I edited that to $1300 after I got to thinking about the equipment I have sitting waiting for use and lowering my standards (in audio.)
$60 for the game
$600 for the 42" LCD tv.
$100 for the upgraded audio card to output a spdif or tos signal to a surround receiver
$200 for a basic cheap receiver for 5.1
the remainder for a basic audio setup.
Oh well it is something I've been meaning to do for a while now. I just haven't had an excuse to upgrade the play room w/ the computer in it since most of our entertainment items (Xbox, PS3) are downstairs on the plasma and sound system.
I wonder if any of this is because, way back when I was much lower level and not into any of the plot, I visited Riften and attempted to slaughter all that was in the Ratway. This was after that hottie Mjoll said something about taking them out. I was like, heh, I can do that. That was when I met my first unkillable characters
Yeah, that was fun to find out that they were unkillable.
Leveled the shit out of some stuff by constantly battling. I thought they were just really durable. I guess they kinda are.
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HunterChemist with a heart of AuRegistered Userregular
You can't kill people that are necessary for primary quests unless that is a clear option
see Astrid...kill Astrid for having the audacity to kidnap the motherfucking Dragonborn while he's catching up on some needed sleep...kill everyone in the Dark Brotherhood for shits and giggles...profit
As for Esbern, depending on what you did with the Thieves Guild intro quest, sometimes Brynholf won't trigger. Try to talk to Keerava, the lizard chick bar owner in Riften. She can also trigger the next step. I believe you then go through Vekel the Man in the Ragged Flagon where you either persuade him, pay him off for the info, intimidate him, or beat the shit out of him. Then it's off to talk to crazy old dragon-racist Esbern.
But don't you have a quest in your queue with the right artwork? After Diplomatic Immunity I've not had anything else. That's what is just so strange. I guess I'll just try everything.
You can't kill people that are necessary for primary quests unless that is a clear option
see Astrid...kill Astrid for having the audacity to kidnap the motherfucking Dragonborn while he's catching up on some needed sleep...kill everyone in the Dark Brotherhood for shits and giggles...profit
See I think my next character will go that route. I just thought she sounded sexy so I didn't kill her, and instead decided to do exactly as she said so she'd keep talking to me. Had they put in an old hag (like the Night Mother maybe) to talk to then I'd probably have gone berserk on them all. In this game, the cute or interesting characters definitely live longer.
Side question, Is Shadowmere invincible or something? That is a STRONG horse.
1.5 patch announced. Some bug fixes for some quests and stuffs, but more importantly, killcam-palooza! More melee kill cams, ranged and magic kill came, wrasslin' unarmed duplexes, etc etc.
Also smithing's gonna gain skill based on the item value, so get your iron dagger spamming in now.
Guess the beta patch is supposed to be on Steam now.
Oh hey, this was one of those Game Jam things, neat.
A small part of me hopes that Giant Mudcrab is in the works.
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HunterChemist with a heart of AuRegistered Userregular
Now I want kill cams for certain dragon shouts. I want to Unrelenting Force some bandit so hard that I literally shatter his bones, rupture all his internal organs, and make him explode from the inside outward like a bag of popcorn.
So I broke down and just bought it for PC. $39.99 at Walmart while wife was shopping for foodstuffs, kinda just sneaked it right in there.
Installed, auto-detected "Ultra" settings (whatever that means), and got past the character creation stage (Breton who looks like a young Clooney btw), and got a blue screen o' death. Haven't seen one of those in a long while. Sure looked good while it was running though. Damn good.
So blue-screens were happening left and right, pissing me off. I decided to try my chance at updating everything, and found that Nvidia recently launched a new driver that claimed a staggering 45% increase in performance on Skyrim. I am here to say that this claim is probably close to true, despite the crazy that is implied.
I not only have a blisteringly fast game on Ultra settings, I have zero blue screens. Thank you, Nvidia!
*Note my PC is a Phenom II from the end of the AM2+ line, not even the new gen, w/ 4gb DDR2 (yep, not even DDR3) RAM, and a modest 550ti card. Yet this older rig is doing 1920x1080 perfectly.*
Now that I've got a stable platform, I've been able to really focus on the actual game. And here's what I want to discuss for a minute:
Why is that my first character as I played on a 360, which was a Khajiit, died constantly and had a tough time in battle pretty much all the way through levels 45ish? He was running heavy armor, constantly with a healing spell in the left hand hand when doing one handed melee.
To compare, my PC character is a Breton, wearing light armor to boot, focused mostly on Conjuring for something different, at level 7 picked up the bound bow, and I've been unstoppable! I checked the difficulty, it is adept just like it was on the 360. Yet I've not died once, I'm hauling ass through places and I'm barely taking damage enough to worry about. It seems like a much easier game with the Breton!
Also thanks to not being on the 360 anymore, loading times which used to take forever now take seconds if that. Man it makes such a difference in the game not having to wait. And wait. And open a door. Wait. Fast travel, wait. etc. I'm already at level 14 and I haven't even put in more than a few hours.
Just picked up the 360 controller for PC too. I think it works better for this game but I wish I could pull back more on my POV like the mouse wheel lets me. That was pretty cool to be a little guy running around in a big world.
One final query for those using big lcd screens - is it just my new screen or does the whole scenery get a little bit brighter if you stay still? Example, I'm in a cave and there's minimal light. If I stay still the whole thing is a bit brighter. When I start to move or move my view, during moving the lighting dims just a bit and it is noticeable. Is this something that everyone experiences or is it my new TV?
One final query for those using big lcd screens - is it just my new screen or does the whole scenery get a little bit brighter if you stay still? Example, I'm in a cave and there's minimal light. If I stay still the whole thing is a bit brighter. When I start to move or move my view, during moving the lighting dims just a bit and it is noticeable. Is this something that everyone experiences or is it my new TV?
could be your TV. most widescreen lcd TVs use what's called a "TN" panel. great for fast motion gaming, and also cheap, but not so good on the brightness/color reproduction end.
could be your TV. most widescreen lcd TVs use what's called a "TN" panel. great for fast motion gaming, and also cheap, but not so good on the brightness/color reproduction end.
That very well could be. I just bought it, a Toshiba 46G310U that was a display model. What really pissed me off was that every time you turn it on, you have to manually go in and select "Game Mode", else the response rate is so bad that not only is a game unusable, but regular computer mousing too. So now I have an excuse to return on top of that weird shading thing it does while moving.
Nvidia recently launched a new driver that claimed a staggering 45% increase in performance on Skyrim.
I want to update my drivers to try these out, but last time I did I started getting bluescreens whenever flash was loaded, sometimes 4 or 5 in a day.
Apparently nvidia is kind of bad at making drivers that are stable for older cards too, even though the 8800gt isn't really that old. Anyone with the same card tried these?
So, here's a funny thing that happened. I'll spoiler it just in case
OK, so I was doing the College quests, Savos is killed of course and I head out to the courtyard to find that out. Well... not with Mr. Dragon swooping in. Nope! So Arniel ressurects Savos, and we all fight the dragon and kill it. Then the stupid anomalies quest comes up and Arniel's Savos comes along with us and promptly gets destroyed. I sadly never got to loot the body.
Hate to say but bluescreens are usually a hardware problem.
Only happens to me anymore (windows 7 x64) if it overheats (overclocked cpu, works fine until dust builds up in the fans, cleaning it all out fixes the prob. for a few months at least...)
I have a 8800gt, no problems with the current drivers, but it's in my email/web/crap PC, don't do a lot of gaming on it.
jwalk on
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FlatEricLeaves from the vine, Falling so slowLike fragile, tiny shells, Drifting in the foamRegistered Userregular
It most likely wasn't a hardware issue as after rolling back the drivers the problem went away completely, I haven't blue-screened since, and it's been quite a few months.
Might try the update, but rolling back is such a hassle, and skyrim performs well enough as it is, so I'm not sure.
The update made it a totally different game to me.
The bluescreen thing is annoying, no doubt. But it was much worse before the 296 updates came through. And yep it might very well be a hardware issue. Knowing how much waste heat a Phenom II gen 1 produces I purposely built my PC to be a good flowing machine, but it could still be a heat thing. It is just so random though. Except in one place, where I dread actually visiting. And that is leaving Whiterun's general store and running up the steps to Dragonreach. If I do it too quick, I can virtually guarantee a BSOD.
There is a way to adjust the camera, I felt the same way as you and finally figured it out but I haven't touched the game in a few months and I forget the actual key combination. (It's definitely a combination) I'm pretty sure I found it in the default config map, try looking there.
There is a way to adjust the camera, I felt the same way as you and finally figured it out but I haven't touched the game in a few months and I forget the actual key combination. (It's definitely a combination) I'm pretty sure I found it in the default config map, try looking there.
You can do this with the 360 controller? I found with a mouse I could just flick the scroll wheel and it would go in 1st person all the way to a really distant 3rd, and everything in-between. But when I got it on the controller it was exactly like the 360. Not a HUGE deal but it was fun exploring the world in a distant 3rd person POV, easier to see trouble coming.
Man, don't you hate it when you think you fixed Blue screen and you didn't? It puts an anxiety in me like nothing else. It is the darn hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe or whatever it is called. I thought I nailed it by disabling the HDMI audio to the TV (the one that goes through the video card), someone said that might be a problem. I just picked up my audio setup and I'm running Tos-link, so disabling this seemed like a good idea anyway. I really thought I had it because it went a while without a blue screen, but eventually I got hit with it. I'm next going to try bumping the voltages of some of the mobo parts and possibly underclock the RAM a bit. DDR2 1066 on an AM2+ setup can sometimes be tricky.
Blue screen is also another way of saying, "Save often", and "couldn't you be doing something more productive with your time?" Yes, ... I probably could.
So how viable is unarmed combat, as-is? Beyond the solid enough explanation of "do it for the kill animations"
I'm told it's solid enough at first but pales compared to alternate modes of dealing damage as the game goes on. If that's the case, which of the multiple unarmed mods would people recommend?
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GrogMy sword is only steelin a useful shape.Registered Userregular
So how viable is unarmed combat, as-is? Beyond the solid enough explanation of "do it for the kill animations"
I'm told it's solid enough at first but pales compared to alternate modes of dealing damage as the game goes on. If that's the case, which of the multiple unarmed mods would people recommend?
Unarmed and Unarmored Perks is what I'm using, though the way the perks unlock are a little dodgy, and the damage buffs seem to apply to every kind of weapon. This mod will up your damage loads, but it works better than other mods that just give you invisible one handed weapons and the like.
Fists of Steel Expanded is a bit more stable and lets your damage end up at around the same for other weapons (early 100s), if you don't mind using heavy gauntlets.
Martial Arts is a must have. It's an animation replacer for the unarmed power attacks (not the regular punches) and is great if you want a more acrobatic feel. The jump animation is awesome as well (but does require you have an included 2x height jump mod).
edit: Oh my god, I've just discovered the new unarmed stealth kill animations. Bethesda I love you.
So how viable is unarmed combat, as-is? Beyond the solid enough explanation of "do it for the kill animations"
I'm told it's solid enough at first but pales compared to alternate modes of dealing damage as the game goes on. If that's the case, which of the multiple unarmed mods would people recommend?
it can be a little dull seeing as most of the time, you're just swinging wildly in between chugging health and stamina potions. no special animations, just left right left right, not even blocking unless you have a shield on one arm which looks goofy. unarmed combat is just kinda dry except for the marvellously entertaining killmoves and the hilarity of realising that you are beating people to death. the first time you kill a bandit in one punch to the face is fun for the first hundred times too.
Man, don't you hate it when you think you fixed Blue screen and you didn't? It puts an anxiety in me like nothing else. It is the darn hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe or whatever it is called. I thought I nailed it by disabling the HDMI audio to the TV (the one that goes through the video card), someone said that might be a problem. I just picked up my audio setup and I'm running Tos-link, so disabling this seemed like a good idea anyway. I really thought I had it because it went a while without a blue screen, but eventually I got hit with it. I'm next going to try bumping the voltages of some of the mobo parts and possibly underclock the RAM a bit. DDR2 1066 on an AM2+ setup can sometimes be tricky.
Blue screen is also another way of saying, "Save often", and "couldn't you be doing something more productive with your time?" Yes, ... I probably could.
This looks more like a problem in your Windows-installation. ntoskrnl.exe is the Kernel of the OS. A repair with the installation disc could fix that problem. hal.dll could be fixed the same way, because it is the abstraction layer between the reported hardware in your BIOS and Windows. Maybe a driver update damaged the dll.
This looks more like a problem in your Windows-installation. ntoskrnl.exe is the Kernel of the OS. A repair with the installation disc could fix that problem. hal.dll could be fixed the same way, because it is the abstraction layer between the reported hardware in your BIOS and Windows. Maybe a driver update damaged the dll.
Completely possible, I'm first going to try a few quick tweaks to BIOS and if that doesn't solve it I'll start the laborious process of redoing windows and drivers.
Posts
$60 for the game
$600 for the 42" LCD tv.
$100 for the upgraded audio card to output a spdif or tos signal to a surround receiver
$200 for a basic cheap receiver for 5.1
the remainder for a basic audio setup.
Oh well it is something I've been meaning to do for a while now. I just haven't had an excuse to upgrade the play room w/ the computer in it since most of our entertainment items (Xbox, PS3) are downstairs on the plasma and sound system.
How shameful that this is a totp response.
Dude, find Vex. Talk to Vex. She is a blond woman in the Ragged Flagon. She will tell you about Esbern.
that bitch says "I've got nothing to say to you." etc.
Grr..
Leveled the shit out of some stuff by constantly battling. I thought they were just really durable. I guess they kinda are.
As for Esbern, depending on what you did with the Thieves Guild intro quest, sometimes Brynholf won't trigger. Try to talk to Keerava, the lizard chick bar owner in Riften. She can also trigger the next step. I believe you then go through Vekel the Man in the Ragged Flagon where you either persuade him, pay him off for the info, intimidate him, or beat the shit out of him. Then it's off to talk to crazy old dragon-racist Esbern.
Secret Satan 2013 Wishlist
Side question, Is Shadowmere invincible or something? That is a STRONG horse.
Also smithing's gonna gain skill based on the item value, so get your iron dagger spamming in now.
Guess the beta patch is supposed to be on Steam now.
whens this rumoured to arrive?
Also when will we get footprints in snow???!
this was very marginally helpful
could you elaborate on how you managed this?
Oh hey, this was one of those Game Jam things, neat.
A small part of me hopes that Giant Mudcrab is in the works.
Secret Satan 2013 Wishlist
Installed, auto-detected "Ultra" settings (whatever that means), and got past the character creation stage (Breton who looks like a young Clooney btw), and got a blue screen o' death. Haven't seen one of those in a long while. Sure looked good while it was running though. Damn good.
Did
Did she just suplex that dude?
http://deicidecomic.tumblr.com/
READ MY COMIC ^^
I not only have a blisteringly fast game on Ultra settings, I have zero blue screens. Thank you, Nvidia!
*Note my PC is a Phenom II from the end of the AM2+ line, not even the new gen, w/ 4gb DDR2 (yep, not even DDR3) RAM, and a modest 550ti card. Yet this older rig is doing 1920x1080 perfectly.*
Now that I've got a stable platform, I've been able to really focus on the actual game. And here's what I want to discuss for a minute:
Why is that my first character as I played on a 360, which was a Khajiit, died constantly and had a tough time in battle pretty much all the way through levels 45ish? He was running heavy armor, constantly with a healing spell in the left hand hand when doing one handed melee.
To compare, my PC character is a Breton, wearing light armor to boot, focused mostly on Conjuring for something different, at level 7 picked up the bound bow, and I've been unstoppable! I checked the difficulty, it is adept just like it was on the 360. Yet I've not died once, I'm hauling ass through places and I'm barely taking damage enough to worry about. It seems like a much easier game with the Breton!
Also thanks to not being on the 360 anymore, loading times which used to take forever now take seconds if that. Man it makes such a difference in the game not having to wait. And wait. And open a door. Wait. Fast travel, wait. etc. I'm already at level 14 and I haven't even put in more than a few hours.
Just picked up the 360 controller for PC too. I think it works better for this game but I wish I could pull back more on my POV like the mouse wheel lets me. That was pretty cool to be a little guy running around in a big world.
One final query for those using big lcd screens - is it just my new screen or does the whole scenery get a little bit brighter if you stay still? Example, I'm in a cave and there's minimal light. If I stay still the whole thing is a bit brighter. When I start to move or move my view, during moving the lighting dims just a bit and it is noticeable. Is this something that everyone experiences or is it my new TV?
could be your TV. most widescreen lcd TVs use what's called a "TN" panel. great for fast motion gaming, and also cheap, but not so good on the brightness/color reproduction end.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
That very well could be. I just bought it, a Toshiba 46G310U that was a display model. What really pissed me off was that every time you turn it on, you have to manually go in and select "Game Mode", else the response rate is so bad that not only is a game unusable, but regular computer mousing too. So now I have an excuse to return on top of that weird shading thing it does while moving.
In other news, YAY v. 1.5! Makes the game even more fun to play.
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
I want to update my drivers to try these out, but last time I did I started getting bluescreens whenever flash was loaded, sometimes 4 or 5 in a day.
Apparently nvidia is kind of bad at making drivers that are stable for older cards too, even though the 8800gt isn't really that old. Anyone with the same card tried these?
They would crash constantly no matter what I was did.
The 296 ones seemed to fix it.
Also I've noticed a slight frame rate drop since updating in skyrim.
Used to be able to play on ultra.
yup
just another reason to roll an unarmed fighter
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=17887
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=13446
What a funny game.
Only happens to me anymore (windows 7 x64) if it overheats (overclocked cpu, works fine until dust builds up in the fans, cleaning it all out fixes the prob. for a few months at least...)
I have a 8800gt, no problems with the current drivers, but it's in my email/web/crap PC, don't do a lot of gaming on it.
Might try the update, but rolling back is such a hassle, and skyrim performs well enough as it is, so I'm not sure.
The bluescreen thing is annoying, no doubt. But it was much worse before the 296 updates came through. And yep it might very well be a hardware issue. Knowing how much waste heat a Phenom II gen 1 produces I purposely built my PC to be a good flowing machine, but it could still be a heat thing. It is just so random though. Except in one place, where I dread actually visiting. And that is leaving Whiterun's general store and running up the steps to Dragonreach. If I do it too quick, I can virtually guarantee a BSOD.
weird playing it after mass effect
really kind of calls into focus how little personality your character has unless you invest it yourself
You can do this with the 360 controller? I found with a mouse I could just flick the scroll wheel and it would go in 1st person all the way to a really distant 3rd, and everything in-between. But when I got it on the controller it was exactly like the 360. Not a HUGE deal but it was fun exploring the world in a distant 3rd person POV, easier to see trouble coming.
Man, don't you hate it when you think you fixed Blue screen and you didn't? It puts an anxiety in me like nothing else. It is the darn hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe or whatever it is called. I thought I nailed it by disabling the HDMI audio to the TV (the one that goes through the video card), someone said that might be a problem. I just picked up my audio setup and I'm running Tos-link, so disabling this seemed like a good idea anyway. I really thought I had it because it went a while without a blue screen, but eventually I got hit with it. I'm next going to try bumping the voltages of some of the mobo parts and possibly underclock the RAM a bit. DDR2 1066 on an AM2+ setup can sometimes be tricky.
Blue screen is also another way of saying, "Save often", and "couldn't you be doing something more productive with your time?" Yes, ... I probably could.
I'm told it's solid enough at first but pales compared to alternate modes of dealing damage as the game goes on. If that's the case, which of the multiple unarmed mods would people recommend?
Unarmed and Unarmored Perks is what I'm using, though the way the perks unlock are a little dodgy, and the damage buffs seem to apply to every kind of weapon. This mod will up your damage loads, but it works better than other mods that just give you invisible one handed weapons and the like.
Fists of Steel Expanded is a bit more stable and lets your damage end up at around the same for other weapons (early 100s), if you don't mind using heavy gauntlets.
Martial Arts is a must have. It's an animation replacer for the unarmed power attacks (not the regular punches) and is great if you want a more acrobatic feel. The jump animation is awesome as well (but does require you have an included 2x height jump mod).
edit: Oh my god, I've just discovered the new unarmed stealth kill animations. Bethesda I love you.
it can be a little dull seeing as most of the time, you're just swinging wildly in between chugging health and stamina potions. no special animations, just left right left right, not even blocking unless you have a shield on one arm which looks goofy. unarmed combat is just kinda dry except for the marvellously entertaining killmoves and the hilarity of realising that you are beating people to death. the first time you kill a bandit in one punch to the face is fun for the first hundred times too.
This looks more like a problem in your Windows-installation. ntoskrnl.exe is the Kernel of the OS. A repair with the installation disc could fix that problem. hal.dll could be fixed the same way, because it is the abstraction layer between the reported hardware in your BIOS and Windows. Maybe a driver update damaged the dll.
Completely possible, I'm first going to try a few quick tweaks to BIOS and if that doesn't solve it I'll start the laborious process of redoing windows and drivers.
So fun though that only Skyrim causes it.