Anyway, I'll upload more of my experiences tomorrow - my first playthrough ended there, because they had to give us less time to keep queues short. I only got about 13 minutes first time round. My second playthrough involved lots more actual gameplay, so look forward to that tomorrow. I need to go to bed now, I've got work in the morning and it's midnight over here!

Right, my impressions. Thanks for being patient, I'm going as fast as I can!

First go - Argonian male

I started the game, fiddled as quickly as possible with the character creator. The creator tells you (briefly) about each race's abilities, so without further ado:

- ORCS: Beserker
- REDGUARDS: Adrenaline Rush,
- WOOD ELF: resist poison, resisit disease, command animals
- NORD: Battlecry
- KHAJIIT: night-eye, claw attacks
- IMPERIAL: Voice of the Emperor, find more coins when looting
- HIGH ELF: regenerate Magicka more quickly
- DARK ELF: Ancestor's Wrath (surround self in fire), resist fire
- BRETON: Dragonskin (absorb spells), resist shock
- ARGONIANS: Histskin (regenerate health quickly), resist disease 50%, breathe underwater

Weight slider is quite cool - not a massive effect on women, turns them from skinny to "slender but not skinny". Men can get massively buff.

So I went into the game and ran immediately out of the starting cave (a demo-specific area I think, I couldn't go anywhere else). First thing I noticed was beautiful music. Better than Oblivion's in my view. I checked the "game stats" screen for any sign of werewolf-related stats, and found nothing - but I also found no mention of vampires either, so that's not proof. I then went straight to the perk trees, and got as many as possible in my brief time (shorter than promised, because of queues).

- FIRST THING I NOTICED WAS THAT RACES HAVE DIFFERENT STATS TO START WITH. The baseline stat seems to be 15, with +5 in some stats and even +10 in others. For example:
- Argonians start with 25 in Lockpicking, 20 in Pickpocketing, Sneak, Light Amour, Restoration, Alteration
- Orcs start with 25 in Heavy Armour, 20 in Enchanting, Smithing (didn't see any more)
- Bosmer start with 20s in most of the thieving skills - Sneak, Alchemy, Pickpocket, Lockpicking - and a 25 in Archery

PERKS

Speech
- Buying and selling price 10% better (5 ranks)
- 10% price buying from opposite six
- Invest in shops and increase available gold permanently in invested stores
- Master Trader - every merchant in world gains 1000 gold for bartering
- Buy and sell from any merchant regardless of what they normally buy and sell
- Intimidation attempts twice as successful
- Persuasion attempts more likely successful

Alchemy
- Potions 20% stronger (5 ranks)
- Potions for restore health, magicka or stamina are 25% more powerful (maybe ranked)
- Poisons 25% more effective (maybe ranked)
- Poisons last for twice as many hits
- Two ingredients are gathered from plants
- 50% resistance to all poisons
- All negative effects removed from potions and all positive removed from poisons
- 2 effects of an ingredient are revealed when testing it for the first time (instead of just one)
- Another (unclear recording, sorry!)

Illusion
- Dual casting overcharges effect for more powerful spell
- Cast Novice spells for 50% less magicka
- Cast Apprentice spells for 50% less magicka
- Cast Adept, Expert, Master etc spells for 50% less magicka (more levels this time around)
- Spells work on higher level animals
- Spells work on higher level people
- All spellcasting (from ANY school) is done silently
- Spells work on undead, daedra and automatons
- One I genuinely didn't understand, and it wasn't clear on the recording either - something about "Kindred Mage" or something.
- Fear spells work on higher level enemies

Conjuration
- Novice for 50% magicka etc (up to Master)
- Dual casting overcharges --> greater spell effect
- Bound weapons do more damage
- Bound weapons cast Soul Trap on target
- Bound weapons banish certain creatures (and I think summon creature in their place, not 100% on that though, dodgy recording)
- Reanimate undead with 100 more health
- Summon 2 Atronachs or reanimated zombies
- Summon Atronachs at twice the distance
- Summoned Atronachs twice as strong

Destruction
- More damage for each school (fire, frost and shock) - ranked
- Novice for 50% magicka etc.
- Shock damage chance to disintegrate targets if their health is under 10%
- Frost damage chance to paralyse targets if health low
- Fire damage chance to make low health enemies flee
- Place runes 5x farther away

Restoration
- Healing spells also restore stamina
- Novice for 50% less magicka etc
- Healing spells do 50% more healing
- Something about recharging healing spells (sorry about poor recording quality, it was in my pocket!)
- More is recharged with each hit with healing spells (again, sorry not 100% sure what this means!)
- Spells more effective against undead
- Once a day chance to autocast 250HP restoration when health drops low
- Magicka regenerates 25% faster

Alteration
- Novice for 50% less etc
- Alteration spells have greater duration (probably ranked)
- Absorb 30% magicka that hits you
- Another couple - bad recording again

Enchanting
- Enchants are 20% stronger (ranked)
- Enchanted armour 25% stronger
- "Soul gems provide extra magicka for recharging" - again, dodgy recording but that's what I heard, even if it doesn't make much sense
- Death blows to creatures but not people trap souls for weapon recharge
- Health, magicka and stamina enchants stronger
- Extra effect on already-enchanted weapon can be applied
- Shock, Frost and Fire enchants 25% stronger (individual perks for each element) (probably ranked)

Heavy Armour
- Increase armour rating 20% (5 ranks)
- Unarmed attacks with heavy armour gauntlets - damage increased by gauntlets' armour rating
- Half fall damage if all in heavy armour
- Heavy armour weighs nothing and doesn't slow you at all
- Additional 25% armour if in matching set
- 25% armour bonus if all in heavy armour (not necessarily matching)
- 50% less stagger if all in heavy armour
- 10% damage reflected back to enemy if all in heavy armour

2-handed weapons
- 2h weapons do 20% more damage (5 ranks)
- Attacks with warhammers ignore 25% armour (ranked)
- Attacks with battleaxes do extra bleeding damage (ranked)
- Attacks with greatswords do extra critical damage (ranked)
- Power attacks cost 25% less stamina
- Standing power attacks do 25% bonus damage, chance to decapitate
- Sprinting power attacks do double (critical) damage
- Sideways power attacks hit all targets
- Backwards power attacks have 25% chance of paralysis

Archery
- Bows do 25% more damage
- Zoom in
- Zooming slows time
- 10% crit chance
- Move faster with drawn bow
- Recover twice as many arrows from dead bodies
- 50% chance of paralysing for few seconds (might be 15%, can't really hear...)
- Draw bow 30% faster
- Another about arrows - can't hear

Sneak
- 20% harder to detect (ranked)
- Sneak attacks do 6x damage with 1h weapons
- Sneak attacks with bows do 3x damage
- Sneak attacks with daggers do 15x damage (end perk on skill tree)
- Noise from armour reduced 50%
- No longer activate pressure plates
- Sprinting while sneaking performs silent forward roll
- Running does not affect detection chance
- Crouching can make hostile enemies lose sight of you and search for a target


So, I actually got (most of) 12 skill trees, not 5 or 6 like I thought. Not bad! Sorry for the bad recording in places, it was very loud in the venue, I had headphones on so could barely hear myself.

Anyway, I'll upload more of my experiences tomorrow - my first playthrough ended there, because they had to give us less time to keep queues short. I only got about 13 minutes first time round. My second playthrough involved lots more actual gameplay, so look forward to that tomorrow. I need to go to bed now, I've got work in the morning and it's midnight over here!

P.S. I should add two things - firstly, there are a few perks that I saw but couldn't hear at all on my recording, so this isn't the FULL list for each skill. I only missed 2 or 3 though. Secondly, I simply didn't have time to check the perks in order, or which ones had ranks, or how many ranks, or what skill level was needed to unlock them. They're not in the proper order either - I really was in a rush. Hopefully you'll forgive me though

Some of the racial abilities are so [censored] in comparison to others, which is a shame. Do nords not at least get frost resistance or something?

The perks sound great. Sneaking dodge roll XD I'll have to use a mod to double the amount of perk points per level.

Some of the racial abilities are so [censored] in comparison to others, which is a shame. Do nords not at least get frost resistance or something?

Perks and racial powers/abilities sound amazing! He's posting his stealth impressions tomorrow and he said it's awesome and we won't be disappointed!

Perks and racial powers/abilities sound amazing! He's posting his stealth impressions tomorrow and he said it's awesome and we won't be disappointed!

"Heavy armour weighs nothing and doesn't slow you at all"

"Heavy armour weighs nothing and doesn't slow you at all"

"Heavy armour weighs nothing and doesn't slow you at all"

You should read thread one! :rolleyes:

Death blows to creatures but not people trap souls for weapon recharge sounds awesome.
great exciting info! Thanks for going through the trouble Sammuthegreat

So in order to get a high end perk, I wonder if it's based only on a level requirement, or if we need to select all preceeding perks first?