The OFFICIAL Anandtech Forums TeS V: Skyrim Thread

[Imp]

1)For enchanting, do the benefits of items you have previously enchanted level up with you as your enchant skill levels up? Or do I have to continually enchant stuff as i level my enchant skill up?

2)Whats the point of the soul gems? I have NO fucking idea what theyre for lol.

3)What is the arch mage robe? Did you make it or just pick it up somewhere?

1 - The enchantment stays the same as the day it was enchanted with the same stats.

2 - You use a spell called "soul trap" to trap the souls of all non-human creatures into the gems to use to make enchantments. They are also good for recharging enchanted items that hold a charge (i.e. ones that "cast" spells).

I finally started playing around with enchantments and easily got my skill up. I get about 3/4 an echantment level per enchantment, and you can make an assload with useless enchantments on stuff like iron daggers. I enchanted my ebony greatsword with a 1 second soul trap. Unfortunately, I'm out of soul gems and even wasted 2 grands on lesser souls.

I'm being way too thorough and exploring every area systematically, then pillaging the dungeons. Money is sitting at $50k now. Sweet. And yes, I hump practically everything with a value/weight ratio greater than 5-ish back to town.

 

[NoSoup4You]

Cascading waterfalls. I'm noticing Orcish weapons appear to be inferior to Dwarven, despite being higher up the Smithing tech tree. Kind of annoying, I've been using this Dwarven Mace for something like the last 25 hours because the Orc version is worse... c'mon Ebony get here already!

 

[Merad]

You use a spell called "soul trap" to trap the souls of all non-human creatures into the gems to use to make enchantments.

You can Soul Trap humans. But, their souls can only be stored in a Black Soul Gem.

 

[ManBearPig]

1 - The enchantment stays the same as the day it was enchanted with the same stats.

2 - You use a spell called "soul trap" to trap the souls of all non-human creatures into the gems to use to make enchantments. They are also good for recharging enchanted items that hold a charge (i.e. ones that "cast" spells).

I finally started playing around with enchantments and easily got my skill up. I get about 3/4 an echantment level per enchantment, and you can make an assload with useless enchantments on stuff like iron daggers. I enchanted my ebony greatsword with a 1 second soul trap. Unfortunately, I'm out of soul gems and even wasted 2 grands on lesser souls.

I'm being way too thorough and exploring every area systematically, then pillaging the dungeons. Money is sitting at $50k now. Sweet. And yes, I hump practically everything with a value/weight ratio greater than 5-ish back to town.

haha, nice! Seems like itd be a PITA for me to do that with 300 capacity.

So i need better souls, with bigger gems, for better enchantments? How the fuck do i know what soul fits into what gem and how much stronger the enchantment would be?

 

[pontifex]

man, everyone seems to have all this cool equipment or can make all kinds of cool stuff. I'm still using mostly stuff I got from the beginning of the game. I'm about 11-12 hours in. I'm in Whiterun and have done several quests there. Mage equipment seems to be few and far between so far.

I feel like my character isn't really progressing either. I'm level 11 I think.

 

[Demo24]

I really like the glass stuff I've been finding. Not only does it look cool but it does a lot of damage as well, albeit it at a weight penalty. I found a nice glass bow to use, but I'd really like a one-handed sword.

 

[ManBearPig]

haha, nice! Seems like itd be a PITA for me to do that with 300 capacity.

So i need better souls, with bigger gems, for better enchantments? How the fuck do i know what soul fits into what gem and how much stronger the enchantment would be?

also, does it make a difference if my armor is heavy/light/whatever as far as mages go? and should i just not use any good enchantments/gems until i get to 100 enchant?

 

[Wardawg1001]

also, does it make a difference if my armor is heavy/light/whatever as far as mages go? and should i just not use any good enchantments/gems until i get to 100 enchant?

The only downside to enchanting an item without high levels in enchanting and high level soul gems are that you cant enchant that item again later with your higher level enchanting powers. That said, most items are fairly disposable, you can easily replace your set of armor or weapon with a new set with new enchantments. Souls are easy to come by, just enchant a weapon with the ability that lets you capture souls when you kill someone (I forget its name right now, something like Soul Siphon I think), so dont worry about using a few souls to enchant your gear early on. That said, enchanting is pretty damn weak at early levels and without a few perks sunk into it.

I'm not sure what the benefits are to wearing different types of armor. I know you can enchant at least breastplates and helmets with enchantments that boost magic related skills/damage and magicka regeneration. I'm fairly sure theres no difference between light/heavy for a mage specifically (all the other tradeoffs still exist though, like its heavier, you make more noise, etc), and I'm not sure theres really a benefit to going no armor (robes, etc), unless the enchants on them are stronger. It may well just be a roleplaying decision.

 

[ManBearPig]

The only downside to enchanting an item without high levels in enchanting and high level soul gems are that you cant enchant that item again later with your higher level enchanting powers. That said, most items are fairly disposable, you can easily replace your set of armor or weapon with a new set with new enchantments. Souls are easy to come by, just enchant a weapon with the ability that lets you capture souls when you kill someone (I forget its name right now, something like Soul Siphon I think), so dont worry about using a few souls to enchant your gear early on. That said, enchanting is pretty damn weak at early levels and without a few perks sunk into it.

I'm not sure what the benefits are to wearing different types of armor. I know you can enchant at least breastplates and helmets with enchantments that boost magic related skills/damage and magicka regeneration. I'm fairly sure theres no difference between light/heavy for a mage specifically (all the other tradeoffs still exist though, like its heavier, you make more noise, etc), and I'm not sure theres really a benefit to going no armor (robes, etc), unless the enchants on them are stronger. It may well just be a roleplaying decision.

Gotcha, thanks! In the wiki it says that the enchantment is the same regardless of the material used...so i'm guessing using a grand gem with a grand soul gives the same enchantment as using a petty gem with a petty soul.

When I disenchant an item and get that enchantment, does that enchantment stay forever, or will it disappear from the enchantments list when i use it?

 

[RebelCapitalist]

I think "stay here" command I gave right before has messed that up.

I've tried waiting for 3 days in the house I bought and fast traveling but she never showed up.:'(

I swear I played about 6 real hours before getting the "tired of waiting" message. Not sure how many game days that is though.

Wish there was a companion icon on the map.

 

[RebelCapitalist]

1)For enchanting, do the benefits of items you have previously enchanted level up with you as your enchant skill levels up? Or do I have to continually enchant stuff as i level my enchant skill up?

2)Whats the point of the soul gems? I have NO fucking idea what theyre for lol.

3)What is the arch mage robe? Did you make it or just pick it up somewhere?

1. The items are static, so if you made them with say 20 enchanting, you'd want to make new ones when you're at 40 or whatever. Also, you can't re-enchant stuff, so those items already enchanted will be sold.

2. You need them to recharge magical items and for enchanting.

3. If you want to know:

Spoiler

The robe is an item you get after completing the mage college quests. Takes a bit, but it's a nice robe.

 

[RavenSEAL]

A word of wisdom if you're not working on the main questline, you're missing out on a lot of cool stuff!

 

[RavenSEAL]

If you don't care to spoil it with a little preview, feel free to click the link below and see my collection of random screenshots.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198019437578/screenshots/

 

[Wardawg1001]

Gotcha, thanks! In the wiki it says that the enchantment is the same regardless of the material used...so i'm guessing using a grand gem with a grand soul gives the same enchantment as using a petty gem with a petty soul.

When I disenchant an item and get that enchantment, does that enchantment stay forever, or will it disappear from the enchantments list when i use it?

Enchantments are more powerful depending on the level of soul gem you use. It is probably referring to the item you enchant. For example, you can put the same power of enchantment on an iron dagger as you can on an ebony dagger.

When you disenchant an item, you "learn" that enchantment permanently. So if you disenchant an item with a bonus to fire damage, you can now enchant any item you want (there are some exceptions, such as you cant put weapon modifiers on armor, etc) with that type of enchantment. When you go to enchant an item with that enchantment, it is not related to the power of the item you disenchanted (so you can disenchant an item with a +5 bonus to fire damage to learn that modifier, then enchant an item with a much higher +damage amount). The power of the enchantment is determined solely by your skill level in enchanting, any perks you have taken that are relevant to the enchantment, and the type of soul gem you use.

 

[Locut0s]

Enchantments are more powerful depending on the level of soul gem you use. It is probably referring to the item you enchant. For example, you can put the same power of enchantment on an iron dagger as you can on an ebony dagger.

When you disenchant an item, you "learn" that enchantment permanently. So if you disenchant an item with a bonus to fire damage, you can now enchant any item you want (there are some exceptions, such as you cant put weapon modifiers on armor, etc) with that type of enchantment. When you go to enchant an item with that enchantment, it is not related to the power of the item you disenchanted (so you can disenchant an item with a +5 bonus to fire damage to learn that modifier, then enchant an item with a much higher +damage amount). The power of the enchantment is determined solely by your skill level in enchanting, any perks you have taken that are relevant to the enchantment, and the type of soul gem you use.

Thanks for that. A very succinct summary!

 

[lehtv]

Here's a scenic shot from the Druadach Mountains region. (The sky brightness is photoshopped a bit.)

 

[PrayForDeath]

Is there a graphics tweaking thread or site to get the most out of the graphics?

After endless tweaks with the ini file I think I fucked it up. The lighting in the dungeons would only show up to a few feet away from my character (as if I'm carrying a torch) and got really distracting.

Eventually I just downloaded the ultra quality .ini from here, and used the nv inspector trick here to activate transparency multisampling. The game looks great and runs great now.

 

[RavenSEAL]

After endless tweaks with the ini file I think I fucked it up. The lighting in the dungeons would only show up to a few feet away from my character (as if I'm carrying a torch) and got really distracting.

Eventually I just downloaded the ultra quality .ini from here, and used the nv inspector trick here to activate transparency multisampling. The game looks great and runs great now.

I'm still waiting for AMD to give a **** enough to release Crossfire drivers before I start tweaking the game. I tried to contact the developers through twitter, but apparently one of them got annoyed because he ignored me every day and added me to their ignore list.

My motherboard supports both xFire and SLi, and I just might look the other way around next time.

 

[Locut0s]

I'm still waiting for AMD to give a **** enough to release Crossfire drivers before I start tweaking the game. I tried to contact the developers through twitter, but apparently one of them got annoyed because he ignored me every day and added me to their ignore list.

My motherboard supports both xFire and SLi, and I just might look the other way around next time.

Driver wise it's usually best to get the single fastest card you can afford instead of Xfire OR SLI. Both are prone to scaling and driver problems. Though SLI seems better IMO. The next upgrade I do will likely be a fast single GPU Nvidia card.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Driver wise it's usually best to get the single fastest card you can afford instead of Xfire OR SLI. Both are prone to scaling and driver problems. Though SLI seems better IMO. The next upgrade I do will likely be a fast single GPU Nvidia card.

I am completely happy with my xFire setup right now, every other game I play runs fantastically. The only thing that annoys me, again, is that AMD didn't bother to have the CAPs pre-release/3 days after release like they did with the newest set their released. Hell, BF3 had the CAPs three weeks before release and Skyrim has better figures in Steam alone.

 

[Locut0s]

I am completely happy with my xFire setup right now, every other game I play runs fantastically. The only thing that annoys me, again, is that AMD didn't bother to have the CAPs pre-release/3 days after release like they did with the newest set their released. Hell, BF3 had the CAPs three weeks before release and Skyrim has better figures in Steam alone.

Maybe they are having a harder time with Skyrim than usual?

 

[RavenSEAL]

Maybe they are having a harder time with Skyrim than usual?

I guess that could be true, but a nice little update saying "Hey, we are working hard on getting the Skyrim CAP done. Sorry for the delay, we are encountering some issues as we progress. Thanks for being a great customer and spending hundreds of your hard earned dollars in our product line!"

Surprisingly though, the game runs stunningly on ONE HD6870. However, i'd like to have my xFire setup atleast 80% functional as soon as those heavy texture mods start rolling out.

 

[MustangSVT]

I wonder if the loot type is different depending on the difficulty level? from my memory TES games didn't scale loots with difficulty, correct?

 

[Locut0s]

I guess that could be true, but a nice little update saying "Hey, we are working hard on getting the Skyrim CAP done. Sorry for the delay, we are encountering some issues as we progress. Thanks for being a great customer and spending hundreds of your hard earned dollars in our product line!"

Surprisingly though, the game runs stunningly on ONE HD6870. However, i'd like to have my xFire setup atleast 80% functional as soon as those heavy texture mods start rolling out.

I know very few companies that do this. A few actually do! But it's rare.

 

[Locut0s]

I wonder if the loot type is different depending on the difficulty level? from my memory TES games didn't scale loots with difficulty, correct?

Don't think so. The way that Oblivion worked if I remember correctly is EVERYTHING is essentially hand placed in the construction kit editor.