While it certainly pays to shop around, I haven’t noticed massive price differences between different people. I do get the feeling (but I’m not entirely sure) that you get good deals when trading with people in one of your guilds. I believe you can buy stuff cheaply from The Copious Coinpurse in the Imperial Market, at least at the start of the game (don’t want to spoil this too much, but there is a quest in which you find out the reason). I’m not sure if a good trader to buy from is necessarily a good or bad trader to sell to, or if this is unrelated. Frankly, the price differences between merchants just hasn’t been enough to motivate me to look into this in depth.
Having said that, the merchant’s disposition toward you can make a big difference as to how far you can haggle. Before trading anything with anyone, I think it’s a good idea to play the persuasion game until it’s maxed out. In fact, when you’re starting out, play the persuasion game with everyone you talk to. Become one with the persuasion game. Don’t bribe anyone unless you need them to like you (to give you information, or if you plan to trade with them regularly). But the persuasion game is free and well worth it. Playing it on everyone you meet is not only good practice for you, it raises your character’s Speechcraft ability. Getting your character up to 25 Speechcraft levels gives you the rotate button, which makes future persuasions a lot easier.
No need to unequip. Just cast the spell as normal (press ‘c’). If you’re close enough to someone it will work. If not, it will just fizzle out.
Thought I’d post a link to some useful console commands. I just had to use no clipping to fix a glitch in a quest (I had to kill someone who had somehow gotten behind a gate that wouldn’t open until that person was dead).
Yup. But of course, for the second or so it takes to cast the spell, you can’t block or attack, leaving you open to the enemy. So good timing is important here. A great time to cast a touch spell is just after the enemy has swung and missed, while he’s still regaining his balance.
This is my biggest complaint besides the interface - spell effects can be ambiguous.
For instance, from what I gather, something that says “damage health 5 points for 30 seconds” means 5 damage to health every second for 30 seconds, 150 damage total. However, “drain strength 30 for 30 seconds” means a single, instant drain of 30 strength, that lasts 30 seconds, after which the mana comes back.
Most effects don’t stack, as far as I can tell. Casting burden 10 times just renews the timer every cast. Some probably do. How can you tell? As far as I know, you can’t except through observation, which can be a pain with all the spells available.
You, and they, don’t hit as hard with low fatigue. Less damage with melee weapons.
Playing the speechcraft game, and using charm spells, also raise disposition.
Touch spells are more cost effective in terms of mana than ranged spells. I find them ideal for battlemages where you two are standing shield to shield and no one wants to take the first swing and make themselves vulnerable… great moment for some frost touch.
By the way - when haggling, look at the level of their mercantile skill. In the haggling window it’ll tell you mercantile: novice (or apprentice, journeyman, expert, master) - that affects how much you can haggle. Try to bargain with people with low skill.
Additonally, as you get higher in level, you’ll notice shops have more or less gold. It can be worth going to another shop because you can get 1200 gold for your 4000 gold item rather than 800.
By the way, the values on the haggle slider aren’t constant with different shops. Dead smack in the middle might be selling for 65% of value with one person, depending on their disposition and mercantile skill, whereas dead center is 72% with another. Look at the percentages, not the slider bar relative position, when determining the best value.
I have a sigil stone that for weapons does 50 drain magicka, and for armor has fortify 50 magicka. The dagger is awesome - I can paralyze an opponent and then hit them a few times and have enough magicka to paralyze them again… but it only lasts 50 whacks until I need a very serious recharge… whereas the 50 mana, where now I have about 110, gives me a significant, permanent boost.
The one question I had was can you use the sigil stones for enchantment without a problem or may they be useful later? I assume it doesn’t matter… but it is always in the back of my mind… I mean these were the stones that created planes of Oblivion after all!
Sure. If you’re a vampire then there’s an inherent power that gives you quite a bit of nighteye, and if you go to the arcane university after doing the recomendations quest you can craft your own version of the spell.
I just pulled the trigger on a very similar system from Alienware. I feel good about the X2 4400 knowing that others made the same decision. I went for 2 7900 GT’s though. Not sure why, or how the 2 would compare to a single GTX. Also added a 2nd hard drive. Nothing like scheduling a full [and bootable!] backup once week. If anything goes wrong, you just have to change to boot order and you’re back in business.
Unfortunately it seems that guards/soldiers/etc. from each town can telepathically talk to each other. That is, if you have a bounty on your head or a warrant for your arrest (say for killing a guard) it goes for everywhere in the game.
The guard have senses that would make Superman blush.
As an archer, I’m quite annoyed at how often the guards get in my way. Yes, I know that shooting arrows into a melee may not be smart, but this is fantasy!
I learned today the hard way that there are four save slots and old saves are deleted (without warning) when you quicksave. I lost two or three hours on my first character when I created a new one to practice some console cheats.
