Killing Dwemer automatons can also yield a decent haul of mid-range soul gems.
For me, Lydia died in a pretty major battle in one of the main story quests. I actually felt kind of bad because we were getting mobbed and I headed up to high ground to rain fireballs of death on everyone below and Lydia might not have been briefed on that plan. The last I saw was her being surrounded by Falmyr, giants, spiders and frost astronachs, occaisionally lit up by the blasts of flaming death from me.
[QUOTE=amanset]
Thanks guys for the explanations about Enchanting and soul gems. Looks like I’ll be off to buy this Soul Trap spell then …
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I wouldn’t, unless your guy is a spell caster. If you are melee, just get a weapon with soul trap on it. What I do, since the bow is my primary weapon, is I have a bow with soul trap on it and my primary bow (daedric with 25 fire damage added). Depending on who I’m fighting I’ll switch off between trapping souls or doing massive damage using the quick change key. Or, you could get a soul trap weapon for your follower, if you are using them to tank for you (it doesn’t work for me because I generally kill stuff before she even gets to swing). Just give him or her a soul trap weapon and a bunch of empty soul stones and then let them fill them up for you.
-XT
I had forgotten about that, but that’s a good point as well. Pretty much all of the automatons drop soul gems. I think the implication is that they use them as power sources.
You can also buy empty soul stones from a number of vendors. And, assuming you’ve become the Arch Mage you can loot his quarters for gobs of the things. I have hundreds, though I still buy them whenever I see a vendor selling empty stones…but I’m a compulsive hoarder in these kinds of games. I also buy ore and ingots, though I have tons of the stuff (and hundreds of dragon scales and bones, and at least 30 daedra hearts…even potion ingredients, even though I don’t have anything to alchemy!)
-XT
Becoming Thane of Whiterun usually gets you a Soul Trap-enchanted axe, and it’s easy to do and part of the MQ. ETA: Oops, think it’s random enchant, never mind.
I completely lost Shadowmere in Oblivion. I never got on another horse, he just stopped following me on fast travel.
ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies, Bethesda does not attempt to trick you. That is Sierra Adventure’s territory, where you have to restart the whole damn game 7/8ths through because you didn’t give a ring to a dwarf at the beginning or some crap.
Bethesda does have an unintentional history of bugs, though. And really, this one isn’t a game breaker, I don’t even look at my TG armor now, although the chest’s strength upgrade is nice.
For Nightingales, you get:
[spoiler]You lose your skeleton key. You can choose from one of 3 greater powers (so 1x per day I believe). If you want to change your pick, you can go back, but must wait about 24 hours before choosing.
Choices are, IIRC:
- Absorb health from a enemy (100 points?)
- Ranged AOE frenzy for 30s
- Invisibility for 120s. If you attack someone then go back to sneak mode, it will still make you invisible for the duration. I am not sure if this is unique to this ability or all invisibility in Skyrim.
Also, non-gameplay: when you die, your soul must first guard the Twilight Sepulcher, then her realm. Considering I seem to be pledged to Hiricine, Sovngarde, and maybe a few other Daedra, she’ll have competition.[/spoiler]
I walked into the town where the thief guild is nd talked to the first person on my left as I entered. He introduced me. Asking around in that town will either hook you up with the guy or tell you where to go.
ALL:
When I cast ebonyflesh with my mage armor perk, I get an armor rating of 300. I’m usually impervious to pretty much anything. Except arrows shot by upper level enemies like bandit marauders or draurg deathlords. Exactly how much do those hurt? If I have an armor rating of 300 and it takes off 100 health, does that mean it did 400 damage?
Ah. That’ll explain why I appear to have some filled ones already. Cheers.
I am a caster, but I am contemplating going the buying filled ones route, mainly as swapping spells mid fight is a pain. I generally keep a fire and a heal spell equipped,
Much to think about. Cheers.
IIRC, the armour rating formula is something along the lines of damage reduction = AR*0.12 so 300 would be 36% DR. So if it did 100 damage to you post armour, the original hit would have been around 150.
Also, yeah, had my first encounter with a deathlord today - I was still in basic thieves guild leather and wielding an unenchanted Elven mace because barrows are easy, right ? Just a bunch of sleeping draugr and a slightly more annoying shouty boss that’s weak to fire, right ?
To say he wrecked my shit is putting it lightly. Thank the Divines for the Wabbajack - it summoned a Dremora and I could slink away while they duked it out. The second Wabbajack bolt healed the deathlord to full :eek:. The third disintegrated him 
.
I don’t go into barrows without a cartful of health potions any more.
Well, I mainly do my soul trapping with bound weapons and the perk (don’t - to my dismay, bound weapons suck in this game past 15ish level, even with the upgrade to dmg perk they do about the same damage as unsmithed orcish…) but I’d wager soul trap in one hand, summon atronach in the other would work just fine against run of the mill enemies.
Of course, even a storm atronach doesn’t last too long against the kind of stuff that drops grand souls.
Haven’t had the pleasure of acquiring Shadowmere yet, but my first toon’s horse got wonkified too. At some point, he simply wouldn’t stay put. I’d dismount and he’d immediately start walking in a random direction. I think this might have had something to do with the quest to steal Frost, because a) that’s how stolen horses behave, and I did own the horse before I did the quest and b) that quest appears to be all kinds of wonky - it also caused multiple copies of the questgiver to appear outside Whiterun, and after completing it I couldn’t use horsecarts either.
So, you know, if someone hires you to steal a horse, tell him to fuck right off.
Well, there is something you might could try: there’s always one of the thieves training alone in that archery range slash lockpick training area away from the others, and they wear basic TG armour. Sometimes it’s the archery trainer, sometimes it’s Rune.
I’m just saying, training accidents happen. Or, if your pickpocket skill is maxed and perked, you could just rob their drawers off :p.
I wouldn’t even worry about that thieves guild armor, even with the upgrade…there is a lot better armor out there. You could either do the Nightblade quest line or the assassins quest line and you will get a lot better stuff (especially if you do a side quest to find an old assassin who wants to gift you his armor that’s on his rotted corpse). I don’t remember the specs, but I think Cicero’s armor is better and so is another set you find on that quest. I went back to have the boots upgraded on the thieves armor thingy but it just wasn’t worth doing all the pieces (the rest is back at one of my houses somewhere in a trunk).
[QUOTE=Kobal2]
Haven’t had the pleasure of acquiring Shadowmere yet, but my first toon’s horse got wonkified too. At some point, he simply wouldn’t stay put. I’d dismount and he’d immediately start walking in a random direction. I think this might have had something to do with the quest to steal Frost, because a) that’s how stolen horses behave, and I did own the horse before I did the quest and b) that quest appears to be all kinds of wonky - it also caused multiple copies of the questgiver to appear outside Whiterun, and after completing it I couldn’t use horsecarts either.
[/QUOTE]
It’s worth doing that line of quests (to get Shadowmere) just for the pleasure of having such a bad ass horse. I don’t have the quest to get Frost and don’t intend to do it if it pops up…Shadowmere is pretty cool and much tougher than the horses I had bought previously. In general stuff tends to attack him as well, which is like an agro magnet…and he rarely dies (the only time I’ve seen him die is either being snarfed by an ancient dragon or when I accidentally ride him off a cliff).
-XT
I harvest mud crab souls to fill petty/lesser soul gems to enchant my cheap iron daggers for money-making. They’re the right “size” soul and are easy to find, compared to rabbits, foxes or other animals. I’ll just wander along a river bank and get 4-6 crab souls within a few minutes. Good time to harvest Nirnroot and other alchemy ingredients, too. I’m glad they kept the Nirnroot sound from Oblivion. That tone still makes me drop whatever I’m doing-even combat-to go looking for it. I hope there’s a Nirnroot-related quest like Oblivion.
The key to making money off enchanted daggers is using the right spell. Some boost the value more than others. In my first game I could invest about 60 septim in crafting an iron dagger and buying an unfilled petty sould gem, enchant it with a mid-level, turn undead spell and boost the value to around 600. Pretty easy money.
Use this list to decide which spell you want to “learn” at the enchanting altar. You’ll lose the item, but can more than make up for the lost value within a few daggers. From the Wiki:
*A very good way to make money and get skills up is to smith iron daggers for very little cost, then enchant them raising their price well above their initial base value of 10. If you use Banish as the enchantment with a petty soul gem the dagger’s base value goes up the most. If Banish is not available, the following enchantments result in a slightly lower value, but may be easier to find. In order of descending value:
- Banish
- Paralyze
- Stamina Damage
- Turn Undead
- Absorb Health
- Absorb Stamina
- Absorb Magicka*
Satisfying moment: Walk up to some wandering Thalmor, talk to them and get a lecture about the “proven superiority” of elves over humans. Then pull out Wuuthrad and slaughter the lot of them. Then tell the scattered corpses “Good thing you’re superior, or this might have turned out really bad for you.”
To resurrect an NPC, look at their body, open the console, click on their body, type “resurrect 1”, then close the console. I understand that the effects can be buggy with quest-related NPCs however, since the game still regards them as dead.
It isn’t the upgraded TG armour I want, I just want closure on that story line after all of the hard work I’ve been doing reallocating Skyrim’s resources.
I may just have to try cold-blooded murder to see how it goes, but I’m already a fairly good pickpocket and no TG armor items are available to me that way in Riften. Not even off the bodies of the poor thieving sods who are run through by the guards topside when they happen to get caught.
On Storm’s behavior, I can’t vouch for his kick-assedness and lack of buggy behavior unless you have his paperwork. Though we did recently ride off a cliff, hang out in mid-air for a while, and then fall to his death (and my stunning), but I toss that up to a really buggy few minutes full of the new Nightengales, a farm, Storm, Lydia, myself and 3 simultaneously spawning bears.
I play as a High Elf, but they’re still dicks to me. After finishing a conversation one of them informed me “You’re a disgrace to all Altmer; I should kill you on principle.”. Needless to say I’ve been hunting them for sport ever since, which has resulted in the Thalmor putting a hitsquad of Judiciars on me.
My favourite moment involving the Thalmor was a random encounter a way south of Solitude, a band of three Judiciars escorting a prisoner for interrogation across a bridge. Fus Ro Dah’d two of them off the bridge and fireballed the last one off. The prisoner was a Stormcloak and I am Legion, but the enemy of my enemy.
Yes, it happens. Usually, I’ve always a follower/dog/horse/whatever who finishes off the ennemy, but recently, for once, I was alone, and I put my weapon down when I heard the pleas for mercy, and the ennemy did stand up and leave without fighting anymore.
However, it wasn’t a “truly bad guy”. It was this orc that you encounter randomly on roads, who insults you and attacks you if you talk back . I don’t know if it would have worked with say, a regular bandit, let alone in a dungeon.
Sure, but you must close up, which can be tricky with high level opponents who are better at detecting you (I’ve 100 sneak, and sometimes I get caught when I’m too close of a powerful ennemy). With the “arrow shock” perk (don’t remember it’s real name), your opponent staggers and often is unable to reach you if you fire arrows in close succession (not waiting until the bow is fully drawn) and you deal big damages with a bow. And since you’re still at some distance, you also have the option of fleeing and hide again. Might not be enough with bosses and such, but anyway, I’d rather be in close combat with a boss who has lost 75% of his HP to my arrows than to the same who’s pissed off because I just tried unsuccesfully to backstab him.
I basically use the backstab way only when I can’t find a convenient position to use my bow from a distance.