New&have a few questions

[Mithro'I]

Hello!
I'm new to skyrim (yes I know that I'm late to the party).
Played some Oblivion a long time ago, but i was never any good at it.
And its all a bit overwhelming
I started playing a sneaky archer type of person. I want to join the thieves guild and the dark brotherhood. I found good info on how to do those things, but i cant seem to find much info on when its best to do that.
I understand there will be good quest rewards at some point, that might be better to obtain later? Or will those items rise in level with me?
I want to learn alchemy and enchanting, should I become a smith too?
Also, I want to learn and use the slow time shout, I read that one way to get it is during a quest for imperials or stormcloaks, but then I read somewhere else that its best to hold off joining either of those sides for as long as possible?
So many questions
I'd be thankful for any pointers from experienced players, since I'm pretty much a complete noob!
Sorry if this is in the wrong area.

 

[ColleenG]

Yes, you have to slow down. Get into your role play as an escaped prisoner from Helgen. You're going to Riverwood. It's a big country and you just arrived. Look around! You have nothing. You need to scrounge to survive. You need to be cunning and opportunistic. You need cash. Start here, and don't be in a hurry, because you'll miss out on a lot if you are. Don't worry about who you want to become. Focus on who you currently are.

Take the wolves' pelts, and the bear, if you can, and make some leather or iron armor. Wait til night and steal the iron and steel from the smithy in Riverwood. IMPROVE all your weapons all the time. Mine everything you can. Find a smelter and make ingots. Sell everything you can for the coin. Pick every plant and mushroom and eat it. Make useless potions and sell them. This is how we begin.

Every quest can be done at any level and there are benefits to doing them at every level. I find getting the Sanguine Rose precisely at level 14 and the Dawnbreaker as soon as you've discovered the beacon to be the only two imperative quests.

 

[Daelon DuLac]

1) TG - go to Riften and talk to Brynholf. It's pretty straight forward and you can do it early. The rewards are good.
2) DB - go to any Inn and ask about rumours and wait for the one about the kid in Windhelm. Go talk to the kid and then follow through and you'll be good to go. Don't worry, apparently murder isn't that big a deal.

Both have good quests and equipment and can make good coin, but, be warned that they are long lines. The rewards will get better and stronger as your level rises.

Don't worry too much about enchanting at low levels unless you want to make money enchanting daggers, but alchemy is great, particularly for TG & DB due to poisons. Smithing is very useful even if you don't want to create your own armor. Just get to 60 and take the Steel and Archane Blacksmith so you can up your magic items and you'll be set.

Slow time is a great shout and the wicki can give you the specific locations to find it, but I warn you, just like Hag's End location, unless you're higher level, I wouldn't try it. It really doesn't accomplish much though. You can get the same affect with other things only better. Besides, it's easier to use paralysis and slow poisons.

You don't have to do the Civil War if you don't want to. I usually save it for late game since I find it boring.

If I may suggest, IMO, early game, it's a good idea to also do some Illusion and I always use Alteration magic as well.

You didn't indicate your backstory or what weapons and armor or what level you are or race, so I can't really help there.

We have loads of helpful and very experienced folks here that I'm sure would be happy to help you.

Just let us know!

 

[Mithro'I]

ha, thank you so much for the help!
I'm playing a Wood Elf, level 7, put all my points in sneaking and archery so far. Can i redistribute skillpoints at later stages? At the stones thingey in the beginning I chose the thief stone. So far I've put 4 points in Health and 2 in Stamina. What ratio should i go for?
I think I was going at it too straightforward, so far i haven't really done any crafting and only a bit of collecting things while on quests.
Ive defended whiterun from the dragon and gotten Lydia as a companion. Should i keep her around for now or will she mess up my sneaky tactics?
I think I will do some more collecting materials before i progress with the quests any further.
I'm still a bit confused about how to learn recipes for potions and so on. I think i found (or bought cant remember) a scroll for a low damage poison somewhere, and crafted two of those. How will i get acess to more? Just consuming stuff, buying them, finding them...? All of the above?
Oh well. Again, thank you guys so much. Ill go do some collecting, thieving, and crafting. Youve been very helpful already!

 

[Kohlar the Unkilled]

Eat one of each of your ingredients to determine their attributes, if you haven't done so (at first you'll only get one attribute from each), then when you get to an alchemy table, ingredients with like attributes will be grouped together for you, (fortify health for example can be made by combining blue mountain flowers with wheat. Throw in a giant's toe for an even greater effect). Or you can just combine random ingredients and see what happens. Often times you'll get lucky and create a potion that, even if you have no use for it, you can still sell it and increase your alchemy level by making it. If you're in a pinch, and you have no healing potions, you can actually eat blue mountain flowers for a small healing effect. That has saved me early on.

Enchanting is usually prohibitively expensive early on, but you can disenchant magical items that you find at an enchanting table. Doing so slightly raises your enchantment skill, and also gives you that enchantment to use for later. So, I tend to disenchant everything I find for awhile, unless the item is very useful.

Welcome

 

[Daelon DuLac]

ha, thank you so much for the help!
I'm playing a Wood Elf, level 7, put all my points in sneaking and archery so far. Can i redistribute skillpoints at later stages? At the stones thingey in the beginning I chose the thief stone. So far I've put 4 points in Health and 2 in Stamina. What ratio should i go for?
I think I was going at it too straightforward, so far i haven't really done any crafting and only a bit of collecting things while on quests.
Ive defended whiterun from the dragon and gotten Lydia as a companion. Should i keep her around for now or will she mess up my sneaky tactics?
I think I will do some more collecting materials before i progress with the quests any further.
I'm still a bit confused about how to learn recipes for potions and so on. I think i found (or bought cant remember) a scroll for a low damage poison somewhere, and crafted two of those. How will i get acess to more? Just consuming stuff, buying them, finding them...? All of the above?
Oh well. Again, thank you guys so much. Ill go do some collecting, thieving, and crafting. Youve been very helpful already!

Your build sounds pretty good so far.

Good on you for the archery and sneak, but don't forget one handed - you'll need it as you level up.

4 to 2 on health stamina is fine for the time being, but, as a sneaker you'll need less health than most (I usually quit at about 300 health and then build either stamina or magicka since my enemies never see me anyhow).

There are two ways to redistribute your skill points:
1) There is a book in the Dragonborn DLC that will allow you to do that
2) Make a skill legendary when it reaches 100 (warning that you go back to 15 and have to start that skill over.
Don't worry too much about redistributing though. It all evens out over the long run.

There's a good tutorial on the wiki on crafting potions (I can send some links if you want), but the easiest way is just to collect all the ingredients you run across and then eat one of them. That will give you the first effect. Me, I do that and then I go to the Inn in Riverwood and just choose ingredients from the list and try combining them (I only do 2 until later levels) and, when you're successful, that potion is added to you can do list. I find recipies pretty useless. I just experiment.

Remember, collect those hides, pelts and skins as you're wandering about hunting as well as get a pick-ax (they're all over the place) and mine some ore. You can use the tanning racks and forges to make leather helmets to up your smithing quickly and you can always change your ore to ingots in Whiterun.

 

[Gregor Moon Fang]

Hey I wanna join in too

Since you're going for building up a sneaky character, your main skills will be Archery, Sneak and One-Handed (you'll need this one for slitting throats and/or if the worse comes, for switching to melee.) Get Archery up to 30 so that you can take the critical shot and zoom perks and Sneak to 30 so you can get the muffled movement perk and make it so that you're harder to detect.

Sneak
Here's a little trick you can use to level up Sneak if you don't mind leveling up Conjuration a little bit. Buy the spell Raise Zombie from Lucan in Riverwood and read it. Then go around bandit camps and caves with weak humanoid enemies (i.e bandits, draugr) and do sneak kills on them, primarily with your bow. Then switch to your dagger and put Raise Zombie in your left hand. Aim the spell at the weak bandit or draugr and they will rise back from the dead. Go behind them and do a sneak kill. If you do it right you'll gain a level in sneak. If they aren't dead after the first hit, do another sneak attack. You'll level up Sneak very fast this way.

Alchemy
Be sure to harvest any plant, fish, crop, etc. that you come across. More or less every one of them have a use for alchemy. They're also hidden in barrels and sometimes held by enemies. Start off by eating every item once. This will give you a starting point to see what items make what type of potion. When you get to an alchemy table, mix and match items. Try and see what effects are shared between ingredients. Trial and error. Don't worry if you get a combination of effects that you don't want or aren't useful to you as you'll be selling these off. A little tip: the more the potion is worth, the more exp you gain for it. Try to find which potions are worth a good amount of money for some fast leveling.

Smithing
For a sneak character this isn't exactly needed but it does give you a chance to get better quality weapons/armor if that's what you're into. Smithing exp is gained by the worth of the item created so try going for the more expensive items to create i.e Leather Armor, Iron Armor, Gold Rings. Collect the hides and pelts of killed animals and make leather armor out of them. Get a pickaxe and mine as much ore as you can so you can melt the ore down into ingots so that you create weapons, armor and even jewelry. Sell all of the excess armor/weapons for some quick cash.

That's all I can think of right now. Hope it helps and welcome to the community.

 

[Snake Tortoise]

At this point I'd listen to the advice you've been given but mostly just get on with playing a lot and figure it out through practice. Explore a lot, play through one or two of the quest lines and then eventually make a new character and be more effective the second time. The game is so deep don't feel any pressure to do everything with your first character

Good on you for the archery and sneak, but don't forget one handed - you'll need it as you level up.

Disagree. When an archer gets the ranger and quick shot perks there's no need for one handed, and because archery levels relatively slowly it wouldn't be a good idea to spend time and perks on another offensive skill.

 

[Mithro'I]

Yeah i guess I should just keep on playing and find stuff out the hard way. Although I am used to trying to maximise my characters / gameplay from other games so its really hard to just run around and mess things up

One issue I came across while playing just now was that I know too little about the leveling process. I payed the alchemy trainer to teach me, and then stole the money back afterwards, after all I'm a thief! I did this for some amount of time, and through the skill increases in alchemy and pickpocketing my level rose from 8 to 14. When I wanted to distribute the new points to my perks I noticed that I couldnt put all of the points into sneak and archery, because obviously during these level ups i didnt level neither archery nor sneak. Even when I level them to 40 there will be points left that i cant put into sneak or archery at that point I think. So it seems like Ill need to go for another perk aswell?
I started out only putting points into sneak / archery, because i thought its probably best to be really good at something specific, instead of okish at many.
So am I right assuming that I need to put points in more than 2 trees anyways?
Hope I could somewhat accuratley describe my issue even though I'm not an expert at all the lingo yet.

Thanks again for all the awesome answers!
Edit: thought about putting spome points into alteration if thats indeed the case.

 

[Gregor Moon Fang]

Well if you're planning on surviving at later levels you'll want to invest in armor. Enemies will start to get stronger the higher your level goes so be sure that your primary skills are upgraded enough or you'll be getting demolished by trolls, bandits, et cetera. Your playstyle would suggest going with light armor so go with that. Anyways good luck.

 

[Daelon DuLac]

Yeah i guess I should just keep on playing and find stuff out the hard way. Although I am used to trying to maximise my characters / gameplay from other games so its really hard to just run around and mess things up

One issue I came across while playing just now was that I know too little about the leveling process. I payed the alchemy trainer to teach me, and then stole the money back afterwards, after all I'm a thief! I did this for some amount of time, and through the skill increases in alchemy and pickpocketing my level rose from 8 to 14. When I wanted to distribute the new points to my perks I noticed that I couldnt put all of the points into sneak and archery, because obviously during these level ups i didnt level neither archery nor sneak. Even when I level them to 40 there will be points left that i cant put into sneak or archery at that point I think. So it seems like Ill need to go for another perk aswell?
I started out only putting points into sneak / archery, because i thought its probably best to be really good at something specific, instead of okish at many.
So am I right assuming that I need to put points in more than 2 trees anyways?
Hope I could somewhat accuratley describe my issue even though I'm not an expert at all the lingo yet.

Thanks again for all the awesome answers!
Edit: thought about putting spome points into alteration if thats indeed the case.

If you don't want to put those points in something else just hold on to them. They'll still be there whenever you get high enough in the skill you want to put them in. Don't waste them on something you don't want.

 

[Daelon DuLac]

A couple of small things JIMO:

1) I disagree that you should be putting points in light armor. As a sneak thief it's pointless, especially as an archer. If you're not going to get in to physical combat anyhow, why bother? I have a Dunmer thief/assassin in mourner's clothes (black) who's at 102nd level and I have never put one point in light armor. So far she has never died and only very rarely takes any damage.
2) I also disagree that you need all those perks in archery (slow time, zoom in, ranger, etc...). The first 5 and the critical damage 3 are the ones you need. That and the 3X you can get from sneak are plenty unless you're a really bad archer. You're sneaking for goodness sake. The whole point is to take your time and make sure your shot counts. I agree that the perks are great when you're actually playing an archer (melee/warrior type) and I use it all the time on my warriors who use archery, but, on a sneaky type, they're pointless.
3) I don't think just archery is valid as your only damage output. Sure, it's fine from a distance, but, up close, not so much. Although, I will amend that to say that, if you can learn how to bash with your bow, you can certainly make it your main and just keep a dagger on hand for emergencies and up close assassinations.
4) See the homeless gal in Windhelm to get your pick-pocket training. She's expensive, but she' can train you all the way up to Expert. I always use her. Of course I don't pick-pocket to steal anything, I only use pick-pocket in the reverse method to place poison in pockets for quiet kills.
5) I still suggest you try some illusion on your build. Muffle, invisibility, calm, fear, frenzy, pacify, rout, etc... - if you really want to avoid melee, those spells can be invaluable.
6) A potion suggestion for you that's easy, useful and can make you good coin. Find some Luna moths (anywhere there are butterflies in the daytime, there'll be moths at night) and some vampires (they're easy stealth kill with archery - just don't get too close) and take their dust. Combine the two and you'll end up with a potion of regeneration/invisibility (300 seconds health regeneration and at least 20 seconds invisibilty) plus they're worth quite a bit.

Just my thoughts. Take them for what they're worth (which isn't much according to my better half! )

 

[Snake Tortoise]

1. For me sneaky archery is mostly for the lower and middle levels prior to getting powerful armour and the higher archery perks. When you have the armour and resistances to tank damage and the ability to move and shoot quickly you no longer need to sneak, and can now take on dragons as well as a melee warrior. It's still useful being able to go into sneak mode for extra damage but more practical if you can do both effectively

I suppose if you don't want to run around shooting arrows and are happy always sneaking there's no point having much armour, but I usually get sick of sneaking eventually

2. Critical damage is pointless, the extra damage it does is tiny. The perk to retrieve extra arrows isn't really worth it either, but I take those perks for ranger. If I planned on using an archer who is always is sneak mode I wouldn't touch the right side of the skill tree, but I'd still take everything on the left. Zooming in, staggering opponents and shooting at a faster rate are great for any kind of archer

3. With power shot, ranger and quick shot archery is everything you need offensively. Ranger means you can move backwards as quickly as almost all opponents move towards you, power shot slows them down even more, and then quick shot means you're dealing damage faster and creating more chances to stagger the enemy.

Spreading perks between one handed and archery is fine at the lower difficulties but for someone new to the game or on legendary difficulty you're hamstringing yourself by trying to be a jack of all trades. While one handed/archery might work I don't think it's optimal

Well if you're planning on surviving at later levels you'll want to invest in armor. Enemies will start to get stronger the higher your level goes so be sure that your primary skills are upgraded enough or you'll be getting demolished by trolls, bandits, et cetera. Your playstyle would suggest going with light armor so go with that. Anyways good luck.

I generally agree (it's particularly good advice for a new player) but I've found a low armour value is surprisingly viable at high levels. Ive got a level 50 character at the moment where I've yet to enchant anything but weapons and her only armour is elven boots and scaled gauntlets. The armour value is something paltry like 120 (which includes +50 for the lord stone) and enemies like trolls and bears can attack me for a little while before I need to heal. That's on legendary, with a health of about 330. I wouldn't have thought such weak armour would work at level 50 but it's not the issue I expected it to be.

I'm sure a dragon or giant would destroy me if they got close enough but weak armour can work for a fast moving archer, it just isn't ideal. Saying that, I'll start leveling enchanting again soon and make a decent set of enchanted armour when I get the chance. I'm keeping the master robes of illusion but taking highly smithed chitin helmet, boots and gauntlets for armour. With decent health and +50 from the lord stone it should be enough to reach about 400 armour

 

[Snake Tortoise]

Yeah i guess I should just keep on playing and find stuff out the hard way. Although I am used to trying to maximise my characters / gameplay from other games so its really hard to just run around and mess things up

One issue I came across while playing just now was that I know too little about the leveling process. I payed the alchemy trainer to teach me, and then stole the money back afterwards, after all I'm a thief! I did this for some amount of time, and through the skill increases in alchemy and pickpocketing my level rose from 8 to 14. When I wanted to distribute the new points to my perks I noticed that I couldnt put all of the points into sneak and archery, because obviously during these level ups i didnt level neither archery nor sneak. Even when I level them to 40 there will be points left that i cant put into sneak or archery at that point I think. So it seems like Ill need to go for another perk aswell?
I started out only putting points into sneak / archery, because i thought its probably best to be really good at something specific, instead of okish at many.
So am I right assuming that I need to put points in more than 2 trees anyways?
Hope I could somewhat accuratley describe my issue even though I'm not an expert at all the lingo yet.

Thanks again for all the awesome answers!
Edit: thought about putting spome points into alteration if thats indeed the case.

I don't think the trainign system is any different to Oblivion

My mistake the first time I played the game was being too narrow with the skill trees I used, but you can definitely go too far the other way too. For your character I'd put perks in the following trees

Archery
Sneak
Light Armour (not too many)
Alchemy
Enchanting
Smithing
Speech (first perk and then any of the perks on the left of the skill tree)

...and you don't need to fill any of those trees. Without wasting perks you should end up with a really powerful character by about the mid level 40s. By that point the game is easy on any difficulty so then I'd just start a new game with a different type of character- maybe a one handed/shield warrior using some magic?

 

[Mithro'I]

so many replies i thought people would bash me for being a useless noob but youre all really helpful
just a quick question for now: i killed a dragon and it dropped a 'hunting bow of diminishing'. - does 30 points of magicka damage.
sorry if this is a really stupid question but does that mean it does 30 damage to an enemies magicka, or it does 30 points worth of 'magic' type of damage to his health?
and, connected to that question, does damage from enchants&poisons stack with the sneak bonusses?

thank you all!

 

[Daelon DuLac]

30 points to magicka. Unless you're intending to go someplace that's mage infested, I'd just disenchant it or sell it. Does regular damage to health.

I believe that it is only the base weapon damage that is multiplied and then you add the extra damage done by enchantments and poisons. Example: Bow does 41 damage, enchanted with +20 fire and +20 poison applied would do 82 (2x damage) +20 fire + 20 poison = 122 damage, not 162 damage.

 

[Mithro'I]

aw such a shame...
about the damage boni aswell.
oh well, at least i still have my imperial bow :/

i just killed 2 giants and broke into their expert level chest with 29 points of lockpicking found a beacon of merida or something.
this is all very exciting :d

 

[Daelon DuLac]

aw such a shame...
about the damage boni aswell.
oh well, at least i still have my imperial bow :/

i just killed 2 giants and broke into their expert level chest with 29 points of lockpicking found a beacon of merida or something.
this is all very exciting :d

Ooo! Good on you! Be sure to follow up on the Meridia thing. Not only is it very profitable, but you get an excellent bonus at the end. Just be sure you're ready for a cold snap.

Re you bow, you'll start finding Dwarven and Elven soon which will put your imperial to shame.

 

[ColleenG]

That's the beacon

aw such a shame...
about the damage boni aswell.
oh well, at least i still have my imperial bow :/

i just killed 2 giants and broke into their expert level chest with 29 points of lockpicking found a beacon of merida or something.
this is all very exciting :d

That's the beacon I was telling you about. Go get that sword! It's actually a tough little side quest. I found having Barbas there helped immensely. Look for the dead bodies inside the temple of Meridia. There's ~42 or so dead bodies with lots of cash on them.

 

[Harkin]

Meridia's beacon quest?

At the end after Malkoran;

You can glitch two dawnbreakers to spawn by using a scroll of firestorm or something on a powerful scale, using it next to the altar will fling a dawnbreaker somewhere in the room on the floor, look for something shiny.

Then picking up the altar one will continue with ending the quest.