Morrowind

[Reese Tora]

Check what skill the spell is cast with, and make sure you ahve that skill high enough.

[Tapewolf]

Check what skill the spell is cast with, and make sure you ahve that skill high enough.

VT requires more mana than I have, so that's that one.  For levitate, how do you tell what skill level it requires?

[Reese Tora]

the higher the skill level of a spell, the higher the mana cost to cast.  The higher your skill level, the higher the chance to success.

Atleast, i think that's how it works; I was never much in to magic because my aim sucked.

Also, I'm not sure if armor had much of an effect on the ability to cast spells.

[Cogidubnus]

Check what skill the spell is cast with, and make sure you ahve that skill high enough.

VT requires more mana than I have, so that's that one.  For levitate, how do you tell what skill level it requires?

Levitate requires a fairly high alteration skill, but this can be easily gotten around. Find a spellmaker, and you can make a very low-power levitation spell that is much easier to cast - it's the twenty second effect time that makes them so hard to cast, so make a three or four second one that you just re-cast in midair. Works much better.

[Tapewolf]

Levitate requires a fairly high alteration skill, but this can be easily gotten around. Find a spellmaker, and you can make a very low-power levitation spell that is much easier to cast - it's the twenty second effect time that makes them so hard to cast, so make a three or four second one that you just re-cast in midair. Works much better.

Good idea.  Do you know anyone who can make levitate spells offhand?

Last night I obtained the Staff of Magnus after a pitched battle which I honestly thought I was not going to win.  Currently it's sitting on Ahnassi's dining table until I can decide what to do with it.  ("Morning dear, I've just found a magic ball on a stick that's worth more than Pelagiad and everything in it and we're rich beyond the dreams of avarice!")

One of the things I love about Morrowind is that everything has a price tag on it.  No need to get something valued in this game 

Assuming it's not game-critical I'm strongly tempted to sell it, the only difficulty being finding a merchant with 100'000 gold coins in their petty-cash box, let alone the full 200k.

So - which merchant has the most money?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

.. and, of course, if you found such a merchant, you'd be sneaking in at night to empty his cashbox, no?

[Tapewolf]

.. and, of course, if you found such a merchant, you'd be sneaking in at night to empty his cashbox, no?

I haven't yet tried that, but if it's anything like U6, money is created on-the-fly so like the goose that laid the golden egg, you can't open him and get all the money out.  (I might be able to get the staff back, although that didn't work in U5 Lazarus).

Frankly I doubt I'll be able to find a merchant with more than 5k so unless I can somehow arrange him to give me monthly payments or something, I'll probably just leave it with Ahnassi as some kind of nest-egg.

[Kasarn]

All the merchants in the Mournhold marketplace have 5-10k
There is also a museum which will buy artefacts, like the Staff of Magnus, from you... but it's usually not worth it.

To get to Mournhold, get a 'port to the Vivec Mages Guild and then cast Divine Intervention, which will take you to outside the Ebonheart Imperial Cult. Go through the other door and the mage who teleports you to Mournhold should be wandering nearby

edit: at least, that's usually my quickest way; it helps to have an Amulet of Divine Intervention. You could just walk to Ebonheart

[Ryudo Lee]

The problem with merchants is that they don't restock their gold supply.  Once you've taken it, it's gone.

Have you tried alchemy yet?  It's not all that hard to make a levitation potion.
Your Alchemy skill should be in the 30's.  Get Coda Flower and Racer Plume (you can also use Trama Root, but you only need two), use a mortar & pestle, alembic, and calcinator.  Depending on your equipment and your alchemy level, you should get a fairly good levitate potion.

And I just found out, you can use skooma pipes as alembics. 

The nice thing about alchemy is that you basically never run out of ingredients.  All ingredients that you pick, grow back in one month's game time.

[Tapewolf]

The problem with merchants is that they don't restock their gold supply.  Once you've taken it, it's gone.

They do.  Wait 24 hours and it refreshes to it default.  This also happens if you sell things and then buy - for instance, I bought 200 crossbow bolts and then decided to sell something.  Instead of 700 gp they had 900, but for some reason I decided to wait until morning before selling and when I went back it was after the refresh, so it had gone back down to 700.

I've used the wait-24-hours approach to offload an enormous quantity of drugs to Balina (or whatever she's called) in the Vivec foreign quarter.  She only has 100gp of float, so each day I would sell four packets of moon-sugar, actually letting her have it for 100gp instead of 107 or whatever to cement the deal, which looks very odd on paper.  ("I'd like to buy them, but I can't quite afford it..."  "Never mind, give me all the money you have and we'll call it square")

After the sale, I'd wait until morning and then repeat the process.  All told, it took about a fortnight, during which he didn't sleep at all but stood in a corner until the sun rose like Gabriel does in The Prophecy.

Have you tried alchemy yet?  It's not all that hard to make a levitation potion.

Last time I tried my hand at alchemy he stole the retort stand instead of using it, which got me in big doodoo.  It's on my to-do list, if I can figure out how to make it work.  I was going to ask here, but I forgot...

[Ryudo Lee]

The grandmaster devices are spread out across the entire island.  I forget where most them are though.  You can raise your alchemy skill by consuming ingredients.

[Tapewolf]

The grandmaster devices are spread out across the entire island.  I forget where most them are though.  You can raise your alchemy skill by consuming ingredients.

I haven't figured out how to use them.  It might be in the manual of course.

And when you say 'consuming', did you honestly mean eating them, or using them in the alchemy process?

[Ryudo Lee]

Eating them.  The idea is that by eating various ingredients, your character is supposed to 'learn' what effects each ingredient has.

[Tapewolf]

Eating them.  The idea is that by eating various ingredients, your character is supposed to 'learn' what effects each ingredient has.

Trippy.  Traditional alchemy used things like lead and arsenic, but I wouldn't want to eat those 

(IIRC, someone who was attempting to synthesize the alkahest, or universal solvent, hit on the method of standing about 10 buckets of pee somewhere for many months.  They failed on the Alkahest, but it did discover phosphorus.)

[Cogidubnus]

Offhand, I'd say the mages guild is the best place to look for spellmakers.

The thing with spellcrafting is, it doesn't use the spells the person knows, it uses the spells that you know. So, if you have a levitation spell, you can make a spell with a levitation effect.

As for selling major artifacts, there's only one way I've ever found that lets you get all the money that the item is worth. There's a scamp in Caldera (in the Gro'Shek manor or some such) that will always give you full price for your items - catch is, he only has 5,000 gold, but it regenerates back to 5,000 every day. By selling him a lot of items that are worth 5,000 gold or less, it's possible to make all the money you can off those, and then when you've approximately sold your artifacts worth of items to the scamp, you can barter the staff for the items you've just sold him, and repeat the process, one day at a time.
You will make insane money doing this. It sounds complicated, but it's much simpler than it seems.

[Tapewolf]

The thing with spellcrafting is, it doesn't use the spells the person knows, it uses the spells that you know. So, if you have a levitation spell, you can make a spell with a levitation effect.

Ah.  I thought your needed a specialist in each particular branch of magic...

There's a scamp in Caldera (in the Gro'Shek manor or some such) that will always give you full price for your items - catch is, he only has 5,000 gold, but it regenerates back to 5,000 every day.

I think I see what you mean.  I'll have find him and try some experiments...

[Reese Tora]

on money...

find creeper.  he buys and sells at cost, so you get the ammount an item is worth (and he sells for same, tough he only has items that you've sold to him.)

bring a LOT of pieces of armor or like that cost 5000 gold, enough so they add up to the ammount that your staff is worth.  Sell one a day to creeper until you have as much gold as your item is worth.  Buy all of them back all at once; you now have all the stuff you sold, the ammount of money you started with, and creeper has enough gold to pay you for your really expensive item.  You can do this for every item you have the patience to sell that you want. 

If your merchantile skill is good, you can even make money form creeper by selling to him above cost and buying from him below.

--edit--

on alchemy, you have to use the mortar and pestle (and other equipment) from your inventory.  you can't use it from the merchant's counter.

[Tapewolf]

I've just met Creeper in Ghorak Manor.  His dialogue is so weird I'm wondering whether he was a debug object left in the game by accident.  I've just realised that I've got 7 rep points now, although I've only actually done about 2 major good deeds.  Is this because of my rising through the Mages Guild?

What's with the weird lizard-dude wandering around north of Nchuleftingth?  His only dialogue is "Must get home" or somesuch.  I'm guessing he came from the slave camp which I've just liberated, but he doesn't seem to want to have his slave bracer removed even though I have the key...

I seem to have licked the money problems, particularly now I've found Creeper.  My current scam is the soul trade - rats seem to be particularly sought-after for some reason.

Does anyone know roughly where Bal Fell is?  'Cause I haven't a clue and no-one wants to tell me...

[Kasarn]

I've just met Creeper in Ghorak Manor.  His dialogue is so weird I'm wondering whether he was a debug object left in the game by accident.

As you wander around you'll find all sorts of easter eggs and other oddities.

[Tapewolf]

As you wander around you'll find all sorts of easter eggs and other oddities.

I was trying to get a list of all Khajiit characters in the game and I came across a list of all known NPCs, including a warlock known as 'Pretty Kitty' who I believe was tagged as some kind of test NPC.  Anyone know if they are user-accessible or only available via cheat more like the 'House of the Dead' in U7SI?

[Cogidubnus]

Generally, those are accessible only through console commands. I won't tempt you with them, as you are trying to do a no-cheat no-mod run, but if you wish, a simple google search can lead you in the right direction.

Oh, and Bal Fell is located in that Archipelago east of Vivec. It's in the lower left-hand area, but it's not too big an area to search. Just look for the ruins.

[Tapewolf]

Oh, and Bal Fell is located in that Archipelago east of Vivec. It's in the lower left-hand area, but it's not too big an area to search. Just look for the ruins.

Found it, thanks - I got it confused with Ald Sotha.  Now while I'm going to check out the neat Dwemer ruins later on, I do need to find 'Sud' which is allegedly near Dagoth Fell.  Unfortunately I no clue where that is...

(And why the hell is it illegal to camp on an island next to some abandoned evil city?)

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

(And why the hell is it illegal to camp on an island next to some abandoned evil city?)

See: Camping...

[Tapewolf]

(And why the hell is it illegal to camp on an island next to some abandoned evil city?)

See: Camping...

I see.  So why the hell is it illegal to rest on an island next to some abandoned evil city?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I've no idea. Perhaps someone who's actually played the game might be more helpful? :-]

[Reese Tora]

(And why the hell is it illegal to camp on an island next to some abandoned evil city?)

See: Camping...

I see.  So why the hell is it illegal to rest on an island next to some abandoned evil city?

You'd have to ask a designer for specifics, but Morrowind has 'vagrancy laws' in order to make you sleep at an inn(or other 'safe' bed) when you are in town.

Why is it applie to an abandoned city?  That's the part where you need to ask a designer.

[Tapewolf]

You'd have to ask a designer for specifics, but Morrowind has 'vagrancy laws' in order to make you sleep at an inn(or other 'safe' bed) when you are in town.

I realise that, I just found it amusing.  It's probably applies to a chunk (to use Ultima 6 parlance) with a certain class of object in it.

**EDIT**
I've finally rediscovered Bal Ur, which I fled from in terror some time ago when I was like level 2.  Now I'm a great deal more powerful so I came back and kicked their asses.  The ring of firestorm is an absolute godsend... if only I could remember where I got it from 

Unfortunately it would seem that Bal Ur is not Dagoth Fell so I'm still none the wiser on that count.  There was this weird woman there though... she wasn't actually aggressive although her minions were, so I killed her out of spite.  Was this a wise move or a foolish one?

[Ryudo Lee]

Possibly she was a target for the Molag Tong missions.

[Tapewolf]

Possibly she was a target for the Molag Tong missions.

Ah, stuff them.  I wonder how many quests I've knackered simply by exploring?  I stumbled upon Nchuleftingth by accident and so when I finally got to the Mage guild in Ald'ruhn, I went up to the leader and she demanded the goodies immediately without even asking who I was.  It seems to have worked out well so far, though.

Oh!  Talking of disposable NPCs, what about the Ordinators?  One of them called me 'scum' too many times and I finally snapped, taking him down with the Toxic Cloud ring (another prized possession I don't remember the obtaining of).  One dead Ordinator crammed with about 10'000 gold coins worth of goodies seems a pretty good return on investment when the bounty for murdering him is only 35 gold coins.
I didn't save that one, but it's looking like a pretty sweet deal.  The only question is whether Vivec himself is going to be angry when I finally run into him...

[Ryudo Lee]

No, Vivec won't particularly care.  I think he will talk to you even if you have a bounty.  Killing Ordinators nets you the same problems that killing anyone does, but if you really want to get on the Oridnators bad side, wear the indoril armor they wear.  They'll attack you on sight.