Creating a Class

Morrowind Character Creation, Part II:  How To Create A Good Custom Class

Back to part I: Choosing a Race
Onward to part III: Choosing a Birthsign

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

ASSUMPTIONS THIS GUIDE IS BASED ON

HOW TO PUT TOGETHER A CLASS: THE VERY BASICS OF HOW IT WORKS

THE TROUBLE WITH THE PREDEFINED CLASSES

• Problem 1: Efficient play
• Problem 2: Efficient leveling
• Preliminary Conclusion: General Principles for Good Custom Classes

SO WHAT ATTRIBUTES SHOULD I FOCUS ON RAISING? (Or: Principle 2 in practice)

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO, AND THE SKILLS THAT LET YOU DO IT (or: Principle 1 in practice)

• I. FIGHTING
  • a. Armor
    • 1. Light Armor
    • 2. Medium Armor
    • 3. Heavy Armor
    • 4.Getting some Armor Rating without any skill: Summoned Armor
  • b.Melee weapons
    • 1. Long Blade
    • 2. Axe
    • 3. Spear
    • 4. Blunt Weapon
    • 5. Short Blade
    • 6. Hand-to-Hand
  • c. Ranged attacks
    • 1. Destruction
    • 2. Marksman
  • d. Blocking
• II. CURING YOURSELF – AND MUCH MORE BESIDES
  • Restoration
• III. USING ENCHANTMENTS MORE EFFICIENTLY
  • Enchant
• IV. GETTING ACCESS TO RESTRICTED AREAS
  • 1. Security
  • 2. Alteration
  • 3. Using enchantments to open locks and disarm traps at a distance
• V. REACHING THE HIGH PLACES – AND THE DEEP ONES
  • a. Acrobatics
  • b. Alteration
  • c. Using enchantments to levitate, breathe water and use other Alteration magics
• VI. WINNING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING PEOPLE – or provoking them to attack!
  • a. Speechcraft
  • b. Mercantile/Speechcraft: Bribery
  • c. Illusion
  • d. Using enchantments to make friends and enemies
• VII. HIDING AND PICKPOCKETING
  • a. Sneak
  • b. Illusion
  • c. Using enchantments for «Invisibility», «Chameleon/Fortify Sneak», «Sanctuary»
• VIII. FAST TRANSPORT: TELEPORTING
  • a. Mysticism
  • b. Getting and using enchantments for Mark, Recall, Intervention and Soul Trap
• IX. GETTING RICH: MONEY IN MORROWIND
  • a. How big an issue is money in the game anyway?
  • b. Merchants and items
  • c. What really costs big money
  • d. Some ways to get gold
  • e. Mercantile
• X. REPAIRING YOUR GEAR
• XI. SUMMONING AND MIND-CONTROLLING THINGS: CONJURATION
  • a. Conjuration
  • b. Using enchantments for summoning things
• XII. OTHER SKILLS
  • a.Athletics

SUMMARY: TEMPLATE FOR GOOD CLASSES

EXAMPLES OF CHARACTERS WITH GOOD CUSTOM-MADE CLASSES

• 1. Sturdy and versatile battle-caster
• 2. Faster caster (lighter, but not as strong version of the sturdy battle-caster)
• 3. Sturdy stealth specialist
• 4. Agile skill-use specialist (variation on the sturdy stealth specialist above)
• 5. Combat specialist
• 6. Jack-of-many-trades

ASSUMPTIONS THIS GUIDE IS BASED ON

This basic assumption of this guide is that you will want your character in the world of The Elder Scrolls III:Morrowind to be able to complete as many quests as possible and gain levels and power from doing so. Of course you can create a character in order to roleplay only one particular kind of task – say, a character that is a completely single-minded killing machine (btw, «roleplaying» as I use it is not synonymous with «puzzle solving»!) However, I think even diehard roleplayers will probably want a more balanced approach to the game that at least lets them rise to the head of a guild or two. In fact, completing all of the quests of, say, the Imperial Legion actually takes skill in several more areas than just killing things. Also, in order to get as much as possible out of the time you spend playing, I am assuming you will want to be able gain levels and power from your efforts in those other areas as well. If this is not the way you want to play the game, consider this guide irrelevant – there’s no right or wrong way to play Morrowind, just the way that you, the player, find most enjoyable. If, on the other hand, these goals are consistent with yours – or if you just enjoy seeing someone else’s take on analyzing the skill set of the game – read on.

One more thing I’m also assuming is that you are using the standard game without mods that change the basic types of armor and weapons or that interfere with game mechanics by changing the way that skills or character advancement works.

HOW TO PUT TOGETHER A CLASS: THE VERY BASICS OF HOW IT WORKS

To create a custom class, you select two «Favoured Attributes», one «Specialization» and a set of 5 «Major» and 5 «Minor» skills. Your Major and Minor skills are the skills you actually level up from using. The other skills in the game will be regarded as «Miscellaneous».

Your Favoured Attributes will simply start with a +10 initial bonus. Since initial Endurance is important for hit point gain per level, you might want to select that along with Luck for your Favoured Attributes – Luck doesn’t govern any skills, wich means you can only get at +1 bonus per level, so it tends to fall behind badly; an initial +10 helps a lot with this.

All the skills in the game belong to one of the three Specializations: Combat, Magic or Stealth. Skills belonging to your selected specialization will not only get a +5 initial boost, they will also increase faster than the other skills if you use them equally much (i e, a smaller number of successful uses of a skill will be needed to raise the skill). In a way, this is where you choose the general «flavour» of your class: Do you lean towards spellcasting? Weapons and armor? Or sneaking, shooting and fast-talking? You should probably choose the specialization that fits the majority of the skills you select as major and minor skills.

Your Major skills will start at a skill level of 30 + any applicable race and specialization bonuses and – importantly – are the fastest skills to raise. Raising an already higher skill takes considerably more time than raising a lower one, so you will find that the Major skills are the ones that you can efficiently raise to really high levels and even max out at 100 – at which point you may want to shift your everyday focus to other skills, as maxed skills will no longer earn you more levels or Attribute bonuses. But when you face real challenges and need your best skills, your Major skills will be it.

Your Minor skills will start at a skill level of 15 + any applicable race and specialization bonuses and take more skill uses to raise than your Major skills – well, longer than major skills at the same level, at least. Of course, once you’ve been playing for a while, the actual level of your skills will depend on which ones you have actually used a lot and which ones you haven’t; you may find that Minor skills you use very often will catch up with Major skills that you use more rarely.

Miscellaneous (or Misc.) skills will start at a skill level of 5 + any applicable race and specialization bonuses. Misc. skills take a lot more skill uses to raise than Minor and, especially, Major skills at the same level, though early on you may find that Misc. skills you do use a lot actually increase quite fast because their initial skills are so low. Once they have reached a certain level, however, you will find that raising Misc. skills will be very slow indeed (though again, if you have Minor skills you don’t use a lot, Misc. skills can sometimes catch up).

THE TROUBLE WITH THE PREDEFINED CLASSES

Problem 1: Efficient play

Morrowind gives you no less than 21 predefined character classes to choose from; yet most of them are rather inefficient with respect to the goals outlined above. Let’s take a rather glaring, but by no means untypical, example: the Warrior class. The rationale behind this class seems to be to select all the skills that belong to the ‘combat’ specialization as Major/Minor skills. This includes all of the melee weapons except Short Blade, plus Blocking, repairing, Athletics, and the two heaviest armor type skills, with Marksman thrown in as well to complete the tour of available in-game weapons.

At first glance this seems logical; with decent initial skill in just about every weapon and armor type, you can try your hand at any of them and do well. Once you start improving, however, you will soon find that the weapon and armor you actually use a lot – and you can only use one weapon at a time, after all – will gain an edge, while the other skills start falling behind. This is a good thing, because focusing on one weapon and armor type is the fastest way for you to improve your character – dividing your skill increases between Medium and Heavy Armor only makes you advance more slowly. But this does mean that, as a Warrior, you have a number of class skills that you’re not using, nor gaining any levels from. At the same time, you have no Major/Minor skills that let you open locked doors or chests, for example – and if you’re trying to crawl a dungeon with locked-up areas or attempting to loot the chests left behind by those nasty outlaws you just defeated, those locks are going to be a nuisance.

Fortunately Morrowind’s game system is sturdy enough to let you get around such problems even as a Warrior. After all, you can use your Miscellaneous skills, it’s just that you will start out being really really crap at them, and also by definition you won’t gain any levels from using them. So as a Warrior you can bring a ton of lockpicks and keep trying to pick the locks until, at least if they are fairly low-level, you finally succeed – or, if the locks are stronger (or you run out of patience) you can spend money on training your lockpicking skills or buying enchantments that will open locks with magic. You may of course feel this to be part of the roleplaying experience. If so, I don’t mean to spoil your fun – go on and play that way. As I would describe it, however, that is a lot less efficient play than making and playing a class that replaces one of those Major/Minor weapon skills that you aren’t using anyway with a skill that lets you pick locks or open them with magic.

Problem 2: Efficient leveling

A somewhat more intricate problem with the premade classes rises from the fact that which skills you raise influences which Attributes you can raise when you level up and by how much. To explain shortly, each skill «governs» a certain Attribute (e g the Long Blade skill governs the Strength Atrribute). If you frequently raise skills that govern a particular attribute, you may be able to gain a better improvement to that Attribute when you level. This is how many skill increases you need to get the different Attribute improvements:

• 1-4 increases of skills governing a particular Attribute => +2 to Attribute at levelup
• 5-7 increases of skills governing a particular Attribute => +3 to Attribute at levelup
• 8-9 increases of skills governing a particular Attribute => +4 to Attribute at levelup
• 10 or more increases of skills governing a particular Attribute => +5 to Attribute at levelup

Now, you can only level your Major/Minor skills 10 times before being eligible for a levelup (and Major/Minor skills increased after this point count towards the next levelup, even if you haven’t actually levelled yet). This means that to get high improvements to several Attributes when leveling, you need to increase both Major/Minor skills and Miscellaneous skills that govern those Attributes.¹ For this to be possible at all, however, you need to actually have both Major/Minor and Misc. skills that govern the relevant Attributes – and the premade classes are often lacking in this respect.

Some of these shortcomings make sense from a roleplaying point of view. Warriors have a hard time increasing Intelligence and Willpower fast because all the skills that govern those attributes are Miscellaneous to their class. You may view this as an annoying limitation for your character, or as good roleplaying logic because the Warrior doesn’t emphasise spellcasting anyway. But you would probably expect tough melee fighters to improve Endurance quickly, so they have lots of hit points, right? The problem here is that Warriors have all the skills that govern Endurance as Major/Minor skills – no Misc. skills at all. This means that it will actually be quite hard for the Warrior to get more than +2, perhaps +3 to Endurance for every level (especially if you ended up focussing on another weapon than Spears).

Preliminary Conclusion: General Principles for Good Custom Classes

For the reasons outlined above, then, this guide suggests you should avoid the premade classes and instead create your custom class in the following way :

(1:) Choose Major/Minor skills that can handle most of the common types of problems you will encounter in your questing,
and
(2:) Ensure that your character has both Major/Minor and Misc. skills that govern the Attributes you want to improve quickly.

A third consideration you may want to make is that different factions (like the Mages Guild or Imperial Legion) have different «favoured skills», and in order to rise to the top of a faction, you need very high skill in at least one of the favoured skills, plus at least some mediocre skill in 2 of the others. So if you have specific factions you want to join and do quests for, I suggest you choose at least one of its favoured skills as a Major skill; the other 2 skills can be either Minor skills or you can pay a trainer to improve your relevant miscellaneous skills.

SO WHAT ATTRIBUTES SHOULD I FOCUS ON RAISING? (Or: Principle 2 in practice)

Well, that depends on how you like to play. The UESP Wiki page on classes suggests you raise them all «efficiently» and fast, or at least create a class that gives you the option of doing so. That would certainly give you a rounded character who gets powerful in several areas early on. However, you may find that focusing too much on the technicalities of Attribute improvement takes fun away from playing the game, so remember that given time and levels, you can usually catch up on all or at least most of the important Attributes for your play style in the long run. If you take this view and aim at a character that is as powerful as possible in the long run rather than the short run, the one thing to note is probably that the Attribute that it is most important to level up fast early on is usually Endurance, for the same reasons outlined in my race choice guide: Endurance determines how many hit points you gain every time you level, and this means that your Endurance early on will affect how many hit points you will have in the end, when you reach the maximum level of your class.²

If you can be bothered to give a little more thought to Attribute raising than that, it bears noting that some Attributes may be important if they affect your play style, whereas others are important to everyone. In my opinion, all classes should make sure they improve (in addition to Endurance) their Agility to dodge more enemy weapon attacks (as well as hitting the enemy more often with weapons), and Strength to let them carry more gear and loot (as well as hitting the enemy harder with weapons). Both of these are of course extra important if you focus on physical combat. If you prefer to cast spells, especially powerful ones, remember that Intelligence gives you more Magicka to spend, and Willpower increases your success rate as well as giving you a better chance to resist hostile Silence and Paralysis spells. For the latter reason, Willpower may be more useful to non-magical types than Int is.

A few Attributes may be less important to most classes. If you’re going to use the Boots of Blinding Speed trick you will get all the Speed you’ll ever need from that. Another less-important Attribute is Personality. Yes, it can help you gather information more efficiently, but it it’s rarely going to save your life like Endurance, and there are other ways to achieve what Personality does. It only comes into play when you talk to people, so you could use magic to charm them instead, or magically fortify this Attribute for the 1-2 seconds it takes to activiate dialog mode – or simply bribe people.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO, AND THE SKILLS THAT LET YOU DO IT (or: Principle 1 in practice)

I. FIGHTING.

Before we start with the task I will discuss at greatest length, it should be emphasized that there are often more peaceful ways to solve problems in Morrowind, and that the best way out of trouble can sometimes be to sneak around it, or calm your enemies with magic, or simply flee using speed, teleportation or stealth. (For an experiment in roleplaying a completely non-violent character, see the journal of my “pacificst” character, in the section on my characters».) Nevertheless, you will certainly encounter both many aggressive hostiles and many quests in the game that require you to kill someone or something. To survive that, you’ll need your defensive and offensive skills to be good and focused enough to beat the opposition. Whether you focus most on fighting from a distance or close-up is partly a matter of play style, but at the same time, you may want to be flexible because terrain and opponents will vary and you will not always be able to fight under ideal conditions. For this reason, I strongly recommend you choose the following among your Major skills:

• (a) 1 armor skill, because armor reduces damage sustained from physical weapons (and even archers need protection from enemy missiles);

• (b) 1 melee weapon skill because sooner or later you’ll be fighting in close quarters – and then, melee weapons deal the damage faster than bows or spells;
• and (c) 1 ranged skill (either spells or Marksman weapons) because even with armor and melee weapons, sooner or later (particularly sooner!) you’ll run into some enemy with so nasty close combat abilities that you’ll really want to fight from a distance.
• An optional addition to the above that you could have (as either Major or Minor skill) is Blocking.

I will discuss these in due order below.

I.a. Armor.

Skill in an armor type is essential to get a decent Armor Class rating from wearing it. To get as good armor ratings as possible as fast as possible, you should choose just one of the three armor skills: Light, Medium or Heavy. Note that, unlike in Oblivion, there are no spellcasting penalties for wearing any kind of armor in Morrowind, so the only drawback to wearing armor is the same as with anything else your character is carrying around while adventuring, such as weapons, potions and loot: It weighs you down and encumbers you. Once you reach your max encumbrance, you won’t be able to move at all, so you need to steer well clear of that, especially since you will encounter spells that damage your strength or burden you with extra weight; but even lower encumbrance levels will seriously slow down your movement rate and, especially, limit your ability to jump.³ Finally, note that your ability to sneak is adversely affected by wearing heavier footwear (which make louder footsteps).

Of course, the smallest possible armor weight comes from wearing no armor at all, and the game does have an Unarmored skill which gives you a little bit of an armor rating even when unarmored. However, I must stress that this I really don’t recommend this, since the armor rating given by the Unarmored skill never gets very high even at high skill levels; plus, you miss out on items with enchantments or enchantment potential. If weight is your worry, go with Light Armor skill. A full set of Dark Brotherhood armor – which is easy to get with the Tribunal expansion – weighs only 16 pounds (excluding shield). With the Light Armor skill, this armor yields about 5 times higher armor rating than the Unarmed skill would do at the same level.

If you want to know more about armor types, read on; otherwise, skip ahead to the melee weapons section.

I.a.1.Light Armor.

Governing Attribute: Agility

Specialization: Stealth

Weight range of full set: From 20 ( 5 ⁴) to 54

Favoured by the following factions: Blades, House Hlaalu, Morag Tong, Thieves Guild

Advice and analysis: This is your skill of choice if you want good armor rating without being weighed down much – perfect for stealth specialists who want to jump or climb mountains using the Acrobatics skill, and great for magic specialists who focus more on spellcasting than raising their Strength with melee weapons. If weight is your primary concern, the Tribunal expansion Dark Brotherhood armor is easy to get, extremely light and as strong as medium-armor class Orcish armor. The green (dragon?-)Glass Armor, though a little heavier, still weighs only 54 lbs for a full set and is very nearly as strong as the top-end Medium armors at about half the weight; it’s also relatively easy to find (though certainly a lot harder than the Dark Brotherhood one).⁵ On the downside, Light Armor is generally not as highly enchantable as the heavier armor types, there are fewer super-powered magical artifacts, and you’ll need something else than your main armor skill to raise that important Endurance stat early on. On the other hand, you’ll want Agility as well, and Light Armor still gets you the best protection-per-weight-point.

Verdict: Recommended

I.a.2.Medium Armor.

Governing Attribute: Endurance

Specialization: Combat

Weight range of full set: From 81.5 to 102.5 lbs.

Favoured by the following factions: House Redoran, East Empire Company

Advice and analysis: What I love about Medium Armor is that it lets me improve my Endurance without weighing me down quite as much as Heavy Armor would. Before the official plugins and expansions were released, Medium used to be the poorest of the three armor skills because Indoril and Dreugh Armor, the best generic Medium armors in the unexpanded game, give less protection than the lightweight Glass Armor – plus, if you wear an Indoril helm and/or cuirass and talk to an Ordinator, all the Ordinators in the game will become hostile! In my view, this inferiority vanished with the advent of Tribunal’s Royal Guard armor, which is a little stronger than Glass, and the yet stronger Gold Armor helmet, pauldrons and female cuirass⁶ added by the official LeFemmArmor plugin.⁷ This also means that, contrary to the USPWiki’s page on Medium armor, there is actually a very wide variety of Medium armor available. In general, Medium Armor can also hold stronger enchantments than Light Armor, although sometimes pieces with lower armor ratings may have higher enchantment values; this is particularly true of Orcish armor, which enchants much better than Gold and a little better than Royal Guard armor. Of course, Medium Armor still weighs a good deal more than Light, and it should be noted that there is no master trainer in the skill, so you’ll have to increase those last slow levels by actual fighting – but hey, that’s what the armor is for, isn’t it? If you still aren’t swayed, note that the single best magical cuirass in the game is of the Medium type.

Verdict: Recommended

I.a.3.Heavy Armor.

Governing Attribute: Endurance

Specialization: Combat

Weight range of full set: From 114 to 354 lbs.

Favoured by the following factions: Fighters Guild, House Redoran, Imperial Legion

Advice and analysis: Heavy armor has both the highest armor ratings and the greatest weight in the game. Fortunately, it also has by far the greatest enchantment potential of the armor types, so you can use Fortify Strength enchantments to better allow you to carry it, and increase the damage you deal with weapons to boot. (To do this, you need to be able to make Constant Effect enchantments, which takes soul gems with super-powered souls and either lots of money for enchanters or the right skill(s) to make your own enchantments – see the Restoration and Enchant skills below.) Otherwise you’ll have to start with the less-powerful, less-heavy versions, like Imperial Steel and Dwemer armor,⁸ which are not that much heavier than Medium armor, but not much better either (compared to the valuable high-end Medium armors, they are of course much worse.) Then you can add heavier pieces as you find them and level up your Strength. Daedric armor, which is the best and heaviest unenchanted armor, is very hard to come by; but so long as you have Tribunal, there is a way to easily get a full set of Her Hand’s Armor. (This armor is the second-strongest, second-most enchantable armor in the game, though parts of it are just as heavy as Daedric.) Otherwise, there are also a number of powerful magical artifacts to be found in the Heavy armor category. Heavy armor is also a particularly good choice if you intend to join and rise in the ranks of the Imperial Legion, because in order to talk to higher-ranking members, you need to wear a uniform cuirass; there is only one Light and one Medium Armor cuirass that count as uniforms, and both of those are pretty rotten. (Since the Light one weighs just 9 pounds, however, it is possible to carry that one as a spare and just put it on whenever you need to talk to another Legionnaire.) All in all, Heavy Armor is not for sneaky or acrobatic stealth specialists, but it’s great for megastrong fighter types as well as powerful conjurer/enchanters.

Verdict: Recommended

I.a.4.Getting some Armor Rating without any skill: Summoned Armor.

Finally, I should mention that there is one way to get at least a semi-decent armor rating without spending any skill slots on armor: Summoning «Bound» armor using spells of the Conjuration school. There are ways to get Bound items permanently (assuming you don’t want to spend time and magicka casting summoning spells prior to every battle) but if you do, there are some things you should know to avoid the game crashing – see the UESP page on Bound Items. Also, you should know that, contrary to what the UESP Wiki page on Daedric armor would have you think, Bound armor is NOT a weightless, Light Armor skill version of the best armor in the game, complete with enchantments to fortify attributes and armor skills. Unlike Daedric armor, each piece of Bound Armor has a SET armor rating of 80, meaning it is not influenced by any armor skill (so although getting hit while wearing Bound armor will raise your Light Armor skill, that skill will not improve the armor rating of the Bound armor – it’s always 80). Also, since there are no Bound pauldrons or greaves, a full set of Bound armor will give you an armor rating just below 60. (You can of course wear some sort of ordinary pauldrons and greaves to improve this slightly – perhaps Light Armor to benefit from the skill increases, or Medium to help a little bit in raising Endurance – but even with Bound armor enchantments, these pieces won’t raise your armor rating much if you don’t have skill). Early on, an AR of 60 is great – it’s about the same as a full suit of Glass Armor at a skill level of maybe 35, and certainly beats Unarmored skill as weightless armor. At maxed Light Armor skill, however, the Glass suit will have reached an armor rating of 168 – almost three times as much protection. Still, if you are desperate to keep your Major skills for other things than armor, it might be feasible to use Bound Armor and pick Light Armor as a Minor skill, or simply rely on Bound Armor in the early-to-mid-stages and then, when you want something better, go spend the money it takes to train up a Misc. armor skill. (If so, go with Light or Heavy, since there is no master trainer for Medium.)

Verdict: Feasible, but not recommended.

I.b. Melee weapons

Skill in your weapon type is essential to be able to hit anything. The only reason to have several weapon skills is if you want your weapons to raise different stats, or if it’s your first character and you want to try several types. However, to get as skilled as possible as fast as possible, you should choose just one type of melee weapon. In short, I recommend either Long Blade, Axe or Spear; choose whatever suits your play style, your mix of other skills, and perhaps your race bonus. Also available, but less good in my opinion, are Blunt weapons, Short Blades and Hand-to-Hand. To know more about these skills, read on; otherwise, move on to the section on ranged attacks below.

Although weapons in Morrowind have different damage rating for chopping, slashing and thrusting, the only sensible thing, in my view, is to set «always use best attack» to ON on the options menu. Not that I don’t understand why spears are better for thrusting than axes, but it makes no sense that you aren’t able to chop while charging or thrust while standing still. Therefore, what I will use to analyze the weapons in the different skill categories is the weapon’s best damage rating, as well as its weight, range, enchantment potential and whether it is one-handed (i.e., usable with the Blocking skill) or two-handed (doing more damage).

I.b.1.Long Blades (broadswords, longswords, sabres, katanas and two-handed swords).

Governing Attribute: Strength

Specialization: Combat

One- or two-handed: Both

Favoured by the following factions: Blades, East Empire Company, Fighters Guild, House Redoran, Imperial Legion

Analysis and advice: Long blades are varied and versatile; they do both good physical damage and have good enchantment potential. Long Blades are the «standard», foolproof choice of melee weapons in the game – just look at the number of factions that favour it – and for good reason. There are lots and lots of good long blades to be found in the game, including a number of truly amazing top-end ones. If you like Blocking, go with a shield and one-handed swords, which weigh less; two-handed swords, on the other hand, do more damage, but also weigh more. Note that you can still carry a shield, even with a two-handed weapon, to get a better armor rating; you just won’t be able to block incoming attacks.

Verdict: Recommended

I.b.2.Axes.

Governing Attribute: Strength

Specialization: Combat

One- or two-handed: Both (I recommend two-handed, though.)

Favoured by the following factions: Fighters Guild only

Analysis and advice: Axes are perhaps a slightly more unorthodox choice than Long Blades, but should be no less terrifying to your enemies. Axes tend to weigh more than Long Blades, but the two-handed ones also do a lot more physical damage; in fact, the generic Daedric Battleaxe can do a whopping 80 points of physical damage in one blow, more than any other weapon in the game except for one unique artifact. Axes do tend to have slightly lower enchantment potential than Long Blades, but not that much lower, and the Axe is still an excellent choice for conjurer/enchanters because the «Bound Battle Axe» is the only summoned weapon that is two-handed, giving you access to that second-most damaging weapon in the game very early on. With this powerhouse, which you can get permanently with a Constant Effect enchantment, the relative dearth of top-end magical artifacts in the Axe category is somewhat less of a constraint. If you want to use the Blocking skill, however, you might want to go with Long Blades instead, since one-handed axes tend to do the same damage as the blades but weigh more – and also since the best one-handed artifact swords do almost as much damage as the Daedric Battle Axe, but also let you Block.⁹

Verdict: Recommended

I.b.3.Spears (including halberds).

Governing Attribute: Endurance

Specialization: Combat

One- or two-handed: Two-handed only

Favoured by the following factions: House Redoran, Imperial Legion

Analysis and advice: Spears don’t do as much damage as two-handed swords or axes and have less enchantment potential, but they are lighter, and of all the melee weapons, Spears have the greatest range. This means that, with speed and practice, you can often keep your enemies at a range where you can hit them but they can’t reach you – even in somewhat close quarters, if not the most cramped ones. Also, have I mentioned how important it is to raise Endurance early on? You could choose this weapon if you want a fast, light-weight way to get more hit points per levelup rather than dealing the maximum damage-per-blow to your foes. This of course means you’ll need another way to raise Strength – jumping a lot to increase Acrobatics is my usual choice. Essentially, it’s a question of which fighting style you prefer.

Verdict: Recommended

I.b.4.Blunt weapons (warhammers, staves and maces/clubs).

Governing Attribute: Strength

Specialization: Combat

One- or two-handed: Both

Favoured by the following factions: Fighters Guild, Imperial Cult, Imperial Legion, Tribunal Temple

Analysis and advice: Blunt weapons come in many types, but unfortunately, most of them aren’t as good as Long Blades and Axes (though there are a small number of wonderful exceptions to this rule). If you are extremely strong and/or don’t carry a lot of heavy armor, then Blunt weapons can do a lot of damage. Warhammers are perhaps your best bet. They are the heaviest two-handed weapons in the game, which is not purely a bad thing, since heavy weapons are also more likely to knock your opponents off their feet. Warhammers also they tend to do more physical damage than two-handed swords – though less, unfortunately, than two-handed axes. The enchantments warhammers can hold are comparable to axes, i.e., a little weaker than swords. On the plus side, warhammers have slightly longer reach than axes or swords. They don’t reach as far as Spears, however, so it takes more practice to be able to position yourself at exactly the distance where you can hit your foes but they can’t reach you.

Staves are lightweight two-handed blunt weapons, and some of them have as good reach as Spears; but they deal so little physical damage they are virtually useless, though it must be said that the Ebony Staff has a whopping 90 enchantment points – the greatest potential of any weapon in the game. This might appeal to enchanters, but be warned that tracking down this one variety can be a little hard, and the other staves don’t match up at all; also, its physical damage is still a meager 3-16.

Maces and clubs are the one-handed blunt weapon variety, i.e the ones you can use while blocking with a shield; but most of these are inferior to one-handed swords in just about every way. This includes the Bound mace, which does up to 30 damage, whereas the Bound Longsword does up to 44. If you are patient, however, there are a few great magical artifacts in the Blunt weapon category, including (in the Bloodmoon expansion) a mace that weighs a cumbersome 90 pounds, but actually does the greatest amount of physical damage in the game.

Verdict: Feasible, but not recommended

I.b.5.Short Blades (including daggers, short swords, tantos and wakizashis).

Governing Attribute: Speed

Specialization: Stealth

One- or two-handed: One-handed only

Favoured by the following factions: House Hlaalu, Morag Tong, Thieves Guild

Analysis and advice: Shortblades are undeniably lightweight, fast weapons, but they do little damage per blow. To have any chance of winning a fight with a short blade, you’ll need to strike multiple times quickly, but even so, you may struggle to deal the damage fast enough to compete with a bigger melee weapon.¹⁰ The only reason to choose Short Blades that I can think of is if you want your weapon skill to increase your Speed for some reason. If so, you can safely couple it with Blocking skill – there are no two-handed Shortblades, so you will always be able to use a shield.

Verdict: Not Recommended

I.b.6.Hand-toHand

Governing Attribute: Speed

Specialization: Stealth

One- or two-handed: Two-handed only

Favoured by the following factions: None (except Quarra and maybe Berne Clan vampires)

Analysis and advice: Fighting with just your fists means that you will have to remove the enemy’s Fatigue before you can get to their Health, and you have to do it without the extra damage afforded by regular weapons. Clearly, this is not a safe way to fight armed, armored opponents, especially since everyone regenerates Fatigue – so when you miss a punch, your foe’s Fatigue will increase again. Admittedly, there are a few quests where you are supposed to knock somebody out without killing them. If you have skill slots to burn, you can choose Hand-to-Hand in addition to your normal fighting skills to help with those few quests. However, these quests are somewhat rare, and if you do want to do them right, an Absorb or Drain or Damage Fatigue spell from the Mysticism or Destruction schools will do most of the work for you. You can then – or alternatively – use Restoration or enchantments to Fortify Skill:Hand-to-Hand to finish knocking people out. You certainly shouldn’t waste a Major skill on Hand-to-hand unless you’re planning on using specific mods that affect the skill, or at least the unofficial Code Patch to let you take items from unconscious opponents without killing them – a feature that doesn’t work in the original game because of a bug.

Verdict: Not Recommended as weapon skill

I.c. Ranged attacks

The choice here is between the Marksman skill, which governs bows, throwing weapons, and crossbows, and using «On target» spells. There are two spell schools that target health directly. The Destruction school covers a wide range of damaging spells in the game, including elemental damage, Drain and Damage Health. This usually lets you choose a spell type that your foe doesn’t Resist. The Mysticism school, on the other hand, has only one directly damaging effect, Absorb Health, which is overly limiting since your spells will be no good if your enemy Resists Magicka. Note that Illusion spells (treated more in-depth elsewhere) can also be used offensively to Paralyze, Demoralize or Calm enemies, so that they are temporarily prevented from attacking you; in the meantime, you can attack them with impunity. Killing Calmed enemies is so sneaky it verges on cheating (it exploits a magnitude bug with the Calm effect) but be warned that doing this may have serious legal repercussions in settled areas. Also, Demoralized enemies can run away, and ranged Paralysis spells take a lot of magicka and skill if you want them to last a while; plus, characters with a lot of Willpower tend to resist paralysis, especially on higher difficulty levels, so it works best in conjunction with a Drain Willpower effect from the Destruction school. All in all, Illusion can certainly supplement Destruction, but probably not replace it. For more details on the difference between Destruction and Marksman, read on; otherwise, skip to the section on curing yourself.

I.c.1.Destruction spell school.

Governing Attribute: Willpower

Specialization: Magic

Favoured by the following factions: House Telvanni, Mages Guild

Analysis and advice: Obviously, this is the spellcaster’s approach to ranged damage. The main advantage of spells over arrows is that you can use area-of-effect spells to better deal with groups of enemies; note that being inside the area-of-effect of your own spells will NOT cause you to take any damage yourself. Also, Destruction has a number of disabling spell effects such as Damage/Drain Attribute – reducing your foes’ Speed will make it much easier for you to stay out of their range, whereas reducing their Strength to zero will cause them to become immobilized (because they are over-encumbered by their gear). And finally, with spells, you don’t have to encumber yourself with bows or arrows. The main disadvantage is that spells, unlike arrows, can be Resisted (reducing or removing the damage), Absorbed (removing the damage and re-charging your foe’s magicka), or even Reflected (the damage happens to you instead of them). The latter is a source of worry to spellcasters – you’ll have to learn, possibly by trial and error, when to use spells and when to take out your melee weapon instead.

Verdict: Recommended

I.c.2.Marksman.

Governing Attribute: Agility

Specialization: Stealth

Favoured by the following factions: Blades, House Hlaalu, Morag Tong, Thieves Guild

Analysis and advice: Obviously, Marksman weapons are the mundane approach to ranged damage. Personally, I think the best Marksman weapons are bows, since crossbows tend to fire too slowly and most throwing weapons do piffling damage (Tribunal’s “Dwarven Darts” being the one big exception). Whichever type you choose, the main advantage of Marksman weapons over Destruction spells is that physical damage can’t be Reflected or Absorbed, and although some foes may have resistance to «normal» weapons, this is no longer a problem once you get an enchanted (or maybe Bound) bow. You also won’t need to spend magicka to use bows, of course. The main disadvantage is that ordinary arrows only hit one enemy at a time, and area-of-effect arrows are hard to come by – you’ll need a specific official plugin, and even then there’s only one shop that sells them. And of course, the damage-enchantment on an arrow is prone to all the same negative effects as spells. Still, for taking out single, powerful enemies with the Reflect ability, ordinary weapons are the best. You could also go for maximum long-run flexibility and choose both Marksman and Destruction, but remember that dividing up your time between more skills means each of them will stay at a lower level for longer.

Verdict: Recommended

I.d. Block

Governing Attribute: Agility

Specialization: Combat

Favoured by the following factions: Fighters Guild, Imperial Legion

Analysis and advice: If you use a shield along with one-handed weapons, this skill lets you block incoming attacks more often, which means you completely avoid taking damage from the blocked attack. Note that, in Morrowind, this only works with a combination of shields and one-handed weapons. As mentioned above, one-handed weapons do less damage; whether to go for better attack or better defence is entirely a matter of play style. As a third option, you could keep Block as a Misc. skill and use a shield and a comparatively lighter one-handed weapon to help gain greater Agility bonuses (because you’ll be raising your Misc. Blocking skill in addition to your main Agility-governed skills); then you could shift to two-handed weapons later in the game, when your Agility is better and you have also gained Strength enough to carry more heavy gear.

Verdict: Optional.

II. CURING YOURSELF – AND MUCH MORE BESIDES

Morrowind’s environment is fraught with disease and diverse dangers, and the ability to cure yourself of diverse ailments is essential to your own well-being. Also, there are a few quests where you need to cure others, as well. While it is possible to rely on potions and scrolls for all of this, constantly keeping track of your potion supply is a chore and you may need to return to an alchemist at very inconvenient moments. I would much rather devote a skill slot to one of the most versatile spell schools in the game: Restoration.

II.a. Restoration spell school

Governing Attribute: Willpower

Specialization: Magic

Favoured by the following factions: Blades, Imperial Cult, Tribunal Temple

Analysis and advice: The very useful ability to restore damaged health is still just the least of the blessings of this skill – in fact, enchantments and, especially, potions work faster for healing and will be more useful in a combat situation. However, a minor skill in Restoration should be enough for you to cure those diseases and restore those damaged stats that will otherwise hamper or even cripple you until you can get back to a temple or well-supplied alchemist. However, with a little more magicka and skill (such as Majoring in it), a «Fortify Skill» spell and a spellmaker’s service, you will be able to gain immediate access to superhuman mastery of a number of other skills in the game as well. The trick is that for skills that are actived in «dialogue time» or «inventory time», a custom made spell with 1-2 seconds duration will be enough – which means you can make a spell that fortifies the same skill several times over at maximum magnitude, for a boost of up to +800 in the relevant skill – i.e., 8 times that of a skill maxed out in the normal, slow way. This means you can become incredibly proficient in at least the following skills:

• Alchemy (mix your own superpowered potions from ingredients)
• Armorer (repair items of all kinds to keep them at peak efficiency)
• Enchant (make your own enchanted items without paying tens of thousands for it; very useful in order to to create Fortify Strength enchantments on your Heavy Armor)
• Speechcraft (flatter people into liking you more, or taunt them into attacking you so you can kill them without getting a bounty)

For a Restoration specialist with lots of Magicka, then, all these skills effectively become redundant as Major/Minor skills because a spell will give you all the abilities you need (with the possible exception of Enchant; see below). You can also experiment with Fortifying other skills in a similar way, such as Security or another spell school. The magnitudes can’t be quite as great here, however, because you’ll need the duration to be long enough for you to at least be able to pick the lock or cast the spell; also, using this all the time will obviously place a serious strain on your Magicka supply.

Verdict: Strongly recommended

III: USING ENCHANTMENTS MORE EFFICIENTLY

You will probably find/be rewarded with a number of enchanted items in your adventuring. Unlike spells,  enchanted items can be used at 100% success rate by anyone regardless of skill, and there are no quests that require you to make your own enchantments. Still, I thought some info on enchantments would be useful here, since enchanted items is the way you can get access to all the spell effects you lack the skill to cast yourself. (This includes all the above-mentioned purposes of Restoration magic.) Oblivion players should also note that, in Morrowind, normal enchantments work much like spells in Oblivion; you cast with them, and then their innate supply of casting power regenerates naturally over time, unlike your magicka, which will only regenerate when you rest.

III.a.Enchant

Governing Attribute: Intelligence

Specialization: Magic

Favoured by the following factions: House Telvanni, Imperial Cult, Mages Guild

Analysis and advice: When it comes to making the exact enchantments you need, the cheapest way to do this is to use the Restoration skill as described above, since even at skill level 100 in Enchant, your home-made enchantments tend to fail. Using the services of an NPC enchanter will always work, but this can be extremely expensive. However, you can invest once in making a ring or amulet that increases your own Enchant skill for 1-2 seconds in the same way as described with Restoration spells above, though this is likely to be more complicated and more costly than if you are skilled in Restoration itself. (For more information on how to create enchantments, I refer you to the UESPWiki’s excellent page on the Enchant skill.)

Note that if you are planning on using a lot of enchanted items rather than or in addition to spells, having the Enchant skill itself as a Major or Minor skill can still be useful even if you have Restoration skill. There are two main reasons for this:

• With more skill, enchanted items burn less power per use, which means you can use the item more often.
• You will gain levels from raising your Enchant skill by use of enchanted items. (Note that this does not include Constant Effect items, however.)

Verdict: Can be useful.

IV. GETTING ACCESS TO RESTRICTED AREAS

Yes, you will want a way to open those locks, and maybe disarm those traps as well. (If you are seen doing this, you will likely get a small fine – just a few gold pieces, so don’t worry.) There are three ways to do this.

IV.1.Security

Governing Attribute: Intelligence

Specialization: Stealth

Favoured by the following factions: East Empire Company, House Hlaalu, Thieves Guild

Analysis and advice: With enough Security skill, you can use lockpicks to open any unscripted lock and probes to disarm any trap. You need to make sure you carry enough quality lockpicks and probes at all times, of course.

Verdict: Recommended

IV.2.Alteration spell school

Governing Attribute: Willpower

Specialization: Magic

Favoured by the following factions: Mages Guild, House Telvanni

Analysis and advice: Powerful «Open» spells take a good deal of skill and magicka to cast, so this is obviously the caster’s approach to opening locked areas. However, it is a much more versatile skill than Security because «Open» is just of one the many useful spell effects it gives access to. Among the greatest other benefits of Alteration is the excellent «Levitate» spell effect (see below). Unfortunately, Alteration doesn’t allow you to disarm traps. For that you will need either Mysticism and the «Telekinesis» effect to disarm them at a distance, or a comparable enchantment, or use probes and your Security skill. Do note, however, that disarming traps is easier than picking locks, so you don’t need as much skill to pull it off; and if you can’t, few traps do a lot of damage anyway.

Verdict: Recommended

IV.3.Using enchantments to open locks and disarm traps at a distance

Since there are often lots of chests with locks of various levels, you will likely need several enchanted items to open all of them without waiting around for ages. This will cost time and money, but that said, this works too.

Verdict: Feasible

V. REACHING THE HIGH PLACES – AND THE DEEP ONES

Though rarely as essential as fighting or opening locks, often you need a way to climb mountains or otherwise reach places above you in dungeons or the like. Again, there’s a stealth skill, a spell school and an enchantment approach to dealing with this.

V.a. Acrobatics

Governing Attribute: Strength

Specialization: Stealth

Favoured by the following factions: Morag Tong, Thieves Guild, all vampire clans

Analysis and advice: Acrobatics lets you jump higher, climb steeper slopes and take higher falls without losing as much health. Useful as this is, this skill is also so easy and safe to raise early on – all you have to do is jump around a lot – that I actually tend to prefer to keep this as a Misc. skill. That way, combined with a Strength-based weapon skill, you can get cheap +5 Strength-bonus at early level-ups – the first skill increases from 5-15 are so fast to get that you need to make sure you don’t get MORE than 10 skill increases in Strength-based skills per level.

Verdict: Very useful, but not really recommended as Major/Minor skill

V.b. Alteration spell school

See above entry for stats

Analysis and advice: The «Levitate» spell is extremely useful – it will let you cross mountains, reach high places and fly above enemies so only those with ranged attack capabilities can reach you (note that this will likely cause melee fighters to run away, because they know full well that you can use bows or spells to rain death from above upon them with impunity). However, note that you can’t sneak while levitating, and that levitation is disabled in some places – most notably Mournhold.

There are also other very useful movement spell effects in this school, most importantly «Water Breathing», which lets you reach deep places without drowning. «Water walking» is faster and more magicka efficient than levitating for crossing water without having to fight those annoying sea critters. «Slowfall» will let you fall without taking damage from it, and «Jump» boosts your jumping much like Acrobatics skill.

Verdict: Recommended for casters

V.c. Using enchantments to levitate, breathe water and use other Alteration magics

A little more expensive and complicated to make, but yeah – that works too. In fact, a powerful «Jump» enchantment, combined perhaps with «Fortify Strength» and «Fortify Acrobatics», will let you move great distances at unrivalled speed, but a Constant Effect Slowfall enchantment (1 pt magnitude suffices) is also essential to avoid death from such super-jumping. Be aware that normal jumping may raise your Acrobatics more slowly with Slowfall active, however.

Verdict: Recommended

VI. WINNING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING PEOPLE – or provoking them to attack!

The part where you need to make people like you enough to divulge important information to you is something you encounter very commonly in quests. Plus, you may get better prices when buying things or services from merchants who like you. If you have money or enchantments, you don’t have to have any skills to do this; but it does give you another way to gain levels. Less essential but sometimes useful is a way to provoke people into attacking you first so you can kill them without getting a bounty. This is achieved by the same skills as you would use to make them your best buddies.

VI.a.Speechcraft

Governing Attribute: Personality

Specialization: Stealth

Favoured by the following factions: Blades, East Empire Company, House Hlaalu, Imperial Cult

Analysis and advice: «Persuasion» is the cheapest way to get people to like or hate you, but also the riskiest – if your «Admiring» comments don’t work, people will start to like you less instead of more. Unsuccessfully «Taunting» people will also leave them with lowered dispositions, but you need to succeed at mid-range dispositions to make them attack you. You’ll need at least the skill level of a Major skill to start using this skill safely, although once you have gained enough levels you may be able to «Intimidate» commoners and other low-level NPCs to like you even with a modest skill. Note that people you have intimidated will like you even less next time you talk to them. Also note that Restoration casters (or enchanters) can make and use a «Fortify Speechcraft» spell (or item) instead.

Verdict: Feasible

VI.b.Mercantile/Speechcraft: Bribery

Governing Attribute: Personality

Specialization: Stealth

Analysis and advice: Like Persuading people, offering them a bribe may backfire by making them like you less instead of more – but to most people, this is just a question of the size of the bribe. Funnily enough, although the success chance of Bribery – or rather, the amount of money required to perform a successful bribe – depends on your Mercantile skill, a successful bribe will increase your Speechcraft skill instead. As mentioned above, you don’t have to have any skill, though – just more gold (see my section on money in Morrowind below).

Verdict: Feasible; Mercantile skill may save you money

VI.c.Illusion spell school

Governing Attribute: Personality

Specialization: Magic

Favoured by the following factions: House Telvanni, Mages Guild, Morag Tong

Analysis and advice: Again, the skill that costs magicka to use is the more versatile one. There are «Frenzy» spells for making people attack and «Charm» spells for making them like you, though the latter are expensive both in terms of magicka and gold. Think of it as an investment in avoiding future bribes, and go visit a spellmaker to make a high-magnitude, short-duration version of the spell. But the really great news is that Illusion also has lots of other good spells that either help you hiding (see below) from enemies or neutralizing them with Paralysis or Calm (see the section on Ranged attacks above).

Verdict: Recommended for casters

VI.d.Using enchantments to make friends and enemies

If you have the necessary (and costly) Illusion spell effects in your spell book but lack the skill to cast them, you can of course spend more money and/or enchanting gear making enchantments that cast the spells for you. This requires a larger initial investment, but may save you money compared to bribery in the long run.

Verdict: Feasible

VII. HIDING AND PICKPOCKETING

Relatively few quests require you to be good at hiding, but it can often be very useful in order to avoid powerful enemies, or the nasty consequences of being caught doing illegal activities such as stealing, pickpocketing or even just picking locks. Being able to spot your enemies before they see you is also an advantage in combat. Note especially that hitting enemies with weapons before they have noticed you causes a «Critical Hit», which increases the damage you do by 50% for marksman weapons, and a whopping 300% for melee weapons. Being able to hide at that close range is of course much more difficult – but if you can manage to stay undetected while hitting an enemy with a Bound Battle Axe, you should be able to deal 320 points of total damage. That’s enough to fell some Ash Vampires in a single blow…

VII.a.Sneak

Governing Attribute: Agility

Specialization: Stealth

Favoured by the following factions: Blades, East Empire Company, Morag Tong, Thieves Guild

Analysis and advice: If you don’t mind exploiting a flaw in the AI., even a Minor skill in Sneak is an asset in combat that usually lets you take your enemies one at a time rather than in groups. Stay hidden at a distance and fire a ranged attack at the closest enemy. Even if you don’t hit, an attacked enemy will probably become aware of you and attack you, but the other enemies will not notice you because you are still hidden. This is perhaps not very realistic, since they should be able to hear and see their friend rushing ahead to fight you, but it works unless they are positioned extremely close to each other. Feel free to back away enough to stay out of sight from the other group members when you leave sneak mode to fight the single charging foe.

More skill in Sneak opens new opportunities, such as scoring critical hits, sneaking past enemies entirely, or stealing things when the guard or owner looks the other way. ¹¹ Pickpocketing items off of living people’s bodies is more difficult, but also becomes possible with very high sneak skill (as well as good Agility and Luck stats). This is the best way to finish some quests, especially if you can pull it off unnoticed. However, even with high skill, you’re quite likely to get caught, which will get you both a bounty and an enraged foe to fend off, so save before trying.

Verdict: Recommended

VII.b.Illusion spell school

Stats: See above entry

Analysis and advice: There are two spell effects in this school that lets you hide. «Invisibility» is the most magicka efficient, but is dispelled immediately if you perform any action besides moving, such as casting a spell, wielding a weapon, picking something up or opening a door. Nevertheless, so long as there are no doors or other things you need to activate, this spell is great for getting past enemies you don’t want to fight, since it’s easy to cast and you don’t have to be in sneak mode for it to work – in fact, you should rather be running in order to get far away from your foes before the effect wears off. (Note that if you do sneak, however, your sneaking is guaranteed to work until the spell runs out – this is a really easy way to raise a low sneak skill.)

In order to do things while hidden, you need the other spell effect: «Chameleon». This works largely like a magical boost to your Sneak skill. A greater magnitude (%) gives a greater boost, and at 100% magnitude, you are certain to avoid detection while sneaking and stealing, lockpicking, moving in for a Critical Strike, or whatever else you are doing. Pickpocketing, however, may fail even at 100%, so again, save before trying.

Related to the hide ability is the defensive spell effects Illusion gives you access to, most notably «Sanctuary», which makes you less likely to be hit with physical weapons. At 100% magnitude, the chance of being hit is zero, effectively making you immune to weapons. This is extremely useful on high difficulty levels, when powerful enemies can dish out hundreds of points of damage per hit even if you are well-armored.

Verdict: Recommended for casters

VII.c.Using enchantments for «Invisibility», «Chameleon»/«Fortify Sneak», «Sanctuary» etc.

Again, that works too.

Verdict: Recommended

VIII. FAST TRANSPORT: TELEPORTING

Though no quests that I know of require you to teleport, this is a must-have in my opinion. In addition to fast escape from tough situations and a way to move more loot than you can actually carry, teleporting will save you hours of mindless travelling from point A to point B.

VIII.a.Mysticism spell school

Governing Attribute: Willpower

Specialization: Magic

Favoured by the following factions: House Telvanni, Imperial Cult, Mages Guild, Tribunal Temple

Analysis and advice: «Almsivi Intervention» and «Divine Intervention» will take you immediately to the nearest Tribunal or Imperial temple, respectively; these spells can be cast even with just Minor skill. To «Mark» a spot and «Recall» (teleport) to it, you may need some more practice, though. Mysticism also includes the «Soul Trap» spell, which is essential in getting what you need to make your own enchantments. The «Reflect» and «Spell absorption» effects are, frankly, too magicka expensive to really bother with. (Some excellent items with these effects can be found, though.)

Verdict: Recommended for casters

VIII.a.Getting/making and using enchantments for Mark, Recall, Intervention and Soul Trap

There aren’t that many spell effects in the Mysticism school, and you’ll rarely need many spells of different magnitudes or durations, so enchanting is perfectly viable if you don’t have the Mysticism skill.

Verdict: Recommended

IX. GETTING RICH: MONEY IN MORROWIND

IX.a.How big an issue is money in the game anyway?

As you will have noticed if you’ve been reading the above, money can compensate for many kinds of shortcomings your character might have – from generous bribes if you’re unpopular, or paying to have enchantments made if you can’t cast the spells, to buying training to improve poor skills or gain you levels. As could be expected, money can be a constraint very early on, while you’re assembling your basic spells and gear and would maybe like to train up to a decent level fast. (You don’t want levels without gear, however, since the monsters you encounter will become nastier fast as you level up.) If you’re following the tips in this guide, however, there shouldn’t really be that many shortcomings to your character that you need to spend a lot of money to fix, and once you get beyond the first stage of your character’s development, you may well find yourself left with a great deal of money and, especially, valuable loot that you just don’t know what to do with. So it stops being a problem relatively soon.

IX.b.Merchants and items

Frankly, the economy system in the game could have used a real makeover because it has many strange features when you start to progress with your character. First of all, although the good gear such as Glass, Ebony or Daedric is incredibly valuable – the latter two are easily worth several tens of thousands of gold – very few merchants have more than about 1000 gold to buy your quality loot for each day, and none have more than 10,000. The idea may have been that you’re supposed to swap good items for other good items rather than gain extraordinary amounts of money, but unfortunately there’s relatively little good stuff for sale in stores (Glass armor being one notable exception, but even then there’s only one shop where you can get all of it). Sure, you can find the occasional gem in a shop, but when you do, it’s sometimes ridiculously cheap, like the fantastic Devil Spear you can buy from Ra’Virr in Balmora; it only costs a couple hundred drakes for a Bound Spear enchantment, while a comparable Bound Longsword or Axe enchantment will cost you several thousand (I think the axe is 9000 gold). Some price balancing would have been nice here.

One consequence of the dearth of valuable items in stores is that once you’ve gotten your spells and basic gear (and at the low cost, I consider the Devil Spear «basic»), chances are your improvements in gear will come from lucky adventuring rather than shopping. Another consequence is that once you’re high enough level to fight respawning Dremora in Daedric shrines and loot Ebony and Daedric gear off of them, you can neither sell the loot at anything near full price nor exchange it for good gear of «your» weapon/armor type because the traders don’t have anything really valuable to trade. So your problem when you get to that point will not be how to get money, but whether to sell loot at the merchants’ max gold although this is only a few percent of the item’s value, or be bothered to accept massive amounts of cheaper gear as payment for the stuff you sell, then wait 24 hours, sell some of the cheaper stuff, wait 24 hours, sell some more, wait 24 hours, and so on. Possibly you’ll soon end up with crateful after crateful of valuable loot you don’t even know what to do with. Of course you can just stop picking up those cumbersome valuables in the first place, but honestly, that takes part of the fun out of dungeon crawling in my opinion.

IX.c.What really costs big money

Probably the most useful ways to spend the vast amounts of mid-to-late-game money is to hire enchanters to make powerful enchanted items. This is the only thing that tends to cost about as much as Daedric weapons are worth – note that if you do some initial trade (buying or selling) with the enchanter before the enchanting, the gold you pay for the service may be added to the merchant’s gold, meaning you can recoup your gold by selling some of that valuable loot. As described in the section on Restoration, however, a custom-made «Fortify Skill» spell or enchantment skill lets you make the items yourself, which not only saves you the money but also lets you gain Enchant skill from creating enchantments. Strangely, though enchanting things can make them much more powerful, it never increases their gold value.

IX.d.Some ways to get gold

Besides plain adventuring, doing quests, crawling dungeons and selling loot, there are many ways to make money.

• As explained under Sneak, stealing things to sell is not a good idea, but you could always steal whatever gold you can find so long as you’re not spotted doing it.
• A better way to make gold is to fill soul gems with the valuable souls of creatures you slay (for how to do this, see UESPWiki’s excellent page on the Enchant skill) and sell them. While rats and skeletons aren’t going to be very valuable, Ancestral Ghosts are easy to kill but have valuable souls, and powerful enemies are usually worth a good deal.
• With Restoration skill and «Fortify Alchemy», you could also create powerful, valuable potions and sell them.
• There is also a trick to easily cheat traders out of all their cash if you have the inclination and the Mercantile skill (see below).

IX.e.Mercantile

Governing Attribute: Personality

Specialization: Stealth

Favoured by the following factions: East Empire Company, House Hlaalu

Analysis and advice: Mercantile is a skill with many strange side effects. Its main function is to let you haggle better – i.e., you can suggest higher selling prices and lower buying prices than merchants offer you to begin with. (Note that when haggling, clicking over and over on «buy» or «sell» [insisting on your haggling price?] may in the end convince merchants to make a trade they didn’t accept at first. Though this will lower their disposition temporarily, once you click «goodbye» and talk to them again, it’s back to the old likes and dislikes.) Higher Mercantile also gives you lower initial prices, which is a little strange because if you are to make a net profit, you ought to be selling more loot than you are buying new gear. Even stranger is the fact that when you hit a certain level of skill in Mercantile (about 70, according to the UESPWiki page), you will get better prices from merchants that dislike you.

The truly economy-breaking effect, however, is that with less skill than that – 40-50 may be enough – you can use haggling to buy stuff from a merchant and then sell the same stuff back to them at a higher price than you paid. This is of course a fast way to get gold early on if you start out with a high Mercantile skill. Personally, though, I find this unrealistic as well as taking some of the fun out of adventuring since it’s easier to just cheat merchants out of their daily gold supply and earn levels in Mercantile at the same time, rather than looting dungeons for valuables to sell. Of course, Mercantile doesn’t help much when you get attacked by a nasty opponent in a quest, so it’s a doubleedged sword to keep raising this as a M/M skill, but at least you gain hit points from levelling up. Though I’d rather have some early Endurance than a +5 to Personality, you could always spend some of your new money training battle skills alongside. Personally, I never bother with Mercantile as Major or Minor skill – there are just too many queer side effects of it for me, and besides, being greedy by nature, I tend to haggle so much anyway that my Mercantile often reaches medium levels soon enough even as a Misc. skill. However, it’s a matter of personal preference.

Verdict: Depends entirely on preferance – but mine is to choose other skills instead.

X. REPAIRING YOUR GEAR

In long quests, being able to fix your gear is very important, since worn armor and weapons work very poorly. Buy armorer’s hammers from smiths and use the Armorer skill for this. As shown above, «Fortify»ing this skill with a restoration spell or an enchantment works better than using up a slot in your Major/Minor skills on it. Also note that you have little control on the availability of worn items, so Armorer is not a good way to level Strength.

XI. SUMMONING AND MIND-CONTROLLING THINGS: CONJURATION

Summoning is not required for any quests I know of, though I do know one mod where you need Conjuration skill to cast a «Command» spell. Still, you may find it useful – or you may not.

XI.a.Conjuration spell school

Governing Attribute: Intelligence

Specialization: Magic

Favoured by the following factions: House Telvanni, Imperial Cult, Tribunal Temple

Analysis and advice: Minor skill in Conjuration may be enough to give you early access to weightless, powerful weapons through the Bound [weapon] spells. Of course, enchantments work just as well, and a Constant Effect enchantment will let you always have the weapon at the ready.

Summoning creatures takes more skill and isn’t really mana efficient enough to be really useful in combat, in my opinion; you can’t give any commands to those creatures, after all. In fact, summoning Golden Saints is much more useful for harvesting their souls for Constant Effect enchantments, though summoning such powerful beings takes a lot of skill and magicka – you may be better off making an enchanted item instead of casting the spell yourself. You can of course also harvest the souls of lesser, easier-to-conjure creatures and make smaller enchantments or simply sell the filled soul gems – they should be worth a pretty penny. Also note that there is one unique item in one of the expansions that can give you an incredible +50 to Conjuration skill as well as a massive boost of extra magicka.

The spell effects «Command Humanoid» and «Command Creature» work on people or creatures, respectively, making them follow and fight for you for the duration of the spell. This is very demanding on both skill and magicka, however, especially for high-level beings, and it may even be hard to fit very powerful command enchantments easily in enchantable objects. It may be feasible to rely on scrolls bought from certain enchanters instead for those rare quests when the effect is needed.

Verdict: Can be useful

XI.b.Using enchantments for summoning things

Verdict: Recommended

XII. OTHER SKILLS

XII.a.Athletics

Governing Attribute: Speed

Specialization: Combat

Favoured by the following factions: House Redoran, Imperial Legion, all vampire clans

Analysis and advice: Athletics lets you run and swim faster, which is obviously very convenient. However, if you are going to use the Boots of Blinding Speed, Athletics isn’t necessary to have as Major/Minor skill. Early on it tends to level fast even as a Misc. skill, and if you are trying hard to get good attribute boosts, having Athletics in your main skills may play havoc on your plans if you’re planning on raising other Attributes than Speed but can’t endure the slowness of walking around just to avoid leveling Athletics.

Verdict: Recommended for Beast Races

SUMMARY: TEMPLATE FOR GOOD CLASSES

Race: See other guide (Breton for casters, Dark Elves for stealth, Nord or Redguard for fighters)

Birthsign: See other guide (The Lady, The Apprentice or possibly the Atronach are good)

Favoured stats: Luck and Endurance are good

Specialization: Stealth, Magic or Combat? (Choose whatever fits the majority of your skills)

	Major skills and their Attributes:	Misc. skills used to get high Attribute bonuses
Ranged attack
Melee weapon
Armor
Skills to open locks, heal, make friends, hide, reach deep and high places, teleport and maybe enchant, repair and summon things
	Minor skills and their Attributes:

Particular plans (play style, items, guilds etc.):

 

EXAMPLES OF CHARACTERS WITH GOOD CUSTOM-MADE CLASSES

1. Sturdy and versatile battle-caster

Race: Breton (or Dark Elf, or maybe even Redguard or Nord)

Birthsign: The Apprentice (or maybe The Atronach)

Favoured stats: Endurance, Luck

Specialization: Magic

Major skills and their Attributes:	Misc. skills used to get high Attribute bonuses
Destruction (Willpower, magic)
Long Blade (or Axe) (Strength, combat)	Acrobatics
Heavy Amor (or Medium) (Endurance, combat)	Possibly Spear
Restoration (Willpower, magic)
Alteration (Willpower, magic)
Minor skills:
Illusion (Personality, magic)	Mercantile
Sneak (Agility, stealth)	Maybe Block
Mysticism (Willpower, magic)
Conjuration (Intelligence, magic)	Alchemy
Enchant (Intelligence, magic) or Marksman (Agility, stealth) orShort Blade (Speed, stealth)	Athletics for Speed

Play style: Reminiscent of the traditional battlemage, but with Sneak and Illusion (Minor skills but working together) to provide hiding capabilities as well. As with battlemages, Majoring in Alteration lets you open locks, Levitate and breathe water. The Boots of Blinding Speed are essential to let you move fast in heavy or medium armor, especially while levitating, but with Major skill in Restoration, protecting yourself from Blindness shouldn’t be a problem. Alternatively, if you want to play very fair, you could practise Short Blade or Hand-to-Hand on weak foes to increase Speed instead.

The class can fight melee-style well, but otherwise relies on spells for everything, so a magicka-increasing birthsign is a must. This means Endurance can’t start as high as with the birthsign of the Lady, so you may want to practise your Misc. skill in Spear to boost Endurance fast; if you get into trouble, powerful armor plus Destruction or your favoured melee weapon should get you out again. Majoring in Restoration provides flexibility and the possibility to repair and enchant. With magic specialization, Minor skill in Mysticism should be enough to teleport right away, especially for Bretons, and Minoring in Conjuration lets you summon a good weapon – Bretons and Nords may want to custom-make a shorter-duration Bound weapon spell that also fortifies that low Agility at the beginning of a tough fight.

Since all the skills governing Willpower are present in the set, Willpower will not rise at +5 increments, but even a caster should prioritize Endurance over Will; +3 increments are quite likely and should be sufficient.

2. Faster caster (lighter, but not as strong version of the sturdy battle-caster)

Race: Breton (or possibly Dark Elf, Argonian (female), Nord or Redguard)

Birthsign: The Apprentice or possibly the Atronach

Favoured stats: Luck and Endurance

Specialization: Magic

	Major skills and their Attributes:	Misc. skills used to get high Attribute bonuses
Ranged attack	1. Destruction (Willpower, magic)
Melee weapon	2. Spear (Endurance, combat)	Possibly Medium Armor
Armor	3. Light Armor (Agility, stealth)	Possibly Sneak
Skills to open locks, heal, make friends, hide, reach deep and high places, teleport and maybe enchant, repair and summon things	4. Illusion (Personality, magic)	Mercantile
	5. Alteration (Willpower, magic)
	Minor skills and their Attributes:
	1. Restoration (Willpower, magic)
	2. Mysticism (Willpower, magic)
	3. Enchant (Intelligence, magic), or Conjuration (Intelligence, magic)	Alchemy
	4. Armorer (Strength, combat), or Enchant/Conjuration (whichever you didn’t pick above)	Acrobatics for Strength
	5. Athletics (Speed, combat), or Hand-to-Hand (Speed, stealth), or Marksman (Agility, stealth)

Play style: Since weapons often rise faster than armor, this caster variety may be able to max Endurance faster than the previous variety. Light Armor also means this caster will be less weighed down. However, she will likely not raise Strength as fast either, since she will have to rely almost purely on her Misc. Acrobatics skill to raise it (remember that Armorer, if she picks it, is unreliable). Nor will she be able to Block well, since spears are always two-handed. Therefore, she keeps Sneak as a Misc. skill in order to get better Agility levelups from Light Armor, and instead turns Illusion into a Major skill which will have to do the work when she wants to escape detection or charm people into giving her information. Minoring in Restoration is enough for healing, and since her Light Armor isn’t as enchantable as heavier armor, she may not need to enchant as much anyway. She might want regular Armorer skill to fix her gear until Restoration improves a bit, but with magic specialization it shouldn’t really be necessary – especially Bretons will have more than enough Restoration skill even at Minor status to let her «Fortify Skill: Armorer» instead – if not, you could always make an enchanted item with the effect.

Feel free to play around with the last few skills; Athletics or Hand-to-Hand could help raise Speed, making you less dependent on the Boots of Blinding Speed, whereas Marksman, once you raise it a lot, could leave you with an alternative to Destruction or melee weapons against enemies with innate Reflect or Spell Absorption.

3. Sturdy stealth specialist

Race: Dark Elf (or Redguard, Nord or Wood Elf)

Birthsign: The Lady, or the Lover, or the Warrior

Favoured stats: Endurance, Luck

Specialization: Stealth

Major skills:	Misc. skills used to get high Attribute bonuses
Marksman (Agility, stealth)	Possibly Block (see play style)
Spear (Endurance, combat)	Possibly Medium armor
Light Armor (Agility, stealth)
Security (Intelligence, stealth)	Alchemy, Conjuration
Sneak (Agility, stealth)
Minor skills:
Speechcraft (Personality, stealth)	Mercantile
Enchant (Intelligence, magic)
Restoration (Willpower, magic)	Destruction or Alteration
Mysticism (Willpower, magic), or Mercantile (Personality, stealth).
Acrobatics (Strength, stealth)	Possibly Long Blade (or another weapon)

Play style: Lacking any Speed skills, this class will rely on the Boots of Blinding Speed. It is a little reminiscent of the traditional «Thief», at least in that you’d focus on stealth-based skills rather than spells for opening locks, sneaking and maybe reaching high places (you may need to invest in Levitation or Jump enchantments to supplement the Minor Acrobatics skill, but at least you have Enchant as a Minor skill as well so you’ll level from using those enchantments). You’ll also need enchantments for other Alteration magic such as Water Breathing. Since Speechcraft (just as with the traditional Thief) is only a Minor skill, you may also have to rely on bribery for information gathering early on; this should, however, raise the Speechcraft skill gradually so that you can use that more later on. Even with Sneak as a Major skill, you may, like a traditional Thief, also need to boost your hide capabilities with enchantments in order to perform demanding thieving tasks (such as stealing in guarded areas and, particularly, pickpocketing), especially in the early-to-mid-level game, but again you’ll get levels from enchantment use.

Fundamentally, this class is much better at fighting than a traditional Thief would be. With a major skill in Marksman and the Spear skill to deal damage in semi-close range, you can get the most out of your sneaking and try to score Critical Hits. Also, the Spear should let you raise Endurance pretty fast to get more hit points; if you choose the birthsign «The Lady», you could start with 75 Endurance (or even 85 as a Nord or Redguard) and hit 100 Endurance very early on. Your Strength will not rise particularly fast, however, so you don’t want to carry too much heavy stuff. (Light Armor is a must in that sense). I suggest Acrobatics so you’d at least have one Strength-based skill in the set, and to let you at least be able to jump semi-decently from the beginning, but +2 Strength increments pr level is the best you are likely to get. Also, since Block is the only Misc. skill governing Agility, to get a +5 at levelup you will have to place your character in front of some puny enemies with your shield but without your favoured weapons, until you raise Block one level naturally; after that, you can pay for training to get the remaining increases you need for a +5. Either Mysticism or Enchant can provide teleportation and soul trapping. With Restoration as at least a Minor skill, you may eventually use «Fortify skill» spells, though this may take a long time; early on, you’ll be using the skill to heal and cure yourself and use smiths or an enchantment for repairs. Also note that Bound Spear and Bound Bow enchantments will let you constantly summon fresh, powerful weapons.

4. Agile skill-use specialist (variation on the sturdy stealth specialist above)

Race: Argonian (male) or Dark Elf (or Redguard, Nord or Wood Elf)

Birthsign: The Lady, or the Warrior, or the Thief

Favoured stats: Endurance, Luck

Specialization: Stealth

Major skills:	Misc. skills used to get high Attribute bonuses
1. Marksman (Agility, stealth)	Block
2. Long Blade (Strength, combat)	Acrobatics
3. Medium Armor (Endurance, combat)	Possibly spear
4. Security (Intelligence, stealth)	Alchemy, Conjuration
5. Speechcraft (Personality, stealth)	Mercantile
Minor skills:
1. Sneak (Agility, stealth)	Block
2. llusion (Personality, magic)
3. Enchant (Intelligence, magic)
4. Restoration (Willpower, magic)	Any Misc. spellcasting skill except Conjuration
5. Athletics (Speed, combat)	Possibly Unarmored (Argonians can’t wear boots or full helmets anyway)

Play style: This character will have an easier time getting +5s to Agility and Strength since he can use a shield as Misc. skill when fighting with one-handed blades and jump around with Misc. Acrobatics to provide extra Strength-governed skill increases in addition to the Long Blade ones that let him level up. Medium Armor should give him some Endurance, though likely he won’t be quite as sturdy as the above type; fortunately the armor will be stronger, but this will also slow him down, especially if he’s an Argonian and can’t use the (in)famous Boots. Fortunately his Strength should be able to rise fast enough for him to be able to carry the extra weight, and Athletics will let him run faster and also increase Speed, albeit slowly.

Since Speechcraft is here a Major skill, this character won’t have to pay as many expensive bribes early on. This means that Sneak has been reduced to a Minor skill, however, so it is essential to supplement Sneak with Illusion spells and/or enchantments if he wants to steal or, especially, pickpocket without being caught – the latter may still prove difficult until he’s very high level, but then, that’s often the case anyway. For repairing gear, you may want to make an enchanted item or use smiths, but even with Stealth specialization, a Minor skill in Restoration may be enough to Fortify Armorer, at least when you raise the skill a bit. Finally, Argonians have natural Water Breathing, but they’ll need Levitation enchantments to get high and dry.

5. Combat specialist

Race: Nord or Redguard or possibly Argonian

Birthsign: The Lady, or The Lover, or possibly the Atronach

Favoured stats: Luck and Endurance

Specialization: Combat

	Major skills and their Attributes:	Misc. skills used to get high Attribute bonuses
Ranged attack	1.Marksman (Agility, stealth)	Sneak
Melee weapon	2.Long Blade (Strength, combat)	Acrobatics
Armor	3.Heavy (Endurance, combat)	Possibly Spear
Skills to open locks, heal, make friends, hide, reach deep and high places, teleport and maybe enchant and summon things	4.Restoration (Willpower, magic)	Possibly Alteration/Destruction
	5.Enchant (Intelligence, magic)	Alchemy
	Minor skills and their Attributes:
	1.Mysticism (Willpower, magic)
	2.Block (Agility, combat)
	3.Athletics (Speed, combat)	Possibly Unarmored or Short Blades
	4. Illusion (Personality, magic)
	5. Security (Intelligence, stealth) or Conjuration (Intelligence, magic) or Hand-to-Hand

Comments: Generally I’m not too fond of characters with combat specialization since you only need a few skills to fight, and at least one of those is always either magic (spells) or stealth-specialized (marksman). Still, getting a faster increase and a +5 initial bonus to your main weapon, armor, Blocking and Athletics is nice and may help raise Strength and Endurance-based skills a little faster so you can spend a little less time raising Misc. skills for +5 Endurance/Strength levelups. Perhaps Athletics could also help you make do without the Boots, either as Argonian or as devoted wearer of Endurance-based armor including footwear, but remember that the gear will slow you down. Medium would also work and slow you down less, but I chose Heavy armor as the most enchantable. With a scant magicka supply, this class will rely mostly on enchantments for magic, including Levitation, water breathing, and opening strong locks. Especially if you find or invest in high-quality lockpicks, a Minor or perhaps even Misc. skill in Security may be able to deal with at least the weakest locks so you can save the good enchantments for stronger ones. Restoration, Enchant and Mysticism are all useful to be able to make at least some of the enchantments yourself, although your magicka supply will be a major constraint here and you may have to resort to expensive NPC enchanter services. Minor skill in Mysticism without magic specialization will not be enough to cast «Mark/Recall» until the skill improves, but you may be able to cast Intervention after a failed attempt or two. Still, teleport enchantments may be necessary early on.

There is also a marked weakness in hide skills here that no Minor skill could really fix; the class has to rely partly on enchantments for hiding as well, though you could combine Illusion and enchantment for «Chameleon» effects. Although Fortifying Speechcraft or Mercantile will help gain friends, you may have to invest in bribery or maybe Charm enchantments or spells – eventually you should level Intelligence enough to get at least some magicka. Note, however, that this whole skill set is a very small step away from magic specialization and a magicka birthsign – there should be just about the same number of combat and magic skills here. With more magicka, you could cast more spells (but you would be more frail physically than with birthsigns like The Lady).

6. Jack-of-many-trades

Race: Breton (or Nord/Redguard)

Birthsign: The Lady (or if Nord/Redguard, The Apprentice)

Favoured stats: Luck and Endurance

Specialization: Stealth

	Major skills and their Attributes:	Misc. skills used to get high Attribute bonuses
Ranged attack	1. Marksman (Agility, stealth)	Possibly Light Armor
Melee weapon	2. Blunt Weapon (Strength, combat) or Axe (same)	Acrobatics
Armor	3. Medium Armor (Endurance, combat)	Possibly Spear
Skills to open locks, heal, make friends, hide, reach deep and high places, teleport and maybe enchant, repair and summon things	4. Restoration (Willpower, magic)	Alteration
	5. Security (Intelligence, stealth)	Alchemy, Conjuration
	Minor skills and their Attributes:
	1. Enchant (Intelligence, magic)
	2. Sneak (Agility, stealth)
	3. Hand-to-Hand (Speed, stealth) or Mysticism (Willpower, magic).	Possibly Short Blade
	4. Illusion (Personality, magic).	Speechcraft (fortified with Restoration)
	5. Destruction (Willpower, magic) or Mercantile (Personality, stealth)

Comments/play style: This class might fit a character that has some, but not overwhelming amounts of magicka (presumably because it starts with better Endurance rather than a more focused caster like a Breton Apprentice). To preserve magicka, Marksman is the ranged attack of choice (until late levels, at least) and Security is used for opening locks; but magicka plus Majoring in Restoration gives full access to Armorer, Speechcraft, Alchemy and making enchantments. Sneak needs to be combined with «Chameleon» effects from Illusion and/or Enchant to get OK hiding capabilities. Enchant is a useful Minor skill since the class does need a number of enchanted items, first of all to levitate and breathe water. If you leave Mysticism as just a Misc. skill, you also need to make or find 5 items to Soul Trap and teleport (Almsivi and Divine Intervention, Mark and Recall). Scrapping those magic skills lets you choose Hand-to-Hand as Minor skill to deal with those few quests where that’s useful; you’ll still need to Fortify the skill with Restoration, but not as much as if it were Misc. Or you could use Destruction to cast debilitating effects and eventually supplement your arrows against goups of foes. You could also use Damage Fatigue for Hand-to-Hand-type quests; this means you could swap to Mysticism instead of Hand-to-Hand to avoid the hassle of making the teleport enchantments (the Destruction school’s Damage Farigue spells cost less Magicka than Mysticism’s Absorb Fatigue).

I chose Blunt weapons mostly for variety’s sake; axes or long blades work just as well. IF you do go for Hammers, their weight can knock enemies off their feet, but it’s probably a good idea to combine them with no heavier than Medium armor to avoid getting weighed down too badly. Also included in this skill set is the option of using Mercantile to earn yourself some money, levels and Personality – a stealth specialization + minor skill lets you raise it faster and start at skill 20.

1 Well, you can of course increase just a lot of Misc. skills and no Major/Minors, but this is likly to be frustrating since Misc. skills level more slowly than Minor and, especially, Major skills.

2There are ways to go beyond your maximum level. For this reason, I’m not going to argue that you should make a class that gives you as high a maximum level as possible by starting with Major/Minor stats that are as low as possible. This would be both counterintuitive and unnecessarily challenging early on. It does mean, however, that you can keep earning more hit points (and more Attribute improvements if these aren’t already approaching 100, the maximum basic value for Attributes apart from magical bonuses) at max level to compensate if you earned fewer hit points early on due to a low Endurance at the time. Still, it will take a very long ime before you get to do this; also, you could of course use this trick to improve beyond an already impressive number of hit points at your max level.

3 I have also seen it claimed that Encumbrance hampers you in combat by negatively affecting your chance to hit enemies and dodge enemy attacks. I haven’t been able to verify this, however.

4Using full Bound armor and Dark Brotherhood armor for the missing pieces; wearing this will level your Light Armor skill, but only the DB armor will actually improve its Armor Rating with increased skill.

5 LIGHT SPOILER WARNING: If you have the money, a full set can be bought from the smith in Ghostgate. Alternatively, if you don’t worry about getting caught breaking the law, the boss of Ald-ruhn’s Fighters Guild keeps a set in a chest behind a lvl 80 locked door. But if you steal this, be warned that selling ANY piece of glass armor to any Fighters Guild smith will be a bad idea.

6The latter looks ridiculous on male characters, but makes Medium Armor a cool choice for females.

7The armors added by the Bloodmoon expansion had changing weight classes in different versions/patches of the game, and going into details about this would get overly complicated.

8If you have the latest patch, Bloodmoon’s Nordic armors will be Heavy Armor weighing about as the same as Dwemer, but with much greater armor ratings – better than Ebony, in fact. However, Bloodmoon’s Nordic armor type tends to have low durability, which makes it less attractive in prolonged fighting anyway; and if you have an older version of Bloodmoon, it will be classed as Medium armor instead.

9Axes may have one more point in their favour, however – if the UESP Wiki page on the Axe skill can be trusted, each Axe skill point actually gives a 20% greater bonus to your chance to hit enemies than other melee weapons do. While I have not been able to confirm this 100% in play, the mere possibility is just one other reason to give the skill a try.

10 The multiple striking does mean you will raise the skill quite fast, but if the UESP Wiki page on Short Blades can be trusted, the increase to your chance of hitting opponents is 25% lower per skill point of Short Blade compared to most other weapons.

11 Btw, there is a design flaw in the game that means you should not steal items to make money. Once an item – say, a diamond – is stolen, all diamonds you later find or buy will also be considered stolen, and if you try to sell one of them back to the person you stole from or a close associate of theirs, you will get all sorts of legal problems because of the theft. Keeping track of what you stole much earlier in the game is a real chore, so take my advice and only steal unique items and gold – not items you may at some point want to sell another instance of.

Back to part I: Choosing a Race
Onward to part III: Choosing a Birthsign