Indeed. Sanguine’s Rose is a god (heh) send in that regards. All you need to fuel an infinite supply of dremora meatshields are mudcrab souls ! The quest is pretty easy too, you can sequence break it straight to the end if you’re so inclined.
Also, while there isn’t a cheap Conjuration cantrip you can cast over and over like there is for most of the other schools, hitting stuff with bound weapons increases your Conjuration skill on top of the applicable weapon skill.
Yeah, you pretty much have to wait until you unlock more spells from the guy at the college. Once you get the frost guy, there is a huge delay until you get anything better. But man, can that frost guy block a doorway while your mana is recharging!
Conjuration in specific is ridiculously easy to raise really fast.
Another awesome cover of some Skyrim music:
As a (mostly) pure Mage cane I use the dragon masks or do they count as armour? I got the Vokon mask but apparently it’s heavy armour.
They count as armor, but the Mokoei (sp?) mask is worth it, IMO.
I hear ya. The other morning I was making breakfast, and I did an awesome job of buttering my toast and said out loud, “I got to wondering, maybe I’m the Dragon Born.”
One of the vendors sounds exactly like Barry Weiss from Storage Wars, cracks me up every time.
Any thoughts on joining the Stomcloak rebellion on either side?
Eh… it’s rather anti-climactic no matter which side you join, but (IMO) the Imperial side is the more moral and pragmatic option and I think that if you’ve completed that quest line near the end of the main quest, a mission becomes a bit easier. Doesn’t really matter though, since there’s no option for you to become the next Emperor. 
All the Imperials I meet appear to be raging jerks. I can see the Stormcloaks point of view but when start on about rekindling a war with the elves they lose me.
Seriously? Every Thalmor character in the game is just begging for a beat-down. My real regret is that there’s no good option to really take it to the damned elves. I’m the freaking Dragonborn! I wanna get all Uriel Septim on their asses! Don’t like Talos? Tough. I’m Talos II. When I’m done, people aren’t going to be saying, “By the Eight,” they’re going to be saying, “By the Ten!”
Fucking elves.
Yea the Thalmor are absolutely the bad guys but is helping the Stormcloaks really going to hurt them?
Considering the Stormcloaks are the only ones actually fighting them, I’m not going to go very far out on a limb by saying “yes.”
The truce doesn’t help the Empire regroup. It helps the Thalmore solidify their gains. No peace! Down with the Dominion!
You’d be wrong.
Stormcloak himself is essentially a Thalmor sleeper agent. They’re supporting the Stormcloaks in order to weaken the Empire. And there will be a second war between the Thalmor and the Imperials and when that happens the Empire will need Skyrim on its side.
Well it would… if the fucking Stormcloaks weren’t leading a rebellion.
Ulfric is not a “sleeper agent.” The Thalmore are attempting to manipulate him, and it may or may not backfire on them, but Ulfric is not their agent.
While it’s true that they call him an “asset”, not an agent, FinnAgain said “essentially a sleeper agent” which is pretty accurate. Ulric may not literally be an agent, but what he’s doing helps the Thalmor so much he might as well be.
Only if he neither wins nor loses.
My aforementioned post on Skyrim: http://ruscumag.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/pen-n-paradise-1-skyrim/
No. That’s simply the best outcome from the Thalmor’s perspective. However, having him suceeed is almost as good as an ongoing bloody civil war. An independant Skyrim would hurt the Empire immensely, while weakening Skyrim and preventing it from helping nearly as much as in the last war. Meanwhile, Ulfric’s bloody-minded racism neatly strips him of any other allies, such as the Dunmer or Khajit.
This is the truly brilliant side of it, becaue the Thalmor plot is so simple it’s laughable, but frighteningly plausible. All they had to do was take an ambitious and morally-doubtful rising star, fill him with some guilt, and let him loose with assistance along the way. Ulfric did their bidding for years, and even now they simply consider it a minor setback that he’s trying to cut the apron strings.
What’s hilarious to me is how they handle it. They introduce Ulfric first as a semi-ally, and imply that the Empire is your enemy. Only later do you start to get uneasy feelings when visiting Windhelm, seeing what Ulfric’s rule is like. Then if you follow the main quest, you realize that Ulfric, though not quite a pawn, still isn’t even honest in his cruel ambitions. when you fit in the facts from Solitude, and you realize he murdered his best friend and doesn’t give two flips about it.
He’s a very, very bad man. The Empire isn’t perfect, but it’s in a bad situation and tryig to keep the world from falling under the thumb of a tyrannical totalitarian nightmare. Everything they do is an attempt to buy time, and it’s hilariously fun to see General Tullius tell the Thalmor to shut it. The Stormcloaks, no matter what their ideals, are not much better than the Thalmor. No surprise they’re just trying the same thing.
Did no one else play Morrowind? The Dunmer in the Grey Quarter of Windhelm bitching about racism is comical. Seriously, Dunmer complaining about racism? Why don’t you go chat up the Argonians on the docks and ask them if they’d like to relocate to Vvardenfell? The Stormcloaks, the very worst offenders in Skyrim, are more welcoming of outsiders than House Telvanni, and on the whole Skyrim treats non-Nords a hell of a lot better than Morrowind treats non-Dunmer.
All I know is that, listening in on the initial discussion in the War Rooms of the respective leaders, General Tullius sounds like a sound if bored tactician advised by an insightful soldier while Ulric sounds like a philosopher with rage control issues advised by a complete muppet.
Who you want to be given orders by, hmm ?
'sides, Imperial Armour looks snazzy. A girl’s gotta have priorities 
[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
Did no one else play Morrowind? The Dunmer in the Grey Quarter of Windhelm bitching about racism is comical.
[/QUOTE]
That was not lost on me either.
It’s even more comical when you realize that, as the club owner is bitching about being treated unfairly inside his fairly successful property, in front of a rather large fire ; a bunch of Khajiit are freezing their tonkers off outside the city gate. In the rain.