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!

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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?

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