The OFFICIAL Anandtech Forums TeS V: Skyrim Thread

[cytoSiN]

ugh. i thought it was something else and was spending time looking for it myself. but he said there was a vampire so i continued looking

^^ This! Sad what we'll do when someone promises a vampire...

 

[Kobota]

WOW, i wasnt expecting the main storyline to be so short. glad i waited forever to start it.

 

[sactoking]

So due to being at home with a nasty stomach virus I went ahead and dl'ed Skyrim. I was pleasantly surprised to get autodetected for Ultra High with my 5770.

I've only put in a few hours (level 4) but I've noticed a few things that might prevent me from going much farther:

1. The game's brightness is atrocious. I had to turn the slider to max to get acceptable daylight levels but at night, underground, and in snowstorms it can be close to impossible to see anything.
2. I hate, hate, hate mouselook; it's so unintuitive for me.
3. I'm probably the only person who has to play in third-person. I started in first-person but the mouse sensitivity had to be turned way up to get decent turning response. That in turn made every picometer movement of my mouse cause a nauseating amount of headshake. Similar was the opening scenario in the cart; the view kept tilting like you character was tilting their head but it made the whole thing miserable.

A minor quibble that was easily remedied: left hand defaults to M2 and right to M1. That seemed ass-backwards to me.

 

[Imp]

That's the College of Winterhold.

I was just there yesterday. Gorgeous area, but I was there during the daytime, so light wasn't as dramatic.

By the way, one major piss off: has anyone had trouble getting their Brightness setting to "stick"?

I set it a notch or two above the middle, but every time I restart the game, it uses the "default" setting, which is too low. The funny thing is that the slider stays where I set it, but I have to move it to get it to recognize my setting.

 

[Demo24]

So due to being at home with a nasty stomach virus I went ahead and dl'ed Skyrim. I was pleasantly surprised to get autodetected for Ultra High with my 5770.

I've only put in a few hours (level 4) but I've noticed a few things that might prevent me from going much farther:

1. The game's brightness is atrocious. I had to turn the slider to max to get acceptable daylight levels but at night, underground, and in snowstorms it can be close to impossible to see anything.
2. I hate, hate, hate mouselook; it's so unintuitive for me.
3. I'm probably the only person who has to play in third-person. I started in first-person but the mouse sensitivity had to be turned way up to get decent turning response. That in turn made every picometer movement of my mouse cause a nauseating amount of headshake. Similar was the opening scenario in the cart; the view kept tilting like you character was tilting their head but it made the whole thing miserable.

A minor quibble that was easily remedied: left hand defaults to M2 and right to M1. That seemed ass-backwards to me.

Something is wrong with some setting then because I actually find it to be 'too' bright, outside everything is fine and the appropriate amount. Underground it seems I never need any sort of aide to see.

If you turn off the mouse smoothing in your .ini file (theres tweak guides to show you how), then you'll be able to lower that mouse sensitivity whilst maintaining decent look speeds. I had to do that eventually just because it made the mouse feel so slow.

 

[NoSoup4You]

That Ancient Vampire was a random encounter, I fought it a little further SouthWest from where that pic was taken. She (it was a chic) had another vampire (much weaker) with her and they were battling, no crushing would be more like it, some Vigilants of Stendarr.

 

[pandemonium]

1. The game's brightness is atrocious. I had to turn the slider to max to get acceptable daylight levels but at night, underground, and in snowstorms it can be close to impossible to see anything.
2. I hate, hate, hate mouselook; it's so unintuitive for me.
3. I'm probably the only person who has to play in third-person. I started in first-person but the mouse sensitivity had to be turned way up to get decent turning response. That in turn made every picometer movement of my mouse cause a nauseating amount of headshake. Similar was the opening scenario in the cart; the view kept tilting like you character was tilting their head but it made the whole thing miserable.

A minor quibble that was easily remedied: left hand defaults to M2 and right to M1. That seemed ass-backwards to me.

I noticed unbearably dark light levels with one of the FXAA injector mods I tried. I found another and that fixed it up perfectly for me. I don't remember the original game settings being too dark for me, though, I do enjoy it when dark is dark (not difficult to see however) for the mood.

I found the mouse sensitivity was about right at the middle setting. I'm not sure why it comes default at near minimal.

I'll run around in 3rd person 90% of the time, and then in close quarters use 1st person to loot, pick out books I haven't read, look closely at the goofy positions that bandits die in from me sneak attacking them, etc... I also changed my mouse buttons to M1 = left hand and M2 = right hand. My brain was hurting from trying to remember the other way each action.

 

[homercles337]

What does the game mean when it says you can combine shouts? Doesnt each "word" learned from the wall lead to a shout, or does the game automatically combine these words to "eventually" make a shout? I know that shouts are unlocked via dragon souls, but does this mean that eventually one can combine these unlocked shouts?

BTW, why were all skyrim threads confined to this one? Seems really retarded...

 

[Locut0s]

Game seems more stable. Still CTDs though. And I'm still getting the purple no texture loading problem.

 

[pandemonium]

What's the deal with Soul Trapping? I have several Grand that are filled with Common and down the line. I have to look at the "value" of each gem to determine if it's really capped out or how much soul is trapped. Is it accumulative? It doesn't seem so, but I haven't tested it specifically.

Also, the way soul trapping works is baffling to me. I never have gems "large enough" for humanoid soul trapping, yet I can trap Giants [as greater?], random (not all) arch or necro mages, and most undead, including the higher level draugrs and so-on. I used to cast it until I got the enchantment. I'm thinking the order priority of which gem to select in your inventory is borked. Instead of using a larger capacity gem for a larger soul when it should, it seems to stop at the lowest common denominator and goes, "oh well, no soul gem here big enough!", lol.

Unfortunately I'm at work otherwise I'd read up on the wikia. >.<

 

[pandemonium]

What does the game mean when it says you can combine shouts? Doesnt each "word" learned from the wall lead to a shout, or does the game automatically combine these words to "eventually" make a shout? I know that shouts are unlocked via dragon souls, but does this mean that eventually one can combine these unlocked shouts?

BTW, why were all skyrim threads confined to this one? Seems really retarded...

I'm guessing you're doing the High Hrothgar quest line where they ask you to combine them? That bit took me a second to figure out, and then I felt stupid, heh.

Spoiler

Hold the button down.

As far as I know, I've only seen the Unrelenting Shout be affected by this.

 

[PrayForDeath]

Has anyone been to korvunjund? It's sorta north of white run, part of a questline for either faction. Just need to know if anyone has gone through that area yet.

Yeah, what's with it?

So due to being at home with a nasty stomach virus I went ahead and dl'ed Skyrim. I was pleasantly surprised to get autodetected for Ultra High with my 5770.

I've only put in a few hours (level 4) but I've noticed a few things that might prevent me from going much farther:

1. The game's brightness is atrocious. I had to turn the slider to max to get acceptable daylight levels but at night, underground, and in snowstorms it can be close to impossible to see anything.
2. I hate, hate, hate mouselook; it's so unintuitive for me.
3. I'm probably the only person who has to play in third-person. I started in first-person but the mouse sensitivity had to be turned way up to get decent turning response. That in turn made every picometer movement of my mouse cause a nauseating amount of headshake. Similar was the opening scenario in the cart; the view kept tilting like you character was tilting their head but it made the whole thing miserable.

Have you tried increasing the field of view angle? Did you turn off mouse acceleration? Vsync?

A minor quibble that was easily remedied: left hand defaults to M2 and right to M1. That seemed ass-backwards to me.

Yeah I did that too. I shoot arrows with the right click and zoom with left click, but everything else feels natural now.

 

[walkur]

What's the deal with Soul Trapping?

the quality of the Soul gem (petty,grand etc.) only indicates the maximun soul that can be stored e.g. you can store a petty soul in a grand gem but not the other way around.

afak 1 gem can only store 1 soul

Human souls require a black soul gem to be stored (these have the same soul value as grand souls)



hint: try doing the "visit azora's altar" quest...

 

[cytoSiN]

What's the deal with Soul Trapping? . . .

Basically, it will use whatever gem is available. So if you trap a common soul, but only have grand soul gems empty, it will put the common soul in the grand gem (which sucks and is a waste, but that's how it works). Once a soul is trapped in a gem, that gem cannot trap another soul,

Spoiler

except for the Black Star/Azura's Star, which is reusable

. For humanoid souls (except for undead, which count as monsters), you need black soul gems

Spoiler

or the Black Star, one variant of Azura's Star, and imho one of the best/most useful items in the game

. There's more info on the various wikia, but hopefully this will tide you over until you can get out of work

That Ancient Vampire was a random encounter, I fought it a little further SouthWest from where that pic was taken. She (it was a chic) had another vampire (much weaker) with her and they were battling, no crushing would be more like it, some Vigilants of Stendarr.

That's actually kind of awesome. I've encountered lots of "overworld" random battles, but nothing as epic as that; besides dragons terrorizing everything in sight, of course.

As far as I know, I've only seen the Unrelenting Shout be affected by this.

Actually, afaik, every shout has three words total. You need to unlock them all through quests and exploration. Some shouts that suck when you first learn them become amazingly overpowered once you learn all three words. At lower levels I barely ever used shouts besides Unrelenting and Windwalker (almost never in combat situations, but for platforming it's very useful). Now, at 52, most of my hotkeys are set to shouts. In terms of progression, I like they way they implemented the shouts.

 

[Demo24]

What does the game mean when it says you can combine shouts? Doesnt each "word" learned from the wall lead to a shout, or does the game automatically combine these words to "eventually" make a shout? I know that shouts are unlocked via dragon souls, but does this mean that eventually one can combine these unlocked shouts?

BTW, why were all skyrim threads confined to this one? Seems really retarded...

If your asking if you can combine different shouts into one, then no that is not possible. However there are different levels to a shout, so some of the words will be part of the same shout and not necessarily all new.

Yeah, what's with it?

Were you able to

Spoiler

unlock the word of power at the end? I saw somewhere it could be bugged (barely visible, hear the whooshing, chanting is loudest several feet away), as I wasn't able to unlock it and wanted to see if anyone else had this issue. I've already got one word for slow time, so perhaps that created an issue?

 

[homercles337]

I'm guessing you're doing the High Hrothgar quest line where they ask you to combine them? That bit took me a second to figure out, and then I felt stupid, heh.

Spoiler

Hold the button down.

As far as I know, I've only seen the Unrelenting Shout be affected by this.

Yeah, i read that about

Spoiler

button hold

, but only tried it with Dragon Breath and nothing happened (beyond the usual that is). How is Unrelenting different from Disarm? If you powerup Unrelenting does it "turn into" Disarm?

If your asking if you can combine different shouts into one, then no that is not possible. However there are different levels to a shout, so some of the words will be part of the same shout and not necessarily all new.

Yes, that is what i was asking. I saw something about combining shouts on that load screen, but its up for only a couple seconds so i did not get all of it. I was hoping one could combine Unrelenting with Dragon Breath or something...that would have been awesome...

 

[Demo24]

Yeah, i read that about

Spoiler

button hold

, but only tried it with Dragon Breath and nothing happened (beyond the usual that is). How is Unrelenting different from Disarm? If you powerup Unrelenting does it "turn into" Disarm?

unrelenting is like a force push, power it up to use all 3 words and you'll knock over just about anything. Disarm just takes their weapons away, but some enemies are too strong for that so I presume the 3 word one will not have that restriction.

 

[sactoking]

Am I missing something? Why is it that my companion won't wear any of the armor I give her except a helmet? I'm using Uthgard and noticed she technically just has on a rag shirt so I gave her a bunch of steel stuff and the only thing she equipped was the helmet. I tried taking it back and giving it again but nothing changed.

 

[cytoSiN]

Am I missing something? Why is it that my companion won't wear any of the armor I give her except a helmet? I'm using Uthgard and noticed she technically just has on a rag shirt so I gave her a bunch of steel stuff and the only thing she equipped was the helmet. I tried taking it back and giving it again but nothing changed.

This has to do with the "invisible" default armor sets on certain companions. For Uthgerd, her invisible set is steel. She's already wearing it even though you won't see it when you trade with her. Like all other companions, she won't equip anything else unless it's better. Try giving her Orcish or better and she'll throw it on.

 

[Zeze]

I just got visited by the Dark Brotherhood.

I threw away all my legendary dragon armor for the ninja gear they gave me (30x crit for 700 dmg LOL). I turned off all 40-50 or so current quests and am exclusively running around assassinating targets now.

The game just turned super fun.

 

[AMDZen]

BTW, why were all skyrim threads confined to this one? Seems really retarded...

Indeed it is.

Indeed

it

is.

 

[KaOTiK]

http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2011/12/01/skyrim-what-were-working-on/

Looks like true mod tools in January and it will be using something called Steam Workshop where Steam host all the mods and there you can rate them and install them with just one click.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Indeed it is.

Indeed

it

is.

Everything important is maintained within the original post, most of the other stuff is conversation.

Search functions are your friends. Google+Thread search=win.

 

[AMDZen]

http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2011/12/01/skyrim-what-were-working-on/

Looks like true mod tools in January and it will be using something called Steam Workshop where Steam host all the mods and there you can rate them and install them with just one click.

Don't think the TES Nexus will be too happy about that

 

[AMDZen]

Everything important is maintained within the original post, most of the other stuff is conversation.

Search functions are your friends. Google+Thread search=win.

Sorry but there should be multiple threads on this game and we'll never agree. So lets just agree on that and let it be.

Oh, let it be.

Speaking words of wisdom