the makings of an ebony staff

[shamrock_uk]

Decided its about time I awarded myself with a 'proper' Wizards staff. Does anybody know where I can pick up a nice unenchanted ebony one?

I swear I've killed about 30 Golden Saints and they've dropped everything but... It's a hard life being a mage...

[ 05-23-2004, 12:05 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Oruboris]

Wish I could send ya one: have about a dozen, from GS and dremora drops. If you are getting mostly 'sub ebony' stuff-- aka, glass and dwarven-- I wonder if raising the difficulty slider would result in better loot: I played through the game and both expansions without getting a single Daedric tower, But after I raised the difficulty to max, I've gotten 6...

Oru

[promethius9594]

yeah, difficulty has a major effect on it. try raising the difficulty and going to rob the vivec houses vaults... i think i found one or two in there, though im not sure...

[shamrock_uk]

Ah yes, that worked, thank you. Only had to kill eight this time [img]smile.gif[/img] I was getting ebony stuff before with difficulty in the middle, just not the staff.

So what exactly does the difficulty slider do? It makes enemies do more damage, you do less? And it changes the loot in the house vaults, eh? Lucky I've only looted one so far then!

One slight problem though, my ebony staff seems to have space for only 15 points of enchantment...i was expecting 90?

[promethius9594]

your enchantment skill is too low then, you need to go to a trainer and get your skill up... that or you need to take it to someone who you can pay to enchant for you.

i dont know that it changes the vaults, but it does change the armament and level that your enemies are. i said the vaults because im pretty sure there's one there.

BTW, do you have a golden saint soul to enchant that thing with? i can also make a recommendation on my custom "blight staff" if you like, but then you have to watch out for enemies with reflect, cus the blight staff will kill you if it reflects 100%

[shamrock_uk]

Ah, found the culprit. I checked the editor using just the Morrowind.esm file and the enchantment value was correct...it turned out to be a 'game improvement' mod which is sort of like the Baldurdash of Morrowind and the ebony staff was one of the weapons that got rebalanced.

At the moment, the staff I'm favouring is

Paralyze 3 seconds on strike
Invisibility on self for 10 seconds when strike
Damage Health 67pts for 2 seconds when strike

in that order.

Paralyze = to prevent a deadly strike by some meaty warrior which would bring me to my knees
Invisibility = buys me time to either run away or to allow me to take on a crowd without being battered to death instantly.
Damage health = seems to affect all enemies in the game so far and does a nice amount of damage.

Any thoughts on this?

Oh, and EDIT: for some reason the invisibility effect doesn't seem to be working. Any ideas why?

[ 05-23-2004, 12:00 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[promethius9594]

yeah, invisibility won't work because it goes away when you hit something, so in effect you cast it then immediately dispel it by hitting the dude. just paralyze for three seconds and then damage would be nice. i go for 100 pts poison damage for two seconds (total 200 pts) on my blight staff, and if theres no reflect its almost cheating.

[shamrock_uk]

Oh I see, so the invisibility and the hit don't work simultaneously.

How does the dispel work? How do you think a 2 sec dispel would do against any kind of reflection? Or are most of the reflect abilities the enemy has innate? And why did you choose poison over damage health? Does that still get machinery eg Dwemer enemies?

[promethius9594]

no, i chose poison because i have swords which do shock, fire, and frost damage, so i pick my weapon before attacking. poison is best on humanoid characters. i'd go for same thing of poison damage with damage health instead for a general killing.

dispel works either on you to get rid of any enchanting effects. be careful because your "restore health for 10 seconds" might get dispelled. on your enemy it will disenchant them of any temporary effects, but not those from items. enemies sometimes have an innate chance to reflect based on their type and/or the difficulty slider. your dispel normally will have no effect on their ability to reflect. i suggest carrying a good non magicka weapon like a bound longsword or axe around in case you run into an enemy who happens to have high reflect, that way there's no magicka for them to mirror back at you.

[shamrock_uk]

Ah, thank you for your advice, excellent as always. Interestingly enough, I tried doing a chameleon spell but that didn't work either...even though it should remain if an attack is made.

I've ended up with a paralyze 5s, restore health 20pts and damage health 60pts for 2s at the moment. Will summon a few things later and see how this fares. I don't really want to carry round lots of weapons being a mage, so will probably just stick to this.

Thanks again