Yep, you gain levels by raising your major skills.

Damn, Flay. I just told him to bugger off.

The adoring fan must come from being a champion of the arena and completing that story line?

If you get a person from each faction quest, you will have quite the little party travelling with you. I know that I get one from being an arch-mage and completing that story line. I also know that I get one for being the listener from completing the Dark Brotherhood story line.

None for being Guildmaster of the thieves thankfully. I can't imagine sneaking into a house or past a minotaur and having a bloody entourage.

On a side note though i found a unicorn last night. I killed it, but had to reload due to one of its minotaur guards miraculously respawning and killing me.

Yeah, you get him from the arena. At this point I can have have him, a DB assassin, and a mage apprentice all following me into a mission at once. In the words of Dave Chappelle, I have a coalition of the willing.

I have learned that obtaining the unicorn horn is part of another quest. So, if you had survived, when you got to that quest, you'd be ahead of the game.

This game got a bit frustrating once the enemies matched your levels. I raised myself probably a good 6 or 7 levels only by sneaking, speechcraft, and security. So that left me fighting bad guys that would clearly overpower me for no reason other than the game thought I was ready for them. Bad, bad Bethesda. I liked that in Morrowind there were places that were easy and places you need to avoid if you weren't up at that level.

At one point, I could only keep going by killing one person over a protracted amount of time. If I got hit once, I'd have to do a minor wound cure, then wait for my magicka to regrow, then attack again. So at the end of all of this I was spending hours to do a dungeon. (This all happened once I had my level in the teens and up).

Thankfully, the analog difficulty slider is there. I knocked it down a few levels and am doing just blade and light armor skills. I'll knock it up again once the game gets easy. I know this might seem like a wuss move but I'd rather not be frustrated by a game and enjoy it. Fun to me is not 2 minutes of battle followed by 10 minutes of healing myself so I can jump in for a bit again.

If you are a mage, once you get your spell levels up, an invisibility spell is a must.

It has helped me numerous times. In quests where you just need to get an item from a dungeon, I just keep casting invisibility on myself, walk through the dungeon and past everyone to take the item. You have to be quick and cast it again after you grab the item or open a door. As soon as you do any action, the invisibility wears off. Of course it wears off on its own if you don't recast it before it runs out.

It has also helped me from getting arrested and given me a chance to escape to have my bounty paid off. I just resist arrest, and then cast invisibility on myself. The guards don't know where you went. Just run out of the town and cast invisibility on yourself incase they follow, until the music changes to the soft sound and you can fast travel anywhere.

I also use it in fights. I cast invisibility, sneak up behind someone to get the extra damage, hit them with my weapon and then invisibility again. They just move around looking for you. You have to be quick and jump back and out of the way as you cast invisibility. Because if you stand there and cast it,they get a few hits in on you. And can stun you for a moment to get more hits in before you can even move.

That's comedy gold right there I also told him to get lost, unfortunately.

Has anyone bought or stole a horse? I heard there are problems where the horse runs away (if stolen I guess...) or gets attacked by a npc and runs away. Anyway I enjoy exploring on foot and with fast travel I feel I don't really need a horse.

^^ I stole a horse but everytime I saw something I I wanted I would have to jump off of the horse to go get it and the damn thing would start to walk back to where it came from oh that and when they get attacked they don't run away at least not that one the damn thing got killed by some guy so of course I had to avenge my stolen horses death against like two dudes and a whole fkn pack of wolves........that was great, thanks alot horse.

How long does it take to become arena champion? I havent every fought in it yet.

Im leary because I got soooo sick of the arena in Fable. Is it similar at all? redundant I mean.

I'm not in the mages guild but i bought an invisibility spell (35 seconds) from the Dark Brotherhood vendor. I think it is called Dark Visage or somesuch. I also got this cool armor with 20% chameleon permanently on the thing. It makes me all cloaked like in Halo so when i feed it looks pretty cool.

I also ended up becoming a knight errant in the Order of the White Stallion. Anyone know if there are other missions in the Order than the one that gets you a membership? It shows up on my sheet with Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood like it has a series of quests.

That is the one I am using, Deathly Visage. Awesome spell.

I haven;t seen that one, but I am a member of the Order of the Virtuous Blood. Which is sort of funny since they are vampire hunters.

It takes about 10 to 12 fights IIRC. I enjoyed it; it's not like Fable, it's more your typical "gladiator" arena. The arena is open from 9am to 9 pm so I became Champion in rougly 3 or 4 days.

Per the strategy guide...the person you do that quest with says at the end that they are going to hunt more Black Bows. They do in fact do so, 3 days a week. But that's it I believe.

That page just lists all the organizations you belong to. Like a Mideval Resume.

Okay another question, since it seems like all the enemies level up along with your character, what is really the point of becoming stonger in this game? If everything levels up with you wouldnt the game be just as hard/easy as a level 5 as it would be to a level 20?

Good question!

I think it was said before that certain items and different kinds of challenges arise in the game as you level up. So i guess you would experience new and different things as you got better?

As you level up, the enemies you fight have better weapons that they have. Mostly magical. you also get access to better spells as you progress and raise your levels. The shops sell better items, etc.
It is a good idea to level up.

That, and some of the side quests require you to be a certain level. I know of a couple that you need to be level 20 or higher.

Isn't part of the game to grow and develop your character? That's part of leveling up.

Given the open ended nature of the game I think the leveling up with your character is a good compromise vs. not being able to access areas without having reached a certain level.

Having said that, I was really ticked off playing last night. I tried going back into Vilveran to pick up some more Weylkind crystals and was having my ass handed to me by skeleton guards and headless zombies. I think I need to learn how to fight better. And I need to increase my magicka somehow. I keep running out of it way too quickly. So I gave up on that and decided to go hit the Sandstone Cavern to do the Sunken One quest. I quick travel to the location and as I'm walking up to the cavern I get attacked by a troll. Fortunately they seem pretty weak towards fire based attacks and I killed him pretty easily. Unfortunately there was another one, and I didn't have enough magicka (does anyone else keep thinking of it as "mana"?) and while he was chasing me I ran into a third. I need to buy more health and sorcery potions. Blah.

And tonight we have a dinner to go to, so no playing until late. Maybe uping some of my stats so quickly wasn't the best idea.

I thought about that question for a long time. I think that in the end, you are playing the game for fun. If you find wandering around kililng things and harvesting plants fun, then you should do it. If you think the mages guild is fun, you should do it. If you find the arena to be a PITA, you should skip it.

There is no "point" to leveling up. It will not help you. Some of the cooler weapons and spells are fun to use. They will not, however, ultimately help you "beat" the game.

This game is unique in that it might be one of the first ever that does not really push you to complete any goals at all. You can do whatever you want. You could probably argue that there is no end to the game, other than just simply running out of things to do.

Me personally, I like to get achievement points. I am trying to do things that get me those achievement points and skipping some side quests. I figure I will get burned out pretty soon, so I should focus on doing things that get me those achievement points. If I can get all 1,000 (which seems pretty easy to do w/ the time required), I can sell the game and feel pretty good about it.

Theres no way around it.....Trolls suck! I am going to take your advice and use the fire against them. Normally its a battle of epic proportions when i meet up with one of them

That's what I love about this game; you do what YOU want. For now I'm playing a "pure" warrior, so I'm staying away from alchemy and spells (ok I still use the weak restore health spell once in a while). Yesterday I hunted deer and wolves for a good hour to raise my marksmanship with my bow; I could swear a deer smelled me as I was sneaking up to it. It raised its head, saw me and ran.I had time to shoot an arrow in its butt and found it later in the woods dead. That AI is amazing

I also gotta start my Dark Elf thief-assassin chick and a pure mage. I feel like I'm back in WoW creating alts

Fire and acid are always good when running into trolls. They regenerate otherwise.


What i hate are dread zombies. The bastards are out of 28 days later and quick as can be plus they regenerate. They suck.

A friend of mine made himself a copy of the PC disc as a "back-up", or whatever, but he said that the disc didn't have any type of copy-protecion.

I wonder why Behtesda didn't take any steps to make it difficult to copy?