[PC/360/Ps3] The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Impressions, tweaks and more!

[Lockdown]

Question:  Other than choosing Khajiit for your race - Is there a way for a character to aquire the "Night Eye" ability in Skyrim?  I'm thinking spell, potion, or enchantment specifically.  I had assumed it would be an early level Alteration spell anyone could aquire, but I'm now thinking my assumption was wrong.

Edit:  Doing a google search netted me the answer.  Not nearly as "accessible" as I had hoped.  I'll live.

[Crawley]

I used Night Eye off and on at the start of the game but rarely use it now as there isn't anything thats going to 1-shot kill me. You can always pull out a torch too, but probably only helpful in dungeons.

[CeeKay]

new patch came out, and I'm waiting to update and watching the forums to see what they may have screwed up this time.

[Hetz]

new patch came out, and I'm waiting to update and watching the forums to see what they may have screwed up this time.

If you take a look at the official forums, they screwed up a ton.

The most major thing seems to be that resistances are now broken and have no effect at all. Have a 100% resistance to Cold? That frost dragon will kill you in 1 second now....

[Greg Wak]

So if I bought the game from steam does it patch on it's own? Because I thought there was already one patch out and I don't ever remember seeing it load.

[CeeKay]

So if I bought the game from steam does it patch on it's own? Because I thought there was already one patch out and I don't ever remember seeing it load.

yep, Steam will autoupdate unless you tell it not to (right click on game, select properties, check update tab).  of course I'm reading that Steam will automatically update a game when you go to run it irregardless of what is checked (haven't verified this myself (and not going to with Skyrim ), just what I read).  my Steam is in offline mode right now.

the two patches have been pretty small, if you blinked you might have missed them.  this one is supposed to be a whole 3 megs.

[CeeKay]

well fuck, went to fire up Skyrim in offline mode and it won't launch.  I hit play on the launcher, if flickers and then the launcher comes back.

[CeeKay]

wow.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_xCjK3BD6u4

I'm also reading complaints about lockpicking not working.

[Caine]

What sucks about Steam is the whole automatically applied aspect of the patch.  Even if you nuked the install, you couldn't just have the vanilla version now unless you archived the install on your own.  This also makes any goty version auto bloat in size as you cannot choose not to have the dlc installed.

Sad that the patch borked it up.  Was hoping for a solution to my "hermit follower" issue on the 360.

[CeeKay]

ended up applying the patch and played around with it.  so far (knock on wood) everything people are reporting as broken seems to be working.  fast travel and lock picking are fine.  fast traveled to a fort that I new was filled with mages and didn't seem to be taking any extra damage from their fire or ice spells.  haven't found a dragon yet though.  gonna go run some errands and then come back to play some more.

[jersoc]

patch sounds broken as fuck.

standard bethesda.

cool, can't even launch the game now.

fixed a bug where the game worked.

[DOSHIGH]

I just put in about 2 hours with the patch and didn't have any problems, including a dragon attack.  I did turn off future auto patching for Steam after I saw it was updated, better safe than sorry.

Edit: I had not modified any ini files or added any mods as of yet.

[kathode]

Not saying there aren't issues, but I never put any stock in official forums for any game I follow.  It is where people go to bitch, plain and simple.  I would kind of like to see that backwards dragon though

[Morgul]

I got the pc version and PS3 version.

No Idea how many hours I got in, But I have a 28 mage and a 34 assassin on the PS3, and a 27 fighter on the PC.   I know its well over a hundred hours.

I have done tons of quests, and finished the quest line for mage guild, companions, thieves guild and the dark brotherhood.

Only bug I have noticed is the dead dragon bones in white run that will not go away.   If it wasn't for forums, I would not even know there were bugs.

The dragon bones disappeared after that patch.   So, yea, I love bethesda..  I hope they keep running with elder scrolls and lay off the damn fallout for awhile.

I want the whole continent on this engine.   I want to hit the desert lands of the cat guys, and love to explore the black marsh.

I sure hope they keep pushing heavy content out, this is my favorite game.   

 

[CeeKay]

I want to hit the desert lands of the cat guys, and love to explore the black marsh.

don't forget the walking tree cities of the Wood Elves!

[Suitably Ironic Moniker]

I installed the patch and haven't noticed any new issues, though it didn't fix the bug I experienced with the mission at Fort Sungard.

[Hetz]

Here is a video with the resistance bug that everyone is talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk2SbJnsXFM&feature=related

[CeeKay]

Here is a video with the resistance bug that everyone is talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk2SbJnsXFM&feature=related

   at those loading times.

I think I'm on normal, so it's probably not as noticeable as it is on Master, but as many times as my thief/fighter/mage gets decapitated on normal I'm perfectly fine with this.

[kathode]

Hetz are you seeing that resistance issue?  Just curious - there seem to be a lot of conflicting stories out there. 

[Roguetad]

1 minute to load?  That's crazy.  Thankfully the game loads quickly on my pc.

[disarm]

1 minute to load?  That's crazy.  Thankfully the game loads quickly on my pc.

For the record, my load times on the 360 are nowhere close to that, even without it installed to the HD due to the texture glitch that this patch supposedly fixed.  Seeing that makes me very glad to have the 360 version over the PS3...

[CeeKay]

OK, bookshelves seem to be acting wonky.  I had a whole shelf of books vanish after I exited using one, and now I can't even access them when I hit the use key.  I also tried putting a weapon on the weapon rack in Breezehome and it just vanished.  re-loaded and put it in the storage chest for now.

[Hetz]

Hetz are you seeing that resistance issue?  Just curious - there seem to be a lot of conflicting stories out there. 

I have not played yet today, but I plan on checking that out tonight. I will be interested to see if it happens to me or not, since, as you said,  there are some people swearing that nothing is broken and others saying the exact opposite.

[CeeKay]

fought two dragons tonight and didn't notice any difference other than one was harder to kill (blood dragon or something like that).  so far the only issues I discovered were the ones I mentioned about the bookshelves/weapons rack.

had a big derp this evening when I realized there is a sprint key.  unlocked a sneak perk that lets you roll forward (not sure how that will come in handy yet) and to activate it you need to hit sprint while sneaking forward.  I was like 'sprint key?  buh?' and looked at the controls, and sure enough it's there.

[Lockdown]

Got a chance to play after the patch as well.  Nothing worth noting here - everything seemed fine.  Mods installed for me:  The texture improvements to faces and bodies, and I'm running with all the basic nvidia tweaks (minus ugrids).  Previous to the patch, I had quite a few ctd's - but since the patch, I've had only 1 (after trying to fast travel, which I rarely do).  Other than the patch, the only thing I changed was to disable the high texture water mod, so either it was the water mod that was screwing me up or the patch added some stability somehow (or it's all just a big coincidence).

I wish I didn't need sleep, or I would play this game all night in between going to work.

[kathode]

Looks like the resistance bug was a real thing as they're putting out another patch to address it (as well as backwards dragons).  Lots of updates on the tools release, too-

http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2011/12/01/skyrim-what-were-working-on/

[CeeKay]

I'm wondering if the resistance thing is related to difficulty settings.  next time I find a dragon I'll change the difficulty to see.

[CeeKay]

I'm wondering if the resistance thing is related to difficulty settings.  next time I find a dragon I'll change the difficulty to see.

well fought a frost dragon on master and if I had any resistances they weren't working.  reloaded with the game set to adept and while tough it was no where near the massacre that master was as resistances seemed to to work fine.

[Soulchilde]

Anyone running any good mods?

[Blackadar]

Anyone running any good mods?

Yep.  On my 2nd play-through, I'm running the following mods:

1.  Smooth Faces  http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30
2.  Enhanced Night Sky  http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=85
3.  Glowing Ore Veins  http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=193
4.  FXAA Post Processing  http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=131

I'm not sure I see any difference from the faces.  
The night sky is just a nice background to look at on the few clear nights in Skyrim.
The Glowing Ore Veins is wonderful.  It's amazing how many veins there are out there and how easily they're missed.  It's so much easier to craft if you can find the ore a bit easier.
I'm using the FXAA with some specific settings so it doesn't over-saturate the game, but it does a little more brightness and color to the world.  

[Qantaga]

I'm having a great time with this game.
  
There are a few quibbles, mostly in combat (because I've been spoiled by Demons'/Dark Souls combat), but on the whole it is a fantastic game.
      
Out of untold hours with several characters, I finally hit my first borked quest (out of hundreds). I have a book that I looted from a chest early on. The librarian for the Mage College just gave me the quest, but he doesn't recognize that I have the book in my inventory. The game still thinks it's in the original chest across the map and, because it's a quest item, I can't put it back in the chest and try to collect it again. No worries, I'm just amazed that it's the only glitch I've seen so far in such a complex game.
          
The main reason for my post, though, is that something happened in the Skyrim world that makes me wonder if it is a normal "feature" of the world and NPCs or if an event happened in my game that I just can't figure out.
  
I don't think it's a spoiler, but I'll tag it just in case. It has to do with Adrienne(?) the blacksmith just inside the gates of Whiterun.
  

Spoiler for Hiden:

Adrienne has been a fixture since I made my ragged way up from Helgen and Riverwood in the early part of the game. I'd talk to her outside and sell things to her every time I returned to Whiterun. She was almost always my first stop after a dungeon run.
  
Then, a couple of visits back to Whiterun, I noticed her missing from outside the shop. I didn't think anything of it because sometimes she's in the shop and sometimes she's walking down the street.
  
After a few more visits, she still wasn't there, so I go in the shop and notice a new line of dialogue from the guy inside about "who does your forging?" When I click on it, he says that after Adrienne's death, he gets his supplies from a caravan.
  
I was floored. Silly, I know, but she was a constant in my character's world and now I don't know what happened to her. I've been up to the Jarl's castle (Dragonreach) and I can't find her father, either, although I've really just started looking for him, so I don't know if he's truly gone, too. (Edit: I did find her father, but he says nothing about her death).
    
So, my question is, do characters die, just as a natural part of the ongoing world? Or did something specific happen to her? She was fine long after the dragon attacked Whiterun and I don't know of any other event that happened there that could have lead to her death. I'd sure like to know what happened to her.
    
I'm curious if anyone else has had anything like this happen.
 
Edit 2: The more I think about it, it is obviously something the devs anticipated, since  they put in a voiced line of dialogue acknowledging it. I hope there's a way to find out what happened to her.

[metallicorphan]

v1.02 patch notes 
http://skyrimpatchnotes.com/

they change everytime you click on the link,here are a few

- Playing Skyrim on a Japanese XBox 360 Elite no longer erroneously unlocks achievements for Sonic Free Riders.

- Thieves spawning randomly inside bookshelves has been fixed by restricting them to cupboards and cabinets.

- Elder Dragons no longer become aroused when in the presence of human children.

Vampires are no longer unavailable as troubled but dreamy teen boyfriends.

Pots and kettles now have slits to see through and can be equipped as helmets.

- Lydia's mace now properly turns into a rolling pin when you purchase Breezehome.

[Arkon]

Pots and kettles now have slits to see through and can be equipped as helmets.

I actually think this would be an awesome addition!

[hepcat]

Those patch notes are hilarious.   

[CeeKay]

maxed out Sneak at 100 tonight.  with a combination of two different things I can do 30X damage when sneaking.  it was kind of satisfying slashing the throat of an unsuspecting Daedra in Mehrune Dagon's place.

I only wish they had made sure that the killing animations would match what you're using.  it looks kind of silly for my character to jump up on a dragons head and then pound nothing into it using my right handed weapon since my left hand is casting firebolts-  apparently they assumed everyone would be dual wielding weapons.  and stabbing someone in the chest with a mace is even more silly looking.

[Gratch]

Out of untold hours with several characters, I finally hit my first borked quest (out of hundreds).

You're lucky then.  I've been playing for not even 20 hours yet, and have already encountered 4 bugged quests.  I also got hit with the dreaded "backwards flying dragon" bug (hover in the same spot just out of arrow range and fly backwards whenever I approach them )after this last patch, which basically makes the game unplayable until they fix it.  Unless, of course, I want to be followed by a backwards flying dragon wherever I go.  

I sort of like the game, but it's running into the same problem that I have with most Bethesda titles.   I've gotten past the "oooh, I love exploring for exploration's sake" and realized that everything I come across is really just variations on 3-4 themes.  Find a dungeon (white stone, brown stone, or ruin), fight some baddies (typically the same 3-4 enemy types), and haul my loot back to one of several identical looking towns to sell it.  A couple of the quests add a little story to it, but they ultimately boil down to doing this same thing over and over again.  It's all very pretty and still somewhat fun, but the shine is starting to come off and I find myself, well, bored.

[CeeKay]

no backward dragons yet, but I still get the occasional one that refuses to fight.  of course dragons seem to be doing their kill move on me a lot more too, which is annoying because most of the time I'll still have at least half my health left.

[metallicorphan]

no backward dragons yet, but I still get the occasional one that refuses to fight.

how far are you in the main quest?

Spoiler for Hiden:

...for those Dragons that wont come down to fight i just hit them with Dragonrend,they have no choice then

[Sarkus]

I sort of like the game, but it's running into the same problem that I have with most Bethesda titles.   I've gotten past the "oooh, I love exploring for exploration's sake" and realized that everything I come across is really just variations on 3-4 themes.  Find a dungeon (white stone, brown stone, or ruin), fight some baddies (typically the same 3-4 enemy types), and haul my loot back to one of several identical looking towns to sell it.  A couple of the quests add a little story to it, but they ultimately boil down to doing this same thing over and over again.  It's all very pretty and still somewhat fun, but the shine is starting to come off and I find myself, well, bored.

If you think, for example, that the towns are "identical looking" then either you haven't seen much of the world or you are never going to be satisfied. Whiterun is nothing like Marketh which is nothing like Solitude, just to name a few examples.

No backwards flying dragons or other noticeable problems in the 10 or so hours I've played since the latest patch dropped. 

[CeeKay]

no backward dragons yet, but I still get the occasional one that refuses to fight.

how far are you in the main quest?

Spoiler for Hiden:

...for those Dragons that wont come down to fight i just hit them with Dragonrend,they have no choice then

haven't answered the summons to high hrothgar yet, been busy doing other stuff for the last 46 hours