Random useful tips (no spoilers!)

[BlashyrkhRavendark]

Some reflections of my own rookie mistakes has lead me to these "Do NOT's"

 

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• Do NOT smelt Iron Ore! Save it for later because there is a spelltome for Transmute Mineral Ore. Once you have it, the convert all your Iron Ore into first silver, then gold!
  
  
• Do NOT lvl up smithing on Iron Daggers and Hide Bracers! Do as i said in point above, and then make gold necklaces.
  
  
• Do NOT sell the above mentioned necklaces for fast cash... Keep them for when you lvl up enchanting, then net a very good sum of cash plus more expensive items grant bigger portions of "Speech".
  
  
• Do NOT hurry lvl'ing, embrace the game, you will be overpowered soon enough, trust me.
  
  
• Do NOT steal everything that is not nailed to the floor. Why? - You will only end up with cluttering your stash and render your first house a complete mess with all that stolen stuff that you might keep for selling later in the game. Besides questing for factions will raise your standing and in no time all that stuff you wanted to steal is yours to take anyways for just beeing a friendly regular guy.
  
  
• Do NOT start all quests you run into immmediately, be thorough and finish an area at the time because unfortunately many quests are buggy/glitchy, annoying but true.
  
  
• Do NOT lvl up right away, just because you just "dinged" doesnt mean that you have to spend stats and perk points. All you will get from fast lvl'ing is harder mobs. "I used to be an adventurer like you, but then i got overpowered and bored"
  
  
• Do NOT waste time getting rich before you enter Whiterun, there is plenty of time and before you know it you will have enough cash to buy the first house anyways.
  
  
   
  
  
• Learn to love Aura Whisper (Shout), way better than Detect Dead/Detect Life because this one does both. Especially if your into sneaking or just dont like beeing surprised by four Draugr Deathlords ;)
  
  
• Mining. When you mine and want most of it, then step back every 3 picks, then you can mine 3 ores instead of just 2 per node.
  
  
• Sneaking down mountains and other high places hurts less than jumping or running at normal speed.
  
  
• Daedric Artifacts are allways cool and worth going for, even those that makes you feel a bit bad inside... Think of it like a demonic pokemon collection; Gotta Have them all!
  
  
• Daedric Artifacts are also cool even for Mages late game if you want to lvl up heavy armor or some melee weapons. Eg; there is a blade that cannot deplete its charge and leeches 30 points of health per hit allowing you to stay alive and use a weapon you havent got the training for.
  
  
• Once you decided to go high lvl, you might want to do some training sessions of various sorts. For instance, on my Mage i sometimes go melee with unbound weapons or Ebony Blade (Daedric Artifact) and then mix equal amounts Light Armor and Heavy Armor to maximise the fronts on which i'm training, in this case 3, or actually 4 if i choose to train block.
  
  
• Training Block takes a loooong time, if you a caster. So, pick up some gear like mentioned above, then find a weak npc and let it attack, find a corner where you can stand facing the npc without getting knocked out of place. Then wedge your mouse so it wont moove, and place an item heavy enough to press down your right mouse button (block) then go watch TV :)
  
  
• If your into collecting guard armor from different regions, one way to get them without stealing it, is to behave cowardly and let Dragons eat a guard and then collect the gear afterwards. Downside to this method is that the dragon might actually kill someone that you like while your hiding.
  
  
• Book Collecting; I have 2 containers (not bookshelves) dedicated for this purpouse. One for my main collection, and another for my spare books. All books go in the "main" collection for "filtering", then i take everthing i got more than one of and put in my secondary collection and use those for filling bookshelves with once i have a whole series in spare. (point is that it is much easier to keep track of what you got if you keep them in a container rather than a bookcase)
  
  
• Speech; Late in the game you might want to look into the speech perks, it is surprisingly convenient and usefull. I got the perk to invest 500g in most vendors business, once spend most in the shop will be freebies that will net you way more than the 500g spend + Vendors will have bigger amount of cash on them.
  
  
• Enchanting; Filling up soul gems can be rather annoying, so my advice is to let a follower do it for you. Give your follower a good soul trap bow and soultrap sword and all the empty soul gems you can find/buy and the harvest his/her inventory every now and then.
  
  
• Enchanting; Once you've reached 100, you might think no need to have petty/lesser/and the other minor gems. Your wrong! Why? Well if you use a follower for "Soul Harvester" as i do you can save yourself a lot of time emptying wrongly filled soul gems by letting him/her keep those smaller ones. When he/she is runiing out of inferior gems, just take them and empty them by dropping on the ground, trade back and then harvest the good ones for keeps.
  
  
• Enchanting; Minor Spoiler but important since this is a unique enchant, and you'd hate yourself for selling the item and realising this afterwards. Notched Pickaxe a unique mining pick can be disenchanted and placed on any weapon you like for dual wielding, what makes it unique is that it is the only weapon enchant in game that raises your Smithing skill (5 points) which is a usefull addition to your Smithing Kit.
  
  
• Enchanting; Minor Spoiler again but also important since this is also a unique enchant. In a specific dungeon you will find an axe leaning up against the back of of a throne, this weapon is enchanted with Fiery Soultrap, which on top of the normal Soul Trap enchant adds a small amount of fire damage.
  
  
• Chopping Wood; You can use a follower to chop wood for you and by doing that you skip the animation. Advantage is that you can place your view to point at the chopping block and then just press "E" once in a while to chop more, and let you watch TV or whatever while earning an honest pay.
  
  

 

Hmmm i think that's it for now, i might update this a bit later if i get the urge or remember stuff i would have liked to know when i started.

 

Current Progress in Skyrim

 

Sneaky Stealthy Sniper Assasin lvl 75

Necro Mage lvl 71

 

Peace Out

 

\m/ :devil: Blashyrk Mighty Ravendark :devil: \m/

Edited January 19, 2012 by BlashyrkhRavendark

[Astaril]

Some good tips there, I especially like the book collection one as I have so many I can't keep track of them all.

I didn't know followers could harvest the soul gems either 8)

[Wael90]

^^^^^

He freaking nailed it, hands off. This should be turned into a catalogue or something.

[JanusForbeare]

If, while traipsing through a dungeon, you run across one of those annoying soul gem-pillars that tries to blast you with spells, pull out your bow and shoot the soul gem. It will detach from the pillar and stop shooting you.

 

Oh, and go to Forelhost, on the mountain east of Riften. The reward is worthwhile.

[thesapien]

When leveling up, enemies get stronger, so be careful if you are boosting skills like alchemy, smithing, and enchanting!

 

Dude, this skills put to use make your more powerful than any other!

 

Skyrim has no mentionworthy "Leveling Problem" like Oblivion anyway.

yes and no. It makes it harder if people pwoer level it right away and do not have the stuff needed to craft daedric or dragon.

 

for one to boost it they need to be able to take full advantage of it.

 

Agreed, since I made a similar point earlier in this thread. A pure mage, for example, who levels up in smithing to make money selling armors and weapons or because they just enjoy it too will cause their enemies to also level up, making fights tougher. Selling those items also levels up Speechcraft. I would even add to this example, that mages can get by without enchanting if they can find enchanted items already in Skyrim. And, no, to others, we're not saying there's a leveling problem. If leveling choices didn't matter, that would be a problem.

[thesapien]

If, while traipsing through a dungeon, you run across one of those annoying soul gem-pillars that tries to blast you with spells, pull out your bow and shoot the soul gem. It will detach from the pillar and stop shooting you.

 

Oh, and go to Forelhost, on the mountain east of Riften. The reward is worthwhile.

 

I never tried a bow, but have used different shouts. Becoming Ethereal works. The 3 word Unrelenting Force worked for me too.

[bobthewibble]

Two facts that changed the game for me:

 

1. You can set a follower to 'command' mode simply by holding 'e' while the cursor is on them, no need to enter dialogue - then just point to where you want them to wait or objects for them to pick up or interact with.

 

2. A follower has unlimited inventory capacity when picking up objects you point to in this way.

[bobthewibble]

Puzzle doors and puzzle claws share pictures... examine the claw in your inventory window if you're stumped

 

Haha, It took 10 doors or so until I realized that! Until then I was brute forcing all combinations (it are only 27, so no big deal anyway)

 

Makes me wonder, who ever designed the doors - what did they think would be the benefit of this? 27 Combinations? Where the combo is written on the key you need anyways???

 

Took me about 30min to figure that out. I decided to read the journal from the guy who had the claw. It said, "those who hold the key have the answers in their hands". So basically, the answer was on the key.

 

I know, it's like writing your locker combination on the locker. I mean, why make a puzzle door at all if you're only going to write it on the key? Why not just use a doorknob? Draugr logic. No wonder they're all dead :P

 

It says in one of the books you find that the claw locks were to keep the draugr IN, not people out. I was impressed they even dealt with this issue in the 'lore'.

[pastafrola]

-Buy charged petty soulgems from court wizards when leveling enchanting, you recover the gold by selling enchanted crap (cloth and jewelry) to them.

[wetwork]

Went from 90 to 100 in destruction in under an hour by killing raising and killing Draugr scourges etc (obviously both smites are with destruction magic). Freakn awesome 'cause I was hanging to crack that 100 mark.

You can pull the soul gems out from the pillar traps too, they're all timed and not continuous.

Eat every alchemy ingredient you find.

Draugr burn really well.

Don't kill all the Khajit traders in the DB quest, the one's you let live carry cool stuff to buy.