Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Alpha,
If you are already dumping points in to mage/magic things then I would dumping points into smithing and enchanting is a waste.

The best way to make a character is focus the points on a very few skills, max them and play the character to its strengths.

Personally I think magic less effective overall to weapons and armor.

Good point except that with enchanting you can create armor, robes and rings that boost your magic skills and magic regeneration. But as a Mage, alchemy would be kind of useless.

Well I only have a few points in to magic so far. Small amount of Conjuration and Restoration since my basic battle tactic is to summon a creature, let it start fighting for me then walk up behind the enemy and axe him in the back. That tends to upset them so they start attacking me, so I just use my heal spells to keep me alive long enough for the two of us to kill it. Works pretty well.


I found the Steed Stone last night and wow, what a huge help that is!


I also got my smithing up to around 50'ish. Made me a set of dwarven heavy armor and enchanted it. I got my enchanting up to around 40'ish.

I was just creating Iron Daggers the whole time. Is there a point where I am going to need to switch to something more difficult, such as Dwarven daggers?

I would then enchant them with turn undead and sell them back to the smiths so I could buy out the rest of their ingots. They ran out quick. Do I just keep doing this, then do the wait for 2-24 hour periods so they replenish their stock, then rinse and repeat?

I see myself running out of soulstones pretty fast. Is there a good place to get a lot of them?

The mage's college has soulgems everywhere. Just loot them from everyone's room. Also, when you finish the Mage Guild's questline, you'll have easier access to some more of them. I never once bought a soulgem.

frankthetoad wrote:

The mage's college has soulgems everywhere. Just loot them from everyone's room. Also, when you finish the Mage Guild's questline, you'll have easier access to some more of them. I never once bought a soulgem.

Nice... so as long as it doesn't say "steal" in red below the item description, you don't get in trouble for taking any object?

AlphaShepherd wrote:

I found the Steed Stone last night and wow, what a huge help that is!

you also can carry 10 more pounds each time you upgrade stamina. and you can enchant items to allow you to carry more weight.

Quote :

I was just creating Iron Daggers the whole time. Is there a point where I am going to need to switch to something more difficult, such as Dwarven daggers?

nope. stick strictly with iron daggers.

Quote :

I would then enchant them with turn undead and sell them back to the smiths so I could buy out the rest of their ingots. They ran out quick. Do I just keep doing this, then do the wait for 2-24 hour periods so they replenish their stock, then rinse and repeat?

if you can find a weapon that sends creatures back to oblivion, destroy it to learn the effects, and use it enchant the daggers. it's effect is called "banish". it'll boost your enchanting the most.

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I see myself running out of soulstones pretty fast. Is there a good place to get a lot of them?

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kind of. you can either buy them from mages or create a weapon that captures souls. i use a dagger with the 15x dmg from sneak attack and the gloves that issue 2x damage. also a bow with the 3x sneak attack is nice. anyway, you need to carry as many empty stones as you can so steal them when you see them or buy them. you'll be able to fill soul stones by killing animals or bad guys. as you get more money, you can keep crafting daggers, enchanting them with banish and earning more than 1000 gold per dagger. (you will get to a point where you're hauling around 30-50 enchanted daggers since selling 1 gets you all of the gold from the buyer. as you get the money, start buying all the soul gems you can and enchanting everything.
the enchantments that boost you the most are: banish on weapons and sneak on jewelry/armor.

and don't forget to keep creating new sets of armor/rings for smithing since it constantly goes up as your skill increases.

[/nerd advice]

AlphaShepherd wrote:

frankthetoad wrote:

The mage's college has soulgems everywhere. Just loot them from everyone's room. Also, when you finish the Mage Guild's questline, you'll have easier access to some more of them. I never once bought a soulgem.

Nice... so as long as it doesn't say "steal" in red below the item description, you don't get in trouble for taking any object?

no. so long as you don't get caught. as long as the reticule *snicker* shows closed eyes, you'll be fine. steal away.

STEAL EVERYTHING!!! SELL, SELL, SELL!!!! Seriously, I looted Skyrim blind.

Alpha...what mat said. I forgot that most of the soulgems are empty. There are spells that will fill up the gems if you cast it on an enemy before they die that are great. There are also weapons that do the same thing. Whatever has "soul capture"...listed in the description will fill 'em up.

Yeah, I had a TON of the lesser ones that I filled up with the Soul Trap spell. I used up all of them on my iron daggers last night. Now I need to head back to the Mage's college to restock.

go through the thieves guild quest so you can unlock the fences who carry 4000 gold. also as you work your way through it opens up merchants in the guild. you can ultimately sell stuff and get 9000+ gold in one shot in the guild.

but keep an eye out for weapons that send dudes back to oblivion. buy if you can. it's a worthwhile investment for enchanting and making an iron dagger go from being worth 5 gold to over 1000.

Nice... the daggers I enchant now with turn undead sell for 250, so 1K a pop would be nice. I could even buy my house then!

After doing all that I still have 130k that I really can't figure out how to spend... And can't really get rid of.

I need to get back into this game. I just have a voice in my head saying I cannot! Not! until I finish Dark Souls. Don't know why I have this mental block going on.

Mark Sporto wrote:

After doing all that I still have 130k that I really can't figure out how to spend... And can't really get rid of.

That was my problem. What to buy? You can find/make amazing weapons...so why ever buy them? I may have bought one weapon the entire game...and that was probably just to break it down to learn the enchantment.

I did buy every single ingredient in every single shop, turn around make potion, then sell them back to up my Alchemy skill.

I guess the one thing I did buy routinely was Restore Magicka and Health potions. I was pretty exposed as a magic build.

I spend all my money on training to help level me up. Some guys will retrain you after you hit higher levels. When you get to higher levels like 80 plus in some sill it costs like 4k to train the level. Well worth it thou IMO.

I'm thinking I'll buy a house in every town like i did in oblivion. Funny thing is I have all this money and did it with out the dupe glitch oblivion had!

For Blacksmithing, did you guys take all of the perks there or just go down one side of the skill tree? I have been going to the right side for the Daedric armor perk. My Smithing is at about 60 now.


Also, there was a dragon flying high overhead that I couldn't attack. Is there some special way to lure them down? I tried fire bolts, 69 arrows, trying to get Lydia to attack it, etc. but nothing would work. It would always eventually fly off in the distance even though I reloaded the save three times trying to get its attention.

I only opened up Smithing enough to be able to get to Daedric.

You get a shout in the main storyline that will bring dragon's down. Was he ever right over the top of you? That's usually when they'll turn around and attack.

frankthetoad wrote:

I only opened up Smithing enough to be able to get to Daedric.

You get a shout in the main storyline that will bring dragon's down. Was he ever right over the top of you? That's usually when they'll turn around and attack.

Yeah... he was right above me several times but I couldn't hit him with arrows or fire bolt. I tried the shout you get at the beginning several times as well but no luck.

The trick with dragons, if you want them to land, is to be in a wide open space. If you're in a village...they're going to land on rooftops. I would always run to a field or something so he wouldn't kill NPCs.

I fought one dragon battle in the middle of the village next to the Mage's College very early on in the game. Some NPC died....his dead body remained there for the rest of my game. I forget his name, but I never spoke to him. I guess he wasn't too important!!!

None of this probably applies to your situation, though. It sounds like he never even attacked you. If not, I'd say leave him be. I promise you'll have plenty of opportunities to battle dragons.

Good... I was just wondering if it was just supposed to be eye candy or what. I was in a very wide open space at the time. I also killed the one at the Mage's College but fortunately didn't kill any of the NPC's there.

Some NPCs wont die, if they're quest or story related. They'll just take a knee (coach) and then get up after a period of time.

Your followers will do the same thing if they're "killed" in battle. As long as you take the fighting away from them while they're in that state....they'll recover. If you don't, and you hit them or an enemy attacking you hits them (enemies won't attack a downed follower directly), they die for good.

I had countless followers die this way. But nothing compares to the selfless sacrifice Lydia made for me. Too bad I never asked her if it would be OK for me to ram a dagger in her heart.....

Jerk!

Thieve's Guild Question:
So I've done the whole she-bang when it comes to the Thieve's Guild other than the Stones of Baneziah (only have 5 of them so far). Does this quest need to be completed in order to become a 'full member?' I'm leader of the guild but still not a full member. I feel as though I am missing out on some dialog options with Sapphire and other members by not being a full member of the guild - but talking to Brynjolf at this point simply results in him saying he's busy and we'll talk later. Is this a bug?

EDIT: I have not done all the 'small jobs' for Delvin and Vex. Could this be why the actual leader initiation stuff hasn't been done yet?