Skyrim - Books on the go, maps and more

Books in a game can be an odd thing - they're certainly a welcome additition that contributes to the depth of the lore - but it can break the tension to stop and flip through a book in the middle of a deadly cave. Ovenall points out a nifty solution (found via Destructoid) at capane.us, where you can download all the books in Skyrim and load them up into your Kindle or e-reader, iPhone etc and read them offline. Great idea.
GameBanshee has kicked off their Skyrim subsite, featuring a detailed map with all the locations (city, town, fort, camp, tower, statue, burrow, stone, grove, mine and dungeon), including a 9-page .pdf version you can turn into a wall poster.
HardOCP has an .ini tweaking guide, including benchmarks of the performance impacts, while RPS has a roundup of Mods and Ends.
On the humorous side, IGN has a 100 Ways to Die in Skyrim video and, to finish, Botchweed has a chance to win a PC copy of Skyrim for social media users but you'll have to hurry because it ends very soon.
More information.

This is way to much WIN! Just downloaded the entire library to my E-Books on the Ipad (all 2768 pages worth). Each book averages 2-12 pages so is perfect reading during boring meetings.

Thanks so much for posting this newbits :-)

Just to let everyone know unlike Oblivion the ini tweaks make a huge difference for performance in this game. Putting in the settings at http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=283 gave me a 20 fps boost and some other tweaks I found at different places helped a good deal also.

cant believe this!
I was spending time just today in the Imperial Library.com, wishing there was a way that I could get the books on my Kindle. Gonna check it out

I saw the link the that on QT3 yesterday, it's really great. I have all the books on my iPhone now. It meant I finally had to time to read the Wolf Queen saga, which was very interesting. I love how there is all that background information for a minor quest in Solitude. Doing that quest, and then recognising 'Wolf Queen' and thinking to read the books is a great piece of RPG, for my money.

This is a truly exceptional game. Occasionally there will be a quest that lacks a choice where it feels like there should be one, but mostly there is a choice - even if it's hidden. I love that this time they don't explicitly alert you to exactly what you must do next, and exactly how, and exactly where. The quest text tells you basically what the NPC told you, but there are sometimes other ways to advance the quest if you look for them.

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
cant believe this!
I was spending time just today in the Imperial Library.com, wishing there was a way that I could get the books on my Kindle. Gonna check it out

Doesn't the Kindle read .txt files? Copying and pasting them in a txt would be a perfectly simple and fast solution. But even if it doesn't you should be able to make mobi files out of txt (or maybe straight from HTML?) with a program like Calibre in mere seconds.


(By the way, I don't know how it works in Skyrim or in Oblivion, but if I remember correctly, Morrowind even saved the journal into a HTML file that you could read outside of the game as well.)

Very nice. Grabbed this for my Kindle.

Pretty cool feature, that being said I want to have the books in game before I read them.

Never understood why people like the big map with all the locations marked already on it. What's the point of exploring then?

Those Prima strategy guides I dont get either, unless your a completionist and must find EVERYTHING in the game. They dont add any world lore, its nothing but maps and quest walkthrough's and enemy stats….to me it would ruin the game. Now if it had additional world lore like additional descriptions on regions and stuff then I would pick it up.

Originally Posted by Saxon1974
Pretty cool feature, that being said I want to have the books in game before I read them.

Same here. I enjoyed reading books in the previous TES titles, and I thought it really added to the overall experience. It just wouldn't be the same if I discovered a book that I had already read outside of the game.

Originally Posted by Saxon1974
Those Prima strategy guides I dont get either, unless your a completionist and must find EVERYTHING in the game. They dont add any world lore, its nothing but maps and quest walkthrough's and enemy stats….to me it would ruin the game. Now if it had additional world lore like additional descriptions on regions and stuff then I would pick it up.

I collect strategy guides, and the guides for the TES games (and FO3 & NV) are among the best. I don't use them to help me during the game, I just like to thumb through them and review the characters, bestiary, etc.

I somewhat agree with the people who say they're a rip-off though. I used to think $20 for a guide was bullshit, and now they're up to $25, with the collector's edition guides going as high as $40+.

I'm going to sound like a dick when I say this, but the in-game books in Skyrim aren't all that good. I would have preferred a quarter as many books with better writing. I usually just open them to see if I'll get something. Every time I actually read a story I'm disappointed. Even setting aside the writing there are frequent grammatical errors as well.

Originally Posted by screeg
I'm going to sound like a dick when I say this, but the in-game books in Skyrim aren't all that good. I would have preferred a quarter as many books with better writing. I usually just open them to see if I'll get something. Every time I actually read a story I'm disappointed. Even setting aside the writing there are frequent grammatical errors as well.

I kind of agree with you. The main problem is that graphically— typographically, they are just plain difficult to read in-game. I'm going to give them a shot on my phone Kindle. I've found some that are good, but yes, many of them are either boring or pointless. Though I guess that's true of books in the real world too.

The new skyrim books read like they were written by kids for kids, odd considering the dialog writing is much better.

Hmm. I'm biased, but I think mine's going to be better (fewer spoilers too).

http://sirbedwyr.deviantart.com/art/…-WIP-271235719

Originally Posted by KapitanUnterhosen
The new skyrim books read like they were written by kids for kids, odd considering the dialog writing is much better.

Less kid-level reading than "standard game-master quality" of writing I think. It's not bad and sometimes the lyrical quality sings like some of the Oblivion books and like the phenomenal Morrowind books, but quality is varied and sometimes reads pretty rushed.

works great, I have all the books on my Kindle now. Nicely done, all by book/chapters

I was kinda collecting books from all over Skyrim, but there are so many that I have to make choices or be encumbered all the time. I was going to (painstakingly) put them on shelves in my house in Whiterun and read at home in between quests. I assume that it's possible to put shelves up in your house.

Oh, I thought you were talking about Maps and more, the indie mapping service:
http://www.mapsandmore.com/

Someone really should commission Ralf to do a map for Skyrim! He did a map for our NWN persistant world and it was excellent. (http://www.thain.org/maps.html)

OMG

Any chance Lusty Argonian Maid has sequels? :evil grin:

Where would one go to get that 3X3 map made into a poster/wall board etc? Anybody have any idea what that would cost, roughly?

Looks like it would run $60-70 here locally. Not too bad for such a monstrous map. Might make a nice early Xmas present!

Doesn't Kinko's have large printers and/or plotters?