Skyrim Questions

[Rattus_norvegicus99]

I've been eating most all of the components, at least once for each item. Handy way to figure out what they can do. Oh - there is one that can kill me? Wow~ I've not yet found that one, then.

Wait, pick pocketing allows you to carry more weight? *blinks* Uh ... really?

You can tell, I've not used the PP ability.

[msterswrdsmn]

It does, but you need to invest 2 perk points into it (one for the base perk and one for the extra pockets perk). I think you need a score of...40 to get extra pockets?

Pickpocketing can be risky to raise, so it may be easier to raise it up with a trainer.

[The Pretty Prince of Parties]

50, I think - and it's a little risky, yes, unless you invest in the first perk like... twice? At which point it becomes mostly a cakewalk and levels up pretty rapidly.

[P Three]

Is there a way to level up sneaking while you're focusing on heavy armour? I get my Snuggybear whomped whenever I try to build a light armour wearer

[msterswrdsmn]

Aside from trainers? Drauger, mostly. Look for areas where they're lying down; check the alcoves for anything that has a weapon and smack it with a power attack. With a pit of practice, you can raise your sneak score to 30-35 going through bleak falls barrow alone.

Not sure how it'll work with heavy armor at first, but even if they detect you, they won't immedietly wake up and start attacking even with an untrained score (usually) if you take it slow and don't try doing something like smacking them with a greatsword. Again, i haven't done this with heavy armor on; you might have to take your armor off when raising the first 10-20 levels.

You can use a bow to shoot 'em from a distance to raise your sneak, but bows are usually pretty noisy and may or may not wake up multiple things at once.

[P Three]

Wondering if it's worth training up THEN going up heavy armour.

[The Pretty Prince of Parties]

Find a trainer, and spend a few levels training with them. There's a perk (pretty early on, actually) that halves the effect of armor's weight on noise produced. Besides that, investing more heavily in the first perk will make you harder to detect in general. If you don't feel like investing in more than the first perk, you can always level up Illusion and learn the "Muffle" spell to negate the impact of armor on your sneaking anyways (which has the benefit of making you extremely hard for Falmer to detect, since their "visual" detection range is nonexistent.) Just make sure you pick up silent casting from Illusion as well - no point in casting something to be less heard if you're going to be heard casting it.

If you're not terrible with a bow, you can also raise it and archery simultaneously by starting fight with sniping, or by hunting some of the local elk and foxes (which has the added benefit of netting you even more pelts for smithing! Win-win)

[Rystefn]

Have you tried not getting hit? If you don't get hit, then you don't need armor at all.

Seriously, though, sneaking in heavy armor is hard road if you try to start that way. But light armor is kind of better than heavy once you get the numbers up and perk it out, depending on what you're trying to do. If the only reason for one kind over the other is trying not to die, I'd say tough it out with light and sneaking through the early part.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

The armour rating differences between light and heavy armour is non-existent. You pick what armour solely based off of perks and asthetics. (And the light armour perk that allows to regen stamina is godsend)

Removing armour weight affecting spell casting is one of the annoying things in Skyrim.

[The Pretty Prince of Parties]

Not entirely true, but mostly. It's basically 100% true if you use the smithing exploit to boost your armor, allowing you to wear whatever you find aesthetically pleasing. Armor gives a percentage (.12%) physical damage resistance per point of Armor Rating, up to an 80% cap - with some funky business added in depending on how fully armored you are. The numbers you want to look out for are:

"Sword & Board" (all armor + shield): 542 Armor Rating
No Shield (but full armor): 567 Armor Rating
No Armor: 667 Armor Rating

Using Smithing (without exploiting), you can reach this with Steel Plate Armor and up for Heavy Armor (that is to say, anything that isn't Iron, Steel, or Dwarven). For Light Armor, you can reach it with Dragonscale (no shield), Glass (shield) and possibly Elven (w/shield). Fortify Smithing enchantments (that is to say, using them regularly - as opposed to the glitch) allows you to bring anything better than Steel up to this point for Heavy Armor, and anything better than Elven for Light armor - if you can get an extra 44% efficiency in your smithing skill. Alteration spells can also help close the gap if you're close, and don't feel like getting those enchantments.

Each one also has several benefits that the other side will never receive: you'll move faster in light armor, your stamina doesn't drain as quickly, and you'll recover stamina faster. You take less damage from falling with heavy armor, you punch harder, and you recover from staggering faster. The "noise from weight" issue can be diminished for either using Sneak perks, or completely via the Illusion school. I stick by Heavy Armor, mostly, because it gets what is (in my opinion) the best piece of armor in the entire game: Spellbreaker.

[msterswrdsmn]

^that said, if you're still having issues with light armor, maybe invest a little in alteration? Its pretty lackluster early on, but its a decent chunk of extra defense. The magic resistance perks are rather nice as well; a breton with full magic resistance perks and the blessing of mara perk gets something like a 65% resistance to magic BEFORE gear.

[Rattus_norvegicus99]

Now that light armor is mentioned, I remember the char I made before a couple years ago - never finished him - he was a Nord, light armor, two handed weilder, decent sneak ... he did get beat up a lot but he did fantastic damage.

This time around I've got a Nord, sword and board,(hehe, that rhymes) heavy armor who really doesn't get beat up much ... fair with sneak. I have made a Dark Elf, duel wielding sneak, however, and am rather enthused to see what she can do after I finished the campaign with my dude.

[Rattus_norvegicus99]

So ... I have learned a few things since my first questions.

I really love the bow in this game. Oh and sneaking ... in full plate.

Lydia is, indeed, the absolute best buddy to have.

Having a merchant spouse is fantastic.

Decorating houses is awesome.

The wilderness is breath taking ... even from a computer screen.

Some voice actors' voices get REALLY annoying when 45 npcs have the exact same voice.

Enchanting is fun.

I already knew smithing and alchemy is fun, but, well, its even more fun now.

Did I mention I loved the bow?

Magic is interesting and .. also intimidating to try to wield.

Not yet got the hang of pick pocketing ... though I'm fairly sure I would be more successful if I wasn't wearing full plate armor. Still ... after whacking some Dark Brotherhood folks, I do have oodles of neat sneaky armor sets ...

[Rattus_norvegicus99]

So ... I have learned a few things since my first questions.

I really love the bow in this game. Oh and sneaking ... in full plate.

Lydia is, indeed, the absolute best buddy to have.

Having a merchant spouse is fantastic.

Decorating houses is awesome.

The wilderness is breath taking ... even from a computer screen.

Some voice actors' voices get REALLY annoying when 45 npcs have the exact same voice.

Enchanting is fun.

I already knew smithing and alchemy is fun, but, well, its even more fun now.

Did I mention I loved the bow?

Magic is interesting and .. also intimidating to try to wield.

Not yet got the hang of pick pocketing ... though I'm fairly sure I would be more successful if I wasn't wearing full plate armor. Still ... after whacking some Dark Brotherhood folks, I do have oodles of neat sneaky armor sets ...

[msterswrdsmn]

The important thing with pickpocketing is to make sure that they can't see you, and to keep an eye on the value of what you're stealing. Both have a very dramatic effect on how successful you are.

Also, don't go crazy with raising pickpocketing early on. I did it once; got to level 20 in an hour, then promptly got my butt handed to me every time I got into a fight. Even if you level quickly (and you can, since npcs will randomly have incredibly valuable stuff on them) your gear/combat perks won't keep up with your level progression.

[Twily]

Sneaking
I just bought skyrim two weeks ago and played it way too much over the next week. Having ended up with over 80 sneak in that time, I highly recommend using a bow to train it. If you use a sword, as soon as you attack the enemy sees you. If you shoot once, the eye will open slightly as the enemies search and then will close again if they fail to find you. Repeat this and you can take out enemies without taking a single hit and your sneak will go up very fast in the process.

Handy style for warriors
My character uses a Bound Sword in the mainhand and I've found it insanely useful. It does a lot of base damage(better than elven) with the Mystic Binding perk and with two additional perks it will also charge soul gems(making it not so much of a pain to use actual enchanted weapons) and instantly unsummon summoned creatures. In addition to that, you'll always have your weapon even in those areas where your gear is taken. If you use onehanded weapons, I highly recommend checking out the Bound Sword spell even if your character isn't a mage.

Also, don't go crazy with raising pickpocketing early on. I did it once; got to level 20 in an hour, then promptly got my butt handed to me every time I got into a fight. Even if you level quickly (and you can, since npcs will randomly have incredibly valuable stuff on them) your gear/combat perks won't keep up with your level progression

I also second this. I did pickpocketing on my brand new character as soon as I got to Whiterun until it hit 50 though(for the increased carry weight) and had no big issues. If you don't mind a slight challenge and want a few perks to kickstart the game with, this can do it.

To anyone interested in purchasing the game:
Skyrim is steam activated, so buying it from a box is still the Steam version. Amazon has the boxed Legendary addition(That's skyrim +Hearthfire, Dragonborn and Dawnguard) for 25$, where as Steam is asking 40.

[Rattus_norvegicus99]

Wow this game is absolutely huge.

Still not PPing much ... what is this Mystic Binding perk and ... Bound Sword you speak of?

[msterswrdsmn]

Bound sword is a lower level conjuration spell. On its own with no perks from the conjuration tree, its pretty weak.

With the basic bound conjuration perk, the weapons value rises roughly to that of a daedric weapon in terms of base damage. Conjuring the sword raises conjuration; hitting/blocking things raises your one handed/block scores.

The second bound weapon perk gives all bound weapons a permanent soul trap property. Its convinent when filling soul gems MOST of the time. Sometimes it not (ie: when it decides to fill your black/grand soul gems with petty souls)

The third bound weapon perk is essentially an onhit: banishment weapon property.

The weapons are pretty powerful, and give you an easy way to raise your conjuration score alongside summons. That said, if you've already invested heavily in enchantment, your probably better off with enchanted weapons.

[The Pretty Prince of Parties]

It's a Novice-level conjuration spell (meaning you can cast it relatively cheaply from the start of the game) - without perks, it's a teensy bit better than a steel sword. 2 Perks (Novice Conjuration, which will decrease the magicka required to summon it in the first place -> Mystic Binding) will put the damage on par with a Daedric Weapon. It's not a bad way to go, if you don't have a good enchanted weapon.

[Twily]

You can buy it from almost any general mage merchant(including Farengar) or the conjuration specialist in Winterhold.

[Rattus_norvegicus99]

I shall have to look into that. Thank you all.

[Rattus_norvegicus99]

I have finally come to the realization that I will never "find" the dwarves and .. after much research ... have discovered that the Dwemer weren't actual dwarves at all, but bearded elves! Such blasphemy!

[Twily]

I never knew that.

[Rattus_norvegicus99]

I never knew that.

Oh noes, sorry if I spoiled it for you.

[msterswrdsmn]

Spoilers!

There are 2 "dwaves" still alive in one of the dlc. You kill one of them. Horray!