Elsarian

What do you mean by "don't use steam?"? As in, what if you don't use steam to install mods?

I signed up for the beta (the first beta I've ever signed up for, actually) and I'm just curious about whether or not they'll contact you if you have NOT been chosen. I already know that they'll send you an email that will confirm if you're chosen with instructions on how to get the game and all, but what if you are not? Will they send one of those apology emails, or will they not contact you at all? Have any of you guys out there signed up for a beta and not get chosen? If so, how did they notify you about it? I know that no company is the same in how they handle things, but it'll help ease my mind and sate my curiosity. Also, lastly, how long did it take whatever studio you signed up for to get back to you? Thanks in advance! -Elsarian

Here's a piece of advice; take it as you will: Slow down. Slowdown and listen to what NPC's have to say, revel in the sights to be seen, travel from place to place without the use of fast travel and simply rely on either your own horse, carriages, or going by foot. Engage in the world and maybe jump into a random dungeon you've never been in. Let your character develop with the game as it progresses and take quests one at a time. It's easy to swiftly run threw everything until the next thing you notice is that you've got crap-tons of quests, you loose track of what's what, and so on so forth. Make a new character, regardless of what type he/she is, and see where you can take that character. If the intention is to be Dragonborn, then follow the MQ, try Dawnguard, build yourself a house, and then prepare to sail off to Solstheim. There is so much to do with one character that it's easy to loose your way if you move to fast. Slow down. The only times I've ever had to start new characters is when I break the game with too many mods, or something like that. I can't stand having to start over, and after so many play-threw's it starts feeling like a chore just playing the game. So take it easy on yourself, there's no rush. -Elsarian

We don't just polish this "turd", no, we take it and add peanuts and/or corn to it to make it more varied, more interesting to look at, and possibly some polish. Couldn't hurt, right?

I have a good "treatment" in helping you break the habit of using the console. Use an Xbox controller or any other USB based peripheral. After a while, you'll start getting used to playing the game regularly even if you drop back to Keyboard and Mouse. You'll simply forget about it. I used one for the longest time then decided to go back and the only time I ever think about the console is when an NPC is stuck, companion acting stupid, or I get myself stuck between a rock (and a hard place XD). Those are pretty much the only times I ever think about using it.

Try making sure that Serana is close to you because the guard talks to Serana and is then supposed to open the gate. If he doesn't open it, then I don't really know what more I can help you with. I have never encountered this problem. This bug might be covered in the Unofficial Dawnguard Patch I would recommend trying this out to see if it fixes your problem. Hope this helps! -Elsarian

There is a guard in front of the gate that is supposed to unlock the gate for you.

I just came here to post the same thing. So now I have to really wonder what's going on, but I'm extremely interested in seeing what Bethesda's working on right now :biggrin: Indeed. However, there is already a new Mad Max sequel coming out and all I want out of Fallout is games. Same for the elder scrolls; I dont want to see a movie or tv show about it, no, I want to play the game. On the other hand, they also applied for trademarks back in 08 and 07 that carry the same titles except one was listed as a motion picture, yet they never came to fruition. I'm wondering if this is all just pointless crap and if their still working on a game for the series. I just want games, lol.

Fallout actually seems to be a tv show. The trademark "Fallout" was applied for by Bethesda Softworks on January 8th. This is all what the new tease seems to be about. Here's more information and the exact source of my information: http://www.trademarkia.com/fallout-85818163.html

This is just to bad because now it's my turn to steal the win! HA!!

One way to make your shadows look less blocky, more blurry, and softer without any performance hits at all require you to change the following: iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3 iShadowMaskQuarter=4 iBlurDeferredShadowMask in skyrimprefs.ini controls how blurry your shadows appear to be. The higher the number, the more blur you add. I recommend, and personally use, a value of 6. There are some out there who prefer to use 8, but that seems a bit to much to my eyes, however that's just me. Pick and choose and find which setting matches your tastes the most. iShadowMaskQuarter also in skyrimprefs.ini controls how soft your shadows are. The lower the number the more softer they become. I recommend using a value of 2 and so do others; with these settings alone, you will see a major improvement in the quality of your shadows without absolutely NO performance impact what so ever. There is a value that you can set that will actually hit your performance a bit depending on what kind of rig you have. It's called bTreesReceiveShadows. The default value is: bTreesReceiveShadows=0. Setting this to "1" will make it so that trees cast shadows upon themselves. The blur and soften options listed first will also apply to these shadows making them better as well. I would also recommend you use the mod Shadow Striping Fix Indoor and Outdoor -Elsarian

Ok, now make these changes to your .ini located in (if using Windows 7) Start/Documents/My Games/Skyrim/Skyrimprefs and hit Ctrl+F and search for these two entries: iBlurDeferredShadowMask and iShadowMaskQuarter The first entry governs how blurry your shadows are. I would recommend setting it to 6. ShadowMaskQuarter governs how soft your shadows are. I would recommend setting it to 2 which the default is 4. The lower the number, the softer the shadows. Try setting those values and see how your shadows turn out. Be sure to back up your .ini as always just in case something happens. Let me know how it turns out. These values should help with any flickering and/or blockyness. Hope this helps! -Elsarian

Thanks for that, bben. However, every time I cap my FPS, my screen tears like hell even with presentinterval activated or vsync being forced from my Control Center. Any ideas on how to fix that issue? It makes so sense to me.

Try the Shadow Striping Fix and see how that helps.

You should have made a save right before choosing whether you were going to join Harkon or refuse his offer. Now that you have gone threw the quest and completed it on his side, then you're stuck that way. That's the whole point of making "choices". Make a completely new character that eventually becomes a vampire hunter. Who says your char has to be both? But anyways, those are your options. Reload a save, or start anew. -Elsarian

Always install the game yourself so that you know what is being put onto your computer and that'll allow you to become familiar with what the game is using. If you installed it yourself, then you would have had to launch the game via steam, and so on so forth.

Looking at that map, I can clearly see a few distinctions between what could be a full game, and what could be an expansion. Let me elaborate: First, if you look at Cyrodiil and then Skyrim, it's strange as to how similar they are in size as if it was almost done on purpose. Looking at Vvardenfell, we can also make this distinction. Now, look at Cyrodill's western border. Hammerfell is a barren and rocky place, the vast Alik'r desert taking up most of it, with fertile grassland only on the coasts. As such, the major population centers are on the coastline, while the majority of the country is inhabited only by shifting sands and nomadic tribes. In the north are the Dragontail Mountains, home of the misunderstood groups of Orcs reviled by many Bretons and Redguards, thus it would be a good province to set a whole new iteration of the series in. Now, if we look at a province like High Rock, which is a province in the northwest section of Tamriel. The coastal region is temperate and covered in loose forests; inland, it becomes more rocky and mountainous. Most of the province is inhabited by the Bretons, who have divided the province into multiple Breton city states and minor kingdoms. The southern tip of central High Rock also contains Orsinium, the City-State of the Orcs. High Rock encompasses the many lands and clans of Greater Betony, the Deselle Isles, the Bjoulsae River tribes, and, by tradition, the Western Reach. The rugged highland strongholds and isolated valley settlements would make for a rather interesting expansion and/or new game. Any thoughts on what I've said here? -Elsarian

Personally, I can't tell the difference between NMM offline, and NMM online, to be honest. It still downloads my mods and everything, so you should give that a try for a temporary fix.

Sorry for the triple post, but this mod here: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/5727 allows you to craft the weapons at any forge. Also, this is the best LOTR Weapons pack on the nexus in terms of endorsements, so this should definitely fix your problem. Merry Christmas and Happy Gaming. -Elsarian

I think you might be referring to the "Skyforge" which is in the city of Whiterun right behind Jorvaskr. The LOTR weapons can be forged there if I am thinking of the same mod as you. Might want to go there and see if you can forge them from there because I'm pretty sure that that's what you're trying to find. Hope this helped. -Elsarian

There is no "moon forge" within the vanilla game. A mod would have to add that. Any idea as to what mod you have installed that would add a "moon forge"? And the lunar forge is basically a "moon" forge considering "lunar" directly relates to the moon like a lunar eclipse. So, I need a bit more information as to what this "moon forge" is before I can help you. -Elsarian

Ok, lets do a run-down. I'll answer your questions in the order that you asked them: First, yes, if you add a mod at one particular save, say level 7, then remove that mod later down the road at, say 17, then it can cause some issues if you continue doing this. One mod might not be to bad, but you also have to keep in mind that it depends on how heavy the mod is. If you install a mod that is very script intensive like a complex quest mod and/or overhaul, then when you remove that it causes a lot of issues because that save ends up requiring those scripts to function and if they are not present then it can lead to crashes or freezing. It's always good to NEVER delete saves if you are going to be modding the hell out of them so that you will have a previous point to revert to. But if all you do is install small mods like texture replacers, armor/weapon mods, basic companion mods, and so on, then you'll be alright. Secondly, it's never a good idea to blend old files from previous installs with fresh installs. There's no telling what kind of issues you could face from that. The only thing you should use from previous games are saves, and you should do that if those saves have little to no mods installed when they were made (unless you can remember all of what you had installed when you made that save). Also, I would advise you to keep a "mod archive" for when issues arise like the one you are having with NMM so that you'll still have your mods even if you can't use it. NMM saves all the mods it downloads to a specific folder, so when it finishes downloading them, go to that folder and copy the mod(s) into a folder of your creation so that you'll have an extra copy of that mod for when NMM crashes, messes up, or whatever. Of course this all depends on how much HDD space you are willing to use to keep multiple copies of mods, but that's all up to you. The best thing to do at this point is to re-install the game fresh and either start anew with a new character and play with that until NMM is fixed for you, or wait it out. But definitely start fresh with fresh game files and all so that you can be absolutely certain that no problems will happen later down the road. Also, your password for NMM is the same as the password you use to sign into the nexus websites. You should be able to download the new version of NMM and simply start it in offline mode which doesn't require a password (there is an option for it when it first launches) and that'll give you some use of it till you can get it fully functional again. Hope this has cleared things up a bit. -Elsarian

Yes, you are right. Whenever a new version of Skyrim is released, SKSE will not launch the game and therefore your mods will not work. However, there is good news. The SKSE team usually updates either the same day of the new patch for skyrim, or a day after, so you shouldn't have to go any more than a day before SKSE works again. Hope this has helped! Also, Merry Christmas! -Elsarian

Steam does not "sync" them as you say. When you launch the game via steam, all steam does is check for updates on those mods, or download mods you subscribe to. It is not necessary to launch the game via steam, for the mods you install from the workshop will still function even if the game is launched via SKSE. If what you say was the case, then why would modders upload mods to the workshop that require SKSE? If you are going to run the game via SKSE.exe, then every now and again launch skyrim from steam so that it can check your workshop mods for updates, otherwise don't launch from there. Hope this cleared things up a bit. -Elsarian