The Elder Scrolls: It's the IX Divines, you milk-drinkers

[Avilan the Grey]

There are several followers I really like:

Serana, because I am shallow enough to think she's hot, AND she has a pleasant personality AND she is the best written follower in the game I know of (I have not played through Dragonborn yet).

Lydia, even before Dragonborn. A true Amazon (Valkyrie? Oh and this is another black-haired Nord, actually, forgot about her for some reason!). A True Shield-Sister (if she wanted to the companions would take her in a hearbeat, I feel) and general bro.

Aela: With the exception of her wearing the wrong armor type, she is great (I personally think she is much more vain than she lets on, and likes showing off). Tough, no-nonsense, a "feral amazon" as pointed out above.

Jenassa: The Psycho Light Dual-vielding artist of blood. One of two dual-vielding followers, but she also happily uses staffs. Even dual-vielding them. She is nuts, but she isn't dangerous (to civilians) since as she points out very well realizes that if she killed everyone she meets, nobody would be around to enjoy her "art". Also if you don't want to use Lydia, she is just 500 gold away from an EXCELLENT follower very early in the game.

Brelyna: Pleasant, curious and very helpful. A little snarky when you overload her, but hey. Her only downside is that you need mods if you want her to reach higher than lvl 20. A great summoner with Destruction on the side.

[DigoDragon]

Come to think of it, I'm curious: what are people's favorite followers?

Vanilla-wise I tend to like Lydia for her sometimes grumpy attitude (like when you ask her to carry stuff). I dunno, I find it cute. Jordis is fun too. I like her optimistic-sounding speech. Jordis takes more work to get though, so I don't often acquire her with my characters. Lately if I want to pick Lydia, I'll mod her a bit to have her play a different combat role. I had fun making her a sneak-archer with a crossbow. That was pretty cool.

[TheEmerged]

Aha. I had gotten the impression that the type of soul gem didn't matter, since I tried quicksaving and doing the same enchantment with different sizes of gem, and the results came out the same.

Looks like it'll be a while before I can manage good enchantments, since I don't have the chance to stock up on good gems or kill the things that would fill them yet.

Okay, some pointers here.

>Early on, disenchant as many items as you can before you try to make anything. You get skillups from this and it increases your chance of getting useful enchants, and this is the best way to get those lowest levels.
>Similarly, recharging a magic item increases this skill.
>In particular, you want to get your hands on the Muffle enchant. This is actually a somewhat hard one to get randomly. Eventually you'll want Banish and Paralyze as well.
>Don't worry too much about making Fortify Enchant potions early on unless you're wanting to make a specific item for your own use before getting to 100 Enchant & Alchemy skill. They don't last long enough to be worth it.
>As soon as you feel up to it, you really REALLY want to do that quest and take the Black option. Black soul gems are always full power, and you'll run into plenty of humans to kill for them.
>The speed at which it skills up is determined by the value of the enchant you create. As such, it will go up faster the more powerful of an enchant you're making. So if you put perk points into Enchanter (the "root" skill in the Enchant tree) the skill will go up faster in addition to just being better.
>Why did I mention the Muffle enchant? Because it's a fixed value regardless of the gem you use, so it's a really good way to skill up using large numbers of petty\lesser soul gems. Better enchants like Banish & Paralyze are still better but only if you have the high-end souls for it.
>Eventually, you're going to want to create a set of Fortify Alchemy gear and then use that to power-level Alchemy. Once your Alchemy is capped too, you'll want to create some Fortify Enchantment potions so you can make an even better Fortify Alchemy set. You will then need to make better Fortify Enchant potions... and continue until you cap out your Fortify <skill> enchants (takes three stages if I remember right).
>At this point? Game = mostly easy mode when you have the Black Star and don't mind making multiple gear sets.

[Calemyr]

Okay, some pointers here.

That's pretty much the bulk of enchanting for you right there.

A few additions/modifiers I would make:

* The Black Star is, as far as I'm concerned, quite overrated. It can only carry one soul at a time (i.e. Only good for one bandit in a camp) and grand souls shouldn't be used for training anyway. In my book, at least. If you want to extend a middle finger to the daedric lady of dusk and dawn, the Black Star is certainly a worthy prize, but if you don't want to make an enemy of Azura and Aranea (no in game impact if you do), there is absolutely nothing wrong with Azura's star. Mammoth's have grand souls, so by the time you need them you've got a replenishing supply either way. Besides, not all black souls are grand in Skyrim.

* An enchantment you want really early on is Fiery Soul Trap, which is available only on an enchanted axe found in the nordic tomb "Ironbind Barrow", near the northern center of Skyrim and right next to the inn (Nightgate Inn) and mountain underpass (Wayward Pass) in the area. You'll have to deal with a boss-grade Draugr and then a necromancer (which can be pretty nasty fights if done too early), but it's worth it for this funky enchantment. It's half destruction and half conjuration, so your skill in both schools increase the efficiency of the enchantment, but that's not the best part. The scaled effect of the enchantment is the soul trap, meaning that you get roughly 10 fire damage (modified by Augmented Fire and Fire Enchanter perks) no matter whether you use a really cheap 1 second soul trap or an expensive 30 second soul trap. It's a really handy enchantment for creating an efficient soul gathering weapon, requiring very little in the way of recharging for the amount of damage and soul trapping it does.

There are two additional paths to boosting your power through alchemy (both of these work on the console, which is where they're at their most useful due to no mods or console commands):

Spoiler: 1) The Alchemy-Enchant Loop (Totally Legit)

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This is not cheating, not to my mind. Alchemy has Fortify Enchant, Enchant has fortify Alchemy, the math is pretty obvious.

What you need:
* Alchemy 80 and Enchanting 80, with their base perks up to rank 5 and the Skill Enchanter perk for enchantment.
* A freaking boatload of Fortify Enchantment ingredients (I use blue butterfly wings and snowberries) and a lot of decent to good soul gems.
* A good number of low grade circlets, amulets, gloves, and rings.
* For best results also collect a Falmer Helmet (somewhat easy) or a Pent-Oculus Helmet (requires stealing from Imperials in Dragonbridge). These helmets can be worn with circlets, giving you 5 enchantable items rather than 4. They're rare enough, however, that you don't want to replace them often.
* It can work with less skill and perks, but will require a lot more ingredients and soul gems.
* A disenchantable item with the Fortify Alchemy enchantment.

1) Make good Fortify Alchemy gear (Head, Circlet, Ring, Amulet, Gloves).
2) Make 1-5 Fortify Enchantment potions, depending on how many things you want make.
3) Take a moment to plan out what you want to make. 30 seconds is not as much time as it sounds. If you are going to name it, decide on that name now.
4) Craft a Fortify Alchemy item. If you still have gear to replace, return to step 3.
5) Once you've upgraded enough, return to step 2.
6) Eventually you won't be able to create a better potion or enchant better gear. But this level of gear and potion is still a pretty big upgrade.
* This can be done one loop at a time as you play.
* Make some Fortify Smithing gear every once in a while while you're at it. Tempered gear is a really nice advantage.
* If you have the 100 Enchanting perk already, you can create Fortify Alchemy/Smithing gear for gloves, rings, and amulets - a one stop shop for crafting boosts.

This approach is limited by diminishing returns. The amount you gain for each run through the loop is less than the one before. This way you can become very, very powerful, but within the expectations of the game.

Spoiler: 2) The Restoration Loop (Obscene Exploit)

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This one is a game breaker. If you use it, you will be a god. Seriously, don't use this if you're even remotely considering playing seriously.

This exploit is based on one little mistake they made during game design: Fortify Restoration was made first and copied to make the other Fortify Skill effects. By some slight oversight, this makes drinking a Fortify Restoration potion boost Fortify Skill enchantments. In itself, that's not a big deal, but enchantments have Fortify Alchemy. Unlike the Alchemy-Enchant Loop you no longer have diminishing returns, you have exponential escalation.

How to do this:
First, horde anything and everything with a Fortify Enchantment or a Fortify Restoration effect.
Second, find at least one disenchantable Fortify Alchemy item and a few filled soul gems (larger is good, but not necessary).
Skill and perks are irrelevant for this - they just reduce the number of Fortify Restoration potions you need to make.

1) Create as many Fortify Alchemy items as you can (Head, Circlet, Ring, Amulet, Gloves). Use decent soul gems for this, but save your heavy hitters for after you make some Fortify Enchantment potions.

2) Create a single Fortify Restoration potion. Drink it.

3) Take your Alchemy gear off.

4) Leave your menu entirely (the effect needs to... well... take effect). Go back to items.

5) Put your Alchemy gear back on. Their effects will now be boosted by the potion.

6) Craft another Fortify Restoration potion. The effect will be bigger this time. Drink it and return to step 3. Repeat as needed.

* Every once in a while make two potions. You have to be quick about this process and complete the loop before the potion wears off. Having a backup potion is handy for starting back up where that potion was made if you take too long.

* The increase will seem minimal at first, but the increase is exponential. 1.1% to 1.21% is not a big deal, but 100% to 10,000% is clearly more of a big deal.

* As the value of these potions will increase as well, you'll almost certainly max out alchemy along the way. If you want, make a couple invisibility potions while you're up there and try to sell them. Nobody will be able to afford them, but your speech skill will increase based on the value of the item not the amount of coin you get for it - max out speech by selling a potion or two.

7) Once you've got a suitably absurd number on your Fortify Alchemy items, make a bunch of Fortify Enchantment potions. These potions will increase your enchanting power so ridiculously that the game becomes absolute comedy.

8) Make some Fortify Smithing gear (Rings, Gloves, Amulet, Chest) with these potions to completely redefine "Legendary" when tempering gear. Iron dagger that can do thousands of damage? Yeah. War hammer with a knockback that can make giants look like weak-armed sissies? Oh, yeah. Gloves that improve your unarmed damage to the point you can kill dragons with one punch? Yes, if you get the Pugilist Gloves from the Riften Ratways.

9) Enchants to give allies include Fortify Health/Stamina/Magicka and their respective Regen enchants. They now have godmode themselves. Or just give them super-tempered gear, that'll make them godmode almost as well.

Edit: Actually, if you wanted to play vaguely fairly, you could just make a ring with Fortify Health and Fortify Unarmed and be done with it. You could then play the game normally, but if you get annoyed or endangered you can just slip the ring on and just punch everything into submission. Very cathartic.

[Divayth Fyr]

It can only carry one soul at a time (i.e. Only good for one bandit in a camp)

Which is also true for the normal version.

and grand souls shouldn't be used for training anyway.

Why not, when you have a reusable stone that gives you a grand soul for killing a random NPC? It will train you faster.

Besides, not all black souls are grand in Skyrim.

This is the first time I hear of such a thing - could you share the details?

One more thing to note is that the Black Star (in vanilla, the unofficial patch team decided to change that) can capture all souls, so it is strictly better than the normal version.

[Calemyr]

Okay, first off: I'm not saying the Black Star is "bad" by any sense of the word. It's very good. But it's not so much better than the Azura's Star that you have to take it no matter what.

Which is also true for the normal version.

Absolutely. The Star means you always have at least one soul gem available. To use it for training, however, requires you to go kill something, come back and use it, then go kill something else. This limitation exists for both versions, but humanoid targets are rarely alone. You'll only get one use of the Black Star out of the group, which means that, while an advantage, it isn't as big an advantage as it at first appears.

Why not, when you have a reusable stone that gives you a grand soul for killing a random NPC? It will train you faster.

There is no way on earth that the star is an efficient use of time. Kill something, enchant, kill something, etc, forces you to keep travelling between your crafting base (you'll want a Well Rested bed (or a matrimonial bed) handy for the XP boost) and finding something to hunt, and since you can't fast travel while hostiles are in the area, odds are good that your previous hunting ground is will be empty the next time around.

This is the first time I hear of such a thing - could you share the details?

I don't use the black star, but I do horde black gems. After adventuring, I have found black gems with common or greater souls in them while I still had regular gems of appropriate size. Thus my conclusion is that black souls are not always grand.

One more thing to note is that the Black Star (in vanilla, the unofficial patch team decided to change that) can capture all souls, so it is strictly better than the normal version.

Correct. Again, better, but not that much better. If you have no investment in the quest, it's the better choice by every angle you can look at. If, however, you are trying to play a character who is reluctant to piss of Azura (who once turned all Chimer to Dunmer in a fit of rage over Nerevar's death), the Black Star isn't so superior that Azura's Star is a bad reward. Besides, you can't recruit Aranea if you take the Black Star, and she's pretty awesome.

What I'm saying here is that the Black Star is the better option by a 45/55 margin rather than, say, a 25/75 margin. The obvious winner, but not so much so that the runner up is a loser.

[The_Jackal]

Aha. I had gotten the impression that the type of soul gem didn't matter, since I tried quicksaving and doing the same enchantment with different sizes of gem, and the results came out the same.

Looks like it'll be a while before I can manage good enchantments, since I don't have the chance to stock up on good gems or kill the things that would fill them yet.

Yes, Enchanting is a long-game play, but you CAN make some pretty good items if you can get your hands on a grand or greater soul gem. For leveling, make sure you do weapon enchants with the FEWEST number of charges, as the price of the item is derived from the magnitude of the charge, not the number. Sell those back for cash, and you'll swiftly find yourself swimming in cash, especially if you do blacksmithing at the same time to improve the weapons on the grinding stone.

My favorite method of raising enchanting and smithing covers it all: Kill draugr and collect ancient nord weapons (yes, this is HEAVY, bring a sherpa). Complete the Companions arc and you can turn them, with a modest amount of steel bars, into Nord Hero weapons. Hone those weapons (with the steel smithing perk) to the best of your ability, then go enchant them with the most costly weapon enchant you can contrive. Sell them back to your smithing vendors for more ore,bars and raw materials, as well as cash, which you can use to stock up on soul gems. Done properly the whole process is economically exothermic and will raise your skills quite swiftly.

[veti]

>Don't worry too much about making Fortify Enchant potions early on unless you're wanting to make a specific item for your own use before getting to 100 Enchant & Alchemy skill. They don't last long enough to be worth it.

Also, they'll make very little difference. The potion adds to your Enchant skill, which makes only tiny, tiny differences to the strength of your enchantments early on, but the curve grows steeper as the skill improves. At 40% skill, a potion that gives you an extra +10% will probably be completely unnoticeable; at 100% skill, it will make some difference.

>As soon as you feel up to it, you really REALLY want to do that quest and take the Black option. Black soul gems are always full power, and you'll run into plenty of humans to kill for them.

I never get the Black Star (Azura is kinda nice), and I've never missed it. There's no shortage of grand and black soul gems, particularly once you get into the Dawnguard questline.

>The speed at which it skills up is determined by the value of the enchant you create.

Are you sure about that? I've never observed any difference - enchanting something to +1% with a Petty soul gem seems to me to give the same XP boost as using a larger gem - and I've seen a couple of online guides that explicitly say it makes no difference.

>At this point? Game = mostly easy mode when you have the Black Star and don't mind making multiple gear sets.

If your goal is to make the game a cakewalk, then really Smithing is more important than either enchanting or alchemy. Legendary equipment = unstoppable and pretty much invulnerable to weapons, the only thing you need enchantments for at that stage is resisting dragon breath.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

>Why did I mention the Muffle enchant? Because it's a fixed value regardless of the gem you use, so it's a really good way to skill up using large numbers of petty\lesser soul gems.

The Waterbreathing enchantment is the same way.

[NeoVid]

I've had fairly sad luck collecting things to disenchant, but I happened to find a cheap set of Muffled boots recently. Collecting useless footgear and using petty gems to stick Muffle on them for fast levels is just the sort of thing I wanted to know about.

And I'm now horribly tempted to use the Restoration crafting loop.

[AdmiralCheez]

There's a good video that shows the absurdity of the restoration exploit loop here, starting around the 12 minute mark. Once it gets going, it escalates ridiculously fast.

[veti]

[SPOILER=2) The Restoration Loop (Obscene Exploit)]
This one is a game breaker. If you use it, you will be a god. Seriously, don't use this if you're even remotely considering playing seriously.

This exploit is based on one little mistake they made during game design: Fortify Restoration was made first and copied to make the other Fortify Skill effects. By some slight oversight, this makes drinking a Fortify Restoration potion boost Fortify Skill enchantments.

I may be wrong, but I assumed this exploit had its roots in the fact that "Fortify Anything" is itself defined as a Restoration effect. So "Fortify Restoration" - makes itself more powerful, i.e. creates a positive feedback loop.

You could (ab)use "Fortify Restoration" to some extent in Oblivion, but skill levels didn't affect enchantment or alchemical strength there, so this loop wasn't an issue.

[NeoVid]

OK, I'm impressed by how much more random the adventuring can get in this game than just about anything I've played.

I was trying to burn up a little time, in hopes that a person I needed to find for a quest would turn up. As I'm wandering around town looking for them, someone in the inn challenges me to a drinking contest. Immediately after, I wake up in a town I've never been to before, halfway across the map. A murder gets committed on the street right in front of me, and my searching for who's behind it results in my getting a life sentence to hard labor for murder. I get out by helping the anti-Nord prisoners inside stage a mass breakout, and as soon as we see the light of day, I'm left standing there stupidly while the other escapees take the opportunity to massacre half the town.

Lesson learned. Adventurers shouldn't drink.

[NineThePuma]

That's two quests at once overlapping, but yeah.

[Winter_Wolf]

Regarding the fortify restoration loop exploit, if you're on a PC you could save yourself the time and just use the command console to jack up either your alchemy skill to make high powered potions, or your enchanting skill to make high powered fortify enchanting items*. Maybe it's cheating, but whatever. Skyrim is a single player game and eminently beatable without exploits or console commands anyway, so why not have a little fun with it?

'Cause if you're invested in spending that much time with the fortify restoration loop, you're already committed on some level to doing essentially the same thing as a console command. 'Course, if you're not on a PC, it's not an option. Frankly I don't see the difference between using an exploit to do something arduously and using the console to get the same results quickly. I've done it both ways, and seriously you get better control over just how much you power up with a player.setav command. For reference, 199 is about the highest you want to go with your enchantment skill if you're enchanting weapons (so 100 in the skill and a +99 enchant* item will get you where you want to go; crafting at 288 will get you a +99 item*). It's already overkill anyway, but beyond that level weird things start to happen. I believe 500 enchanting will get you 162% enchantments on things like smithing or +81 unarmed damage.

*I have a mod that grants a disenchantable magic item with a fortify enchanting magic.

[veti]

Lesson learned. Adventurers shouldn't drink.

When you finally track down the guy who initially challenged you, then all of that will make so much more sense. More than even the writers ever intended.

You might even amplify that effect by not trying to track him down immediately, but just getting on with whatever presents itself as it comes up, until you stumble back onto the trail.

[NeoVid]

When you finally track down the guy who initially challenged you, then all of that will make so much more sense. More than even the writers ever intended.

You might even amplify that effect by not trying to track him down immediately, but just getting on with whatever presents itself as it comes up, until you stumble back onto the trail.

In an amazing coincidence, I finally found the person who I was looking for before the drinking contest started. Before I could give her the item I was hoping to deliver, she told me about how I needed to pay her back for the ring she'd given me for my impromptu wedding that I'd been ranting about last time she'd seen me.

When I put the pieces together, I decided my character isn't touching alcohol again for the rest of his adventuring career.

[Anxe]

In an amazing coincidence, I finally found the person who I was looking for before the drinking contest started. Before I could give her the item I was hoping to deliver, she told me about how I needed to pay her back for the ring she'd given me for my impromptu wedding that I'd been ranting about last time she'd seen me.

When I put the pieces together, I decided my character isn't touching alcohol again for the rest of his adventuring career.

Just wait until you find your new wife!

[Duck999]

In an amazing coincidence, I finally found the person who I was looking for before the drinking contest started. Before I could give her the item I was hoping to deliver, she told me about how I needed to pay her back for the ring she'd given me for my impromptu wedding that I'd been ranting about last time she'd seen me.

When I put the pieces together, I decided my character isn't touching alcohol again for the rest of his adventuring career.

The drinking contest is such a good quest, and is so entertaining too! And it has a good prize... If I remember correctly.

[mythmonster2]

The drinking contest is such a good quest, and is so entertaining too! And it has a good prize... If I remember correctly.

Yeah, being able to summon Dremora for backup is pretty useful for most types of characters. Even stealth can helped by giving a nice, flaming distraction for everyone to pay attention to, if they don't notice you.

[Gaelbert]

In regards to followers, who are some good ones for an evil character? I almost always play good/neutral, and I just don't think my usual Mjoll, Aela, or Lydia would fit with the character I'm running.

In other news, I'm running this character. Even though I've played a ton of vampires, this character design looks really interesting and fun to me. I've not run a spellblade yet, and the synergy between shouts is great.

[veti]

In regards to followers, who are some good ones for an evil character? I almost always play good/neutral, and I just don't think my usual Mjoll, Aela, or Lydia would fit with the character I'm running.

I think Jenassa would work well - or more generically, most people you find hanging about in a pub and looking for violence. J'zargo from the College looks promising, though I've never tried him myself.

[Triaxx]

Jenassa is amazing for an evil character, and Borgakh the Strong Heart is awesome for anyone, and she doesn't mind you being evil.

[Sharoth]

Damn. Now I want to start up a new Skyrim playthrough.

[Calemyr]

Damn. Now I want to start up a new Skyrim playthrough.

It's catching. I'm trying a high elf ex-Thalmor known as Baccano. Dumb joke, I know, but looking at Thalmor names it just kinda made itself.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

It's catching. I'm trying a high elf ex-Thalmor known as Baccano. Dumb joke, I know, but looking at Thalmor names it just kinda made itself.

Awesome. If you don't mind me asking what questlines are you planning to pursue?

[DomaDoma]

J'zargo from the College looks promising, though I've never tried him myself.

He's a follower who actually cooperates with your sneak tactics. Highly recommended.

[Triaxx]

Hah, I just started my third Archer. Great fun having the sighted bows and no crosshair. Does make shooting with non sighted ones a bit more challenging, but that's kind of the point.

[veti]

It's catching. I'm trying a high elf ex-Thalmor known as Baccano. Dumb joke, I know, but looking at Thalmor names it just kinda made itself.

After a frustrating weekend of trying to get to Karthspire only to see my graphics card collapse mid-way through the Forsworn battle, time after time... I'm sadly giving up on my attempt at a heavy-armour-wearing sorceror. It's weird, it looks very much like a hardware crash, but it always happens at approximately the same point, which means it's behaving like a software bug.

I've already restarted twice from earlier saves to get through previous issues, but this is the last straw. It takes so damn' long to get to this point, I don't have the heart to start over.

Next character is back to light armour. I can't be having with all this extra encumbrance.

[DemonicAngel]

Having a blast with my board and axe/bow light armored nord , but I really can't decide between the empire and the stirmcloaks.
I hate the racism f the latter but also hate the boot licking of the former (Bloody Thalmor )