I think I'm ready to move away from cheap-o 'Altmer with critical weakness to paralysis' characters now, and create something I actually enjoy playing. Like a Dunmer, or Redguard. But before I do so I have a couple of questions:

1) Websites keep telling me that long blades are the best type of weapon. Is this true, and if it is, how much of a disadvantage will using flails (the weapon I'd like to use) or other blunt weapons or axes or whatever be?

2) Is Immunity to Magic actually usefull if I'm already immune to paralysis?

3) Should I pay attention to how much health I gain each level or just ignore it and play the game?

4) Will 'Forbidden Armor Type: Chainmail/Leather' do a good job at lowering the difficulty dagger without making the beginning to hard?

5) Is it more proffitable to join the Temple itself or the Temple Knightly Order? (In terms of services, training, payment, etc)

Thanks.

1. The reason they say long blades are the best is because, on average, they're the weapon group that does the most damage. And they're very common in the game world, so you'll never have a hard time finding one.

You won't be at any sort of disadvantage by taking blunt weapon as your main weapon skill. Flail does quite a bit less damage than the more powerful weapons, but not so much so that you'll be constantly getting killed.

2. Immunity to Magic makes it so that you're highly resistant to magicka-based attacks. So if you chose Immunity to Magic, you'd still be vulnerable to Fire, Frost, Poison, Paralysis, etc. This is a mistake that the guys over at UESP made early on and never corrected.

3. Try and set your "Health Per Level" setting as high as possible, so you can increase your health by a lot each level. If you're referring to saving/reloading the game several times just to try and get the maximum health increase allowed by your class, it's not worth the headache.

4. The beginning won't be too hard if you do that. Just make sure to rush through Privateer's Hold without stopping to fight too many enemies.

5. As far as gameplay goes, they're identical. In fact, I'm not even sure that there's a way to join one of the Templar orders, such as the Order of the Lily.

1) I think that it is false to say that long blades are the best type of weapon. I think it was Mark Stinson who argued (you should check out his site, it's at http://tesguides.com/) that you short blades are deadlier: you get in more hits because they move faster. Eg. one hit with a dai-katana doing 15-33, or two hits from a dagger doing 13-22.

Concentrating on improving your speed will allow you to swing even a flail like a whip.

2) Supposedly all magical attacks, including those that are fire-based, frost-based etc are first checked against your magicka resistance. I don't know if that is true, but I always found resistance/immunity to magic useful.

3) I agree with Krol on this point. But remember that having a massive maximum health will make the game very easy very fast.

4) No. You will gain almost no advantage from forbidding those two. I thought I once read a chart that detailed the exact amounts... can't see it on uesp or tesguides, I don't know where that was. A lot of game information on Daggerfall has been lost

5) They are identical as Krol says. Join whichever suits your RP.

Thanks! My Character will be a Redguard/Nord Priest/Paladin of Arkay, created with the BG2 Undead Hunter Paladin in mind. If they are joinable I plan on joining the Knight of the Circle since I focus more on melee than spellcasting, otherwise I'll just join the normal temple. Since I have a soft spot for flails I'll use those with a mace and shield in my cart just in case. His eternal hatred of Undead will also give me a good excuse for raiding crypts in the beginning of the game 'To cleanse them of the foul creatures that inhabit them and remove the cursed items they left there to defile the tomb (a.k.a. gold, weaponry and valuables).'. I'll, of course, give him all sorts of advantages that allow him to kill Undead. I'm already looking forward to doing the King of Worms quests. >:D He won't be happy with having to help the most powerful and influential Lich in Tamriel.

It would be interesting to give him a phobia to Daedra, as well.

Clearly, flails make up for their lower damage by being so damn cool looking. Same goes for daggers.

Besides, if you are playing as the Bane of the Undead, then using blunt weapons will help you fight them. It's either all undead or just the skeletal ones (can never remember) take only half damage from all weapons except blunts. So bash away.

Well, I really can't think of needed skills. I like being in control of levelling, though, so running and stuff are out. So far I have:

Blunt Weapon
Critical Strike
Dodge

Medical
Restoration
?

?
?
?
?
?
?

Advantages:

Immunity to Paralysis
Bonus to hit Undead
Expertise in Blunt Weapons
Athleticism
Increased Magery # times INT in SP (Depends on the number of magic schools I'll end up with)

Disadvantages

Crit. Weakness to Poison
Crit. Weakness to Disease

Any other disadvantages I could add to even things out without severely handicapping my char?

Thank you.

3. Try and set your "Health Per Level" setting as high as possible, so you can increase your health by a lot each level. If you're referring to saving/reloading the game several times just to try and get the maximum health increase allowed by your class, it's not worth the headache.

I don't think your second sentence follows from the first. Because it is a pain in the butt to get the max HP increase when you level, you do as a rule have to restore and re-level quite a bit to get the full benefit of the trait. And at the same time, you don't need all those HP to survive. (Perhaps you're thinking by setting the "health per level" setting high you're guaranteed to get a lot of health per level? This is not true; it merely provides the possibility of more health.)

The only guarantee is that it will drive the difficulty dagger higher, which (unless you're looking for a challenge) is not a good thing.

1) in daggerfall there aren't enough differences to make any weapon class different, as they all attack at the same speed. bladed weapons do less damage to skeletons, and hand to hand once fortified above 100% is the most powerful attack.

2) immunity to magic negates all ill effects supposively. it includes fire/frost/poison/shock/paralysis and probably disease. this is why a lot of guides say to pick critical weakness to the others if you take magic immunity, as magic resistance for some reason is always checked first.

3) more health is nice, depends how you really play. thieves and mages can get by with less.

4) since those armors are poor quality, it barely adjusts the bar

5) if you can find a knightly temple order, i think some of them aren't featured.

@Dr. Memory: Raising your maximum health per level doesn't just increase the possibility for more health. The minimum amount that your HP can increase is equal to half of your maximum per level. So if it's set at the default 8, then you'll get a minimum of 4HP per level. If you set it to 30 (which I usually do) you get a minimum of 15 per level. So yes, it DOES increase the amount of HP that you ACTUALLY GET per level.

In response to abysmal terror: Most guides say that magic immunity also gives you immunity to everything else. While that would be nice, I've seen evidence to the contrary. I used to give all my characters immunity to magic, but then they'd get their butts kicked every time they ran into a Lich. This is probably because I had critical weakness to Shock, and they were using powerful shock spells, so I'd get insta-killed.

And those same characters that were "immune" to magic would get paralyzed every time a Daedra Seducer so much as looked at them. So like I said, I've seen a lot of evidence that indicates that the old "Immune to Magic, Crit Weak to everything else" trick simply does not work.

Instead, "Immunity to Magic" only protects against magicka-based attacks. If an enemy throws a fire-based or frost-based attack at you, or tries to paralyze or poison you, you're still quite vulnerable. If you're playing a magic-using character, that doesn't matter because you can just throw up a spell reflection/free action spell. If you're a pure fighter or pure thief, though, you're really going to be feeling any Critical Weakness that you choose for your character.

I suppose I haven't tried it in a while, though I generally never pick critical weaknesses either. I do remember always resisting fireballs and paralysis with immunity to magic though.

True or not?

Blunt Weapon
Critical Strike
Dodge

Mysticism
Restoration
Thaumaturgy

Alteration
Mysticism
?
?
?
?


Still don't know which skills to pick... Swimming, perhaps? I've noticed my characters swim very slow... Hand to hand, for when I'm attacked by Assassins with my weapon and armor still in my cart? Streetwise and Etiquette, because they're controllable and easy to level?

That quote from Beginner's Guide MAY be correct, but if you take a critical weakness to paralysis, you will be getting paralyzed a LOT even with magic immunity. Trust me - it's happened to several of my characters before I finally wised up a few years ago.

Rollthedice: Having critical strike AND dodging as primary skills will make leveling kind of hard. I'd recommend moving one or both to Major skills, and moving the magic skills up to replace them.

Climbing and Jumping work great as Minor skills, so I'd pick them. Otherwise, whatever fits your character concept would work just fine.

As I said earlier, I think the Immunity to Magic thing works. But as Krol said, if you take Critical Weakness you will get paralyzed -- a lot. And you will die a lot. Standing frozen while giant spiders nibble you to death.

The major problem with taking a large number of hit-points per level is not getting the maximum hit-points per each level-up. That just requires patience. The problem is that DF scales opponent's level and points per level, especially human ones, to the player character. So by making yourself tougher, you automatically make your opponents tougher. That makes such an increase a zero-sum trade-off. :grad: :grad:

Forbidding chain and/or leather has only a very small effect on the difficulty dagger, as was mentioned above. I would only do so last, after I had determined that all of my other advantages/disadvantages were taken care of.

Forbidding steel may be the most cost-effective way to get a difficulty-dagger drop, if you dare. :icecream:

When choosing a weapon type to use, remember that the only damage that is ever cut in half is that which is the result of the die-roll. Any bonus from strength, material and/or magic are all added in full.

This can make several quests that require hitting an opponent without killing them somewhat of a problem for higher-level characters, but otherwise shouldn't affect your weapon choice. :spotted owl:

... or not. Enemies are scaled to your level. Thusly, the more hit points you have per level, the more hit points you'll have in comparison to a given enemy when you encounter it.

Where do you get the idea that having only 100 hit points when fighting a Vampire Ancient will enable you to last longer than having 400 or 500 hit points when fighting a Vampire Ancient?

Besides, if you choose 30 hit points per level, then the minimum you can ever get on a levelup is 15. If you leave it at default, however, then the MAXIMUM you can ever get is 8, and you won't always even get that. And the enemies you fight will still be just as strong at each level, regardless of what you choose, so more=better.

Heh, while we're on the subject of health:

I played a new character the other night. Decided I would make the game harder than it should be by dropping my endurance to 10 and max hp/level to 4. Yes, that means I began with 29 health and only gained a single hit point per level. Holy cow that character was unplayable! Even bears could kill me in two swats, and NO animals (save spiders and scorpions) have EVER posed a threat to any character I have ever had. So naturally my first quest was to slay a vampire... who could kill me in one hit regardless of anything I did. Yeah, that character got scrapped.

@Dr. Memory: Raising your maximum health per level doesn't just increase the possibility for more health. The minimum amount that your HP can increase is equal to half of your maximum per level. So if it's set at the default 8, then you'll get a minimum of 4HP per level. If you set it to 30 (which I usually do) you get a minimum of 15 per level. So yes, it DOES increase the amount of HP that you ACTUALLY GET per level.

True, but: if the choice is e.g. 1-8 vs. 5-12, you can see you are not guaranteed more HP unless you are willing to restore the game to ensure you get at least 9.

Well, now you're just splitting hairs. Of course it's true that, unless you take at least 16 max hp per level, you might occasionally get less than the default 8.

But make no mistake - if you choose a larger Max HP per level, your character WILL end up with more HP overall. And that's a good thing. It raises your difficulty dagger a bit, but you can easily bring that back down by taking a couple key disadvantages. If you're planning on playing a warrior type, then ban magic use entirely; if a mage, then take some crit. weaknesses that you can nullify with magic protection anyway.

But for the love of all that is holy, let's not turn this into the Gamefaqs boards with endless bickering about which stats will give you a SLIGHT advantage. I think we can easily agree that a higher Max HP per level will make your character last longer in combat, regardless of whether you spend an hour reloading to maximize stats at each levelup.

I find the HP slider to be one of the least important character creation aspects. I usually up it to 12 or 14 and call it good. Regarding the difficulty dagger, it's important to remember that it doesn't make the game harder- it makes raising skills slower. So it more affects the pace of your leveling. The reflex setting will make it harder, because more baddies will be able to outrun you on higher settings.

Personally, I usually have the dagger halfway to top. It gives the game a nice sense of accomplishment when you do level but without being tedious.

And I personally prefer quicker leveling, especially for the first 10 or 15 levels. So depending on how someone plays the game, that difficulty dagger might be VERY important.

And I refuse to use physical shield spells unless my character concept allows for it, so my characters need to be able to take a LOT of punishment. There certainly is no "wrong" or "invalid" way to play this game.

True enough. I spent a long time making high elf fighter/mages because I just liked running around hacking things up. Years later, I eventually got around to making a pure mage. Now I play for the challenge of staying within a lore-type character. Of course I've been playing for over 10 years now.... ahhhh good ol TES

Well, now you're just splitting hairs. Of course it's true that, unless you take at least 16 max hp per level, you might occasionally get less than the default 8.

The point is to make sure the person creating the character understands the implications of what s/he is doing. It one must split hairs to do so, then so be it.

Personally, I can be very persistent indeed, so I have put the HP up at max and created some pretty good tanks with which it is nearly impossible to be killed. You takes your fun where you finds it.