No, you do it for completion sake and if you want to actually kill Paarthurnax. You should do it if you want Esbern's help (PROTIP: You don't LOL), so its a matter of weighing what you would prefer. Its not necessary that you do this quest at all, you can leave it lying there and do all other quests and the game doesn't punish you for it.
IMO I find leaving Paarthurnax alive much more valuable since he helps you meditate with Words of Power. I find that more useful than the services Esbern gives me.
Sneak
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At the very beginning, in the section of tunnel with the bear that you can sneak by or kill...put on a dagger, get behind your helper NPC (Ralof or Hadvar), go into sneak, and just wail on him. As long as the "Sneak Attack for X damage!" appears you should be getting sneak EXP.
If you get tired of that, keep going and when you get to Whiterun, go to the Guards Barracks (just on the left as you enter) and Sneak behind the guard in the chair. Best done if left on overnight with a rubberband.
Block
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Grab your favorite shield and find a Giant Camp. If there are more than one kill the others so you arent overwhelmed. Just hold the block button for skillups. Run away and heal if you need to (Restoration skills!!!).
Destruction/Restoration/One-Handed/Two-Handed/Archery
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Do the Dark Brotherhood questline until you get the horse Shadowmere. Turn up your difficulty to Master and just cast on/attack the horse. He regens really quickly.
(Shadowmere is a BADASS horse btw, he can climb in some places your character cant, and he fights along with you out in the world. He killed a dragon for me once!)
For Destruction and Restoration, put the same spell in both hands and cast them seperately (not Dual-Casting), this nets you more EXP for those skills.
Conjuration
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Find something and kill it. Anything will do. Then spam Soul Trap on it until capped. Will cap you in about 20-25 minutes!
Illusion
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Buy the Muffle spell from Farengar in Dragonsreach. As you are travelling just cast and run. This will level your Illusion very quickly.
Speech
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Go to the Black-Briar Meadery in Riften and speak to Ungrien behind the counter. Choose the option "Tell me about Maven Black-Briar." Then choose the Persuade option. Repeat. The persuade option does not disappear, so you may do this over and over to cap Speech. The Persuade option will only work if you are 25 Speech or higher. If you are below 25, you may bribe him until you reach 25 Speech. Base level to 100 Speech should take 25-35 mins depending on how much you button mash.
Smithing
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Buy Iron Ingots and Leather Strips wherever you can. Stock as much as you can by waiting 2 days for the shops to restock and buying them all out again. Find a forge and spam-create Iron Daggers. Depending on your Speech perks, this should cost you between 7000-16000 gold. You may sell the Daggers to make a portion of your gold back of course.
I always found putting a bucket over an Inn keepers head and standing in front of him way more amusing for leveling sneak :x
For Alteration, stand in water that doesn't require you to swim and spam water breathing.
For restoration/alteration, you can use the convert hp>mp spell (believe it's equilibrium off the top of my head) in one hand and your highest level healing spell in the other. If you get the timing down this takes about 20 mins to cap.
Speech there is a very fast way using vendors after running them out of gold, but I'd have to look on uesp for a proper way to explain this.
http://www.uesp.net/ has pretty much all the information to boost chars in the fastest ways if you want.
*Edit: waterbreathing is alteration not illusion, brain fart
I always found putting a bucket over an Inn keepers head and standing in front of him way more amusing for leveling sneak :x
For Alteration, stand in water that doesn't require you to swim and spam water breathing.
For restoration/alteration, you can use the convert hp>mp spell (believe it's equilibrium off the top of my head) in one hand and your highest level healing spell in the other. If you get the timing down this takes about 20 mins to cap.
Speech there is a very fast way using vendors after running them out of gold, but I'd have to look on uesp for a proper way to explain this.
http://www.uesp.net/ has pretty much all the information to boost chars in the fastest ways if you want.
*Edit: waterbreathing is alteration not illusion, brain fart
There are a lot of ways to skillup, the ones I posted are just the ones I used :D
I refuse to use a glitch to skill up (i.e. Speech glitch).
I got a good lol out of standing on a fire trap while healing myself for some restoration XP.
Question though, does it give you xp when you start casting or does it continue the entire time? Like Clairvoyance, Healing Hands, and Healing.
For Restoration you get the EXP for it as your casting. For Destruction, you get the EXP when you hit a viable target. Conjuration, you get after cast.
Also, the higher tier spells gets you more exp towards the associated skill. I.E. Firebolt gets you more exp than Flames.
That doesn't really answer my question. If I'm using Clairvoyance, is it more effective to cast it repeatedly or just hold down the button until I run out of mp?
That doesn't really answer my question. If I'm using Clairvoyance, is it more effective to cast it repeatedly or just hold down the button until I run out of mp?
That doesn't really answer my question. If I'm using Clairvoyance, is it more effective to cast it repeatedly or just hold down the button until I run out of mp?
You can hold the button down until you run out of mp, however, if you can find a spot where you can get up on a ledge that no enemies can get to (Lost valley redoubt is a good spot for this) and simply sneak, shoot an arrow into the middle of them, then spam muffle, you can level sneak and illusion at a decently high rate. Clairvoyance is one of the crappier spells to PL illusion with unfortunately. I can post a ss of where to hide if you'd like, but any spot where you can elevate yourself to where enemies cannot reach you works well. If detection goes too high, simply strafe behind a rock.
For Restoration you get the EXP for it as your casting. For Destruction, you get the EXP when you hit a viable target. Conjuration, you get after cast.
For conjuration as well, if you summon a creature (like flame atronach or something), you only get EXP when its in battle. For bound weapons your conjuration increases on the spot.
Soul trap is the best way to level it though, but I don't recommend doing this particular method. Soul trap spam something like a horse or even a dead bear, and you can spam level it up like crazy.
Speaking of Conjuration, I can now summon Thralls... can't wait to build my own little undead army with it, mhmhmhm :3
For Restoration you get the EXP for it as your casting. For Destruction, you get the EXP when you hit a viable target. Conjuration, you get after cast.
For conjuration as well, if you summon a creature (like flame atronach or something), you only get EXP when its in battle. For bound weapons your conjuration increases on the spot.
Soul trap is the best way to level it though, but I don't recommend doing this particular method. Soul trap spam something like a horse or even a dead bear, and you can spam level it up like crazy.
Speaking of Conjuration, I can now summon Thralls... can't wait to build my own little undead army with it, mhmhmhm :3
I've gotten skillups when summoning Atronachs outside of a battle O.o Granted its very slow, but you do get -some- EXP from it.
Bound weapons also net you EXP while you connect hits with it.
For Restoration you get the EXP for it as your casting. For Destruction, you get the EXP when you hit a viable target. Conjuration, you get after cast.
For conjuration as well, if you summon a creature (like flame atronach or something), you only get EXP when its in battle. For bound weapons your conjuration increases on the spot.
Soul trap is the best way to level it though, but I don't recommend doing this particular method. Soul trap spam something like a horse or even a dead bear, and you can spam level it up like crazy.
Speaking of Conjuration, I can now summon Thralls... can't wait to build my own little undead army with it, mhmhmhm :3
I've gotten skillups when summoning Atronachs outside of a battle O.o Granted its very slow, but you do get -some- EXP from it.
Bound weapons also net you EXP while you connect hits with it.
Thats odd, never happened for me... oh well. The more you know lol
I started doing the Thieves Guild questline, as I had to put my Brotherhood one on hold. If I continue with the brotherhood one, it will conflict with a quest I am yet to do in Windhelm, which will result in me being unable to purchase the home in Windhelm. Bah!
For Restoration you get the EXP for it as your casting. For Destruction, you get the EXP when you hit a viable target. Conjuration, you get after cast.
For conjuration as well, if you summon a creature (like flame atronach or something), you only get EXP when its in battle. For bound weapons your conjuration increases on the spot.
Soul trap is the best way to level it though, but I don't recommend doing this particular method. Soul trap spam something like a horse or even a dead bear, and you can spam level it up like crazy.
Speaking of Conjuration, I can now summon Thralls... can't wait to build my own little undead army with it, mhmhmhm :3
I've gotten skillups when summoning Atronachs outside of a battle O.o Granted its very slow, but you do get -some- EXP from it.
Bound weapons also net you EXP while you connect hits with it.
Thats odd, never happened for me... oh well. The more you know lol
I started doing the Thieves Guild questline, as I had to put my Brotherhood one on hold. If I continue with the brotherhood one, it will conflict with a quest I am yet to do in Windhelm, which will result in me being unable to purchase the home in Windhelm. Bah!
if you want a short cut on a few of the magic skills, CON, ALT, and illusion(you can do Illusion anywhere though) on the thief guild quest line around the second mission when your asked to go steal from a vault and burn down a few bee hives. There is a room in the basement of the building the vault is it, you can sit in here and spam spells that give skill ups. In the room is a bunch of skins you can pick it the room is like a storage area. Guards are in the other rooms next to this one so when you cast something they hear it and your in combat but they never find you. You can sit back here in sneak mode and spam spells that give skill ups while in combat and lvl your magic skills.
For Restoration you get the EXP for it as your casting. For Destruction, you get the EXP when you hit a viable target. Conjuration, you get after cast.
For conjuration as well, if you summon a creature (like flame atronach or something), you only get EXP when its in battle. For bound weapons your conjuration increases on the spot.
Soul trap is the best way to level it though, but I don't recommend doing this particular method. Soul trap spam something like a horse or even a dead bear, and you can spam level it up like crazy.
Speaking of Conjuration, I can now summon Thralls... can't wait to build my own little undead army with it, mhmhmhm :3
I've gotten skillups when summoning Atronachs outside of a battle O.o Granted its very slow, but you do get -some- EXP from it.
Bound weapons also net you EXP while you connect hits with it.
Thats odd, never happened for me... oh well. The more you know lol
Bah!
Quickest way to level conjuration is to cast the single sword in each at hand at nearly same time (to avoild Doublecast or interrupting casting of the second one to draw animation) while red dots are on the radar, just find a spot where they cannot attack you. low MP needed and even at lvl 99=>100 you need no more than 8 rounds and enemies don't die in the process.
Just finished with Enchanting (finally) after having Smithing done for weeks. Beefed the crap out of a set of Dragon Scale and went to town with double enchantments. Accidentally put one of the wrong things on my body piece, but it pushed me over the Destruction Cost - threshold so now Dest. is free.
Beast moded a couple of dungeons I had been waiting on. Kill Lydia often now, and she won't wear any of my Magic Resistance gear I made for her.
Even better Conjuration; you can cast Soul Trap on things that are dead. Just wear some magicka cost -% gear, kill something, and cast Soul Trap over and over. Can go from 20 to 100 in about 15 minutes.
Question for everyone here.
I mined up all the ore in Gloombound mine. I've gone ahead and did some quests and come back some 15~20 game days later and the mine has still not replenished it self. I dont have kinship with the orcs.
I was wondering if I was needing that to have the mine replenish?
Any help would be great! And no it does not mark as "Cleared" so it should only take 10 days.
I heard somewhere earlier in this thread it takes over 1 in-game month for mines to replenish. I had cleared out Halted Steam Camp mine early in my game, went back after a lot of adventuring, and it was replenished. I've never heard of needing a special status(kinship) for a mine to replenish.
Gonna keep waiting I guess. I just came into a bunch of daedra hearts and I would like to fashion me some Daedric Armor, and this is the largest deposit of ebony as far as I know.
Thanks !
edit: I read up a bit more and apparently I'm not the only one with this issue. I will see if I need to wait more or walk there maybe and update when I hear more.
Bethesda Softworks just announced the fifth game in the Elder Scrolls series and the sequel to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion will be called Skyrim. And it'll be out next year.
Bethesda's Todd Howard introduced the game with a brief teaser showing a stone dragon and a dramatic narration that sets up the story of the next big role-playing game in the Elder Scrolls series. That teaser also dates Skyrim for November 11, 2011.
I cannot bloody wait. I've always loved the Elder scrolls series since Daggerfall.
