Skyrim - Tweak and Guides

Obviously the Skyrim reviews are still pooring in but I thought I'd change pace and offer some tweaks and guides. It's very early days, of course, so better guides will come along.

• PC Gamer - improve graphics, disable vsync, change FOV and more
• HardOCP - PC performance review
• Tips at Rock Paper, Shotgun (some of these are repeats)
• Make Skyrim Look Even Better at IGN
• Guide to skill books at IGN
• Marriage guide at IGN

More information.

Tom's Hardware has performance review as well:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/…l#xtor=RSS-182

Just a note about the the skyrimprefs.ini file - There are two of them. The PC Gamer article says to browse your steam folder, but I believe the correct one to edit is in username - documents - my games - skyrim - so apply tweaks to that one (it does have more settings in it)

In case anyone else gets unexplained crashes, as I did, try disabling your 2nd monitor if you have one. I was crashing every 15-20 minutes till I physically unplugged mine.

Originally Posted by mbuddha
Just a note about the the skyrimprefs.ini file - There are two of them. The PC Gamer article says to browse your steam folder, but I believe the correct one to edit is in username - documents - my games - skyrim - so apply tweaks to that one (it does have more settings in it)

Yeah, the one in documents is the one you want to edit. Adding shadows to trees and rocks really improves the outside visuals at the cost of very few frames. I also turned off quest arrows and the compass entirely, which is awesome. They add the quest location to your map anyway, so just find the right name and boom there you go.

I actually found the mouse got completely screwed up in-game when I turned off acceleration, so I left it on.

Any way to turn off the "finishing moves"?

Seriously, one of the more lamentable gaming trends that i'm bummed to see made it's way into the game.

My mouse scaling is messed up. Horizontal sensitivity is about 10 times more sensitive than vertical. It plays like a have a crick in my neck. Tried setting scaling settings for x and y separately per the tweak suggestions iread around, to no avail. No change. Anyone know the trick?

Originally Posted by Dhruin
Obviously the Skyrim reviews are still pooring in

Intentional humor?

Ha ! Ha ! What a mis-writing !

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
Any way to turn off the "finishing moves"?

Seriously, one of the more lamentable gaming trends that i'm bummed to see made it's way into the game.

http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php…no-kill-moves/

Originally Posted by Sir_Brennus
Intentional humor?

I wish it was…senility setting in?

Add the below lines to the bottom of the skyrim.ini in the My Documents\My Games\Skyrim\ folder to fix the mouse horizontal sensitivity.

[Controls]
fMouseHeadingYScale=0.0400
fMouseHeadingXScale=0.0200

PS. These are my settings and I tried 0.0800 for y scale at first but it was way too much but 0.0400 is working well for me now.

guenthar is like having our own professional coder/guinea pig around

With all this talk of horrible UI I decided to just play it with my 360 controller. It takes a while to get used to how god awful the turning rate is, but I like it well enough. I tried turning the speed up, but then it's too fast. One advantage of using the gamepad is that I get to kick back on my sofa and play. Yes, I have a sofa in my computer room. There was no other place to put it since we bought the new one. Now I'm glad we didn't have room anywhere else.

How people play FPS with this stupid thing is beyond me. It's ok for this game because I don't really need pinpoint accuracy for my spells. Bows are a little difficult, but not that bad and I don't use them that much. I prefer a healing/flame combo. Blast the hell out of them with one hand and heal me up when I run away with the other. I'm loving this dual wielding spell mechanic.

Great game so far. A little buggy though. For example:


Once there are a few mods for the inventory I'll stop using the gamepad, but until then it's gamepad only for me.

Originally Posted by vurt
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php…no-kill-moves/

Well, I didnt really make myself all that clear. I dont mind the actual "finishing move" itself, I just dont like how it suddenly pulls you into a cinematic slo-mo thing. Would be great if there was a toggle, to "kill finishing move cinematic"

what the hell, why would they do that to this game? It just seems so out of place

I love smashing the wolves down…makes me feel all bad ass…hehehe it doesn't effect anything…and my character isn't soaked in blood afterwords.

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
what the hell, why would they do that to this game? It just seems so out of place

Yeah in this game it doesnt work so well, but i like them in FO3/NV, it's disturbingly satisfying, while in Skyrim it's kind of "meh."

Fry em. No finishing moves when they're burned to a crisp.

Originally Posted by guenthar
Add the below lines to the bottom of the skyrim.ini in the My Documents\My Games\Skyrim\ folder to fix the mouse horizontal sensitivity.

[Controls]
fMouseHeadingYScale=0.0400
fMouseHeadingXScale=0.0200

PS. These are my settings and I tried 0.0800 for y scale at first but it was way too much but 0.0400 is working well for me now.

Hey Geuthar, I tried that and it didn't work. As I said above I tried the recommended tweaks to no avail. Something else must be borked. Thanks anyways! Any other ideas?

I have to say this UI makes the Oblvion UI look brillant. The damn thing keeps forgetting my number 3 binding to my bow.

Now I remember why I don't buy Bethesda games at release. And no, the combat isn't much or any better. It is a beautiful looking game (except for standard ugly as f NPCs), though.

I know that some of the places I saw it the person said to put it in the skyrimprefs.ini so I thpught that could have been the problem since this worked perfectly for me. The only other thing I changed related to the mouse is increase the mouse sensitivity further in skyrimprefs.ini but that is because I like having a high sensitivity.