I plan on buying Skyrim at tonights midnight release, and I was curious if I should install the disk and play, or should I scour the webz for a patch first?

I know there's some obvious assumptions to be made here, but can anyone that got an early copy or for any reason has prior knowledge about this tell me if it's crucial (totally worth it gameplay wise) to update the game?

(Long story short : connecting to the internet at that moment of time is going to be incredibly difficult and I need to know if the troubles I need to go through will be worth it or not.)

Thanks for reading.

On Steam, if you're connected to the internet, the game will patch itself automatically unless you manual turn off "keep games up to date" in the settings.

The days of searching the web for patches are over.it's all automated now

I'm afraid I didn't convey the message correctly, let me give you more details then.

I will not have access to the internet by the time the game comes out, and in order to get access I would have to do something incredibly terrible and would prefer not to unless this patch prooves very important to the enjoyment of my game.

I don't mean to be condecending, but instead of telling me how patching works in general, can someone tell me if it's a gamebreaking choice of mine to ignore the patch I've been hearing about?

It's steamworks, so it'll automatically install the patch.

You'll also need to be online when you activate the game. You need steam to play Skyrim.

The computer I will first be playing on isn't internet connected in any way. When I come home from the midnight release, I will not physically be able to play the game without connecting?

If you don't have internet access, you can't activate the PC version of the game.

No. Steam is required to activate and verify the game for the first time.

You will be unable to play the game until you activate it on Steam, physical copy or no physical copy.

No.

No. You need the internet at least once to activate the serial code.

Yikes this is terrible news. The genre of single player games have taken a mighty blow this day...

Alright thanks everyone for the information, can a mod please delete this post now?

Cheers, and see you all in Tamriel