CHEATS AND MISCELLANEOUS

Hard-core gamers would probably call this stuff "fluff" because it does not rely on 3rd party editors or rearranging files and you don't even have to know hexadecimal to make it work. Some information may have been mentioned in other pages, some appears only here.

"Free Daedric Weapons": At low levels (1st - 6th), Daedric weapons are unavailable; they are fairly scarce at middle-levels (7th - 11th), but almost as common as dirt at ultra-high levles (17th+). To top it off, Daedric weapons bring the highest prices when you sell them. Wouldn't it be nice to have that extra combat edge or a few extra GP's at lower levels where you need them rather than at higher levels when you don't? Take a trip to the "Rusty Ogre Lodge" in Daggerfall province. In the upstairs room are footlockers that always have stuff in them (weapons and miscellaneous). If you reload a saved game while in the lodge, the weapons miraculously change to Daedric weapons. Since the lockers always have stuff in them, you can plunder them to your heart's content. Just save, reload and plunder until you can't hold any more. Run down to a "rusty" pawnshop (Holmarket is my usual choice) and unload your haul. The game will make a skill check when you open the lockers and, if you fail the check, the guards will come running. But since you're in the upstairs room and the guards don't navigate stairs very well, you're safe until you try to leave. It's best if you have a "Recall" anchored somewhere outside the tavern, but you can make it to the door when you're done with a little planning. Standing in the corner diagonally opposite the door to the upstairs room will eventually draw the guards back into a bottom-floor room (they don't seem to realize that they can't bust your chops if you're not in the same room with them, but they try) and you can then make a mad dash for the front door. DO NOT use archery to deal with the guards or you're in for a serious rep hit with the law. If you absolutely cannot get out, scootch down near the bottom of the stairs and pickpocket one of the guards (the rep loss is lower), let them whack you and send you to jail, and then hightail it for another province for a few months to let your rep zero out again.

"More Health Points": When you gain a level, the game will include bonus Health Points if your END is enhanced at the time. So rather than picking up 14 points with a 60 END, you can pick up 17 points by having a 90 END. When you know that you are ready to gain a level, equip any item "of Fortitude" before you actually level.

"Open up!": There is nothing more aggravating than running into a locked door, especially a magically locked door, and failing your lockpicking attempt or burning up your magica on a couple of "Open" spells. Believe it or not, the bad guys can help you with this. When a bad guy capable of opening a door (this leaves out things like rats, bats, bears, tigers, etc.) passes in front of a door, the door will open. This occasionally happens to a locked door. Remember how all of those doors spring open when the bad guys try to ambush you in your tavern room? By some careful maneuvering you can get those humanoid-type critters to do your work for you. The odds of success are by no means certain, but why waste your magica if you don't have to?

On a similar note, nobody likes to blow all of their magica on two or three "Open" spells. That little cheapie spell you made to practice your Mysticism skill has a very practical use. If you set your chance of success at 1% +1% per 2 levels and are around 10th level, you have about a 5% chance of opening any door. By 10th level, your chances of success with a standard "Open" spell are about 40%. Most characters would get 2 to 3 shots at hitting the right number, but burn up their magica on those shots. On the other hand, that little 5-point open spell will let you take 20 shots for the same casting cost. Toss the dice enough times and you're bound to hit it eventually.

Don't bother me! Can't you see I'm busy?: (thanks to Magnus Itland for reminding me of this and pointing out its practical application) Bringing up your map, inventory or character sheet stops the game, but does not stop the clock. Critters will leave you alone while you're thinking, but time marches on. So, you can switch weapons or wait for a spell to wear off by bringing up these screens, but you don't have to worry about being mashed to a bloody pulp while you're waiting.

Which Way?: An odd effect of moving to your ship is that you will always come off your ship facing in the same direction you were facing when you went to it. For example, if you were facing North when you moved onto your ship, you will be facing North when you get off. It doesn't matter which way you are facing when you leave, you will always be turned to face in your original direction. I'm sure there is a practical application for this effect somewhere, but its usefulness escapes me at the moment. In contrast to this effect, teleporting lets you arrive facing in the same direction as you were at your last location.

Restocking Shelves: (Thanks to several people on the alt.games.daggerfall newsgroup for sending this my way) One of the problems for characters who want to make use of “Midnight Adventurer’s Supply” is the problem of empty shelves. Once the stores have been cleaned out, you have to find a way of resetting the town to get the shelves to restock. The easiest way to do this is to anchor a "recall" spell somewhere in town and teleporting OUT of a building. Another method is to toggle your transportation mode to "Ship" and back again. But those characters who do not have ships or spells will have problems making the shelves restock without traveling. Instead of traveling to another town, you can travel to the town that you are in. It costs 5 GP, but you come up outside your current town with full health, fatigue and magica and the town has reset itself. Remember, too, that the carts and horses automatically restock in General Stores. If you are running the latest patch (which allows you to have more than one horse and cart), you can keep taking them off the shelf and selling them back to the storeowner. Also, if you completely empty the shelves (you can dump anything you don't want on the floor), save the game and then reload, the shelves will sometimes restock.

The Magical Reappearing Treasure: This is apparently a "loophole" in the program that I stumbled across while training at the Thieves Guild. Each Thieves Guild has three piles of goodies in the attic where you get training, talk to the spymaster, and unload your magic items. Apparently the game feels that these piles MUST be there, even if you've already picked up the stuff. If you save the game after getting the goodies and then reload it, the treasure piles will reappear. If you're gaining a level at the time, you're going to have a tough time getting your full allotment of hit points and attribute bonuses (at least I never managed to do it). I had to settle for 75% of my maximum hit point gain, but on the other hand I completely loaded my wagon with Holy Tomes, Holy Daggers and other assorted stuff, plus five or six magic items. The key to making this work is that you must take EVERYTHING from the piles (including the junk). If there is one measly bunch of twigs left in the pile, the pile remains and does not get replaced. But dropping the junk and making your own "junk pile" does not interfere with the process. The game apparently looks to see if its piles are there and doesn't care about any of yours. Since the Dark Brotherhood also has these piles laying around, it seems reasonable to assume that the same trick will work there.

Free "Recall": This may be a bug that exists only on my system, but it appears that creating the "Recall" spell in the spell maker makes the cost of the spell 0 GP. Casting cost remains normal, but you can save yourself a few hundred GP's by doing it yourself (remember, though, if it breaks it's not under warranty).

Inventory bugs: Items in your inventory can get hung up in the system and cause a crash (usually Error 113). The cause of the problem is apparently that you can see the item in one location and the game thinks it's in another. As far as I have been able to determine (and this is just my experience - no solid confirmation from Bethesda on this one), the hang up occurs when you try to equip an item directly from your wagon. You can usually solve the problem by moving the guilty item from where ever it is back to your wagon. Once it's back on the wagon, move it to personal inventory and then you should be able to safely equip it. To identify the item, you need to check through every item in your inventory and look for anything with a weight of 0 kg. You'll know you have a hung item if your wagon is empty, but the weight is not at 0. You can check yourself periodically by emptying your wagon.

Free Magica Points: This is a bug that was supposed to have been fixed in one of the earlier patches (v.195, I think), but is still around, much to the joy of the spell-slingers. When you use a magic item that casts spells that must be targeted (usually Destruction spells), you can hit "E" rather than clicking the mouse to fire it and some or all of the magica will go into your reserves. The amount replaced will be equal to the casting cost of the last spell you cast. So, if your last spell was an 87-point Godstrike, you will get back 87 points. If it was a 5-point Water Breathing spell, you'll get back 5 points. If you don't want to waste your item on a bunch of 5-point increases, toss out the biggest spell you can cast and then suck up the magica at the higher rate. The item will deteriorate as if you had used it, so it will wear out unless you repair it.

Materials Available by Level: In general (I don't have a formula to confirm it - this is just observation), you'll start seeing the better materials each time you go up a level. As a general rule, you'll see weapons first and then armor comes one or two levels later. Elvish will start appearing at 2nd level, Dwarven at 3rd, Mithril at 4th, Adamantium at 5th, Ebony at 6th, Orcish/Daedric at 7th (kind of hard to tell when Orcish starts appearing since it's so rare to start with, but it always seems to be there by 7th level). The higher your level, the more likely you are to find the better quality materials. But items and treasure are always involve Luck, so the higher your Luck attribute, the better your chances of encountering these materials.

Starting Equipment: this may just be a glitch on my system, but the game saves inventory items when I click "Restart" after rolling up a character. The equipment carries over across classes, so if you don't mind going through the background questions a lot of times, you can start with a ton of equipment. Of course it's a little difficult to haul it all around, but it's possible to try for the best stuff for each class and then dump the garbage when you actually start the game.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 793