As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Please post in new thread [Skyrim] & [The Elder Scrolls]
Dashui
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a role-playing video game being developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is the fifth installment in The Elder Scrolls action role-playing video game series, following The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It was released on November 11, 2011 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Skyrim's main story revolves around the player character's efforts to defeat a dragon god who is prophesied to destroy the world. Set two hundred years after Oblivion, the game takes place in the land of Skyrim in the midst of a civil war after the assassination of the king. The open world gameplay of the Elder Scrolls series is continued in Skyrim, as the player character can explore the land at will and ignore or postpone the main quest indefinitely.
News
12/20/2011 - Patch 1.3.10 has been released for the PC, adding the Large Address Aware flag to the exe. The game can now make use of more than 2GB of memory.
12/15/2011 - Patch 1.3 has been released for the Xbox 360 and PS3, fixing the resistances bug, backwards flying dragons and more.
12/07/2011 - Patch 1.3 has been released for the PC, fixing the resistances bug, backwards flying dragons and more. The Xbox 360 and PS3 patches have been sent to Microsoft and Sony for certification.
11/30/2011 - Skyrim's second update is now available for the PC and Xbox 360. However, there are reports that the new update for all platforms is causing issues with damage resistances, dragons, and more. A third update correcting those issues will be released in one week.
11/28/2011 - A new patch for the Playstation 3 version of Skyrim has been released. An Xbox 360 and PC patch will be released on 11/30, the former of which will fix texture streaming issues.
11/11/2011 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is now available for purchase!
Information & Tips
Double Skyrim's maximum grass distance with (possibly) little to no performance loss! Find your "SkyrimPrefs.ini" file in "Documents\My Games\Skyrim" and change the "fGrassStartFadeDistance=" value from 7000 (its max in the launcher/in-game display options) to 14000. You won't see any difference between 14000 and higher values, but 7000 to 14000 is a fantastic improvement.
Increase Skyrim's grass density! Find your "SkyrimPrefs.ini" file in "Documents\My Games\Skyrim" and add "iMinGrassSize=20" under the [GRASS] heading.
Unlike previous Elder Scrolls games, Skyrim does not force you to decide your favored attributes and skills at the start of the game. In fact, you are not forced to choose any favored attributes or skills at all. Bethesda has opted for a class-free system, and those choices will come naturally through experimentation as you play the game.
Changes have also been made to the leveling system. You continue to raise your level by improving your skills, but you no longer have a long list of attributes you only add minor, numerical improvements to. Instead, you raise your health, stamina or magicka by ten points and can then choose a perk. Perks are divided into the game's 18 skills, each skill having a branching tree of numerous perks. There are currently 280 perks in the game. You are not forced to choose your perks upon leveling. You can spend them at any time once earned.
If you raise all your skills to 100, the hard level cap you reach is around level 70-80. Bethesda has stated the soft level cap is 50, and past that point leveling becomes much slower. You do continue to earn perks past 50.
The racial bonuses are linked below:
Racial Bonuses 01
Racial Bonuses 02
Racial Bonuses 03
Racial Bonuses 04
A skill and perk calculator can be found here.
Mods & Downloads
[SKYRIM]
Every Skyrim in-game book, available in Kindle and e-pub format.
Skyrim Tweaker - Our own resident GnomeTank has created a fantastic graphical UI that lets you edit various properties and settings SkyrimPrefs.ini file, as well as explaining what every value does.
Skyrim Script Extender
TESV Acceleration Layer - The Acceleration Layer is an SKSE plugin which improves performance by a significant amount. "It works mostly by rewriting some x87 FPU code and inlining a whole ton of useless getter functions along the critical paths because the developers at Bethesda, for some reason, compiled the game without using any of the optimization flags for release builds."
SkyUI - SkyUI is mod that aims to improve Skyrim's User Interface by making it easier to use with mouse and keyboard, less wasteful of available screen space and nicer to look at.
XCE - Xenius Character Enhancement - XCE is a compilation of Xenius' character enhancement mods. It currently includes Detailed Bodies, Detailed Faces, Detailed Lips, No More Blocky Faces and High Quality Eyes.
Enhanced Blood Textures - This mod increases the blood decal resolution from 512 to 2048.
Enhanced Night Skyrim - This mod replaces the night sky with a beautiful, high resolution one.
Realistic Colors and Real Nights - This mod use the power behind FXAA Post Process Injector to generate a new and realistic color palette and an enhanced night-time gameplay experience. It includes Realistic Water Textures, which is also linked separately below.
Enhanced Shaders FX - This mod adds a number of sophisticated customizable visual effects to your game using ENBseries technology.
Note: FXAA Post Process Injector- and ENB-based mods can be used together.
Realistic Water Textures - This mod replaces the water textures with brand new textures based off of actual, high resolution photography.
Enhanced Distant Terrain - This small texture mod enhances the distant low-detail terrain by upping the amount of noise and quality of the the texture maps.
Realistic Paper - This mod replaces the paper of books and notes with a more realistic and higher resolution texture.
Vurt's Skyrim Flora Overhaul - Skyrim Flora Overhaul is a WIP mod project dedicated to overhauling the Skyrim flora.
Lush Grass - Lush Grass enhances the world's foliage by making it look fuller and more lush.
Lush Trees - This mod fills out all the pine trees in the world by adding extra branches and needles to the current ones. Download the available compatibility file for use with Vurt's Flora Overhaul.
Glowing Ore Veins 300 - This mod makes the game's ore veins much more visible, especially in darker environments.
Deadly Spell Impacts - This mod gives fire, lightning, and frost spell impacts with their own unique textures, as well as improvements and variety to decal sizes.
Immersive HUD - The aim of iHUD is to provide the immersive feel you get from having no HUD, whilst keeping the usefulness of having one. It takes the permanantly visible HUD elements such as compass and crosshair, and hides them when not needed.
JaySus Swords - This mod adds a large variety of new, high quality swords for you to craft.
Weapons of the Third Era - This mod contains a pack of 50+ new weapons (not replacements) with Morrowind-themed designs. They are added to the loot tables and so you can find them on enemies you encounter, and several can be crafted, as well.
Skyrim HD - 2K Textures - Skyrim HD is a texture enhancement project. The author created new, high resolution textures to replace everything from landscapes, rugs, skies, trees, water and more. There is a high resolution and lite version available. (Dashui: The mod will conflict with other texture mods such as Vurt's Skyrim Flora Overhaul, Enhanced Night Skyrim, and Realistic Water Textures. You can manually move Skyrim HD's folders - such as ignoring its water textures folder if you already have Realistic Water Textures installed or want to install it - or simply install the other mods over Skyrim HD and overwrite when prompted. I also recommend the lite version. The full version has needlessly high resolution textures; you won't notice much visual difference between lite and full, but lite will run a lot better.)
Silly Level of Detail - Potions & Poisons - This mod replaces the textures for potions and poisons in the game.
Silly Level of Detail - Wine Cellar - This mod replaces the wine bottles and mead bottles in the game with higher quality ones.
A Quality World Map - With Roads - This mod replaces the map with high resolution textures that also includes optional roads.
Skyrim Tweaker - Our own resident GnomeTank has created a fantastic graphical UI that lets you edit various properties and settings SkyrimPrefs.ini file, as well as explaining what every value does.
Skyrim Script Extender
TESV Acceleration Layer - The Acceleration Layer is an SKSE plugin which improves performance by a significant amount. "It works mostly by rewriting some x87 FPU code and inlining a whole ton of useless getter functions along the critical paths because the developers at Bethesda, for some reason, compiled the game without using any of the optimization flags for release builds."
SkyUI - SkyUI is mod that aims to improve Skyrim's User Interface by making it easier to use with mouse and keyboard, less wasteful of available screen space and nicer to look at.
XCE - Xenius Character Enhancement - XCE is a compilation of Xenius' character enhancement mods. It currently includes Detailed Bodies, Detailed Faces, Detailed Lips, No More Blocky Faces and High Quality Eyes.
Enhanced Blood Textures - This mod increases the blood decal resolution from 512 to 2048.
Enhanced Night Skyrim - This mod replaces the night sky with a beautiful, high resolution one.
Realistic Colors and Real Nights - This mod use the power behind FXAA Post Process Injector to generate a new and realistic color palette and an enhanced night-time gameplay experience. It includes Realistic Water Textures, which is also linked separately below.
Enhanced Shaders FX - This mod adds a number of sophisticated customizable visual effects to your game using ENBseries technology.
Note: FXAA Post Process Injector- and ENB-based mods can be used together.
Realistic Water Textures - This mod replaces the water textures with brand new textures based off of actual, high resolution photography.
Enhanced Distant Terrain - This small texture mod enhances the distant low-detail terrain by upping the amount of noise and quality of the the texture maps.
Realistic Paper - This mod replaces the paper of books and notes with a more realistic and higher resolution texture.
Vurt's Skyrim Flora Overhaul - Skyrim Flora Overhaul is a WIP mod project dedicated to overhauling the Skyrim flora.
Lush Grass - Lush Grass enhances the world's foliage by making it look fuller and more lush.
Lush Trees - This mod fills out all the pine trees in the world by adding extra branches and needles to the current ones. Download the available compatibility file for use with Vurt's Flora Overhaul.
Glowing Ore Veins 300 - This mod makes the game's ore veins much more visible, especially in darker environments.
Deadly Spell Impacts - This mod gives fire, lightning, and frost spell impacts with their own unique textures, as well as improvements and variety to decal sizes.
Immersive HUD - The aim of iHUD is to provide the immersive feel you get from having no HUD, whilst keeping the usefulness of having one. It takes the permanantly visible HUD elements such as compass and crosshair, and hides them when not needed.
JaySus Swords - This mod adds a large variety of new, high quality swords for you to craft.
Weapons of the Third Era - This mod contains a pack of 50+ new weapons (not replacements) with Morrowind-themed designs. They are added to the loot tables and so you can find them on enemies you encounter, and several can be crafted, as well.
Skyrim HD - 2K Textures - Skyrim HD is a texture enhancement project. The author created new, high resolution textures to replace everything from landscapes, rugs, skies, trees, water and more. There is a high resolution and lite version available. (Dashui: The mod will conflict with other texture mods such as Vurt's Skyrim Flora Overhaul, Enhanced Night Skyrim, and Realistic Water Textures. You can manually move Skyrim HD's folders - such as ignoring its water textures folder if you already have Realistic Water Textures installed or want to install it - or simply install the other mods over Skyrim HD and overwrite when prompted. I also recommend the lite version. The full version has needlessly high resolution textures; you won't notice much visual difference between lite and full, but lite will run a lot better.)
Silly Level of Detail - Potions & Poisons - This mod replaces the textures for potions and poisons in the game.
Silly Level of Detail - Wine Cellar - This mod replaces the wine bottles and mead bottles in the game with higher quality ones.
A Quality World Map - With Roads - This mod replaces the map with high resolution textures that also includes optional roads.
[OBLIVION]
Oblivion Modding Guide -- If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to send a private message to Dashui for help. [Dashui: Some mods may have newer versions since I've written the guide, but there shouldn't be any conflicts.]
[MORROWIND]
If you'd like to breathe new life into Morrowind, I highly recommend Morrowind Overhaul - Sounds & Graphics. It installs all the latest audio and graphical mods to the game through an easy to use application. You choose from a variety of different mods, and can make changes later with the press of a button through the same application and without having to start a fresh game. Included is a very detailed readme that will guide you through the install and setup process.
Reviews
10/10 - Eurogamer - "It evokes a word that's overused in reviewing of all kinds: one that's best kept in the cellar in a plainly marked box and reserved only for the most special of occasions. For Skyrim though, I'd like to blow the dust off it, open up the lid, and enjoy a masterpiece with you."
5/5 - Gamespy - "I'm looking forward to continuing my adventures of the frozen north long after this holiday season, and it's without a doubt one of the best games I've played this year... if not one of the best role-playing games of the last decade."
5/5 - Joystiq - "This is the deepest, loveliest world ever created for a single player to explore, and one that no one should deny themselves. This is a game about following Emerson's advice, leaving the trail and finding that the most powerful force on Earth or Tamriel isn't fire or sword, but the ever-insistent desire to know what lies beyond."
9.5/10 - IGN - "It's difficult to ever feel completely satisfied with a play session of Skyrim. There's always one more pressing quest, one more unexplored tract of land, one more skill to increase, one more butterfly to catch. It's a mesmerizing game that draws you into an finely crafted fictional space packed with content that consistently surprises. The changes made since Oblivion are many, and result in a more focused and sensible style of play, where the effects of every decision are easily seen. Featuring the same kind of thrilling freedom of choice The Elder Scrolls series is known for along with beautiful visuals and a stirring soundtrack, playing Skyrim is a rare kind of intensely personal, deeply rewarding experience, and one of the best role-playing games yet produced."
88/100 - RPGFan - "Oblivion is in my top five most overrated RPGs of all time, while Fallout 3 is one of my favorite current-gen RPGs. The Elder Scrolls V sits somewhere between the two. Indeed, Skyrim strongly resembles its predecessors at times, and the catalogue of small changes and minor additions makes it more of the same. Skyrim takes few risks. Perhaps the only risk it takes is failing to match up to its competition in individual areas. Other RPGs released this year have better stories, sharper graphics, and more visceral combat. Skyrim doesn't really care. The latest Elder Scrolls has such confidence in the allure of its open-world structure that it shirks the need to compete. And, it largely succeeds in being better than the sum of its parts. So grab a tankard of mead, wrap yourself in a tundra beast's hide, and stoke the meadhall's fire. There is a long winter ahead."
Screenshots
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
Dashui on
0
Posts
Someone asked how to hotkey spells and got a misleading reply:
You just push 1-8 with the item/spell selected IN THE FAVORITE menu. So hit F (or whatever) key in the inventory, then Q (whatever) and do it in there.
Unacceptable.
I noticed this when they accused the dragon flying overhead of being a member of the organization.
Man, I wish.
Because icons are usually much easier to identify visually in a short amount of time than picking out something from a long list of text. If you don't go a full-on Morrowind style of gridding due to lack of unique iconography, you can go an Oblivion route, which is an acceptable compromise.
Basically you need something visual near the name of the item for easy identification, and the big honkin' 3D model on the right is not it.
As far as columns of info go, I hardly see how listing the weight, value, and damage/armor in an easy-to-compare column that you can sort by is "clutter", but that's just me. We're not talking WoW raiding levels of UI clutter or anything.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Still... whew!
Press X To Podcast
Press X To Watch
Become Ethereal shout is especially useful for making good my escape via the medium of Viking Base Jumping: legging it over a cliff and using the shout before I pancake. Gets some good distance from the winged beasties.
Down side is that I've used up my banked dragon souls now so I'm going to have to man up and actually kill some dragons.
GW2: Tavalisk.9463
Are the resists only screwed on the consoles or the PC too? I hope its the PC because otherwise I need lots of magic resist gear then lol. Any idea when the patch to fix this is coming out?
Faster attack rate
Barring the backwards dragons, which I really want to see.
Haha awesome. On a side note (more brotherhood quest spoilers)
It doesn't look cool or interesting, it just looks buggy. And it prevents you from being able to kill the dragons, as they never land. Not even a crash landing if you manage to kill them with arrows. It's virtually game breaking unless you have the ability to one-shot sleeping dragons so you can at least advance in the game.
Not everyone has 50+ dragon souls stocked up on all their characters, and I'm actually getting rather sick of people claiming that this bug is cool, or neat, or interesting.
It's not. It's lame.
I've started looking up words in dragon tongue so I can appropriately name my own forged magic items.
Fastest is more accurate. Speed and damage are inverse so:
Swords - fast and weak
Axes - medium medium
Maces - slow and strong
@Regina Fong - Being upset that people find something interesting is just silly. You don't get to control what they think. You can be irritated by it, but don't tell people they are wrong for thinking something that is wholly opinion based.
If people can go on about how nifty a bug is then I can certainly point out how incredibly mistaken they are.
Someone can be "mistaken" if they say the sky is made of buttered cream icing. They can't be "mistaken" if they say they think buttered cream icing is delicious. Even if you don't. See?
Well no, anyone who says that butter-cream icing isn't delicious is just objectively wrong.
Even though it's an opinion.
because butter-cream icing is delicious.
I see that you misunderstand my point, and want to have a 3rd grade-level argument about whether or not an opinion can be bad or wrong or worse than a different opinion.
I am uninterested in having that argument, and yet I do not retract my previous statements.
:bz
I've been playing a battlemage (level 14), with fire spells in my left and a sword in my right, wearing heavy armor to take the knocks. I've been really enjoying this. Now, I keep seeing people talk smack about destro, and that if you don't dual-cast with the Impact perk for stun-locking, it's useless and I'll gimp myself. As I want to always keep a sword in my right, I'll never dual-cast.
Am I doing Skyrim wrong? The other magic schools seem completely passive: alteration to increase my armor, conjuration so someone else gets to do all the fighting for me, restoration so I may as well just be holding a shield and not get hit in the first place.
Thoughts?
The problem was, Favorite shares a key with Change PoV but isn't listed that way in the Controls screen. The default for Favorite is F, but when I changed F to Activate the tooltip didn't update, and I ended up activating everything I wanted to favorite.
But having the controls fucked up apparently doesn't concern Bethesda as much as making dragons fly backwards.
There's an entire room of guys: double draemora lords or whatever they are called, sit back and watch the carnage.
It's been nice actually. I use them more for insurance than anything and have been focusing on just melee combat. Get in trouble, summon, done.
It's also fantastic to summon two flame atronach's against a dragon and have three characters flinging fire spells as the dragon does fly by flame bursts.
There's also the perks, if you get them
swords crit more/for more damage
axes cause bleeding damage over time
maces ignore x % of armor
No. There is no wrong way to Skyrim. Trying to min/max everything is the quickest way to get bored and it's completely unnecessary.
Holy Akatosh Damn! Over 130 hours in and I didn't think to try this. I can not imagine how many times I've equipped and unequipped my ghost blade just to free up my right hand. You've just made magic much less tedious. Thank you good sir.
Which of these is most handy? I'm about to make the choice about where to put the points. I'm guessing not axes, as dudes don't stay alive long enough. The most trouble I've had with bad guys is definitely armor related (magic or metal), which makes me lean towards maces, but swords feel cooler in the kill animations.
This is what I thought. Thanks Raikou
Warhammers are unusably slow for me, axes are alright, but the crits and impale kill animations are more up my alley. I've never even really used maces.
I use a warhammer on my heavy armor guy, and the way to do it is to block > bash > powerswing
Works great.
I suspect our earlier discussions about destruction magic tend to center around their use as a "pure" mage who uses robes as the primary method of protection. As a battlemage, if you have heavy armor, and a sword then you have an alternate means of both damage and defense. So it should be fairly viable, especially once the resist bug is ironed out and you can start enchanting your heavy armor pieces with resists. I don't see any reason why your approach should be any less viable.
Further, when I do that, I get this weird effect where everything looks stretched and slightly off. Is there any way to fix these things easily?
On a related note I regret doing the Thieves Guild after The Dark Brotherhood. Spent a lot of it wishing I had a "Motherfucker you know who I am?" dialogue option.
Having the same problem. Everything they want me to do feels petty and beneath me.
On the harder difficulty levels mace/axe > sword unless you're really exploiting smithing/enchantment and/or have a paralyze on hit weapon. But if you're doing that then none of the specializations matter.
The reason for this is that
1) Enemies will have a lot more armor, so the reduction in armor perk will be the most important. Furthermore, the most dangerous enemies are mages(which have alteration armor) and heavy armored two handers (which have heavy armor). Both of these armor types scale with difficulty as far as i can tell.
2) You will be doing a lot more blocking. The more blocking you do the more time your bleeding damage from axes comes into play. At the first level its pretty weak (1 damage/second, 10 second, iirc it stacks), but if you're only attacking every 5 seconds and have a 30 damage axe... that is a 16% damage increase. At level 2-3 the damage is not insignificant.
Re; Destruction. Yea it doesn't scale, but i don't think that will be a huge deal because Alchemy does and the alchemy buff for destruction is good enough that a high mana pool/regen should let you burn through enemies.
Edit: Do wish the benefit of potions was more unique, stuff like allowing you to act super fast(slow down time for 10 seconds), or growing in size(or shrinking enemies) and such which we know can be done rather than simple stat boosts.
The "wall of" spells are great for one-handed casting. As enemies close, spray them with wall of fire/frost/lightning (your choice, they're all good). When mana gets low, engage them in melee while they're standing in the static aoe effect. They'll continue to take damage from the spell, and you can beat on them in melee.
Cast Bound Sword in your off-hand for additional awesomeness.