TES V: Skyrim

[Meridian]

And neither do some respawned ones as far as I can tell. In the meantime, I've finally started playing with enchanting. One annoying factor: it tells me I can't do a particular enchantment (resist fire in a dragon bone armour) but doesn't say why not. Please tell me what the limiting factor is...


M

[kbohip]

Anyone here been watching the mods update on Skyrim Nexus? I see there's already a nice new HD texture pack that's out.

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=607

[Meridian]

What are people's feeling about the level scaling here? Both MW and Ob came in for criticism of the way enemies leveled (Ob) or didn't (MW). What seems to be happening here is a mix of scaling and not. Most types of monster stay the same level, but some level up. However, even when humans level up, their gear stays mostly low level, with only a few random bits leveled up as well. It means you don't get bandits in full daedric gear hitting you for ten gold. My feeling is that it mostly works, but I can see the usual willy-waving crew complaining about the game being too soft at higher levels. It does certainly get easier, but most mobs will have at least one leveled nasty who will give you a fairer fight.


M

[Windrunner]

Well, for some reason the starting guy in the cutscene really kicks my butt every time I see him. By the time I see him, some stone dragon or what-not, I'm back at my desktop. Quite a tough fight. Any pointers? :|

[Activate: AMD]

What are people's feeling about the level scaling here? Both MW and Ob came in for criticism of the way enemies leveled (Ob) or didn't (MW). What seems to be happening here is a mix of scaling and not. Most types of monster stay the same level, but some level up. However, even when humans level up, their gear stays mostly low level, with only a few random bits leveled up as well. It means you don't get bandits in full daedric gear hitting you for ten gold. My feeling is that it mostly works, but I can see the usual willy-waving crew complaining about the game being too soft at higher levels. It does certainly get easier, but most mobs will have at least one leveled nasty who will give you a fairer fight.


M

I'm not a high enough level to really notice it yet, but the way you describe it sounds like the way it should be. At high levels the game should be easier.. i mean, you're a honed, trained sword-wielding and shouting badass. Having random bandits in oblivion wearing glass armor was always stupid after they were running around in low-level leather at the beginning of the game. It just kills the immersion. I'd maybe like to see roving bands of tough guys looking for you to present a challenge.. it would follow logically that as your reputation grows, there would be guys out there trying to take you down.. enough that you'd be able to find some loot worth grabbing while the everyday wimpy bandits still carry crappy junk.


Annoying glitch: every time I try to go into Nepos' house the game crashes, rendering the quest unfinishable without console commands

[Meridian]

Well, for some reason the starting guy in the cutscene really kicks my butt every time I see him. By the time I see him, some stone dragon or what-not, I'm back at my desktop. Quite a tough fight. Any pointers? :|

Do you mean the dragon itself? Or the various guards? The dragon cannot be killed (or not by you anyway) so just keep under cover. Watch where he circles and move when he's moving away.


M

[kbohip]

I finally picked this game up yesterday during a Black Friday sale at Direct2Drive. So far my initial impressions of the game are excellent. It just feels so much more polished than Oblivion, which I've been playing heavily over the last few weeks. Even the console centric gui doesn't bother me all that much. The only problem I have is my mouse speeds up way too much when I'm trying to navigate the menus. I remedy this by switching the dpi down.

Honestly I'm genuinely surprised how much I like this one over Oblivion so far, and I've only played it for an hour so far. Hehe, I like the crazy violent kill sequences too.It does suck going all the way back down to level 1 though when I'm used to be a level 15 in Oblivion. The skeletons in the cave on my current quest easily kicked my ass, and back in Oblvion I'd have layed the smack down on them with my level 15 badass self.

[Keven]

I'm a little burned out on Skyrim. Game's been out about two weeks and I've logged 77 hours according to Steam! I think I'm going to take a break, play some other stuff for a bit, before jumping back in to finish the Main Quest and Civil War quest.

[Meridian]

I'm only at about fifty hours, and level 40. I've mostly ended up doing miscellaneous quests, although I've done the main quest stream for the Companions (but not the radiant quests for them). Killed about twenty-five dragons so far. In the MQ I've only got as far as the retrieve quest for the Grey-Beards.


M

[kbohip]

I'm a little burned out on Skyrim. Game's been out about two weeks and I've logged 77 hours according to Steam! I think I'm going to take a break, play some other stuff for a bit, before jumping back in to finish the Main Quest and Civil War quest.

77 hours. That means you could've finished Deus Ex HR what, 6 or 7 times? I noticed when I've been playing Oblivion over the past few weeks, I have good nights and bad nights, but many more good than bad. Sometimes though the game just got tedious.

[Windrunner]

Do you mean the dragon itself? Or the various guards? The dragon cannot be killed (or not by you anyway) so just keep under cover. Watch where he circles and move when he's moving away.


M

No, I mean the game is crashing to desktop on me within 20 seconds of starting a new game. I hear it's the new hardcore way of dealing with player character death, so I'm assuming the level scaling is way off. I never even saw 'em coming!

[Activate: AMD]

Now it's time to see everything all put together. We've taken all of the tweaks from the previous two pages and put them all in at once. In SkyrimPrefs.ini, we have set the following commands:


bDrawLandShadows=1

bTreesReceiveShadows=1

iShadowMapResolution=8192

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=32

fGrassStartFadeDistance=14000.0000


And in the Skyrim.ini file, we have added one simple line:


uGridstoLoad=7


In doing so, we have added self-shadows to rocks, boulders, mountains, and trees. We have doubled the dynamic shadow map resolution and softened the shadow edges by a magnitude of about 10. We have also doubled draw distance for grass and increased object draw distance by 40%. Before we show what the game looks like now, we have to look at performance. After all, the best graphics in the world aren't worth much if you can't play it.

http://hardocp.com/article/2011/11/2...mage_quality/1

Some tweaks that make the game look a bit better. If you go to their article you can see some pretty noticeable changes in quality with an overall framerate hit of approx 15% on a single GTX580 running at 25x16 with 8x MSAA/16x AF. The best part is that they're all .ini tweaks.. no downloads necessary.

Speaking of which: Anyone download any mods yet? I'm particularly interested in some of the graphical ones like high-res textures and such.

[kbohip]

Some tweaks that make the game look a bit better. If you go to their article you can see some pretty noticeable changes in quality with an overall framerate hit of approx 15% on a single GTX580 running at 25x16 with 8x MSAA/16x AF. The best part is that they're all .ini tweaks.. no downloads necessary.

Speaking of which: Anyone download any mods yet? I'm particularly interested in some of the graphical ones like high-res textures and such.

I've downloaded quite a few mods already, including the High res pack. It definitely helps, but there's much more to be done. I also got the lockpick pro mod, as well as another one that puts the current real world time on the loading screens. I like that one a lot for obvious reasons.

[Meridian]

One thing I've found is that the game starts getting a little dull above about level 35. Progress becomes slow because most of the skills you use all the time are now either maxed or progressing very slowly. But if you switch to alternates, then enemies can be too strong. So anyway, I got bored and went along the MQ. I discovered:

1) Don't take your minion when you go to talk to the head of the Greybeards.

2) Save before you read the scroll - I got stuck in the cut-scene, which wouldn't finish.

3) If you have started the first mission for Tullius and you have to ask him to the meeting, you can't until you complete the first mission.


M

[kbohip]

Steam says I've already got 16 hours played in Skyrim, which I couldn't believe could be right. Then I remembered all the times I went off and left the game paused, sometimes for a couple of hours. Now I don't feel like I'm as much of an addict. Make no mistake though, I'm still an addict.