Rowan, are you using a heat sink underneath your laptop?

Looney, I am using a Belkin laptop cooler. I'm assuming a heat sink is something similar?

It is indeed! Hmmmmmm, have you turned off all unnecessary processes?

If so, then you are beyond me. The smart folks over in Glitches would have more ideas, I'll bet.

Like Moondancer said, I turned off HDR and turned on timeslicing. Is there anything else that will help?

Sorry to hear about that, Rowan.

Because all the parts in a laptop are smaller and closer together, sadly overheating tends to be a problem with laptops, especially with activities as hectic as gaming.

A colder ambient temperature will help to some extent. (Put the laptop in the fridge and pull up a chair for yourself. Just joking).

No, seriously though, anything like an external fan or airconditioning, and also trying to improve the ventilation and airflow around the laptop itself - maybe if you place it on a grid-like structure of some sort?

You can also set shadows off completely in the game, that might also help to some extent.

Because of the high demands of next-gen games, have you considered moving to a desktop for your gaming sometime in the future? ...or would that prove to be too inconvenient for your circumstances?

Thanks, Moondancer. I just removed shadows but it doesn't seem to help. I can play only 10 minutes at a time and then have to let it cool down. At this rate I'll be playing for the Guiness Book of Records for longest time on a game. I've played all my games on a laptop and have experienced this over heating with only one other game. I wish I knew what part of the game does this as I can play for hours with other new games without this problem. I used to have a desk top but I was really happy to switch to a laptop as I gained so much desk space etc.

Would an external harddrive dedicated to games preserve my computer?

Hmm, I think you might do well to take this to glitches, since there might be experts there on laptop gaming, which I am not.

I do know about combating overheating in a desktop system, but of course a laptop is quite a different kettle of fish.

Re playing on a fast external dedicated to gaming:
of course every little bit will help, but will removing just the little bit of heat that the hard drive contributes be enough?

Not all externals are quite as fast as internals tend to be either, since externals tend to be more for storage in general. (Plus they're usually a bit more expensive as well).

Sadly I doubt that it will alleviate all or even much of your problem, since the items that tend to build up the most heat would much rather be your CPU and your graphics card. Either or both of those could be sending the "overheat" signal out.

(Although, as I said, that somehow raising the bottom of the laptop to have some ventilation underneath, might also help) ; but I'd rather not give myself out as an expert - I'm hoping someone in glitches could possibly give you some more definite solutions.

EDIT: Heh, you'd probably faint if you saw how big the box for my gaming system is Rowan! It's huge, and the main reason for it being huge is to prevent overheating; so my system has a lot of ventilation space and fans going for it.
Now just imagine how cleverly they must try and design a gaming laptop to be able to dissapate as much heat as a desktop, and bearing in mind that even some desktops tend to overheat if you don't take care of that aspect...

In any case, good luck, I really hope you manage to find a workable solution for your problem.

Rowan, how long have you owned this laptop? If it's a number of years, it might be suffering from dust on the cooling elements - I've lost desktop PC hardware to gummed up fans and radiators before now.

Thanks to all who have given me suggestions for my hotblooded laptop. Things have improved a little since I repositioned my laptop over the cooler. Before I had it right in the middle but now I moved it so the fan was directly over the hottest part which is closer to the back near the screen. So now I can play 20 minute stretches. Still not ideal but better.

Gremlin, my laptop is three years old. I use a can of compressed air occassionally to blast dust out of the cracks. I just don't understand why it's overheating with this particular game but not with other new ones.

I'm still doing side quests for the Broken Valley Village. It is fun.

I'm in the Forgotten Outpost. There is a room with a chest but I see no way to open the door. According to the gamepressure walkthrough there is supposed to be a button on a wall to push and a key on a table. I don't see the key although I may have picked it up on an earlier visit. Unfortunately the inventory keys are not labelled. But I don't see a wall button anywhere. Does anyone remember where this button is?

Rowan did you get past this?

No, looney, still no button on any wall. I understand it's sometimes hard to remember details like that. I hoped someone had better memory than me about stuff like that. Thanks for asking.

Rowan, The key is on a table and a pressure plate is at the far end of the room and it says so when you get close to this blank wall. That wall is brick with nothing in front of it. No barrels. You have to walk all around the room until, at the end, you see this wall. Impossible to see this pressure plate but if you are at the right spot, the game tells you about this plate. I just went there to check!!! Hope my description is clear???

Thanks Jacline

Did that get you moving Rowan?

Thank you, Jacline and looney! I finally found the pressure plate. It was very difficult to find the trigger point. As a matter of fact it showed up only after I turned sideways to the wall. The message to open the pressure plate just flickered on and off so it must have been a very small target. Anyway, after all that, I didn't think the prize was worth all that much. Those are just the surprises of a game.

I've been getting some quest items for which I don't have a quest yet. Hope this doesn't mess up any quests.