Skyrim for the Unwashed Console Masses

Stryker wrote:

Probably a stupid question, but here goes anyway:

Does it matter if I join all 4 of the "guild/clans" even if I'm not specialized in that area? For example, I'm a 1 hander/shield character with hardly any sneak or magic specialty. Does it matter later on if I do the College or Thieves Guild questlines even though my character doesn't fit their mold at all?

I don't think it matters. It didn't in Oblivion, and I just went through the Mage College quests as a thief. There was a few spots where you needed to use magic to get past, but there were Tomes of the appropriate spell near each of those spots.

AcidCat wrote:

So has anyone installed and confirmed that the textures load properly now?

Yup. Texture loading seems to work fine now.

I initially installed the game (360) on launch day and started noticing the low-res textures. When the story came out a day or so later, I uninstalled and immediately noticed the difference. I've been playing uninstalled since.

Nabbed the patch yesterday and played for a good 6 hours and everything looked just as good as when it was running off the disc. Obviously the load times were much improved too.

Haven't noticed the patch-glitches reported yet (backward-flying dragons, etc.).

Running Man wrote:

I use that shout all the time as a 100/100 archer sneak. It feels pretty darn Garrett-like at times, but it's overpowered in most cases.

I got that shout and have never used it despite being a sneaky archer too. When I want to distract someone I usually just shoot an arrow at a wall so they go investigate it. My favorite shout so far is the Mark For Death shout. Makes some of the tougher battles way easier.

Stryker wrote:

Probably a stupid question, but here goes anyway:

Does it matter if I join all 4 of the "guild/clans" even if I'm not specialized in that area? For example, I'm a 1 hander/shield character with hardly any sneak or magic specialty. Does it matter later on if I do the College or Thieves Guild questlines even though my character doesn't fit their mold at all?

The game will let you join everything and anything. But, there will probably be points where a lack of a specific skill will seriously impede you. For your character, for example, one boss in particular in the Mage's College quest line will be extremely tough (unless you're over-levelled).

Also, if you don't do magic, the rewards from that quest line won't do jack for you (and the game doesn't use an exp. system for finishing quests anyway). Just fyi.

CptGlanton wrote:

Also, if you don't do magic, the rewards from that quest line won't do jack for you (and the game doesn't use an exp. system for finishing quests anyway). Just fyi.

You can always sell loot. Heck, I am a mage and some of the things I came across were

Spoiler:

an enchanted dwarven chestpiece and shield, what with me doing neither heavy armor nor blocking

Took down a dragon today. It flew normally.

I'm probably jinxing myself, but I am now 60 hours in on the 360 version (6 of those with the new patch), and my game experience has been much better than all of their past games from a technical perspective so far.

I've had no locks, no crashes, no broken quests, etc. The only major technical issue I had to work around was the 360 texture glitch, and I avoided it by installing the game to a thumb drive instead of the hard drive. Now that the issue is fixed, I'm running off of the hard drive and my loads have sped up a little, but are still a bit on the slow side. The only other technical bits of wonkiness I've witnessed have been characters talking over each other occasionally and one instance where an optional quest goal I needed to destroy was invisible for some reason.

specific quest goal in question (thieves' guild):

Spoiler:

In the Windhelm thieves guild mission where you need to take down the rival guild of Altmer and steal the back the farmer's daughter's ring, there is an optional goal of destroying their banner. In my game, the banner was an invisible solid object strung between two posts. I could locate it because the quest marker hovered over it.

On the bright side, the mission above is one of three or four where I have been directed back to a location I had previously cleared as part of another quest and which was properly repopulated for the current quest. Specifically, there were previously bandits in that location that I cleared out for someone else.

I was playing last night (the 30th) from 8PM until 2AM, but never saw the update notice. Will check again tonight.

Can you marry Lydia now? The strat guide says you're supposed to be able to, but I never get the option. Online wiki says its a bug. She was my first and only companion! I shall have no other!

Are carrying capacity and stamina different levels? If I up my stamina with a a level up, I can carry more. But if I up my stamina by 40 points because of a ring or necklace, my carrying capacity doesn't go up. What gives?

Question about a certain monster in a certain early, snow capped dungeon:

Spoiler:

Does anyone know what spell the magic weilding Drugar in the Bleak Falls Barrow quest are casting at you? It's a bright white light, but I can't figure out what it's supposed to be doing to me.

Draco wrote:

Are carrying capacity and stamina different levels? If I up my stamina with a a level up, I can carry more. But if I up my stamina by 40 points because of a ring or necklace, my carrying capacity doesn't go up. What gives?

What you're upping when you level up is both carrying capacity AND stamina. Stamina by itself is the bar that governs how often you can sprint or power attack (or use the zoom in slow-time mode with archery).

Draco wrote:

Are carrying capacity and stamina different levels? If I up my stamina with a a level up, I can carry more. But if I up my stamina by 40 points because of a ring or necklace, my carrying capacity doesn't go up. What gives?

I think the ratio is 1 to 1 because you start with 200 stamina and 200 carry capacity but I am not 100% sure on this. The issue you are having may be a bug.

Draco wrote:

I was playing last night (the 30th) from 8PM until 2AM, but never saw the update notice. Will check again tonight.

Can you marry Lydia now? The strat guide says you're supposed to be able to, but I never get the option. Online wiki says its a bug. She was my first and only companion! I shall have no other!

Are carrying capacity and stamina different levels? If I up my stamina with a a level up, I can carry more. But if I up my stamina by 40 points because of a ring or necklace, my carrying capacity doesn't go up. What gives?

Question about a certain monster in a certain early, snow capped dungeon:

Spoiler:

Does anyone know what spell the magic weilding Drugar in the Bleak Falls Barrow quest are casting at you? It's a bright white light, but I can't figure out what it's supposed to be doing to me.

The update was available for me yesterday morning. My version number on the lower left side of the save/load screen is 1.2.11.0. Thinking they may have pulled it, I just ran upstairs and checked it out on my other system where I haven't played since the weekend. The patch is still up because it just prompted me to download and install it. It is only 3MB, so it downloads quickly.

I'm already married in game so I don't know about Lydia.

Your carrying capacity is calculated based on your actual, unbuffed stamina value. Whether it is supposed to work that way I'm not sure. However, it makes some sense as the game includes some items that buff stamina and others that specifically buff carrying capacity.

As far as what spell the drauger in the first cave has, I honestly don't remember. Is it a stamina or magicka drain of some sort? I'm not a magic user so I don't have much familiarity with the in-game spells.

Sorry for jumping in here without looking both ways, but I feel like a part of me is giving in to the "buy Skyrim, everyone else is!" hype.

Just curious if anyone is aware of any direct comparisons as to which version (360 or PS3) is considered "better"? I've seen that this latest patch potentially screws things up but good, and have also heard that the PS3 seems to be the worse option, but since I own both systems I figured I might as well ask the learned masses.

Direct comparisons favor 360 both visually and performance wise, but it could be anyone's guess what it will be like after Bethesda rolls out a few patches.

Which controller do you like better?

Everything I've heard points to a lot of performance problems on the PS3 compared to the 360. I have no idea to what extent the latest round of patches affects this: hopefully one of our PS3-playing brethren can enlighten us.

I've had a pretty pleasant experience on the 360. I'm not sure if I was magically unaffected by the texture bug (reportedly fixed in the latest patch) or if I'm just a cheap lay graphics-wise, but the game looked equally fine to me both with and without the patch. (Been playing it installed on the hard drive since Day One.) I've never had the game lock up on me, and I can count the number of times I've had performance issues on one hand. There was a couple of instances where the framerate dipped noticeably, which either cleared up on their own or when I passed through a loading screen. Considering the ludicrous number of hours I've put into the game, one or two problems like that are no big deal. Only other issue I've run into was one time when a quest-necessary NPC got frozen and wouldn't continue to the next quest objective; I reloaded my most recent auto-save and it was fine. My only big complaint was that the load times seemed to get longer the further I progressed with my first character (who I got to level 35 with), which only really got annoying when I was doing a bunch of smithing and constantly going in and out of my house and to the forge and back. I haven't noticed the same effect with my current character (level 24), so I'm not sure if the patch fixed it or if something got borked with that first character specifically.

My experience may be atypical, of course, so you should certainly pay attention to any problems that anyone else reports, but from where I'm sitting, the 360 is a perfectly fine way to go.

Draco wrote:

Are carrying capacity and stamina different levels? If I up my stamina with a a level up, I can carry more. But if I up my stamina by 40 points because of a ring or necklace, my carrying capacity doesn't go up. What gives?

Carrying capacity goes up by 5 each time you pick the stamina boost when you level up. The only enchant that boosts carrying capacity is the one that increases carrying capacity There's also the Steed Stone that increases your carrying capacity by 100 and stops your armor from weighing you down. That's Skyrim's way of saying that your stamina won't decrease as fast when running.

SommerMatt wrote:

Sorry for jumping in here without looking both ways, but I feel like a part of me is giving in to the "buy Skyrim, everyone else is!" hype.

Just curious if anyone is aware of any direct comparisons as to which version (360 or PS3) is considered "better"? I've seen that this latest patch potentially screws things up but good, and have also heard that the PS3 seems to be the worse option, but since I own both systems I figured I might as well ask the learned masses.

I think that the general consensus is the 360 is the way to go. I've seen serious complaining about memory problems (leading to unacceptable loading times, etc.) and framerate on PS3, far fewer complaints on 360. I'm playing on 360 and as long as you're not a new-pc-graphics-whore, I think that you should be very pleased with the performance. I think I've had one or two freezes in 25 hours. For Bethesda, that's A+ work.

Eurogamer did a face-off thing between them. PS3 came off worse.

Even so, Skyrim is the first "western-made" game to earn a perfect score in Japan's Famitsu magazine for the PS3 version, joining the lofty ranks of Ocarina of Time, MGS4, and the hallowed Nintendogs.

It's a good game whichever version you play.

Running Man wrote:

Even so, Skyrim is the first "western-made" game to earn a perfect score in Japan's Famitsu magazine for the PS3 version, joining the lofty ranks of Ocarina of Time, MGS4, and the hallowed Nintendogs.

It's a good game whichever version you play.

How many versions of Nintendogs were there?

Just started two days ago, am playing unpatched off the disc, but man am I impressed with the engine and art tweaks since Oblivion (which I sank 150+ hours into). The two dungeony spaces I've been in, there are parts where the lighting and water and whatnot just WORK, like, I buy it. Wonderfully varied. Such a better character creator, too.

Slumberland wrote:

Just started two days ago, am playing unpatched off the disc, but man am I impressed with the engine and art tweaks since Oblivion (which I sank 150+ hours into). The two dungeony spaces I've been in, there are parts where the lighting and water and whatnot just WORK, like, I buy it. Wonderfully varied. Such a better character creator, too.

I haven't seen a a repeated dungeon yet. Some repeated elements, yes, but after dozens and dozens of dungeons, all of them have been different as far as I could tell. Pretty amazing the amount of work that went into this (and it makes me sad that the environments in DA2 were so half assed).

Yeah, I heard it mentioned before but when you sit Oblivion and Skyrim side by side it's almost like they're from two different generations of hardware.

I think Skyrim's vastly improved lighting engine and custom-designed dungeons contribute greatly to this.

One of the biggest improvements of Skyrim over Oblivion is that I can see in the dungeons without a torch! Now, don't get me wrong, you can always see BETTER with a torch or the candlelight spell, but at least when I'm sneaking around, it's not pitch black. I felt like I spent the entirety of Oblivion dungeoneering looking through blue-colored glasses from the "Night Eye" spell.

I'd also like to confirm the gimping of resistances post-patch. Playing on the Xbox 360 and when I fast traveled to Riverrun a Frost Dragon attacked. I'm level 29 and typically laugh in the face of their breath weapon as between my Nordish blood and magic necklaces, rings and boots, I have 95% Frost resistence. Well, not this time. Breath weapon fried me in the first shot. Reloaded two more times and same results.

You know, having recently come off of Red Dead Redemption, the Elder Scrolls horses are just so damn clunky. You can do everything on a horse that you can do off of a horse in Red Dead (escept for climbing ladders). The horse is just an extension of yourself. Why is it so hard to show my horse's stamina and health bar? Why can't I shoot from the horse? Why can't I at least be able to cast Clarivoyance? Grrrrrrr.

Draco wrote:

One of the biggest improvements of Skyrim over Oblivion is that I can see in the dungeons without a torch! Now, don't get me wrong, you can always see BETTER with a torch or the candlelight spell, but at least when I'm sneaking around, it's not pitch black. I felt like I spent the entirety of Oblivion dungeoneering looking through blue-colored glasses from the "Night Eye" spell.

I think your brightness/contrast settings may be too high. By default the dungeons are supposed to need a torch. You can ignore it, of course, but I recently dialed the brightness down on the game (had it cranked up in Settings for the same reason as you) and I forced myself to use torches. The added lighting "management" is kind of fun. I travel more during the day now and I creep through dungeons with a torch in one hand and a sword in the other. I can make out faint details in the dark corners, but a torch lights them up. It feels dungeon crawl-y.

And because I switch up my left hand more, I am using more magic. Just using torches has got me managing my situational equipping more effectively. I am learning the rock, scissors, paper mechanics odf combat and defense more deeply too.

I don't think they are using true dynamic lighting, but the wizbangery they cooked up for the lighting is convincing. Fighting at night with a small circle of torch light around up is exciting. It reminds me of the scene in Avatar were Sully is fighting of the pack of Pandoran wild dogs.

I like that there are so many options on how to approach the game play. Hell, you could just wander the wilderness as a hunter/alchemist or something, tracking down spriggons, daedra, and hargravens, while living off Venison stew.

Just had my first quest bug. Same for everyone else? (Xbox 360)

Spoiler:

It's the Daedric "House of Horrors" quest in Markath for the Mace of Molag Bal. The guy I entered the house with just stood in the middle of the room saying the house is "suspicious." I went into the basement alone but didn't hear the voice. So I went backupstairs and just killed the guy I was with. This set off the poltergeist effect in the home and finally triggered the spirit voice. Went backdownstairs and was given the next leg of the quest to reteive some monk that was defiling Morlock's alter. However, I am unable to leave the house because it says I need a key. Had to reload to a much earlier save and just skipped it all together

.

heavyfeul wrote:
Draco wrote:

One of the biggest improvements of Skyrim over Oblivion is that I can see in the dungeons without a torch! Now, don't get me wrong, you can always see BETTER with a torch or the candlelight spell, but at least when I'm sneaking around, it's not pitch black. I felt like I spent the entirety of Oblivion dungeoneering looking through blue-colored glasses from the "Night Eye" spell.

I think your brightness/contrast settings may be too high. By default the dungeons are supposed to need a torch. You can ignore it, of course, but I recently dialed the brightness down on the game (had it cranked up in Settings for the same reason as you) and I forced myself to use torches. The added lighting "management" is kind of fun. I travel more during the day now and I creep through dungeons with a torch in one hand and a sword in the other. I can make out faint details in the dark corners, but a torch lights them up. It feels dungeon crawl-y.

And because I switch up my left hand more, I am using more magic. Just using torches has got me managing my situational equipping more effectively. I am learning the rock, scissors, paper mechanics odf combat and defense more deeply too.

Well, I did have them kind of high, but I'm not going back. In Oblivion, I had my 8 slots of quick items and could easily switch to my torch, sheild, spell, ect. Now, with just two quick slots, it's too time consuming to switch back and forth. And I'm a theif, so no holding a torch for me.

Aaron D. wrote:

Yeah, I heard it mentioned before but when you sit Oblivion and Skyrim side by side it's almost like they're from two different generations of hardware.

I think Skyrim's vastly improved lighting engine and custom-designed dungeons contribute greatly to this.

Well they pretty much were developed on different generations of hardware. Much of the work on Oblivion would have been done on the early modified PowerMac G5 dev kits that Microsoft sent out before the real dev kits were ready or even on generic PC dev kits since if I remember correctly Oblivion was in development for like 4 years. Much of the development for the Xbox version of Oblivion would have been done with the assumption that the final hardware was only going to have 256 megs of RAM as well. When developing a launch title or a first year title (Oblivion was supposed to be the first but ended up being the later) it has to be a pretty crazy process with last minute hardware tweaks and not even having access to final hardware until a few months before launch.

The thing that blows my mind still is that they were able to ship Skyrim with fewer noticeable bugs than Oblivion still has after a dozen patches.

Okay, so I went to sleep and was kidnapped by a Dark Brotherhood assassin who wanted me to pick one of the people in a room to kill.

I chose her. And got my level 11 arse handed to me Twice.

What's the point of heavy armor, dragon shouts, flame spells and an orcish mace of arcing if I can't take out some woman in her pajamas?

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Okay, so I went to sleep and was kidnapped by a Dark Brotherhood assassin who wanted me to pick one of the people in a room to kill.

I chose her. And got my level 11 arse handed to me Twice.

What's the point of heavy armor, dragon shouts, flame spells and an orcish mace of arcing if I can't take out some woman in her pajamas?

This game has levelling. Some parts are easier than your level and some parts are harder. I guess, it's just the nature of the game and it hasn't really bothered me so far. I like getting into situations where i'm taxed from time to time and the converse too.

It sucks if you get stuck in one of those situations though....

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Okay, so I went to sleep and was kidnapped by a Dark Brotherhood assassin who wanted me to pick one of the people in a room to kill.

I chose her. And got my level 11 arse handed to me Twice.

What's the point of heavy armor, dragon shouts, flame spells and an orcish mace of arcing if I can't take out some woman in her pajamas?

Level 11 is pretty low to be fighting the highest ranked member of the world's most storied assassination guild.

Sometimes you have to do what the game wants you to do. It's the price we pay for more cohesive storytelling.