Got to admit that my little 5770 is coping with it better than I expected. High texture, world and shadow settings, a bit of AA, maximum viewing distances and it's happily zooming along at 1920x1200. This time around, I'm VERY impressed with the smoothness of the engine with regards to loading stuff whilst you're moving. The Gamebryo ones always stuttered a bit for me here and there as they loaded new cells as you moved around, but Skyrim seems dead smooth.

 

Only main quibble I have with it so far is the lack of a hotkey system. I can't get the "Favourites" menu to work, and it's rather annoying having to keep going in and out of my inventory to switch between magic and weaponry. I'm sure someone will soon create a mod for it! I want to be able to map a few weapons and spells to the different buttons on my mouse. That used to work a treat for Oblivion!

 

And as for game-breaking bugs, I kept getting constant CTDs when I first launched it. Google told me to change my Windows audio settings to 44Khz/16bit and then it worked. Weird!

The favourites menu works perfectly for me. Select the items, spells, whatever in the inventory and hit F to favourite them, then Q brings up the menu in game (and handily pauses the action while doing it) then click on whatevr you want with left or right button depending on which hand you want it in (LMB for right hand, RMB for left hand).

Aye, I'm surprised how well optimised it seems to be. Runs very very nicely and seems to run well on oldish hardware.

Like Trenty says, use the favourites system (though he neglected to mention that once something is in the favourites menu, you can map a hotkey to it right there by pressing a number key (including numpad, which is handy for us non-WASDers).

I'd heard that setting audio settings to that fixed the low volume problem but didn't know it helped with crashes. I've had a few crashes (usually while alt-tabbing) so I might give that a pop, thanks.

That's because he didn't know. He does now, and he thanks you.

Anyhoo, thoughts on the Companion questline...
Bit rubbish, really. Admittedly i didn't have high hopes for the story as the Fighters Guild in Oblivion was easily the weakest of the guild subplots, but it didn't really reach my low expectations. It has a good start, (the werewolves thing) but it didn't really go anywhere and i never really believed in what i was doing and what i was supposed to be standing for. There were times in fact when i didn't want to do what i was doing, and actually sympathised more with the people i was fighting.

Plus the missions themselves weren't all that exciting. Obviously they ere just going to be full on fighting missions, but i wsa hoping for a bit more variety with the fights.

lol @ fighters.

Cool nested spoilers though :D

<backstabs mr. trent while loling>

FOOF! (<-- this dragon shout, the first one you get, seems to be designed solely for ruining peoples' dinner tables. And then giggling)

I got attacked by a dagron but I lack a bow or any decently ranged spells. What do I do? :[

You mean you can't get its attention without ranged or ... how to fight it?

 

If you don't (and don't want to) use any ranged offensive stuff then you'll just have to take it with whatever you usually use when it lands I guess?

 

If you want to use ranged then... buy/find a ranged spell or bow.

 

You can kinda kite them if you can lure them to a settlement where there's some guards or giants/mammoths and they'll help you bring it down.

 

Depends what kind of character you are though. If you're all about heavy armour and big weapons then ... yeah, just wait for it to land and then give it a beating.

 

I suspect it's going to be hard to get by without any magic in this one though (unless two handed weapons are significantly more destructive than single handed, I dunno, not tried them) as the magic is very powerful this time. Far more so than in Oblivion. I didn't use magic at all in Oblivion (aside from healing) and didn't intend to in this but... have found myself doing so partly because it's fun but also because it's my best attack in a stand-up melee fight. It's my fallback when I'm in a tough spot.

 

Is anyone playing without magic at all?

 

I'm playing a sneaking up-close daggers person mainly. Relying on my backstab for tough stuff and speed/agility for weak/moderate groups. If there's room I'll use my bow to whittle down numbers if I can do so without being detected. But yeah, if I'm spotted with multiple enemies around in closed areas I have to get the flamethrower out.

 

So I kinda feel like I'm possibly spreading my perks/skills a bit thin. Most perks are in sneak and one handed but I also have a few in archery and then some in destruction and restoration.

 

How's everyone else playing?

I mean I can't get near the damn thing, every time it lands it's blasting my face off before I can get into melee range. I'm using the starter spells (flames and sparks) but they're only mid-range and can't hit it while it's flying.

 

That character was meant to be a mage type as well but so far he's just ended up swording most things. Dual-wielding a sword and a spell is awesome though. My second character is a stealthy one, archery and dual-wielding swords and daggers. Brutal battleaxe'd barbarian dude is up next. As always, making characters turns out to be more fun than playing them. :D

Noooooooooooooooooooooo. Not in this game. Making characters is fun for sure but playing them is far more fun in this. Discovering things and going to places and getting distracted and making plans and having them fall apart.

If you're a magic dude you just need to get some more spells. Just head to any city and find the chief mage or whatever they're called and he'll have plenty of spells for sale. If you're a melee dude and anything but all-out hardcore heavy armour and weapons then a bow is a good idea for backup and for dragons (they'll still land by you and immolate you though, that never changes :D Just have to dive for cover when it looks like they're going to do that and attack them on the ground when someone else has the aggro).

Buying spells is like so 90s. Isn't there a magical version of Pirate Bay? :P

Yes, that would be finding the spell books in dungeons :D

Which happens but is unreliable :Y

Figured it out. It seems that if you re-map some of the keys, 90% of the dialogs update themselves, but the favourites one doesn't. So, because I changed "E" to be my Use key, I simply had to try that one instead, and it worked. And once I'd added stuff to the favourites menu, then it started to display when I tried it.

So yet again, loads of testing and not one tester tries re-mapping the default keys! :-(

As a jack-of-all-trades at the moment to be honest. I was never a fan of archery in Oblivion, but it's much better I'm finding in Skyrim (plus it helps that arrows are weightless). Hence, spells for mid-distance stuff, bow for even further away stuff (like dragons), then either two-handed sword, or one-handed sword and spells for close-up stuff. Probably not ideal for levelling up mind you, but so far it's working quite well!

The levelling system is hard to read, I've not really got my head around it yet. But if I'm reading it right you can potentially max out the perks in 5 skills (though you prolly won't want /all/ perks in a given skill, so it's more really). So yours doesn't sound unreasonable.

Me :Y

I'm gonna play all-out two-handed warhammer-wielding heavy-armour-wearing barbarian in this one.

(when I get a chance to play it for more than half an hour :(( )

You're going to get slaughtered (hug)

:D

:D

I've not played this type of character before, so it'll be an interesting change. Early signs are promising though: I could kill the dudes in the start area in one hit.

I'm putting most of my perk points into Archery and one-handed weapons, with others going into sneaking and lockpicking. The arrows aren't doing as much as I hope, though. I keep running up against NPCs that are so tough that even a sneak shot with an arrow only takes a tenth of their health. And then I get swarmed by all of them and I have to get the axe out, which is surprisingly effective.

I did a couple of the Thieves Guild quests:

Not too sure. I seem to be doing things to help a bunch of bastards, while at the same time running missions for another bastard who set a bunch of hired thugs on me. I'm not sure why I'm still helping her. Actually, wonder what would happen if I killed her. How many quests would that break?

Also, I was wandering down a road near one of the big cities early in the morning, and crossed the river that's beside the road to get some Nirnroot. I looked back to the road, and saw a ghostly headless horse-rider galloping along. I was going to have a look, but got distracted by someone attacking me, and when I looked again, the ghost had gone. Not sure what that was all about.

Also, do headshots take more health than a normal shot? Because if they don't, I'll stop trying to be so accurate, despite how funny it is to see people fighting me with three arrows sticking in their faces.

I'm not bothering with lockpicking because all it really does is saves on lockpicks. Which I have plenty of anyway. Seems like a waste.

I won't read that cos I've not done much in the thieves yet :O

That headless horseman thing sounds wicked :D

Here is a picture of me practising my sneaking:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/132841/TESV%202011-11-15%2009-30-55-55.jpg