WDeranged

Installed my first mod

I just did one of the most atmospheric quests so far over in Solitude, a den of necromancers were attempting to resurrect a long dead queen (not Freddie Mercury), the sheer atmosphere of the dungeon and magic effects really struck me, I had to use every health potion I had for the climax, reloaded several times, loved it The best Dragon fight I've had so far was outside Riften when I first arrived, it was night and the weather was abysmal, there was a decent sense of danger as the dragon circled, appearing out of the fog now and then to attack, me and the town guard eventually took it down with arrows. I just read an interesting article about the PC issues with Skyrim, he's blowing his lid a bit but the points are totally fair.

I saw a fox swimming deep underwater, moving as fast as a shark

Bethesda should just hire him and have him be the lead for UI design on PC platform for all their future games. Agreed.

The lockpicking/security is the first thing I'll be modding, just like Fallout 3 I can crack expert locks within seconds *edit* I just got a chuckle over in the modding forums, some people know the ropes so well from previous games that a few mods have already been made without the Creation Kit, including one that slows levelling for those interested, also the god awful UI is Flash based, DarN is currently working on it.

I've hardly started any questlines at all, it always feels like I have way more stuff to do first, I've only been to Whiterun and Solitude so far, I can't believe some people are completing the MQ already

I don't think the Septim dynasty has anything to do with the Empire anymore after their last heir became a dragon statue, so it doesn't seem weird to me that they may find that advantageous for historical revisionist reasons. I may be overestimating Beth's current writers tho', so I'll wait for my copy and see for myself. There are a few books around that explain the situation, I can't remember all the details but basically the Empire was almost completely wiped out, the Thalmor captured or disrupted most of their holdings and pushed them right back to White Gold Tower, which they then sacked. The remaining Imperial armies made a last desperate attempt to retake the tower and with a stroke of luck/brilliance they utterly decimated the Thalmor's invasion force, killing their top general. This caused the Thalmor to re-think their immediate plans for conquest and they offered terms for peace, which happened to include their original demand before the war started, the outlawing of Talos worship. From what I can tell the Empire is seriously screwed and has no choice right now. *edit* I just remembered this thread over at Bethesda, the posts mention The Talos Cult going out of fashion and being forced to worship from basement dwellings even back in Morrowind days, a good retcon probably.

Might as well add to the Skyrim flood Talos in Whiterun, I love how the priest is quoting The Many Headed Talos. I haven't used the Skyforge yet but it just looks epic. I hunted down some bandits here after they fooled me into doing a pretty terrible thing, they got theirs. A nice short ruin occupied by a sadistic necromancer. Dunno what's in here but it's a lovely scene. Best sky boxes evar. Y'know, even though he almost cut my head off I like his grim determination.

I remember some info from a while back saying that the dungeons do respawn, dunno if they actually do though.

Yeah I turned mine to 15, far better now. I've had a few of those now and I don't mind them, it's a more creative way of doing what Dragon Age did with the Chantry board, I'm going to be going out grinding anyway, might as well have a little quest based incentive too.

I got heavily diverted from my first Companions quest, I decided to go climb a mountain and ended up walking straight into , I got about five seconds to appreciate the epicness before a Snow Troll absolutely ****ing murdered me I also saw some god awful, cringeworthy LOD on the way to Solitude but my arrival was epic, Aurora Borealis, fog, moons, mist and the city on the hill

So far I've had three crashes all in the same spot in a dungeon, beyond that it's been rock steady, I've heard other people are having really terrible instability though.

That's how I've been playing and it seems to be working so far, you can still see quest markers on the local map so if you get dramatically stuck you can check that, or use the clairvoyance spell but I've avoided it so far.

Turning left is precisely what I did, there's a cottage over that way with some interesting stuff to do, it was a blast finding it minutes after hobbling into the daylight Levelling is way too fast but I'd assume/hope it dramatically slows down, I imagine they want you to quickly shape your character at the start of the game so you don't end up investing 20 hours on a build you're not sure about.

It goes without saying what I've been playing, Fallout 3 with swords Never sleep again.

I'm looking forward to visiting it soon, I was a bit surprised to see how close it is to the starting area but your experience with the Troll gives me hope that it might be at least a little bit of an epic. Sounds like the bug people are talking about on the Bethsoft forums, apparently if you're using Windows 7 the fix for this is to select 24bit 44khz output in the Advanced section of the soundcard properties.

The Dark Elf voices annoy me but only because it seems the old gravel voiced Dunmer from the previews turned out to be a placeholder, Dunmer are all from the East End of London now apparently All the children having American accents is also slightly distracting. I've seen that giant glitch on youtube

Yeah the interface on PC is quite sinful, I really hope it's moddable and not something tied to the executable. *edit* Just noticed that kinda rhymes...I've information vegetable, animal and mineral? I did a bit of digging and it turns out the interface is flash based, that's a good sign.

Yeah I've noticed a hell of alot of people reacting to my race, what I'm wearing and what weapon I'm using, the first time I went to the tavern in Riverwood the local alcoholic said "Either I'm drunk or you're naked!..probably both", turns out I'd sold the armour off my back in the trading post I didn't mind seeing the Thalmor immediately, they most likely wanted to ensure that Ulfric's head rolls, plus not many people follow the lore so Bethesda probably just wanted to introduce them quickly. On the whole I had a blast last night, there's issues to be sure but most of them are technical rather than plot/gameplay, I mostly spent my time cheering whenever I found a bookcase full of new lore I've regained my faith in Bethesda's ability to produce an Elder Scrolls game.

I just tried and it will run without steam, the launcher however needs steam, now I'm going to go and sleep on the sofa, after playing for around ten hours in knackered...

I just made it through that bit of the dungeon, wrangled about eight Draugr chasing me and led them into the trap

Yeah the texturing is hit and miss, I don't even remember Oblivion being so mixed, still I'll just be glad to get it running at 60fps like god intended.

Hmm, I just checked my GPU usage and it's hovering around 60% on Ultra, definitely something driver/software related.

I unlocked early through a VPN and have been playing a few hours, I'm mostly impressed and glad to be back in Tamriel but yeah there's issues, pretty bad slowdowns on my GTX 580 and that interface plain sucks, patches, drivers, tweaks and mods will be the solution as usual. As soon as I got out of the starter dungeon I saw the obvious path ahead and swiftly went off road, found myself besieged by bandits after stealing their stuff and eventually dived into a cottage , I'm now finally dragging my overencumbered arse to Riverwood and I have to say I've enjoyed every moment of it. These slowdowns need fixing though, Ultra is way out of bounds for now.

I could be back home and playing it within the hour but I made a stupid promise to help my friend clean his house for a landlord inspection, then I have to go see another friend and then I've got to get up early tomorrow, Skyrim is already interfering with my real world plans...