The OFFICIAL Anandtech Forums TeS V: Skyrim Thread

[HybridSquirrel]

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

player.additem a 10000000

 

[Markbnj]

Heh, check this out... I'm wandering northwest of Falkreath (Shor's bones!) collecting ingredients and sightseeing, and don't have Lydia with me because this kind of trip bores her. I encounter and kill two dragons, and find myself standing next to the skeleton of the second one encumbered by a stack of 10 bones, and a stack of 10 scales (and a bunch of other stuff). Meanwhile a fisherwoman has run up from the woods and taken up position nearby to deliver the standard "I've never seen anything like that!" line.

I try to fast travel to Whiterun to dump stuff and find that I can't while encumbered. Ok, fair enough, I can magically travel unaware of the passage of time, but not while carrying too much crap. I decide to drop the stack of 10 scales and then come back for them later. As soon as the stack hits the ground the fisherwoman runs over and picks them up, says "Here, you dropped these," or something similar, and the stack is added back into my inventory. But she only gives me 1 scale back, not my stack of 10.

I pop over to Whiterun and sell off, store some stuff, fast travel back to Moss Mother Cavern, and hoof it back to the dragon skeleton. I head down to the lake and find her at her fishing camp. I kill her, and sure enough the other 9 scales are in her inventory. I take them, and check my crime stats. No murder, as I guess I wasn't seen. I reload and try to pickpocket them but she catches me, which isn't surprising since I'm not a thief. Now I can't decide whether to kill her, since she did steal from me, or just say the hell with it and let her keep them. Moral of the tale: don't drop your chit near nosy, lightfingered NPCs.

 

[Specop 007]

Just started playing this game, really enjoying it. One huge downside I've noticed is in Oblivion when you cast a buff on yourself there would be a timer in the upper corner. Also there was an icon present for summoned creatures.

In Skyrim I dont see this, so theres no clear indication when spell effects and summons will wear off. Is there a mod to address this? This is kind of a big deal to me.

 

[zinfamous]

Just started playing this game, really enjoying it. One huge downside I've noticed is in Oblivion when you cast a buff on yourself there would be a timer in the upper corner. Also there was an icon present for summoned creatures.

In Skyrim I dont see this, so theres no clear indication when spell effects and summons will wear off. Is there a mod to address this? This is kind of a big deal to me.

That is, indeed, annoying.

 

[dennilfloss]

I still find myself hopping occasionally. Old habits die hard.

 

[Markbnj]

Just started playing this game, really enjoying it. One huge downside I've noticed is in Oblivion when you cast a buff on yourself there would be a timer in the upper corner. Also there was an icon present for summoned creatures.

In Skyrim I dont see this, so theres no clear indication when spell effects and summons will wear off. Is there a mod to address this? This is kind of a big deal to me.

Another glaring omission in an interface more or less designed around glaring omissions. I read a blog post by some XBox player the other day saying how much he liked it, and how carefully Bethesda had thought it all through, and I wanted to claw my way through my monitor to get my hands on his throat.

I've read statements in the forum so often saying essentially that Elder Scrolls games weren't worth playing until they had been modded into something acceptable, and it's funny how true that turned out to be with Skyrim. The construction set is due sometime in January, and hopefully the modding community will get to work on some of this stuff. It's one of the reasons I'm not getting too attached to this character.

 

[Visaoni]

I just installed SkyUI. I haven't played with it much, but it seems pretty nice. I probably won't see much advantage from it (besides being able to actually see a good number of items at once) until I train myself out of using the keyboard for pretty much all UI navigation.

I really hope SkyUI, or similar mods, get around to redoing the entire interface. The worst problem with the default UI, by far, has to be conversations. Now I habitually spam the up or down button before selecting a dialogue option. Why? The big one, the one that is positioned next to the pointer, isn't always the selected one. I know the mouse moving anywhere in the general vicinity of the dialogue box can cause such disruptions, but it seems to happen from time to time when I'm pretty sure the mouse wasn't moved at all. A similar problem seems to crop up with the Alchemy screen if I bounce around it too much.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Another glaring omission in an interface more or less designed around glaring omissions. I read a blog post by some XBox player the other day saying how much he liked it, and how carefully Bethesda had thought it all through, and I wanted to claw my way through my monitor to get my hands on his throat.

I've read statements in the forum so often saying essentially that Elder Scrolls games weren't worth playing until they had been modded into something acceptable, and it's funny how true that turned out to be with Skyrim. The construction set is due sometime in January, and hopefully the modding community will get to work on some of this stuff. It's one of the reasons I'm not getting too attached to this character.

Modding is the now the cool excuse for developer laziness.

 

[homercles337]

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

I think i made the mistake of keeping Keening instead.

EDIT: Has Bethsoft fixed that dog dam key mapping bug yet? I have no favorites or quick menu since i dont want the default key map...its utter nonsense.

 

[shortylickens]

Just started playing this game, really enjoying it. One huge downside I've noticed is in Oblivion when you cast a buff on yourself there would be a timer in the upper corner. Also there was an icon present for summoned creatures.

In Skyrim I dont see this, so theres no clear indication when spell effects and summons will wear off. Is there a mod to address this? This is kind of a big deal to me.

Even more annoying is you cant make your own spells and theres no way to combine multiple spells into one with your choice of power or duration.

I previously made spells with a full set of daedric armor to keep my mage comfortable while fighting and unencumbered while travelling. Also combined helpful effects for myself and allies, and combined weakness to fire with fire magic.
All that stuff is gone. So it summoning any creature in the game you want (Oblivions construction set allowed it).

Also, since I cant hard myself without falling, its difficult to bump my restoration skill. In Morrowind I made a spell that let me do fire damage and healing, on myself. In Oblivion I made an area effect spell to do the same thing and just cast it on a tree or rock. Improved both skills at the same time. Good stuff.

None of that any more. Now I gotta jump off cliffs, hope I dont die, and heal myself. Run back up (which usually takes a while) and do it all over again. I have an Expert heal spell but I dont get skill points from it unless I'm really hurting, which means long falls, which means lots of quick saving and loading if I dont measure them correctly.

 

[coldmeat]

In Oblivion couldn't you cast a spell that actually did fire damage to yourself?

Why don't you find one of those traps that are in some dungeons? The ones with the soul gem that fires a fire/frost ball at you? Just go and grind with one of them.

 

[Concillian]

None of that any more. Now I gotta jump off cliffs, hope I dont die, and heal myself. Run back up (which usually takes a while) and do it all over again. I have an Expert heal spell but I dont get skill points from it unless I'm really hurting, which means long falls, which means lots of quick saving and loading if I dont measure them correctly.

If you jump in a forge (other than the Skyforge) it will burn you.

You have to keep jumping to get repeated fire damage to yourself.

For some really strange reason, this burning of yourself will level your destruction skill. I guess because you're inflicting fire damage to someone (yourself) Then you can heal back the damage and level restoration.
It doesn't do a ton of damage, so it does take some time. Falling may work better if you're a Breton.
I haven't tried increasing difficulty. It may damage you quicker if you increase difficulty. Anyway this is a good way to get a few easy destro skillups for a low level mage.

Or you can find some enemy who doesn't do massive damage (wolf, bandit, etc...) and let him beat on you while healing back the damage. Use your 'freeze them solid' shout or even just Fus for buying time to regenerate magicka. In that case you get light or heavy armor points plus restoration. Or you can block damage and get block skill increases while getting restoration. If you have lots of -% restoration magicka gear you may be able to block with wards and get some double quick restoration skill leveling. I don't actually know if wards level restoration though. I would assume so, but don't know.

 

[Fenixgoon]

burn baby burn! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bifmj1O3D24


also, how exactly do you fill up soul gems? i saw one sword that will find them up if i kill people, but otherwise i dont know. i'm gonna go google it for myself

 

[IGemini]

also, how exactly do you fill up soul gems? i saw one sword that will find them up if i kill people, but otherwise i dont know. i'm gonna go google it for myself

They need to be hit by soul trap from either the spell or a weapon enchanted with it. If the enemy dies while the trap is still active, you trap it in a gem so long as you have one large enough for the soul. There's "white" souls that are animals and lesser daedra and "black" souls that are humanoids and dremora. Black soul gems hold both types.

 

[Borealis7]

about soul trapping...i found a spider cave while being around level 40 and with about 20 petty and lesser soul gems in my inventory, so i set left hand to Soul Trap, right hand to Chain Lightning, and yada yada yada...20 soul gems filled for enchanting! mwahahaha.

good times...

Belethor's store in whiterun got a shipment of iron daggers with fire damage that night

 

[zinfamous]

about soul trapping...i found a spider cave while being around level 40 and with about 20 petty and lesser soul gems in my inventory, so i set left hand to Soul Trap, right hand to Chain Lightning, and yada yada yada...20 soul gems filled for enchanting! mwahahaha.

good times...

Belethor's store in whiterun got a shipment of iron daggers with fire damage that night

try this:

iron ore > transmute silver > transmute gold > smelt gold ingot > smith 2 gold rings > enchant petty destruction each ring. Pretty good turn on investment, less cost in supply, lots of skill leveling.

 

[ManBearPig]

Any opinions on which is the best out of 1 handed + shield, two handed, or dual wielding? I wanna try a new character and on master difficulty.

Thanks

 

[zinfamous]

on my only character, I'm primarily shield + one-handed with occasional dual wield. You can fairly easily go one hand/shield or dual wield on one character with no real waste in perks.

You can, at least block with 2-handed, though not as well, but if you focus on that it can free up some shield-specific perks for other uses, like heavy armor perks.

I can say that shield is ridiculously powerful once you get the reduction magic damage perks and bash strength.

Either way, be sure to pump most of your levels into stamina.

 

[Skott]

on my only character, I'm primarily shield + one-handed with occasional dual wield. You can fairly easily go one hand/shield or dual wield on one character with no real waste in perks.

You can, at least block with 2-handed, though not as well, but if you focus on that it can free up some shield-specific perks for other uses, like heavy armor perks.

I can say that shield is ridiculously powerful once you get the reduction magic damage perks and bash strength.

Either way, be sure to pump most of your levels into stamina.

I was thinking of making a 1h+shield warrior (my only character is low level thief/assassin) to try out and heard that a 70/30 split (health/Stamina) is good enough. Do I really need to put a much higher ratio of stamina into a build like that?

Also is a Nord a good enough race to go 1h+shield or would I better off going with an Orc? I hear Orcs make the best warriors but I don't like the looks of them much.

 

[zinfamous]

I was thinking of making a 1h+shield warrior (my only character is low level thief/assassin) to try out and heard that a 70/30 split (health/Stamina) is good enough. Do I really need to put a much higher ratio of stamina into a build like that?

Also is a Nord a good enough race to go 1h+shield or would I better off going with an Orc? I hear Orcs make the best warriors but I don't like the looks of them much.

meh, I'm fine with my Nord warrior. The Frost resist sure helps, though I imagine that Orc is probably the best--I forget the advantage.

I would almost go 70/30 stamina/health. The main benefit to shield is bashing for stun, which takes stamina each time you use it. You can sap up stamina real fast with shield bashing. I would suggest not to grab the unconnected perk that allows you to slow down time when blocking power moves. I think it's available at ~30 skill points. It does provide some benefit to dodge from time to time, but for me--it is mostly bugged. The game will become stuck in slowdown and I often have to F9.

Oh, but if you're thief assassin, you might want to try and stick with dual-wield daggers and sneak. No need for a shield if they're dead before they see you. ....except for Dragons, I guess.

 

[ManBearPig]

Nice, thanks! So more stamina than health then?

 

[Skott]

Thanks for the info. I think to start I'll try a 50/50 ratio and see how that works and then if I need to fine tune my warrior's health/stamina more I will do so from there. That should be a good starting point. Can't wait to get home and create my new character.

 

[ManBearPig]

anyone know who the best mage companion/follower is?

 

[zinfamous]

anyone know who the best mage companion/follower is?

The only follower that I have used is Lydia, but I imagine that the dude you get in Dawnstar is a pretty good mage--but his quest is quite lengthy.

 

[Dominato3r]

I got married to Aela and forgot to tell her to go my house. Now I can't find her anywhere... jorrvaskr or breezehome. Where the fuck is she? I still have the stealing plans quest from her so I'm gonna try completing that and see if she pops up.