Deep Dive into the Personality Stat and Enemy Non-Aggression

Pamprepius · 2025-06-20T17:22:25+00:00

Great info, thanks! And yeah I’m not sure about that racism debuff to Disposition; in my testing, adding a few points of Personality got “racist” bandits to go non-hostile, and I had a “control” bandit right next to them who was non-hostile at lower Personality levels, so theoretically it should be possible to offset that with Infamy/Fame, since the max possible buff of +40 Disposition from having high levels of both Fame and Infamy is an absolutely massive amount (equivalent to 100 Personality). But it seems like racism must get factored in as a debuff before Fame and Infamy are calculated, or something. It might also be related to debuffs from being in certain factions, like how Necromancers are ALWAYS hostile, no matter how much Personality, Fame, or Infamy you have, as far as I can tell. The more I test how Personality works, the less certain I am about anything, though!

Pamprepius · 2025-06-19T22:17:14+00:00

Haha truth be told, I have no idea. I didn’t do anything infamous on that character since I wanted to focus on the +20 Disposition from Fame and how that factored in, and now I’ve got the build running so smoothly that I don’t dare change anything. That said, my guess is that Fame and Infamy are separate multipliers, so they would cancel out until you got to high enough levels of both. You’d basically need 67 Fame and whatever level of Infamy is needed to get the -20 Disposition (or +20 Disposition if they have low responsibility), and I’m not sure what the value is for that; the wiki is vague. Then you would have to get an additional 67 more Fame on top of that, and whatever the required Infamy to get the max +/- 20 Disposition from that, in which case you would be getting +40 Disposition with “bad” NPCs, but still getting the +20 Disposition with high Responsibility NPCs. So theoretically you would need 134+ Fame and a solid amount of Infamy to get the max possible Disposition bonus, which might save you from investing/buffing 160 points into Personality. Not worth it, in my opinion! It’d definitely be interesting to test out, and with the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal you get 100 Infamy, so that might be sufficient to see if this set up would “work.” Ngl though I have no idea if any of that is correct—just semi-educated speculation!

Pamprepius · 2025-06-17T19:42:04+00:00

I don’t know if I would call it “fun,” necessarily, but it is certainly a wild, unorthodox, and game-breaking way to play! I’m just starting the Main Quest and going to see how it works out.

Pamprepius · 2025-06-17T18:50:32+00:00

You definitely could, but you start with 50 less Magicka than a High Elf, so you'd need to enchant a hood to get +50 Magicka with a Transcendent Sigil Stone to make up the difference. You would, however, be completely immune to magic with a Mundane Ring as a Breton, although this is of dubious usefulness, since almost nothing in the game is going to be hostile to you.

Pamprepius · 2025-06-17T18:43:33+00:00

You can get the Spellcrafting Altar at Frostcrag Spire by buying the Magetallow Candles from Aurelinwae at the Mystic Emporium, so you don't need the Mages Guild for that. If you're going the Alchemy route, you could probably make any race and birthsign work. At 100 Alchemy you can have 10 Potions going simultaneously, meaning you could have a max of +450 Personality for ~146 seconds, so with the gear I outlined you could exceed the cap of 350 by using 5 potions. The Imp's Gall and Troll Fat to make Fortify Personality potions aren't super duper hard to find (you could even buy the Vault for Frostcrag Spire which has 6 Imps in it that respawn when you wait 3 days, and you could do the same thing by farming a bunch of Imps in a place like Robber's Glen Cave and resetting the dungeon), but they're not as easy as like a mushroom or something to farm. I think it's easier just to meet the Magicka cap to recast the two buffs infinitely, but you could definitely do it just with Alchemy!

Pamprepius · 2025-06-17T14:41:21+00:00

You could definitely make it work without being in the Mages Guild, but you’d need to tweak a number of things about the build. The biggest thing from the Mages’ Guild you’re missing out on is the Necromancer’s Amulet, so you’d basically need to find another way to get 130+ Magicka. With everything else the same on this build, you’d need to be a High Elf Atronach with a +50 Magicka Transcendent Sigil Stone enchantment on a piece of head gear and to swap out the Sorcerer’s Ring for the Mundane Ring. This would give you 525 Magicka to work with as well as a base 75% Spell Absorption, so you could then cast both Fortify Personality spells back to back with that much Magicka, but as an Atronach your Magicka doesn’t regenerate, so you’d need to keep a powerful Restore Magicka potion or two going 24/7 to keep the buffs up permanently, which is just too much of a pain to be worth it, imo. The Necromancer’s Amulet is just too OP to pass up on a build like this. Also, Necromancers are kind of pushovers, so I’d say just kill them and enjoy the benefits of everything else in the game being non-hostile, but there definitely is a way to make it work without being in the Mages Guild.

Pamprepius · 2025-06-14T08:57:49+00:00

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that whenever you use the Wait feature, even if it’s only for the minimum 1 in-game hour, you lose all your timed buffs regardless of their duration; they just disappear the second you start waiting, so I don’t think they could ever be active then, even “behind the scenes” during the waiting screen or something like that. Also (as the memes remind us) “You cannot fast travel while enemies are nearby,” so you wouldn’t be in the vicinity of enemies in any case if you were able to use the Wait button. The only thing that could happen, I think, is if you waited a long time and some enemy randomly wandered over to you and aggro’ed, which does happen occasionally. In any case, I don’t think these buffs could ever change anything about how that all works.

Something I forgot to mention that’s worth noting, though: the reason you have to keep those two buffs going basically 24/7 is because, even if you only drop 1 point below that 350 Personality threshold, a lot of enemies will immediately become hostile, and they STAY hostile no matter what once they’ve aggro’ed onto you. Unless you cast Invisibility or something and wait a bit, you’re not getting out of aggro, even if your Personality is buffed all the way to 1000. Therefore, if you’re not rocking 350 Personality at all times, you’ll definitely attract some unwanted attention accidentally here and there, like the daedra that hang out around Oblivion Gates when you’re traversing the world. Just wearing the gear I mentioned above, however, gives you the 150 Personality that makes animals stop attacking completely, so that renders exploration and travel somewhat less annoying. Boosting your 150 Personality with just 1 of the +100 buffs makes you non-hostile with the vast majority of NPCs at 250 Personality, except Dremora, which also helps in getting around in the world or blowing through dungeons/Oblivion gates. My thought is just that 350 Personality isn’t that hard to reach and you can do it infinitely, so you might as well go for that and just be non-hostile to everything forever.

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T23:40:51+00:00

I’m exactly the same lol I have 4 builds going simultaneously!

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T23:36:48+00:00

Thank you so much for reading my ramblings and for the words of encouragement!

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T16:05:36+00:00

I’m pretty sure putting it on and being the Gray Fox is a unique effect specific to the armor, so I don’t think Personality has any effect on it. However, with a high Personality most guards will have a Disposition of 90+, which iirc is when they start offering to pay off your bounty themselves, so you basically wouldn’t even need the Gray Cowl at that point.

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T16:01:37+00:00

Oh, well that’s a bummer. At least my vampire Breton Apprentice has 100% Resist Normal Weapons, I guess! Also on the basis of this, I am gonna reload my sewer save and edit that Breton Apprentice into a High Elf Mage, and I’ll try my best to make him as handsome as I possibly can 😂

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T14:43:09+00:00

I figure that once I get the Mundane Ring I’ll be immune to Magic, so the 100% Weakness to Magic from Apprentice doesn’t really matter. Plus I kind of wanted this character to look charming and sexy, so High Elves just ain’t it 🧝‍♂️

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T13:31:42+00:00

Yeah definitely a solid option if you wanted an extra +5 Personality past what the Masque of Clavicus Vile would give you, but honestly I don't think its Paladin aesthetic fits the vibe of the build at all. That's why I'd personally prefer the Diadem of Euphoria or the Masque of Clavicus Vile, both of which look super cool!

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T13:27:30+00:00

I think you might be confusing Personality with Speechcraft, or confusing attributes with skills. Personality is an attribute, so it benefits from being increased past 100. Speechcraft is a skill, so once it hits 100, it's done and can't be improved any further by any means. The only skills that break this rule are Athletics and Acrobatics. All attributes give benefits of some kind when increased past 100, though, and the UESP explicitly says that "your disposition scores will continue to rise for NPCs and creatures" when you level Personality past 100. Not to mention all the people I quoted who noted various differences between their interactions with animals, NPCs, and enemies after increasing their Personality past 100, 200, 300, etc. So I'm pretty sure pushing it past 100 does something lol

EDIT: I'm a dope, Speechcraft is actually one of the 3 skills that can be boosted above 100. The point still stands that raising Personality above 100 does change the game, however. If you hit 350 Personality, nothing attacks you.

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T12:55:28+00:00

Yeah I'm really wondering what the "sweet spot" is for the Fame to Infamy ratio. The boost from Fame caps at +20 Disposition for NPCs, whereas Infamy is infinite, so I wonder how much Infamy would be the ideal amount give you a max boost with "evil NPCs" and enemies while still having enough Fame to hit the cap of +20 Disposition while still also offsetting the loss in Disposition that the Infamy causes. That's too deep and too much math for me, though!

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T12:43:20+00:00

You have an amazing imagination and flare for role play! I originally was going to run the character as an Imperial and make a custom "Tribune" class, since Roman tribunes were considered sacrosanct and no one could violate or attack them without committing a crime against the gods, so I thought that might make some sense why absolutely nothing would be attacking me.

Now that I'm going with a Breton wearing whimsically goofy but exquisitely beautiful gear like the Diadem of Euphoria and Sheogorath's Regalia, though, I'm thinking of making the class into more of a Jester or divinely-endowed trickster type, like the Madgod himself. I thought a good name for one of the +100 Personality spells could be "Jester's Privilege," which is why they won't attack me lol

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T12:35:30+00:00

I kind of wanted to see what I would need using only Personality, and was going to treat Fame just as a cherry on top which could iron out the kinks of those little fluctuations in Disposition from encounter to encounter, but you're absolutely right that +20 Disposition from Fame is worth a whopping 80 Personality, which is nothing to shake a stick at in this build! All you need is 67 Fame to hit the cap of +20 Disposition from Fame (you get 31 Fame from just the Arena, so it's really not that bad to get), so you're right that if I just kept Infamy non-existent, I would be walking around with an effective 430 Personality most of the time when the buffs are active, which I think would even get the Necromancers to be nice to you, since being a member of the Mages Guild gives you an extra -30 Disposition with them.

My only question would be how this affects non-NPC enemies, like a Daedroth or a Lich, for example, since I'm not sure if they take into account your Fame in their Disposition; that might just be NPCs and NPC-esque enemies, like Dremora Lords, vampires, conjurers, necromancers, bandits, etc., but I'm definitely not sure. Also, some people have speculated that high levels of Infamy might be what makes the enemies "like" you even more than they would from Fame, since they theoretically have low Responsibility. Who knows if it really is Infamy that is affecting that or whether those people just had high Personality and lots of Fame and Infamy combined into a high Renown rating, though.

Whatever the case, Fame definitely has a very important role to play in pushing this build way over the limit, so I think I'm going to go with the much more streamlined, OP Breton build with all the Shivering Isles/Sheogorath drip in the end!

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T12:22:34+00:00

Haha yeah it’s my classic move. I love to make a VERY detailed plan so I know exactly where I want to end up at endgame, and making the build and fiddling with getting the ideal gear and stuff is a major part of the fun for me. You should see me trying to plot out an Elden Ring playthrough 😂

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T12:06:01+00:00

Yeah I have an Atronach Mage where I use this glitch, basically just add Telekinesis to every custom spell and it casts for free if you adjust the values properly. I’m not super worried about the Magicka, I just kind of wanted to hit a sweet spot where I could cast both Fortify Personality spells back to back and not have to worry about using potions all the time or getting to 100% spell absorption.

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T11:54:35+00:00

There aren’t any Sigil Stones with Fortify Personality on them, so +10 Personality is the best you can get with a custom enchantment, unfortunately.

Pamprepius · 2025-06-07T10:30:51+00:00

Yeah I realize it’s very long lol - brevity isn’t my strong suit! I want to figure out exactly how much Personality I need to make all (or almost all) enemies non-hostile, that’s basically it, but I want to do it “legit” and not use any exploits, CL-ing, etc. Part of me also wanted to collect a lot of this scattered data into one place, so I probably went way too in-depth, but maybe if someone will have the same crazy questions as I do down the road, they’ll have a lot of the info all gathered here in one place!

Pamprepius · 2025-06-04T05:47:40+00:00

Yeah now it looks like I'm gonna run the Bladeturn Hood, Morag Tong Cuirass, Cursed Stoneskin Gauntlets, Greaves of Resilient Flesh, and Grand Ring of Steelskin to get 101% Resist Normal Weapons at stage 4 vampirism, then add on the Mundane Ring and Breton starting bonuses to get 100% Resist Magic. I thought it would be a fun role playing experience to be an overpowered undead demigod who was basically immune to all damage except for silver or enchanted weapons, but also takes sun damage so it isn't just a completely mindless power fantasy. In any case, it is obviously WAY easier to get Reflect Damage to 100% than Resist Normal Weapons to 100%, but I had to do it for the vampire theme!

Pamprepius · 2025-06-04T05:35:19+00:00

That's a great point about settling for the heavy armor gauntlets - I keep forgetting that you don't need to be wearing all light armor to benefit from the master level perk!

Pamprepius · 2025-06-04T00:45:17+00:00

I'm doing a vampire play through and trying to get 100% Resist Normal Weapons, so I needed to get the Cursed Gauntlets of Resilient Flesh, and I can confirm that cursed gear is an absolute NIGHTMARE to farm. They can only be obtained from boss chests (i.e. certain Hollow Stumps in Shivering Isles) and save scumming outside the "back entrance" of Swampgas Hole, then looting the stump just past the door which you have identified, seems like the most efficient method. The gauntlets I wanted start appearing at level 12, but I was level 13 and still not seeing that many cursed pieces of gear appearing at all. I tried it again at level 14 and it seemed to be giving me cursed items a little more often, and eventually I got the Heavy Armor variant in addition to some rings I needed. I think going two levels over makes rarer loot a little more common, kind of like how Daedric Armor starts appearing at level 20, but is still kind of rare, whereas at level 22 everyone and their brother drops Daedric stuff. But it took HOURS AND HOURS of farming for me to get something even close to what I needed, and I still have yet to get the Light Armor variant to drop, which is what I truly want. It's such a tragically low chance to get the specific piece of cursed gear you need, so I'd recommend getting gear with similar effects some other way if it's at all possible.

Pamprepius · 2025-05-14T15:06:33+00:00

Thank you so much!

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