TES V: Skyrim

[pcchen]

If I want to make potions, I have to scroll through reams of ingredients, scanning the four possible effects of each of them for the desired ones I need. This is HELLA tedious and cumbersome. I should of course be able to search for effects directly, to make potion-making less of a giant PITA.

I think you can make potions by selecting the effect you want and it shows which ingredients you have with those effects (known). But of course the UI still need a major overhaul.

... which makes me wonder exactly how much time has passed from the events of Morrowind. Hundreds of years by the looks of things, but maybe I'm wrong.

The events of Morrowind were in 3E 427 (the start of the blights). The events of Oblivion (the death of the emperor and starting of the Oblivion Crisis) were in 3E 433, which also marks the end of the 3rd era. Skyrim started in 4E 201, so it's two hundred and some years after Morrowind and Oblivion.

 

[Cartoon Corpse]

It sounds like I need to sharpen my axe in real life then. Like your sort "knows" something I don't about life in THIS jungle, given exposure to current events.

 

[Malo]

I think you can make potions by selecting the effect you want and it shows which ingredients you have with those effects (known). But of course the UI still need a major overhaul.

Correct. Potion making is rather simple once you know the effects. You have a list of effects, select the desired one (knowing that you have components when it's not greyed out) and toggle the appropriate ingredients that you have.

 

[Grall]

Hm, maybe I hadn't discovered many effects then when I tried some alchemy, because I saw no list; it appeared to be completely trial-and-error. I do have an enormous store of ingredients now though, maybe time to start cooking up some pots!

Problem is though, nobody can afford to buy all the junk potions I'll make to level the skill... Gold is a serious issue in both Morrowind and Skyrim; not sure about Oblivion since I never played that one much, but it probably follows the same pattern.

 

[Colourless]

You can 'eat' ingredients in your inventory which will reveal the first of their 4 properties. You can also get perks to allow you to reveal more of the ingrediants by eating them. You can also just trial and error to attempt to work it out yourself (or just cheat and lookup a reference online listing all of them and what they do)

 

[Malo]

Lastly you can find recipes around in lots of places that often indicate the 2nd, 3rd or 4th of several ingredients. I have the guide so I gathered a large amount of different ingredients at the start then went through matching different potion types to 2-4th to discover them.

 

[RobertR1]

Destruction Damager is quite borken.

Once you get past into Level 40, you'll be really wanting dual wield based on smithing and enchanting perks.

I'd say conjuration is the best magic school if you're hell bent on playing Mage. Destruction is find from about level 20 - 35. Even then it's only the case if you focused heavily on from the beginning.

 

[Sxotty]

Destruction Damager is quite borken.

Once you get past into Level 40, you'll be really wanting dual wield based on smithing and enchanting perks.

I'd say conjuration is the best magic school if you're hell bent on playing Mage. Destruction is find from about level 20 - 35. Even then it's only the case if you focused heavily on from the beginning.

What is wrong with it? My destruction is at 100 and it seems fine and I am right about level 40 (41 or 2 I think). Of course I usually use the bow anyway. That cave quest you get in solitude is great for the bow and sneak skills.

 

[Grall]

Speaking of bow and sneak, the quest you get in whiterun to free an old woman's son from some nasties was really interesting (as well as enormously financially beneficial, lol); I don't know what happens if you travel up there right away at say level 10, but when I went there I was in my mid-40s roughly and ALL the NPCs there wore either a full suit of (gilded) elven armor or glass armor, with elven, glass or orcish weapons. I hauled an absolute shit-ton of loot out of that place, and because that stuff weighs so little I and my follower managed to totally clear out pretty much every bit of valuable stuff there.

Each elf mofo took about 3 iron arrows to take down, or 2 ebony, but after a couple re-tries I settled for the cheaper arrows anyway. Felt better that way. I might need all the good arrows I can get late in the game, who knows. I swing by the elf shop every time I'm in Whiterun and buy all his higher-end arrows, I now got about 150 ebony arrows.

 

[xatnys]

That quest perplexed me. Supposedly it should be possible to get that one done diplomatically, but I was unable to the multiple times I've tried. It didn't feel right failing the sub-objective of freeing that guy from the Thalmor, so I deferred it and it's one of the few quests that has sat in my journal since nearly the beginning of my character.

Of course, I can't progress anymore since my game constantly crashes now. Thankfully the thread I made in Bethsoft's forums has garnered some attention, and it's looking like the save game I provided will be sent to the right people for study. I hope something comes out of it.

 

[pcchen]

That quest perplexed me. Supposedly it should be possible to get that one done diplomatically, but I was unable to the multiple times I've tried. It didn't feel right failing the sub-objective of freeing that guy from the Thalmor, so I deferred it and it's one of the few quests that has sat in my journal since nearly the beginning of my character.

Spoiler

It seems that the only "peaceful" way to finish this mission is to ignore all guards, then the prisoner will not fight any guards either, and you can run out with him without killing anyone. Of course, you will have to be fairly higher level compared to those guards.

Some people also data mined an in-game item called "Imperial Order" which reads something like 'note from Tullius allowing for release of prisoner,' however, how to get this item without using console command is still unknown (it's possible that this is just bugged or unfinished). Note that joining the Imperials does not change General Tullius's answer.

 

[Frank]

Speaking of magic by the way... Is there a resurrection spell that can reanimate my follower maybe? Cuz he seems to get killed an AWFUL lot, and if I can get my mule back without having to reload it would be rather convenient! Preferably without him drooling, starting to smell bad, attracting flies and repeatedly moaning "braaaaaaiinnss..." too, if possible.

1. Open the console, click your follower, and type "resurrect".

2. You can upgrade your follower by dismissing them, opening the console, target them, "Disable", "Enable" and have them follow you again. That way they don't die immediately anymore and become a tank.

That your followers level along with you should happen automatically, but is broken.

 

[N_B]

Spoiler

It seems that the only "peaceful" way to finish this mission is to ignore all guards, then the prisoner will not fight any guards either, and you can run out with him without killing anyone. Of course, you will have to be fairly higher level compared to those guards.

Some people also data mined an in-game item called "Imperial Order" which reads something like 'note from Tullius allowing for release of prisoner,' however, how to get this item without using console command is still unknown (it's possible that this is just bugged or unfinished). Note that joining the Imperials does not change General Tullius's answer.

I heard that you can put on Imperial armor and walk right in..don't know if it's true, probably not, though I haven't seen people refute it yet.

 

[pcchen]

I heard that you can put on Imperial armor and walk right in..don't know if it's true, probably not, though I haven't seen people refute it yet.

AFAIK it doesn't work.

 

[Malo]

Supposedly as one of the kinds of Elves you can wear the Thalmor robe setup and unless you get real close and they see your face, you can make your way around easier. As a Dark Elf this didn't work at all for me. Apparently as a High Elf you can pretty much have free reign of the place in Thalmor robes.

 

[pcchen]

A new patch has been landed (1.3.10.0). It's now confirmed to have LAA supported. Hopefully it will reduce (or better, eliminate) CTD.

 

[Grall]

Yeah, I noticed they pushed the update, I was just about to hit the forum to trumpet about it and you beat me to it! Do you have a linky to a complete changelog mayhaps? Steam says diddly about what exactly was updated (other than LAA, then of course.)

Hopefully they'll fix the mislabeled buttons of the user interface too if you change anything from the default key settings, and the weird slowdowns/performance issues, but I dunno what we can expect from Bethesda really...

Thanks to Frank regarding the NPC leveling trick too by the way. Maybe this has been fixed as well now, who knows. If it hasn't, I at least know how to fix it manually for now.

 

[Bludd]

http://www.bethblog.com/2011/12/07/skyrim-update-1-3-now-on-steam/


Update 12/20: The 1.3 update is now available on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Additionally, an incremental update, 1.3.10, is now available on Steam.
Update 1.3.10 Notes (PC)

• Support for 4-Gigabyte Tuning (Large Address Aware)
• Fixed issue with accented characters not displaying properly at the end of a line

Update 1.3 Notes (all platforms unless specified)

• General stability improvements
• Optimize performance for Core 2 Duo CPUs (PC)
• Fixed Radiant Story incorrectly filling certain roles
• Fixed magic resistances not calculating properly
• Fixed issue with placing books on bookshelves inside player purchased homes
• Fixed dragon animation issues with saving and loading
• Fixed Y-look input to scale correctly with framerate

 

[Daozang]

I don't know what they did with 1.3.10, but I'm having great performance improvement!!!
It seems that the moded LAA patch, although did save me from a lot CTDs, somehow managed to wreck my frame rate...
But now it runs great, and stable!!!
Now for the CK, and an unofficial patch for all those bugs

 

[Vadi]

My system is an AMD Phenom x6 with FSB 2.6GHz and a GTX480 1.5GB.
I found ugridstoload at 7 only rarely drops FPS below 30. Shadow maps need to be 2048 to ensure good FPS inside of dungeons. Other than that I set to ultra and increased draw distances manually according to various suggestions. Also I set resolution to 1440x900 and use 4xSSAA, and looks quite good with little shimmering.