We know that what you put in your hands defines what your character can do now. Your average battlemagi might be interested by combos such as sword/magic, magic/magic, magic/staff and even staff/staff, for instance. Lets say I'm playing such a character...

What I want to know is how easily I can switch between these four combos. Can we hotkey sets of objects and swap between them with a keypress? (For the PC) I sure hope so, but I can't recall seeing it done or reading a detailed explanation.

It also seems possible that we may have to use menus for every switch, which would be pretty sad :/ I assume it would be modded in, but I'm curious if anyone has more info on how itll work in the stock game? Thanks!

Binding combos would be excellent. If its not in i expect it modded fast.

What's wrong with the menus? The game will pause while you're choosing and it is easier than binding only 8 sets and then trying to stretch my fingers to reach all of them...

Especially considering you have to "equip spells", do you really want to go in a menu every time you want to cast something new?

But more to the point, the use of hotkeys is making this whole system more dynamic. I like to play hybrid characters and I totally see myself wanting to open combat with say, a "both hands" fireball, and then switch on the fly to axe/shield for some melee hacking, or the other way around. Going into menus mid-fight is never as fun, nor as convenient.

You can't be serious. If you can't hit 1-5 without stretching, get a new keyboard

If I had to use a menu to switch between a bow and sword everytime, I'd be so man

I think making these sets of combos and switching between them sounds like a great idea. It has to be in addition to regular hotkeys though, and I don't see any immediate solution to that..

I'm sure 1 of the videos at E3 showed the PC swapping weapons on the fly without needing to pause the game or go into a menu.

I expect it to work as follows:
You pre-select several items which are assigned to hotkeys.
When choosing an item; you select the appropriate hotkey and then use the hand that you want it to go into.

Setting up combos as hotkeys does sound good, but I can see myself wanting lots of combos and running out of hotkeys. I think if you just hotkey the spell/weapon etc. and then choose which hand it goes into, you would have alot more choice pre-setup.

I always play as a battle mage, and being a PS3 guy, I am very concerned about switching my spells during battle without having to interrupt my game every time. If there are two hands to assign, I'm hoping that they will use the directional pad for hot keys as they did in Oblivion, but that now we will have to assign the hot keys to a default hand. IE: Up = Left Hand Heal Spell, Right = Right Hand Destruction Spell, Down = Right Hand Sword, etc.

uhh...im not pausing my game when I can just press 1-5, f, q, e, x, z, v, and 3 auxilliary mouse buttons :mellow:



a control or alt modifier.

The problem with this is that it sort of halves the amount of hotkeys you have.

Essentially it should be:
Console: Up = Heal Spell, Right = Destruction Spell
PC: 1 = Heal Spell, 2 = Destruction Spell

Then to put the heal spell in your left hand you press:
Console: Up, Left trigger
PC: 1, Left mouse button

or for right hand:
Console: Up, Right trigger
PC: 1, Right mouse button

If you assigned a hot key per hand; then each item would take up 2 hotkeys if you want the ability for them to be in either hand...

I like it; that sounds like it would work even better. I wish we knew how they've addressed these issues. I really wish they would released an in depth menu system video.

It'll be nice if you could set up different combos and scroll through them with the mouse wheel.