The Big One is almost here...Skyrim. Who's going to join me on this epic adventure?

[javierdlopez]

There's the main quest line, and you're free to play through it and not get side tracked. Thing is, the game has other quest lines that can take hours to complete. Also, the game has some sort of auto-generated side quests which basically makes the game "never-ending". Point is, it's up to you, the player to decide how you want to approach the game. If you'd like to focus on the main story and nothing more, you're free to do so. If you want to get lost in the world, you can simply explore and find stuff to do besides the main quest line... Pretty insane actually...

[CausalSpark]

Will post an insightful viewpoint on my outlook of this game when I get the chance to put this down. It already has my vote for GOTY. I also just got married to some Nord chick. I was pleasantly surprised to found out that you can get married...

[ChairoNoMe]

So is there actually a story to this game, or do you just run around killing dragons (and whatever else) for 60 hours or so? I've heard that you could finish this game and still not see a lot of it, so I'm not sure exactly what the end goal is. Is it like GTA, where there's a main story, or else you can just run around the game world doing whatever?

It's like Oblivion and Fallout. There's a main storyline and dozens of alternate quest paths. You choose what to do while building your character.

Sent from my FUSIONideos using Tapatalk

[Shane R. Monroe]

How does the game handle grinding? If you don't do the main story for 5 months, end up with a killer character, can you just breeze through any challenge of the main quest at that point?

[merman1974]

PS3 owners reporting serious lag after about 20 hours in the game, believed to be down to the size of the save file (over 5Mb)... Bethesda said to be working on a patch.

And the storyline is your typical "you are the last one of blah-blah and you have to save the world from thingy" nonsense that passes for fantasy...

[alexjlopez]

How does the game handle grinding? If you don't do the main story for 5 months, end up with a killer character, can you just breeze through any challenge of the main quest at that point?

Every dungeon's difficulty scales to your character's level the first time you enter it. Stuff that randomly spawns in the wild scales too, but there is stuff littered around the world that will kick your ass too, retaining a sense of danger.

[chooka1]

I only have a few hours invested in the gam so far and now I'm at the in-laws for thanksgiving with no games in sight.
A couple of observations and thought-many in comparison to Fallout:

Random combat encounters I'm the open workd seems less frequent and consequently leveling up seems slower

Like Fallouts world better

Like Skyrim's graphics and interface better

Miss VATS

Skyrim's scope appears to be bigger


Overall I like it and have ways to go


I welcome any suggestions on level long up.quests, grind in random caves?
How about equipping a Mage? Robes? Armor? Build up one type of spell or spread it out?

Im used to my Fallout high level character so it's taking some time to get used to being so weak,

What do all you former fallout characters think?

Chad

[alexjlopez]

On the random caves, before going in you may want to scope out any surrounding towns, villages, or encampments before just charging in. The locals at the inn and around town usually will have a ton of useful (and non-useful) information about the local caves and tombs--some will outright hand you quests or give you information on where you can find keys or maps. Talk to the beggars too--they're a great source of information if you're willing to give them some coin.

You can certainly just clear them out when you find them, but there may often be a door or two you can't get past or you could possibly ignore an item that might be useful for a quest you don't have yet.

Also, keep in mind that the moment you enter a dungeon, it is pretty much "set" to a difficulty that you'll find challenging at your existing level. If you pop your head in to look around and leave, then come back 20 levels later, all the monsters in the dungeon will be pretty much one-shot-one-kill enemies. You can also use this to your advantage if you are having a lot of trouble with one dungeon by coming back in a level or two. But don't wait too long, as (in my opinion) the experience is completely watered down when there's no element of danger.

One more thing--before entering any dungeon or sequence related to the main quest, it's a good idea to create a separate save file right before you step inside (separate from your quicksaves). A lot of these dungeons require you to jump down to where you can't climb back up without clearing the whole dungeon, or have doors that won't let you go back the way you came. In those cases, if the dungeon is beyond your abilities to clear, you could find yourself having to start over or resort to an inconvenient, earlier save file. I've been in two such situations, in screwed up predicaments that took hours of sneaking around trying to get monsters or guards one-on-one. I even inadvertently skilled up my "sneak" skill to a pretty high point, considering I'm a warrior-type character. I suppose if you're playing a rogue-type, that kind of gameplay is the order of the day regardless, but it's not fun trying to sneak around in noisy steel armor.

[chooka1]

Thanks Alex...wish I was back in Colorado so I could play....one week to go.

[Mordroc]

I'm playing this on my PS3. So far no lag but my save file is only about 3.8MB so far. I'm about 18 hours into the game. I'm hoping Bethesda will release a fix update soon, but I'm also reading that this lag issue does not seem to affect everyone who is playing the game on a PS3. Maybe I'll be one of the lucky ones. I am playing it on my original PS3 phat (with a 300GB HD upgrade I did myself).

Love this game!!! I'm a student at the College of Winterhold and am working on my second main quest (Find the Three Missing Books). I just moved up to Apprentice from Novice last night.

I have a question regarding perks. I'm still trying to understand how to they work. I really want to get to a 25 on my Conjugation skills, because I bought some Conjugation spells I still can't use (the one where you can summon a ghost weapon to attack for you). Actually, now that I'm an Apprentice I can use them, but it says I still don't have enough magica (I have leveled up to where I have 140). I have a general magica constellation value of 19 right now. Earlier in the game I used one perk to get the 15 established. Then I paid for some training two times, and each time I advanced one point. Then I got one point for recently buying and using another Conjugation spell (raise a dead corpse to fight for you for 60 seconds).

I have thee perk points right now that I can use (in the constellation). What I don't understand is why the game wont let me use them to get my Conjugation number any higher. Any explanation or web link explaining better how this works would be appreciated. Google is not turning up anything concrete on this question for me. My guess is that maybe I need to find other ways to get my Conjugation number to 25, and then I can use a perk point to buy the 25 value Apprentice perk.

This game is so great. I love being able to do whatever you want to. Every time I play I have no idea where the adventure will take me, or what surprises will happen. I played Oblivion quite a bit and this is definitely better.

Word of advice: If you are at level 5 or lower (where I am), and run into a Giant and his animals, stay away. He easily killed me and sent me flying with one weapon hit. All the magic and weapons I hit him with did practically zero damage. I tried about five different ways to damage him and he easily chased me down every time. I finally decided that I'll just have to take the long way around this guy for now.

Mike