It depends on the crime you committed against them. The 20 daedra heart and 20 vampire dust i have to collect are due to me killing a member of the guild.

They originally wanted me to collect 20 redwort and 20 dragon tongue for stealing from a fellow guild member, I guess they don't know how to count.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think so. Look at your marksman stat, shoot 25 arrows, and then look again.

Also, realize that your new bow is enchanted and has a limited number of uses before it has to be recharged. Don't waste those uses on a target or a weak enemy.

Oh, I thought it was inherent. So I guess I need to learn a souls capture spell so I can recharge it?

There is so much stuff that is inside the game that I don't even know about.

When an item loses its charge, you can pay a mage to recharge your item (usually for more money than its worth), or you can charge it with a varla stone. I assume as I move up in the mages guild I'll eventually learn how to recharge items on my own...

I haven't even attempted to do any soul trapping in this game yet. But from what I know from playing Morrowind, isn't soul trapping another way of enchanting normal equipment, not recharging already enchated equipment? See Save Ferris' post below for clarification

I think you are right, and where do you find varla stones? I do not think I have found one yet.

So far I found only one in a display case at one of the castles, which I had to steal. I've read on other forums that they're scattered about in ayleid ruins. I also read that there's a fixed number of them and do not replenish over time. I haven't done too much ruins exploring unless it was for a mission so I can't confirm.

no thats not right. Varla stones are a one time use thing that charges all your enchanted weapons at once. To full capacity I believe. Its like the Welkynd stones, those recharge all your Magika to full (the blue bar)

You use Soul Gems to recharge your magic items. think of them as batteries. some are more powerful depending on the quality of stone and the soul you have 'trapped' in there (the charge). You cannot trap humans in a soul gem only 'monsters'. You select your soul gem and use it to charge any given weapon. more charges for better soul gems.

When you want to create your own magic item you need a soul gem (bigger/better soul gems create bigger/better charges it can hold and magical stats it can alter)

I found one varla stone in a cave in a plain old unlocked crate. So it definitely pays to go through everything just so you dont miss any treasure.

Ah, thanks for clearing things up.

I was replying to Cusm, Rabbit you might be right about the other stuff!

The Orrery is up for download in the Market Place 150pts.

Is that the mages guild thing or the tower up in the mountains?

Thanks, I feel a bit better about it. Not that it's happening to you, but that it's not anomalous to my machine. How do you clear the cache? I think I read that you hold down the Green button while starting up but I can't remember if that's so. Thanks...

Hold down the A button as soon as the xbox logo shows up. You should notice that it takes longer to load the game than normal if done correctly.

Harness the power of the stars. Rebuild the defiled Orrery and unlock the secrets of this Mages Guild Inner Sanctum.

So is this soul capture something that I learn from the mages guild? So far I have done 2 fighters guild quests and it really didn't "teach" me anything. Or am I to figure this out on my own. Even the guide really doesn't shed much light on the subject.

You can buy a soul trap spell from various mage's guilds or find a weapon that has soul trap already enchanted on it.

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/10723/...-for-Download/

Jon,

Just play the game and don't worry so much about all these details -- they really don't become important until much later in the game.

I don't think you ever learn how to recharge items w/o using Soul Gems, paying someone, or Varla Stones. It's too bad you can't though.

To add to Save Ferris' post....
Varla stones are pretty rare. I haven't hit very many Aelid Ruins, but I've only found 2 so far. I'm curious to see if they regenerate, so I'm hitting Vilveren again tonight now that I think my character's strong enough to take on pretty much anything if I don't get swarmed and I prepare for the fight.

Soul Gems... Yes you can soul trap creatures you summon (which helps out your conjuration skill at the same time).

What's tricky about the soul gems is matching up a particular size gem with a particular size soul. Take a scamp for example. You need at least a Lesser Soul Gem to soul trap a scamp. BUT if you only have a Grand Soul gem in your inventory, it will put the scamp's lesser sized soul in your Grand Soul gem. Which is kind of a waste since a lesser soul only gives you 300pts of charge, while a Grand soul gives you 1600pts.

So becareful when you start capturing souls that you aren't wasting a soul gem by not matching the gem with the largest soul it's rated to hold.

Also, I haven't seen these yet, but there are Black Soul gems. (One of the Deadric Shrine quests lists it as a prerequisite, so I wouldn't necessarily consider this a spoiler.) These will capture human souls, but I don't know what this means for recharging/enchanting items.

There are quiet a few merchants that can do this too, but you have the same problem with waiting for them. What I'm doing is buying bunches of empty Petty and Lesser Soul gems, conjuring skeletons and imps and capturing their souls. I'll probably upgrade to doing this with Common/Greater Soul Gems. Need to get to a store and buy more of these things though.

What I really wanted to point out was that using the trainers for hire is kind of expensive and leaves you open to leveling up too fast. This leaves you with equipment that's 3-5 levels older than your "artificially" upped level would normally indicate.

And it's 10 level increases in any of the major skills that gets you to the next level. Also, the trainers for hire start charging more as the skill level goes up, and it also gets harder to level up by using a skill as you level up too (where it might take you 10 conjurations to go from level 10 to 11, it will take you 15 conjurations to get from level 14 to 15, for example).

My Illusion skill (not a major skill for my character, fyi) is at 100 because I was casting Night Eye spells every 30 seconds at night and in dungeons. I did the master trainer quest for Illusion (10 weylkind stones) soon after reaching that point and when the training screen came up it said she couldn't train me.

I've gotten a lock up here or there, but nothing so frequent that I've needed to reset the cache yet.

One thing though: I haven't seen a confirmation of this yet, but there has been posted some concern that if you've bought a house and are storing things there that a cache clearing can cause these items to disappear.

I have cleared the cache and do own a house, I have never lost a thing after clearing. All my items where in there place when I returned. I have a feeling when you hold down the "a" button your just doing a defrag on the drive not clearing the cache.

And after all that verbiage, now I have a question!

Is anyone an expert in Armorer yet? At that level, you're supposed to be able to not only repair, but also IMPROVE the damage (weapons) or a/c (armor) of the items you repair. How do you do this? Do you just repair the item like normal and it automatically gets repaired?

I created a spell to bump my Armorer skill over 100 but I can't figure out how to do the super repair stuff.

Thanks.