The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Guide

Skyrim is 5th series of the epic saga known as The Elder Scrolls. Famous for the first person shooter and open-world view, Skyrim continues the Role Playing genre retaining all the favorite aspects of Morrowind and Oblivion while introducing a bunch of new features.

New classes, new guilds, new civilizations, new state-of-the-art graphics and...
wait for it...
Dragons!

Follow my step-by-step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in Linux with PlayOnLinux.

Note: This guide applies to the Steam version of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Tips & Specs:

Try SteamPlay before using this guide as Valve now uses a fork of Wine called Proton and should run most Windows games.

To learn more about PlayOnLinux and Wine configuration, see the online manual: PlayOnLinux Explained

Mint 17 64-bit
PlayOnLinux: 4.2.8
Wine: 1.7.49-staging

Wine Installation

Note: Wine versions older than 2.0.2 and 2.12-staging no longer work with Steam.

Click Tools
Select "Manage Wine Versions"

Look for the Wine Version: 1.7.49-staging

Select it
Click the arrow pointing to the right

Click Next

Downloading Wine

Extracting

Downloading Gecko

Installed

Wine 1.7.49-staging is installed and you can close this window

PlayOnLinux Setup

Launch PlayOnLinux
Click Install

Click "Install a non-listed program"

Click Next

Select "Install a program in a new virtual drive"
Click Next

Name your virtual drive: skyrim
Click Next

Check all three options:

• Use another version of Wine
• Configure Wine
• Install some libraries

Click Next

Select Wine 1.7.49-staging
Click Next

Select "32 bits windows installation"
Click Next

Wine Configuration

Applications Tab
Windows Version: Windows 7
Click Apply

Graphics Tab
Click "Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows"
Check "Emulate a virtual desktop"
Desktop size: 1024x768
Click OK

PlayOnLinux Packages (Libraries, Components, DLL's)

Check the following:

• POL_Install_corefonts
• POL_Install_d3dx10
• POL_Install_d3dx9
• POL_Install_tahoma
• POL_Install_vcrun2008
• POL_Install_xact

Click Next

Note: All packages will automatically download and install

Click Browse

Navigate to your desktop
Select "SteamSetup.exe"
Click Open

Click Next

Click Next

Check "I accept the license..."
Click Next

Select Language
Click Next

Click Install

Click Finish

Updating...

dwrite isn't enabled yet, so there won't be any fonts
Click The "X" and close Steam

PlayOnLinux Shortcut

Select "Steam.exe"

Name your shortcut: Skyrim
Click Next

Select "I don't want to make another shortcut"
Click Next

PlayOnLinux Configure

Back to PlayOnLinux
Select Skyrim
Click Configure

General Tab
Wine version: 1.7.49-staging
Arguments: -no-dwrite -no-cef-sandbox
This fixes the missing font and store problem

Note: -no-dwrite will allow the fonts in Steam

Display Tab
Video memory size: Enter the amount of memory your video card/chip uses

Launching Skyrim

Select Skyrim
Click Run

Note: Click Debug to see errors and bugs

Login to Steam

Select Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Click Install

Click Next

Skyrim is about 6 Gigs
When its finish downloading...
Click Finish

Click Play

Detecting Video Hardware
Click OK

Optimization

Click Options

Graphics Adapter and Resolution
Adjust:

• Graphics Adapter
• Aspect Ratio
• Resolution
• Antialiasing
• Anisotropic Filtering
• Detail
• Windowed

Click Ok

Advanced Detail
Adjust:

• Texture Quality
• Radial Blur Quality
• Shadow Detail
• Decal Quantity
• FXAA
• Water Reflections

Click Close

Advanced View Distance
Adjust:

• Object Fade
• Actor Fade
• Grass Fade
• Specularity Fade
• Light Fade
• Item Fade
• Distand Object Detail
• Object Detail Fade

Click Close

Click Play

Rule of Thumb
High settings = More detail, lower frame rates
Low settings = Less detail, higher frame rates

Conclusion:
Skyrim ran beautifully on my GeForce 550 Ti with everything set on High or Ultra. Wine 1.7.49-staging does a great job and I didn't have too many issue:
Tree animation was not smooth and the shadows moved irregularly
Can not see underwater (underwater view can be disabled in the .ini files)

Screenshots:

 

I tried turning down the graphics settings and it is a little better but still poor FPS. I will play with it some more later.

 

I just noticed that wine 2.16, is now available via POL. I am downloading it now.

 

Well it improved to the point where the game is just barley playable. Not fun yet. Waiting on the slow graphics to execute means that the Player character is always late to kill the enemy! If a dragon attacked then your character would get roasted waiting for the FPS!

 

Might be time for a gaming desktop?

 

Are you paying? My sister is building one for me, who knows when she will ship it. It will be a relief to be able to play Transport Fever and Civilization 6 again. At least I can play Civilization 5 on steam for Linux right now. Yes Civ 6 is on steam for Linux! Xcom 1 and 2 are also on steam for Linux.

 

I don't have xact installed what does it do?

 

Are you paying?

Sure, I can build a budget gaming machine for around $500.00

 

Just a quick note to say that Wine 3.4 seems to work really well on Fedora 26. I've got some very minor glitching in my audio (a slight pop every second or so), and very occasionally my movement keys get stuck, but other than that, it's quite playable.

 

I haven't tested Skyrim in a long time, but Wine 3.5 has some vulkan features bundled with it. There is a chance you might get better performance with Wine converting Direct X to Vulkan instead of OpenGL

 

Installed the Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch (USLEEP) along with the Dawnguard, Dragonborn, and Hearthfire DLCs. This seems to have largely resolved the remaining issues.

HOWEVER, I did manage to make WINE start misbehaving. I have NO idea how I got to this state, but for some reason, with my weapon drawn, I could only look about 30 degrees left/right and about 45 degrees up/down.

I had to completely reboot before I could resolve the issue.

 

This is actually a common problem with the virtual desktop and many games.
There are some games that would lock the mouse rotation because I kept hitting PrtScr to make screenshots.

Other games I was able to fix it by right-clicking the screen.
It has something to do with the mouse leaving the game window and no longer giving you access to the game mouse controls. its strange, but has happened to me a Lot.

That is why I always add the "Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows"