So I'm 100 hours and still haven't been invited to the Dark Brotherhood. Just figured out why.
You have to sleep in a bed! After becoming a stupid werewolf for the Companions (which I"ve never used since), I never bothered sleeping in a bed because it serves no purpose. That was like, 80 game hours ago? And I killed the orphanage lady maybe 60 hours ago? lol
Also, I can't become the Thane of Riften for some reason. I bought a house and completed all the help quests. My Miscellaneous quests has a prompt for "Speak to the Jarl of Riften" but she's saying the same stuff as normal. Oh well.
One-hit kills from NPCs are such bullshit. I met Delphine and was on my way to Kynesgrove, when I met two vampires on the street. I killed the first one with two charged fire spells, when the other one approached me and I died with a wonderful animation. Now I have to walk all the way again.
They come from the side kills. In Oblivion, we were given targets to take down, and promised a secondary reward for doing so through often hilarious methods. Sneaking into someone's house and dropping a mounted moose head on them. Entering a lock-in party and slowly snuffing out the party goers, and watching the panic rise as they don't know who is doing it. Swapping someone's medicine for poison, undetected. And so on. They were fun, creative, often hilarious and offered unique secondary rewards for completing the secondary criteria.
In Skyrim, they're a string of simple hits. Go here, kill this guy standing outside. Ten times. In Oblivion the fun was pulling off the unique kills and getting unique loot for it. All that is lost in Skyrim.
I liked the main story and its many twists very much, though
I would like to have found out why that guy wanted the Emperor dead. Without the motivation, the story felt anti-climactic. I was hoping to see some news of what happened after. Of course, I did kill the guy per the Emperor's last request.
I felt bad about that last (well, second to last) kill, too. I wish there was an option to end the quest differently.
It seems I've leveled up my non-combat skills too quickly. I just reached level 20 and much more powerful enemies are spawning. I may be forced to lower the difficulty.
They come from the side kills. In Oblivion, we were given targets to take down, and promised a secondary reward for doing so through often hilarious methods. Sneaking into someone's house and dropping a mounted moose head on them. Entering a lock-in party and slowly snuffing out the party goers, and watching the panic rise as they don't know who is doing it. Swapping someone's medicine for poison, undetected. And so on. They were fun, creative, often hilarious and offered unique secondary rewards for completing the secondary criteria.
In Skyrim, they're a string of simple hits. Go here, kill this guy standing outside. Ten times. In Oblivion the fun was pulling off the unique kills and getting unique loot for it. All that is lost in Skyrim.
I liked the main story and its many twists very much, though
I would like to have found out why that guy wanted the Emperor dead. Without the motivation, the story felt anti-climactic. I was hoping to see some news of what happened after. Of course, I did kill the guy per the Emperor's last request.
I felt bad about that last (well, second to last) kill, too. I wish there was an option to end the quest differently.
It's not like I didn't like the game before, but for some reason it has clicked like crazy today. I have probably played like 8 hours, which is really unusual for me. I just couldn't stop playing. I even went online to look up some of the history/plot that I wasn't picking up on before. This game is so damn good and playing a mage is fun as hell. I am even playing on master and no longer worry about the fact that I die if something sneezes on me.
I had a huge, 10 paragraph reply all written up, and when striking a key my pinky hit another key - Ctrl maybe? - and my window backed up several times into my PM box. Going back forward, the post was gone from my reply box. Someone else will have to explain leveling, I don't want to spend another 20 minutes re-writing. Sorry.
It has a great set of backstory summaries that set the stage. I didn't understand the scope of the civil war until a long time into my game, but once I did a lot of things made more sense.
The Civil War storyline is one of the major quest lines in the game. You can choose to join one side or the other, and tip the scales to that side accordingly. It's not a black/white decision. Both sides have legitimate grievances, and both have serious flaws.
If you want to advance the main quest - and I suggest you do, early - follow the one that leads you to the Jarl of Whiterun.
You just descirbed a huge part of Skyrim's appeal to me. I love going from place to place. Usually I'll decide in advance whether I'm going to march straight to my destination, or wander off to a cave or nearby ruin, depending on my mood.
It is a large part of the appeal for me but if that's all you do for a while it can wear on you. Thus tuning back into the main quest or getting involved in a guild quest again will give things a little more purpose. In the beginning I would be en route to one destination and then discover new places along the way. I would then systematically clear each new place one after the other which was cool at first but then I had to take a break from it. I now force myself to walk right by and in a sense "window shop" on some occasions.
I'll just ask this here too (originally posted in the PC performance thread):
Not sure if this is the right thread, but... how would the game run on this laptop (it's not for me, I'm already playing it on a significantly better one)?
HP PAVILION DV6
CPU: Intel Core i5 460M 2.53 GHz
GPU: ATi Mobility Radeon HD 5650 1024 MB
RAM: 4 GB
Native screen resolution: 1366 x 768
It's a matter of PS3 vs PC here, and we all know how the PS3 version runs... but even disregarding the horrible game-breaking slowdown you get in that version after your save file gets too big, would it look and run better on this laptop? I'm thinking it would probably run alright at native resolution with about medium settings (maybe with some stuff turned down to low)...?
I jist killed a dragon and couldn't take his soul. It didn't burn up either. Just a whole dragon, laying on the ground. Has anybody ran into this as well?
I'll just ask this here too (originally posted in the PC performance thread):
Not sure if this is the right thread, but... how would the game run on this laptop (it's not for me, I'm already playing it on a significantly better one)?
HP PAVILION DV6
CPU: Intel Core i5 460M 2.53 GHz
GPU: ATi Mobility Radeon HD 5650 1024 MB
RAM: 4 GB
Native screen resolution: 1366 x 768
It's a matter of PS3 vs PC here, and we all know how the PS3 version runs... but even disregarding the horrible game-breaking slowdown you get in that version after your save file gets too big, would it look and run better on this laptop? I'm thinking it would probably run alright at native resolution with about medium settings (maybe with some stuff turned down to low)...?
It is a large part of the appeal for me but if that's all you do for a while it can wear on you. Thus tuning back into the main quest or getting involved in a guild quest again will give things a little more purpose. In the beginning I would be en route to one destination and then discover new places along the way. I would then systematically clear each new place one after the other which was cool at first but then I had to take a break from it. I now force myself to walk right by and in a sense "window shop" on some occasions.
Same here. Before I HAD to explore every nook as I discovered them. 50+ hours in and new discoveries are now just on my to do list. I'll never get to my destination if I keep getting pulled in.
I wonder if it's a bad idea that I'm saving the main story quests for last. For some reason, once I'm done with the story portion I have zero interest in doing side quests but as long as the story isn't resolved, it makes sense to finish everything. Strange? I wonder if by saving story for last, will I be missing a lot of helpfull tools like the graybeards shouts and so on.
So a summary of today's events. I dunno if I should spoiler tag, but Ill just in case.
1. I spoke with Jarl of Whiterun.
I had previously acquired the Dragonstone thing from a previous dungeon and was able to take on the dragon right away. The first battle with the dragon was pretty underwhelming. He went down pretty quickly. I'm playing on Apprentice. I don't know if that's the right difficulty for a first time player. Outside of the dragon battle, it sure feels like it. I had more trouble taking down a Frost Troll (more on him later).
2. Before heading to
the Greybeards to hone my shouts, I decided to help imprison Saadie (or whatever her name is). I searched around Whiterun for a bit before heading off.
3. I discovered that you can dual wield spells. Awesome! Too bad you can dual wield a bow with a spell.
4. On my way to the Greybeards' place I discovered Haemer's Cave.
I got killed by the Master Vampire about ten times before I was able to get him on a glitch where he couldn't chase after me. Victory!
5.
That Frost Troll was a jerk to take down. He moved so fast and could take me out with three hits.
You travel a bit further is what I noticed. Not worth the extra cool down IMO, there are almost never such long straight paths. To be honest, I think every shout upgrade is underwhelming except for the Fus Ro Dah where there is a very noticeable different in effect. It's a real shame really, they could've done other shouts like that as well with those extra words adding meaning to the effect.
Good. Played for 20 hours post patch. Split up the time between a 100 hour save file and a new character. No stupid texture pop in, resistances are fixed, and dragons are behaving correctly on all accounts.
To add somewhat to Blue Ninja's advice (some of which might contradict it).
My single biggest piece of advice, especially early on, is do not fast travel. An enormous amout of what makes Skyrim so amazing are the things you can see and do on the road between destinations. Emergent AI interactions, breathtaking vistas, side quest opportunities, hilarious and wonderful details all over the place. If you start fast traveling from one place to another, chasing one quest marker after another, you'll lose out on so much of what Skyrim has to offer. The journey really is as good (and often better) than the destination.
Following on that, you should feel free to be impulsive. Skyrim, more than any other game I have played, rewards curiosity. What's in that cave? Where does this quest lead? What's this guy got to say? Is that a tower I see in the distance? Will I get away with being that nerfarious? Don't feel like to have to stick to one thing at a time, unless you want to.
Otherwise, Blue's adice overlaps steeply with my own. You might have lots and lots (and lots) of specific questions. Skyrim is enormous and there are a lot of gameplay systems layer into it, and not all are well explained. Don't be afraid to ask. We're here for ya.
Listening to the soundtrack over Youtube. It's pretty good.
I'm playing as an archer. Will I ever be able to make my own arrows? When/where will I be able to pick up the necessary materials?
I have a lot of fun looting in this game. Haven't had any trouble carrying around all my stuff. But I'm in only about five hours.
Edit: What's the pacing you guys recommend? How much of the main quest should I be doing among all the side quests? I guess I mean to ask, what are your play-styles? Do a bunch of side quests then a couple of missions of the main quest?
Edit 2: How much money should I have on hand early on? I think I have about 2,000 gold coins.
I wonder if it's a bad idea that I'm saving the main story quests for last. For some reason, once I'm done with the story portion I have zero interest in doing side quests but as long as the story isn't resolved, it makes sense to finish everything. Strange? I wonder if by saving story for last, will I be missing a lot of helpfull tools like the graybeards shouts and so on.
In Oblivion, FO3, and New Vegas, that's how I played. I would essentially ignore the main quest and do random stuff for the same reason you described. Unfortunately, it also meant I was less likely to actually play the main quests. I beat Fallout 3 and Oblivion, but by the time I did, I didn't necessarily care about the story anymore.
In Skyrim, 40 hours in, I decided I'm going to break that habit and I'm going to hit the main quests. I'm a mage, so I've decided not to do the other guilds on this character. I'll make other characters for those, which is tough for me b/c I really want to do the thieves guild now. But screw it. I want to do the main story for once.
Listening to the soundtrack over Youtube. It's pretty good.
I'm playing as an archer. Will I ever be able to make my own arrows? When/where will I be able to pick up the necessary materials?
I have a lot of fun looting in this game. Haven't had any trouble carrying around all my stuff. But I'm in only about five hours.
Edit: What's the pacing you guys recommend? How much of the main quest should I be doing among all the side quests? I guess I mean to ask, what are your play-styles? Do a bunch of side quests then a couple of missions of the main quest?
Edit 2: How much money should I have on hand early on? I think I have about 2,000 gold coins.
Listening to the soundtrack over Youtube. It's pretty good.
I'm playing as an archer. Will I ever be able to make my own arrows? When/where will I be able to pick up the necessary materials?
I have a lot of fun looting in this game. Haven't had any trouble carrying around all my stuff. But I'm in only about five hours.
Edit: What's the pacing you guys recommend? How much of the main quest should I be doing among all the side quests? I guess I mean to ask, what are your play-styles? Do a bunch of side quests then a couple of missions of the main quest?
Edit 2: How much money should I have on hand early on? I think I have about 2,000 gold coins.
My advice: Do more side quests first. As far as I know, there are a bunch of bugs when you progress your main quest too far that will ruin some of your side quests.
Also, you won't have to worry about money. When you finish power-leveling smithing and enchanting, you will have at least 20K-worth of stuff in your hands. You just have to sell them to get rich.
Listening to the soundtrack over Youtube. It's pretty good.
I'm playing as an archer. Will I ever be able to make my own arrows? When/where will I be able to pick up the necessary materials?
I have a lot of fun looting in this game. Haven't had any trouble carrying around all my stuff. But I'm in only about five hours.
Edit: What's the pacing you guys recommend? How much of the main quest should I be doing among all the side quests? I guess I mean to ask, what are your play-styles? Do a bunch of side quests then a couple of missions of the main quest?
On the main quest vs. side stuff, whatever you feel like doing is fine. I will say, though, that you get some truly awesome shouts through the main quest. Part of me would advise you to power through the main stuff to get the cool stuff, but that's maybe not the best way to go about it for the first playthrough. The problem I ran into my first time through was that I put the main quest aside before doing all of the faction stuff, so by the time I got the really cool shouts, I didn't have much of an opportunity to use them. I wouldn't worry about it, though. Do what you want when you want, it won't punish you for doing things either way.
BUT, there is a trick:
Bring a follower, and put one piece of the best arrow you've got into the follower's inventory. He/she then will only shoot that kind of arrow, infinitely, so you can later loot from those killed by your follower.
Later with a higher level, you will be able to loot ebony arrows from draugrs, and have a good chance to find daedric arrows in the chests.
Not sure if this is the right thread, but... how would the game run on this laptop (it's not for me, I'm already playing it on a significantly better one)?
HP PAVILION DV6
CPU: Intel Core i5 460M 2.53 GHz
GPU: ATi Mobility Radeon HD 5650 1024 MB
RAM: 4 GB
Native screen resolution: 1366 x 768
It's a matter of PS3 vs PC here, and we all know how the PS3 version runs... but even disregarding the horrible game-breaking slowdown you get in that version after your save file gets too big, would it look and run better on this laptop? I'm thinking it would probably run alright at native resolution with about medium settings (maybe with some stuff turned down to low)...?
I simply YouTube'd "ATi Mobility Radeon HD 5650 skyrim"
Results in the videos vary. One guy has 8x AA on and runs it buttersmooth, another has it off and runs kind of choppy. Maybe it's their recording software, or small differences in CPU/RAM/other stuff. But this will give you a good sample to judge.
Just updated 1.3, they still didn't fix the leg disappearing bug on some apparel, for eg, wearing Archmage robe+ nightingale boots still makes your leg invisible, duh.
I simply YouTube'd "ATi Mobility Radeon HD 5650 skyrim"
Results in the videos vary. One guy has 8x AA on and runs it buttersmooth, another has it off and runs kind of choppy. Maybe it's their recording software, or small differences in CPU/RAM/other stuff. But this will give you a good sample to judge.
just finished with the game on 360, here are my final thoughts after playthrough #1, may revisit in the future.
----------------
I played as a hulking Dark Elf, as I did in Oblivion where the fire resistance was big especially when trudging thru dozens of Oblivion gates. I figured with fire breathing dragons it might come in handy again, and Dark Elfs look cool with their red eyes. The fire resistance and Ancestor's Wrath perk helped out a lot early on, but after Level 30 or so they didnt really matter at all.
After a little dabbling I settled on using two handed greatswords and archery as my attack methods. Only used magic for healing purposes. I didn't really ever have companions help me out, except on mandatory quests. I did a lot of sneaking around dungeons and got the jump on enemies with the bow & arrow which was really effective. I finished the Main Quest at level 53, 145 hours in. Completed all the guilds, except Thieves Guild where returning them to glory was getting a bit tedious, but I did finish the main Thieves Guild questline. Also did about a million misc quests.
I played and finished Oblivion on 360 and I'm not afraid to admit I really enjoyed that. Skyrim was a step up from Oblivion in most areas, but also disappointed me quite a bit. I havent run into too many annoying bugs, glitches. I have about 10 misc quests that I cant finish because of various bugs, most of them due to me completing the Civil War questline really early in the game. I also have not downloaded the most recent 360 patch, I've been avoiding it, after reading that it does more harm than good.
---------------- PROS:
-Beautifully crafted world, some of the architecture, environments and atmospheres are really memorable. An absolute treat to explore.
-Menus were surprisingly efficient, although they could still use some improvement, but once I got used to them, they made sure questing was not a chore and with the favorites menu and 2 quick switch buttons made the game a lot more enjoyable as I didn't need to go into the menus that often as combat, magic, shouts were all easily swappable. Inventory management was a lot easier this time around.
-Dungeon/Cave design took a big step up. There were dozens that were just breathtaking. Most were more linear than they needed to be, but even after 145 hours, I wasn't bored, most of them had something unique to offer, and were more than the palette swaps that Oblivion is famous for.
-Enemy A.I was surprising good in a lot of areas, despite the lackluster melee combat engine. It was cool to see enemies run for cover when my arrows were too much for them to handle, early on in the game before I became too overpowered to handle, lots of enemies engaged me in good battles. Forsworn, Draugr Deathlords and Dragon Priests all presented good challenges for awhile.
-Random stuff, was cool to be attacked by assassins, tracked down by couriers, etc... I started fast traveling a lot after about 50 hours in and this stuff started happening less and less, but really added some personality to the game.
---------------- CONS:
-I really thought the creativity for many of the quests was unimpressive compared to Oblivion. Too many of the quests were of the "go there, kill (insert name) or retrieve item. Oblivion had more mysterious type quests, and those that required more specific handling, such as hiding in shopkeepers stores to investigate burglaries, making deaths look like accidents, and other unique type missions, rather than the standard murder and fetch quests.
-I've been popping in and out of this thread and have been surprised at how much people seem to praise the guild quests. I thought all 4 of them were disappointing overall compared to their counterparts from Oblivion. Don't get me wrong I think they all ended pretty strongly in Skyrim, but they all seemed rushed and their "busy work" quests before you got to the main story of each guild were really lackluster. Your "status" in each guild after the questline is completed is even more ridiculous then Oblivion. At least it seemed like you earned your place in those. You do like 4 or 5 tasks and things fall into place for you to
lead each guild
-The dragons in general were pretty disappointing, they were pretty easy for me to defeat after the first few, and none of them aside from the ones focused on in the main quest had any personality or uniqueness. They became meaningless encounters after awhile on the same level as some necromancers I would run into on the road. Pretty lame considering they are the main draw of the game.
-Main quest was good while it lasted, but had a pretty easy and abrupt ending. The final boss was a joke and I didnt use any game breaking Enchanted gear or anything. I think in general, yes it may sound like blasphemy to some, but I saw a real need for cutscenes in the game. It just seemed like a lot of the game's potential awesome moments weren't made as big and meaningful as they could have been. You can only tell so much of a story thru the game engine...
Was particularly disappointed they didnt even show you riding the dragon but for 5 seconds out of Dragonsreach
-I had a real problem hearing dialogue in the game, seemed like you needed to be in 1st person and had to be looking in just the right direction, sometimes which was not even directly at the person speaking to hear anything, probably should have played with subtitles on. This became pretty bothersome towards the end of the game and especially when in conversations with more than one person, pretty poor sound design.
----------------
Overall it slightly exceeded my expectations and will go down as one of the best games I've played this year and one of my favorites for this gen.
I wouldn't advise anybody to play without subtitles. So many times I saw dialogue (even important ones) in the subtitles of which the corresponding audio wasn't even played. Let alone the times it was too soft or garbled, some random NPC started talking through it, or a spoken line ended abruptly halfway into the sentence. I find it commendable that you even understood the main quest.
I jist killed a dragon and couldn't take his soul. It didn't burn up either. Just a whole dragon, laying on the ground. Has anybody ran into this as well?
That horse needs armor! If only Bethesda would find a way to give it to us...
I'm about 70 hours in at level 54 and pretty much a walking death sentence even at Master.
I did the Mage's college and Companions. Just started the theives and and haven't come close to Dark Brotherhood.
In some way that game has too much filler content. The fetch quests for non critical NPC's get tiring but I had having open quests in my journal and I don't say no, so I'm stuck doing them.
The biggest problem with the game is destruction at high levels. It's just not that useful. If you want to do damage, dual weild is the way to go. I really wish I can go all Mage but at high levels it just turn into a chipping battle for high level enemies. Where as with Dual weild, I'm doing executions and chopping heads all over the place.
I'm almost at 100 conj so I can't wait to summon dual demora lords all over. Good times. Anyone know if Demora Lords are considered Anthoarchs or Undead? I'd like to know which tree to go up.
