The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Catch-All

garion333 wrote:

Last mention of the Elder-Geek charity marathon. They just started playing Skyrim and will be playing for the next 48 hours. All donations will go to Child's Play and there are prizes and whatnot for donators.

Should I feel bad for failing to lend my marathoning to a cause better than my own enjoyment?

Lets talk about this hot key thing. I've basically been using the favourites menu, which equates to pausing the game to change your fit out. I have a G13 so hotkeying is, er hot? I mean easy. What am I missing about binding. It took me about an hour to get any kind of fluidity going with the menu system.

Gravey, what was that tankard filled with? Also what's the thing above the TV? Another, smaller, sneaky TV, or a painting/framed poster of sorts? I always enjoy these 'GWJ action shots' (and I grinned at the dreamcast)

People talking about the intro:

How did you guys like the intro? I must admit, I *loved* the cart ride and the bits shortly thereafter, but found myself lapsing into usual dulled panic mode when the thing started making the explosions and the flame. It felt too much like every war game I've tried to play, where stuff is exploding and you're expected to listen to instructions regarding what do to after the fires and explosions that you can't hear properly over the sound of the fires and explosions.

I find that I am much more likely to be awed by having to crawl toward a baby book/rattle as an infant at the start of a game (Fallout 3)/go to a birthday party than to race through a burning building to survive an explosion. I guess it's a weird sort of reverse-fatigue.

I found the Oblivion intro more affecting than this one. I knew I wasn't in any real danger in this situation, but having Uriel Septim suddenly show up and escaping under some kind of pretense without all of the flashy explosions was far more interesting to me than, "OMG DRAGON."

Anyone found a good place to store stuff early in the game?

BNice wrote:

Anyone found a good place to store stuff early in the game?

I need to know this.

Also, is it just me or is this basically Fallout 3 with swords?

Sorry, tucked in that dated joke is this, though. I love Bethesda's new engine. But as soon as I started lock picking it felt still familiar. This isn't a bad thing. Just interesting.

I was having a lot of fun zipping around town with the Whirlwind shout, then a guard ran up and asked me to stop because "all that, er, shouting is making people nervous". Way to spoil my fun Mr. Guardy McBuzzkill, I mean it's not like I was yelling fire at people or anything.

Also: the fire shout is awesome.

The Jarl in the first major town (Whiterun, I think) said something about giving me permission to buy property but I haven't found a followup on that yet. I'm guessing that means that I can actually own a house somewhere, but I don't know how yet.

He also assigned me a follower who so far only seems to be good for aggroing everything we come across.

ETA:

DSGamer wrote:
BNice wrote:

Anyone found a good place to store stuff early in the game?

I need to know this.

Also, is it just me or is this basically Fallout 3 with swords?

Sorry, tucked in that dated joke is this, though. I love Bethesda's new engine. But as soon as I started lock picking it felt still familiar. This isn't a bad thing. Just interesting.

Yeah, I got a Fallout flashback pretty heavily the first time I picked a lock. Now, if I have to hack a computer terminal then my suspension of disbelief is going to be pretty badly blown...

tanstaafl wrote:

The Jarl in the first major town (Whiterun, I think) said something about giving me permission to buy property but I haven't found a followup on that yet. I'm guessing that means that I can actually own a house somewhere, but I don't know how yet.

Talk to the Jarl's assistant guy, there's a chat option for buying a house. I think it costs something like 5000 gold.

Alright, third time I've hit "R" to 'take all' from a dead enemies inventory and crashed to the desktop. This happening for anyone else?

Puce Moose wrote:

Okay, I think I may be going crazy. Can anyone else confirm weird sound stuff going on?

There's two things that have been mentioned about this:

1) Go into your sound control panel, right click on your speakers (or whatever your output device is), properties, advance tab, change the Default Format to 24 bit, 44100 Hz.

2) Go into your sound control panel, right click on your speakers (or whatever your output device is), properties, advance tab, change the Default Format to 16 bit, 44100 Hz.

I honestly think it's the 44100 Hz portion that's important.

muttonchop wrote:
tanstaafl wrote:

The Jarl in the first major town (Whiterun, I think) said something about giving me permission to buy property but I haven't found a followup on that yet. I'm guessing that means that I can actually own a house somewhere, but I don't know how yet.

Talk to the Jarl's assistant guy, there's a chat option for buying a house. I think it costs something like 5000 gold.

Yup, it costs 5,000 frickin gold even after you do good things for them. Psha.

So, anyone want to show off their characters? I'm only a few hours in, so don't really have any fancy gear yet, but here's my Nord:

IMAGE(http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o310/VegaGWJ/Skyrim/SkyrimNordVega.jpg)
(hard to see scars - links to full size)

I figured I'd start with the stereotypical 2-handed Nord muscleman with a penchant for axes. I don't really have any real back story for him yet other than the obvious by looking at him. Which, of course, is that he was a bad ass Warrior in his youth until he was blinded in one eye by an Ice Troll. Barely surviving, and thought dead by everyone he knew, he fled Skyrim in disgrace to rehabilitate. Having only one eye he's had to relearn all his skills, but now he thinks he's an even better warrior and ready to get revenge on that Ice Troll. He'd tracked it down to a particular mountain range, but before he gets a chance he's picked up by the Imperial army....

Here's a nice little page of tricks I found. Includes details on changing the field of view.

Someone tell me what Vsync and smooth mouse mean? Starting to think I should have gotten this for the console.

http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comme...

TheWanderer wrote:

Here's a nice little page of tricks I found. Includes details on changing the field of view.

Someone tell me what Vsync and smooth mouse mean? Starting to think I should have gotten this for the console.

As a part of the dirty console underclass this kind of stuff does make me smile. I don't enjoy your pain, but these are exactly the reasons I'm willing to put up with gimped versions of Battlefield 3 or a less than gorgeous experience in Skyrim.

Puce Moose wrote:

Gravey, what was that tankard filled with? Also what's the thing above the TV? Another, smaller, sneaky TV, or a painting/framed poster of sorts? I always enjoy these 'GWJ action shots' (and I grinned at the dreamcast)

People talking about the intro:

How did you guys like the intro? I must admit, I *loved* the cart ride and the bits shortly thereafter, but found myself lapsing into usual dulled panic mode when the thing started making the explosions and the flame. It felt too much like every war game I've tried to play, where stuff is exploding and you're expected to listen to instructions regarding what do to after the fires and explosions that you can't hear properly over the sound of the fires and explosions.

I find that I am much more likely to be awed by having to crawl toward a baby book/rattle as an infant at the start of a game (Fallout 3)/go to a birthday party than to race through a burning building to survive an explosion. I guess it's a weird sort of reverse-fatigue.

The tankard is full of Dead Frog Chocolate Mint Brown Ale (with a hint of leather). Above the TV is a framed photograph, I only multitask with laptops, not secondary TVs.

Intro is alright, for the reasons you mentioned. First it froze during the attack, and now I've reloaded to follow the other guy into the keep. It's not getting better, but it's not getting worse.

I only have about 2 hours in on PC, love it so far, but I found it damn near unplayable with mouse and keyboard. I will be picking up a controller tomorrow. I have not had any crashes yet either, just a clicking sound in the pause menu at one point.

Love, love, loving the game so far.

From jump you can see the step up from Oblivion on so many levels, from presentation to general game design.

One baffler, so you can't turn off the compass at the top of the screen (360 version)? I find it terribly distracting.

In a game that's all about personal choice, that's a pretty major oversight.

In Whiterun, I spoke with Andrus' in the House of the Dead (I think), who had me go into the catacombs and retrieve an amulet. I've cleared the catacombs, but there is no amulet... what gives?

I'm just barely to level 4. Puce, your trick about examining inventory would have been quite useful when I was cleaning out the barrow (though I'd seen the place before in one of the preview videos).

Coolest thing I've found so far is setting some spilled oil on fire and watching some draugr get toasty. And then I went back to not using magic except to heal up after battles.

BNice wrote:

Anyone found a good place to store stuff early in the game?

You can give items to your housecarl.

Heck, I already somehow got a vampire disease. Any ideas yet on how to get rid of it?

Enjoying the game after a few hours I just traveled around in the snowy mountains before heading to the first town. I was able to kill most things except a vampire Master and a White bear. Just finished the barrow area.

Melee could use more feedback, I can't tell if I'm hit or I hit the guy sometimes. I'm rocking 2 orcish axes so it's all good

So...I rebound my keys yesterday, and apparently rebinding something to "F" screwed up the favorites button in the UI (which, of course, you can't rebind). Despite me undoing my rebind, now the favorites button doesn't work. At all. Which is a huge problem.

Such a serious failure. Were all the QAers playing with a controller? I'm trawling the internet looking for a fix but have no clue. Such shoddy, shoddy UI work.
My advice - don't rebind ANYTHING.

EDIT: After further research, it turns out that the "Favorites" button is just the same as whatever you use to toggle your POV, which I changed to "Alt". It's just the tooltip in the inventory still said "F" instead of "Alt", so I didn't realize the two were connected. So, further advice, if you rebind your POV toggle, that's your new favorites button too.

So stupid.

Dunmer mage/thief:

IMAGE(http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d133/Salvaje1/2011-11-11_00003-1.jpg)

Edit: Vega, how did you get such a large image uploaded on photobucket? My original image is 1920x1080, but this is as large as I can get it to work.

Can someone give me the quick and dirty version on how to switch weapon sets on the PC version? Like if I want to switch quickly between sword and shield, bow and arrow and spells.

And how do you learn/equip spells anyway? I found someone who sells spell books, and I bought one, but didn't see it listed as an equitable spell.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/FWeGg.jpg)

Tscott wrote:

Can someone give me the quick and dirty version on how to switch weapon sets on the PC version? Like if I want to switch quickly between sword and shield, bow and arrow and spells.

And how do you learn/equip spells anyway? I found someone who sells spell books, and I bought one, but didn't see it listed as an equitable spell.

Go to the book section of you inventory and activate it, then it will be available to use.

DSGamer wrote:
BNice wrote:

Anyone found a good place to store stuff early in the game?

I need to know this.

If you're a caster type, the University in Winterhold gives you a room with your own bed and a bunch of storage.

I ran into a weird exploit. You can pickpocket the money you give to trainers to build your skills, and there doesn't seem to be a cap to how many times you can train. I just went up 10 levels by training archery and pickpocketing the same guy over and over again.

As a part of the dirty console underclass this kind of stuff does make me smile.

The link upthread collates everything into one quick set of instructions. It's basically changing one setting, and adding two, for a much improved frame rate and better feel. It took me under five minutes. I'm willing to spend five minutes to use a box that's ten times as powerful as my consoles.

BNice wrote:

Anyone found a good place to store stuff early in the game?

If you joined the Companions (fighter) Guild, near where you sleep there's a dresser in the middle of the room. That seems to work fine for me.

As far as the controls go, the whole interface makes perfect sense with a 360 controller. I'm fine with not using my keyboard and mouse, but I do hope some modders tweak that for people who don't have a controller to use.

Last random 1AM note for the night: Flame Atronacht looks so cool, I think I'll be summing more than usual in Skyrim.