This is my first post in this forum and my mother language is not English, so please be nice...

After 2 weeks foolhardy full-time playing the ES IV, I finally got a conclusion: this is a great game than I thought before!! Even much better than fallout 3 and new vegas, the latter ranks higher, though.

Back to the topic, this post is for those who find this game is too difficult and painful to enjoy, at least I enjoy it and I'll be happy if more people enjoy it.

How to be great in ES IV:

First of all, don't ignore the races selection. Unlike some other games, this game is strict and balanced and race matters a lot! So don't choose an orc if you wanna play a mage, don't choose a high elf if you wanna chop your foes with claymore or battle axes....then how to choose race? please refer carefully to the race description in game.

Secondly, Birth Sign. This is also very important. In my opinion, this is to make up your character's weak point. For instance, if you play an orc worrier, then you don't need to pick the warrior birth sign because when you'er level 15 or even lower, your strength and edurance will be already 100 and cannot be improved by leveling up. Then you can choose the anorach birth sign-150pts more magika, 50 magika absorption but never regenerate it. Don't worry, you will seldomly cast spells and, good for you, you don't fear magic anymore!

Thirdly, Do not level up major skills that are all governed by only one attribute.Every char. has two main attributes, don't ignore any one of them.


Following I'll generalize key points of character create and play and the character to be mentioned is in typical and default class in each specification. i.e. warrior represents combat specialization, mage represents magic specialization and assasin represents stealth specialization.

Specializations:

COMBAT:
If you wanna be tough and fear nothing, you could be a worrior, knight or babarian, etc. this class is called combat class. The most important thing you need to know is that being this class, your character will have 10 more points on armorer, blade, blunt, block, hand to hand, such combat skills and they will GROW FASTER.The same to other two specializations. This is important because if you choose a combat char. but always cast spells to avoid leveling up, then it will be time-consuming and boring and you can never master(skill level 100) any magic skills before you delete this character. So, if you wanna have a mean and rough combat char., you could choose an Imperial, Nord, Orc or Redguard, choose an appropriate birth sign and of course, a combat class.

Note:
1. It's better to choose only one melee weapon for your char. although he/she majors in several melee weapons. If you switch your weapon kind frequently, you'll level up too fast to confront your foes.
2. wear your majoring armor. Melee char. is great because they can tolerate massive melee damage, so you have to improve your majoring armor skills. Otherwise,when you realize you should have focused on one armor kind, you don't have chance to do that- the foes will lay you down in 4-5 beats, how much blodd you could spill which should be spilled earlier T.T.
3. don't turn to merchants to repair your gears, do it your self and you can even pick up broken gears in enemy's bodies to repair and discard them. Doing so to improve your armor skill which is very supportive especially when you expert it.
4. Make sure you can cast soul trap spell, your enchanted gears need to refill frequently.


MAGIC:
Casting flowery spells is always fasinating but in this game, being a speller is painful for novices. The key to be a good speller in this game is to creat your own spells in the Arcane University, or in frostXXXXX in DLC. I highly recommend spellers first finish all quests from the mage guild to make you can enter the Arcane University. After that, a new sight is coming. Another important thing is your birth sign, the amount of magika is very important

Note:
1.You don't need to wear light or heavy armors if you don't major in them. They are fragile, hard for you to repair and effect the cast effectiveness. Just wear enchanted robes, hoods,shoes and manacle(you have it at the beginning of the game), gears without duration.
2.When you create your spells, take a look at your magika---how many times you can cast this spell with your total magika? I suggest you can cast at least 3 times of your main assulting spell and make sure your foe down after your one or two strikes.
3.Spell combination. weaken your foes and make larger damage to them. you can create a spell weekening four elemental resistances and cast it before you cast damaging spell in battle.
4.Whatever kind of speller you are, you must focus on at most only 2 schools of magic, like conjuration and destruction and improve them as fast as possible.This is learnt from the book in game Spellcraft Manual
5.About Alchemy. In my opinion, alchemy should be put into minor skills if you're a mage. leveling up it will give you more points to intelligence when you level up. This is good, but if it's your major skill, then the problem is that alchemy doesn't help a lot in battle and you will level up too fast if you improve your alchemy and ironically, alchemy is very easy to level up.


Stealth:
When I'm writing this post, I'm still not very sure about this specialization and playing an asassin since I haven't prooved it. Till now, everything's allright to this level 9 asassin. And I'm sure some of my opinions are worthy of listening to.

This specialization is recommended for expert player. It needs good controlling and flexibility.

Stealth char. lies on alchemy a lot because they have great disadvantages at melee battle and they can't cast powerful spells. They must use poisons to enhance their attacks and make sure the foes die in short time. So I recommend stealth char. choose alchemy as one of their major skills.But, ONLY MAKE POISON POTIONS!! and coat your bows or daggers with them.

Note:
1. Use bow and blade as your main weapons, you could keep one skill a little lower than the other but both are indispensable.
2. A shrine north to Leyawiin named noctual will give you a quest rewarding a skeleton key which can permanantly increase your security skills 40pts and keep your lockpicks from breaking when you pick locks. You must have it.
3. Sneak in underground most time, and attack your foe without being seen with your coated weapons. If it comes to a melee battle, run around your foe and try to attack him/her from back. if necessary, coat your weapon again.
4. Join the thief guild and/or dark brotherhood. This helps a lot.
5. Get familiar with the ingredients having damaging effects and collect as many as you can but don't make all of them to potions at your char's current level.


Ok, I don't want to write more. Since I almost never read posts about ES IV before, maybe what I said is already out of season, but I do did a lot of homework..... after finish ES IV again with my asassin, I'll say goodbye to this game... and to PC games for a long time.....

Thanks

Who can tell me why nobody even has no comments....? is it too long to read or too boring? :sadvaultboy: :sadvaultboy:

Don't be sad. It's just that these forums have a slower posting activity than some other forums. Give it a few hours maybe a day and you'll have quite a few replies.
Anyway, that's quite a guide you wrote there. Well done. :foodndrink:

Edit: Oops, ninja'd.

I kinda already covered this... see below.

Thank you! :disguise:

You originally did that ,great!!

I didn't finish reading your post, but allow me to ask you some questions I'm not clear.

1. If an enchanted weapon featuring fire weakness and fire damage, when it strikes, will the weakness effect work before the damage effect?
2. will fire damage inflict "inernal burning" to a foe when the foe is under over-time cold damage like one of the books in game said?
3. Charm up to level 5, frenzy up to level 5, etc, how to know whether it works to a foe? Does the level mean the foe's level which is the same to the player's level? Why sometimes it will fail when cast a up to level 20 frenzy to foe when I'm just level 5 and sometimes sucess to cast a frenzy up to 5 level on a foe when I'm level 20?

Thanks

Its long, its in broken english, and its completely inaccurate.



No. The first strike will deal basic fire damage and then cast the weakness to fire. Subsequent hits will deal the base damage + the weakness effect.


No, this just explains that extreme cold causes a burning sensation. A cold spell doesnt cause any added fire damage.


The enemies in this game have their own leveling system. For example Rats are a low ranking creature, Land Droughs are a high level character. The best way to manage these spells in my opinion is to always have the best one you can cast, (if you have Journeyman Illusion, get the Illusion Command spell) if its not working you need to raise your Illusion skill and get a better spell. All in game enemies are capped at 20, so a Command creature level 20 spell will be effective on any creature on the game unless they resist it.

I thank you first but I have to say something

Are you playing an orc barbarian recently? I don't know what's going on here and what made you so agressive but I really feel uneasy to chat like this. Maybe I should've named my post "My humble opinions on Elder Scrolls IV" but I didn't act like I know anything about it. nobody knows anything about nothing right?

My English is broken, ok, but I'm not pround of it and at least you did understand what I mean.And actually I sincerely hope you could tell me where are broken, no sarcasm but I didn't expect you can do so.

You didn't notice that " the characters to be mentioned are of typical and preset class in each specification. i.e. warrior represents combat specialization, mage represents magic specialization and assasin represents stealth specialization" Indeed, you can play a char. over 500hours and make him almighty and find so many different ways of grow the char. but I don't think a novice of this game will have such patience and time. I played this game for several months in 2009 and recently restarted 3 characters and I played tons of RPG games, I don't think how wrong I am, at least what I posted here made me much happier when playing this game than before.

I can only hope because you literally know nothing about what your talking about.
---I literally know nothing about this sentence...my problem.

As for technical details in game, I don't want to argue with you since both of us have inaccurate points

I also wonder how can you know so much and be so sure about it if you just have one character in this game.

Iron Bible, I skim read your first post and here are my thoughts on it.

The advice you've given is sound, to a relatively new player. In fact, most of it is advice I would give to a new player. Want to play a Warrior? Choose an Orc, Nord or Reguard. However, what Zakarius has highlighted is the fact that with some basic knowledge of the game mechanics any race can be any class.

For example, I've had Altmer warriors and Nord mages. At the beginning, this makes the game more difficult, yes. But in the endgame, race is merely an aesthetic thing, apart from some of the racial bonuses like resist fire (as an example) or fortify magicka.


Zakarius, I feel the manner of your reply to Iron Bible was rather unnecessary. Yes, his posts are in fairly broken English, but I managed to understand them, and evidently so did you. He clearly states that English isn't his native tongue, and even apologises for it in the opening post.
I'm not hating, or anything. I'm merely trying to preserve the overwhelming friendliness this forum has always had.

No hostility was intended. I just speak to people online all the time who have english as a second language and I find it easier for them to understand if you speak very directly. No harm intended. all is well in Cyrodil.



It isnt so bad that I cant understand it, but there are minor grammatical and syntax errors. Most people arent patient enough to read through it and figure out what it says, and thats why it didnt land a wealth of responses. In fact the guide I wrote only has 5 or 6. When you write guides on here a lot of people read them, very few give feedback (800+views, less than 10responses). So even in a perfect world guides dont always gather a lot of response.

Thank you, Count Lauriel. I always hold that friendliness is first to come. And ZakariusSvedlin, you seem to treat people whose native language are not English a little discriminately like they are poor educated or not civilized. Direct and polite are not conflicting each other and grammatical and syntex flaws can't keep people from exchanging minds. I'm not judging but hope you could focus on the topics and give constructive suggestions but not teasing.After all, I'd like to learn your ideas. :wink_smile: we're good.

You might be right. I mean I live in a very White dominated area in the midwestern united states, and Im a prison guard. So my interactions with diferent cultures have fallen inside the correctional environment. This probably subconsciously affected how I wrote.

Anyways like I said, no hostility implied. As for my ideas. I pretty much posted them all in my guide. Im a regular around the forums so if you need something just post it and Ill probably fly in.

If it makes anyone feel any better, I will state that Alchemy is not necessarily the best skill in the game, contrary to ZakariusSvedlin's claim. It CAN be, but it all depends on how you develop your character. If you focus on alchemy and using alchemical effects, then naturally it will be quite powerfful.

However, I would say that Illusion beats Alchemy quite easily. Why? Because once Illusuion hits Journeyman (50), it unlocks spells that make you invincible, pretty much. Not "invincible" as in "gosh, I can take a ton of damage" but "invincible" as in "hey, no one can see me or touch me and I can do anything I want."

Also, once Illusion is Journeyman (50) level, you can make Frenzy and Command spells that work on almost all enemies, so even if you are detected, the enemies will not be able to do anything against you in most cases, and instead either fight each other or fight for you (the latter be far superior to Conjuration since you can Command multiple allies).

Of course, this is assuming that you develop your character accordingly. However, I will take a character with 100 Illusion (or even 75 Illusion, for that matter) against a character with 100 Alchemy anyday, especially if the character also has 100 Restoration and 100 Destruction.

Iron Bible, I'd also like to offer one correction to your various points. Regarding magicka, the total you have doesn't matter very much for pure spellcasters. You do not need a large pool of magicka in TES IV. Instead, you use Fortify Magicka and Fortify Intelligence to create a temporary pool of magicka (up to a maximum of 150) in order to cast spells continuously. This is called "spell chaining" and you can search the Hints forum for posts I have made about it in the past. I have made some pretty extensive posts, so if you read them, I think you'll find them very helpful.

Alchemy can make a lot of money that's ture..and like you said , it depends. I'm curious about Zaka's fondness of alchemy.

As to the spell chaining which sounds cool, I did searched your name in hints forum but didn't get any relevant results. But I saw your general picture. If I understand it clearly, I've already tried to do so. Fortify magicka 100 for 8 seconds, fortify destruction 35 for 20seconds, and then cast a mixed damage spell. The "temporary magicka pool" is good and feasible. I didn't recommend it maybe because our different battle styles. You see, my character is a high-elf born under Apprentice, This makes him extremely vulnerable. If I cann't kill my enemies on sight, then they will. So I didn't have time to cast a short sustaining magic in restoration school before I attack. even if I can in sneaking mode, I'm tired of that, I like hardcoe fighting, face to face and violently even for a mage, I enjoy to cast a shock blast on enemy and blow them off when I'm almost dying. Plus, before I cast a damaging spell, I would cast a weakness to four elemental resistance spell to make sure my next attack is the first and the only one to an enemy, if I missed ,I can cast another one. The weakness spell need around 80 magicka and the damaging spell need 170-190 magicka with my destruction skills at 125. So, I need more magicka. I really can't understand the shorttime buffering in this game...making me pain in balls

I cleared the hardest difficulty as a Breton fighter with Atronach birthsign..... with high alchemy I could chain cast any spells I wanted by consuming magicka potions and kill enemies by rapidly applying poisons that stack (if the poisons do not have exactly the same effects such as damage and duration they will stack and not overwrite each other). I wore damage reflect and some spell absorption gear to prevent being mauled by groups of enemies at level 50.... which can get very hairy (Kvatch at 50 is......ouch). Alchemy was essential for my melee oriented character... but on the default difficulty I am pretty sure its unnecessary. You gave a lot of very good advice for beginners and they will do very well with those character types. Just thought I would add my limited experience....it was like 2 years ago when I last played the game, so I might be wrong.


EDIT: I forget to mention that there is no need to cast fortify spells on yourself because you can make potions that do the same thing. Make a bunch with slightly different bonuses and they all stack.... you can have some seriously huge buffs for 5 minutes.

I do not agree with many of the points the OP mentioned, most covered by Zakarius - actually, the only point I do not agree with Z is about Alchemy. Yes, it is pretter powerful, but as someone mentioned, Illusion is my first choice (Invisibility, Charm, Frenzy, Paralyse and Silence... Oh God...).

I'd suggest the OP to play more than 2 weeks, even after 2 months we all still have a lot to learn.

Things you can do with Illusion:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Illusion

Things you can do with Alchemy:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Useful_Potions
(Notice that invisibility, Paralyze, and Silence are all availible)

Other reasons:
Alchemy does not require purchasing spells, Illusion does.
Alchemy does not drain your Magicka, Illusion does.
Alchemy can sell for profit, Illusion cannot.
Alchemy can turn stolen foods into non-stolen potions, Illusion cannot.
Alchemy takes a lot less time to get to Mastery level than Illusion

You cant be invisible for everything:
In the fall of Kvatch you cant leave the castle untill all the creatures are killed because Salvian Matius will not talk to you, but you could use alchemy to give you the strength, magicka, endurance, health, ect. to get the job done. I doubt this is the only time this occurs.

Other reasons:
Alchemy does not require purchasing spells, Illusion does.
Alchemy does not drain your Magicka, Illusion does.
Alchemy can sell for profit, Illusion cannot.
Alchemy can turn stolen foods into non-stolen potions, Illusion cannot.
Alchemy takes a lot less time to get to Mastery level than Illusion


-------------------

Alchemy requires collecting ingredients, illusion doesn't
Magicka can regenerate automatically, ingredients don't
Illusion can help you make a good bargin, alchemy doesn't
Illusion can help you make a good bargin when seling legal things made of stolen things, alechemy doesn't
Illusion need not to get to mastery level, alechemy needs
Illusion spells weights zero kg, alchemy weights a lot.

Oh come on! let a newbie play following my guide, I don't believe he/she will have nothing but headache.

Were my eyes deceiving me, or did not one single person here give you a http://images.uesp.net//c/c4/Fishystick.jpg even though you clearly stated that this was your first post here!?

Well, now you have one too. Welcome aboard :foodndrink:

1 ingredients are Free and numerous, but need time to collect and most of them are not so frequently used. Illusion can be used all the time.
2 I may use the stone in ruins to fully restore my empty magicka
3 I use charm 100pts for 3seconds (without any requisites) to get a good bargin
4 I mean practicing illusion will not keep you from making potions but can make a good bargin
5 basic potions are useful in basic circumstances. Illusion is widerly used.
6 well, the "only" seems too subjective and the logic here is not solid. other things weight a lot doesn't mean alchemy's weight is not a disadvantage compared to illusion.

Anyway, I just tried to say that both of them are good and have advantages and disadvantages

Seriously, what did you mean?

It′s a thing here at the forums. Every new member recieves a fishy stick, a tradition that goes way back. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General:Fishy_Stick about it