Maximum Profit Guide For Dwemer Ruins

  • Welcome to Skyrim Forums! Register now to participate using the 'Sign Up' button on the right. You may now register with your Facebook or Steam account!

Squirrel_killer-

The blade in the dark and the hand at your throat
A word before I begin:

Dwemer Ruins are one of my favorite places to gather loot. You can make a tidy profit off of the Soul Gems from the Dwemer Automations, the gems and ore that both Dwemer Automations and Falmer drops, Chaurus Chitin sells well, and most importantly all those scraps! Dwemer Ingots have a value of 30 each and are made in multiples from Dwemer scraps. This means even a non-smithing character can make money off of them. So let’s get down to business and talk about making money of these ruins!

Preparation:

Before you go delving into the ruins you need to be prepared. Bring a collection of cure poison potions –unless you have a way to gain 100% poison immunity–, increase carry weight gear, some health potions, a follower, a pick axe for the ore veins, and the bare minimum of other gear since you want to maximize your carry weight. The Steed Stone is also very useful for maximizing carry weight; it increases your carry weight by 100 and makes your armor weightless. If you can cast the spell, dead thralls make awesome pack mules as well.

Those ruins are more dangerous than Chuck Norris on steroids:

Dwemer Ruins are full of danger, and it’s my job to tell you what it is and how to handle it, after all, can’t make money if you’re dead! These ruins are mostly inhabited by either Dwemer Automations or Falmer and their pets, and full of traps.

Dwemer Automations are heavily armored, immune to poison and frost damage, and come in three main varieties; Spiders, Spheres, and Centurions. I will address each type separately here:

Spiders are the weakest and most basic, just little robotic bugs. Some of them may try to use a small shock attack on you at range, but they almost always tend to stick to melee when they are up close. All varieties other than worker have death explosion which does shock damage so it is advised to back away if you kill them up close. Fighting them is pretty simple, just doing a decent amount of damage and they’ll die fast. They always drop random Dwemer scraps, and single Common Soul Gem, that may or may not be empty. They can also sometimes drop a leveled gem, a leveled Soul Gem, leveled ore, or Dwarven Oil.

Spheres are the middle-tier Dwemer Automations and are a little more complex, they move around in a form when dormant, and open up into a combat form, which resembles a man with wheels for legs, when they detect something. The basic variety only possess a rather powerful melee attack, while the stronger varieties have a ranged dart gun that they use as well as their melee attacks. Fighting these guys can be difficult, as they can hit hard with their melee attacks. I suggest blasting them with your strongest stagger spells, beating them with power attacks, or spamming arrows at them to bring them down. You want to avoid damage from these guys since they can do a real number to your health with their melee attacks. One thing to take note of is that they move fast and can attack fast. As for loot they always have one Dwemer scrap, and a Greater Soul Gem with a chance of being filled. They may also have up to two extra Dwemer scraps, a leveled Soul Gem, and a leveled gem.

Centurions are the biggest, baddest, and most dangerous of the Dwemer Automations. These guys are war machines, basically a giant hulking suit of armor with a hammer for one hand, a spring powered spike for the other, and a habit of blowing steam at their enemies. Fighting these guys involves a little more work than the other Dwemer Automations. Most of the tactics here revolve around the fact they are slow. What you want to do is stay behind them where you’re safe from harm from their steam attacks, and do swift hit and runs if you use melee hitting them fast than getting out of reach before they can use their very powerful melee attacks on you and devastate your health, mages and archers get a little more freedom with these behemoths since you just need to stay out of reach and spam ranged attacks. When they go to use their steam attacks you have an opening to attack, if you can avoid the actual attack that is. These guys are definitely worth the fight when it comes to loot though, with their guaranteed drops being a piece of Dwemer scrap, a valuable Centurion Dynamo Core, Dwarven Oil, and either an empty or filled Grand Soul Gem. The nonguaranteed loot includes up to three extra pieces of Dwemer scraps, an extra sample of Dwarven Oil, up to three leveled gems, and some arrows.

As for Falmer they can either be archers, mages, or warriors, with all types having some kind of melee weapon and using Falmer weapons and armor. They use mostly frost and sometimes shock spells and have a weakness to fire and a resistance to frost damage. I wrote a whole guide on fight them here: Falmer Hunting - A Guide For New Players On Taking On Those Annoying Snow Elves | Skyrim Forums. Their loot includes Falmer ears, Soul Gems, gold, Falmer weapons and armor, poisons, and ore.

The Falmer do however have pets that can surprisingly dangerous. These include Chaurus, Frostbite Spiders, and Skeevers. The Chaurus and Frostbite Spiders are both resistant to frost, weak to fire, have a poisonous ranged attack (which should be dealt with swiftly by those cure poison potions you brought), and drop Chaurus Chitin and Frostbite Venom respectively.

As for traps the Dwemer seemed to have relied on spear, piston, spinning blades, flamethrower statues, and giant overhead blades that slice from above. The most common trigger are pressure pads, however I have encountered doors and chests with tension cables that set off traps as soon as they are opened. Falmer tend to set up bone chimes to alert them of your presence. They also seem to favor tripwires connected to claw-traps which function as the swinging spike walls from Nordic Ruins, swinging out and damaging the unsuspecting victim, however the Falmer variety can attack from walls, ceiling, or floor.

What loot you want and what’s just junk:

This is the money making section of the guide, here’s the part where I tell you what to take and what to leave.

Your main source of income will be Dwemer scraps and Ingots that means you want to maximize your profit off of them. You may or may not know that only certain kinds of scraps are any good for making Ingots, and certain scraps make differing amounts Ingots. However the weight of the scrap does not help determine the number of Ingots it makes, it is rather the value. For every Ingot the scrap can make its value increase by 5. Each Ingot you find or make has a value 30. So it is clear that you want to make sure make those scraps into Ingots before you sell. The best scraps that you can collect by weight/Ingot ratio are: Small Dwemer Plate Metal, Large Dwemer Plate Metal, and Bent Dwemer Scrap Metal, all of which have a weight of 2 and produce 3 Ingots a piece. The only other types of scrap that can be used to make Ingots are: Large Decorative Dwemer Strut, which have a weight of 15 and make 2 Ingots, Large Dwemer Strut, which have a weight 20 and make 3 Ingots, and Solid Dwemer Metal, which have a weight of 25 and make 5 Ingots. Every other piece of scrap you find, leave it alone. Once you make those Ingots you need to determine what to do with them. If you’re a smith use the Ingots to make Dwarven Bows, Armor, Shields, and Gauntlets, in that order for maximum value and experience for the materials that you have. If you’re not a smith, sell the Ingots. Remember smelting doesn’t provide smithing experience.

As for the rest of the loot, Soul Gems, ore, gems, Chaurus Chitin, and other loot collected from the various enemies mentioned before sell well enough to be worth taking. The Centurion Dynamo Cores, from Dwemer Centurions, in particular have the potential to be highly profitable since they are used in the Atronach Forge, located in the Midden below the Collage of Winterhold, to make Daedric items out of Ebony items without use of the smithing skill. Using this method to make Daedric armor and items and selling them is highly profitable. As for the chests found throughout the ruins, take the valuable items such as jewelry, gems, gold, etc., and leave all unenchanted weapons and armor where they lay.

Last words before I go:

As always, please make suggestions, point out anything I may have left out, or just tell me how awesome I am. Hopefully this guide will lead you to riches from those deep, dark, Dwemer Ruins.
 

ShadowGambit

Active Member
You should put a list of the different dwemer ruins and their "difficulty" level regarding the number of enemies there.
 

berzum

Why is the alto wine always gone?
I have a couple of dwemer ruins i vist on a regular basis, at first it was for coin but now i have over 10k in dwarven arrows. I use the arrows to soul trap wild life like deer and wolves, plus it raises my blacksmithing so even if your not into making coin visiting dwemer ruins is a good way to raise your blacksmithing plus its a free source of soul gems so it kind of helps with enchanting!
 

Max the Daedric

Proud member of PAHAAA & Daedra worshipper
What are the best Dwemer areas I can raid for materials? So far the only Dwemer area I check frequently is the Reachwind Eyrie, near Markarth. But I can't remember the Dwemer ruin near Narzulbur. I remember it having a separate armory place filled with ingots and plate metals.
EDIT: I found the ruin south of Narzulbur. Any other ruins that are good for looting?
 

Squirrel_killer-

The blade in the dark and the hand at your throat
Gone for a bit, come back and I'm getting support for one of my guides. Thanks to all of you for actually reading this and appreciating it. I've got an update planned for this one so stay tuned.
 

Recent chat visitors

Latest posts

Top