» Sat Jul 24, 2010 3:55 am
It's just about impossible to get a grand soul gem with a grand soul in it before level 12. That's when empty grand soul gems start showing up. There's a very slim chance of finding one in random loot before that, but VERY slim, and not much before that. It's far more likely that if you do find a grand soul gem, it's going to already have a soul in it, and it's going to be petty or maybe lesser. And even if you do find an empty grand soul gem, the earliest creature to show up that has a grand soul is a minotaur lord, at level 18, so even if you can get an empty one, there's nothing (or almost nothing - I'll get to that) to fill it with.
The easiest thing to do is to steal two of them from the Arcane University. There are two grand soul gems with grand souls in a locked display case in the foyer of the AU. And really the ONLY other way to get a filled grand soul gem before level 12 (or really, for all intents and purposes, before level 15, since that's when they start showing up in vendor's inventories and creatures with grand souls don't start showing up until level 18), is to get an empty grand soul gem, convert it to a black soul gem, then use it to trap an NPC soul. All NPC souls are grand level, but they can only be trapped in black soul gems.