Skyrim impressions

Q-BZ said:
Question for folks: Trying to track down an issue my sister is having with the game.

What were/are the causes for the CTD where it happens real fast and you don't even see an error message or anything. It's the kind of CTD where you're playing, you blink, and you're starting at your desktop in a flash.
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As far as I can tell that's just Skyrim being Skyrim.

I did find the 4GB address aware patch helped, though. It used to happen about once an hour, but since installing that it happens maybe once every six or seventh play session, if even that. Give that a try.
 
jadams said:
The main story felt extremely short. It also seemed like it ended out of nowhere. I had this same feeling in FO3.

There was no sense of I'm almost there. I got the scroll and figured once I got back up the mountain to use it I would be transported back in time and would be required to do a bunch of additional quests. I didnt think it would bring Alduin to me.

I also found the fight with Alduin to be very annoying.
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Pretty disappointed in the main quest. The fights were really dull and annoying and there is no feeling of accomplishment after finishing it.

They really missed a creative opportunity
When you go to Sovngarde. I mean this is the mythical land of dead Nord heros? Seriously? It looks exactly like any other random town. It has the same wildflowers growing outside and the same goblets and cinnamon rolls on the tables inside. Just lazy. Where are the cool creative touches like the world inside the painting in Oblivion or the virtual neighborhood in Fallout 3?
 
Jellylesg said:
As far as I can tell that's just Skyrim being Skyrim.

I did find the 4GB address aware patch helped, though. It used to happen about once an hour, but since installing that it happens maybe once every six or seventh play session, if even that. Give that a try.
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With the latest official patch, one does not want to be using the 4GB patch as it is already included in the game.
 
What would you all think about this kind of glitch?: After an hour or so the game's video freezes but the music continues on and you're forced to ctrl-alt-delete out of it.

My sister is working with the corrupt save theory and trying to figure out how far back that might go. If a save is corrupt, would it even load?
 
That exact thing happened to me yesterday. It was the first crash of any kind I've had since I began playing the game. It happened while saving, so I wasn't sure if the save took or not. Loaded the game up again, loaded the last save, and the game fired up fine but it didn't save. Game has been running fine ever since.

So, at least for me, it had nothing to do with a corrupted save.
 
Q-BZ said:
What would you all think about this kind of glitch?: After an hour or so the game's video freezes but the music continues on and you're forced to ctrl-alt-delete out of it.

My sister is working with the corrupt save theory and trying to figure out how far back that might go. If a save is corrupt, would it even load?
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Based upon Morrowind and Oblivion history, yes.
 
Parmenides said:
Based upon Morrowind and Oblivion history, yes.
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Typically what would be signs of a corrupted save?


Here's another concern at least she has:


Examples: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2261827

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2358293


http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=27465528
^^ This thread especially describes this possible issue. Does this mean anything to anyone here? Boy, that's sure going to suck for all of us if this ends up being true. I'm past 100 hours and I have about 318 MB worth of saves that have gotten slightly bigger as I progress through the game but if I cross 18MB on a save file apparently that's where the beginning of problems can show up, at least according to some of these folks.

So far, I haven't personally had any problems but my sister has and our installs are identical and hardware is fairly comparable to each other.

What do you all make of this?
 
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Why worry about it? Your sister was unlucky, the odds are way against it happening to you or anyone else. Besides, if it is gonna happen, you can't really do anything about it until after the fact.
 
shantd said:
Why worry about it? Your sister was unlucky, the odds are way against it happening to you or anyone else. Besides, if it is gonna happen, you can't really do anything about it until after the fact.
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I need to rule it out for my sister. I'm still leaning towards corrupted save so far but I guess I'll be looking over my shoulder if I see one of my save files cross the magic 18MB barrier like some of those people believe in those threads. That's kind of a shitty feeling to think I might just suddenly hit this invisible barrier of broken-ness and I would think everyone else would potentially be unhappy about that as well...if it's even a real issue which is what I'm trying to determine.

I wanted to see if anyone here had any experience on any of that either way.

Is there anyone here that's say north of 100-150 hours of gameplay, 18MB or larger save files, and still having no issues at all? That's really all that previous post of mine boils down to.
 
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anyone want to give me some hints on how to get my smithing or whatever up enough so I cna actually upgrade bows better?

best I have is a once upgraded glass bow with glass arrows and unless I get sneak attacks or criticals it is nearly useless on a lot of things.

I can sit there and buy cheapo swords and upgrade them once and sell it and repeat but that requires having lots of blocks of metals.

I can do basic enchantments on weapons also but that often doesn't seem useful either. (say like 20 points of lightning damage)
 
After the steam version gave me issues, I went with an older version of the game and that allowed me to avoid steam and use the 4gb patch. Since then, the game has been completely stable.
 
Bigbacon said:
anyone want to give me some hints on how to get my smithing or whatever up enough so I cna actually upgrade bows better?

best I have is a once upgraded glass bow with glass arrows and unless I get sneak attacks or criticals it is nearly useless on a lot of things.

I can sit there and buy cheapo swords and upgrade them once and sell it and repeat but that requires having lots of blocks of metals.

I can do basic enchantments on weapons also but that often doesn't seem useful either. (say like 20 points of lightning damage)
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Personally I've only been upgrading weapons/armor I loot or build myself and mostly only use lngots/leather I've found, looted, stolen or mined/hunted although lately I've been buying a few ingots to allow more upgrading/building.
 
smithing up?
buy/collect/make iron ingots and leather strips.
with 200 of each you can make 200 daggers, that should get you most of the way to 100 smithing
just select iron dagger and keep hitting enter
you will want to buff the smithing skills and enchantment skills and alchemy skills
enchantment buffs alchemy
alchemy buffs smithing and enchantment

anyway I have not bothered too much in perfecting anything, but my bow does 212 pts of damage with 63 of lightning and 63 of fire, I can pretty much 2 hit anything from stealth mode
 
Q-BZ
I've had pretty much what you describe in previous games. After certain amount of hours (and/or filesize), the save just becomes unbearable. But I haven't yet experienced this in Skyrim yet so I'm not sure how helpful I can be in that regard.

Based upon my experience with previous games, there are a couple thoughts:
1. low FPS may cause corruption. If you keep your games close to 60 FPS then problems are more scarce. If you have occasional drops into the teens of FPS, bad things happen and can accumulate over time.
2. polling too much data in your folders. How many files and folders are in the data folder (folders, readmes, .esp) (not including in subfolders). Previous games had issues where file polling caused too much stuttering. 100 files might even be problems.
3. If you pay attention to where things go sour, you can load a previous save and sometimes the issue won't come up again for a while.


Otherwise might also want to give this: http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2569 a try. Seriously might be worthwhile.
 
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Any fixes for the jerky mouse movement in first person? I've tried all of the ini tweaks I could (disable smoothing, fMouseHeadingXScale to 0.02 helped the most) but sometimes the game turns in 1-2 degree increments. In third person the game is perfectly smooth locked at 60 fps so it's not framerate related. Strange thing is the jerkyness is much more common indoors than outdoors.

Apart from that I'm very impressed with the game. I just got done with a 14 hour spurt without restarting the game and I didn't have any performance issues or crashes - something that would have never happened in oblivion or fallout. Now I just need someone to make a mod to change leveling to be based on an experience system instead of skill usage based (like OblivionXP or Fallout)
 
Parmenides said:
Q-BZ
I've had pretty much what you describe in previous games. After certain amount of hours (and/or filesize), the save just becomes unbearable. But I haven't yet experienced this in Skyrim yet so I'm not sure how helpful I can be in that regard.

Based upon my experience with previous games, there are a couple thoughts:
1. low FPS may cause corruption. If you keep your games close to 60 FPS then problems are more scarce. If you have occasional drops into the teens of FPS, bad things happen and can accumulate over time.
2. polling too much data in your folders. How many files and folders are in the data folder (folders, readmes, .esp) (not including in subfolders). Previous games had issues where file polling caused too much stuttering. 100 files might even be problems.
3. If you pay attention to where things go sour, you can load a previous save and sometimes the issue won't come up again for a while.


Otherwise might also want to give this: http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2569 a try. Seriously might be worthwhile.
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Good tips.
 
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Hi. anyone know how i can make armor using the dragon bones ans scaled i get from killing dragons?

i read on wiki that with these items i can make dragon type armor but now? When i go to a forge, there is no option to create one despite having the dragon bones and scales items.

Thanks
 
jonneymendoza said:
Hi. anyone know how i can make armor using the dragon bones ans scaled i get from killing dragons?

i read on wiki that with these items i can make dragon type armor but now? When i go to a forge, there is no option to create one despite having the dragon bones and scales items.

Thanks
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You must have the smithing perk to create dragon armor.
 
Yeah, you need to get smithing to 100 and spend a few perks, the smithing level 100 perk is being able to craft dragonscale/dragonbone armour.
 
eh, I am thinking all the smithing/armor related stuff is a bit of a waste.
I believe maximum armor is 580, and you can improve virtually anything to that level.
may want to keep that in mind when burning points on various skills and multipliers
 
If you take a side in the civil war and follow through with their quests, what kind of affects are there on the game world afterwards?
 
Q-BZ said:
If you take a side in the civil war and follow through with their quests, what kind of affects are there on the game world afterwards?
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I didn't do the nord one yet, but on the Imperial side, a new Jarl is in place and a certain city has Imperial troops for guards. Can't remember whiterun, except that I didn't see the Talos priest anymore.
 
Has anyone used the console commands...

AdvSkill <skill> <amount>

??? I want to know if they're reliable or have any weird side effects that I should be worried about.

I'm trying to get my enchanting to level 100, at 85 now and I really can't be fucked doing it "genuinely", so want to just use console commands to get it the next 15 levels to 100. Sick of grinding for souls and fast travelling from town to town to buy crappy low level soul gems. At first I thought I'd level it "naturally", but past level 50ish you really won't get far unless you grind, enchanting dagger after crappy dagger... I'm sick of grinding :p Between smithing and enchanting I must have spent a few hours just grinding to get the levels up... feel like I'm playing a bloody MMO or something.
 
I hope you've already beaten the game, because getting smiting and enchanting up to 100 will break the game...even on Master difficulty. You'll be able to 1-shot just about everything. I got my smithing to 100, donned daedric gear from head to toe, and then enchanted all of them. It was ridiculous, had to go back to an old save and start over to keep things fun.
 
shantd said:
I hope you've already beaten the game, because getting smiting and enchanting up to 100 will break the game...even on Master difficulty. You'll be able to 1-shot just about everything. I got my smithing to 100, donned daedric gear from head to toe, and then enchanted all of them. It was ridiculous, had to go back to an old save and start over to keep things fun.
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even without doing all that the game gets ridiculously easy even with a basic sneak/archery combo.

I am still just sneak shoting everything with 1,2, or 3 arrows. Not major boss things but the AI is so broken I can hide behind just about anything and they'll give up the chase. Even a big room, I can often just stand in one place, in a corner, and just sneak shot whatever cause the boss will get confused and just do nothing.
 
Q-BZ said:
If you take a side in the civil war and follow through with their quests, what kind of affects are there on the game world afterwards?
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Just new guards and a different Jarl in each city. It's just flavor, neither choice matters.
 
shantd said:
I hope you've already beaten the game, because getting smiting and enchanting up to 100 will break the game...even on Master difficulty. You'll be able to 1-shot just about everything. I got my smithing to 100, donned daedric gear from head to toe, and then enchanted all of them. It was ridiculous, had to go back to an old save and start over to keep things fun.
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I think I'm on the last "quest" on the main story (I started it not realising what it was and I wasn't all that prepared so had to go back to an earlier save).

But I know what you mean, I'm level 36 now, been playing mostly on Expert and nothing has really posed much of a threat since my mid 20s when I fought Hevnoraak, that's without abusing smithing/enchanting/alchemy, I only had enough smithing to make some basic armour and no enchanting or alchemy at all. Even now I'm staying away from Alchemy because it doesn't really seem necessary. People talk about making these epic builds of alchemy/smithing/enchanting, but it seems totally unecessary really, given its entirely offline play.

Skyrim definitely has issues with difficulty level. For the most part everything is far too easy, then you suddenly come up against something that's impossibly hard.
 
Just finished it recently with 148 hours into the game.

IMO Oblivion was better, Though I did enjoy Skyrim.
 
Q-BZ said:
In what ways?
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I can't really put my finger on it, maybe its nostalgia. I thought Oblivion was less consolized. I personally liked the combat system in Oblivion better. Skyrim felt too much like a "Vats" hybrid.

I thought the main storyline in Oblivion was better. Skyrims was way too short and linear. Also IMO Alduin "The World Eater" was far too cliche and didn't offer much of a challenge to the end player.

Which leads me to believe this games difficulty wasn't designed around a person spending more than 60 hours on the game. I also didn't like the conflict between the Imperials and the Stormcloaks, it reminded me too much of Fallout New Vegas with the conflict between NCR and the Legion, hence it was nothing new.
 
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Krenum said:
I can't really put my finger on it, maybe its nostalgia. I thought Oblivion was less consolized. I personally liked the combat system in Oblivion better. Skyrim felt too much like a "Vats" hybrid.
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I can all but guarantee you there's some serious nostalgia here. ;)

Shoot, an optional VATS like system, streamlined of course, would have been fun in this. ;)



I thought the main storyline in Oblivion was better. Skyrims was way too short and linear. Also IMO Alduin "The World Eater" was far too cliche and didn't offer much of a challenge to the end player.
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I can't really disagree here. I will say that for sure I thought Oblivion handled guilds and their characters and quests a lot better for the most part. A lot more satisfying.


Which leads me to believe this games difficulty wasn't designed around a person spending more than 60 hours on the game.
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Did you play at, at least Adept difficulty? Adept has been a nice balance for me.
 
fwiw I felt the main quest was seriously underwhelming too. But it's not really the point. I've been playing daily for 2 weeks after "finishing" the game and I'm still barely scratching the surface of what there is to see.
 
I've been playing since launch date and still have not visited the Grey Beards, which is a main story quest you get after a few hours of playing. There is a lot of content here.
 
I kind of "forced" myself to start over. Deleted everything except my saves, started over. I don't ahve to time to play at present, wondering what I'll do. Could start over, or use my old save. But my old save has been through A LOT of fiddling.
 
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