There is a serious problem with dual wielding and using hot keys that I believe needs to be addressed by Bethesda. If you have two stock (non sharpened, and/or non enchanted) weapons, and press the hotkey number associated with it, 1 for example, twice will allow your character to dual wield said weapons. If however, you sharpen or enchant both weapons, it prevents them from stacking and presents a problem when trying to dual wield. If you assign the weapons to two separate hotkeys, 1 and 2 for example, pressing 1 will equip one weapon to the right hand, and pressing 2 will equip the second weapon to the right hand. So if you have sharpened or enchanted weapons, the only way to dual wield in combat, is to constantly go in and out of the favorite menu and manually assign each weapon to the left or right hand. This is incredibly tedious and not at all convenient.

I can offer two solutions:

1. Resolve the stacking problem. Is there a way to *force* similar items to stack? I imagine a steel dagger sharpened at smithing level 19 is going to be slightly different than one sharpened at level 20, but for the sake of dual wielding, can it be forced to stack as long as it has the same title or similar stats? Same goes for enchantments.

2. Set left and right hands for one hotkey. For example, #1 is Sparks Left and Sword Right. #2 Heal Left and Sword right. #3 Dagger Left Dagger Right. WHOAH. Dual wielding problem SOLVED! Seriously though, how did this get past QA?

I have never had a problem hot keying dual wield setups with two of the same weapons.

Just equip both, mark it on the hotkey.

Then hotkey something else on the other slot.

You should be able to switch back and forth easily. Still, I'm not on PC so maybe it doesn't work as well.

Been feeling your pain, and complaining about this on the forums, since day one. So lame that this wasn't included, It's a mind boggling, incredible oversight that I really can't see any good excuse for.

Should've been in the first patch.

Try hot keying magic and shield... just wow.... this did not occur to anyone as being problematic?

The worst is trying to either equip a 1hander and an empty hand, or dual spells if you only have one spell hotkeyed. Both impossible to do with hotkeys, you have to go into the menu. It's so amazingly awkward I can't believe I've been playing this game for so long with such a system. When you try to switch to dual wielding a spell from a 1h weapon, it'll just keep re-equipping the spell in the left hand until you switch to two different spells, and then equip the first spell again after.

Lol Lord Orion, makes me want to get some Master of Orion 2 and build a ship finally. In Skyrim I use 2H for ease of use, and in Starcon 2 I gather all the races....

Try the macarena http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN62PAKoBfE while you try to switch weapons and spells in your hands. AHH!

Got very frustrated by this, I ended up for now.. to simply play without sharpened/enchanted weapons and modified my gear with some stamina enchants to make up for the loss.
..
"how did this get past QA?"
Ye, I ask myself the same question -.-
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Perhaps they didn't have time to actually do any decent QA? Dual wielding is their most bragged about new feature, and yet trying to dual wield any one handed weapon is as hard as hell. The QA team probably just went around trying to dual wield every single type of weapon without improving / enchanting them. Given the number of weapons (and thus the number of combinations), I can't say they're too lazy, I'd say their brains were destroyed by the sheer amount of QA needed for anything else

Which promptly leaves a lot of bugs

It hasn't been fixed yet, so that's not really a good excuse anymore.

Pretty sure the main reason was focus on the console. It really, really needs a fix on PC.

Guys the usual number keys are one hand and the numpad keys are the other.

Are you saying that in order to use their newest feature, I have to either leave my movement keys or leave my mouse?

Having to use numpad keys is as bad as going into the menu.

What the hell no it isn't, it takes under a second to quickly tap a numpad number :facepalm:


"newest" feature? don't understand what is meant by this...

I'm not sure what size your hands or keyboard are, but for me I have to leave either my mouse or my standard position on the keyboard to "quickly tap" a numpad number. It's on the opposite side of the keyboard from where my hand rests. Not to mention it'd still be better and easier to be able to bind sets of spells/weapons to a key.

Yes I leave my mouse and it isn't a problem

Basically, the hot key system would work a lot better if it remembered what was in both hands. If I have 1H/shield on hot key #1, then switch both hands to healing once the battle is over, hot key #1 should not switch me to 1H/healing. It should switch me to 1H/shield.

That would solve the problem pretty effectively right there.

Quick hint: You can't wield a one-handed sword on your left hand in Oblivion

Oh, and it takes under a second for a Hagraven to cast fireball :facepalm: any PC game designer knows that it's best NOT to try to use the numpad keys when your game relies heavily on mouse


It's much better if they could've just let us bind two items of the same type into different numbers. As of now, whenever I try to, they suddenly get lumped again in favorite menu

I did some testing on this issue and i have found that it works correctly until you either:

a. Improve the weapons
b. Enchant the weapons
c. Poison one of the weapons.

Basically, anything that makes them not "vanilla" will screw up your hotkey when you switch to a different weapon.

A lot of games let you pick two weapon sets and switch between them with a button. Maybe that's what could be done for this. Like many other people I will just use base weapons when I play a dual wield type.

If you're using a different set of weapons for right and left (Ancient Nord War Axe for the left, Steel War Axe for the right), will they still screw up?

Melee weapons hotkey to right hand and spells to left so yes they would still mess up. It would just keep replacing one war axe with the other. Unless there is something I am missing.

All they'd really need to do is have a separate little hotkey menu for PC. Assign things in it, including "free hand", to left and/or right or "standard"(standard binds would function as current ones do), to any key you don't have assigned already rather than just 1-8. That'd also let us use the favorites menu without it being cluttered with things we already have keybound. Again, just...no good excuse for this joke of a PC control scheme.