Taking the Plunge...

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The incessant badgering by my 4-year old son to buy him a Kinnex.... has finally worked. So I bought the bundle with the 250GB XBox, along with two free Kinnex games.

The upside in this, is I got an XBox, and I purchased Skyrim...

But I'm also a total noob at this and I don't think I know what I'm doing just yet. Some general questions for starters.

1. Perks. Since the top perks are only available in skills that you use, and use a lot, it seems senseless to spend perks in anything other than things that you use a lot. So I'm playing a thief archer character. So obviously, I want to spend most of my perks in the sneaking and archery trees. And that's what I've done up to this point. (In fact, I've spend almost all of them in the sneaking tree, because even though I use my bow almost exclusively in combat, my sneak skill is already 45, while my archery skill is only 28.)

Now these two trees seem to pair up pretty well. I definitely want the perk for sneak attacks with bows doing triple damage (not enough sneak skill yet), and I definitely want the critical strike chance on the archery tree (not enough archery skill yet). In fact, that skill may merit more than a one point investment.

Which brings me (finally) to my first question. It seems that the first point in each skill tree can be invested in multiple times. There area also a few other skills in the tree that can be invested in more than once. How good of an idea is this? (Hopefully, it's worth it, as I've already invested two in the first archery skill - more damage can't be a bad idea, right? - and two in the first sneak skill.) It seems like unless you're saving up a perk for a future use, and if you already have everything else in a particular tree that you can currently get, dropping a second point into something you use a lot would be a good idea.

2. That said, there are other trees that I use to some extent, and will eventually get good at, but I'm unsure if I should invest now, or just stick to the two trees I have. The issue I'm having in looking at the skill trees is that I have to spend a lot of prerequisite perks to get to the ones I really like. Like lock picking - I don't have a problem with picking anything from adept or easier. So it seems like a waste of time to spend perk points on all those prerequisites just to get the benefits from the higher ones. (Although I may well spend the two perk points I need to get quick hands, which would allow me to pick locks while staying hidden.) Or the speech tree - useful, but not worth the perks. Or light armor. Or one handed. Or pickpocketing. Or alchemy/blacksmithing/enchanting. All useful, but perks points are in limited supply, and I probably won't ever get good enough at any of them to unlock the top tiered perks.

3. What is the benefit of forking over a few thousand gold to get a house? Sure, it's a place where I can put stuff... I guess. Seems like everyone says I should buy one, but 5K is a chunk of change, you know?

 

You can pay to train up levels in skills you might not use that often. Each trainer will train 5 levels before you need to find a new one. Having said that, it's strongly advisable to concentrate on a couple of trees at first.

5k really isn't that much, I'd get a house ASAP. You will need somewhere to store stuff that you don't want to sell (namely, dragon bones & scales). You can actually glitch the Whiterun house so you get it for free, if you're into that kind of thing.

Try to forget your 'RPG game conventions' and learn Skyrim itself. I've stated another game recently as a mage, and I've discovered it's better to forget wearing robes etc (you will die fast with robes on), and just stick on the heaviest armour you can find and enchant it with -25% Destruction spell cost (or the closest you can get in terms of soul gems available). When you have this enchant on a few items, mixed with the half cost destruction spell perks, mana cost quickly becomes a non-issue. Possibly an exploit that Bethesda oversaw, but there it is.

 

Mana (or I guess magicka) is already of no importance to me. I have spent none of my level ups improving it, and the only spell I cast at all is the healing spell. Even if I'm almost dead, spending my full magicka allotment on healing nearly returns me to full health. (Full enough at least that I recover the rest pretty quickly.) The tree I'm really torn on is one-handed. I know I'm going to backstab, and hell, the sneak perk that allows 15X damage with daggers, well, that sounds like ... a lot.

 

That's a decent way of tackling the game to begin with, but you'll soon realize that against the big mobs, if your backstab doesn't 1 shot them, or at least do serious damage, then you're in trouble.

 

1. It's a VERY good idea. You definitely notice those damage multipliers. Eventually you'll get up to 200+ damage per arrow, non-sneak. That ain't nuttin' to sneeze at.

2. My recommendation is that you invest perks in Light Armor, One-Handed, Alchemy, Enchanting and the Light Armor side of Smithing. Don't invest any in lockpicking (it's easy enough on it's own), Speech, and be discriminating when it comes to the Sneak tree. I usually only add the sneak damage multipliers and nothing else. Smithing and Enchanting are extremely useful, and pretty easy to level up. Also - enchanting can be extremely profitable. Which brings me to your next point...

3. 5K for Breezehome is the best investment you'll make all game, period. You will collect a TON of stuff over the course of the game and you'll need a place to stick what you don't sell off. 5K may seem like a lot (it's actually closer to 6,400 once you finish upgrading) but you'll find that money isn't much of a problem after about level 18. My stealth archer elf guy is level 42 and has something like 100K gold, and that's after buying 3 other houses with full upgrades (Markarth, Windhelm and Solitude houses... what can I say, I'm the Mitt Romney of Skyrim).

Quick money tip: as soon as you can acquire (find or buy) a weapon with the Banish Daedra enchantment, destroy it and enchant basic iron daggers with the enchantment. Depending on your speech skill you'll sell them for around 700 each. Since making iron daggers repeatedly is the easiest way to level up your smithing skill, you'll have plenty lying around. Get your speech skill raised and you'll sell them for more than a grand each.

 

Not quite - you can only train five skills per level from paying a trainer. After that you have to level up before you can train again, with the same trainer or a different one.

There are four tiers of trainer however, which limits how high they can train their particular skill. I believe the levels are Common/Adept/Expert/Master I believe.

There's also a perk calculator you may find useful in curbing erroneous spending. Remember - maximum perks is 80 as maximum level is 81 which is reached when most skills are maxed out at 100.

 

Wait a second... You mean that I only have to destroy one enchanted item to enchant unlimited copies of that enchantment on weapons? I thought it was a one to one ratio. So that if I wanted, to use your example, five Banish Daedra enchanted daggers, I would need to find 5 weapons with that enchantment. I was under the impression (wrongly) that enchanting was a means of switching an enchantment from a weapon that you didn't use to a weapon you could use, but that since the original item was destroyed, you only got to do it once. Or am I completely reading this wrong?

It would seem like the limiting component in all of this would be soul gems - or do you only need one of them for each enchantment too? Does the type of soul gem matter? There seems to be no fewer than three different types. Well, I guess I'd need iron too, but that seems pretty cheap as far as I can tell.

About that. Is there such a thing as a merchant with over 1000 gold? I think I would have the money for a house already, except that I sell off a few high priced items and the merchant is out of cash. I got a million of potions that I created that don't sell for a lot - probably 30 to 40 a pop - but like I said, I have LOTS OF THEM.

Which brings me to alchemy. I have been rather indiscriminate in my alchemical endeavors thus far. I figured out that you don't want to combine stuff with opposite effects. Like if one ingredients confers weakness to fire, don't combine it with something that confers fire resistance, because you get nothing. But I don't actually buy any alchemy components. I just harvest whatever I find, and when I find an alchemy lab, I just start throwing **** together and see what I get. A lot of times I get nothing, and even when I get something, it typically isn't anything that is particularly useful to me. But I can sell it, and since there was zero cost on my part, it's all profit.

Well, there's still the issue of a merchant with enough cash to buy them. But you don't have to smith the better stuff to raise your smithing skill? It would seem like daggers would be good when you're skill was low, but the game doesn't differentiate what you make when you smith an item - so long as you smith something?

That's even better. Five levels with one trainer, then get one level up and you can tack on another 5 points? It seems like even the adept trainers can get you up to level 50, which is pretty good, especially for skills you don't use much. (According to the wikia page, there are three levels, adept, expert and master, which can train to levels 50, 70, and 90 respectively.)

So what you're saying is level 81 is pretty much unattainable, unless I'm willing to donate around 500 gaming hours to this character. What's a more realistic expectation? It seems like 50 would be enough to max out three trees, or max out two and partially develop two or three others.

One more thing. I notice that my sneak skill is flying up, but that my archery skill isn't, even though I use a bow almost exclusively. Is that because I took the thief standing stone? I guessing here again, but I'm assuming that the sign you pick gives benefits to skills of that classification, so since sneak is a thief skill, using that regularly would enhance my advancement. On that note, once I get sneak to an acceptable level, should I switch to warrior to improve my archery ability?

 

On merchants: if a merchant runs out of money, waiting 24 for hours (I think) replenishes his or her cash register. If a merchant's base cash on hand is, say 700, sell what you can and come back the next day - he should be flush again. There is a perk in the speech tree that lets you invest with merchants to permanently increase their cash on hand - but it takes quite a few speech perks to get there, and I've never found it worth it. What I do is load up my inventory with stuff I want to sell and then fast-travel to other cities until I've unloaded everything on the various merchants therein. I go do a quest or two, and by the time I'm back everybody's made their deposit at the bank, so to speak.

On crafting – it works like this: you only have to destroy 1 item 1 time to learn its enchantment. This is based on the enchantment itself - not the item. For example: If I find an iron sword of embers that does 5 points of fire damage per hit, I disenchant it, I then find an Axe of Firey Burniness, I won't be able to disenchant it, because I know the fire enchantment. If I want to make my own Mace of Searing Flamyness, I need an unenchanted mace, a soul gem (bigger the soul and the higher my enchant skill, the more powerful the imbuement), and to have learned the appropriate enchantment by disenchanting (destroying) an item with said enchantment.

On alchemy: it does pay to experiment. While making stamina potions I accidentally made a stamina potion that ALSO gives a bonus to two-handed weapons skill, made a ton of those, sold them all for like 150 each. When the potion lady in Whiterun ran out of dough, I went back to Breezehome to stash them, went and did a few quests, came back, sold the rest, Bob's your uncle.

 

Aldeth read through some of the other threads in this forum, many of your questions are answered and discussed there.

If I were you I would ignore almost everything DR is saying, DO NOT max out your enchanting. Heck I would even recommend staying away from smithing especially since you are a stealth character. Not that it isn't good or powerful, it is, way too good and powerful. When you have finally maxed enchanting and smithing, used it to create superduper items the game is over. Even on master everything just dies instantly and there is no way for you to die. My recommendation is to stick with the items you find and discover, doing that completely revitalized the game for me after having a rather dull second playthrough where I superpowergamed.

I would recommend that you focus on your sneaking and archery for the time being, one problem is that oyu can only use a stone for one of those two skills so check what you want to level most of your secondary skills and then decide if you want the warrior stone or the thief stone.

I would also recommend dashing off to Riften asap to start the Thieves' Guild quests, it will give some excellent gaming, lots of nice items and what is probably hte most important, access to the different fences in Skyrim. Merchants who buy anything from you and that have 4k gold.

 

Normally saying "I would ignore almost everything DR is saying" would summon the 10-ton sh*thammer of snark that is my wrath, but...

Yeah, sadly I think this is actually good advice. On my second playthrough (with a stealth character) I have mostly avoided enchanting because the items I have found have been pretty sweet on their own, especially since I began the Thieves Guild quests very early (like level 10). My other Stealth character - the level 42 guy - is fairly overpowered, due largely to his nice equipment (which I have created myself). I'm nearly ready to beat the game and the fun level has dropped.

So, ADDENDUM: Do most, if not all, of the Daedric Artifact quests, as they yield the most interesting (read: unique) items in the game, and are a ton of fun to boot. Ditto the faction quests. You can do the Companions quests later on, they don't care that you're not a brute-force warrior.

That said - I would still beef up your Smithing skill because you are definitely going to want to improve the weapons and armor you find, unique or otherwise. The best reason to max Smithing is to create the Dragon Scale Armors, which are pretty sweet. But the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood questline offers even more armor choices, which, while not quite as powerful armor rating-wise, offer lots of sweet bonuses and look cool as hell. So I would say work on your smithing, just don't aim for maxing it (which requires concerted effort). Just up your skill when you find you have a stockpile of iron ingots and leather strips, which will allow you to improve your weapons and armor at least to a respectable degree.

 

I keep telling myself, I will get started on the main storyline, I will get started on the main storyline. I just keep getting side quests, which I feel compelled to complete. However, at this rate, there seems to be no end of potential side quests out there. I do one, go back to the person who gave it to me to collect a reward, go sell some stuff, and invariably pick up another side quest. I even got this one about finding a guy in a bards college or something like that.

I would love to start the thieves guild, and I wouldn't mind getting the assassin's guild too. In fact, I think I might prefer the latter. I'm just one of those thorough gamers. I can't skip a side quest, and I still haven't even got to Whiterun. I discover some cave, or mine, or whatever, and I can't just keep walking. I have to go in. I know that's going to bite me on the ass sooner than later, when I walk into something they didn't intend for you to do until you were level 50, and I'm level 10.

Hell, I haven't even progressed the main storyline beyond my initial escape. I assume this dragonestone I found is good for something, and I probably will find out what if I get my ass over to talk to the Jarl dude in Whiterun - but I've already covered why that hasn't happened yet. Also found a shout, but I can't use it yet, because I haven't found a dragon to kill yet, which I find rather surprising given the ubiquitous nature of these creatures that everyone reports. (Then again, I'm only level 10, so FIIK whether or not I can even kill a dragon if I happened to find one.)

As far as thief or warrior stone - I don't know. I'm leaning warrior because I think after archery and sneak that I'm going to want something in the way of one handed weapons. Yes, light armor would be nice, but my character up to this point involves killing stuff from a distance. So I don't know how much armor will help as I'm pretty much trying to stay out of harm's way. Even with backstab and the 15X multiplier, I'm assuming that with a good dagger I can one shot stuff. It might come down to what I find first - someone who can train me in archery versus someone who can train me in sneak. If what DR says is true - that he has 100K gold with nothing to spend it on, I can buy my advancement in one, while working my way to advancement in the others.

 

Couple of things.

One - don't overthink these quests. I can tell you're overthinking them, so stop. This is not like BG2 where certain quests have time limits. I got assigned one quest at level 8 with a "meet me in so and so cave right away, I won't wait forever," promptly forgot about it, then at like level 40 decided to clear out my cluttered quest log, found the cave (by accident!) and there she was, saying "ah, there you are. Glad you got here so fast." It really doesn't matter, the quests will always wait for you.

Head to Whiterun at your next opportunity, and go talk to the Arl. You won't see a dragon until you do that.

Two - just because you find a place doesn't mean you have to go in immediately. Walk close enough to the entrance of a new place to get it marked on your map, finish what you're working on currently, and then bring up your map. Any place that hasn't been "cleared" will be indicated on the map, and you can fast-travel straight back to it from there. You're like me - you don't want to forget this (potentially!) cool cave you just walked by, but you have to remember it'll still be there tomorrow. FFS, it IS a cave.

I know it feels like you're pretty far into the game, but believe me when I tell you you haven't even scratched the surface yet. To compare it to BG2 terms, you haven't even been to the Copper Coronet yet.

 

I will start the main storyline. I will start the main storyline. I will start the main storyline.

Well yeah, I know that you can quick travel to places you have already visited, but it's like a siren's call. Hell, there's probably just some bandits, but maybe they have something cool. Or maybe there's a bear or a wolf in there, and I can use tanning racks on any animal skins I find. And now I have a pickax, and get this - a wood cutting hatchet, so now I can harvest ore in those caves... not that I have found a place to smelt it ... or chop firewood (which evidently is required if I want to upgrade my bow).

I know - I'm hopeless. I'll sit down after my workout tonight - PAP Upper, Bring it Tony! - with all intentions of heading to Whiterun. And then I'll find a cave. Or a mine. Or a something that I'm just going to have to go take a look at - just for a minute.

I will start the main storyline. I will start the main storyline. I will start the main storyline.

 

Dude, Aldeth there is an unlimited amount of sidequests. Literally unlimited. There are lots and lots of unique ones but the game also constantly generates generic quests for you to do. Do not aim to do everything, if you play a stealth character I would recommend doing the thieves and assassin questlines, the main quest and maybe focus on an area or two (a major city and its surroundings). The game is much too big to do it all with one character. I am on my third character where I try to do as much as possible, my rogue is lvl48, hasn't even started the main quest and I still find new and interesting things to do. This is my first time I have actually tried to find all the Dragonmasks and I must say that it is worth it. Not for the masks themselves although they are nice and useful but for the very interesting and challenging dungeons they are to be found in.

Afaik firewood isn't used for anything, there are a few places you can sell it for a gold a piece. Work as a day labourer if you want. You can also pick cabbage and sell it to the farmer or you can use it to make nutritious vegetable soup which speeds up your stamina regeneration.

 

Haha I saw joa put 'ignore DR' and I was like... Awwww **** is gonna go down! Haha. Slightly disappointed, but nevermind

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

Hmmm... When I tried to upgrade my bow, it told me I needed wood. So I assumed that I needed something to collect wood.

Anyway, I visited Whiterun finally, and killed a dragon (with help obviously). Only died once. I got too cute with it. I had a rock that I could hide behind whenever it used its breath attack, and I just kept hopping from behind the rock to shoot it. Didn't know they could lunge at you, shake you around in their mouth like you were a dog's chew toy, and insta-kill you. I will take care to stay away from the business end of a dragon in the future.

Evidently, there are some penalties for stealing stuff, even if you don't get caught. Had some hired thugs come after me to "teach me a lesson" after some pilfering.

One more question. I've had a few people tell me that "I look sick". Should this be concerning, or is it that I'm agronian (sp?) and I look sick to everyone?

I did do a side quest, just because it sounded cool. Three brothers, bunch of badasses, eventually hunted down and killed and sealed in tombs. It gave me my first experience with draugr, who, even by undead standards, have to be the least observant creatures in an RPG ever. There had to be 30 draugr/restless draugr in there, and I think maybe 3 actually got a swing off against me. At least bandits are willing to put forth a modicum of effort to find you if you kill someone standing next to them. Not draugr! As long as you stay in the shadows and don't move, they can be almost close enough to touch and they won't see you.

The final area was guarded by a "Draugr Deathlord" - presumably one of the three brothers. While he might have had a cool spired helm to differentiate him from the other types of draugr I had encountered, his AI brain was no better. The only real difference is that he took several arrows to kill as opposed to getting one-shot killed like most of the others.

So I took him out, got a new shout, and some stuff that I should be able to sell off that will net me the funds necessary to purchase a house (a couple of staves worth about 1k each). The problem is the other two brothers. They are buried in separate tombs, both of which are half way across the god damn continent. Since I haven't been to anywhere near there yet, I'd have to walk, and even my level of dedication to complete side quests has its limits.

So they are on hold. Got to another town, met the Jarl, met a ghost girl and am investigating the house fire she died in. Have to wait until dark and then "find her" inside. Whatevs. After that, I'm going to meet the Greybeards. But I also got a lead about someone looking to find someone from the Dark Brotherhood. That, I can only imagine, is the lead-in to the assassin guild, so after a stop with the Greybeards, I'm back to side questing.

EDIT: Oh, and the perk that allows you to zoom in while aiming your bow makes distance killing so much easier. Also like the slow time thing - very useful when you still want to use your bow in melee range.

But why do I look sick to everyone?

 

The brothers in that quest are named, so if you killed 'Draugr Deathlord' it wasn't one of the brothers mate. You need to loot something from them too.

 

You look sick cause you are sick. Go to a temple or drink a cure disease potion.

 

Meh - maybe he was named and I'm confusing him with the Deathlord I also knocked off. All those Draugrs look the same you know... I know it was one of the brothers because I got one part of the amulet from his corpse.

OK, but um... how would I know this other than people telling me I look sick? And when did I get sick? I know you can get vampirism or lycanthropy, but I haven't encountered any of either of those type of creatures. What, did I get bit by a rabid wolf or something? Hmmm... I did get bit a while back by a skeever.

Temples do not appear to be particularly common.... (sigh)

 

You get a note in the top corner when you get it, also check your magic menu there is a section called "Active Effects" which has detriments and diseases in red text for you to spot easily