So this is the first time in these forums, so bear with me.

I'am strongly considering purchasing skyrim. I've heard nothing but good things.
Two questions that hold me back are -can my GeForce 8800 gts 512 meg card run it ok? I know minimum specs sa I can, My other specs are Duo core 3 gig, 3 gigs ram for the basics. Will it be ran at the lowest crappiest settings with my vid card?

Second- I'm a family man with kids. Is this game something you can touch and go with? If I played for 30 minutes once or twice a day can a guy actually make progress in the game? Or does it require like 3 hours to explore a town, or do a basic quest? I don't mind, just would like to know what I would be getting myself into.

Thanks for any responses.

I don't know anything about your specs, but you can totally play for half an hour a day and enjoy the game. It's a pretty easy game to learn, since it was designed to appeal to a mass audience. You won't have any problems enjoying it with limited playtime.

I play on Xbox so I don't know about the computer specs, but some little side quests can be done quickly and some quests take hours or days. You can also just lose yourself exploring. Time really flies when you play this game though. It's totally worth it to get the game no matter what, but it will sort of consume your thoughts and eat your soul... In a good way

Welcome to the forums.

Regarding your first question, you should be able to get medium graphics settings out of that video card at least, with some settings up in the high range. You will need to stay away from HD textures, though - you don't have enough VRAM on your card to run those. Your CPU is old but is okay for the vanilla game. You'd need to be careful about adding mods to your game, though, especially ones that add a lot of new NPCs (who have lots of scripts attached to them and increase the demand on the CPU).

A complete playthrough, if you do the main quests and a good number of the guild quests and other side quests, will probably take well over 100 hours total to complete - some people can put many hundreds of hours on a single character. But you can definitely play it at your own pace and still make good progress. There's no quest in the game that has a time limit to complete. Some quests can be done in just a few minutes, while others may take a couple of hours or more to complete. But even in the longer ones, there are usually points in the middle where you can save the game, quit and then come back to finish when you have some more time.

You can save your game progress at any time (no checkpoints), and if you do get it, you should quickly get into the habit of saving frequently, and keeping multiple recent save files handy. Bugs and glitches do happen, unfortunately, and probably the biggest reason why people ragequit the game is relying on one save file, having the game glitch out on that file, and losing hours and hours of progress.

As Gator said save and save often in different slots. So that way if you mess up you can go to a previous save.

You can totally take a 1/2 hr a day exploring a dungeon, traveling along the wilderness enjoying the scenery, or take that time doing odd jobs for various townsfolk.nwhatever your heart desires.

You play Skyrim when you want for however long you want.

Protip: get a mod called HIALGOBOOST

I use it with my weak computer. It tweaks graphics on the spot to keep constant framerate. Combat goes smoothly (with low graphics) and you can still stand still to take a good scenery screenshot

You will get it to work. However do not use (download) the official Skyrim HD textures.

Uesp says you can get it to work with Medium/High settings.

But it doesn't say at what resolution. !!!

I thing you could play it well, at 1280x720. !!! (medium/high settings) (without AA and AF)

You can enjoy Skyrim for short and long sessions, just be sure to save often as mentioned above. With your rig, I would not even worry about mods at this time, just learn and play the vanilla (unmodded) game, The only exceptions to that recommendation would be to download all of the Unofficial patches, or at least the Unofficial Skyrim patch if you do not buy the DLCs. Download the patch for each piece of content you purchase. These patches have corrected a huge amount of glitches and bugs and are well worth having. I would even say they are imperative! The Nexus has them all, and they cost nothing. Play the game and have fun, and in between, learn more about what your machine will handle, and browse the Skyrim Nexus. Just reading about the different mods will start the learning process and is pretty interesting to boot.

Welcome, and everyone here is always willing to help. There are no stupid questions. This is an open world, you can do what you want, when you want. You can follow the storyline or not, as you please, and your character can be whoever or whatever you want.

ENJOY!

Edited for typos

Hey im new also and I just started playing vgames again after a years long break,I have xbox 360 and bought like 4 games to start playing again well this is the only one I've been playing for DAYS straight, you can do all kinds of stuff within a half hour and save your progress I highly recommend this game its the best game I ever played,I usually like 2d games but still,you know.

It's a whole world to explore and complete achievements,even the mundane ones are fun ive pretty much spent the last 3 hunting bears and leveling up my archery skill smithing skill and enchanting skill without doing 1 actual "quest"and im having a blast.

Before you start making a character I recommend that you research the possibilities first,im on my second character the first one I took to level 40 before starting a new one so that was a waste of a few days.

You should be able to play with this setup -just don't install the high res DLC and if it downloads anyway, keep it disabled.

As for the 30 minutes per day, ofcourse you can have some progress, but you may find yourself wanting to keep playing -not the best thing to happen to someone with a family to take care of. Keep that in check and you'll be fine.

You can run it, but you probably won't like how it looks. I had the same vid card and a 2 core machine when the game was released (but more RAM), and while it would run at the lowest settings I didn't think the visuals were doing the game justice, so I shelved it until I upgraded 3 years later. But it depends what you consider acceptable - 20 FPS with the game looking worse than TES IV wasn't doing it for me.

As for playing for half an hour: sure. You can save at any time. But you may find it's 3.00 am and you just want to see that one... last... thing...

LOL, yeah.....

Thanks for all the replies! Good to see a kind forum of people for a change who don't tear into you for asking a question.

So time wise it sounds ok. But it seems like there are mixed answers with if I can run it on low or medium settings. I'll stay away from high textures, as long as it looks better than oblivion (which still looked good) I'll be happy.
And by Mods, are we talking official downloadable content from Bethesda? Or fan made mods? Sounds like their are a lot of them.
If I do get the package that allows the "expansions" such as dawn guard etc, is that ok? Will it create any issues? Just don't wanna download it only to find out I chose the wrong stuff and have a much more limited game play.

You should be able to run a few mods as long as you are careful and don't overload your system. Some mods will make your system run better, like the unofficial patches and the Skyrim Script Extender with the memory fix ini.


http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/51038/?

There are literally thousands of user made mods. Many of them won't affect performance but others will. My best advice about mods is to go slow, choose carefully and install one at a time and play test after each mod to make sure things are working well. If you run into a mod that causes problems, you can uninstall it. Just remember to make a back up save before installing each mod because uninstalling mods in an existing save can cause problems for the save, depending on the mod.

There are also three official DLC, Dawngard, Dragonborn and Hearthfire. If your PC can run Skyrim, it should be able to run those. If you get those you should get the unofficial patches for each.

Edit: Almost forgot my favorite patch, the flora respawn fix. That bug drives me nuts when I play on my Xbox (so much so that I'm afraid to pick flowers) but it can be fixed on PC.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31268/?

Razmirth, if it makes you feel any better, I play Skyrim with an Intel Core 2 Duo 3200MHz, GeForce 9800 GTX+ (1gig) and 4 gigs of RAM. I'd guess this is probably not too different than your machine. I typically run about 50 mods in my games. I don't use any graphics mods. But I do use mods that add a lot of scripts and that add extra NPCs and creatures to the game. I've encountered no problems on my machine.

Sent you some Nexus information, check your envelope icon, top upper left of your screen.

I play Skyrim on about med/low settings, and apart from a few screenshots not looking 100% like I want, you really don't notice it - the game drags you in too much. If you're not a graphics snob, you'll be fine.

It's possible to play for 30mins a day - you could get a couple quests done in that time. Will you want to only play for 30mins a day? Not once you get going.

Welcome to the forum!! Here's your http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General:Fishy_Stick ( it's kinda a tradition...can't believe no one else gave the man a fishy stick!)

I played on a 360 for the 1st 3 yrs, just got a pc that would run the game a couple months ago. I had 3 yrs to figure out the kinda mod's I wanted... you don't need to take that long . But what I would do is get on the Nexus and read the "Top Files", you don't need them all of course. The unofficial patches of course, but Start with reading the rest or rather anything that catches your eye's.

I knew what annoyed me in the vanilla game, so I looked for things that would change that, plus enhance the game, for me. Which is not to say it would suit you. Jot down the names of files or once you have your own account you can "track" the mod's you may like. That is a good way to quickly go through them, then take your time actually reading them. Also note down those things that a mod author says is a "must" for a mod you like. For instance for many, many mods you must have SKSE ( just google it). Taking notes really helps.

As others have said, save....save...save!!!!

And yes, it IS possible to play for 30 min a day!