I actually wrote this awhile ago for UESP but I felt I should repost here


Alright so on page 86 of the Guide book when disgussing Soul Gems:

Petty Soul Gem: Can hold creature souls below lvl 4 so I guess a petty soul is lvl 1-4
Lesser Soul Gem Can hold creature souls below lvl 16 so I'm assuming a Lesser soul is lvl 5-16
Common Soul gem can hold creature souls below lvl 28 so that might make it 17-28
Greater Soul Gem can hold up to lvl 38 so lvls between 29 and 38
So therefore Grand souls are any creature with a base lvl of 38-39 and above.

So cross referencing this with the Bestary begining on page 101 excluding humanoids, that leads to the following being grand souls:

Mammoth
Elder and Ancient Dragons
Draugr Deathlord
Draugr Death Overlord ((the one with ebony weapon not ancient Nord Weapon))
Dragon Priest
Falmer Shadowmaster spellsword/warrior((assuming these are creatures and not humanoids))
Shadowmere ((but not recommended))

However you can't soul trap dragons and Shadowmere takes roughly 30 ingame days to respawn where she died

Also I would like to point out there are two types of deathlord. One has ancient weapon and dies fast and gives greater soul, the other is much harder to kill and comes with an ebony weapon and has grand soul.

Mammoths respawn the quickest especially around the giants camps in whiterun hold and the Giants are a great source of Greater Souls

::SLAUGHTERFISH::

Many of you, myself included, are upset since Bethesda decided that removing any way to attack underwater or activate a spell ((even waterbreathing)) to the point you can only rely on potions/enchanted gear and swimming reals MUST be a good idea on their part, I have found a trick around this.

Before you go too deep into water to the point you start swimming Simply activate a Flame/Frost/Lightning Cloak and swim near that annoying toothy fish. They die quick. This way you don't have to lure them to land just to bash their skulls in. This is the -ONLY- quick way to kill them.


::Disabling repeatable Traps::

This trick only works on those traps that are activated by pressure plates and are repeated such as Swining Spikey Gate and a log to the face from above.

Simply drop anything that you concider trash and manever it so it sits on the pressure plate. The trap will activate once because the pressure plate went down but since there is now an item on it, it won't move.

On Swinging Gate Traps I recomend putting a sword or a dagger, something thin that the gate goes right over without pushing it aside ((such as dead bodies or armor. You can also try garnets or other gems.

This is espeically useful if one of your dumb followers likes to run over the same pressure plate time and time again only to be nailed and then flown halfway across the room. Funny to watch but slows down dungeon proggress.

what is so ridiculous about my man only orgy? I rather enjoy it!

interesting info. thanks.

Thanks for these little tips
Although for traps who cares if the follower flies across the room i really ENJOY watching my follower get nailed again and again by the spiked gate that flies toward you till they finally give up and clip through the spiked gate

A bit off topic but after looking at your signature, do people honestly give you crap? Thought this is not suprising for there are a many who think talking to your self from twenty different view points is insane, off topic again. Though interesting about the man-orgy, most interesting. I prefer the thryoid, it is more interesting.

And back to topic sadly & happily.

Interesting bit of infomation on the soul gems, that will we quite useful for the giants tend to disagree about mamoth extermination sadly. Oh so sadly, and then they get stuck in the gem to.. Seeing the part on traps was quite interesting, I usually use the corpses of others or followers for such things. Never did use items, even more usage to the trash carrier now!

1) Yes they do. I made the mistake of telling MoS that he should make the song more gender neutral. Like instead of saying "Sons" he should say "Children" as we are all children of this land. But according to not only his but his closest man-only orgy friends both "Daughters" and "Children" sound pathetically weak in the case of the former "Daughters" and anything depicting a female is stupid as it is weak and therefore "Sons" must be a rename of "Man" and therefore cover all of man kind. This leaves out Mer kind and Beast kind. According to their own logic that would mean if two parents were to copulate and a child was born as a result it doesn't matter if that child has a vegina or a penax ((have to spell them this way or they get censored yet words like "dike" are not censored)) it's still going to be a "son". Using that same logic against them I have come up with the result that all Nords must be women even if they have a fully functionable baby-making penax. I did a lengthy description on another post and then followed up with the fact that Nords don't like to wear pants as almost all of their armor including stormcloak and imperial armor all look like a bunch of bulky dresses and mini skirts.

But please do explain this "thryoid theory"

Back on to topic. Yeah it's very interesting but at the same time kind of sad. See no enemy in this game other than Alduin levels with you. Aside from Hunters ((they will just have Hunter in their name, not to be confused with the bandit like "Orc Hunter)), Stormcloaks, and Imperials Alduin is the only enemy that levels with you starting at some kind of base level. Though the bestiary fails to mention enemies like Mage Anomoly, Mammoth is truly the easiest source of a grand soul and can be found at level one. The others need you to reach a certain level before they appear unless it's a named Dragon Priest.

However the majority of all enemies are humans and they have black grand souls. However black grand soul gems are really hard to come by and I know of only 2 NPCS that sell them. The first is Enthir at the College of Winterhold ((he doesn't have them all the time though )) the second is Fallion, the redguard master conjurer that many people of Morthal do not like.

It makes getting the Black Star much more appealing.

The Trap disabling I discovered by accident while traversing the tomb to get Heinovrak's mask. I had kicked one of those pots that you can't grab with the grab option or place into your inventory. I kicked it like a soccer ball onto the pressure plate and then realized I had disabled a trap. So I started trying out random things from my inventory and discovered no matter what weight they say they are, they are all heavy enough to disable the pressure plate traps.


And At Aphaea and Azuron- No problem hope it helped!