplaished single-handedly (Storm call helped, that was delicious fun)
"D'ja hear about this mad Legate that the Legion use as a weapon of last resort? Yeah, well that's why no-one's heard from <Insert fortname here> Recently..."


-Tir

I've always just engaged them in polite conversation, mentioning in passing that I, perhaps, worship Talos. Then they attack me, and I'm just defending myself. No need to worry about a bounty, if they throw the first fireball.

I think you should get to work on making that mod.... Just sayin'

Is there an enchanting table in the College of Winterhold, and if so, where is it?

Archmage's Quarters - I also think there's an alchemy one, as well as another alchemy one in the Heap.

Oh - and get the atronach forge recipes if you want some uber spells at low-levels. Hint: there's a reason why ruined books exist, now.
Also: broomsticks!

Aside from the Arch-Mage quarters there's an enchanting Table in eastern rest quarters (I forget the name, the western one has an alchemy table though).

The Hi-Rez pack is really nice, I buckled down last night and stayed up almost all night finishing up the Thieves Guild - by which I mean running jobs to "restore" the guild and become the guild master.

If HTML wasn't about the limit of my "coding" skills, and if I didn't have Skyrim on my 360 instead of my PC...I'd love to.

Oh, man...

Point of general advice. Never ever get a Bethesda open-world sandbox game on anything other than a PC.

Because otherwise you'll miss out on the massive PC-only mod and add-on community.




-k

If I'm not mistaken they have or are going to make available mods to console owners this time around.

Behold, she who rode out from Whiterun as simple Kyria, daughter of Skyrim, and returned Kyria Dragon-Blooded, slayer of the dragon Mirmulnir! Gaze upon her steadfast countenance, and count yourselves accurs'd that you were not there to share in the glory of that dread battle!

If I had a PC that could run it, I would've, trust me. I know how much I'm missing out on...but I figure any Skyrim's better than no Skyrim at all.

Hello all,

Skyrim is a sweet game, now up to level 39 and loving it.

Playing game on standard difficulty, and love the amazing landscape.

A few things to note: use terrain to kill Giants, I started at level 6-7 and used archery from ruins to snipe at mammoths and giants. If you are caring a few hundred arrows then it is a great way to level up archery.

Even at level 30+ I have only done a few of the main quests, I have so much fun wondering the world. Heck I did not see a new city till I was around level 20 (silly "night to remember")

For whatever reason I have a fetish for jumping from high places: I use shout ethereal to avoid damage on landing!

At around 33 i have found the game combat too easy, so remembering you can adjust difficulty is important. The only thing giving me problems from that level on is arch magic foes, and elder dragons. I can take two giants and a mammoth in a hand to hand with little problem (say loosing about 1/4 health)

Reading instruction book is important in hind sight:) at level 20 I learned how to sprint!

I could get lost in crafting, I have smith at 100, and love cooking. Need to get into enchanting though, as I still fight in none magical armor (except bracers) and only use one magical blade(souls trap ebony dagger I found). Got to smith 100 fairly fast (for me about level 20-22) and now with most heavy armor perks I have armor of over 600. And my sword and dagger give me damage of about 141 (this last one may be off, will check tonight and see)

I have yet to use horses, or (except for three dungeon crawls) companions. I had my wife fight with me but found she was taking opportunities away from getting my heavy armor, single blade, archery skills leveled.

Overall I find this my favorite game so far, and except for my hoarding ( I collect anything glass, elven, orcish, ebony, daedric, and magical and put them in chests) and eating people my PC seems semi normal ( have only got 40 gold bounty for killing a three person falmor patrol)!

Is there a way to up-armor a companion? After crafting my superior dwarven armor, I put my superior steel armor in Lydia's inventory, but she didn't equip it like she equips weapons I give her.

I have a bit of a hard time getting into the game.

How so?

No idea, just can't get into it.

The stuff has to be better than what she's using, but the default stuff doesn't show on her inventory if that's what's she's keeping. I've noticed that she usually goes for fancier stuff. I.e., she'll wear a plain gold ring in favor of a magic silver one with decent benefits. She seems to have a preference for heavy armor and two-handed weapons, too. She will use magic staves like they're going out of style, especially if you give her two elemental staves. (I found that out when I gave her a fireball staff and a lightning staff. Can you say "friendly fire"?)

She should be using it no problem, I remember giving her Steel Plate and she used it lickety split.

Maybe my handcrafted superior steel isn't better than what she has. I'll craft another suit of superior dwarven and give it to her.

On a side note, how do you craft steel plate armor? It's not in my smithing menu.

There's a perk for it, Advanced Armors. Ya hafta take Elven Smithing to get to it, though.

Dwarven armor oughta work for her. She almost always equipped that when it was in her inventory.

Weird that you have to go thru Elven armor to get to it as well. It gives access to scaled armor and steel plate. I don't think I remember scaled being better than elven. Also, insert my rage when my light armor character couldn't go back down the tree from dragon armor to daedric for making weapons... console commands are go!

Oh. Well, I'm going the heavy armor route: Steel -> Dwarven -> Orcish -> Daedric. If I have spare perks, I might go through Glass to get Advanced Armors.

I found it worth it just given the abundance of steel ingots for sale and/or the ease of finding iron and corundum ore.

Have any of you messed with the Creation Kit? I'd kind of like to build a custom dwelling, but I can't find any documentation on the CK.

What am I looking at, here? It's the meat-seller's stall in Riften; is that thing the deer leg is resting on supposed to be wood?

Weird-ass looking glitch.

What you're seeing is the object's "normal map". A normal map is basically an advanced bump map: you take a high-poly object and render the "normal" of what it looks like, and then vastly downgrade the poly level of detail (LOD) and apply the normal. Since the normal is a 3d bump map true to the original object rather than a 2d bump map on a texture, the technique lets you get 90% of the object's fidelity without all that extra math.

When you see a normal and not a texture, it means somebody's either accidentally deleted the diffuse & ambient lighting textures, or someone forgot to check off the checkbox that says that texture is a normal map and not a diffuse map.

Or the wheel of cheese went really, really bad.

Maybe we're seeing the invention of penicillin in Skyrim.

There's an unmarked location southeast of Sleeping Tree Camp, north-northeast of Bloated Man's Grotto, and due west of Secunda's Kiss, with three of the rotatable pillars marked with a snake, whale, and bird, and a pull-handle that appears to open a grate set in the ground. Do any of you know the place, and if so, have you solved the puzzle? I found all three markers giving the correct sigils, but I can't figure out which marker goes with which pillar, and from what perspective.

There's usually a pendant that shows the correct sequence - the first one I found was part of a questline, a shopkeeper asked me to retrieve it from the bandits who stole it. When I got it, looking at it in my inventory I realized that rotating the pendant to look at the far side revealed a set of three sigils. There was a related cave that had a set of three rotating pillars, when I put in the correct sequence it opened a door.

Apparently there's a number of these puzzles scattered around.



-k

I looked for that spot after you mentioned it, and the markers are closest to the pillar they go with. Look at the base of the pillar and there's a notch to show where to align the face.

Overlooking the site.
Note the notch.
And the pull lever.

And yes, that is dragonscale armor that Lydia is wearing.

Ahh! Totally missed the notches. Danke.

Bitteschön

That's a result of the high rez pack. Two objects got janked by it. Fire logs and chopping blocks. There's a patch for it, naturally.

Ok, so, Lv 52, did the Rebellion with the Storm Cloaks, took over Thieves Guild, Assassin's Guild, Companion's group. Can't do the oculary right, so stuck half way between the Mage's story line. Whenever I hit the thing with hot and cold spells, it simply does nothing. Annoyed.

So besides chasing down the dragon story line and getting my Smithing skill high enough to make the Dragon Armor (and other skill perks along those lines) and chasing down the Daedric Artifacts, what else is there to do? I know I can hunt down all the shouts, but that just doesn't seem worth while if there's no point besides "Hey I can shout fire better now!".

Also, anyone tried the vampire route? I made a character just to try that route out and now I spend most of my time trying to find something someone to eat just so that I can still go into towns. I mean, I get that being a vampire should be tough, 'cause fuck Twilight that's why. But the cons seem to seriously out weigh the pros for me.