how do ou become a werewolf ?

is there a vampire questline like Morrowind had or do you just become a vampire and go [snip] off some where after like in Cyrodriil

How do you aquire or make black soul gems I have the black star but its getting tiring to make a single enchanted item with it and then hunt down a fort I haven't cleared of all life ...

does mining give smithing xp or smeltering the ore into bars?

do the minining spots respawn with ore or do they stay dead for ever till i make a new game?

if they do repsawn how often ?

I noticed a bar type called "Quick Silver" while I was making some Malachite bars, Is this bar made of Mercury ? and whats it used for?

whats the fastest way to gain smithing levels short of buying training my smithing character is too poor and I dont plan to do the main quest on it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28element%29

(Currently working on 2 characters 1 is a mage other a dual wielding smithing warrior thief...)

1. You need to join the Companions. Eventually you'll get an opportunity to become a werewolf.

2. There is no vampire questline.

3. Black soul gems are found as loot at higher levels. I believe the magic forge underneath the College of Winterhold can turn soulgems into black soul gems, but I'm not certain of that.

4. I don't believe so.

5. I've heard they do respawn but it takes a very long time.

7. Quick silver is mercury (in this case no doubt a mercury ore, which is why it is solid). I believe it's used with some Elven armors, but I can't remember.

8. Purchase a pile of metal, make a pile of weapons/armor, hone them, then sell them back.

I'd recommend spending some time on http://www.uesp.net/, it's an excellent source of game information.

the Companions at Jorvaskr are your route to being a werewolf, and it's a full chain.

there's no vampire chain, unfortunately... it's just "be one" or "cure yourself before you do."

mining and smelting do not raise blacksmithing, only blacksmithing raises the skill... the two easiest recipes to level on are iron daggers (one iron bar and one leather strip) and leather bracers (one leather and two leather strips) and both of these are great for leveling enchanting as well.

it seems to me that mines inside of instances don't respawn and that the ones I've found outside do respawn. inside of instances if they respawn it will probably be the 30 game days that it takes the chests and other items... I'm not sure about outside because I usually don't end up back in the same spot with any regularity. maybe someone else will know the exact time?

unsure on quicksilver, I have never mined any... I always end up buying it from a vendor.

I mine what I find and buy iron ore and silver ore from every vendor and then smelt it myself. I usually make daggers and silver rings because they're lighest and easiest for leveling both smithing and enchanting together. If you're not going to enchant, probably the daggers and if you have extra leather then also the bracers. mages like enchanting... and if you do it with smithing you wont be broke. (hint: the best places in the game for jewelry gems and soul gems is dwemer ruins... the mechanicals all run on them)

sorry... *edit: black soul gems are found in necromaner dens and can be mined in blackreach, a falmer stronghold under alftand in the north that you get sent to on the dragonborn quest chain. The Azura's star can be gotten (refillable Grand or Black soul gem) by doing the Azura quest chain.

hope that's helpful. You'll get one level out of doing the "do you need any help around the forge" quest for either Alvor in Riverwood or Adrianne in Whiterun and both of them give you the materials to learn on and let you keep the stuff you made.

Good luck.

Go through the first few quests of the Companions.

No, there's no vampire questline other than the cure. Technically there isn't a werewolf questline, either... even though werewolves are tied to the Companions, there's nothing particularly "werewolfy" about the quests you need to do (only about 2 of them only have any real relation, and those are triplicated (the exact same thing three time but with a different follower/quest item)). The rest pretty much deals with sacking "bandit" hideouts and killing creatures. Don't even need to be in beast form, or have any direct connection with Hircine (unlike Bloodmoon).

They're pretty rare, but you can find them on Necromancers sometimes.

Many of TES's metals/ores aren't directly correlated to ours, even though they may use familiar names. Bethesda doesn't seem to know much about geology.

I don't think it's an issue of being unaware of real world geology, but wanting to avoid silly names for such things. They fully understand that ebony is a wood, but its an apt description of the Elder Scrolls mineral and it saves us from "blackheart armor" or a nonsense word with enough Ys to embarrass the Welsh.

As for quicksilver itself, it could just be that they like the name (as with ebony), or it could be a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livingstonite. Given that quicksilver in the game is used with Elven Gilded Armor, and real world mercury is used in gilding, I'd guess in-game quicksilver represents actual mercury, with the ore being just that and the ingots being an amalgam.

I wouldn't read too much into the ores and metals. Corundum is just another name for sapphire, and is certainly not used in steel making (being aluminium oxide crystals, corundum could not be refined by smelting being an oxide of aluminium already - and aluminium is VERY reactive metal - electrolysis would produce aluminium ingots.). Malachite is a very brittle crystal, and certainly lacks the properties that'd make good glass armour. "Quick silver ore" is a bright red powdery rock usually (mecury oxide), mercury CAN be made into ingots - but you wouldn't need to smelt it (once the mercury is liberated from the oxygen at least), the metal is essentially self smelting, it turns into liquid at -30 celcius - making ingots out of it would require refrigerating it rather than smelting it. Ebony isn't even a metal.

Eh. Personally, I'd prefer made up (or at least modified) names if it's not enough like the real-world counterpart. Same reason I wouldn't like Nords being called Norse Vikings in-game even though there's plenty of superficial similarities, since there's plenty more differences.

As I said, there's a fantasy element to all of this. I'll also point that there are tons of real world examples where names don't properly explain something or are misleading. This is especially true in the vernacular, but even technical terms have their bloopers. For example, the largemouth bass genus is micropterus which means "small fin" despite largemouth bass not having small fins. The defunct order Edentata means "toothless" despite containing more animals with teeth (aardvark, armadillos, sloths) than ones without (anteaters and pangolins). So it's certainly reasonable that any black material be named ebony, that a see-through substance be called glass, and that a hard substance be called corundum.

is black reach quest related or can i go there when ever? is it the only place to mine black soul gems? and do you mean literally mine them with a pick axe or more slughter bunch of necromancers and hope they drop some? is that the only place to mine them ?

if not can I have a list of places where they can be mined

why dont you just check the wiki?

because if its quest related I dont want spoilers .-.

you go to blackreach during the main quest, or the septimus signus quest. you can mine soul gems there with a pickaxe. soul gems can be mined from Geode Veins, which can only be found in blackreach.

Note that improving items DOES raise skill, but not as much as making items.

youre welcome/

UESP typically lists the quests for a given location, however you'll only get spoilers if yo click the links to the quests.

how do you get in without the sphere?

According to the big honkin' game guide I bought, the mines throughout Skyrim will repopulate with ore after about a month of in game days. (It doesn't seem to differentiate between longer or shorter months, so I'm guessing after 31 in-game days your veins will be full again.) But I've never had to wait for a mine to repopulate (even though I RP as a miner). All I do is wander the land looking for veins and precious stones. As long as you keep heading away from the last ore vein you've mined then when you come back to it it will probably be repopulated with fresh mining goodness.

Happy mining.

Also, never pass up an opportunity to mine, you can get tons of iron that way and there are plenty of precious stones that pop out randomly. You can mine iron all day and end up with a healthy pocketful of Emeralds (which is the most common stone that I've seen while mining Iron). Different ore veins seem to favor different random precious stones. Silver tends to yield the most diamonds that I've seen. Although I've gotten diamonds while mining for gold and I've gotten a pearl while mining corundum. I love the random stones that one gets when mining.