The OFFICIAL Anandtech Forums TeS V: Skyrim Thread

[coloumb]

Interesting.. I usually take the stealth + 1h/bow + conjuration [pets] + destruction [fireballs!] + lock picking [I MUST unlock every door/chest!] route in these games. It's fun to lob arrows from far away while my pet keeps them occupied.

 

[Concillian]

Is the first post being maintained still?

I mean there has been some major events like the official LAA patch negating the need for the 4GB mod, for example.

There's also the mod where they guy basically removed the CPU bottlenecks for Bethesda.

 

[power_hour]

Interesting.. I usually take the stealth + 1h/bow + conjuration [pets] + destruction [fireballs!] + lock picking [I MUST unlock every door/chest!] route in these games. It's fun to lob arrows from far away while my pet keeps them occupied.

Conjuration is for pets? OMGRTFM!!!

 

[Slew Foot]

As for conjuration what do you think of Arniel Gane's Shade? That thing has some SERIOUS resistance, it just sits in front of anything and takes hits like a MOFO without dying. Then I hide in a corner and lob incinerates Best thing is the zero casting cost

 

[zinfamous]

Visited my first dungeon yesterday and was like wow, this ain't too shabby. Trap doors, puzzles, crazy undead bill collectors everywhere.

Now if I can just figure out why I am trying to play a Mage who uses a sword (in off hand, with fire in the other) who has a problem tanking when he doesn't. I could fit a shield in my off hand but I figure gank over tank. Yeah I know I am a total noob at this. LOL

you can play as you want pretty well throughout most of the game, I think. If you have any doubts about how you want to develop your character, just don't invest perks into a skill tree that you are not confident about. Perks are the major thing that can limit you in the end game.

as for "Stats" --majicka then health for mage, stamina then health for mele.

 

[zinfamous]

Conjuration is for pets? OMGRTFM!!!

what manual?

steam has manuals??

:hmm:

 

[Locut0s]

what manual?

steam has manuals??

:hmm:

Yeah it seems for some, maybe lots?, of retail games Steam offers the manual in PDF format.

 

[zinfamous]

Yeah it seems for some, maybe lots?, of retail games Steam offers the manual in PDF format.

 

[Locut0s]

 

[gothamhunter]

I'll just leave these here:

 

[s1njin]

Is the first post being maintained still?

I mean there has been some major events like the official LAA patch negating the need for the 4GB mod, for example.

There's also the mod where they guy basically removed the CPU bottlenecks for Bethesda.

Bump. I asked this many pages back.

 

[zinfamous]

Interesting.. I usually take the stealth + 1h/bow + conjuration [pets] + destruction [fireballs!] + lock picking [I MUST unlock every door/chest!] route in these games. It's fun to lob arrows from far away while my pet keeps them occupied.

I don't think there is any reason to invest perks into lockpicking. Just lockpick everything, your skill will increase on its own, and there are more than enough lockpicks in the world to compensate for broken lockpicks. You shouldn't ever have to buy one.

there are rings, amulets, gauntlets, and the enchant that you can learn, to improve your lockpicking enough.

I've invested no perks into it, and master locks have given me no problem.

 

[frostedflakes]

Bump. I asked this many pages back.

On a related note, is Bethesda planning to include the SSE optimizations in an official patch eventually? Kind of like how they did with LAA. Saw some pretty huge gains from this, went from 17-18FPS on Dragonsreach looking out over Whiterun to 25-26FPS. Other CPU limited areas like Markarth run a lot smoother as well. No reason for them not to roll these tweaks into an official patch IMO, would probably benefit a ton of users.

 

[zinfamous]

Bump. I asked this many pages back.

I think Ravenseal is done with Skyrim so he abandoned it.

there are some nice mods in here, but I haven't tried any of them due to the ongoing patching status of the game, and the fact that the one I really want to install, may not be updated very soon--the smithing mod that allows you to smith arrows and break down swords and armor and such into their base components. You can use the various tankards and plates and all the other useless chaff for arrows.

Plus, extra types of combo-gear, I think
here's one of them:

http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1601

there was another, can't find it, that works with this larger mod. The developer broke his PC so no telling when he will be able to keep it updated. I was waiting for that before trying it out.

I usually wait for a second play through for such shenanigans, though. Sometimes, these things can be way OP.

 

[s1njin]

Ack. Well I supposed its good that I didn't use his pak than.

 

[zinfamous]

Ack. Well I supposed its good that I didn't use his pak than.

I downloaded, but haven't used it yet. I think it was a great pack of mods upon release, but some of the issues fixed by those mods have since been officially patched, so I just ignored them.

The only thing I have done is simple shadow tweak for trees and rocks. No big deal, but I did notice a decent change in depth. I haven't screwed around with this SSE stuff or whatever that is called--I assume it will be patched.

I haven't had any serious problems or noticeable frame rate issues as I started playing only after the most recent patch--so I've always had 4GB support. The only problems I have with the game are a handful of buggy quests and the hotkey/inventory interface that will forever piss me off.

 

[zokudu]

Someone should PM him. I bet he would update the pack if asked.

 

[Markbnj]

I don't think there is any reason to invest perks into lockpicking. Just lockpick everything, your skill will increase on its own, and there are more than enough lockpicks in the world to compensate for broken lockpicks. You shouldn't ever have to buy one.

there are rings, amulets, gauntlets, and the enchant that you can learn, to improve your lockpicking enough.

I've invested no perks into it, and master locks have given me no problem.

Ditto. The lockpicking system is so easy that even master and adept locks gave me few problems at the beginning, as long as I had picked up enough picks to break a few in finding the point at which the lock barrel began to rotate. It's really a pretty silly system, and compared to Oblivion's lock picking it constitutes one of the more dumbed down concepts in a game in which a great deal has been dumbed down.

 

[Qbah]

Ditto. The lockpicking system is so easy that even master and adept locks gave me few problems at the beginning, as long as I had picked up enough picks to break a few in finding the point at which the lock barrel began to rotate. It's really a pretty silly system, and compared to Oblivion's lock picking it constitutes one of the more dumbed down concepts in a game in which a great deal has been dumbed down.

I absolutely hated the lockpick minigame in Oblivion. What I always did as one of the first things (lvl10+) was to go for the Skeleton Key and auto unlock spam.

Though I must agree, it's even easier than in Fallout 3 / NV. At least there you had to have your skill high enough for an attempt. In Skyrim I never ran out of lockpicks, ever. Even the Master locks are rather easy. So I just got a mod that shows me the exact position :awe:

 

[coldmeat]

Ya I never really had an issue with lockpicking. At the beginning I thought it worked like fallout so I put one of my first perk points into lockpicking, but once I figured out that there was no minimum level to open any lock I haven't put one in sice.

I did get the

Spoiler

skeleton key

. I haven't brought it back yet because the quest so far seems like I won't get it back so I'm delaying that part until near the end.

 

[Martimus]

I actually really like the new lockpicking method in Skyrim. Although I admit that I don't see any need to use any of the perks. The Oblivion method SUCKED! This new method is fine, with only a minor tweak needed if they want it to be more difficult.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Ditto. The lockpicking system is so easy that even master and adept locks gave me few problems at the beginning, as long as I had picked up enough picks to break a few in finding the point at which the lock barrel began to rotate. It's really a pretty silly system, and compared to Oblivion's lock picking it constitutes one of the more dumbed down concepts in a game in which a great deal has been dumbed down.

I agree, my character has like a 20 lockpicking and I can pick master locks with only 5-6 lockpicks, considering I have something like 50 lockpicks I don't think I'm going to worry.

I don't understand the lockpicking perk tree at all. Why would someone need novice or adepts level locks to be much easier to pick? You basically need to just be on the right side. Does anyone ever break a pick on a novice level lock? I guess treasure hunter could be a nice perk, but it takes 4 completely useless perks to get to it. And then you get to unbreakable which makes the rest of the tree useless. Why go on to Master after you have unbreakable?

Overall the entire lockpicking tree seems to be badly thought out, and I'm really hoping that the mod community does something interesting with it.

 

[Markbnj]

I absolutely hated the lockpick minigame in Oblivion. What I always did as one of the first things (lvl10+) was to go for the Skeleton Key and auto unlock spam.

Though I must agree, it's even easier than in Fallout 3 / NV. At least there you had to have your skill high enough for an attempt. In Skyrim I never ran out of lockpicks, ever. Even the Master locks are rather easy. So I just got a mod that shows me the exact position :awe:

Yeah, I won't necessarily say it was fun. But the conundrum is that picking locks should be hard to do, otherwise why would anybody have locks? So you have to come up with some in-game mechanism that makes it hard to accomplish and yet fun to try, and that ain't easy. I think they did reasonably well in Oblivion, but the lock-picking in Skyrim is just a joke.

 

[disappoint]

I've got 99 lockpicks but a problem ain't one.

 

[shortylickens]

Had anybody used a titty mod yet?
Ideally one that does NOT modify the original models? Just replaces textures?