It's morning, and I've just arrived in Skyrim. I wear no armor, just simple clothing and footwraps. I carry no two-handed broadsword, just a small iron dagger. No fearsome warpaint adorns my face and no jagged scars tell stories of hard-fought battles won. I have no priceless treasures or magical artifacts, just a handful of gold coins and a single piece of fruit.

I won't be looting ghoul-infested crypts or rampaging through bandit-occupied forts, I won't be helping citizens with their various problems and quests, and I certainly won't be awakening any dragons. My name is Nordrick. I'm not a hero, I'm an NPC, and I'm here not to play Skyrim, but to live in it.



I did something similar with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and wrote about it in a blog called Livin' in Oblivion. The NPC I created for Oblivion was a dopey-looking fellow called Nondrick, and I'll be following similar rules with his descendant, Nordrick, here in Skyrim:

Eat and sleep regularly, and walk everywhere, as NPCs do, unless there's a specific reason to sprint, such as while hunting, fighting, or fleeing. No fast travel!
Do my best to avoid adventure, intrigue, and excitement, though if a quest seems reasonably boring or safe (such as a crafting tutorial), it might be okay.
No stealing, and no "stealing" (I can't join a guild for the sole purpose of helping myself to all their stuff and selling it to a vendor).
Find some way to make a living that doesn't involve adventuring. Find a place to call home, and maybe even land a spouse, if the fates allow (they probably won't).
NPCs can't reload a previous saved game if things don't go their way. Neither can Nordrick. If  he dies, he dies.






In my Oblivion blog, I began the game standing on a boat in the small coastal city of Anvil. As Nordrick, I will be starting in a similar fashion, standing on a boat in the small coastal city of Dawnstar. Nordrick will begin the game with the same meager inventory as Nondrick did: a dagger, an apple, and 17 gold pieces. (If anyone is interested, I can post in the comments what console codes I used to start my game like this).

Okay. Enough mundane set-up! Let's get into Nordrick's mundane life! I slowly stroll off the boat I'm pretending to have just arrived on after a long trip I'm pretending to have taken, and walk up the dock into the town. Dawnstar is a chilly, drab-looking village, its few buildings clustered together as if for warmth. Lo and behold, the entrance to a mine is straight ahead of the dock. I sort of wanted to have a look at the town and maybe chat with the locals a bit before beginning hours of routine manual labor, but since the mine is right here, I might as well get to work.



Walking into Quicksilver Mine, I'm gripped by a sudden moment of panic. The place is dark and rumbly, and I have a vision of the mine entrance collapsing behind me, trapping me inside, and having to fight giant spiders or cave trolls or irresponsible mine safety administrators to escape. What if this isn't a mine but a clever attempt by the game to force me to immediately have an adventure? Oblivion was constantly trying to engage me with thrills, and I don't imagine Skyrim will be any different.

Luckily, the mine remains mundane and doesn't collapse, although I am immediately faced with my first tough moral quandary: I'm here to mine ore, but I don't have a pickaxe. I find one lying on a table, and it's not marked as an owned item, so if I take it,  the game won't consider it stealing. Still, it feels like stealing, since it's not mine. I decide to compromise and borrow it: I'll do some mining, and then leave the pickaxe behind when I'm done, and try to buy my own later. That feels like a satisfying decision, and probably as close as I'll get to a dramatic personal choice in this blog (you've been warned).



I get busy, swinging the axe with my spindly arms, chipping away at the rock in a few different places in the cave. Pretty quickly, my pockets are loaded with quicksilver ore: 15 hunks of it, in fact, which I determine to be worth 25 gold apiece (I'm sure the local vendors will disagree). I'm also surprised to dig up a couple shiny garnets, which I value at 100 gold each. Man, I've only been working for an hour and I'm already rolling in loot! Poor Grampa Nondrick worked for ages picking flowers and mixing potions to attain the kind of wealth I've amassed in my first hour in Skyrim.

Finished, I drop the borrowed pickaxe roughly where I found it, but I'm surprised when another miner, a woman named Edith, walks over, picks up the axe, tells me she saw me drop it, and hands it back to me. How thoughtful of her! Shame that I can't propose to her on the spot (marriage is little complicated in Skyrim), because Edith is my kind of woman: hard-working, considerate, and female. I can't explain to her that the axe doesn't actually belong to me, so I walk close to the entrance of the mine, drop it again, and leave before she can scurry over and politely force it back into my inventory.

Outside, the mine's owner, Leigelf, offers to buy all the ore I chipped up, which strikes me as a little weird. It's his mine, isn't it his ore? It's like owning a grocery store, then buying all the food back from the customers as they leave. Leigelf also makes an angry, passing reference to "milk drinkers." I don't know what the heck that means, but I assume it's some sort of racism. Stay classy, Leigelf. At any rate, I want to try to use this ore to craft something more valuable, so I don't sell any of it. I wait patiently for a miner named Lond to finish using the smelter, smelt half of my ore into ingot form, then head over to the blacksmith's shop.



I chat a bit with Rustlief, the local smith, and try to sell him my garnets, but he's not interested. I start using his forge, hoping to make something with the quicksilver I mined, but, even as watch myself bang away at an anvil with tools and materials I don't have, I see that I can't craft anything with my quicksilver ingots. I don't even know what the hell quicksilver is, frankly.

I take a quick (actually, instantaneous) break, eat my apple for lunch, and then I stroll around town some more. I chat with the people I pass, and nearly all of them mention having terrible nightmares. Some go on about it at length. Ominous. There is a cloud hanging over this town, a dark cloud in the shape of a giant quest. I walk away in the middle of a conversation to eat some strange berries I find on a bush, which I admit is pretty rude. Someone is desperately asking for help with terrible supernatural nightmares, and I walk away and start stuffing random berries into my face. But look, sometimes you get quests just from listening to people for too long, and I want to avoid that. Also, free berries! Eating them reveals one of their alchemical properties to me, so I've taken my first small step in the world of alchemy. Grampa Nondrick, a decent alchemist in his own right, would be proud.

I descend into an iron mine and leave a few hours later, laden with iron ore and a bunch more gems (at this rate I'll be able to craft my own game of Bejeweled). I still can't make anything at the forge, though, because I need leather. I can't afford to buy any, so that means I need to hunt, and hunting means I need a bow and some arrows.



It's actually getting kind of late already (walking everywhere instead of running really eats up the day: try it sometime), so I head over to the local inn. I meet an attractive woman named Karita, who mentions she's a bard and that she trained at a Bard college. A hot, employed college graduate? I think I want to marry Karita instead of Edith. I mean, maybe if Edith had gone to college she wouldn't be covered with filth and breaking rocks in a hole.  Then, Karita starts beating on a drum and singing, and wow, she's just terrible. I'm quickly leaning back toward wanting to marry Edith again.

I pay for a room for the night, and I'm genuinely charmed by the fact that the innkeeper, Thoring, actually walks me to it, rather than just vaguely telling me where it is (as innkeepers did in Oblivion). Pleasant, helpful, and runs his own business? Plus, he has a nice selection of cheeses on his counter. Maybe I should marry him instead.

After paying for the room (10 gold) and buying a piece of bread for dinner (6 gold), my savings account is down to a single gold piece. I'm a little conflicted: mining has provided me items of value, but no one I've come across will buy the precious stones, and I want to save the ingots and ore for crafting, if possible. I'll have to find a solution tomorrow, because the room is only rented for one night, and a Nord's gotta eat. At least I got through the day without having any adventures, and only fell in love three times.



There's a book on the night table, and I consider reading it before bed, but it's called "The Cabin in the Woods, Volume II", and I haven't read Volume I yet. No spoilers! I'm a little worried about these nightmares everyone is having: what if simply falling asleep starts some dangerous quest? Thoring, though, tells me I won't have bad dreams: they don't seem to affect travelers, only locals. As I stand beside my bed all night, sleeping, I take some small comfort in that.

Do you remember this impressive Deus Ex: Human Revolution mod? It was built by Boris Vorontsov, author of the ENBSeries graphical mods which also formed the basis of the spectacular ICEnhancer mod for Grand Theft Auto 4. He's just released the first version of one for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. You can download it now from Skyrim Nexus.

The ENBSeries mods layer a suite of new post-processing and colour adjustment effects over the visuals, smoothing out colours, making shadows look deeper and adding a bit of vigour to Skyrim's brightest hues. It also uses a unique SSAO method, which may have a hefty performance impact. Vorontsov recommends setting EnableAmbientOcclusion=false in the enbseries.ini file to improve your framerate. The video above is footage of a work-in-progress version of the mod. Here are a few screenshots, taken from the ENBSeries site.

If you're interested in tweaking Skyrim more, check out our list of the 20 best Skyrim mods so far.

http://youtu.be/Z83wzJwrBK0

Members of the PC Gamer team have been known to shout FUS RO DAH when activating dragon shouts out of instinct alone, making for a noisy office at lunch times. This man's suite of Kinect controls actually use the dragontongue shout as a vocal cue, letting you blow enemies away with the power of your voice. You also get to attack by flinging your arms at the screen and draw your sword by shouting "LONGSWORD!" See all of this in action in the impressive demonstration video above, spotted by Destructoid. It's easier to see how Kinect interprets his movements and turns them into game actions in KinectFAAST's Morrowind video. If you want to mess with Skyrim's inner workings yourself, check out CVG's Skyrim guide and tips.

Nothing is safe in a post-Mists of Pandaria announcement world. This month Tim, Tom, Rich and Graham get together to discuss the revelations at Blizzcon. It's not long before the conversation turns to Skyrim. Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 and Steam sales also get turned over in episode 62 of the PC Gamer UK podcast.

Download the MP3, subscribe, or find our older podcasts here.

Skyrim patch 1.2 landed recently, fixing a few niggling problems, like dead people turning up to weddings and dragons holding onto their souls after death. In a new post on the Bethblog, Bethesda say that there are plenty more updates incoming, and they'll be arriving on PC first.

Bethesda say we'll be getting more regular updates because patching the PC version is "a process we control." With no third party certification procedures to deal with, Skyrim will get fixed faster on our machines. Which is nice, because there are still plenty of problems.

"After the holidays, we’ll continue to release regular updates for the game — through full title updates, as well as incremental “gameplay updates” to fix whatever issues come up along with rebalancing portions of the game for difficulty or exploits," say Bethesda. "We plan on having a lot of these, not just a few."

Bethesda say there will be another "incremental update" next week to fix some of the problems caused by patch 1.2, like broken damage resistance stats and dragons flying backwards. In the same blog post, Bethesda also announced that Steam will host Skyrim mods through the Steam Workshop, adding that the Creation Kit is set to arrive in January. Modders, on your marks.

Bethesda have just announced that the Skyrim mod tools, the Creation Kit, will let players upload their mods to Steam's Workshop service. That's a slick, Valve-hosted database of user-made content that's already being used for Team Fortress 2 models.

Players will be able to choose the mods they want on the Steam Workshops website, even via mobile devices, and they'll be downloaded and installed automatically the next time you play. More details and the release date below.

If it works as planned, this will be a huge leap forwards for the accessibility modding, and a strong gesture of support from both Bethesda and Valve. More to the point, it's just going to be really easy and slick to try out the vast selection of amazing stuff Elder Scrolls fans always create.

The normal methods of acquiring and installing mods, via places like TES Nexus, will still work.

The Creation Kit will be out in January, and will apparently be even more versatile than Oblivion's tools, letting players mess with Radiant Story.

You can read a bit more about what Bethesda are working on, Skyrim-wise, over on the Bethesda Blog.

The parkour driven multiplayer shooter, Brink will be free to play through Steam this weekend to celebrate the addition of Clan and Tournament support. That'll let you create and keep track of clans on the Brink site. From there you'll be able to challenge other clans and battle for position on the global clan ladder. The clan hub will also let clan members set up tournaments with custom rulesets, and keep track of each battle online.

Brink never quite got off the ground when it launched back in May, though it showed plenty of promise, with characterful avatars, spectacular settings, varied classes and some destructive gadgets. Find out more in our Brink review. It'll go free at 10AM PST, in about an hour, giving everyone the opportunity to find out how Brink plays six months on. If you like it, Brink will be on sale at 75% off for the duration of the free trial.

Nothing punctures the wedding day atmosphere faster than having the groom's friends turn up dead. Bethesda have put a stop to that sort of thing and a few other impressive Skyrim glitches with patch 1.2.

For anyone concerned about the environmental concerns of leaving dead dragons all over the place "dragon corpses now clean up properly." Stubborn dragons who just wont let go of their soul after death will now do so and "rare" peaceful dragons who don't attack the player will now remorselessly attack the player.

Like a newly discovered dungeon mushroom, the patch that hit consoles yesterday had some unexpected side effects. Edge say that dragons have been spotted flying backwards, and the damage resistances system broke completely. Let us know if you encounter anything weird in the wake of 1.2. The patch notes, pickpocketed from Steam, are below.

UPDATE 1.2 NOTES

Fixed crash on startup when audio is set to sample rate other than 44100Hz
Fixed issue where projectiles did not properly fade away
Fixed occasional issue where a guest would arrive to the player’s wedding dead
Dragon corpses now clean up properly
Fixed rare issue where dragons would not attack
Fixed rare NPC sleeping animation bug
Fixed rare issue with dead corpses being cleared up prematurely
Skeleton Key will now work properly if player has no lockpicks in their inventory
Fixed rare issue with renaming enchanted weapons and armor
Fixed rare issue with dragons not properly giving souls after death
ESC button can now be used to exit menus
Fixed occasional mouse sensitivity issues
General functionality fixes related to remapping buttons and controls

 
If there's something on the list that you really wish was fixed, you might just find what you're looking for in our pick of the best 20 Skyrim mods.

Skyrim is gaming's Disneyworld. It's positively colossal, bursting at the seams with magic, and full of giant rodents. Unfortunately, the two also share one less savory similarity: They're far from perfect. But while you can't patch out the miles-long line to ride Space Mountain, Skyrim's bugs are oh-so-squashable. Version 1.2, of course, will be doing the honors, and it's right around the corner with a Wednesday, November 30 drop date. Read on for the full patch notes, courtesy of Bethesda's blog.



Fixed crash on startup when audio is set to sample rate other than 44100Hz.
Fixed issue where projectiles did not properly fade away.
Fixed occasional issue where a guest would arrive to the player’s wedding dead.
Dragon corpses now clean up properly.
Fixed rare issue where dragons would not attack.
Fixed rare NPC sleeping animation bug.
Fixed rare issue with dead corpses being cleared up prematurely.
Skeleton Key will now work properly if player has no lockpicks in their inventory.
Fixed rare issue with renaming enchanted weapons and armor.
Fixed rare issue with dragons not properly giving souls after death.
ESC button can now be used to exit menus.
Fixed occasional mouse sensitivity issues.
General functionality fixes related to remapping buttons and controls.

Desslock puts on his reading glasses and sinks into his Lazyboy for our monthly Alternate Lives column, letting us in on some impressive game based fiction. This month, Desslock flips through the pages of the newest novels based in the fantasy world of The Elder Scrolls and The Witcher.

In early RPGs, exchanges with NPCs generally consisted of being told where to go to dispatch the evil wizard mastermind. Thataway, Avatar. These days, however, NPCs have become downright loquacious, and you’re just as likely to hear characters spout deep philosophical musings or attempt to seduce you as you are to get quest directions. BioWare’s RPGs, in particular, have effectively evolved into interactive novels that feature some first-rate writing and storytelling.

But I’m still skeptical of the merits of actual books based upon gaming franchises. In fact, resolutely avoiding all books (or movies) based upon gaming franchises is a prudent rule to maintain, since they’re consistently awful. But the Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski don’t really fall into that category, since the novels spawned the games. I really loved the first Witcher book, The Last Wish. Geralt is a fantastic protagonist and the book introduces several characters that are important to the game, including the cursed princess Adda, companion bard Dandelion, and the elves Chireadan and Toruviel. Prior knowledge of character history might actually influence your gaming decisions—you’d probably be less inclined to side with Toruviel, for instance, if you knew that she previously tried to bash your head.
Unfortunately, the rest of the Witcher books are hard to recommend unless you can read them in Polish, German, or Russian. The second book hasn’t been translated into English, and though the third book, Blood of Elves, has, it forms part of a larger story that may never be entirely translated.



In anticipation of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I decided to take a chance on the spinoff books written by Greg Keyes. I can happily report that the books don’t read like the schlocky fan-fiction I was dreading, but the writing is not of Sapkowki’s caliber, and the novels only vaguely describe notable events in Tamriel since Oblivion. They also only bridge the first 40 years of post-Oblivion events, while Skyrim is set 200 years after Oblivion. But a lot happened to Tamriel. The Empire collapsed and was partly reestablished by a new family line. Morrowind was devastated by a massive volcanic eruption and then conquered by the Argonians, who established their independence. The Kjajiit of Elsweyr seceded from the Empire, as did the Wood Elves and High Elves, who reestablished the Aldmeri Dominion. The old guild system collapsed, giving rise to cryptic bands like the College of Whispers and The Synod.

The books only teasingly refer to those events, and instead focus on the threat of Umbriel, a self-contained, floating city that feeds off souls and creates an army of undead from its victims. The tone of the books sometimes seems juvenile, and several of the characters are very young and naive, but Keyes also throws in some awkward sex scenes and surprising deaths. Much of the “action” in the books takes place in a kitchen—actually, several kitchens—yet the books manage to overcome that bizarre narrative choice and be reasonably entertaining, particularly when they feature iconic characters from the games, including several Daedric Lords. Alchemy receives considerable focus, which seems appropriate given the emphasis harvesting reagents has in the games, and each of Tamriel’s unique races gets at least a few moments to shine.

If you’re only tempted to read the books to learn what’s happened in Tamriel since Oblivion, they’re not worthwhile, and The Last Wish is better written and less padded if you’re just looking for a fantasy novel. But as someone who loves the lore of Tamriel, and actually reads the books within the games, the novels were a satisfying appetizer before Skyrim.