First impressions

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Steam, you will have to download it through there whether you buy it retail or not so might as well Steam it.

 

I'll have to wait till next month cos I'm about to go over my data cap for the month

 

While I appreciate the words of encouragement, the positives of a PS3 are already overcome by my situation. You see, we already HAVE a BluRay, so that's not winning me any points.

While we do have Netflix, almost all of our movie watching occurs upstairs in the bedroom. That's not where the PS3 would go - it would definitely be on the downstairs TV in the living room. But here's the real kicker - I have DirecTV, and all of my TVs are connected through my router, so the fact that a PS3 has Netflix capability does me no good - I can select movies to download and watch from my TV directly from my TV already.

 

I heard this is due to a steam.ini error.
A mate was forced, with his crappy ISP-speed, to DL the game even though he bought the DVD to avoid that.

In the Beth forums, later, he was told what to change in order to make steam(ing pile of dung) recognize the DVD and install from there.

 

I noticed this, too - I installed mine from a purchased disc and it automatically loaded it into my steam library... just as if I'd downloaded it.

Conspiracy!

 

Same here. But I just click on the DVD icon in "my computer" to start the game. Otherwise I have to go to Steam to launch it.

 

Just realised that you *CAN* hotkey weapons and spells. Just add them to favourites, open the favourites menu (Q), hover over what you want to hot key and press the desired key (1-8), and presto.

Who would have thought that reading the manual wasn't a waste of time .

 

I think I have encountered a game-breaking bug - twice. I returned to the Legion general after completing a mission. I got paid, and he gave me another mission. When I head to my contact, I can`t talk to him at all. He just says "what can I do for you", and things like that. No conversation options show up. The same thing happened after I talked to the leader of the Graybeards. I was to return to Esbern and get some info from him afterwards. Same thing happened. He has a quest marker above his head, and nothing happens. I clicked the fellow 20 times. Nothing. Anyone else encounter stuff like this? It kind of sucks since my character is level 18.

 

I have heard about broken quests but not any gamebreakers. Maybe you are supposed to wait or something?

 

From what I have seen, it looks like you have a TON of options for skill trees when you level up, but you have to be of a certain skill level to pick up later options on the skill trees. I'm assuming that actually using said skill raises your skill level. (Like use fire skills to improve your mastery of fire, and thereby unlock further skills on the fire tree.)

However, it seems different than most RPGs in that since you have so many choices it looks like the game favors diversification over specialization. Is that the case?

 

That is pretty much the case, yes, Aldeth.

 

I'm going to assume you meant that you're going to need a new PC, not just a CPU. Because CPUs are generally not more expensive than new consoles. Unless you go for the top tier ones.

Anyway, as is usual for many new games, I'd wait a bit longer anyway until the first or second or third patching round has passed us by. Maybe wait for a couple of the community patches too, once they release the construction set for Skyrim. And some mods that will inevitably put Bethesda to shame again.

 

So I finished the game. Ended up rushing through it in the end just to see how the main quest played out. Now I could just go back and do the TON of quests I didn't do (I pretty much just did the companions and the main quest really), but I'd rather go for a different character and try something else.

I'd like to go with a Battle-Mage of some sort (though not a spellsword). However I didn't use the crafting system much in my last play-through (I was a sword and shield warrior so I only did smithing really) so I'd like to go for that as well.
Now I also want to be a Nord for RP purposes (liberating the homeland from the evil Imperial and Thalmor overlords), so I'd also like the character to be somewhat in line with the whole viking-esque theme.

So a heavy armour wearing, spell-slinging crafter? This doesn't leave a lot of room open for perks.

I've been wondering how something like this might work out? I'm afraid I might be spreading myself a bit too thin with all these crafting perks...

 

This is sad - I haven't even purchased the game yet, and already I have an idea of what I want my first character to be. I'm thinking of a kind of ranger-wizard combo. Like specializing in bows and spells. I won't have a shield, but the thinking is I won't be in melee much. It seems easy enough to spam spells running backwards (mana permitting of course).

 

I would recommend going a pure caster or a pure archer. Since you level the skills you use and gain levels from your skill levels (lots of levels here) if you split your damaging skills you will end up with a character that is only decent in two things instead of good at one thing. I can imagine it would cause problems further on. I aimed to go mage/onehanded where I would basically unload my mana and then finish off with my sword. Has not really worked out like that, firstly I only go oom on "boss" mobs and secondly any mob I do go oom and would could then finish off with my sword will one shot me in melee. This probably the thing I like the most in Skyrim. My mage is literally a glass cannon. Immense damage potential but if any mob as much as touches me in melee I die instantly so I have to constantly be on my toes, switching to lower cost spells to keep the enemy staggered. I am playing on the "normal" difficulty level which I think is called adept and yes I could probably raise it a bit since I have experience and am blasting most things to smithereens but the fact that one good chop from a barbarian's axe ends me makes me wary to do so.

I am also thinking about my next character purposely leaving things with my mage. Next I want to play a nord heavy armour, two hand wielding berserker of some kind and gosh darn it if I won't try to start a stealth character as well. Should take me a year or two to finish all that but it is nice to have something to fall back on.

 

Well, it would be primarily an archer, but my thinking is that I need something to fall back on in close range, or if I run out of arrows (I don't know how problematic that is). Even using that short range fire spell (whatever it's called) you get at startup seems effective enough for close encounters. Most of my skill points would be placed in the archery tree.

Well, if you're getting one-hit killed on normal difficulty, why would a harder difficulty be any different? I would assume that at a higher difficulty, the enemies you encounter would have their damage increased, but you'd still get one-hit killed either way... I guess the only difference would be that you'd be "more" dead?

 

I don't want ranged mobs to one shot me as well. My aim is terrible and ranged mobs always get off an attack or two which almost kills me. Do not want it to splat me.

I have no experience of an archer/caster but it sounds awkward and the spell you talk about is the first lowbie spell and it doesn't do *that* much damage which is kinda sad cause it is very satisfying to roast/freeze your opponents with it but blowing things up with huge fireballs is kinda fun too.

 

Amazing game. Simple as. Even better when you learn the console command to give yourself more carry weight. Before I learned that, I spent 80% of my playing time trying to find stuff in my inventory to drop ><.

Dragons should be harder to kill though. I watched one get roflstomped by a giant when I was trying to fight it. It landed right near a giant, got lobbed round the mouth with a club and died. That made me a dragonborn hero! sweet thx bye.

Great game though.

 

Yeah the Dragons aren't the fearsome beasts they're made out to be. If you just cover your elemental resistances they're actually really easy to kill.

I'm with Joacqin here. You should focus either on Archery or Magic.
I just did a run-through with an Archer, and mobs closing in on you in melee isn't really that much of a problem. In fact they should often be dead before they reach you if you plan your character well. If you do go the archer route I'd recommend picking up smithing and enchanting as well. Go with Heavy armor smithing if you want the best bows (daedric). You can still get the best light armor when you unlock draconic smithing anyways.
Enchanting is really overpowered. You can easily cover at least 2 full elemental resistances, and with +bow damage enchantments by the end you bow will do 320ish base damage (with archery perks) and 2 x 35 points of elemental damage. I was killing dragons in 3 hits on Master difficulty if I managed to sneak up on them by the end.