Hand-to-hand opponents terrify me

[kenny26]

Somehow losing all of my fatigue at low levels is incredibly more devastating than facing an opponent who 'only' does damage to my health, but leaves my precious fatigue untouched so I can actually connect my swings.
Granted I've just started a brand new level 1 character who is not focused heavily on any melee weapon skill, but Foryn Gilnith is somehow beating me senseless every single time I load and try to confront him about the murdered tax collector in Seyda Neen. I got so sick of being staggered and having my fatigue drained to the point where I could not connect even one swing unless I was very, very lucky, but the guy is level 5 so nothing I have at level 1 can possibly one-shot him, and he ends up actually winning.
Then I did the most incredible thing. I cheated by console command spawning a chitin dagger into his inventory so he would use that in our fight. I won! Somehow, impossibly, he became less lethal while wielding a lethal weapon.
Has the same thing happened to anyone else? I genuinely dread facing literally any opponent who does not have a weapon to equip, until I am at least around level 10. Somehow I can never get my own hand-to-hand skill to be effective unless I do an embarrassing amount of practicing to get it up to at least level 30-40 first. Even then it is the slowest possible way to kill anything in the game, so I never bother outside of the one or two quests in the entire game that calls for an unarmed fight and actually has scripts to make the NPCs in question surrender after they've been smacked around for a bit.
For now, I live in terror of the opponent without a weapon.
Just needed to vent a bit before getting back to save scumming against a guy that should be an easy encounter (I loaded after winning by cheating).

Edit: This time I actually won the fight by casting Santuary (10) and Chameleon (10) on myself so he couldn't shred my fatigue, but actually suffered terrible accuracy. Yay for magicka based solutions.

[SeaGtGruff]

He can be a tough opponent to beat if you're a low-level character, but I find that it's easier to beat him if you fight him with hand-to-hand. Also, stay near the door so you can leave and heal a bit, because when you reenter his hut he'll still be at the same level of health he was when you left, making it easier to wear him down.

[sabinscabin]

just buy a Drathis Winter Guest scroll from Arille and use it on Foryn. Super easy win.

[Thefakewhitefang]

Me too.
Quoting the pages:

Maximum Fatigue = Strength + Willpower + Agility + Endurance

I have a build of the default assassin class and still get beat up by these hand-to-hand dudes even when I increase Willpower by 5 every level. I have heard that increasing Endurance at early game is important for increasing the health gain.
Thanks for reminding I should probably train my Armorer or Medium Armor skills for the attribute bonuses.

[SeaGtGruff]

Me too.
Quoting the pages:

Maximum Fatigue = Strength + Willpower + Agility + Endurance

I have a build of the default assassin class and still get beat up by these hand-to-hand dudes even when I increase Willpower by 5 every level. I have heard that increasing Endurance at early game is important for increasing the health gain.
Thanks for reminding I should probably train my Armorer or Medium Armor skills for the attribute bonuses.

My go-to ideal order for increasing stats is Endurance, Strength, Agility, Willpower, then the others.

- Endurance first, to help maximize the number of hit points I gain as I level up, plus faster healing.
- Strength second, to help increase the maximum weight I can carry around, plus more powerful hits.
- Agility third, to help increase my chance to land hits and dodge attacks.
- Willpower fourth, to help increase my resistance to magical attacks.

The others are of varying importance depending on chosen class. For instance, Intelligence is much more important for spellcasters but much less important for non-spellcasters.

[Thefakewhitefang]

Doesn't increasing strength also increasing the rate of weapons wearing down?

[Squalor]

I'm doing a different order for Attributes. First a description:
Male Breton Apprentice - Strength Endurance Magic - Major: Spear, Security, Sneak, Speech, Mercantile Minor: Axe, Block, Blunt, Hand, Medium
To explain: Spear and Medium Armor are my "Leveling" skills and I try to avoid leveling with the others until Endurance 100 . Spear 30 made short work of Mr. Gilnith and Medium 15 for the Legion Cuirass. With a Spear drawn and a shield equipped you will not raise Block. It's a benefit having Security, Sneak, Speech and Mercantile begin at a higher level yet all 15's and 30's allow for maximum level. My Breton Apprentice needs 150% magic resistance to equip the Boots of Blinding Speed so the Resist Magica spell from Arrille's Tradehouse allows a custom resist magic spell of 1 - 100 for 2sec on self .
The first level up was Endurance & Speed (always +1 Luck) but it was Endurance & Intelligence after that because ....... well ........ Alchemy.
I'm saving Agility for last so I have a easier time leveling Armor. Drarayne Thelas's cave rats are my personal trainers.

[SeaGtGruff]

Doesn't increasing strength also increasing the rate of weapons wearing down?

That could very well be-- I didn't realize that, although it makes sense-- but I do try to keep my weapons in good repair, in addition to using gear made from the best-available (hardest) material so it doesn't wear down as quickly as less durable gear.

Also, in Morrowind and the later TES games it can be difficult to level up your attributes efficiently unless you're carefully managing your skill usage, so I don't always end up maxing out my attributes in the order I'd prefer. It's a lot easier to do in Arena and Daggerfall, since you just get a certain number of points that you can distribute however you wish.

[Thefakewhitefang]

Also, in Morrowind and the later TES games it can be difficult to level up your attributes efficiently unless you're carefully managing your skill usage

In my opinion efficiently leveling in Morrowind is way easier than Oblivion. Just pay for training. As there is no limit on times you can train per level you can get 100 on all attributes without having to worry about your class.

I started my first playthrough for Morrowind as an "Assassin" character, now after reaching the level cap for this playthrough, I have basically created an "Every-Build" character. Managed to increase all attributes to 100, except luck (Which is at 73) and after this I can basically learn anything I want thanks to my stockpile of just a few hundred-thousand coins and my trusty Fortify Skill on touch spells.

It is also not helped by the joke of the economy system. Just start selling filled soul gems and you're set for life.

[Squalor]

In my opinion efficiently leveling in Morrowind is way easier than Oblivion. Just pay for training.

I agree. It's more relaxing too, for me at least. It's easy to play without sound too so I listen to what I want.
My Endurance hit 100 at Level 13, Intelligence before that. Then I raised Speed and Strength by training Short Blade & Long Blade while leveling with Security or Spear. Level 25 now. All financed by those two guys in the bottom of the Balmora Temple. Salt rice & Wickwheat from one and Karesh fiber & Stone flower from the other. Tasty
Today I'm going to fly to Tel Branora and buy some gems.

[SeaGtGruff]

I'm one of those masochists who prefers leveling up my skills by myself rather than paying trainers!

[Thefakewhitefang]

Today I'm going to fly to Tel Branora and buy some gems.

Ahh, the memories (From like a year ago ) I used to buy all the common soul gems and then hunt all the Betty Netch I could find, since I could not summon Flame Atronachs then.

But before that, I used to wait for Dark Brotherhood assassins to spawn to sell all their armour. Earning money is just too easy in this game.

P.S Is there an RSS feed for the news page on the wiki or a feed for this forum available?

[Squalor]

I'm one of those masochists who prefers leveling up my skills by myself rather than paying trainers!

I can understand your point of view I guess. Like savoring a fine wine ?

[SeaGtGruff]

I'm one of those masochists who prefers leveling up my skills by myself rather than paying trainers!

I can understand your point of view I guess. Like savoring a fine wine ?

I feel like a lot of gamers just want to blow throw a game as quickly and easily as possible-- so they can move on to the next game, I guess. It's great that some games let you pay NPCs to train your skills if you want to go that way, or have ways-- such as the Oghma Infinium-- to permanently increase your stats in a heartbeat.

But I also feel like you can miss out on a lot of what a game has to offer if you rush through it just so you can say you beat it. It's sort of like putting on a popular album but skipping over two-thirds of the songs, and listening to the other one-third of the songs at 5x speed, just so you can tell everyone you listened to it, or reading the CliffsNotes summary of a famous novel and thinking that was equivalent to reading the novel itself.

[Squalor]

Morrowind was all I played in '04 ~ '06 until Oblivion was released. I had a level 36 character but didn't know about UESP or efficient leveling. I wanted to see how my Oblivion character worked in Morrowind so I made it a "exercise in leveling". All attributes except Luck were 100 at Level 45 but my Journal was hardly touched.

[Thefakewhitefang]

All attributes except Luck were 100 at Level 45 but my Journal was hardly touched.

I have tried efficient leveling many times in Oblivion but I always end up with a bad system. I thought I could level by paying like in Morrowind but I found out about the training limit the hard way. Can you give me any tips for efficient leveling?

[Squalor]

All attributes except Luck were 100 at Level 45 but my Journal was hardly touched.

I have tried efficient leveling many times in Oblivion but I always end up with a bad system. I thought I could level by paying like in Morrowind but I found out about the training limit the hard way. Can you give me any tips for efficient leveling?

( You saw it SeaGtGruff, she asked. ) I have a few videos on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzyxxyiZMmA You can go original recipe or extra crispy.

[Thefakewhitefang]

( You saw it SeaGtGruff, she asked. )

What do you mean?

[Squalor]

Just that it's not my intention to use this forum to promote my video series. It's a forum that teaches me things.
The thing I need to know now is how to make the Balmora silt strider operator re-appear. Help ?

[Thefakewhitefang]

Check at Assarnatamat. Quoting the UESP,

Assarnatamat is located at coordinates [0,0], the center of the game world. These coordinates are the default location for the game to spawn "lost" NPCs and creatures. If you use a Command spell to lure an NPC or creature into a different location, and then leave them there unattended for too long, they will occasionally end up at this shrine.

Edit- BTW I am a dude

[Squalor]

Thanx dude ! Any good loot at Assarnotahat ?