Morrowind, soul gems and magic.

[Guest]

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I recently started play Morrowind again, now with the expansion packs
installed.
My character is an Imperial, but the course of the game made me do much work
for the Mage Guild.
My character is custom so did start with the major and minor skills of my
liking. Kind of like a jack of all trades. Have put a lot of points into
intelligence, Endurance and willpower. Tried to max the most out of bonus's
for training.

The characters intelligence is at 99, the available magic points is around
95 or so. Is that normal? Or does more magic oriented races such as Breton
get higher bonus's there?

Trapping souls seems to be a nice way to get some coins into your pocket,
however, is there a limited supply of soul gems? Is there any shop about who
renew their stock of gems? Or any good source of the higher quality gems.

When trying to enchant items, most of my atempts seems to fiddle and fail
with an enchant skill at 48.
Any tips regarding this?

 

[augustus]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

"Erland Andreassen" <wsg@-nospam-lways.online.no> wrote in message
news:E0M%d.3177$SL4.67416@news4.e.nsc.no...
>
> Trapping souls seems to be a nice way to get some coins into your pocket,
> however, is there a limited supply of soul gems? Is there any shop about
who
> renew their stock of gems? Or any good source of the higher quality gems.
>
> When trying to enchant items, most of my atempts seems to fiddle and fail
> with an enchant skill at 48.
> Any tips regarding this?

Soul gems are both set and random treasure... there are lots out there.
There are better and more efficient ways to make money tho (IE: cleaning out
one of the forts is thousands of GP)

There is a rechargable grand soul gem you can get from a quest.

Your Enchant skill has nothing to do with how well you enchant items...
your success/failure at enchanting items is based solely on intelligence
(same with Alchemy). What the enchant skill does is determine how fast
items recharge themselves and how many charges you use to get an effect from
the item.

IE: at the start of the game you might find a sword that has 50 charges...
that sword has a power that costs 8 charges to use and does 10-20 additional
damage to a foe... so that means you can use the sword 6 times before its
out of charges and then you'll have to wait for it to recharge.
However... if you pump up your enchant skill the cost to use the swords
power might drop from 8 to 7... then 6... then 5... and so on as your
enchant skill increases. At the same time, you will notice that the sword
recharges faster... maybe before when the sword cost 8 charges to use it
would recharge 1 point every 2 minutes of real time... but as your enchant
skill increases the sword will start to recharge even faster..

 

[Guest]

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On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 04:14:51 +0100, "Erland Andreassen"
<wsg@-nospam-lways.online.no> wrote:

>
>
>I recently started play Morrowind again, now with the expansion packs
>installed.
>My character is an Imperial, but the course of the game made me do much work
>for the Mage Guild.
>My character is custom so did start with the major and minor skills of my
>liking. Kind of like a jack of all trades. Have put a lot of points into
>intelligence, Endurance and willpower. Tried to max the most out of bonus's
>for training.
>
>The characters intelligence is at 99, the available magic points is around
>95 or so. Is that normal? Or does more magic oriented races such as Breton
>get higher bonus's there?

Magic bonuses come from picking the right race, and the right birthsign.
Bretons and High Elves get a small bonus to maximum magicka, as do the
Apprentice, the Mage, and the Atronach birthsigns.

>Trapping souls seems to be a nice way to get some coins into your pocket,
>however, is there a limited supply of soul gems? Is there any shop about who
>renew their stock of gems? Or any good source of the higher quality gems.

When you get to Mournhold, there's a shop which has an unlimited supply
of the more expensive soulgems.

>When trying to enchant items, most of my atempts seems to fiddle and fail
>with an enchant skill at 48.
>Any tips regarding this?

You need to have a very high skill and stats to succeed consistently.
Personally, I don't bother.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

> >Trapping souls seems to be a nice way to get some coins into your pocket,
> >however, is there a limited supply of soul gems? Is there any shop about
who
> >renew their stock of gems? Or any good source of the higher quality gems.
>
> When you get to Mournhold, there's a shop which has an unlimited supply
> of the more expensive soulgems.

Even without expansions, higher level soul gems are not hard to find later
on. Once you get to a certain level, (not sure what exactly), you'll start
finding them at random in crates and chests everywhere. Plus, most of the
vendors that sell them will restock after a while. I think it takes like 4
game months, though.

> >When trying to enchant items, most of my atempts seems to fiddle and fail
> >with an enchant skill at 48.
> >Any tips regarding this?
>
> You need to have a very high skill and stats to succeed consistently.
> Personally, I don't bother.

True. Large sources of money are much easier to find, and when you pay an
enchanter to do it for you, it always succeeds. Remember to carry a few
expensive items that the enchanter will buy with you. After you get your
enchantment, you can sell the items to them and get most of your money back.

 

[Guest]

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Darrel Hoffman in <qu2dne-wdqj2BKLfRVn-qA@giganews.com>:

> True. Large sources of money are much easier to find, and when you pay an
> enchanter to do it for you, it always succeeds. Remember to carry a few
> expensive items that the enchanter will buy with you. After you get your
> enchantment, you can sell the items to them and get most of your money back.

Or turn around, stuff a couple of the freshly bought soul gems with
summoned critters and sell them to the enchanter. Always use the most
expensive kind of soul gems that you can buy (grand soul gems preferred but
can only be bought in Mournhold) because the game multiplies the nominal
price of the soul gem with a critter's soul value in order to determine the
nominal trade value of a filled soul gem. So a rat in a grand soul gem is
'worth' twenty times as much as the same rat in a petty soul gem.

The same principle applies for other vendors. If you buy ingredients, sell
potions to get your money back and all of the merchant's; if you want to
have spells made then use a spell maker who also barters, so that you can
get your money back by selling worthless junk like potions or stuffed soul
gems.

Besides alchemy and soul-trapping there is another source of infinite
money: infinite spawn points of mobs who tend to drop high-value loot, like
daedric shrines and some tombs in Morrowind, and the assassin cave in
Mournhold.

But you don't need a whole lot of money in Morrowind, just a bit of spare
change for transport fares and about a hundred grand that you may have to
'lend' to an enchanter temporarily when you have enchantments made.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

> Anyone know of a good shop with lots of coin, best I can find only has
> about 12,000. I'll never sell all these soul gems!!!

I think there is some plugin for this. Anyways I just abuse that poor
creeper in Caldrea.
He only got 5000, but he I end up trade back and forth items with him, over
a few days.
Time doesnt seem to do much anyhow, but to go through a item that is worth
50k or so is a pain though.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

> Besides alchemy and soul-trapping there is another source of infinite
> money: infinite spawn points of mobs who tend to drop high-value loot,
like
> daedric shrines and some tombs in Morrowind, and the assassin cave in
> Mournhold.

My favorite trick involves those "cursed" gems and such that you find left
as offerings in Daedric Shrines everywhere. You can tell they're cursed,
because they don't stack with regular gems. When you pick them up, it
summons a Dremora Lord behind you. Thing is, this isn't limited to where
you initially find it in the shrine. You can put down and pick up that gem
anywhere, and summon another Dremora Lord. I think you can't do it twice in
a row in the same cell, but leave and come back, and you can summon as many
as you want. So long as you're able to kill them reliably, you get a
Daedric weapon from them every time. Sell to Creeper or Mudcrab, and you
can make a ton of loot pretty fast.

 

[Guest]

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In article <ocf041p9nejtm9a22fg1vi8ikmvtgq9qo4@4ax.com>, Darth Frog wrote:
> The merchants in Mournhold have the most money, so flog your
> stuff to them.
>
> If you really want to sell high 'value' items then sell a
> couple of medium price items with round prices first (Ebony
> stuff has often nice round price like 10000 gold, dito bell
> hammers IIRC). Come back a day later and sell the next item and
> so on. Then trade your big item for whatever money the merchant
> has plus the appropriate number of 10000-gold items that you
> sold earlier. Sell the 10000-gold items one per day after that.

Wow! That sounds fun!

--
Neil Cerutti

 

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Neil Cerutti in <3abhamF69f888U1@individual.net>:

> In article <ocf041p9nejtm9a22fg1vi8ikmvtgq9qo4@4ax.com>, Darth Frog wrote:
....
> > If you really want to sell high 'value' items then sell a
> > couple of medium price items with round prices first (Ebony
> > stuff has often nice round price like 10000 gold, dito bell
> > hammers IIRC). Come back a day later and sell the next item and
> > so on. Then trade your big item for whatever money the merchant
> > has plus the appropriate number of 10000-gold items that you
> > sold earlier. Sell the 10000-gold items one per day after that.
>
> Wow! That sounds fun!

It isn't, of course, and there is no real need for it either. But it is a
frequently asked question and some people obviously want to turn the
Daedric Dai-Katanas etc. they've looted into cash instead of stacking them
in their loot hoard.

I usually added all high-grade loot to my collection on the place before
the Vivec temple (reachable via teleport, lots of space for making a nice
display) and sold off only cheap cr*p in order to reduce clutter. Creeper
and Mudcrab certainly have more than enough daily bartering money to take
the junk off your hands, and since I had towed Creeper and Mudcrab to the
same place where my loot collection was it was quite convenient. When I
teleported 'home' after an adventure (Recall to the Vivec Guild Guide, then
Almsivi to the temple) I could repair and sell off junk without having to
move, which might have been quite impossible anyway with something like a
metric ton of stuff in the inventory. Then I would add high-grade items to
the appropriate stack in the collection and finally I would I walk a few
steps to a flat where I stored all keys in case they were needed again
later.

This arrangement made it easy to sell the junk in small daily increments
without actually seeking out vendors or even camping at the Creeper's or
the Mudcrab's. If, on rare occasion, the value of the junk exceeded the
limit of Creeper and Mudcrab then I dropped excess items on the floor and
sold them at the next opportunity, or simply hit Max Sale in order to get
rid of the stuff. This way I accumulated about 3.5 million cash over time
(which I added to the loot display in nice round 1-million piles whenever I
had a full million) without any extra effort.

There are mods that raise the daily limits of Creeper and/or Mudcrab
considerably, and they are probably the only viable way of finding out how
much your loot collection is worth. Unless you want to spend several years
camping out the Mudcrab, that is. I loaded such a mod once because I was
curious; I also added 10000 STR via the console so that I could pick up all
the items and carry them to the Mudcrab. The total amount was a bit over 26
million. )

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

Darrel Hoffman in <tdWdnbaC_7bXOt3fRVn-sQ@giganews.com>:

> Of course, Golden Saints and Ascended Sleepers are the best (short of two
> gods you can trap), and they can be found on Vvardenfell, so no need for
> Bloodmoon. They have the added benefit of being able to create Constant
> Effect items, which no lesser soul can do.

It is funny, though, that plain Ascended Sleepers (courtesy monsters) have
stronger souls than the named Dagoths. In one game I made it a point to
make a collection of all Dagoths, and collecting them is pretty much all
they are useful for anyway. For CE items and for sale it is more convenient
to summon Golden Saints and trap them.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

Darrel Hoffman in <p_qdnYFIvModON3fRVn-3g@giganews.com>:

> > [...] another source of infinite money: infinite spawn points of mobs
....
> My favorite trick involves those "cursed" gems and such that you find left
> as offerings in Daedric Shrines everywhere. You can tell they're cursed,
> because they don't stack with regular gems. When you pick them up, it
> summons a Dremora Lord behind you. Thing is, this isn't limited to where
> you initially find it in the shrine. You can put down and pick up that gem
> anywhere, and summon another Dremora Lord.

Cool, I didn't know that. I thought they only work once. The places where
you can hunt 'free' Dremoras and Dremora Lords often give you only lots of
Daedroths instead, and I don't think that a Daedroth ever dropped anything
useful for me. <g>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

In article <9ui24114f5907s22aohrokksin5j9n0ipc@4ax.com>, Darth
Frog wrote:
> Neil Cerutti in <3abhamF69f888U1@individual.net>:
>
>> In article <ocf041p9nejtm9a22fg1vi8ikmvtgq9qo4@4ax.com>, Darth
>> Frog wrote:
>> > If you really want to sell high 'value' items then sell a
>> > couple of medium price items with round prices first (Ebony
>> > stuff has often nice round price like 10000 gold, dito bell
>> > hammers IIRC). Come back a day later and sell the next item
>> > and so on. Then trade your big item for whatever money the
>> > merchant has plus the appropriate number of 10000-gold items
>> > that you sold earlier. Sell the 10000-gold items one per day
>> > after that.
>>
>> Wow! That sounds fun!
>
> It isn't, of course, and there is no real need for it either.
> But it is a frequently asked question and some people obviously
> want to turn the Daedric Dai-Katanas etc. they've looted into
> cash instead of stacking them in their loot hoard.

In fairness, I spent plenty of time doing boring things like that
in Wizardry 8 to make money.

--
Neil Cerutti
These people haven't seen the last of my face. If I go down, I'm
going down standing up. --Chuck Person

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

Darrel Hoffman wrote:

> My preference is to sell to the Mudcrab merchant. He only has
> 10,000/day, but he pays full price for everything, since he has no
> Disposition or Mercantile skill. What I do is I get a bunch of
> 10,000 gold items (Daedric Daggers, Ebony Shortswords), and sell them
> to him, 1 per day. Then when I want to sell an expensive item, like
> an 40,000 Daedric Longsword, I'll sell the longsword, and buy back 3
> daggers so it evens out. Then sell him back the daggers 1 at a time
> for the next 3 days. You can do this a lot quicker if you just bring
> the items to an Enchanter that also buys weapons, since you can get
> your really-expensive enchantment, and then sell them a bunch of
> really expensive items you don't need to get all your money back.

I haven't played for awhile, but I preferred installing the Shakti Temple
Fences mod - a merchant at every Almsivi/Divine Intervention materialisation
point, with plenty of cash (about 100,000 I think), but still normal
disposition so you still need to haggle.

--
Mark.

 

[Guest]

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"Darth Frog" <sherlog@t-online.de> wrote in message
news:9ui24114f5907s22aohrokksin5j9n0ipc@4ax.com...
> Neil Cerutti in <3abhamF69f888U1@individual.net>:
>
>> In article <ocf041p9nejtm9a22fg1vi8ikmvtgq9qo4@4ax.com>, Darth Frog
>> wrote:
> ...
>> > If you really want to sell high 'value' items then sell a
>> > couple of medium price items with round prices first (Ebony
>> > stuff has often nice round price like 10000 gold, dito bell
>> > hammers IIRC). Come back a day later and sell the next item and
>> > so on. Then trade your big item for whatever money the merchant
>> > has plus the appropriate number of 10000-gold items that you
>> > sold earlier. Sell the 10000-gold items one per day after that.
>>
>> Wow! That sounds fun!
>
> It isn't, of course, and there is no real need for it either. But it is a
> frequently asked question and some people obviously want to turn the
> Daedric Dai-Katanas etc. they've looted into cash instead of stacking them
> in their loot hoard.
>
> I usually added all high-grade loot to my collection on the place before
> the Vivec temple (reachable via teleport, lots of space for making a nice
> display) and sold off only cheap cr*p in order to reduce clutter. Creeper
> and Mudcrab certainly have more than enough daily bartering money to take
> the junk off your hands, and since I had towed Creeper and Mudcrab to the
> same place where my loot collection was it was quite convenient. When I
> teleported 'home' after an adventure (Recall to the Vivec Guild Guide,
> then
> Almsivi to the temple) I could repair and sell off junk without having to
> move, which might have been quite impossible anyway with something like a
> metric ton of stuff in the inventory. Then I would add high-grade items to
> the appropriate stack in the collection and finally I would I walk a few
> steps to a flat where I stored all keys in case they were needed again
> later.
>
> This arrangement made it easy to sell the junk in small daily increments
> without actually seeking out vendors or even camping at the Creeper's or
> the Mudcrab's. If, on rare occasion, the value of the junk exceeded the
> limit of Creeper and Mudcrab then I dropped excess items on the floor and
> sold them at the next opportunity, or simply hit Max Sale in order to get
> rid of the stuff. This way I accumulated about 3.5 million cash over time
> (which I added to the loot display in nice round 1-million piles whenever
> I
> had a full million) without any extra effort.
>
> There are mods that raise the daily limits of Creeper and/or Mudcrab
> considerably, and they are probably the only viable way of finding out how
> much your loot collection is worth. Unless you want to spend several years
> camping out the Mudcrab, that is. I loaded such a mod once because I was
> curious; I also added 10000 STR via the console so that I could pick up
> all
> the items and carry them to the Mudcrab. The total amount was a bit over
> 26
> million. )

I use a mod called, I think, Temple Traders by Shakti. It is an early mod
but available on his web site. It places a trader at every temple you can
reach by an Almsivii. Traders have 250,000 gold every day. Traders don't
give full price and my current Imperial is very high in personality so they
now offer about 1/4 to 1/3 which he can raise to half. It still unbalances
gold at higher levels but I like it because anything I want to buy back is
at one of these traders. Each has a chest too where you can store things.
Like all traders these women will equip what you sell them sometimes. It
depends on the class they are.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

> I usually added all high-grade loot to my collection on the place before
> the Vivec temple (reachable via teleport, lots of space for making a nice
> display) and sold off only cheap cr*p in order to reduce clutter. Creeper
> and Mudcrab certainly have more than enough daily bartering money to take
> the junk off your hands, and since I had towed Creeper and Mudcrab to the
> same place where my loot collection was it was quite convenient.

How exactly do you "tow" Creeper and Mudcrab over to where you want them?
Are you using some sort of console commands, or using the CS to make a
custom mod with them in a new location? Or can you get them to follow you
by using spells? (Never tried the Command Creature spells, but I guess it
might do that...)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

Mark Blunden in <3adglmF673uivU1@individual.net>:

> Darth Frog wrote:
....
> > After a certain point the amount of money you get decreases the
> > higher your mercantile skill is and the more the shop keeper likes
> > you.
>
> But that's easy to get around, by trying to repeatedly buy any item for 0gp.
> That temporarily drops his friendliness until you next speak to him.

Temporarily draining Personality on self is quicker. In case you ever
wondered what those 6th House amulets are good for ... <g>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

ALMA ENGELS in <e7j0e.930$cg1.816@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>:

> Like all traders these women will equip what you sell them sometimes. It
> depends on the class they are.

LOL, sometimes this looks really funny, especially with the Khajit and
if you sell unmatched pairs of things like pauldrons.

And at one time I was combing all of Vvardenfell for a certain amulet
which I needed to complete a quest. I knew that I had found that amulet
not too long before and that I sold it to somebody in order to
unclutter my inventory. But I did not remember exactly to whom. In the
end and after quizzing every merchant on Vvardenfell at least once it
turned out that my first guess had been correct but the amulet had not
shown up in the sales inventory because the blighter was wearing it ...
So I sold him a better amulet and the missing locket promptly showed up
on the sales screen.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

Darrel Hoffman in <r8ydnW4KKdSGnt_fRVn-qA@giganews.com>:

> How exactly do you "tow" Creeper and Mudcrab over to where you want them?
> Are you using some sort of console commands, or using the CS to make a
> custom mod with them in a new location? Or can you get them to follow you
> by using spells? (Never tried the Command Creature spells, but I guess it
> might do that...)

Command Creature it is. While Creeper and Mudcrab are in 'commanded' state
they will follow even if you travel by siltstrider or Mage Express. Mudcrab
and Creeper are both very slow, so it is convenient to have an appropriate
speed booster spell and to use public transport as much as possible (btw,
it is far easier to get a siltstrider guy/gal to Mudcrab than to get
Mudcrab to the nearest town).

Note: except as far as public transport and doorways are concerned, the
easiest way of getting a creature or human to follow you is to make them
hostile. This makes them follow you until you pacify them, as opposed to
command spells that always run out after a certain duration. This is
especially important if you try to tow high-level characters like the
enchanter in Mournhold, because they require high-level command spells that
cannot last for very long with realistic skill levels. So all you need is
about 10 seconds and you can shave it even closer if necessary.

Note: if you command creatures this way, watch out for guards - if they see
an angry Mudcrab chasing your tail then they will come to the 'rescue' and
kill your favourite merchant.

It is also possible to get Mudcrab/Creeper to fly but it is difficult,
which means that certain areas are not feasible for Mudcrab. He is too
broad to walk up to the Vivec Mages Guild, and IIRC he is also too broad to
travel via gondola.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

> It is also possible to get Mudcrab/Creeper to fly but it is difficult,
> which means that certain areas are not feasible for Mudcrab. He is too
> broad to walk up to the Vivec Mages Guild, and IIRC he is also too broad
to
> travel via gondola.

Of course, if you have Bloodmoon, a little SetScale command will take care
of that. I was having problems with this guar (Corky) following me around
everywhere, and the activation box for a guar is MUCH larger than the actual
geometry, so if he's anywhere near you, you can't activate anything else,
NPCs, doors, items on the ground, etc. So I just used a "SetScale 0.5" on
him, so I had a nice little baby-guar following me instead of a full-sized
one. Would probably work on Mudcrab too...