General Tips

This is just a compendium of general (and sometimes specific) tips that you may find useful. We'll update this section with more goodies as we uncover them!

Magic And Magical Item Tips

Buying New Spells

If you want to achieve better effects with your spells, you'll need to buy more and better spells as you play through the game. Doing so can be accomplished at most of the Mages Guild houses, but each has its own specialization. Here's a list of where to go when you need a specific kind of spell:

Alteration: Cheydinhal Mages Guild
Conjuration: Chorrol
Destruction: Skingrad
Illusion: Bravil
Mysticism: Leyawiin
Restoration: Anvil

In addition to these choices, the Bruma Mages Guild will have spells from most of the schools on display. Many of the clerics in the Chapels in each of the smaller cities will also have Restoration spells for sale.

Recharging Magical Items

If you can obtain the Umbra sword, then you won't have any need for Soul Trap; it casts it upon your target with each hit.

As you level up, you're going to find more and more magical items. Warriors and archers will find magical weapons to be especially helpful, as they'll let you deal extra damage, absorb stats and skills from your opponents, or produce any number of harmful magical effects. The catch? Magical weapons come with a certain number of charges, and when those charges run out, your magical weapon will be just another hunk of metal.

In order to recharge your magical weapons (and staffs, for you wizards out there), you're going to need two things: the Soul Trap spell, and a Soul Gem large enough to hold the soul of the creature that you're going to kill. You can find Soul Trap at the Leyawiin Mages Guild, and Soul Gems are fairly common pickups in dungeons or in magically-oriented shops throughout the land. There are five varieties in all, ranging in size from Petty to Grand. Each creature that you encounter (you can't capture souls from humanoid characters or Dremora, unless you're practicing some pretty dark Necromancy) also has a certain-sized soul, ranging from Petty (Rats, Mudcrabs) to Grand (Liches, Minotaur Lords).

If you cast Soul Trap on a creature prior to killing it, its soul will automatically be placed in the smallest available Soul Gem in your inventory. If you Soul Trap a Rat and have a Petty Soul Gem in your inventory, then, it'll go into that. If the only Soul Gem you have is a Grand Soul Gem, though, it'll go into that, essentially wasting the extra space in the Soul Gem. (Soul Gems can't be reused after they're used, and a soul can't be removed when it's inserted.)

When you've captured a soul into a Soul Gem, you can "equip" the Soul Gem in your inventory to use it to recharge a magical item. Depending on the size of the soul, you'll get a set number of charges to restore, with larger souls being worth more charges. Of course, the more powerful your weapon, the more charges it'll take to completely restore it, so as you gain more powerful items, you'll have to capture larger souls just to stay even.

Armor and jewelry cannot be recharged, because their magical effects are constant and ongoing. They don't fade over time nor can their effects be reduced.

Random Generation of Magical Items

Saving your game before the room that leads to the Sigil Stone will let you reload until you find one that you like.

Here's something you may not know: the loot that you find in most dungeons is randomly generated when you enter a level. Most dungeons of two or three levels have a "boss" encounter somewhere near the end, with a harder-than-average enemy nearby, as well as a chest that offers up a chance to find significantly better loot than you normally would. Since the items in these chests are randomly made when you enter the level, you can give yourself an opportunity to play through a level multiple times with the game's save/load system and see if you can't find something that appeals to you more than whatever you get the first time through.

As an example of this, take the Sigil Stones at the top of citadels in the Planes of Oblivion. Each citadel has numerous rooms leading up to the top, but the top room that contains the Sigil Stone is always the same configuration, consisting of a set of bone stairs leading up to a fleshy ramp to the Sigil Stones. The Sigil Stones themselves are often of considerable power, offering anyone, even non-magicians, the chance to enchant equipment with some powerful effects. You can add magical damage to a weapon, or add a Strength buff to a piece of armor, and so on. They're powerful items, but the effect you get when you pluck the Sigil Stone is randomized among around 20 different possible types of stone, so you'll sometimes get something that might not be of much use to you.

The solution to this little riddle is save your game just before you head into the citadel's final room. If you make a save just outside the door, you can run into the final room, check the treasure chests (which themselves often have great items) and nab the Sigil Stone. If you don't like what you get, just reload your savegame and try again! It's important that your savegame occur before you enter the room, though, as that's when the loot is generated. (Actually, the Sigil Stone is randomly generated as soon as you click on it, allowing you to save your game just before you grab it if you want to reload, but since any treasure chests in this room usually contain boss-level loot, you may find it useful to still save before the door, especially as you get above level 20 or so and find most of the useful sigil stone configurations.)

This can be applied to any dungeon, really, but most dungeons and caves have somewhat larger last levels, making it more of a pain to reload your save and play through the content that you skipped. Used judiciously at the top of citadels, though, it can let you get some killer Sigil Stones with which to enchant your equipment.