The OFFICIAL Anandtech Forums TeS V: Skyrim Thread

[RavenSEAL]

Finally done at work, I get to go home now and smash buttons for 3 hours! :awe:

 

[MustangSVT]

Not sure if this was posted, but here is a MASSIVE list of many many useful tips.

http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/mb8la/massive_list_of_all_the_tips_and_tricks/

 

[Merad]

Man, horses are really OMGWTF terrible to use. I was really hoping they'd improve that area. I think I'll just go on foot.

 

[Locut0s]

Man, horses are really OMGWTF terrible to use. I was really hoping they'd improve that area. I think I'll just go on foot.

How so?

 

[Avalon]

Anyone have really blocky shadows?

I'm playing on ultra settings and have tried changing the shadow maps all the way up to 8192, as well as reducing fshadowdistance down to 2000. Looks great on the wife's computer on high, mine looks like ass. I also notice obvious shadow shimmering every 3 seconds, it's extremely distracting.

Core2, 4GB RAM, GTX460, Win7 64bit. Latest drivers.

 

[NoSoup4You]

Anyone have really blocky shadows?

I'm playing on ultra settings and have tried changing the shadow maps all the way up to 8192, as well as reducing fshadowdistance down to 2000. Looks great on the wife's computer on high, mine looks like ass. I also notice obvious shadow shimmering every 3 seconds, it's extremely distracting.

Core2, 4GB RAM, GTX460, Win7 64bit. Latest drivers.

I also get the shadow shimmering, my pc is similar to yours. Though the shadow resolution tweaks make it much less noticeable. I'm running the latest WHQL drivers from the Battlefield 3 release, though I understand new beta's are out for Skyrim though I have yet to have a single crash on these WHQL's so I'm not switching.

 

[Merad]

How so?

If you get attacked while riding or if the horse is too near when you start combat, they run in and attack everything. Except for the times that they randomly run away, leaving you to search for them. For some reason they also seem to be the main target for AI, since the horse was always being attacked instead of me or Lydia.

 

[Imp]

Just burned about 3 hours... I take back what I said about dragons - some of them are effing hard. Looks like I was running into a bunch of weak dragons earlier. The latest one I fought crashed down from the sky right into me when it was low on health (major clipping issues...). Cool.

Looking forward to running into more giants. Only seen one and I'm up to level 20, but haven't really touched the main quest too much - only done a few things in Whiterun/-castle/-whatever.

Tech-wise, I haven't run into any major issues yet. Not one CTD except one I forced because I thought it had hung loading; it happened again, and after I waited long enough, it resumed. Running on 'high' with an i5 750, 4Gb ram and a year-ish old AMD 6850.


Oh ya, is there a trick to having your NPC die for good? Earlier in a dungeon, I used the 'marked for death' shout at a group of bandits and she got killed for good by them. Yes, I think I accidentally marked her too.

Edit: Googled my own answer. Turns out companions can never die by anyone's hand but YOURS. I probably (definitely) hit Lydia while she was down. Woops.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Just burned about 3 hours... I take back what I said about dragons - some of them are effing hard. Looks like I was running into a bunch of weak dragons earlier. The latest one I fought crashed down from the sky right into me when it was low on health (major clipping issues...). Cool.

Looking forward to running into more giants. Only seen one and I'm up to level 20, but haven't really touched the main quest too much - only done a few things in Whiterun/-castle/-whatever.

Tech-wise, I haven't run into any major issues yet. Not one CTD except one I forced because I thought it had hung loading; it happened again, and after I waited long enough, it resumed. Running on 'high' with an i5 750, 4Gb ram and a year-ish old AMD 6850.


Oh ya, is there a trick to having your NPC die for good? Earlier in a dungeon, I used the 'marked for death' shout at a group of bandits and she got killed for good by them. Yes, I think I accidentally marked her too.

Edit: Googled my own answer. Turns out companions can never die by anyone's hand but YOURS. I probably (definitely) hit Lydia while she was down. Woops.

Oh my god! You killed Lydia! You bastard!

 

[Wardawg1001]

Just burned about 3 hours... I take back what I said about dragons - some of them are effing hard. Looks like I was running into a bunch of weak dragons earlier. The latest one I fought crashed down from the sky right into me when it was low on health (major clipping issues...). Cool.

Looking forward to running into more giants. Only seen one and I'm up to level 20, but haven't really touched the main quest too much - only done a few things in Whiterun/-castle/-whatever.

Tech-wise, I haven't run into any major issues yet. Not one CTD except one I forced because I thought it had hung loading; it happened again, and after I waited long enough, it resumed. Running on 'high' with an i5 750, 4Gb ram and a year-ish old AMD 6850.


Oh ya, is there a trick to having your NPC die for good? Earlier in a dungeon, I used the 'marked for death' shout at a group of bandits and she got killed for good by them. Yes, I think I accidentally marked her too.

Edit: Googled my own answer. Turns out companions can never die by anyone's hand but YOURS. I probably (definitely) hit Lydia while she was down. Woops.

I've found varying difficulties in the dragons as well. I recently ran into one that takes off over half my health with a single blast of his breath, and there was very little in the way of cover nearby so it was a very difficult fight.

Interesting note on the companion. I had noticed that in fights she usually just goes down for a minute then gets back up, but in one fight in particular (a mammoth), when the fight was over she was lying dead. I was pretty sure I hadn't hit her so I didn't even consider that option.

 

[dennilfloss]

Ha! Looks like Drusilla inadvertently stole a book at the arcane library for Urag gro-Shub hired three now thoroughly deceased thugs to "teach her a lesson". Maybe she should pay him a visit to discuss this.

 

[RavenSEAL]

So...has anyone crafted dragon armor yet?

 

[flexy]

Some really funny stuff can be done, intentionally or via glitch...i dont know.

For example, i was attacking those guards in the embassy.

I used my relenting shout (which is about the coolest thing ever)....and blasted one of the attacking guards behind a desk in a corner of the room where it got stuck and could not attack me.

So i could finish off one other guard....get back my health...and then finish the guard who was stuck behind the desk

The other cool think i have seen so far was killing a dragon with the help of a giant who was around. I lured the dragon towards the giant...and the giant basically did the job

 

[coldmeat]

This game convinced me to overclock my Q6600. I've had it at stock speeds since I got it over 4 years ago. Skyrim was running OK, but I still noticed dips in the fps every now and then.

I've got my Q6600 running @ 3.0ghz. It was pretty easy to do, and is perfectly stable as far as I can tell. The game runs so smooth now, like butter, on high settings of course.

 

[dennilfloss]

Strangely enough, the look & subdued colours of the terrain outcrops remind me of that horrible game from 2002, Might & Magic IX, which also took place in a Viking-inspired icy boreal setting. A bit unsettling as I expect a hag to come out of her hut and say "There you are!!" in a horrible high-pitched voice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsTf0fQuv3Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkfixUjRi6M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1n9RV4VGXY

 

[dennilfloss]

So...has anyone crafted dragon armor yet?

I saw a pic of someone wearing dragonbone armour in the Ars thread. It's fugly.

 

[MustangSVT]

its probably done in oblivion but there should be a samurai or ninja character. only to perfect the way of the katana.

 

[yhelothar]

its probably done in oblivion but there should be a samurai or ninja character. only to perfect the way of the katana.

Kajit? Kitties are ninja - stealthy, agile, night animals armed adept at making a deadly calculated attack with its sharp claws.

 

[Zenoth]

I've tried the "No In-Game AA/AF" trick from the linked In-Game AA/Anisropic Filtering Performance Hamper/Gain tricks on the first page, and I get a black screen after I launch the game.

The link brings me to a thread on the official Bethesda's forums where the original poster (Starhammer) says: "Go to Skyrim's launcher => options and disable Anti Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering. Then go to your video card's configuration settings and force AA and Anisotropic Filtering there instead."

Which is what I did. I disabled both AA and AF from the game's launcher options, and then went to my NVIDIA's Control Panel and switched AA from "Application-Controlled" to "Overried any Application Setting" and then set the value to 4X to try that out and see if I would gain some frames. Since the goal of doing that in the first place is supposedly because the AA/AF method used by the game itself isn't as good as the method coming from the driver itself when forced via the control panel.

So, the result after trying it is that as soon as I launch the game my screen remains black and nothing happens, even trying to CTRL+ALT+DEL my way out of it doesn't work, so I had to hard-reset my computer. I've tried two times, same result each time. I'll just keep using the game's launcher AA and AF instead. I was just curious to see how many frames I would gain but alas, doesn't work at all at least in my case.

Anyone else tried and it wasn't working? And for those of you who tried and it worked, how's the FPS gain? Anything noticeable? Or is it only negligible?

 

[flexy]

This is what i have, note that i tied the TESV.exe to this in the NV Inspector so this profile gets applied automatically. I also only have 4xAA and 4x Multisampling Transparency forced because i only have a GTX 275.

There are some extreme settings (like 32xAA etc.) which would result in black screen since the video memory wouldnt be enough to support such extreme AA settings.

As for skyrim options, IN the game options i still have 4xAA on and 8xAF....which doesnt matter since i override all this anyway.

 

[Zenoth]

This is what i have, note that i tied the TESV.exe to this in the NV Inspector so this profile gets applied automatically. I also only have 4xAA and 4x Multisampling Transparency forced because i only have a GTX 275.

There are some extreme settings (like 32xAA etc.) which would result in black screen since the video memory wouldnt be enough to support such extreme AA settings.

As for skyrim options, IN the game options i still have 4xAA on and 8xAF....which doesnt matter since i override all this anyway.

I'm not using NVIDIA Inspector, what I have is the default NVIDIA's control panel. But it doesn't work for me anyway. It looks to be working for you, so is there a noticeable performance difference?

 

[flexy]

I found the solution:

In the game options, you NEED to have it active since otherwise there is nothing to "override". So..turn it on in the game options.
As for NV inspector, i prefer NV Inspector for many reasons, but one particular reason is that with the original NV control panel you cannot get good transparency anti-aliasing, they are using low quality form of transparency AA by default. With NV inspector (see my settings) you can use real multi sampling..and of course all the other types of AA (if your card can handle it).

As for performance: The game is VERY playable for me (50ish, 60ish FPS) even with a GTX 275 and 4xAA and 4xAA Multisampling Transparency AA.

 

[RavenSEAL]

I've tried the "No In-Game AA/AF" trick from the linked In-Game AA/Anisropic Filtering Performance Hamper/Gain tricks on the first page, and I get a black screen after I launch the game.

The link brings me to a thread on the official Bethesda's forums where the original poster (Starhammer) says: "Go to Skyrim's launcher => options and disable Anti Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering. Then go to your video card's configuration settings and force AA and Anisotropic Filtering there instead."

Which is what I did. I disabled both AA and AF from the game's launcher options, and then went to my NVIDIA's Control Panel and switched AA from "Application-Controlled" to "Overried any Application Setting" and then set the value to 4X to try that out and see if I would gain some frames. Since the goal of doing that in the first place is supposedly because the AA/AF method used by the game itself isn't as good as the method coming from the driver itself when forced via the control panel.

So, the result after trying it is that as soon as I launch the game my screen remains black and nothing happens, even trying to CTRL+ALT+DEL my way out of it doesn't work, so I had to hard-reset my computer. I've tried two times, same result each time. I'll just keep using the game's launcher AA and AF instead. I was just curious to see how many frames I would gain but alas, doesn't work at all at least in my case.

Anyone else tried and it wasn't working? And for those of you who tried and it worked, how's the FPS gain? Anything noticeable? Or is it only negligible?

I was supposed to make a note of that in OP, it's supposed to be a hit and miss thing. It might work with some PCs, might now work with others.

 

[PrayForDeath]

Question... What do you gain from leveling skills? The game doesn't clearly state the gains from leveling up, say, destruction. I understand that some perks require a certain skill level (advanced destruction perks might require a destruction skill of 40 or higher), but is that the only reason to level skills, or do they actually get stronger (more damage from destruction spells as you skill-up, etc.)?

 

[Zenoth]

Question... What do you gain from leveling skills? The game doesn't clearly state the gains from leveling up, say, destruction. I understand that some perks require a certain skill level (advanced destruction perks might require a destruction skill of 40 or higher), but is that the only reason to level skills, or do they actually get stronger (more damage from destruction spells as you skill-up, etc.)?

Very good question, I've wondered about that myself.

Is there any difference (however small it may be) between say... having 21 or having 24 in Archery? Or, indeed, do we just level-up until we can unlock the next Perk? From my own observations (playing as a Sneak/Archery/Magika Thief/Mage hybrid) there really isn't much difference in my Sneak abilities until I actually get a new Perk to "make a difference", I might be wrong but it's one example out of a few others which makes me think that Perks is all there is to leveling. If not then I guess it takes a very long time in most skills to make a noticeable difference outside of Perks themselves.