PC Gamer - March 2012

skills
Po TIoN PreP
Key ingredients for the most
useful potions

Get “free” training
plenty of people in Skyrim can train you in
their preferred skill, but it’s expensive—if
you let them keep your money. When the skill they’re
training you in is pickpocketing, though, stealing your
money back from them is practically homework. try
swiping it back after each level you pay for; smaller
amounts are easier to steal. in the thieves’ guild,
there isn’t even a penalty for getting caught—and
the gear they give you will help you do it.

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steal people’s clothes

once you’ve trained pickpocketing all you
can, keep practicing: it’s worth getting it to
ridiculous levels. you don’t need to be especially good
at sneaking to grind it: just ditch all the stolen items
you care about somewhere, and start stealing. you’ll
inevitably get caught—pay the paltry fine, pickpocket
the arresting officer, and repeat. At pickpocketing 90,
you can steal weapons from people’s hands. At pick-
pocketing 100, you can nab armor right off their back.

8

1the potion you’ll need most is restore health. look for Wheat (from farms), imp stools (cave mushrooms), and Blue mountain flowers (they grow on mountains). they’re all common, and any two together make a health potion.

Find a ’shroom forest

oh gosh. Blackreach. probably the most beautiful and unusual place in Skyrim,

hidden deep under an already extremely deep dwarven ruin: Alftand. it’s not immediately accessible, though, so head north from Winterhold onto the icebergs until you see a cave on your compass. find it, and the guy inside will help get you into Blackreach. Be prepared for a long, tough, and exciting adventure with a spectacular visual reward.

9
steal dreams

the people of dawnstar can’t sleep. look
into it, and you’ll discover a great quest in
an old haunted watchtower. i won’t spoil the plot,
but there are a few ways it can play out. if you want
to be able steal people’s dreams, it should be
obvious that you have to do the Wrong thing. it’ll
get you the skull of Corruption, a staff that can suck
the dreams out of sleeping people and use them as
charges to do extra damage when you fight with it.

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2dragons breathe either fire or frost, so potions that boost your resistance to those are always handy. snowberries, purple mountain flowers and frost mirriam all make resist frost potions, and Bone meal, elves’ ear and snowberries all make resist fire.

3every character type wants to disappear sometimes. invisibility potions can be most easily made from Vampire dust (see step 2 on the opposite page), nirnroot (glowing shrubs) and ice Wraith teeth (ice Wraiths have them—it’s polite to kill them first).

throw your voice

unrelenting force, unlocked early on, is the
most satisfying dragon shout. But there’s
another great shout with a subtler use. head to the
mountains north-east of Whiterun and follow the
dragon head icon on your compass to the throw
Voice shout. it creates a noise where you’re aiming,
luring your enemies to investigate—fantastic for
baiting them into horrible traps, or just for slipping by.

II
turn foes into chickens

Oblivion fans remember the Wabbajack,

a staff that transformed people into random creatures. it’s back in Skyrim, and it’s even more random: now it can do anything from causing a lightning storm to turning dudes into sweet rolls. if that suits you, find a guy named dervenin in the shopping district of solitude, and help him out. the quest he’ll lead you on is, in a word, imaginative.

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Bonus tip

Free arrows equip a companion with a single good arrow. they’ll fire that type without ever running out, letting you pick them out of your enemies one by one.