Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[spoodie]

I've fixed my constant crashes by turning off Xfire and also making sure Firefox isn't open in the background - it's worked marvels so far. Also as soon as the game has started, open task manager and set Skyrim as high priority.

Closing Xfire seemed to work, thanks. Xfire is becoming more trouble than it's worth, what with everyone on Steam anyway.

Does anyone else have a problem with the UI? There's this article, which I've not read. But I know from my own experiences that the menus can be both wonderfully straightforward and in some ways annoying and limited. Sometimes operating the mouse and keyboard together confuses the game about what you're trying to select. I try to only use the keyboard now. It's obviously a slightly lazy console conversion thing. Also when crafting it doesn't tell you if the item you're looking to make is any better than your current and worth crafting. So you have exit the crafting and enter the other menus to check. A little annoying.

[Roman Totale]

The conversation option thing is bloody irritating - even just using the keys I've had trouble. I'm also disappointed you can't felcher your inventory by weight/value etc, and the fact that armour isn't grouped by 'place' (i.e. head, chest, legs) so it isn't easy to see what you can equip. That said, I'm sure lots of delicious mods are already being worked on.

I love the class system. At first I wasn't keen (I fear change) and couldn't work out which skills you were supposed to focus on to level, but I love the fact you can do anything. Currently I'm a confused mix of Archer, Heavy Armour, Destruction, Restoration, Sneak, Lockpicking and One Handed. Haven't touched the main quest yet, but I have found Max von Sydow.

[Joose]

The UI is terribly frustrating. Its not like its ruining the game for me or anything, but little stupid things like you guys have mentioned, or the escape key not getting you out of the inventory, or the slightly overcomplicated looting (press R to loot everything, except for sometimes where R puts things in to what you are looting), or a number of other things do grate. Its made more of a issue for me because the UI is the *only* thing I'm not liking, so it stands out more.

Like Roman says though, this is something that can and I'm sure will be fixed through mods. Seeing as the official mod tools are not even out yet and there's already a bunch of the things available, its only a matter of time really.

[mrbobbins]

the game is fucking amazing

This.

I might be horribly addicted. Oblivion was the gateway drug, I should ween myself off by playing some Morrowind.
But that would be admitting I have a problem, which I don't, I WANT to play every waking hour and dream about it all night.

[deject]

I've fixed my constant crashes by turning off Xfire and also making sure Firefox isn't open in the background - it's worked marvels so far. Also as soon as the game has started, open task manager and set Skyrim as high priority.

Closing Xfire seemed to work, thanks. Xfire is becoming more trouble than it's worth, what with everyone on Steam anyway.

I'm starting to agree. The only people I know that really use it is us, everyone else uses Steam for everything.

[Mr. Johnson]

I'm officially loving it as well, and I even surprised myself by not going for the usual bearded Nord barbarian. It's a female Nord barbarian (sadly you can't give ladies beards).

[FatherJack]

The UI has annoyed me a bit, but as I keep playing it I get used to it. That's not how games are supposed to work really though as if I were to come back to it after a while off it would frustrate me once again. The worst things I've found with the UI are:

- I had to physically disconnect my gamepad before I could press ESC to enter the menu where I could disable the gamepad
- The scrolly menu on the left where the options go underneath the bit where it tells you the buttons so you can't click the options and have to scroll with the mousewheel
- I still don't know how you take a step back in menus, I have to press ESC/TAB and start over again
- The map is pretty horrid as the only way to move it seems to be moving the mouse to the edge - made worse when you're at the "top" of the map
- The skills menu I've got no clue over - once you've zoomed in to look at a skill you seem to have to click in empty space to move the view around bit by bit, or completely exit and start again
- I could only off-hand equip stuff once it is in my favourites list - this is a "rebinding RMB only works in some menus not all" issue
- The favourites list - where is my quick-select weapon/item buttons? I don't want to pause the game to switch weapons
- The randomness of the buttons/clicks where R is sometimes 'craft' sometimes 'take all'. The worst is when I tried to fill the chest in my house - I started putting in my potions, only to realise I'd been left-clicking and therefore drinking all my potions. Burp! After reloading and painstakingly going through my inventory pressing E on the things I wanted to put in the chest, I then accidentally press R...taking everything back out of the chest again. Grar!

[Dog Pants]

- I still don't know how you take a step back in menus, I have to press ESC/TAB and start over again

I think you can use A (as in WASD left) to go back through the inventory menu.

- The map is pretty horrid as the only way to move it seems to be moving the mouse to the edge - made worse when you're at the "top" of the map

Again, WASD works.

- The skills menu I've got no clue over - once you've zoomed in to look at a skill you seem to have to click in empty space to move the view around bit by bit, or completely exit and start again

I found that the scrollwheel pans back out of skill trees.

- I could only off-hand equip stuff once it is in my favourites list - this is a "rebinding RMB only works in some menus not all" issue

I appreciate that you should be able to rebind to any spacky, cackhanded configuration your mutant paws feel best with, but wha?

- The favourites list - where is my quick-select weapon/item buttons? I don't want to pause the game to switch weapons

You can't do that? Well hot piss, I kept forgetting to try to bind favourites to number keys. Now I won't bother.

- The randomness of the buttons/clicks where R is sometimes 'craft' sometimes 'take all'. The worst is when I tried to fill the chest in my house - I started putting in my potions, only to realise I'd been left-clicking and therefore drinking all my potions. Burp! After reloading and painstakingly going through my inventory pressing E on the things I wanted to put in the chest, I then accidentally press R...taking everything back out of the chest again. Grar!

Oh god this gives me the fucking rage. The amount of ingredients I've accidentally eaten because of it. I mean, I now know what a lot of things do because of the most primitive form of experimentation, but does the game really think I wanted to eat a beehive husk or some ectoplasm? Now I know how that idiot savant dwarf enchanter in Dragon Age ended up how he did.

Alchemy? Alchemy!

Overall I find it's easiest to ignore the mouse. That's easiest in that you get less eaten bugs and conversation faux pas, not in that it's actually easy. The whole thing sucks ass and needs a huge mod overhaul.

[FatherJack]

WASD

That makes a bit more sense, I don't use WASD, it's uncomfortable with Khajit claws.

Hadn't realised Left/Right swung you around the skills menu of stars, I was expecting something to happen when I moved the mouse to the edge and gave up when it didn't and just clicked frustratedly. Then I just didn't bother spending skill points because it was too annoying.

Oh, number keys on favourites? I half-assumed you were being sarcastic and it did work and I went and tried it and it does. I'd tried to set them in the inventory (before I'd made them favourites) and assumed they'd removed the feature. Sounds so obvious with hindsight.

I do wish games wouldn't grab your primary control method, be that WASD or a more spack-handed version and attempt to apply the paradigm to all the menus as well. For me the 'W' and 'S' should be 'forwards into the screen' and 'backwards out of the screen', never 'Up' and 'Down' - if anything, when applied to an on-screen yoke, they should be the reverse. The arrow keys are for navigating menus and moving the screen, WASD is for moving me.

Curiously the arrow keys do work in the menus, as does whatever you've bound WASD to. In the maps the arrow keys don't work, but actual WASD does - even if you've rebound it - overriding what you've set it to.

Cheers for the other tips, should make things a bit easier. I tend to just flail around in menus and live with their perceived crappiness rather than figure out how you're meant to do stuff.

It's still a bit daft that 'Enter' can't be the 'Enter' that's right next to the mouse, but the big 'Enter' that's halfway across the keyboard, but I'm not going even attempt remapping that.

[Dog Pants]

Oh, number keys on favourites? I half-assumed you were being sarcastic and it did work and I went and tried it and it does. I'd tried to set them in the inventory (before I'd made them favourites) and assumed they'd removed the feature. Sounds so obvious with hindsight.

Oh crikey, so it does! I assumed that's what you meant. Well that's good to know. Seems if you hit it once it changes your left hand, again to change your right. Would have been nice to be able to configure each hand to a button i.e. 1= sword & shield, 2 = mace and turn undead etc. Still, better than nothing.

In other news, I don't like J'Zargo, the slacking furry bastard, so I've been griefing him by filling his bed with skulls.

[Joose]

Shamelessly thieved from some other site somewhere:

Code: Select all

Access the Sound menu from the Control panel. In the playback tab, right click on speakers and select properties. Select the advanced tab on the new screen and select 24 bit, 44100Hz (Studio Quality) from the drop down menu. This should fix some random crashes.

Ive seen the exact same text in a couple of places, so I don't feel bad for copying it

EDIT: Also this is probably a good idea for most of us. Does any of us have less than 4gig of ram nowadays?

[Roman Totale]

I meant to post the sound thing the other day after I'd scoured the web for crash fixes, but it didn't do much for me. Booting Xfire in the chuff certainly did though.

Also two questions that I really should have worked out by now:

1) How do you pick things up with out taking them? e.g. I presume however Pants moved those skulls

2) How the piss do you yield? In Oblivion it was pressing E whilst blocking, but my off-hand is generally balls of fire so that doesn't work too well. Had problems in the first village when I accidentally killed a chicken, and all the locals ran after me and beat me to death.

[Mr. Johnson]

1) How do you pick things up with out taking them? e.g. I presume however Pants moved those skulls

2) How the piss do you yield? In Oblivion it was pressing E whilst blocking, but my off-hand is generally balls of fire so that doesn't work too well. Had problems in the first village when I accidentally killed a chicken, and all the locals ran after me and beat me to death.

1) Holding down E does, but I accidentally stole some silverware after trying to decorate the guards with a silver bowl, so beware.

2)The exact same thing happened to me, also in the first village. Sheathing your weapons will normally open a conversation with a guard, but I didn't know that when I killed that chook so I had to load an earlier save.

[Dog Pants]

What do you people have against poor chickens?

[Mr. Johnson]

They're just millennia away from turning back into dinosaurs, I'm just being pre-emptive.

[Roman Totale]

If people had been killing chickens earlier, we wouldn't be in this mess with the dragons.

[spoodie]

As above I navigate the UI with WASD and let go of the mouse as it confuses things. But when a confirm action box comes up it horses you to use the mouse again to hit "OK". It's almost as if the UI hasn't been properly thought out for the keyboard and mouse control system. Whatever next?

[mrbobbins]

It's not that great on PS3 either. I always end up quitting the skills menu rather than 'going back one'.
And scrolling sideways through the star field seems random, like if I want to just scroll through all the 1st tier perks sometimes it jumps up to a 2nd, 3rd 4th tier on the next one over. Bit confusing.

I like the favourite system, although I should manage it better rather than just adding new stuff to the increasingly long list.

Also, Mammoths + Giants harder than Dragons, WTF?
I took down a dragon and there was a giant watching me, once I'd done he ran over and one hit killed me.
Are they best mates or something?, surely I'd protected his precious mammoth herd from a dragon?!. Twat.

[Joose]

I managed to take out two dragons at once using a giant.

Well, I say "I".

I actually ran away from the two dragons, screaming like a girl. They chased me, and accidentally hit the giant with their dragon breath as I ran past him. I then cowered behind a rock whilst the giant beat the dragons senseless, then popped a sneaky arrow into the mostly dead giant and claimed the spoils of all three. I'm heroic!

[mrbobbins]

I managed to take out two dragons at once using a giant.

Well, I say "I".

I actually ran away from the two dragons, screaming like a girl. They chased me, and accidentally hit the giant with their dragon breath as I ran past him. I then cowered behind a rock whilst the giant beat the dragons senseless, then popped a sneaky arrow into the mostly dead giant and claimed the spoils of all three. I'm heroic!

So if someone else kills a dragon do you still get the soul?.