Skyrim, or, How I Ruined My LifeFollow

It's probably a glitch, but my Deadric sword of Doom never needs to recharged. I put Absorb Health and Fills a soul gem if target dies in 11 seconds, but it never uses charges. The effects kick in, but the charge bar doesn't budge.

No, I went straight up the middle, never touched the sides.

Has anyone killed a dragon and not absorbed its soul?

I killed an elder dragon and its corpse is just sitting next to a house in the middle of nowhere. I've since killed other dragons and they acted normally after death. I revisited this one a while later and his scaly *** is still sitting there.

Would have been cool if this happened next to my house. I could've kept it like a trophy or something to impress all the other housecarls.

My sneaky thief character is interesting, but difficult I have about 50 sneak, 40 archery, 50 lockpicking, and 75 pickpocketing (man, that's easy to level). I did the main quest up to Whiterun, then went to Riften to do the Thieves Guild quests. And so far I'm finding the enemies very difficult; my character level is like 18-19, which is probably why, but unless I one-shot an enemy with my bow, they usually run right to me, preventing me from getting any more sneak attacks. If more than one enemy attacks, I need to spam health potions to not die.

I guess the only real way to play like this is to cheese your way to 100 sneak and basically pretend to be invisible? It kinda seems like an all-or-nothing route, though. I might powerlevel either smithing or sneak though because as it is I need to reload all the time. Or maybe you're not supposed to fight enemies on the thief quests? I know you can avoid most of them...

Pro-tip: Delphine at the Riverwood Inn has an Orcish bow. VERY low chance to pickpocket it, but if you do it's probably the best bow you'll find for like 10 levels unless you take up smithing right away.

I hit a bit of a wall like that too on the thief quests, but you can work your way through it without power leveling or grinding. Just keep raising Sneak and Archery and putting perks in them exclusively. At 50 Sneak, with the proper perks, most enemies shouldn't see you unless they're close to being on top of you. Snipe from as far away as possible, and then back away or go around corners until you're hidden again.

Get the "arrows stagger" perk as soon as possible...it seems to trigger almost 2/3rds of the time, and it means that you can really keep enemies at bay. The +30% bow speed and 3x Critical damage perks helps a lot, too. Wear the lightest armor you can, and stay in the shadows.

Edited, Nov 25th 2011 1:00pm by Eske

I was running ... somewhere or the other Wednesday and somebody ran up to me and said "Hold this for me, I'll be back for it later." I'm like "Okay ..." and didn't even bother to check what it was. A minute later a Hunter runs up and says "Hey, did you see a no good thief around here?" I'm like "Nope ..." because I was kind of interested in the thief. Not long after I hear the hunter "There you are!" and I stumble upon the dead thief's body. So I check him, and he's got pretty standard bandit stuff. I check my inventory and there's an Orcish Bow of Scorching with 20dmg Fire Enhancement.

That was pretty awesome.

I can agree with what Eske said.

I've killed off 90% of dungeon trash and dungeon bosses I've faced this way, including dragon priests -- Snipe, break LOS from the original firing spot, repeat. You just have to be patient. If they heal themselves? Great, gave you more time to plunk in one or two more arrows and more chances to skill up Archery. The ones I didn't kill this way were the ones from early on before I figured out how to snipe effectively or much later on when I was heavily skilling up Destruction.

But looking cool is worth any price! :D

Well, you can get away with spells too. :) Dropping a Fireball or Chain Lightning at your feet is surprisingly effective. =X

I ran into him at Silent Hills Camp, a small dungeon area North/Northwest of Whiterun. The thief ran up to me and said "Here, hold on to this, no questions asked!" and it was a pair of +Lockpicking gloves. The hunter ran up, said he was looking for him, I told him I hadn't seen him. The hunter ran around, found him, and I watched as the thief cowered in the corner as the hunter kept running around trying to shot him with arrows. Eventually the hunter killed him and then ran off.

Was there a NPC with a giant weapon and a weird helmet walking around there?

That's happened to me twice with different items each time.

First time, I gave the hunter the item. Don't remember what the reward was.

Second time, I pointed him towards the thief. Got to keep the stolen item--dunno what happened to the thief though.

I get why the early Thieves guild quests are what they are, but I don't like doing them. In Oblivion, it was only stealing from the rich. Now I'm just brutalizing people who are just trying to get by.