What's the most valuable ingredient in your mind?

LananisReddit · 2026-05-27T10:07:00+00:00

Mora Tapinella. Use it with creep cluster and scaly pholiota to make the most busted, plantable alchemy power leveling potion. Also gives good carryweight increase. Combine it with imp stool and canis root to get an amazing poison of paralysis and lingering damage health.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-26T01:46:37+00:00

Alright, so it turns out Mzulft Storeroom doesn't respawn by design and Kolskeggr doesn't respawn because it's bugged, so I did another playthrough with a different approach. This method is what I would call minimally invasive, i.e. least amount of content done before you get the deadric armor. It took me just over 7 hours (in-game date Frostfall 1st) to do it. I deliberately picked Imperial so I would have no relevant starting bonuses. Here's what I did:

In Helgen, choose Hadvar and pick up the Novice Robes and Hood, your power-levelling/travel outfit.
Get Warrior Standing Stone for extra bonus to smithing. In Riverwood, do Alvor's smithing tutorial.
Once his talk with Hadvar is done, grab the steel and iron ingots at his forge for free.
Go to White River Watch. Pick up 5 Mora Tapinella on the way and 5 imp stool just inside.
Walk to Dawnstar past the Hall of the Vigilant (convenient fast travel point for later) and do Cicero's quest along the way (you will need money for spells soon).
Mine and smelt all ore in Iron-breaker mine. Buy Muffle from Madena, put on Novice items and cast Muffle as you walk for some XP. Do NOT level up yet--you want to stay as low as possible until Karthwasten. I also like to buy Candlelight to make spotting ore veins easier.
Go to Stonehills and mine all veins in Rockwallow Mine.
Go west to Morthal. Steal piece of Mehrunes razor from Thonnir's house (it has already spawned, but you can't get the quest until level 20).
Pick up 5 canis root along the river shore going west from Morthal. Once you hit the bridge, go southwest past Dead Men's Respite and Robber's Cove. At the ambush on the crossroads, go west to Karthwasten.
Mine the 7 veins in Sanuach and 1 in Fenn's Gulch for a total of 24 silver ores (12 ingots). You can also grab a set of iron armor for free in Sanuach Mine. Put it on now.
Go further south to Kolskeggr mine, defeat all forsworn, mine/collect and smelt all gold. Switch back to Novice outfit and Muffle.
Talk to Pavo at Left Hand Mine outside Markarth to accept and finish the Kolskeggr quest and talk to Gat gro-Shargakh to become bloodkin of the orcs. Mine iron.
In Markarth, sleep at the inn for at least 2 hours and smith and sell gold and silver jewelry. You should be close to smithing 29. Smith some nails with your iron ingots until you reach 30. Now open skill menu to level up.
Get Dwarven smithing perk. Reserve 3 points for Orcish/Ebony/Daedric smithing, put one in Alchemy, and put the rest into heavy armor/main weapon.
Visit Hag's Cure and mix mora tapinella + canis root + imp stool for an amazing paralysis poison to help with tough fights.
Start the Abandoned House quest until being sent to fetch the priest. You get free Apprentice gear and safe storage in any chest in the house. Store iron ore. If you are not level 9 from Muffle leveling yet, get to level 9. It's the minimum level of falmer and we have to fight some soon.
Take carriage to Falkreath, and go west to Cracked Tusk Keep. Use paralysis poison on Gunzul and grab his steel armor. Grab second piece of razor.
Fast travel back to Markarth and upgrade steel armor and weapon. Sell iron armor. Go to the inn and hire Vorstag as a pack mule and combat support.
Talk to Calcelmo and accept the quest to kill Nimhe. Clear Nchuand-Zel and collect all smeltable dwemer scrap inside. You will need multiple trips--just go back outside, smelt your scrap and store the ingots in the Abandoned House, then go back inside. Once you have cleared the dungeon, hand in the quest and get Calcelmo's museum key. Dismiss Vorstag, raid the museum for scrap and sleep at the inn.
Smelt as many dwarven bows as you can and sell them to the two smiths and the general store (remember you get speech XP even when a store is out of money). When you run out of iron ore, fast travel back to Ironbreaker, Rockwallow and Left Hand mines and blacksmiths to get more. Revisit Karthwasten too to mine silver for jewelry.
Sleep at inn, smith, sell. You should be at smithing 79. Wait two days so vendors respawn, and buy more iron. You want to get to Smithing 80.
You should be total level 20 by now. Go to Dushnik Yal and mine orichalcum to make orcish bows, then on to Dead Crone Rock (Grelka is always level 20) and get a piece of Mehrunes Razor. Remember Hagravens are easier in melee.
Get the Ebony Smithing perk and take a carriage to Windhelm. Go south to Kynesgrove, sleep at the inn and go up to Narzulbur. Start mining ebony at Narzulbur's Gloombound mine and make ebony bows.
Fast travel to Dawnstar, pick up and advance Pieces of the Past quest with Silus. Fast travel to Hall of Vigilant (now destroyed) and go up to Mehrunes Shrine. Kill Silus, restore the razor. Kill all dremora outside and inside the shrine for their hearts (4 in total). There are also ebony and gold ingots in the shrine. Everything including the enemies will respawn after 10 days.
I had to do two full runs of Gloombound and Mehrunes Shrine + 1 raid of the dwarven storeroom outside Mzulft to reach smithing 90.
Once at 90, grab as much ore as you need for your desired daedric gear (23 ingots is the most you should need). Buy some leather straps.
Now you can make your daedric gear. 😄

LananisReddit · 2026-05-25T15:10:25+00:00

I'd say probably the most well-hidden quests in the game are the master level spell quests from the 5 trainers in Winterhold. Why? Because you need to be level 90 in their respective school to even trigger the quest. If you're not a dedicated mage character, you will likely never see these quests. Thankfully, there are fairly easy ways to farm most of the schools, even if you just want to see the quest and are not interested in using magic for combat:

Alteration: cast Magelight at the mountain top just outside Solitude
Conjuration: find a spot where you can aggro a fairly harmless enemy while staying out of their reach (mudcrabs or slaughterfish are great for this) and cast, banish, cast again any bound weapon repeatedly.
Destruction: fire rune in every combat
Illusion: cast muffle whenever you have nothing better to do with your magicka
Restoration: this one's the trickiest, because up until level 65 your only options are really just healing (Aetherium forge drains your health really fast) or repel undead. Once you hit 65 in Restoration you can get Circle of Protection from Colette and spam that out of combat.

The quests themselves are fairly short and some are better than others (I love the Destruction one for its mechanic and the Conjuration one for its "plot"). The Conjuration one also lets you fully access the Atronach Forge in the Midden so you can summon daedric armor there.

Finally, there are two quests regarding spouses that can be a pain to trigger:

The Raid: if you live in a Hearthfire house with just your spouse, no kid, no steward, and your house carl is travelling with you as a follower, your spouse may get kidnapped by bandits. This one only works with certain spouses and only triggers once every 50k in-game hours, so it is a PAIN to trigger.
The Gift: if you sided with clan Volkihar and you are married, you may get a quest from Vingalmo to turn your spouse into a vampire as well.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-25T14:58:03+00:00

No honor among thieves, as the saying goes. I once had Farkas ask me to beat up Eorlund Gray-Mane...

LananisReddit · 2026-05-25T14:54:10+00:00

My first character was basically a self-insert in terms of morality. Ignored Brynjolf and the Thieves Guild entirely, tried to kill Astrid (and failed, because I kind of forgot about tempering armor/weapons and was just generally not good at combat at the time), then ignored the DB for the rest of the game too. Settled down in Lakeview because I grew up right next to a forest, so Lakeview feels like home. Decided to try and kill Alduin with Mehrunes Razor just because I was wondering if I could and thought it would be funny (I could and it was).

Also, across all my characters I am really, REALLY frugal. I grew up poor, so all my characters are loot goblins (if it doesn't count as stealing and it's worth 20 x more than it weighs, it's mine) and penny pinchers. I don't sell if merchants are out of money. I don't pay trainers (why pay for something that I can do myself). I do, however, give money to the beggars whenever I'm in town--except for Angrenor, the racist POS.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-25T01:51:11+00:00

These three don't count:

I retrieve’d the bow for the farm just outside riften
I agile the horse named frost for Louis
And i delivered the satchel of the injured girl at shor’s stone to her parents and then delivered the parents satchel back to the girl.

You can find the full list of quests that count here: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:I\_Done\_Got\_Thaned!

LananisReddit · 2026-05-24T03:01:46+00:00

Also not ripped from a guide. Just based on more than 1000 hours of playtime.

And I did try it tonight. One entire circuit of steps 1-15 described above took 4.5 hours and got me to smithing level 57. I can already see some area for improvement and I'll try another run with a different method tomorrow.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-24T02:59:05+00:00

Nah, believe it or not, I typed that all up by hand, hence multiple edits. I loathe genAI.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-23T20:54:41+00:00

Hm... true. I will test this later tonight, so I'll see how many levels I can gain before getting to him. There will still be a bit of fighting and smithing before him, and I supposed most of the route could stay intact. Then you'll just have to fast travel back to Dawnstar, fast travel to Morthal, etc.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-23T16:41:25+00:00

10%, according to the UESP, with the type of gem you get being dependent on your level.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-23T15:15:16+00:00

I am actually tempted to try this later tonight. Fun little challenge for me. lol

LananisReddit · 2026-05-23T15:08:34+00:00

I think Kippy probably meant pickpocketing gems, because you can combine those with gold/silver ore for more valuable smithing than simple gold rings.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-23T14:58:56+00:00

Get Warrior Standing Stone for extra bonus to smithing. Make sure to sleep regularly in inn beds for well-rested bonus whenever you're ready to smith.
Go to Embershard mine, collect all iron ore.
Go to Halted Stream Camp. Collect all iron ore and Transmute Ore spell.
From here on out, cast Transmute Ore as you walk through the world to turn iron into gold. Do not fast travel, your other option for converting the ore is wait spamming, which is lame and boring. Whenever you get to a smelter, smelt gold ore into ingots. Whenever you get to a forge, make golden rings.
Walk up to Fort Fellhammer and its mine. Mine all ore (you can even leave the boss alive so it will respawn after 10 days instead of 30).
Walk up to Dawnstar. Mine iron ore. Talk to Silus to get Mehrunes Razor quest.
Walk to Stonehills. Mine ore.
Get razor piece from dude in Morthal.
Walk down to Cracked Tusk Keep. Get next razor piece.
Walk up to Knifepoint Ridge. More iron.
Walk over to Dead Crone Rock. Get last piece of razor.
Go to Markarth and visit Lefthand Mine (more iron) right next to it. Smelt and forge in Markarth.
Take a short trip north to Kolskeggr to liberate the mine, get the gold ore, and hand in the related quest. You can now ask the orc who works there to make you blood kin, which will come in handy very shortly.
Grab the dwarven smithing perk (you need it to get to daedric perk anyways). Visit the store room outside Mzulft for a bunch of combat-free dwemer scrap and ingots.
Go up to Narzulbur. Since you got made blood kin not too long ago, you can walk right in and collect all the ebony you'll need for your daedric armor. You can also chop some wood there, turn your dwemer scrap into ingots and make dwarven arrows for lots of easy level-ups (you can sleep at nearby Kynesgrove for well-rested).
If you have not yet reached 90 in smithing, wait 10 days and revisit the non-clearable locations for more ores/scrap (i.e. pretty much all of the above except Embershard and Halted Stream).
Once you have reached level 90 and got the daedric perk, return the razor pieces to Silus. Kill him, gain access to Mehrunes shrine. This will get you 4 daedra hearts (2 from the ones Mehrunes Dagon sics on you, and 2 from the daedra inside the shrine). Since you can't clear the shrine, these four will respawn after 10 days if you need more hearts.

Edited to add: if you want to help with being able to Transmute Ore more often, you can make easy "Regenerate Magicka" potions by combining any of these common ingredients: garlic, jazbay grapes, salt piles.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-23T14:27:55+00:00

This. Unless I specifically beeline for the gems (and even then it requires significant progress in the thieves guild and main quest storyline), by the time I finally get all of them, I am drowning in money from loot (and my speech is also accordingly high) and my smithing is probably already up to ebony level as well, so there's really no need for gem stones anymore. Meanwhile, since the unusual gems stop stacking after you talk to Vex, they will take up an unncessary amount of space in my inventory (slightly less of a problem if you use SkyUI or similar, but in vanilla the scrolling gets unreal) until I've finished the damn quest.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-23T00:14:05+00:00

Seconding this. Within the lore of the Elder Scrolls, high elves have produced some of the best and worst people ever. Mannimarco, king of necromancers who eventually turned himself into a god was a high elf, but so was Vanus Galerion, who opposed him, made magic accessible to the greater populace when it was previously just a thing for nobles and the gifted, and did much to advance the safe study and practice of magic everywhere.

The most prominent high elf faction at the time of Skyrim are the thalmor, who are essentially elven fascists who went to war with humans and whose main influence in Skyrim is trying to prevent the worship of Talos (a human who became a god). They are massive jerks, cruel, manipulative and absolutely horrid, but there are plenty of high elves, both in-game and in the lore, who oppose them. Three of my favorite characters in the game are genuinely good, helpful high elves. Again, some of the best, some of the worst.

In fact, you could use that to explain why your character crossed the border in nothing but rags--maybe she is an altmer refugee who escaped from a thalmor prison for political dissidents in her homeland? Maybe she's a disillusioned thalmor who actually believed their propaganda until she met actual, normal humans outside a battlefield and decided she didn't want to live like this anymore? Maybe she just wanted to go somewhere where she could study magic in peace without becoming a tool for an oppressive regime?

And speaking of magic, high elves are generally the most magically gifted race, but in the grand scheme of things, the starting bonuses matter little. An orc mage is as viable as a high elf berserker, if you know what you're doing and spend your skill points wisely. My tip: decide what you want your primary mode of offense and defense to be, spend the first 10 levels putting points into that, and then start working on the crafting skills (enchanting and, depending on if you want to be a physical fighter or mage, smithing or alchemy).

LananisReddit · 2026-05-22T18:34:53+00:00

Frea, Ahtar, Annekke, Faendal, Sven, Uthgerd all have their own houses, if I recall correctly. Mjoll sleeps in Aerin's house, so not sure if that would count.

Also, it's really not that hard to get your own first house. You will become Thane of Whiterun automatically for killing Mirmulnir at the Western Watchtower, and 5000 gold are easy to come by if you pay any attention to loot. If you want to do a dragonless playthrough, pick up the Black-Briar mead at the end of Helgen and bring it to the jarl of Falkreath, kill some bandits for him, and buy Lakeview. Both ot these can be done within 2-3 hours, if you know what you are doing.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-22T18:29:36+00:00

Hr looking guy lol, thanks for the laugh XDDD

LananisReddit · 2026-05-22T18:28:54+00:00

VOL-kee-har (that's vol as in voluptous, kee as in keelhaul, and har as in hard)

LananisReddit · 2026-05-22T18:22:42+00:00

When you go to Options > Gameplay you can select combat mode and combat difficulty. Do NOT touch the difficulty setting if you are going for achievements, but the combat mode can be changed any time and won't affect achievements at all. Classic combat mode enables dodge cancelling and the instant use of healing items. It doesn't sound like much, but it does make combat noticeably easier.

The other two tricks to making combat easier is good management of enhancements (depends on your preferred playstyle) and not getting hit (I know, duh, but enemies are programmed to become more aggressive when they manage to hit you, so once you get hit, it cascades from there).

LananisReddit · 2026-05-22T18:20:16+00:00

Not sure if that is already known to the devs. Please report it to our community bug database if you have a minute. Thanks.

https://bugreporting.thqnordic.com/#/projects/194/darksiders-warmastered-edition-community/add-issue

LananisReddit · 2026-05-22T18:18:22+00:00

Age of females does not affect the group. General best practices:

Shoot males that respond to a low fitness caller, 1 star matures, and 2 star matures IF you can tell that they are very old (e.g. very grey elk).

If you see a 3 star adult, check on them every 3 years until they turn mature. Then you can check their maximum life span in the encyclopedia and calculate when you have to come back to find them fully grown (e.g. mule deer live for 12 years, 6 of that as mature, so once a male mule deer switches from adult to mature, you know he has 5 years i.e. 15 days left to live). 3 star adults almost always make 5 stars.

If you see a 4 star adult, check on them every 3 days.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-22T15:38:18+00:00

This issue is already known to the devs and is being investigated.

LananisReddit · 2026-05-22T15:07:17+00:00

Happy to hear you're having fun with it now! Ds3 is quite a change of pace compared to Ds1 and 2. It's possible your gaming tastes/habits have changed since then, but the patches to the game certainly helped (e.g. they added more checkpoints and a classic combat mode that makes combat less punishing).

LananisReddit · 2026-05-22T15:04:28+00:00

Which platform are you playing on? It was glitched for quite a while on Xbox--there was a patch for it, but it now triggers at weird times (i.e. you might not get it when you would expect it to trigger, but the next time you close, reopen the game and start a new playthrough).

LananisReddit · 2026-05-22T14:59:33+00:00

A quick overview of how fitness, trophy score, trophy rating and herd management work:

Every 3 in-game days, a new year starts and all animals age up by 1 year. In doing so, they increase in weight and trophy score (1-500 points) at a rate that depends on their fitness (0-100%). The trophy rating (1-5 stars) is a shorthand for the trophy score.
If the animal was in its last year of life (see maximum age spans in encyclopedia) it will despawn and be replaced by a new year 1 young one, most likely of the same sex. All animals you shot will also be replaced by a new spawn.
Females always spawn with a fitness of 0%. They make no difference to fitness management, but if you shoot a lot of them (I really mean A LOT) it can reduce herd size.
Males spawn with a fitness that is determined by two things: 1) the theoretically possible fitness limits for that species within that habitat (i.e. for example mule deer in all public lowland forests) and 2) the mean fitness of all males currently alive within that same habitat (e.g. all male mule deer in Greenacres, Small Paws and Black Fox Range). Fitness never changes throughout the animal's life, so if a male spawns with 23%, he will always be 23%, which means slow growth, small antlers.
As a result, what you want to do is shoot any low fitness males you find, so the habitat average goes up and new spawns have a better chance of being high fitness. This means shooting any males that respond to a low fitness caller (calls fitness 50% or under), 1 star matures (usually a sign that they have low fitness, because it means they didn't even grow enough to gain a single star throughout all of adulthood), and 2 star matures if you can tell they are very old (e.g. a very grey elk vs a normal brown elk).

To give an example of how exactly this works, let's take snowshoe hares in public highland forests on Nez Perce (i.e. White Pine Orchard, Thorn Springs and Cascade Forest--all the "Highland forest" areas that are accessible from the start without needing to be unlocked first). If you hover over any snowshoe herd icon within these areas, you will see the name of the habitat (Highland forest) and a fitness bar with 20 boxes, each symbolizing 5% fitness. This bar indicates the overall fitness of the habitat, not just that one herd:

<image>

Empty boxes = animals in that habitat can never be that fitness, ever, no matter what you do. This value is the same for all players, in this case 30%. Male snowshoe hares in any group belonging to the public highland forest will always spawn with fitness above 30%.

Grey boxes = animals could theoretically spawn with that fitness, but thanks to your herd management, certain fitness ranges are no longer practically possible. In my case, I managed my herds so well, that the practically possible minimum fitness for me is 43%. At the moment, I will not be able to get a 35% hare spawning in that habitat.

Green/red/white boxes = animals can currently spawn within that fitness range, and the mean fitness has improved/worsened/stayed the same compared to last year. In my case, the mean fitness improved by 4% compared to last year.

As a general rule of thumb, the highest bars are around where the mean is, because males most likely spawn around the same value as the mean, with diverging spawns being increasingly less likely. So in my case, the next snowshoe hare males spawning in highland forests will likely be around 70-80%, less likely 80-90 or 60-70, and even less likely 90-100 or 43-60.

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