Aja on 8/7/2004 at 00:05
Just bought the game, and it seems pretty daunting. I haven't created a character yet because I'm afraid I won't like it after a few hours of playing, and then have to start over.
I'd like someone who can be a good thief, but also a decent fighter and explorer, with magic skills taking a backseat (or as a minor). I don't want some club-weilding monster, but someone who can at least use a long sword and a bow, and can get into some harder to reach places. I'd like them to have good speech skills, but also thieving skills - so I want to be a strong, well liked guy on the outside, but secretly a thief. Is all this even possible? (Can you guess that I'm carrying over my affinity for the Thief series :cheeky: )
I'd like to get this right the first time - any help and suggestions would be appreciated.
Shadow on 8/7/2004 at 00:39
==Class "Affinity"==
Stealth
==Prime Attributes==
Endurance
Agility
==Skills==
=Major=
Medium Armor
Sneak
Security
Marksman (Possibly switch this for Long Blade, hitting anything with a bow below 50 marksman skill is almost impossible)
One magic skill of your choosing (I took illusion for the invisibility and chameleon)
=Minor=
Acrobatics (some people will say taking either Acrobatics or Athletics as a Minor or Major skill causes you too level up too quickly, so be warned)
Another magic skill of your choosing (Take whatever you want, but I took restoration for the healing)
Mercantile (gives you better prices and bargaining skills)
Light Armor
Long Blade
==Birthsign==
You chose, for the bonuses I would take The Shadow for the daily casting of invisibility (which gets really useful when stealing stuff early-on). If you are trying to roleplay a Garrett-type character I would take The Snake because The Snake doesn't have it's own month, no real allies (like Garrett, most allies for him are using him for an ulterior motive) and are "both the most blessed and the most cursed". That really sounded like Garrett to me. Let me tell you though, The Thief birthsign is almost useless. It adds 10 (or was it 15?) points of Sanctuary, which is dodge. This alone is nearly worthless unless you intend to buff up your Sanctuary with rings or spells.
Edit: Oh yes, for balancing stats purposes and stuff I am assuming you took an Imperial Male (they are, along with the Bretons, the humans of Tamriel).
Edit2: Just a little info, the Magnitude (the "points" of a spell, e.g. 15 points of sanctuary) is, to my knowledge, based on a 100 scale. What I mean is that 15 points of sanctuary would be a 15% chance to miss for an opponent, 15 points of chameleon would be a 15% chance not to see you, etc.
Zaphod on 8/7/2004 at 01:20
Yes, except that you want at least one skill from each Attribute in your Major or Minor skills. Otherwise, you never get multipliers when levelling up.
And, Medium Armor is useless. There's no Master Trainer, and there's no great Medium Armor in the game.
So, I'd do the following:
Race
Dunmer or Bosmer.
Class Affinity
Stealth
Prime Attributes
Endurance
Agility
Skills
Major
Sneak
Security
Light Armor
Short Blade
Marksman (note: ranged weapons suck in this game, but if you really want to role-play a bow-and-arrow guy, this would be the one. Otherwise, choose something like Blunt Weapon.)
Minor
Acrobatics
Alteration (for the Willpower attribute)
Mercantile (gives you better prices and bargaining skills)
Long Blade
Illusion
Birthsign
I like The Lady. The intial boost of Endurance and Personality is worth it until people learn who you are.
Aja on 8/7/2004 at 01:46
Thanks a lot guys... I think I can get started now.
Striker on 8/7/2004 at 01:52
My suggestion is: Don't be affraid to start over after a couple of hours if you want to. In the scheme of how long the game is, a couple of hours is nothing.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure that misc skills DO count towards multipliers when you level up. I think it originally may have worked that way, but it was changed at some point.
Of course, I may be wrong (And I haven't played in a while), so feel free to correct me. :)
Aja on 8/7/2004 at 03:32
Well I started... I've been playing for an hour and haven't accomplished a thing! Here goes the rest of my summer :cheeky:
Oh, and one other thing - though I have major and minor skills, it looks like I still have the capacity to learn other things - so couldn't I eventually become good at EVERYTHING?
Talgor on 8/7/2004 at 05:36
Yes, you can learn everything, and yes, don't be afraid to start over... or just start new characters. Hey, I'm playing five "major" characters (ie. I intend to do something useful with them), and another five which I'm just testing things with (the unarmed + unarmored monk didn't seem to work, FYI)...
Plus, as I've said in an earlier post: remember to play a Role. It's a good game for that. Think about who your character is. What he/she is all about, why does he/she do things (which leads into thinking what kind of things should be done with it)... It's not so important to chase numbers, really... Unless you want to be UBER-Munchkin, able to kill ash vampires at level 5 or something.. ;) So maybe it takes you a few more levels to be able to do something, so what? I'd rather enjoy playing than worry about getting x5 on stats every level... My latest char is level 10 and most stat upgrades I've taken are x2 only... I'm still doing good. ;)
(and using the "awful" medium armour, too... ;) What's wrong with orkish or adamantium armour, eh? ;)
I almost didn't make my own character suggestion, but I noticed neither of you has Speechcraft there... Don't you people ever TALK to anybody? ;)
But really, the best way to learn what skills are useful is just plain play the game... My first character was an awful failure who couldn't get anything done, but it at least gave me a pretty good idea of what NOT to choose. ;)
Aja on 8/7/2004 at 07:15
I chose my character as follows:
Specialty
-stealth
Major
-sneak
-security
-illusion
-long sword
-light armour
Minor
-Altercration
-Short sword
-speechcraft
-mercantilism
-acrobatics
Birthsign
-the Lady
Slightly different than suggested, but we'll see how it works out ;)
Talgor - are you saying that you can play more than one character at once? Or you just mean 5 separate games?
TheGeeK on 8/7/2004 at 13:30
My first char was really funky.
Alot of unknown (for me, at the time.) skills. It probably ended up costing me a few level ups, if ya know what I mean.
The cool thing is, I beat the game with that char. :cheeky:
Talgor on 8/7/2004 at 18:52
That's a good looking character, shouldn't give you much trouble. Number-chasing-wise you're only lacking an Endurance-giving skill so fighting might feel tough sometimes, but on the other hand, you've got Illusion and Alteration so who's to say they're going to hit you or do any significant damage anyways ;)
And I meant playing separate games, of course. ;) (yes, I really don't have much to do sometimes... I enjoy creating characters a lot more than playing them sometimes ;)
