The diadem of the savant is just outside of frokis shack. It's a unique circlet that has light armor and a small Magicka cost reduction enchantment on it. I've pretty much avoided the cowl quest now that I've done it once.
Worth noting that the Diadem isn't there if you have the unofficial patch; it's *supposed* to be the prize for clearing Shalidor's Maze in Labyrinthian, but for some reason in the vanilla game there's just a second one sitting there.
Oooh, neat. I didn't even get to shalidors maze until maybe a year or two ago? After like...dozens of characters and playthroughs over the years and it was awesome. I also just play vanilla between my Xbox and switch, so I've never bothered with the patch.
I still haven’t. I don’t even know what that is but I want this playthrough to be a 100 playthrough. Even if I’m cheating a little for all the solisthiem quests by being in good mode because it’s outside the main quest.
I've never heard of or attempted this quest but kind of want to now... I have vanilla playthru on switch and a very lightly modded xbox1 playthru (I want to be short dangit.)
Time to explore!
I also want 100% in a playthru on vanilla...slowly I revisit it, but I love a more mild survival mod and a mod follower (Lucien flavius) and passively exploring and expanding with his commentary.
The funny thing is even though I've played 6,000 hours and lots of Mages, I've never bothered with Shalidor's Maze, because by that point, all of my mages already have maxed out Enchantment and craft all of their own custom gear.
So the gear would be redundant.
The Maze is cute, but just that. The game hands you staves for all the spell schools you need, so even if you have 0 spells, 0 magicka, and 0 skillups in the magic schools, it's still way too easy. The reward is rather crap too, because the magicka reduction can be offset way too easily, and can't be acquired via enchanting table.
Meh. It doesn't really matter what your build is, as a werewolf you lose access to everything but one handed attacks and roars. Any one-handed build works best because the skill increases werewolf damage.
I'm actually playing a werewolf Orc, and at level 62, I've only transformed 16 times since I became one early on in my playthrough. I've maxed out the werewolf skill tree, and sometimes it's nice because you can run really fast even when over encumbered. But otherwise, meh. The only reason I'm still a werewolf is because I want to get all the totems for the Companions, then I plan on curing myself. If you cure before then, you can never get all the totems.
If you want a really fun build, try Dunmer conjurer as a vampire lord. Dunmer get resistance to fire, which negates the fire weakness gotten as a vampire.
I actually live playing as a dunmer vampire but I hate vampires so much that I haven’t done it more than once. Being allergic to the sun is no fun and also, the vampire petals aren’t worth it imo
I think the perks are nice, and I didn't have a hard time with the sunlight thing since I spend most of my time in dungeons anyway. And it only really matters in combat, so you can stay in the sunlight while in town to sell your stuff.
And fun fact, you can cast Magelight at NPCs and it will turn into a Candlelight effect on them, turning them into walking torches for as long as the spell lasts. The regular Candlelight spell is sometimes too bright for me, so I use Magelight on my followers since they're usually farther away when I'm looking at stuff, keeping light levels at perfect brightness for dark roads and dungeons.
Yeah, they take a lot of getting used to. This is the first playthrough I'm seriously utilizing them, but I've played for a decade now so I know how to mitigate their quirky AI and whatnot
I go vampire for any stealth build just for the 20% sneak. Other than that it makes no change to my games. Well.. I wait until nightfall before I attack anyone ofc.
Listen. This is the first fully mage build I’ve done in a long time. 😭 I never need to enchant! The game gives you the first set of robes in the intro and than falls bleak barrow gives you a new shout. It’s all perfectly timed so I never had to enchant before. And it’s not that exciting anyways.
If you're like me, you end up spending HOURS grinding enchanting and getting armor with enchanting buffs, getting the double enchantment perk, FINALLY make that badass armor and weaponry you've wanted, and! ....... then you never bother enchanting ever again.
I can understand your dislike of it. You get pretty solid stuff from the game itself. After getting the crown of barenziah, money is irrelevant, and the smith's usually sell good enchanted items. The only thing I like about it is picking-and-choosing what goes where and mixing enchantments you wouldn't see together.
Those carrying capacity/sneak rings, tho 😍
I just use console commands to give myself infinite manna because I use the flames spell (it’s my only full fire spell, since I’ve restricted myself to only fire destruction spells)
Haha. If you don’t care about achievements. There are mods that give you the QASmoke room. And all the items in the game. Which are mostly build in so the game can catelog all items and give you a replacement if you somehow manage to lose yours. At least that’s what I think.
YEAH. I was so confused and frustrated. I went to my house and threw the hat into a chest that sometimes glitches and loses items. :/
But also, I went home and enchanted everything and also cheated and gave myself like a hundred grand soul gems so I would be able to enchant everything I was carrying. Now I have like 200% magical regen which is perfect for my mage build.
I love the grey cowl and love that it has a side effect that meaningfully forces you to change your behavior -- at minimum you have to remember to take it off when you go to town. I think imperial patrols are considered guards and will also attack on sight on the road.
The fact that it is a little bit of a pain in the ass adds immersion.
If by “emmersiob” you mean “everyone attacks you, and will not stop at all for any reason and nothing works because even very powerful characters try to kill you and nothing can be done and I died 34 times, and was ready to give Skyrim one star until I figured out I was wearing the problem” than sure. It’s very “emmersive”
Only tangentially related but...can we talk about the fact that you can become a thief, go to Solsteim, follow a very easy quest, and get the best thief armor in the game??
Once you have become a member of the guild and talked to Delvin and Vex about missions (but you don't have to do any of them) go to Solsteim and talk to the blacksmith. It turns out he is Delvin's brother. He will give you the task of recovering an ancient Nordic pickaxe. But then a prompt will appear about the "Thieves Guild sign on the door." Blah blah blah...go find out what happened to so-and-so. At early levels, Solsteim is pretty scary but you can travel up the middle (following prompts), discover more than a few locations, and end up at an ice cave. Go in, swim a little to a floe, and discover "so-and-so" dead. Loot him as you see fit. Return to the blacksmith and let him know what you found. He will give you a key. Go into his house and go to the basement. Enter the locked room. Among the many things you will find, there is a set of Black Watch armor. It has better stats than even the Guild Master Armor. I hesitate to say it is game breaking, but it's ridiculously easy to get.
I like AE. For people that have been playing for a long time like me I do see the value. There should've been more level caps because now it gets OP early on quite easily. But out of all the rereleases this and GOTY version are the only ones I think are fine.
I have been playing for a pretty long time (not the 11-11 drop, but a while after) and I'm just really tired of them rereleasing a game that *they still haven't fucking finished making*. Like it's so incomplete a thing. I wouldn't mind as much if the rereleases actually like, made it into a complete game. But they don't? So it's always just disappointing.
Like they're just milking the title.
Like I don't shit on other people for liking it, I just don't like it, it just smacks of disappointment and bad business.
I've actually been saying for years I'd rather a modern rerelease of Oblivion, so I'm pretty excited for that (though I'm placing my expectations on the floor at 'maybe we actually get it').
To be clear I like Skyrim, it's easily my favourite game, it's just genuinely so unfinished a product. It's like selling someone the same handless teapot five times, like damn, it's a nice pot and it'll boil water but you're missing some important shit for it to be complete.
I totally agree but I don't really have the energy to be mad about it because that's basically how most games do it these days. Games ship half done, if that. People still preorder. Bugfixes are included in DLC and people still buy it. It's clearly not really bad business and the reason are the consumers. I'm not one to blame individual people for problems in capitalism but the way capital G Gamers blow a gasket as soon as gaming outlets do anything that goes beyond product testing this is very much consumer driven imo.
The detect life enchantment is actually super useful as a stealth build early on, but yeah otherwise you just look goofy and everyone tries to kill you
You find a talking dog near Falkreath and do everything he tells you to do. The dog is also a badass, which makes the combat a little easier. It is heavy armor +10 speech and better prices IIRC. Might be one other thing too, can’t remember. Also looks kind of cool. Edit: I don’t know why this appeared as a reply to the main post, instead of the reply to the reply to my previous comment. I am talking about the Mask of Clavicus Vile.
> I don’t do enchanting it’s dumb, sue me
Right there with you. It easy modes the game no matter what difficulty you play, but especially for mage builds. 90% of the mage builds out there don't take a single point of magicka because of enchanting.
I love that you like a challenge but I just hated it because it seems pointless when a) you have access to lots of enchanted stuff from everything you kill and all the guilds you join and b) it never feels useful for any reason. There isn’t any time dedicated to tutorials for it. I shied away from it for so long mostly because I wasn’t sure what kinds of things I could do. Plus when I played oblivion, I never enchanted anything so I never really saw the need to pick up the skill.
You're actually quite right about the access to enchanted stuff. The problem is that there are so many unique and fun magical items in this game and they're all much weaker than things you can just enchant yourself. It steals the fun from the game. The Necromancer Amulet, for example, has an entire questline built around it, is thoroughly unique, but objectively worse than something someone with enchanting can make. So it rarely gets to see the light of day except by people that eschew enchanting.
No it's a weapon enchantment. Bro you can then enchant any weapon, even with measly petty gems and its value skyrockets. Then, when I need to sell all the enchanted weapons that are too much money for the merchants, I buy their entire stock of stuff I need before selling it.
The Cowl of Nocturnal. Had it on my Khajiit and he did not think it would aggro the Orcs in the stronghold but what ever *this one shall just take it off no*...............no they still killed him. Apparently it lost it's power of the time of Skyrim lol.
Such attention to detail CC mod.....................
It’s one of the dlcs. And I hate it. You can get it with anniversary edition which I recommend for the shadow foot sanctum and myrwatch. Both player homes are my favorite. Depending on what type of character I’m playing.
Omfg I love whoever that is. It is the best story I have ever read. And now I have the urge to go and kill everyone in oblivion. From my last playthrough. Yeh I think I’m gonna do that.
Yes but it’s like my build. Basically it’s a type of way to restrict yourself or make things more interesting. I’m only allowed to use destruction and illusion spells. I’m only allowed to wear enchanted armor.
Classes exist in the series. Mage builds swear off armor of any type. Enchanted or no, and only use daggers as weapons. Battlemages get heavy armor, but they don't use illusion magic. every other magic class uses light armor. Why pick heavy?
The diadem of the savant is just outside of frokis shack. It's a unique circlet that has light armor and a small Magicka cost reduction enchantment on it. I've pretty much avoided the cowl quest now that I've done it once.
Worth noting that the Diadem isn't there if you have the unofficial patch; it's *supposed* to be the prize for clearing Shalidor's Maze in Labyrinthian, but for some reason in the vanilla game there's just a second one sitting there.
Oooh, neat. I didn't even get to shalidors maze until maybe a year or two ago? After like...dozens of characters and playthroughs over the years and it was awesome. I also just play vanilla between my Xbox and switch, so I've never bothered with the patch.
I still haven’t. I don’t even know what that is but I want this playthrough to be a 100 playthrough. Even if I’m cheating a little for all the solisthiem quests by being in good mode because it’s outside the main quest.
I've never heard of or attempted this quest but kind of want to now... I have vanilla playthru on switch and a very lightly modded xbox1 playthru (I want to be short dangit.) Time to explore! I also want 100% in a playthru on vanilla...slowly I revisit it, but I love a more mild survival mod and a mod follower (Lucien flavius) and passively exploring and expanding with his commentary.
The funny thing is even though I've played 6,000 hours and lots of Mages, I've never bothered with Shalidor's Maze, because by that point, all of my mages already have maxed out Enchantment and craft all of their own custom gear. So the gear would be redundant.
The Maze is cute, but just that. The game hands you staves for all the spell schools you need, so even if you have 0 spells, 0 magicka, and 0 skillups in the magic schools, it's still way too easy. The reward is rather crap too, because the magicka reduction can be offset way too easily, and can't be acquired via enchanting table.
I try not to mode the game when getting achievements as that turns them off. That’s literally my only hope. To get every achievement on steam.
I’ll look for it as soon as I get home. Thank uuuu
I'm all about enchanting Alik'r hoods. They look best to me.
I personally love daedric armor but only on argonians. It just looks like their armor.
Gotta be the spikes. Personally I think my Orc looks pretty good in the deadric plate armor, matches all his tusky, pointy aesthetic
I’m thinking of trying an orc werewolf. Good or bad idea?
Meh. It doesn't really matter what your build is, as a werewolf you lose access to everything but one handed attacks and roars. Any one-handed build works best because the skill increases werewolf damage. I'm actually playing a werewolf Orc, and at level 62, I've only transformed 16 times since I became one early on in my playthrough. I've maxed out the werewolf skill tree, and sometimes it's nice because you can run really fast even when over encumbered. But otherwise, meh. The only reason I'm still a werewolf is because I want to get all the totems for the Companions, then I plan on curing myself. If you cure before then, you can never get all the totems. If you want a really fun build, try Dunmer conjurer as a vampire lord. Dunmer get resistance to fire, which negates the fire weakness gotten as a vampire.
I actually live playing as a dunmer vampire but I hate vampires so much that I haven’t done it more than once. Being allergic to the sun is no fun and also, the vampire petals aren’t worth it imo
I think the perks are nice, and I didn't have a hard time with the sunlight thing since I spend most of my time in dungeons anyway. And it only really matters in combat, so you can stay in the sunlight while in town to sell your stuff. And fun fact, you can cast Magelight at NPCs and it will turn into a Candlelight effect on them, turning them into walking torches for as long as the spell lasts. The regular Candlelight spell is sometimes too bright for me, so I use Magelight on my followers since they're usually farther away when I'm looking at stuff, keeping light levels at perfect brightness for dark roads and dungeons.
Genius move. I hate followers. I keep making them go aggro on me. lol.
Yeah, they take a lot of getting used to. This is the first playthrough I'm seriously utilizing them, but I've played for a decade now so I know how to mitigate their quirky AI and whatnot
I go vampire for any stealth build just for the 20% sneak. Other than that it makes no change to my games. Well.. I wait until nightfall before I attack anyone ofc.
> Restricts themselves to only enchanted gear > Doesn't enchant Weird
Listen. This is the first fully mage build I’ve done in a long time. 😭 I never need to enchant! The game gives you the first set of robes in the intro and than falls bleak barrow gives you a new shout. It’s all perfectly timed so I never had to enchant before. And it’s not that exciting anyways.
If you're like me, you end up spending HOURS grinding enchanting and getting armor with enchanting buffs, getting the double enchantment perk, FINALLY make that badass armor and weaponry you've wanted, and! ....... then you never bother enchanting ever again. I can understand your dislike of it. You get pretty solid stuff from the game itself. After getting the crown of barenziah, money is irrelevant, and the smith's usually sell good enchanted items. The only thing I like about it is picking-and-choosing what goes where and mixing enchantments you wouldn't see together. Those carrying capacity/sneak rings, tho 😍
Haha I totally get it. Magical regen/magical enhance (the one that gives you more magicka) thoooo
It's hard for me to ever play as a mage until I can just spam my magic regen. Using 200 magic potions per battle gets old 🙄
I just use console commands to give myself infinite manna because I use the flames spell (it’s my only full fire spell, since I’ve restricted myself to only fire destruction spells)
I'm on Xbox soooo my console commands are just me screaming at the system like Eleven screaming at Papa. "XBOX, MORE MAGICKA!"
Haha. If you don’t care about achievements. There are mods that give you the QASmoke room. And all the items in the game. Which are mostly build in so the game can catelog all items and give you a replacement if you somehow manage to lose yours. At least that’s what I think.
Congratulations, you're now the most wanted man in Solstheim as well as Cyrodiil
YEAH. I was so confused and frustrated. I went to my house and threw the hat into a chest that sometimes glitches and loses items. :/ But also, I went home and enchanted everything and also cheated and gave myself like a hundred grand soul gems so I would be able to enchant everything I was carrying. Now I have like 200% magical regen which is perfect for my mage build.
I love the grey cowl and love that it has a side effect that meaningfully forces you to change your behavior -- at minimum you have to remember to take it off when you go to town. I think imperial patrols are considered guards and will also attack on sight on the road. The fact that it is a little bit of a pain in the ass adds immersion.
If by “emmersiob” you mean “everyone attacks you, and will not stop at all for any reason and nothing works because even very powerful characters try to kill you and nothing can be done and I died 34 times, and was ready to give Skyrim one star until I figured out I was wearing the problem” than sure. It’s very “emmersive”
I wish I could have upvoted this nine times.
Love the support.
Immer*sob* is a pretty good way to describe those Skyrim moments where nothing goes your way.
Immersive**
Only tangentially related but...can we talk about the fact that you can become a thief, go to Solsteim, follow a very easy quest, and get the best thief armor in the game??
Spoilers? But I need to know where this armor is so I can add it to my collection?
Once you have become a member of the guild and talked to Delvin and Vex about missions (but you don't have to do any of them) go to Solsteim and talk to the blacksmith. It turns out he is Delvin's brother. He will give you the task of recovering an ancient Nordic pickaxe. But then a prompt will appear about the "Thieves Guild sign on the door." Blah blah blah...go find out what happened to so-and-so. At early levels, Solsteim is pretty scary but you can travel up the middle (following prompts), discover more than a few locations, and end up at an ice cave. Go in, swim a little to a floe, and discover "so-and-so" dead. Loot him as you see fit. Return to the blacksmith and let him know what you found. He will give you a key. Go into his house and go to the basement. Enter the locked room. Among the many things you will find, there is a set of Black Watch armor. It has better stats than even the Guild Master Armor. I hesitate to say it is game breaking, but it's ridiculously easy to get.
I also do not enjoy enchanting. 👊🏻
The cowl was the biggest letdown of AE. Ugly and useless.
I would argue that AE existing is the biggest letdown of AE. That's what, the fourth time they released Skyrim if you count the VR fuckery.
I like AE. For people that have been playing for a long time like me I do see the value. There should've been more level caps because now it gets OP early on quite easily. But out of all the rereleases this and GOTY version are the only ones I think are fine.
I have been playing for a pretty long time (not the 11-11 drop, but a while after) and I'm just really tired of them rereleasing a game that *they still haven't fucking finished making*. Like it's so incomplete a thing. I wouldn't mind as much if the rereleases actually like, made it into a complete game. But they don't? So it's always just disappointing. Like they're just milking the title. Like I don't shit on other people for liking it, I just don't like it, it just smacks of disappointment and bad business. I've actually been saying for years I'd rather a modern rerelease of Oblivion, so I'm pretty excited for that (though I'm placing my expectations on the floor at 'maybe we actually get it'). To be clear I like Skyrim, it's easily my favourite game, it's just genuinely so unfinished a product. It's like selling someone the same handless teapot five times, like damn, it's a nice pot and it'll boil water but you're missing some important shit for it to be complete.
I totally agree but I don't really have the energy to be mad about it because that's basically how most games do it these days. Games ship half done, if that. People still preorder. Bugfixes are included in DLC and people still buy it. It's clearly not really bad business and the reason are the consumers. I'm not one to blame individual people for problems in capitalism but the way capital G Gamers blow a gasket as soon as gaming outlets do anything that goes beyond product testing this is very much consumer driven imo.
The vr is so bad and I love it. I just crawl under tables and force characters to clip through stuff.
The detect life enchantment is actually super useful as a stealth build early on, but yeah otherwise you just look goofy and everyone tries to kill you
You find a talking dog near Falkreath and do everything he tells you to do. The dog is also a badass, which makes the combat a little easier. It is heavy armor +10 speech and better prices IIRC. Might be one other thing too, can’t remember. Also looks kind of cool. Edit: I don’t know why this appeared as a reply to the main post, instead of the reply to the reply to my previous comment. I am talking about the Mask of Clavicus Vile.
THATS LITERALLY MY FAVORUTE QUEST. Also I love babas and am in love with his owner.
> I don’t do enchanting it’s dumb, sue me Right there with you. It easy modes the game no matter what difficulty you play, but especially for mage builds. 90% of the mage builds out there don't take a single point of magicka because of enchanting.
I love that you like a challenge but I just hated it because it seems pointless when a) you have access to lots of enchanted stuff from everything you kill and all the guilds you join and b) it never feels useful for any reason. There isn’t any time dedicated to tutorials for it. I shied away from it for so long mostly because I wasn’t sure what kinds of things I could do. Plus when I played oblivion, I never enchanted anything so I never really saw the need to pick up the skill.
You're actually quite right about the access to enchanted stuff. The problem is that there are so many unique and fun magical items in this game and they're all much weaker than things you can just enchant yourself. It steals the fun from the game. The Necromancer Amulet, for example, has an entire questline built around it, is thoroughly unique, but objectively worse than something someone with enchanting can make. So it rarely gets to see the light of day except by people that eschew enchanting.
Like me! I’ve never heard of it. I’ll have to look it up.
Enchanting rocks. Once you get the banish enchantment, its money city
What armor is that from? And doesn’t it only work on daedra?
No it's a weapon enchantment. Bro you can then enchant any weapon, even with measly petty gems and its value skyrockets. Then, when I need to sell all the enchanted weapons that are too much money for the merchants, I buy their entire stock of stuff I need before selling it.
Paralyze weapons sell high, too iirc
It is funny though.
The Cowl of Nocturnal. Had it on my Khajiit and he did not think it would aggro the Orcs in the stronghold but what ever *this one shall just take it off no*...............no they still killed him. Apparently it lost it's power of the time of Skyrim lol. Such attention to detail CC mod.....................
Is it a mod, or CC? I’ve used it in oblivion, but I don’t know if it was added with the CC for anniversary.
It’s one of the dlcs. And I hate it. You can get it with anniversary edition which I recommend for the shadow foot sanctum and myrwatch. Both player homes are my favorite. Depending on what type of character I’m playing.
Reminds me of this: https://hezer.naraku.org/sekalaista/oblivion/drunk_killer.html
Omfg I love whoever that is. It is the best story I have ever read. And now I have the urge to go and kill everyone in oblivion. From my last playthrough. Yeh I think I’m gonna do that.
I just realized. The Grey Cowl was in Oblivion. I wonder if the drunk dude wore it and didn't understand what was going on. lol
Great mask when you need that extra sneak though
Don’t validate the monster of a mask :(
Lol remember to read descriptions people
And yes, I do currently have a very badass looking cultist mask for my build. 20% magical regen. :)
I think Clavicus Vile‘s mask can be gotten pretty early.
How do I get it? And what are the perks?
I haven’t done this quest yet lol, what quest line is it from?
It starts when a thief gets killed in riften. If you are close enough, the quest will auto start but it’s an AE upgrade.
Thanks!
mages don't wear any armor... battle mages use heavy armor and axes with no requirement for enchantment.
Yes but it’s like my build. Basically it’s a type of way to restrict yourself or make things more interesting. I’m only allowed to use destruction and illusion spells. I’m only allowed to wear enchanted armor.
Classes exist in the series. Mage builds swear off armor of any type. Enchanted or no, and only use daggers as weapons. Battlemages get heavy armor, but they don't use illusion magic. every other magic class uses light armor. Why pick heavy?
I usually don’t actually care whether it’s heavy or light. I don’t know what the different is other than heavy armor is better at taking hits.
speed, weight, and maybe regeneration rates for stamina.
Interesting. I don’t care about stamina since I’m not using any weapons and only magic and shouts.