ADOdb-Lite PerfMon: Basics Completed

I’ve already been playing In fact I took yesterday off to play it all day It’s very nicely done and I haven’t had any major problems (except one with the AI just going crazy when I stepped foot on a ship). Anyway, it’s very in depth and I especially like the new skill system that makes skills matter more than attributes (no pressure to min/max). You should definitely read through a bit of the manual while on the pot or some such thing because you’ll be very interested in what each skill has to offer in the way of “ranks” (a new skill system). The mini-games are also fun to play around with, even more than once.

First thing I did (after exiting the “tutorial” area) was run to the top of a mountain which was exhilarating as I can’t remember being able to see for miles in any other game

As you can guess I'm getting a bit impatient to get hold of the game .

Are your eyes reforming their basic genetic makeup so you can play Oblivion all weekend long without blinking?

Got hold of the game yesterday and played for 5 hours straight. Pretty good so far, but the default graphic options are stinkers. On my rig the deciding factor was “Specular Distance”. Lowering this upped performance substantially (I use a Nvidia 6800 GT). Draw distance can be bettered with an INI edit . After 5 hours I barely scratched the surface – spent most of it exploring the Imperial City, raiding crates/barrels, getting a feel for the game – and of course buying better equipment if possible. Playing as a custom class with a Magic speciality and a few major skills for fighting like Blade, Light Armour, and Block. I note making anything like Athletics a major skill leads to accelerated levelling – you walk/run everywhere – I need to get me a horse. End of enthusiastic half-crazed comment . It’s a great game so far.

Well, if you follow the quest you are given by the king shortly before he dies you will get a horse really fast.

Plus you will gain access to some really nice armor, weapons and other things.

I am a Dark Elf born under the sign of The Thief and my class is an Assassin. Nothing like sneaking up on a goblin and stabbing him in the back.

The game definately needs a powerful graphics card to view the beauty of the game. I have a 6600GT and had to lower the shadow settings but everything else is pretty much maxed at 1280×1024. There are alot of places to explore in the game. I ran across many caverns, crypts and mysterious ruins as I was riding around.

So far it looks great. I ended up spending most of my time initially creating my character. That was just designing how the face looked.

I spent a bit of time adjusting the graphics. Biggest hitters for Internal Cells seems to be Specular Depth (all those glistening surfaces) and Bloom Lighting. External GPU suckers were harder to find – ended up disabling shadows (a first for my card – but it helps), knocking down grass view distance, and lots of other adjustments. The INI hack I mentioned I removed – it did not do as it said on the tin…

My custom class just got hold of a few powerful spells, a step above the automatically added ones – makes a huge difference. The Assassin Guild missions are pretty rewarding.

P.S. Getting tired of that Monk’s horse…