Morrowind Better-Play Guide Version 2.1 2002 Giegue Don't steal this info from this guide without my permission. I mean 'steal' as insist that you made it up and I copied you. You can take innforamtion from this guide and use it in yours to a degree below plagarism if you credit me and you can use a fwe things if you admit you read it somewhere but can't remember. I have read lots of guides on Morrowind and I really don't want to try to guess what info I got from which one, but it's safe to say that most guide writers from GameFAQ's will find something of theirs in here. I do not claim that all of this guide is my own discovery, but most of the general tips are. Item locations are partially borrowed from Stevmill's guide and everyone he got info from in other sections as well. Sorry for not being more specific to all of you whose info I unknowing borrowed but I wsa very unorganized writing this guide. Personal and free use (ex: morrowind fan pages) of this document is acceptable. Please notify me if you post this doc at another web site so I can keep track. Use of this info in pay-based media (i.e. Ziff-Davis magazines, pay-per-view, greedy ex-Ziff Davis employees on the street corner, etc.) is not allowed without a written agreement from me determining the amount of royalties I receive from each sold copy (approximately 1,000,000,000%) ************************************************************************************************ Contents: 1) General tips 2) Pros and Cons of all the choices you can make involving your character 3) Glitiches and how to avoid/abuse them 3.5) Cheats that are actually cheats intentionally made to be cheats not glitches. 4) There is no section 4. Don't try to read it. 5) Just for fun stuff 5.5)Things that would have made Morrowind better than having sex while high on crack. Not that I know anything about what that's like or anything. Why are you staring at me like that? 6) Where to find some rare items ************************************************************************************************ Chapter 1: Basic thoughts to help you survive the huge island of many unfriendly deaths. In no particular order: ¥ Before we get into the general game tips, I want to take the time to say "Read ALL of the guide. Not just where the good armor and spells are, not just the fun stuff. Every stinkin byte of text. Why? Because it'll help both of us. You, because you'll know everything, and me, because you wont have to go online and ask me stupid questions I already answered. Maybe not all the stupid questions were answered, but I tried real hard to. Read the guide before you ask me anything online." ¥ When trying to decide which clothes to steal from rich victims of yours, or from a shop, notice that Exquisite clothes cost more than Extravagant. Exquisite items also have more enchantment points, so they are useful to enchanters that way. Plus, people will notice your taste in garments and often remark about them. People often like players dressed similiar to them. ¥ For most skills, you will need at least 60 points before you can reap all its benefits. Alchemy needs 60 points before you can see all 4 properties of the ingredients. Weapons do better at about 80. Magics vary mostly by the spell, not the skill, so 30 will do for easy spells (like Hearth Heal) but 60 or 80 is better for more difficult spells (like Vivic's Tears). The best way to determine what skills should go into your custom class is discussed in chapter 2, if you were wondering what my thoughts on the various skills were. ¥ Savants and Publists can be your best friends. They know lots of information and topics to talk about. A glitch was found by me, and probably other people, but I will mention it here since it is relevant. AVOID talking about "Morrowind law". It is an endless loop unto itself (that is, it says the same stuff over, and over etc.) ¥ Don't try to rip merchants off. Every refused offer you make lowers their disposition by 1 point. That applies to every time you push the A button. Read the last sentence again. Not price, each and every time you offer. So, don't try to sell a potion of certain death for 1000 G if it's only worth 10G. ¥ Speaking of potions, merchants WILL buy potions with negative effects at the price of other potions you make at the same time. So, carrying 10 potions of drain luck/health/whatever can be a good thing. ¥ There is a trader named Creeper who will buy any object (sans alchemy ingredients) for full price regardless of your Mercantile skill. He has 5K gold, so try buying a lot of stuff off him when selling really expensive items. ¥ Containers in this game often contain random items. Some of them seem to refill occasionally. ¥ Enemies with the Blight are much stronger than regular enemies of the same kind. Diseased emenies are not notably stronger than regular enemies of the same kind. Corprus infected enemies are typically seperate monsters, and are more likely to give you the Blight than corprus. ¥ 'Sleepers' are annoying. Ask them about the Sixth House enough, and they will have a disposition of 0. Then they will attack you regardless of surroundings or witnesses. Normal people will usually not attack you if too many other people can see them beat you to a pulp. Some might, most don't. ¥ Use the map that came with the game. Reread that sentence many times. That map is your best friend if you don't like roads, and why would you? There is way more empty land than road, usually hiding interesting secrets and structures. You will miss a lot of cool stuff if you stick to the roads only. ¥ The odd font and metallic rusted buildings on the map are usually Dwemer ruins. But, lots of ancestral tombs, Dwemer ruins, smuggler caves, and other places are not marked. Find them. Meet interesting people there. Kill them. ¥ 'Fortify Health' potions and spells seem nice, but they are to be avoided. They increase you max and current HP by an amount, but when the effect wears off, you lose the extra max AND CURRENT HP you gained from it. This has killed me more times that I care to admit or understand until I finally traced it. Benefit from my experience. If you understand, scroll down; if not, keep reading this. If you have 60/60 HP, and use a potion of fortify health, you will then have, as an example number that is not necessarily what you will use in the game every time, 96/96 HP. You fight a....Insanely Strong Hampster (NOT a real enemy, just a joke. It is not a hidden enemy. There is no way to unlock it. Maybe the PC version has an add on for them. I don't know or care.) After a long fight, your HP is now......35/96.(It was insanely strong). That's all good, until the potion wears off putting you back to 60 max HP. The math says you would have.......carry the 18 trillion,.........-1/60HP. Look! You were killed by a potion of certain death, I mean, fortify health. Use RESTORE HEALTH effects only. ¥ You cannot naturally increase your stats or skills over 100, but they can be fortified over that amount artifically by items and vampirism. This means if your strength goes over 100 as a vampire, you will not be able to increase it, but if it is at 100 when youbecome a vampire, it will go to 130 or so, and the extra bonus is figured into calculations. ¥ Vampirism, which does exist but mostly in side quests, can strengthen a character. Look in section 2 for more details on whether or not to become embraced by the dark side. Look for people called 'cattle' that signify that vampires are near. ¥ Make multiple saved games of one character. It helps you make decisions, gives you a backup, and opens up more possibilities. You could have 1 save be a vampire dedicated to killing everyone on Vvardenfell, 1 going on the storyline, and 1 making a killing by trading illegal items. Lockups happen infrequently, even on the Xbox, but can ruin your mood and destroy unsaved accomplishments. Play Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and you'll fall into the habit of saving every 3 minutes. It's not necessarily a bad habit. ¥ Approximately 1/10th to 1/5th of you endurance is put into your health every time you level up, giving some more incentive to increase that skill. ¥ If you summon a creature, cast Soul Trap on it and kill it. When it dies, you wil have it's soul. ¥ Only Ascended Sleepers and Golden Saints will let you enchant an object with a constant effect. ¥ Use the Mark and Recall spells to the fullest. Mark a location just outside of a town you get a mission from. Go there, finish the mission, and Recall back. Saves lots of time. ¥ Go ahead and find some commoner in a house and kill him and take his house. The game was designed for this kind of action and it is practically expected of you. It can help to keep a base in each city to hold stuff in. ¥ Use all the repair hammers and tongs you find. They can help extend your armor's life by a few fights. ¥ In jail, you will lose 1 skill point per day you are in captivity. Increasing your misc. skills will help increase the probability that your more important skills stay where they are. ¥ If you play Morrowind long enough to max out your characters major and minor skills, meaning you cannot go up levels anymore, kill someone and go to jail. Your skills will go down, and you can raise them up again to boost your level more. ¥ By doing some math, you can figure out that the max. level you can obtain in Morrowind is 77. And if any of your races' skill bonuses are in a major or minor skill, your max level drops some more. Make sure not to ruin that by boosting your stats until you get 3 5X multipliers as some guides reccomend. You can still hit the max level, since stat points carry over from level to level (at least in the Xbox version) but you'll lose those extra multipliers over 10 points. The jail technique above could help a bit, but you'd eventually run out of people to kill. And getting more than 5K of bounty on your head means a death warrant is issued for you. Ohhhhh. ¥ Boosting your misc. skills will contribute a max. of a 2X multiplier to a skill. Wait, let me fully explain this; each misc. skill will boost a point to a 2X max. multiplier. Other misc. skils with the same governing attribute contribute another multiplier, to 3X, and so on. That is the best way to boost your stats at level up. ¥ Glass armor is the best light armor and Ebony is the best heavy armor. Daedric armor is really rare, but way more powerful. Dwemer armor is almost always heavy, and a close second in strength. ¥ Potions will add their effects together when used, wven if they are the same name. Drinking lots of Sujamma will give you a huge Strength level, able to kill most anything with any weapon (except maybe bows). ¥ If you find some other adventurer with a full set of the same kind of armor you prefer, kill them and take it. A partial glass set (minus bracers and helm) can be found in Druscashti, a shrine in the Ashlands. The owner is Valrina Quarra, a vampire who is pretty good with magic. A more complete set can be found on several people in Ghostgate. Full ebony armor belongs to Seanwen in the Arena Training room in Vivec. The House Vaults in Vivec have a good amount of strong armor. The key to one room in Redoran is held by someone near them, and the other is in a closet at the top floor of a manor. ¥ Using multiple potions that have the same effect adds the effect together for the overlapping duration of the potions. I like to use this to regenerate health faster than the entire city's guards can get rid of it. ¥ Turning yourself in for a crime will give you a 10% discount on the fees you owe. ¥ If you have multiple items/spells that have the same effect but different names, you can use them and the effects will be added together, so making multiple spells with the same effect is a good thing. ¥ Bound items have extra effects wile they are worn, usually relevant to the bound item's type. ¥ Recharge enchanted items rather than enchant new ones if you are looking to gain skill points in Enchant. It saves time and works more often. ¥ The Ashlands and Red Mountain have few roads. Use the map. ¥ Since you can read books without stealing them, look at all of them. Only ones with a value over 100 or so gold actually boost stats, but a lot have some helpful info anyways. ¥ There are 3-6 copies of each book that will increase your skills, so don't worry about not being able to find one. ¥ In large areas (especially shrines and larger Dwemer ruins), use levitate effects to search areas you cannot walk to. You might find some nifty treasures. I did. ¥ If you lock in sneak mode, and put a rubber band or something on the controller, and walk into a wall where no one can see you (shown by the sneak icon that appears beside your magic), you will effectively build up your sneak skill without doing anything. Shut off the TV and wait a few hours before coming back. You could gain a few levels if Sneak is a major or minor skill this way, plus your sneak skill will be higher. ¥ For weapons, use a rapid fire 3rd party controller and attack a ghost with a weapon that cannot kill them. Back them into a corner so they can't escape. Wait until desired level obatined. If it breaks, get another one or have it repaired. ¥ For magic, buy a weak spell with an effect in the school you wish to increase. Have a spell made with that effect at the weakest levels you can (damage 1-1, area 1, time 1, etc). They won't cost much in gold or magic, but they will be an effective way to build you skill. They will be realtively reliable, and they don't need to hit to increase you skill, just be cast properly. ¥ For armor, put on all the armor you can wear in the desired weight level. Get lots of healing potions/scrolls or spells. Make sure the armor is the strongest of the weight class you can get. Go to a group of weak enemies, like a mudcrab gathering or rat party. Get them all to attack you. Stand there and heal when necessary. Wait until desired level obtained. If one or more spots is open or becomes open by the armor breaking, it will begin to affect your unarmored skill more and your armor skill less. The curias (body) makes up 40% of the armor, and the other parts make up 10%, so you should be ok unless the curias breaks or you happen to be a perfectionist. (if you are, I wouldn't reccomend Morrowind. You can't be perfect at it.) ¥ Mercantile skill increases by selling and buying things. Sell your entire inventory of potions one by one to a very rich person or for very little gold. ¥ To increase your Armorer skill, just buy and use all the hammers and tongs you can buy or find. But, use them on the spot. They are really heavy and can take up space for other items. ¥ You increase your Athletics skill quicker by swimming rather than running. ¥ Acrobatics can be easily increased by jumping all the time while traveling. Use 1st person view, 'cause you look really stupid jumping across the world. After Acrobatics hits 50 or so, it becomes faster than walking or running. ¥ For Enchant, capture all the rats and cliff racers you can in gems. Then make weak enchantments on old armor or paper, and recharge it after you use it with the remaining gems. ¥ Alchemy can be increased smply by making potions over and over. Just get lots of ingredients and mix them together into working potions. Your succes rate increases as your skill rises, and you skill rises when you make working potions. Kinda like a catch-22, huh? ¥ Disarm traps and pick locks to increase your Security skill. Hard to increase in mass numbers. ¥ Speechcraft can be incresed by persuading people and getting the desired response. ¥ Emenies respawn every 6 hours of game time or so. Resting near a respawn point will result in interruptions every 6 or 5 hours, rounding. ¥ Don't kill people arbitrarily if possible, as a few people may be important to the story and their death will destroy the threads of prophecy. Most people are fair game, but watch some Blades and travel merchants. ¥ Using X instead of A when resting will automatically set the hours to the exact number you need to fully heal. ¥ This is a big game, and not all the people in it have a great sense of direction. If you know someone is lost because you just came from the direction you came from or already explored it, go the other direction. The Ashlanders occasionally misinterprit thier compass when looking for Dwemer ruins and Sixth House shrines. ¥ You hear a lot about corprus, but it really doesn't affect you too badly. Plus, you get it in the main storyline and later get cured. After you are cured, you can not get any kind of disease, common, blight, or corprus. By the way, hemophilia is a 'common' disease in this game, so after you are cured you cannot become a vampire. ¥ If you fight a mage that summons a creature to help it, ignore it and focus on the mage. When he or she dies, so will the summoned creture. Some spells also go away when the caster dies. ¥ Or, as an alternative to the above, cast Soul Trap on the summoned monster and kill it, giving you a powerful filled soul gem. ¥ Soul Trap does not work on named NPCs, and probably does not work on 'cattle' or 'egg miners' either. Apparantly people don't have souls. Hmm... ¥ Intervention scrolls take you away to the nearest kind of temple the scroll is associated with. Almsivi takes you to the tribunal temples and Divine takes you to the Imperial temple nearest you. ¥ Find a Necromancer's amulet. They give you a few constant effects that are about 1/2 the power of the same effects you would have as a vampire. Necromancers might have them. ¥ Disposing of corpses will help reduce the size of your save file somewhat, if you are concerned. ¥ If an enemy is running from you, and they stop, you can attack them with magic or projectiles from a distance and they will not run more or attack you. ¥ Being a vampire automatically increases some creatures' inclination to run from you, espically slaves. ¥ If you do kill someone in the thread of prophecy, you can still most likely beat the game. (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT) If you kill the last surviving dwarf in the Corprusarium, you can beat the game as long as you got the boots off him. If you kill anyone before you needed them, you will have to 1)Kill Vivic. Yes, he's God here, but he can be killed. Just bring lots of enchanted weapons, healing items, and luck, or, as those of us who don't rely on luck call it, skill. 2)Take the 'Unique Dwemer item' to the last living dwarf in the Corprusarium. He will identify it. 3) Kill Dagoth Ur and his followers in Red Mountain. This is a bit of a simplification, but that's the emergency backup plan to save the world.(END SPOILER) ¥ If you are being attacked by multiple monsters, or more likely guards, using an area effect spell can save some time since you hit multiple targets for some damage. ¥ In relation to the above, many items are found in obscure places, like behind or under beds, the middle of forests and arenas. They don't belong to anyone usually. ¥ All weapons can knock opponents down, but heavier weapons have a higher chance of doing so. If the target (or you) is wearing heavy armor, they are more likely to be knocked down than normal. High Endurance and Willpower can prevent you from getting knocked down. ¥ Armor will offer greater protection as you skill in that armor class increases. Glass/Ebony offer 2X your skill level in that class, and Unarmored sections are equal to your unarmored rating. ¥ Levitating and using a bow/crossbow will let you hit targets from out of range above them. ¥ Merchants regain their base level of money and goods after 24 hours. Narcalya in Balmora is really helpful to alchemists, since you can sell 3K's worth of potions, make some more, and sell them again after some time passes. They also keep all the items you sell them if they aren't wearing it themselves. ¥ Once you join a Guild, you can take stuff from the equipment chests for your own personal use without punishment. ¥ Once you Speechcraft is around 30, you can probably endlessly Admire a person with the right frequency to keep them from hating you permanently but not so that it won't go up. It fluxuates perfectly around 50-80. If it's not working, find an Orc or Nord orsomeone easily confused like that. ¥ Do not kill any ashlander in a camp of more than 4 people if you want to finish the game the mormal way. Killing one will make the whole camp hate you. ¥ If you insist on living a criminal life, be careful. When your bounty goes over 5K gold, a death warrant is issued for you. Guards will not allow you to turn yourself in, and proceed to make your innards into your outards, if outards is a real word. ¥ If you have lots of Petty soul gems to fill, head to an egg mine. Lots of Kwama creatures there, all will fit in a petty gem except the queen, who manages in a lesser gem. ¥ Looking at the statues of the 7 Daedra can occasionally give you extra quests. Each has different mission for you, and each has a good reward. Azura will give you a reusable soul gem. ¥ Alchemists looking for lots of items with 'Restore Health' should head for the Grazelands and nothern Azura's coast. Wickwheat, marshmerrow, and saltrice abound. ¥ Some ashlander merchants have lots of gold, but at the same time won't give you much for even the most expensive items. You definitely want more than 10% of that 120K gold Daedric Katana, right? ¥ Powerful enemies like Golden Saints and the Atronatchs will usually have a weak Reflect spell on them, so try not to use that sword you enchanted with Paralyze or Absorb Health on them. ¥ Just so you know, there are over 3K NPCs, 316K hand placed objects, and 27 billiion possible playable characters in the game. Don't believe it? Go count yourself. The first person to give me a list of all the NPC's names and their locations gets a prize. You like emulators? (Hint, hint.) ¥ When determining which items to take and sell and which to leave, try using a weight:value ratio. If it's over 1/2 (if it weighs half of what it's worth or more), leave it. There are lots more valuable items, some of which weigh .1 like emeralds and diamonds and such. ¥ Although Marksman wepaons are exhausted eventually, you can reclaim approx. 1/20th of your ammo and 1/5 of thrown weapons from dead enemies. Smarter ones will throw them back at you. ¥ If you start a guild or house side quest, finish it before you finish the game if you can. They typically give sweet items, bigger discounts, and much respect from the guild members. The Theives Guild quest earns you a 5X quality lockpick with 50 uses. Very handy, although by the time you get it you may be able to use Apprentice picks to open level 75 locks. I could. ¥ Creatues without sharp claws or teeth, like netches, will not reduce your armor rating. Useful to increase your armor skill if you have the healing potions for it. ¥ Shop around when training, buying, or selling goods. You can find Security and Sneak cheaper from the female Khajiit downstairs in the South Wall than from Sugar Lips most of the time. ¥ Don't be afraid to train a stat up. It still counts toward a level up and speeds up development. It does not reset your current total toward a skill point up, it decreases slightly due to the new necessary point total for a point up. Confused? I'll explain it better. *** If you look at a skill in the stat menu and hold Y, it'll show you th ecurrent progress toward a point up. As an example, it might say 35/100. That indicates you are 35% done toward a point up. Not necessarily 35/100 points. The needed points go up quickly as you increase in levels. It could be 89/250 or something. When you train a skill, you keep the earned points and the needed points goes up. So, you might go from 56/75 points to 56/85 points after training. Just an example, but you should understand now. ¥ If you elect to run the one side quest involving delivering clothes to a merchant, and you have to swear an oath to the guy, be careful and make sure you finish it. Otherwise, you wil get the 'mark of Zenithar'. No merchant will sell of buy stuff from you. If you sell them to the wrong person, you will probably have to kill them because they will likely wear one or the articles of clothes themselves and not sell it back. Don't mess us and you will be ok. ¥ Check the Glitches chapter to find some more helpful tips you can use to increase your skill and fun levels in the game. ************************************************************************************************ Chapter 2: Decisions that you may want my opinion on now, or, more likely, when you were making your character for the first time but might still not be too late to change. ¥ Pros and cons will be discussed later on, for now, just basic tips. Immeadiately below are the tips for creating a custom class. ¥ Use only 1 armor and weapon skill in character creation. It saves room for other skills. ¥ Make you armor type skill a Major skill and your Weapon type skill a Minor. Both will go up quickly, but you gain weapon skill points faster than armor normally. Good major/minor skill allotment corrects that rather well and keeps them balanced. ¥ If you hunt down vampires, or stumble blindly into them, you may contract some kind of hemophilia (the blood disease, not becoming a hemosexual). It can be cured with a Cure Common Disease potion or spell, but left alone it will make you a vampire. That might be good. All vampres gain 20 points in Strength, and the 3 'bloodlines' of vampires gain other 20 point bonuses in other stats. Each bloodline has 3 other stats it gets bonuses in. And it can be cured. You will lose the bonuses of being a vampire, but you will keep the ones you earned normally. Plus, the Vampire Touch spell does what you would expect: drains target health, give you health. Once cured, by the way, you cannot become a vampire again. That can be good too, since it is an awful long quest to get cured. And most people hate vampires, so you almost cannot finish the main quest. Almost. There is a backdoor style group of side quests that let you finish the main quest if you, for example, kill a important person to the main quest, or become a vampire and the people won't give you quests. The Mages Guild, which is curious about vampires, will let you do quests as a vampire. ¥ More on vampires. All vampires gain 30 pts. in 9 skills, as well as 20 pts. in 3 other skills, and 20 pts. in 4 attributes (Strength is always one of them). The stats and skills are determined by the bloodline you enter. All vampires have: Resist common disease and paralysis 100%, resist normal weapons 50%, weak to fire 50%, sun damage 5 pts., weird dreams after every rest, and they no longer heal by resting. The best way to avoid the sun is to wait indoors until 8:00. 7:00 is too early. Resting outdoors will almost guarentee your vampire death. Use potions and your new spell to counter nonregeneration. Use fire shields to conter the other weakness. ¥ Luck is a factor mostly for negative results. My theory is that is a negative result (not making a potion, geting caught pickpocketing, etc.) occurs, your luck is rolled to see if it becomes a positive result before determining if it happens or not. This means a luck of 100 would guarantee success in all actions, but since luck can only go up 1 point per level, this is OK and mostly unobtainable. Mostly (perfectionists, that means you). ¥ Athletics and Acrobatics are practically worthless. Putting them in you Major or Minor skills may speed level development, but you would lose multipliers to the Speed and Strength categories when you may be looking for other stats to increase. Picking them also wastes a spot for another useful skill. Trust me, every other skill is more useful than Atlhetics or Acrobatics. Unless you want to be cheap. ¥ Classes with magic skills in Major start with a spell from each school of magic in Major. ¥ 'Touch' range spells still have a decent range (5-7 ft. estimated) ¥ At level 5-10, diseased monsters start showing up. At level 10-20, blighted monsters appear frequently. Over level 30, powerful monsters like Ogrims and Golden Saint start appearing in the wild. This is one reason not to stay in Seyda Neen and cheap-level up. &*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&* And now, the pro/con section on races, birthsigns, vampirism, skills, weapons, and spells in that order. Racial Profiles: All races have 45 bonus points distributed to various skills, and special abilities that may be constantly active or need to be activated. You also get approximately a +5 bonus in dispostion when talking to another person of the same race as you. The races are realtively well-balanced, I only marked them as to how well they compare on paper to other races. Also, picking a race simply because they are resistant to disease is a bad reason, as you eventually become immune to all diseases anyway. Argonians: With +5's in Alchemy, Illusion, Med. Armor, Mysticism, Spear and Unarmored, and a +15 in Athletics, Argonians have a decent set of bonuses that fit well with magic/combat classes like Nightblade or Witch Hunter. They resist common diseases 50%, can breathe above and below water, and are immune to poison. Their special powers are not that great, but help early in the game as well as against enemies with poison damage enchanted weapons. They cannot wear shoes/boots, as they are a beast race. Overall: 6/10--maybe as a second time around or for an advanced player, especially as one of the more tricky classes like Nightblade. Not wearing boots means that you will always have a uncovered body part, so pick Unarmored as a skill if you can to make up for that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Breton: Bretons have strong 10 pt. bonuses in Conjurtion, Mysticism, Restoration, and helpful +5s in Alchemy, Alteration, and Illusion. They make good mages, but may be limited later in the game by not being able to utilize those magical skills for level ups, essentially trading full development for early power. They also have extra Magicka equal to 1/2 their Intelligence added to their total, 50% resistance to all magical attacks on them, and a 50 pt. shield that can be used once daily. These guys are definitely meant to be mages. Overall: 8/10--Good for starting players and hardcore mages. Not too many downsides, although they aren't so good at combat until they gain some experience with a weapon, and you're not limited to which weapon you can use as they have no weapon bonuses, so all weapons are equally good at first. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dark Elf (Dunmer): These people make up half of Vvardenfell's population. Being one will help your reputation with other Dark Elves, but other people will be sick of you. They have +5 bonuses in Long blade, Light Armor, Athletics, Mysticism, Marksman, and +10's in Destruction and Short Blade. Ancestor Guardian will make them harder to hit for 60 sec. per day by 50 pts.(Sanctuary spell), and they are resistant to fire by 50%. Plus, they have more appearance options that the other races, to cover the civilized and Ashlander Dunmer. Overall: 7/10--Having 2 weapons skill bonuses is rather useless. Other than that, they aren't too bad. Most characters will like you better, as 50% of the island is Dunmer. They might make good Spellswords or Witchunters. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ High Elf (Altmer): This race has a +10 bonus to Destruction, Enchant, Alchemy, and +5 to Alteration, Conjuration, and Illusion. Another mage race, it seems. They also have increased max. Magicka like the Bretons, and common disease resistance like the Argonians, but Altmer are weak to Magicka spells, fire, ice, and electricity. That makes them weak to other mages. Overall: 4/10--Weaknesses to what they use most is bad, and no weapon or armor bonus at least let you pick which one you want to use. These are also rare to see, making the racial dispostion nearly useless. Their specials aren't that great either. Take the Bretons instead, they are more common, not weak to anything, and are resisitant to magicka. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Imperial: The pretty-boys of the game, Imperials have +10 pts. to Speechcraft, Mercantile, Long Blade, and +5's in Blunt Weapon, Light Armor, and Hand-to-Hand. Their specials help charm people and Star of the West absorbs fatigue 200 pts. Overall: 4/10--THREE weapon bonuses (H2H counts as weapon)? That's either 10 or 15 wasted points, depending on what you use, Blunt or Long Blades. If you use H2H only, make sure the target only has 200 or less fatigue pts, as you will be relying on Star of the West a lot, but it only works once per day. If you like getting the occasional extra info most won't tell you, then maybe they're worth it. Maybe. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Khajiit: The half-cats (no pussy jokes here) seem to be able to make do with their bodies, having a +15 in Acrobatics, and +5's in Athletics, H2H, Light Armor, Security, Short Blade, and Sneak. They can scare enemies and see in the dark thanks to their specials. Overall: 5/10--Acrobatics is not worth a +15 bonus (see below on which skills to pick as Major and Minor.) Their specials are also tremendously useful, and when I say 'tremendously useful' I mean 'They suck'. Plus, they look funny with a tail sticking out of their armor and they cannot wear shoes or boots, so pick Unarmored as a skill to cover low hits to the feet. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nord: Violent people with +10 pts. in Axe, Blunt Weapon, Med. Armor, and +5's in Long Blade, Spear, and Heavy Armor. The have 4 helpful specials, more than any other race. They are Woad(30 pt. shield for 60 sec.), Thunder Fist (25 pts. frost damage, maybe just a single bit change by accident), Resist Shock 50% (electrical damage) , and Immunity to ice-based damage. Overall: 6/10--Way too many redundant weapon and armor bonuses. If you plan to use every weapon and armor in the game, then maybe this could be your race. The 4 bonuses do help more than most do, and they are the only race that is IMMUNE to any kind of magick. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Orc: Big, slow, strong. +10 bonuses in Armorer, Heavy Armor, Med. Armor, and Block. +5 in Axe. They are resistant to magicka 50%, and they can go berserk, making them more accurate and damaging. Overall: 7.5/10--Built to be warriors. Forget magic, screw stealth. Full frontal assualt is the prescription from Dr. Orc. Heavy and Med. armor bonuses take away 1/2 point, though. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Redguard: Another 1-super-bonus race, with a +15 in Long Blade, and +5's in Short Blade, Heavy Armor, Axe, Blunt Weapon, Med. Armor, and Athletics. They resist poison and disease 50%, and can increase all their physical attributes (not skills) temporarily with Adrenaline Rush. Not too shabby, really. Overall: 6/10--Still too many redundant bonuses (why aren't there any decently built races?) for my taste, But Adrenaline Rush is useful EXCEPT it acts like a Fortify Health potion as well (you did read about Fortify Health potions in Chapter 1, right? I ain't gonna repeat myself.) Disesae resistance is common among races, and you won't need it after Caius leaves. Plus, it should be called Epinephrine Rush, if the programmers had ever taken Biology in high school. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Wood Elf (Bosmer): The Tree sap people have +15 in Marksman, +10 in Light Armor and Sneak, and +5 in Alchemy and Acrobatics. They also Resist common diseases 50% and can command monsters 5 levels with Beast Tongue. And, they're midgets compared to some of these races. Overall: 6.5/10--At least this race is balanced decently with no redundant bonuses. The specials aren't extremely useful and half the other races can resist diseases as well. Good, but not too special. They are even rarer than High Elves, though you probably won't want to be seen if you play as one anyways. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Best Races: Fighter/Warrior/Soldier/etc--Orc Mage/Wizard/Harry Potter/etc--Breton Theif/Agent/Accountant/etc--Wood Elf Green Goblin Trick-or-Treater--Orc Prep trying to fit in--Dark Elf Panicking Lunatic running from a fight--Imperial Pope--Imperial School principal who thinks everything can be resolved by talking--Imperial School principal who eats misbehaving kids--Orc School principal who can't count to ten--Orc or Khajiit drug user. Pain in the Ass--Khajiit Pain Reliever--Imperial slaveowner Slave--Khajiit and Argonians are used as slaves commonly, Elven races less often. Human race slaves are almost impossible to find. Missionary--Imperial (see a trend yet?) Person who doesn't care about finishing the game in any realistic amount of time--Nord Person who intends to be cheap and level up to the max before starting the game--Orc Fighter Anyone named 'Red'--Redguard Junkie--Khajiit Smuggler--Khajiit/Argonian Your mom--Have her read this and ask her Psychic--Not in this game Hippie--Wood Elf Lawyer--Imperial Person with Gangrene and an overactive thyroid--Orc Pop Star--Imperial Guard--Redguard Vampire--Breton or Orc Crappiest Vampire ever--Altmer Roller Coaster fan--Redguard Pokemon master--Breton, using Soul Trap and lots of soul gems. Keep one gem of each monster. Robin Hood--Bosmer Your character--I have no idea, wait until we go over birth signs and skills for classes, and maybe we'll get closer Ok, now that you have an idea of what you want to be as a person, you need to figure out what you want your sign to be. We'll determine the skills later, assuming you will make a custom class, which is a good idea because it will fit you nearly perfectly. ************************************************************************************************ What's Your NOOO! MUST..RESIST.FINISHING..LAME...JOKE.. Your Birthsign AKA The Freebie Bonus Look, I did it! No lame joke! A first in this FAQ. Anyway, like I said, the birthsign is mostly a freebie bonus, but it does play a part in the story, and giving you an option does not affect the story but is just a nice gesture to the player. Plus, it adds more strategy to creating your character. Here they are Apprentance: Increased max. Magicka, but a weakness to it as well. Essentially makes you a High ELf without a weakness to elements. Not recommended for High Elves, Bretons, or Orcs, as it doubles or cancels their specials (and you do not want to take 2X damage from magic as a High Elf.) 4/10 Atronatch: You cannot Regenerate Magicka by resting but you have a 50% chance of absorbing all spells cast at you as MP. Not reccommended for players who would consider becoming vampires, as not regenerating health or magicka by resting is a very bad combo. 6/10 Lady: Gain 25 pts. in Endurance and Personality. THey would increase the health you receive at the beginning of the game and at every level up. Hey, 50 bonus stat. points is not a bad deal. Good for just about anyone except vampires (as everyone hates them anyway, cutting away 1/2 the bonus), and players who would rather use one of the other signs. If you cannot decide, pick the Lady. Makes picking stats to raise at level up easier when 2 are already way up. 8/10 Lord: Your health regenerates naturally over time without resting, but you are weak to fire. Not reccomended to Dark or High Elves, as this counters/multiplies thier special powers respectively (This would cause a total of 300% damage from magical fire if a High Elf with this sign became a vampire.) 5/10 Lover: Agility is increased by 10 pts and you can paralyze others at close range. Not the best, not the worst. 5/10 Mage: Max. Magicka increased by 1/2 your intelligence, like the othe increased max. magicka effects. Not recommended for Bretons, High Elves, (copies their natural bonus), or Orcs (does any Orc player really want to use magic?). 5/10 Ritual: Heal yourself 100 pts/day and scare away monsters. 6/10 Serpent: Poison an enemy 3 pts. for 30 sec. and you lose 1 pt. health for 30 sec. Not as good as it should be. 3/10 Shadow: Turn invisible once a day for a minute. This would be better if it was Chameleon. 5/10 Steed: 10 pt. bonus to Speed 6/10 Theif: Harder to hit (Sanctuary) by 10 pts. Dark Elves need not apply since they have Ancestor Guardian. 6/10 Tower: Detect keys, animals, and enchantments for a minute once a day as well as unlock anything at or under lock level 50 once a day. 5.5/10 Warrior: Accuracy increased by 10 pts. 6/10 So....Some of the birthsigns mimic innate racial powers. You could double an effect of your race, gain some extra points in some stats, or get an unusual handicap for the hell of it. This should give you a better idea of your character. Now, pick your favorite sign and go compare the races again with this new info. Your ideas may change. Don't worry if you just had a better idea for a character while you were making one with this guide beside you, you'll get a chance to change them all just before you are released. *&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*& Now let's take a quick look into the future. Your character (even though not yet finished) is doing rather well and is taking a vacation inside some old Dwemer ruins when s/he sees an odd looking person. They attack immeaditely with a weird purple spell and strong weapons. They do not react very much to your regular weapons, so you switch to magic (unless you suck at magic). After the fight, you notice a message saying you have hemophilia. Before you freak out, that means you have the possibility to become a vampire in the same bloodline as the one who infected you (look at their last name). Should you stay as a mortal or join the poorly-lit side? The expected help guide: Vampires gain: Total: 20 pts. in 4 attributes (strength is always one) 80pts. 30 pts. in 9 skills 350pts 20 pts. in 3 skills 410pts Resist Paralysis + Common disease 100% 610pts Resist normal weapons 50% 660pts spell: Vampire Touch (absorb health 15-30pts) 690pts Looks good, huh? Well; Vampires lose: Weakness to fire 50% 640pts 5 damage per sec. in sun 440pts (it's a major loss!) Resting does not heal health 240pts (this too!) Weird dreams after each rest 239pts (they're pretty cool) So, it's not as good as it was at first. There are 3 bloodlines, each one giving you different stat and skill bonuses. One you become a vampire, you are the bloodline of the one that infected you. You cannot join the other bloodline, and you can be cured, but you cannot become a vampire again after you are cured, plus it's one helluva long quest to be cured. The 3 bloodlines cover all the stats and skills. You can only get 1/3 of them increased at any given time. Make sure if you want to become a vampire to do the vampire side quests, don't kill the vampire with a last name. They give you the quests, and without them, the only reason to be a vampire is to kill everybody. An obscure fact to note is that it will be harder to level up as a vampire since several of your skills will be enhaced by 30 or 20 pts, meaning you lose 2 or 3 levels for every vampire-enhanced skill you have in the Major or Minor categories. The best times to go out as a vampire are from 8pm-6am. This misses most or all of the sun lit hours, avoiding damage. Plus, everyone that's not in the mages guild or a vampire themselves from the same bloodline hates you. So, forget Speechcraft and Personality as a vampire. If you want to be a vampire, wait or rest for 3 days after you get hemophilia and you will have the first of may weird dreams, and a bunch more icons at the top of the screen. If not, just take a potion of cure common disease or scroll or spell of the same effect. *&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&* Back to the current character development: It's time for skills pro and con. This is to help decide which skills to make major and minor in your custom class, or to help determine which premade class fits you best. Even though I may reccommend multiple armor and weapons skills to the same spot, please use only 1 for your character. That's so important I'll repeat myself: Remember to pick only 1 armor and weapon type as Major or Minor skills, as it leaves room open for more usefull skills. Combat/Magic/Stealth skills in that order, and weapons will be discusses in their skill spot: Overall determines how good the skill is in general, and reccomended shows where I think it should be put in a custom class based on if it is Combat/Magic/Stealth based, in that order. Block: Determines how well you use a shield to stop attacks. Blocked attacks do not do damage, but do fatigue you more. Shields are also calculated into your total armor rating. You cannot use shields with 2 handed weapons. Overall: 6/10 reccomended: Major/Misc/Misc. Armorer: Repair your own stuff with hammers and prongs. Easier to carry around multiple light weapons, but is slightly more useful if you use all heavy armor and big weapons. 4/10 Minor in Heavy armor, Misc in Light/Med. Armor/Misc/Misc Med. Armor: In between armor: More protective that light armor, less fatiguing than heavy. It's all depends on your play style. Do not use it with other Armor skills. 6/10 Major/Major/Misc. Heavy Armor: Most protective, most exhausting armor. It all depends on what you personally like, but don't pick more than 1 armor kind. 6/10 Major/Misc/Misc Blunt Weapon: Maces, hammers, clubs, staves. Heavier weapons have higher max. damage, all have low min. damage. Some are 2 handed. Larger blunt weapons can knock down opponents. 4/10 Minor/Misc/Misc Long Blade: Most races have a bonus to this skill, and it accumulates on top of your choice in your class. These are usually 2 handed, leaving out the option of using a shield. Quite strong. 7/10 Minor/Misc/Misc Axe: Axes can be 1 or 2 handed, and do lots of chop-stlye damage but little thrust-type damage, so remember that if you didn't turn or 'Always use Best Attack' in the Options menu. Occcasionally knocks down opponents if a large axe is used. 5/10 Minor/Misc/Misc. Spear: Spears are always 2 handed, but have long range and do a lot of thrust damage. 7/10 Minor/Minor or Misc/Misc. Athletics: Quite useless, determines a small part of your speed. Builds up naturally by walking, swimming, or running. 2/10 Misc/Misc/Misc Destruction: Magic that damages others, drains, or absorbs their stats. 8/10 Misc/Major/Minor Alteration: Alter yourself to meet the circumstances, like water walking or breathing, and levitation 6.5/10 Misc/Minor or Misc/Minor Illusion: Alter other creatures like blind and paralyze. 6/10 Misc/Minor or Misc/Misc Conjuration: Summoning helpers and equipment. 7/10 Misc/Major or Misc/Misc Mysticism: Odd spells like Soul Trap and Mark/Recall 6/10 Misc/Minor or Misc/Minor or Misc. Restoration: Healing magic 8/10 Minor or Misc/Major or Minor/Minor or Misc. Enchant: Make powerful magical equipment or recharge enchented equipment. Doing it yourself if wayyyyyyy cheaper than paying for it, especially any kind of powerful enchantment. 60 is good for recharging items and making cast on strike weapons out of the powerful Daedric stuff you might have found by the time you get that far. 80 is reccomended before you try to make a constant effect item, but stock up on Golden Saint soul gems early. 6/10 Misc/Minor or Misc/Minor or Misc Alchemy: Possibly the most useful skill, you can make potions for youself from ingredients you find all around you. Practive and get good at it, and you can sell the excess or negative potions for a large profit. But, get a warehouse or something as you could end up carrying over 20 pounds of potions. Requires a "'X's mortar and pestle" to be used. Other equipment help a lot too. 9/10 Minor or Misc/Anywhere/Minor or Misc Unarmored: Not using armor. If you don't have every part of armor possible on (about 9 pieces), this skill will be practiced anyways slowly. Clothes do not count as armor. 6/10 Minor or Misc/Minor or Misc/Minor or Misc Security: Pick locks with lockpicks, disarm traps with probes. 7/10 Misc/Minor or Misc./Major or Minor Sneak: Goes around unnoticed, pickpockets by sneaking around a person a pushing A. 6/10 Misc/Misc/Minor or Misc Acrobatics: Jumping, falling, landing, directing your fall. 3/10 Misc/Misc/Misc Light Armor: Light armor is good for sneaking around in, and glass is light and relatively common for being the strongest type of light armor. Again, it depends on what you like. 7/10 Major or Misc/Major or Misc/Major or Misc Short Blade: Can be 1 or 2 handed. Relatively strong for size. Stealthy weapons. 6/10 Minor or Misc/Minor or Misc/Minor Marksman: Using bows, throwing stars, and other projectiles. Can be recycled by taking from ground or carcass made into pincussion by you. Bows have set damage. 6/10 Misc/Minor or Misc/Minor or Misc Mercantile: Buy low, sell high. Get and make deals. 4/10 Misc/Misc/Misc -- If you want, go ahead and make a Minor skill, definitely Minor if you also have Alchemy and plan to sell extra potions Speechcraft: Persuasion techniques. 3/10 Misc/Misc/Misc -- Principals should consider this technique. Hand To Hand: Fight w/o weapons. Usually useless, can be used to beat down a person in their house, take their stuff, and run. They don't die, you don't get fined. Useless for serious adventuring. 4/10 Misc/Misc/Minor or Misc. I know, I left a lot of blanks in there, but that's for you to fill in, not me. I help guide you to what's good and bad, you pick what you like to use. If I made set guidelines, everyone would use my character, and that would suck for you, because you're not me. I hope you're not me. If you were me, who would I be? I hope not you. I like myself too much to be someone else. That's all the skills, but feel free to pick the ones you think will be useful in your game. Just pick one weapon and armor type, and make the armor Major and the weapon Minor. It keeps things balanced. But, there is a bit more strategy below. The class specialization also factors into this. Specialized classes gain +5 pts. in skills under that specilization and they go up really fast. If done right, a character could have a skill of 50 in one skill at the start of the game (Redguard (15)/Long Blade as a Major (30) /Combat specialized class(5)=50, for example) I won't go into how stats affect skills, but they do. Remember that having a high governing attribute will slightly make up for a low skill. Before the next section, I want to show you what skills should be bought early on to increase it and which you would be better off just training up. This is to help you save money early on when you don't have much of it. Use this up until the skill hits about 20, then reverse it. That way the ones that are hard to train at first are bought so you can train decently by yourself and the easy ones to train are bought to save time. They should all go up naturally by playing anyways. Train: Enchant, Alchemy, Hand To Hand, Short Blade, Long Blade, Blunt Weapon, Acrobatics, Destruction, Conjuration, Illusion, Security, Unarmored, Mysticism, Athletics, Spear, Axe, Alteration, Restoration. Buy: Speechcraft, Mercantile, Marksman, Light Armor, Heavy Armor, Med. Armor, Sneak, Armorer, Block. &*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&**&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&&*&*&**&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&&*&*&*&* OK, by now you should have decided either what your character will be, or that you need to go over all that again. If you need an example, which I provide just about all the way throughout this doc, here are a few My Avatar: Giegue: Breton Trickster(Custom Class--Major:Enchant/Alchemy/Restoration/Destruction/Short Blade Minor:Security/Sneak/Unarmored/Light Armor/Mercantile Magic-specialized class, Luck and INT favorite attributes) (Yes, I know I broke my own armor/weapon rule, but I didn't make that until after I made this guy, and realized how much better I could be.) Birthsign: Tower My avatar is made to be a good balance of combat, magic and stealth, taking the better things in life and making the best. Enchant is used to recharge my many stolen enchanted items unitl I can make my own more powerful items, and Alchemy is both a lifesaver for recharging and fortifying stats and a money maker, as I made so many potions I sold off most of the excess inventory. Magic is supported by Restoration and Destruction, the 2 essesntial in my opinion schools. Light Armor is ueful for protection and sneaking, and leaving more room for stolen goods. Short Blade is the best for the situation, same as light armor, and Unarmored helps when my armor breaks after about 5 ordinators get to me. Mercantile helps sell the goods for a better price. Magic-Specialization helps the other magic schools if I need an effect I cannot make in a potion, like Soul Trap for Enchanting stuff, and favoring Luck and Intelligence boost them up, and I feel a Luck of at least 40+ is essential. Everything balances out, and all magical effects are at my disposal, whether as potion, spell, or stolen scroll. Cheap-ass Player's (you know who you are, don't deny it) example character: Paulie or Petey or James Trafficant or some gangster-like name: Nord Cheapo(Custom class--Major:Destruction/Long Blade/Heavy Armor/Short Blade/Restoration Minor:Athletics/Acrobatics/Sneak/Alchemy/Mercantile Stealth-Spec., STR and END favorite att.) Birthsign:Lady Extras--Spells:(Restore Fatigue 1pt), (Fire Damage 1pt), etc. This character is designed to level up as fast as possible, putting useful skills in as Major Skills and quick advancing skills as Minors. The spells mentioned are used to quickly and reliably increase the appropriate school's skill. Every Minor skill can be easily 'rigged' to go up quickly. Multiple mistakes as a character work together to make a character that is built from the ground up to become as strong as possible, not wasting power into useless (for this character anyway) stats like Luck and Endurance(which the birthsign increased), and focusing on STR, INT, and AGI. This player may very well spend some time just leveling up before leaving the first town, but will quickly discover that at level 10 diseased and blighted monsters show up far too often for someone not prepared for it. This kind of player would probably kill someone real important to the story and end up eventually winning by taking the 'backdoor' plot by killing Vivic, and probably trying to way too early, if they even bother trying to finish the game. The Nord's has more specials than other races, so that's why they were picked. They would make a lot of potions to help heal themselves while they get beat down and sell one at a time to merchants to boost their level. In summary, this character is built to gain levels, and therefore stat points, rapidly. They will not start out very well in combat, but as their STR increases, they will be a force to reckon with eventually. Ideal Straight Warrior/Barbarian: (Straight means 'only one class', not the avatars sexual preference) Brutus or Hulk or Hans or Vegeta or Ahnold or Sampson or similiarly beefy name: Orc or Redguard Premade classes: Barbarian/Warrior or custom class below-- Custom Class--Tiny Puppy Smasher(small in-joke for all the Sillhouette Mirage fans there), Combat specialized, STR and END favoirte Attributes. Major:Heavy Armor/Armorer/Block/Light Armor/Athletics Minor:Weapon of your choice/backup weapon/Mercantile/Med. Armor/Unarmored Birthsign:Atronatch or Lord This guy is decked out to smash and bash. All 4 armor types and 2 weapon types (Extremely redundant but most of the magic and stealth skills are left out by principle) make sure you can use most any item you find on your travels. A lot of options are left for you to decide but that's so you can choose if you happen to like axes or spears better than blades. I do not recommend Marksman for this class, again it goes against principle, a large muscular guy using a crossbow and ninja stars to kill evil. Real good look there (sarcasm). The Atronatch lets you absorb magic (you're not really going to be using it much anyway so not recharging it through rest is ok) or the Lord lets your health regenerate but makes you weak to fire, some of that weakness if offset by the health you can regenerate, and you will probably need lots of healing if you fight a lot. Consider substituting one of the Armor types you don't like for Alchemy, so you can make your own restore health and fatigue potions and save money. And if you don't want to be a Tiny Puppy Smasher, or if you haven't played Silouhette Mirage, you can call it something else cool, like 'Manly Man' or 'Femi-nazi' or 'Arse-Kicker'. I really don't care. But, if you keep the name I chose, you can go around screaming "I smash you like tiny puppy!" in a deep voice. Yes, screaming is optiopnal, but you can't do it unless you choose this name. Ideal Straight Mage/Wizard: Copperfield or Houdini or Kenobi or Popeil or Gandolf or similiar magical sounding name: Breton Premade classes: Mage or Sorcerer or Custom Class below-- Custom Class--Arthur Anderson Accountant or Magic Man or Fairy, Magic Specialization, INT and Willpower favorite attributes. Major--Restoration/Destruction/Alteration/Alchemy/Light Armor or Unarmored Minor--Short Blade/Enchant/Conjuration/Mysticism/Illusion Birthsign: Mage or Apprentice First, the birthsign. Choose Mage if you want extra Maigcka equal to half of your current level. The Apprentice will give you an amount equal to your INT, but you will have a 50% weakness to Magicka. Make your choice. Now, if you notice, 8 or 9 Magic skills are used here, depending on if you use Unarmored. The only one here that is not Magic based is Short blade, and using light armor leaves more room in you small inventory, which is due to your probably low STR. You will definitely be a formidable opponent to fight after you learn some spells, which you will probably not have a problem mastering. You can make potions for the spells you can't quite pull off easily, like levitation and water walking. It may be better to enchant some spells you have a low probability of casting successfully. Non-typical Avatar: Kyo or Shinobi or Ryu or any Asian name: Wood Elf Custom Class--Ninja Stealth-Spec., Speed and Strength fav. attributes Major--Light Armor/Unarmored/Destruction/Mysticism/Athletics Minor--Marksman/Restoration/Alteration/Security/Acrobatics Birthsign: Lady This one breaks a lot of ny rules, and here's my attempt at justification. This characted relies on speed and strength to kill targets at long range, so as to not to take too much damage. You will need more practice at Marksman than other weapons, as it seems they are less accurate. Using higher quality arrows will help with damage and accuracy. Light armor is the obvious choice here. Unarmored is for when you are getting beaten down and your armor breaks or you need more space for stuff. The magicks are the best here, inculding damaging spells, invisibility, mark/recall, and healing. That's what you need for this class. Security for lockpicking. Athletics and Acrobatics for faster levels (you will need to get strong fast with this guy if you want to do anything good with him). Bosmer have a big bonus to Marksman, and they're small, kinda like Asian people. You will do a lot of stealing and killing. You should practice Hand-to-Hand as well, for when you need to steal without killing someone (like in early Theives' Guild missions.) This character doesn't have a bunch of defining skills but uses many not selected as Major/Minor. Practicing magicka with cantrips and jumping across the landscape are prescribed for ninjas. *&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&**&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&* Magic Spells, or How You can Benefit by Warping and Destroying Forces You Can Never Hope to Understand and Never Will. This section shows a variety of the different spell effects you can buy and how they help you, and a rating of usefulness. When you buy a spell, you can use it's effects in spellmaking from merchants. There are supposed to be over 500 base spellsyou can purchase, not counting variations in magnitude or duration, which makes it more like 1.5 trillion total possible. I have approx. 60-80 different spells so far. Potions and scrolls can have the same effect as most of the spells below. In the same order as in the instruction manual, more or less. And before anyone gets confused, when you make a spell, you can choose to target an enemy or yourself. Turn Undead--Makes undead monsters want to run away in fear and not attack you. 2/10 Summon *Creature*--Creates a helper for you. Goes away when the caster dies. Relatively large variety to choose from. Many mages use this on you. 3-7/10 You can summon: Atronatches(Fire, frost, shock), Bonewalkers, Skeletons, Scamps, Ancestor ghosts, Dremora, Daedroth, Clanfear, Centurian, Golden Saints, more Command--Makes target work for you. Level of spell is max. level of controllable creature or person. 3/10 Bound *Item*--Gives you a powerful, lightweight Daedric item temporarily. Useful if you are a powerful Conjurer and don't like to carry excess armor or weapons. Weapons are specified in the spell, but armor is typically light. Used by a few select people, including the High Elf in Balmora who belongs to the Theives Guild. 6/10 You can bound most if not all kinds of items that can be used as weapons or armor. Invisibility--You are unseen. Doing anything besides running or jumping will probably cancel the effect. More useful than Chameleon to sneak around, less useful to do stuff. 5/10 Chameleon--You blend in with the environment. You can perform actions while under this effect, but if you are not at 100% Chameleon, you may be seen. Rumors abound that even 100% isn't perfect. (actually, the magnitude determines who can and can't see you. 100% means people about 10 level higher than you can't see you, but people more than that can. The numbers aren't exact yet.)5/10 Light--Lights the area, doesn't hurt targets. Not worth the gold unless your TV is darker than a GBA screen or you're afraid of the dark. 1/10 Sanctuary--You become harder to hit. Dark Elves may use this occasionally, can not confirm as they die too quickly. 4/10 Night-Eye--Light level raised. Like Light, but almost more useful. Does not require a target. Eye of Night for the Khajiit is this spell. 1.5/10 Charm--Target likes you more. Temporarily. Voice of the Emperor for Imperials is same spell. Semi-useful for selling things. 2/10 Paralyze--Target can't move. Useful against quick and powerful opponents at the same time. Reduce the number of hits you take and increase the number of ones you deal. Scribs can paralyze you for about 5 sec. If you hit a paralyzed target with another paralyze spell (probably from a cast when strikes blade in this example), and they resist it, they will be unparalyzed. 7/10 Silence--Target can't cast spells. Useful as a first attack against powerful magic users. Some ash creatures use this. 6/10 Blind--Reduces target's chance of hitting you. So-so useful. Hard to tell when it is on you unless you look closely. 4/10 Sound--Reduces target's chances of casting a spell. Less useful than Silence. Some ash monsters and mages use this. 3/10 Calm Human/Creature--Drops the target's likeliness of attacking you. Useful in some stealth missions if you it early enough. 4/10 Frenzy Human/Creature--Opposite of above. Useful for avoiding trouble in the cities. 5/10 Demoralize Human/Creature--Same as Turn Undead but for living things. A few mages use this on you. It looks like a skeleton appears over their body. If you are truly a powerful fighter or a vampire, the attackers may run away without using this spell.5/10 Rally Human/Creature--Opposite of above. They join you to fight temporarily. 3/10 Damage *Stat*--Decreases the target's health, magicka, fatigue, or attribute. Useful in combination. Side effect of most diseases and since it's so useful the game rarely uses it on you. That's a good thing. But when it does, you will definitely want some restore stat potions or spells. Otherwise you may have to restart because you can't move or move really slow. Greater Bonewalkers use these spells among other powerful creatures and mages. Make sure you can restore your stats later in the game. 6/10 Fire--Fire-based attack. Many monsters use this and fire is the most commonly resisted attack as well as the most often found weakness. Several creatures and mages use this. 6/10 Shock--Lighining damage. A few ash monsters use it and some others, resistance/weaknesses are rare. 6/10 Frost--Ice damage. Nords completely immune to ice. Few mages and monsters use this. 5/10 [Note--Atronatches can be associated with any of the above 3 elements, and will use spells with their element.] Drain--Temporarily decreases a target's attributes. Use Damage instead. Used by many monsters, mages, and weapons have this a lot. Ordinators will drain your agility and willpower, explaining why they can knock you down so ofter.3/10 Poison--Causes constant poison damage until it fades. Can be cured with a cure poison spell or potion. Resistances are common. Quite a few monsters and weapons use it. Can be stopped by potions or spells unlike elemental damage. 3.5/10 Stunted Magicka--Target cannot regenerate magicka from resting while the spell lasts. Most likely going to be used on you rather than you using it, because it isn't very useful to you. Half of the Atronach birthsign effects. 1/10 Weakness--Drops target's resistance to elemental attacks, magickal effects, normal weapons, diseases and poison. Hard to find, but a nice help in a pinch. Apperars occsaionally in scrolls more often that spells, but great in a combination spell. 6/10 Disintergrate Weapon/Armor--Weakens the items targeted on the target. Semi-useless, as most targets will have perfect condition armor and wepaons anyways. Hungers (enemies with suckers) use this. Make sure you buy Disintegrate ARMOR. Disintegrate AMOR (no 1st r) would only ruin a relationship. 2/10 Cure--Cures a given disease, poison, or paralysis. Necessary later when the Blight becomes more prevalent. 7/10 Restore *Attribute*--Returns targets stats to normal if they were reduced by damage/drain magic attacks. A necessity later in the game, specifically the Nerevarine missions if not earlier. 8/10 Fortify *Attribute*--Temporarily increses an attirubte. Avoid using Fortify Health for reasons mentiond above. 6/10 All 8 primary attributes, all 3 derived attributes, and all 27 skills can be fortified, as well as attack by itself. Spells that fortify skills may not exist as usable magic spells, you may need items enchanted with it. Fortify Max. Magicka--Adds X to your max. magicka, where X is your Intelligence times the magnitude. 5/10 Fortify Attack Bonus--Increases your chance of hitting and damage. 7/10 Resist--Increases resistances to fire, frost, shock, magicka attacks, normal weapons, diseases, poison, or paralysis temporarily. OK in areas that you know will have a certain element, like when you can see several Flame Atronatches. 6/10 Remove Curse--Never seen it in the game, or curses either, but the spell removes curses from the target. It's in the instruction manual. ?/10 Dispel--Removes any spell effects you are under. Does not work for diseases, innate abilities, or item effects. Some enemy mgaes will use this if you cast spells on them. Golden Saints will use this if you cast Soul Trap on them, so hurry up and kill them. 5/10 Soul Trap--If this is cast on a creature and then killed before the spell ends, it's soul will be put into the smallest available soul gem that the soul fits in. Necessary for enchanters. In the PC version, you can cast on a dead creature and take their soul, for whatever reason. 8/10 Telekinesis--You can perform action on items farther away than normal. You won't get caught stealing if you use telekinesis from far enough away. 7/10 Mark/Recall--Mark a spot, and then you can Recall yourself there later. Makes return trips a lot shorter. 7/10 Almsivi/Divine Intervention--Teleports you to the closest Tribunal or Imperial temple, respectively. 6/10 Detect *Key/Animal/Enchantment*--Detect the respective item/property from a distance. Tower gives you Beggar's nose, which detectes all 3 from 200ft. Small circles on your map show location of the objects. Animals are red, enchantments are blue, and keys are green (I think). 4/10 Spell Absorption--Percentage is the likeliness that a spell used on you is converted to Magicka points. Half of the Atronach Birthsign effect. 7/10 Reflect--Returns a spell to it's caster. Percentage is chance the spell will reflect. Stronger, magicka based enemies like atronatches and golden saints can use this. 6/10 Absorb *Attribute*--Target's attribute will decrease, caster's same attribute will increase. Stats reset when effect ends. Some weapons have it. 6/10 The 8 primary stats and 3 derived stats can be absorbed. You cannot exceed your maximum stat with this with the 3 derived stats. You can exceed your max. in the 8 primary stats. Water Breathing--Stay under water without losing air. Argonians can do this naturally. 6/10 Swift Swim--Swin faster. 2/10 Water Walking--Walk on water like land. Saves time traveling across the islands in the east coast. 5/10 Shield--Creates a defensive force field around you, reducing damage from everything. Can be associated with any of the 3 elements, which increases it's ability to deflect damage of that type. Bretons can do this as Dragon Skin for 50 pts. Bonelords, other undead enemies, and stronger mages and some famous warriros use it. Items that can constantly make a shield exist. 8/10 Burden--Increases weight being carried by the target. Can make a target stand still if they have more than they can carry. Many mages use this trying to stop you. 2/10 Feather--Opposite of above. 4/10 Jump--Increases your ability to, well, jump. 3/10 Slowfall--Reduces speed of fall, and reduces damage taken on landing as a result. 4/10 Levitate--Walk through the air by looking in the direction you want to go in. Needed in some Telvanni towers and other places to get to cool hidded areas or over mountains quickly. 8/10 Lock--Locks a door, chest, etc. The opposite of open, which is way more useful. The only thing this spell is good for is lockinbg a chest at 5 pts. so you can pick it open and increase your Security skill. 2/10 Open--Opens a door, chest, etc. Can open anything with a lower point value than the spell. 7/10 There are more spells than this, and I will write about them when I find them. ************************************************************************************************ Chapter 3: Xbox and PC game glitches and taming them for fun, profit, or keeping the game working. Note to all readers: Some of the below activities may constitiute what some people call 'cheating'. Some may call it 'cheap'. Some call it 'totally awesome'. Read it anyways, unless knowing how to 'cheat' will force you against your will to cheat. Some of the below glitches should be read by everyone so they know what to avoid doing to waste X amount of time due to a bug or lockup. For the Xbox, the easiest way to identify lockups is the same as the way to find out on the NES: 1) No disc actvity (DVD or Hard Disk) 2) Monotone Sound Output, or repeating sections of music approx. 1 sec. long. 3) No response to controller input The game can lockup at a 'Loading Exterior' screen, but make sure there is no disc activity before you eject/powerdown the console. On the PC, you should know what to look for if you've used a PC for more than an hour at a time. ¥ The game does occasionally lock up. They cannnot usually be detected, prevented, or avoided. Save often is all you can do to minimize damages. ¥ You can stick to walls and ceilings by jumping into them. This helps a good deal in some Dwemer ruins with pipes leading to upper floors. ¥ If you have a price on your head, and you are in the Theives Guild (which usually go hand-in-hand), you can get rid of it for free! Talk to the bartender in Balmora in the South Wall Cornerclub (it also works on any other price-on-your-head person) to get rid of the price at a discount and without losing your stolen items. But, try dropping you gold in the hall before you talk to him. It says the gold is removed, but it's not! Go back in the hallway and get your gold. It's all there, and you have no bounty. ¥ There are a lot of clipping glitches (that is, objects going through other objects or walls). They don't hurt anything really, but are more common that usual, and an examply of ported PC code brought to the Xbox. The Xbox (and a decent PC, for that matter) should be able to mak a dead rat bend to a hill rather than going through it. Just weird to look at. ¥ Whether a glitch or not, you do not automatically record your in game map while in combat (when the dramatic music plays). This causes blacks spots to appear, and can leave a map looking like swiss cheese if the area is heavily populated. It also seems to go out at random by any kind of magical effect. Checking the map in game every few seconds seems to help it. ¥ Talking with the wise women in the 1st ashlander group will get you a copy of 2 of the prophecies. Talk about it again and she will give you another copy of each. ¥ Mentioned in Chapter 1, avoid talking about 'Law of Morrowind' with people, it is an endless loop glitch and you will have to reload your game. ¥ Spells set to activate on target and with a decent area rating can kill people and enemies through walls and doors. This can be used to get rid of the rats in the Mages Guild that has the rat infestation. ¥ Reading a book that enhances your skill points in a category that you have already reached 100 in will not increase the skill, but it will count toward your level up. Same goes for using the master trainers. ¥ If you enchant an item to have a constant effect of bound item, the bound item will be permanent. ¥ Since the wise woman from the Ahenmussa camp can waterwalk without spells, and M'Aiq the Liar can too, it's possible the game has a glitch that citizens cannot swim, only waterwalking instead because they aren't programmed to do anything else. But in Seyda Neen, Fargoth does not. ¥ If you cast Soul Trap on a named monster, like Rollie the Guar, the soul gem will have it's name in the gem. Rollie offers no extra points compared to a normal Guar. ¥ Your magic spell/item is occasionally deselected for no reason. This usually happens in combat when you are attacked by a magic spell set to 'Target', but occurs on other circumstances too. ¥ Tall characters may have a hard time navigating around Telvanni towers, especially while levitating in the halls. This is one thing giving that .5 to the Bosmer. Sneaking can help get around this. ¥ If you use your notebook and check under 'price on your head', it will show you the current amount of gold you would have to pay to the person you talked to first. It may be different if you go to a different person to remove the bounty. ¥ On the PC at least, talking to the woman who pays your 1K gold for solving the murder of Ralen Hlaalu early in the game, keep talking to her and she will keep paying you. Contributed by RichBomb12@aol.com ¥ If you have a bound weapon, and another weapon, quick switch by holding X and pressing L AND R (Xbox). You'll hear the sound but the weapon won't change. Keep doing it and it will cause the fortify weapon bonus associated with it to become permanent and layered, and the extra bonus over 100 counts, so feel free to give yourself a 230 in Marksman with a Fortified Long Bow. ¥ Your map shows the boat you come in on although it isn't there in the actual game. ¥ On the Xbox, pushing L and R at the "Loading..." screens at random may cause a 'splash' sound to register. It seems to be some sort of signal or cheat, but I can't figure out what it does. There may be multiple. The first person to tell me one or more of these effects and a consistent way to activate it (the exact button presses) will get a nice present from me (If you use emulators, and are looking for something to play with them, you may get an idea of what you'll get). ¥ Use a Golden Saint Soul Gem to start to make a item with "Constant effect". Then, change the soul gem to something else. It should be kinda powerful, as constant effects tend to use a lot of charge and points in their creation. When you do this, the effect type should not change, letting you make constant effects from most any soul gem. *************************************** Chapter 3.5: Real Cheat Codes *************************************** SPOILER ALERT: The following are actual confirmed cheat codes. They may spoil the game for you or help you survive in tough areas in the early going. They may make you into a sissy boy. Avoid the below if you do not want cheat codes for fear you may actually use them. XBOX: Go to the stats menu. It is not necessary to highlight the desired stat to activate the code, but it is to increase it. After putting in the code, hold 'A' until the stat reaches the desired level. If you want to be an extra big cheater, keep holding 'A' and leave the menu, it will constantly go up. Changing menu screens will deactivate the codes as will putting in another code. Health: Push Black, White, Black, Black, Black Magicka: Push Black, White, White, Black, White Fatigue: Push Black, Black, White, White, Black PC: Bah. Go to www.gamewinners.com if you want PC cheats. I decided there's too many and they take up too much space. Get 'em yourself if you want. The xbox owners really don't care about all of your mile long cheats. They have 3. I can spare room for 3 cheats. 300 is kinda useless, and some were repeats too. I'd rather not sort it all out. ************************************************************************************************ Chapter 4: I told you this chapter didn't exist. I lied. But, there's nothing in it anyway. ************************************************************************************************ ************************************************************************************************ Chapter 5: Fun stuff to do sometime between the other 350 or so missions in the game. ************************************************************************************************ ¥ As an alternative to the first point in Chapter 1, avoid wearing armor or clothes in a city just for fun. People will definitely notice that you are nearly naked. ¥ In most of the Sixth House shrines, there are a lot of blighted and corprus monsters. And, they like to have jam sessions. Check out the bell set. You can play them by pressing A when 'bell' appears in the help text. Also, the hammer next to them is probably the strongest blunt weapon in the game. Have not yet confirmed that. ¥ Go ahead and try to pickpocket from slaves or cattle. They will not attack you (or have any items of use), but they will try to tell their masters! ¥ Books can be used as stepping stones over lava. ¥ Kill everyone on the island, not necessarily counting yourself. Human, elf, orc, khajiit, argonian and vampire. Do this in a seperate saved game, so you can still beat the game. ¥ Alternately, be a pacifist. Try to finish the game without killing more people or monsters tham necessary. You do need to kill at least 3, so don't expect perfection. If you elect to finish the game the back way, you'll only need to kill 2 max. ¥ Since I've mentioned it quite a bit in this guide, I suppose I should elaborate on this 'backdoor' method of beating the game. The steps are as follows: 0) [optional] Mess up the thread of prophecy and save so you can't undo it. 1) Break into the palace at the southern most part of Vivec. You'll need to pick a 100-level lock and trap. Or kill the people in the area, and possibly in High Fane until you find a 'Secret Palace Entrance Key' and use it to open the door. 2) Kill Vivic. He's a god, so you should be rather strong [level 30+] and/or ready to cheat. Potions and enchanted weapons work well here, especially absorb health enchanted weapons. 3) Take the 'unique dwemer device' from the corpse. No one knows you killed a god. 4) Go to the Corprusarium in Tel Fyr on the east coast islands. 5) Show the artifact to the last living dwarf. 6) Listen to Fatty yak for a while. 7) Go find the two books he asks for. I have no idea where they are besides in some Dwemer ruins. 8) Return with the books to Señor Gordo. 9) Get the two artifact weapons Sunder and Keening from inside the Ghostgate area. 10) beat the game as if you finished the storyline normally. Reading Vivic's copies of "Plan to Defeat Dagoth Ur" and other papers will help you here. ¥ Get a lot of restore health and fatigue potions, and magicka if you need them, and go raid a treasury. There are at least 3 in Vivic and they have lots of gold and powerful armor and weapons. Redoran Treasury/Vaults/Records in Vivic has about 15K of gold, and a nearly complete set of glass armor, including the rare glass helm--it looks really cool. ¥ A lot of people already know this, but there is a talking mudcrab merchant in the game. It is southeast of Suran somewhere, it is supposed to buy anything and has 10K gold. ¥ Free the slaves. There are about 170 total, but not all of them can be saved. Free 30 and the game gives you a present from Jobasha in her rare book store as a few books that increase a few stats. ¥ Find M'Aiq the liar and chat with him for a while. He has some really neat stuff to say and he lives on a rock between Dragon Fel and Ald Daedroth, slightly SE of Dagon Fel. You may need to lower his disposition toward you before he has anything to say, and he can waterwalk. ¥ If you are a marksman, levitate in the air out of reach of swords and fire arrows into helpless guards while screaming "I'm a Super Saiyan!" Screaming is optional. ¥ Collect all the books in the world. Some are hard to find, some have over 90 copies in existance. Don't forget the gag books, like 'ABCs for Barbarians' and 'The Lusty Argonian Maid'. ¥ Kill an Ordinator,then wear his armor and talk to other Ordinators. ¥ Enchant all your stuff, so all of it glows in the 3rd person view. Impress your friends. You have friends, right? Well, maybe before you started Morrowind? ¥ Find all the unique weapons on the island. A book somewhere in a building in the ashlands (I think in a ruin or old Dunmer temple) lists a few unique weapons and armors. One of them isn't too far from it. ¥ You CAN kill Vivic(in the temple at Vivec) and he is a god. He has lots of power, so bring lots of healing items and powerful weapons you can swap, as you might wear out some of them. Star of the West might help, as he has a few thousand points in each category, missing 200 might make him slightly weaker. ¥ If you sell someone an enchanted item, they have a great tendency to wear it themselves. ¥ Other items has similiar effects to the Sanguine items, like Moon-and-Star fortifies Speechcraft 5 pts, and you can enchant other items to have the same effects once you get enough skill in Enchant. ¥ In Ald Daedroth, There is an Orc Boozer who thinks he's a Khajiit. First thing he says is 'Meow'. Ask him about stuff. Don't expect good answers. And tell him his tail looks good. ¥ After killing lots of innocent civilians, you may notice they have lots of keys with no locks. There are also lots of locks with no keys. Hmm..... ¥ You may get to start your own city. One man in Ebonheart has a construction permit for you. I assume he and the builder will both need to be alive in order to start the city. More details when I get them. ¥ When you sell stuff to merchants, they hold it in their inventory. Sell stuff to them unitl they can't possibly move from the weight, and them steal everything in their house/store and they cant do anything about it. Or, sell everything you own to a pawnbroker or outfitter for lots of cash, then kill them, take your stuff back, and sell it again to a different merchant. ¥ I was certain I already put this in, but I can't seem to find it anywhere in the FAQ (maybe it's too big). SO, I'll retype it here. Let me know if you see it elsewhere in this huge mess of text. I think it is possible to use addons and extras made for the PC version on the Xbox version. It requires some knowledge of PCs, CD burners, and disc copying. Follow me on this. 1) Have a Morrowind Xbox and PC game, a PC with a CD-R or DVD-R, and an Xbox with a modchip in it. It doesn't really matter which one. 2) Download the patch you want to put on the Xbox Version. 3) Make an ISO image of the Morrowind Xbox disc. 4) Play the new map/patch on the PC version. 5) Use the cheat code to make maps for the Xbox game. The cheat can be found with the rest of the PC cheats in chapter 3.5. 6) Add the new Xbox map file to the ISO image you have. 7) Burn the new ISO image onto a disc. 8) Put disc in modified Xbox. (It won't work in a normal Xbox.) If everything is done right (and I am correct on all assumptions made), then you should be able to play PC maps on the Xbox version. I cannot confirm if it works or not. I hope someone tries this and lets me know if it works or if changes to my outline are needed. *********************************************** Chapter 5.5: The list of stuff that had these ideas been implemented would be guarenteed to make Morrowind a game nit-pickers couldn't complain about. *********************************************** Idea for this chapter given by pgl@yoyo.org. This entire section is simply opinional. You may not agree with some, or any, of it. It does't matter. If I left something big off, let me know. ¥ Another generic script or 2 would have been nicer than getting the same answer from half the city. ¥ Either more sound clips or a code sequence that kept people from using the same line at the same time or close thgether. See Sadrith Mora Mages Guild and stand between the 2 Breton women. ¥ Removal of those freakin' clipping problems! The most powerful gaming rigs in the world can't make a frealin' rat bend to the ground? BAH! ¥ Some way to get yourself unstuck from areas you get into you aren't supposed to be into. I got stuck inside indoor trees I jumped into, under a metal platform with water underneith it in Arkingthand or something, and a few ceiling I jumped into also. ¥ More of everything! The PC can swap discs and the Xbox has freakin' 9GB DVDs! Use it up! ¥ Better balance in the number of enemies. I've killed about 10 Cliff Divers in the same area I kill 1 other creature in in 15 minutes. Gangs of powerful summoned creatures definitely suck. Attack someone in a Mages Guild and feel the pain. ¥ Some kind of construction kit for us Xbox fans. Even a dumbed down one. Anything. ¥ Options to adjust the visual quality. Speed up the choppy framerate on the Xbox or beautify the world in PC. Or load more of the map at once. That kind of deal. ¥ The facial options would have been better if you could adjust each part seperately like eyes, mouth, nose, ears, hair, etc. It isn't that much more taxing that what's there. ¥ A bit more humor. I think this game takes itself a bit too seriously. Some people are funny, but given a population of over 3,000, you should expect some weridos. I'd like to see something really unexpected, like M'Aiq the Liar's birthday or a Killer Rabbit. And M'Aiq should be a Breton Girl if he's gonna be naked. One moon is already red in my game. When's his birthday? ¥ Merchants should have more gold. We get all these 10K, 12K, 120K at the top end weapons, and most merchants only have 5K or less gold. And they don't have enough items to buy enough off him to make up for it. ¥ A little bit more time in QC would have helped a lot. Fixed some of the weird glitches like getting killed by entering a different area through a door (Happened to me twice, both times at full health, others times they were not fatal). ¥ Make use of the analog buttons! Why hold it in when you could just hit it harder? ************************************************************************************************ Chapter 6: Items that are uncommon to find and that are powerful in comparison to other nonpowerful items and where they can be located before you own them at which point they will be in your inventory yada yada yada etc etc etc. ************************************************************************************************ ¥ 27 Sanguine items exist. Each one increases a given skill by 5 points. One guild has aquest to collect all 27 items. While you may not want all of them, I will try to make a list of them and where they can be found: Fleetness--Athletics--Caldera. Ahnassi tells you about the devil worshipper girl upstairs who has it. Close the door, then kill her. Take this belt. Silver Wisdom--Illusion--Some Dwemer ruin or shrine in the northern Ashlands. One mage there has this ring. He attacks you, so don't feel guilty when you pry it from his cold dead hand.(Guilt? Me? Never.) Horny Fist(I think they meant horned or thorny, not horny)--Hand to Hand--The Redoran section of Vivec has an inn called Flowers of Gold. The NPC named Guril Retheran holds this glove. Swift Blade--Short Blade--Severa Magia in Ald Sotha (the Dewmer ruins northeast of Vivec) has this glove and the next two artifacts. Nimble Armor--Light Armor--Severa Magia owns this amulet, see above. Fluid Evasion--Unarmored--Severa Magia claims this ring to be hers, see above. Transfiguring--Enchant--Llandrale Varam in Ald Sotha has this ring and 2 others below. Transcendence--Conjuration--See above. Red Wisdom--Destruction--Above again. Ald Sotha has 6 of 27 Sanguine items, making 2/9 in 1 area. Enterprise--Mercantile--Eno Hlaau in the Vivec Arena Hidden Area has this amulet. Smiting--Blunt Weapon--Domba in Ald Daedroth (The northeastern most marked Dwemer ruins on the paper map) owns this belt. He might already be dead by the time you get there. Green Wisdom--Restoration--Gnaw Tooth, Domba's apparant partner, owns this ring. See above for location. Sure Flight--Marksman (7 pts)--Barusi Venim in Tel Arun tower living quarters will sell this to you, or you an steal it from him. Denial--Block--Marvis Darys at the Ald Sotha mages guild owns it. Ask him to join the Morag Tong (which you only need to have in your notebook to ask him, you don't need to be assigned to get it from him) and he will give it to you if you don't kill him. Or kill him and take it, just remember it's bad karma. Or what goes around comes around. Actually, almost every religious has some verse/line/etc about doing unto others as you would have done unto you. I'm serious. And rambling. Shut up self. OK. ¥ Necromancers anulets can be found on necromancers, and one exists in the Vivec Mages Guild, Foreign Quarter. ¥ A helmet that increases personality 30 pts. is owned by Sorkvold in his tower near Dagon Fel, the northernmost large(?) city. ¥ The Lord's Mail, which is not the most powerful armor around despite what they say, and a heavy curias as well, can be found on Furius Acilius in the EBonheart Caves. There is a hidden door in one building that looks just like a wall. Use your small map to find where it is. ¥ A powerful weapon called Temriki, Shackler of Souls is owned by Larius Varro in Ft. Moonmoth. It casts Soul Trap and Paralyze. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a note on exactly what kind of weapon it was. Sorry. ¥ The Erabenimsun ashlander Assu-Ahhe has a med. armor curias that always gives a 10 pt. shield. ¥ Next door, Ranabi has a gauntlet that also gives the constant 10 pt. shield. Wear em noth for a constant 20 pt. shield. ¥ The Bitter Cup, found in Ald Redrynia, will increase your best stat and lower your worst. It is needed for the Theives Guild missions, so decide first whic you would rather have. ¥ The Best clothes in the game belong to a man named Lenas Sarandas in Ald-Runh. They have the highest enchant points of any items. ¥ In Addamasartus, you can find a Theif Ring around a partly complete skeleton and a few single gold coins. It is almost invisible to the player, and the cursor only shows it in a small spot. ¥ The Redas Robe of Deeds is a powerful item. It's effects are Feather 50 and Detect Animal 10 feet constantly. It's in the Redas Ancestral Tomb far west of Vivec, on some island in the south sea. There's also a rather powerful shock axe there. ¥ The tower of Tel Fyr has tons of good stuff. If you want most of it, you'll need to kill the owner, and he is one powerful sorcerer. No one else there is nearly as much of a threat. ¥ The below items are the ones mentioned in Yagrum's book of Great Artifacts. I cut/pasted them to save myself time retyping. Thanks to Josh Aldrich for typing for me. * * * * * * * * ¥ Bloodworm helm: Owner Crazy Batou found in Maren Ancestral Tomb west of Erabenimsun Ashlander Camp. ¥ Bow of Shadows: In the Venim Ancestral Tomb north of Zianab Ashlander Camp. ¥ Cuirass of Saviors Hide: In a locked closet in the Hall of Fyr in Tel Fyr Tower. ¥ Daedric Scourge: In a chest in the Hall of Fyr. ¥ Denstagmer's Ring: In a trapped cremation urn marked D. Bryant in lowest chamber of the Falas Ancestral Tomb east of Gnisis. ¥ Eleidon's Ward: Mounted on a wall in Ibar-Dad west of the Urshilaku Ashlander Camp. ¥ Fang of Haynekhtnamet: Found in the Shrine of Pitted Dreams in the Sixth House base in Mamaea north of the stronghold Berandas. ¥ Fists of Randagulf: Both are in souls rattle the innermost recess of the Sixth House base Ilunibi. ¥ Masque of Clavicus Vile: In possession of Sorkvild the Raven who is in a tower east of Dagon Fel. You can pick-pocket it. ¥ The Mentor's Ring: In Samarys Ancestral Tomb southeast of Hla Oad in an urn marked Lord Brinne. ¥ The Ring of Phynaster: In the Senim Ancestral Tomb southeast of Dagon Fel. ¥ Staff of Hasedoki: In possession of Koffutto Gilgar in Gimothran Ancestral Tomb in mountains south of the stronghold Falensarano. ¥ Vampiric Ring: On the skeletal wizard who rules the Velothi dome in Ald Redaynia in western Sheogorad. * * * * * * The rest of these were also taken from Josh Aldrich, but they aren't in the book. ¥ Tel Fyr's upper study has a locked cabinet with sone extremely powerful armor in it. More powerful than Glass and constantly resists magicka 60%. *%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*%*% Chapter 6.5: Good Magic Spells and Who Owns Them Note that more than one person can have a spell ¥ The man standing in between the large open gate before the Temple canton in Vivec has all the Restore Attribute spells you'll need to restore your stats that tend to get drained by powerful monsters. Man, this chapter really sucks right now. ************************************************************************************************ Feel free to contribute info regarding other tips, or locations/people I did not specify in my tips for whatever reasons. You will be credited with the info. email: giegue@exite.com AIM: neogiegue Home adress and phone number: NO, I'm not that stupid. Cute girls who can prove that they are cute AND girls may be able to get them off me. For everyone else, here is a secret code that can be decoded to find the info : NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO Have fun decoding? ************************************************************************************************ Revision History 1.0: First release. A major jump from no release. First guide to playing a game by me. Some clarifications here. No offense to Ziff-Davis magazines or employees, but it seems they occasionaly take info from FAQ's and use them in print. Maybe other FAQ writers are paranoid. Maybe they have a reason. I really don't know or care, and never will unless I see info from this document in a printed magazine without my getting lots of money from it. Permission isn't needed if money is supplied before printing. Also, forgive the excessive use of bad writing like cliches, parenthethees, using etc., long lists with commas, etc. I just used 2 in the last sentence. I rock! 1.5: Second Release "Cool Items". More items and their locations were added as the main focus of this release, most of which were from the book near the last living dwarf. This release was also written mostly under the influence of having to do other work and avoiding it. "One Winged Angel" (Sepiroth's Theme) was the main song I heard while typing this. With my main character's game coming to a close, I feel that I may run out of general tips to help you all. But, there will still be lots of othe fun things to do and items to find. Also added the list of which skills to buy or train early on and more hints and tips. Some typo's were removed and more added. 2.0: Morrowind FAQ Revolution 3rd Mix. Added a few more items along with some reader-contributed stuff. I type this and upload it on 2 different computers, so the credit may not be immeaditely given, but it will be. Interesting stuff added to the Glitches category and a reader-suggested area has been opened, a completely opinional section about stuff that would have made Morrowind into a better game. It's good as it is, but a few small things would have pushed it into the small margin of unforgettable games like Tetris and ...um... Final Fantasy something. Just put the number of your favorite FF game there and act like we both like the best game in the series. (In case you care [stalker], I have played the first 9 in the series in english [Fan Translation rules] and have beaten 1, 4, 7, 8, and 9. I don't really have a favorite of the ones I've beaten.) Cheats for the Xbox version have also been added. At the risk of being humiliated, I admit I have still not beaten the game. My excuses are 1) Started again with a new Ninja character 2)addicted to Um Jammer Lammy on the PSX 3)went on vacation for 2 weeks 4)lockups at random, usually if I go without saving for more than 20 minutes. That's the main reason, and 5)repetition in the game is kinda boring after 50 or so hours. Maybe that's why the FF games end at 40 hrs. I'm serious if you're laughing at me. I beat 7, 8, and 9 all in 40 hrs. each, give/take half an hour and all my characters were around level 50 give/take 10. It was tricky but I did it. Part skill, part strategy, part karma. I think writing FAQs is good karma, maybe I'll write more. But for what? The guide is now 2X the original size as well. This may be the last version of the guide, as I feel the limits of the document are being pushed as it is. 2.1: Better Morrowind Playing Through Meditation and Tai Chi. I've finished Morrowind after 3 months of ownership. I've also finished Um Jammer Lammy. I'm starting to run out of extremely useful things to add. Only small tips were added this release, hence the small version change. Revised the magic section and added only a few tips. Added a new section, the magic spells and who owns them section. It should be bigger later. This could be the last version, as I haven't played Morrowind for a while. I've got other things to do now. Dance Dance Revolution Konamix and Xenogears for example. Maybe not. Sites currently knowingly hosting this doc: www.gamefaqs.com www.angelfire.com/oh4/giegue/ your computer probably some Morrowind fan sites that like to link straight off of GameFAQs.