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:

 

Perhaps in time I will try AMD cards but Right now the best at Linux drivers is NVIDIA, not that they are perfect either but ever since Linus gave them the finger with his famous rant, they have gotten a little better. Of course mesa is still a bit of a headache so there is liable to be problems integrating stuff anyway.

 

Agreed, Nvidia drivers have been great for me. Honestly, who knew a GeForce 550 Ti would run Shadow of Mordor in Linux?

 

Agreed, Nvidia drivers have been great for me. Honestly, who knew a GeForce 550 Ti would run Shadow of Mordor in Linux?

Maybe however main problem could see your cpu

Core i3 haswell or upper will be better (core i5 will be ideal) in both cases with more than 3.5ghz

 

I am playing Skyrim on my ubuntu 16.04 using POL 4.2.10.
Everything runs fine, except for one aspect: I can't open the console during gameplay. I use a German keyboard and I understand that the game maps the English keyboard somehow: Infact, I use "Z" instead of "Y" for dragon shouts. The ~ sign on my keyboard is together with the plus symbol and I need to press ALT GR and + to make it appear. However, nothing happens, not even when I press the key underneath ESC, which should be ~ in the English keyboard layout. Any hint?

 

Welcome to the forum pi4630...
Honestly I have no idea how keymaps work with different layouts. My English keyboard normally works just like in Windows with PlayOnLinux/Wine.
Have you done any research on this?

 

Welcome to the forum pi4630...
Honestly I have no idea how keymaps work with different layouts. My English keyboard normally works just like in Windows with PlayOnLinux/Wine.
Have you done any research on this?

Solved *right* now Keyboard layout must be set to EN, seems to be a WINE issue see https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29281.

 

Hey Bro!, thanks for your guide ! glad i found this website, i already playing FalloutNV and Skyrim Legendary Edition! Thanks again ! I hope you post more guide on upcoming games! Thank you!
PS: Even though the shadow in skyrim is broken on my playthrough, but the game itself still great! Thank You ! You the best!
PS2: sorry for my bad english xD

 

I would love to post guides on newer games, but a lot of them are direct x 10/11 which will not run in Wine yet...

Thanks for the compliments. I haven't tested Skyrim in a few years, so its good to hear that its still running in Wine. I mostly tested without mods...

 

I just reinstalled this game. When I start the game and it checks the mods, I get 'failed to synchronize mod. steam error 3.' This is for almost all mods except for hearthfire which is a DLC pack and the High res pack.

 

The mouse cursor is very slow and sluggish.

 

Are you installing mods manually or through Steam?

 

Are you installing mods manually or through Steam?

Steam.

 

Make sure to use Wine 2.0.2 or 2.12-staging or newer. There was a recent update to Steam that broke Wine again. I have only installed one mod through Steam for Skyrim... but most gamers prefer a lot of mods. So I don't have a lot of experience troubleshooting most mods.
I do know that Skyrim handles mods much like Oblivion where you can turn certain ones on and off with the launcher. Then other mods are simply placed in the mods directory. So you may have to go through the recent mods you added through Steam and turn them off to see which one is causing the problem.

 

I changed wine to win xp and that enabled all but one mode to download. Probably got removed from the workshop or something. Everything works now except the mouse is extremely sluggish.Any idea how to fix that. Steam doesn't display anything beyond the main page and the downloads page. I suspect steamwebhelper again.

 

Normally setting it to XP fixes the steamwebhelper. did you add the --no-cef-sandbox argument?

 

wine 2.15. I don't think the mods are the problem since it was doing this before the mods were installed. Maybe a wine switch and or dll override?

 

Normally setting it to XP fixes the steamwebhelper. did you add the --no-cef-sandbox argument?

Great now steam is broken!

I would upload a screen shot but the file chooser won't open a subdirectory and drag and drop is also broken, so using dolphin won't work either.

Steam just displays a black all black box and I can't close the process, so I will try re logging my user account.

 

Yeah, those Steam updates are definitely breaking things in Wine. Really sucks because you can't install mods or free-to-play games.
You might want to install Steam again but leave Skyrim installed. Back up the "common" folder to be safe.

Thanks for dropping-in by the way.. its good to see you are still gaming in Linux

 

I ran it again and it played but the wine switch didn't change anything. It might just be the FPS being very low. I will try turning down the Graphics and try again. This notebook will be ten in November! HP dv6 from 2008.

 

wow, that PC is getting old I'm suprised you can play Skyrim in Wine on that thing.