TES V: Skyrim

[KimB]

I took mana at every level.
And I put every point into destruction if available and conjuration if not.
I joined the magic guild as soon as possible, since some of the quest rewards have mana regen.

There is still a lot of running away involved with higher level mobs that have elemental resistance of any sort.

I split my mage between magicka and health.

But in the end I found that being smart about your spells prevented most of the elemental resistance. I don't think any enemy in the game is resistant to all of the elements. I think the element the fewest are resistant to is lightning.

The really annoying thing with playing a mage is going up against other mages that use wards, because unless you use very powerful spells, they just get absorbed by the ward. What I found, though, is that as long as their ward is up they can only use one-handed spells, which are much weaker. So I could just absorb the little bit of damage they could throw at me and wait for them to run out of magicka on their ward, at which point I'd throw a couple of spells at 'em and they'd die.

 

[KimB]

It's all relative obviously and I haven't played Morrowind in the last 5 years so a lot of it I'm sure is rose tinted spectacles. running around was certainly a pain, but it added to the cost of being a vampire, you couldn't get caught out in the day time running between locations.

Well, the issue of quick travel vs. no quick travel is a different issue than I was talking about. I'm just talking about the simple speed of normal movement in Morrowind. It was so agonizingly slow most of the time. "Running" often just felt like a decent walking speed.

Judicious use of the various transportation facilities and spells made it so that travel wasn't so horrible. It was the simple exploration that was agonizing.

 

[Daozang]

The fiction stresses time and again that the Dwemer built to last with secrets of metallurgy that the other races can only dream of. In particular their common construction metal retains its edge and is very corrosion resistant.

I don't see that Dwemer ruins being in good order is all that wrong really.

No, actually according to lore, it's quite all right for the ruins to be in good shape.
It just doesn't feel right...
Besides, I already said, it's an art direction choice, and I liked the Morrowind one a lot more.

 

[Bludd]

Anyone got the 1.2 patch downloaded yet? I've read there are some issues with it, mainly resistances don't work and dragons are behaving weirdly.

 

[Jedi2016]

I haven't seen any of those issues yet, but I just walked inside a building in Riftin (first time going inside since the patch) and it's completely unplayable. We're talking 2-3fps, when I'm used to 50-60fps. I don't know what hell's going on. I can't progress at all like this, it wrecks the whole game.

 

[Sinistar]

Just played for a little over an hour, killed a dragon, no odd behavior of the dragon, did "The Black Star" quest, and sold a bunch of loot in different shops.

Seem to be running fine here.

Edit: Just did a fast travel to Riften, and went into several building, no problem. I am using the LAA loader, don't know if that makes a difference.

 

[Jedi2016]

I thought I was using it, unless having the patch somehow broke it.

I remember reading about that problem before, pretty much since launch, but I never paid any attention because it wasn't happening to me.

 

[Sinistar]

did you delete "Tes.exe.4gb" in your game directory, so that the loader can create a new one with the new "tes.exe" file?

 

[Jedi2016]

I checked the logs, it did it automatically during the first startup after the patch. Handy feature, that.

Looks like it might have been the shadow settings. I had changed one of the shadow map resolution settings in the INI to match the rest of them (8192), and for some reason that killed all my interiors. I was fiddling with it because the game blew out my INI settings yesterday, like it was doing the first time setup, so I had to pull it in from an older backup of the INI and try to remember what else I had changed. I changed the setting back to what it was (4096), and now it's running more or less like it was before, maybe a little more jittery. I wonder if I should try dropping it even further and see if it improves. I'm surprised it had as big an effect as it did.. It's the same setting as all the other shadows, and yet in those locations it causes a 50fps loss. Ridiculous.

 

[RobertR1]

I took mana at every level.
And I put every point into destruction if available and conjuration if not.
I joined the magic guild as soon as possible, since some of the quest rewards have mana regen.

There is still a lot of running away involved with higher level mobs that have elemental resistance of any sort.

I'm only at level 21 with mosnt of my points into Mana and have a lot of mana regen support on my apparel. The problem is that when I'm in battle, all that mana regen is useless and you run out of mana quickly.

Being a mage in Dragon Age 1 was much more fun than this. I'm might switch to melee at this point with magic as support when needed. It's not how I like to play RPG's.

 

[swaaye]

I discovered if you use a person from the Companions guild (Whiterun) as a tag along buddy, and they offer training, you can just take your money back after you pay them for training.

 

[homerdog]

I checked the logs, it did it automatically during the first startup after the patch. Handy feature, that.

Looks like it might have been the shadow settings. I had changed one of the shadow map resolution settings in the INI to match the rest of them (8192), and for some reason that killed all my interiors. I was fiddling with it because the game blew out my INI settings yesterday, like it was doing the first time setup, so I had to pull it in from an older backup of the INI and try to remember what else I had changed. I changed the setting back to what it was (4096), and now it's running more or less like it was before, maybe a little more jittery. I wonder if I should try dropping it even further and see if it improves. I'm surprised it had as big an effect as it did.. It's the same setting as all the other shadows, and yet in those locations it causes a 50fps loss. Ridiculous.

I suspect you ran out of videomemory with such high shadomap resolutions, and such a sharp dropoff in performance. That would also explain why it only happened in certain areas.

 

[KimB]

I'm only at level 21 with mosnt of my points into Mana and have a lot of mana regen support on my apparel. The problem is that when I'm in battle, all that mana regen is useless and you run out of mana quickly.

Well, with my mage this was an issue at lower levels, but could usually be handled by casting my spells sparingly, and only using the apprentice-level spells. At higher levels I had more than enough magicka regen to cast these spells continuously.

To me, the real saving grace of making a mage is the 100% stagger chance on dual-cast destruction spells. The conjuration spells also help a ton when going up against a bunch of enemies.

 

[Frank]

Well, the issue of quick travel vs. no quick travel is a different issue than I was talking about. I'm just talking about the simple speed of normal movement in Morrowind. It was so agonizingly slow most of the time. "Running" often just felt like a decent walking speed.

Judicious use of the various transportation facilities and spells made it so that travel wasn't so horrible. It was the simple exploration that was agonizing.

You could train speed, make fortify speed potions, enchant something with fortify speed, or you could levitate or jump, etc.

In other words: there was a large amount of things you could do to improve your exploration options and speed.

All of this they have removed with Skyrim. And I think horses and fast travel are no good substitute, as they don't help exploring at all.

 

[KimB]

You could train speed, make fortify speed potions, enchant something with fortify speed, or you could levitate or jump, etc.

In other words: there was a large amount of things you could do to improve your exploration options and speed.

All of this they have removed with Skyrim. And I think horses and fast travel are no good substitute, as they don't help exploring at all.

You could, but it took quite a while. In the mean time, getting up there was agonizing. So usually I just semi-cheated and got the boots of blinding speed, combined with a 1-second duration 100% resist magicka spell.

 

[Sxotty]

You could train speed, make fortify speed potions, enchant something with fortify speed, or you could levitate or jump, etc.

In other words: there was a large amount of things you could do to improve your exploration options and speed.

All of this they have removed with Skyrim. And I think horses and fast travel are no good substitute, as they don't help exploring at all.

I agree skyrim really ruins the fun of wandering on your own. I always used to get my speed really high as well as acrobatics. You could do all sorts of fun things then. No it is much more boring in terms of movement.

 

[KimB]

I agree skyrim really ruins the fun of wandering on your own. I always used to get my speed really high as well as acrobatics. You could do all sorts of fun things then. No it is much more boring in terms of movement.

I pretty strongly disagree with that. Sprinting is definitely a nice touch. The horses I don't get into so much, but I guess some people like them.

 

[Malo]

Sprinting definitely is a great aspect of Skyrim, combined with stamina potions to get you out of danger fast! Horses definitely different in Skyrim as they seem to be less of a permanent addition than in Oblivion. They tend to get killed much faster as they get into combat more. If they end up running away they're usually back at the next town you fast travel to. I've got Frost, a unique horse and the 2nd toughest in the game, and it has survived several dragon attacks tanking for me.

 

[homerdog]

Fast travel is stupid. They need to go back to the Morrowind way, where you could travel between towns via boat or Silt Strider or magic. Maybe they would substitute the Silt Strider for caravans since I guess there are no striders in Skyrim.

I don't like being able to transport anywhere at any time. It makes the game feel small, and there is no reason this game should feel small. I know I know, just don't use it, well I am weak .
Wouldn't it be cool if on the hardest difficulty you could only fast travel via caravans, and then even only between towns? I call for a mod!

 

[Bludd]

Uh, homerdog? You know there's a wagon guy you can pay to take you to the big towns? That's the silt strider, right there.

Fast travel is great.