Your First Character - Wildlander-mod/Support GitHub Wiki

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Character Creation

STARTING SKILLS AND ATTRIBUTES

Race Abilities Power Skill Bonuses H/M/S Carry Weight Traits
Argonian 75% Resist Disease 90% Resist Poison Waterbreathing Strong Stomach* Claws - Your sharp Argonian claws deal <15> additional unarmed damage. Histskin - Some Argonians can consciously alter their metabolism to speed their regeneration for a short while. restore 1hp/Sec for a hour, and 10hp/Sec for 60 seconds +10 Light Armor +5 Pickpocket +10 Lockpicking +5 Sneak +5 Alteration +5 Restoration 105/90/120 85 Can brew potions without a perk in Alchemy Can sneak without a perk in Sneak
Breton 20% Magic Resistance Dragonskin - Breton blood allows you to absorb 100% of the Magicka from hostile spells for 8 seconds. +5 Alchemy +5 Speech +5 Alteration +15 Conjuration +5 Illusion +5 Restoration 90/120/70 70 Power attack Stamina costs 110% Can brew potions without a perk in Alchemy Can recharge enchanted items without a perk in Enchanting.
Dark Elf 65% Fire Resistance Ancestor’s Wrath - Caster ignores 95% of all physical damage for 30 seconds. +10 One-Handed +5 Light Armor +5 Sneak +5 Alteration +10 Destruction +5 Illusion 100/100/100 75 Can brew potions without a perk in Alchemy Can recharge enchanted items without a perk in Enchanting Can sneak without a perk in Sneak.
High Elf 75% Resist Disease 40% Weakness to Magic +50 Fortify Magicka Highborn Restore 100 Magicka /s for 30 seconds +5 Alteration +5 Conjuration +10 Destruction +10 Illusion +Restoration +5 Enchanting 90/130/80 70 Power attack Stamina costs 110% Spell Magnitude 105% Spell Durations 105% Spell costs 95% Spell Range 110% Can brew potions without a perk in Alchemy Can recharge enchanted items without a perk in Enchanting.
Imperial Imperial Discipline: Imperials are granted 50 additional stamina, regenerate it faster and can sprint much longer due to the drills many of them had to go through. Voice of the Emperor +25 fortify speechcraft for 30 seconds. +5 One-Handed +5 Block +5 Heavy Armor +10 Speech +5 Destruction +10 Restoration 110/100/110 80 80% Stamina cost for Power Attack Restore 2 Stamina a second while Sprinting.
Khajiit Claws - Your sharp Khajiit claws deal 25 additional unarmed damage. Strong Stomach* Night Eye - Your Khajiit eyes allow you to see in the dark at will. +5 One-Handed +5 Archery +5 Pickpocket +5 Lockpicking +15 Sneak +5 Alchemy 90/90/120 75 Can pickpocket without a perk in Pickpocket Can sneak without a perk in Sneak. 35% fall damage 115% Movement Speed
Nord 50% Resist Frost 25% Resist Shock Tongue’s Trance - Your Thu'um can be used more often. +5 One-Handed +10 Two-Handed +5 Block +10 Smithing +5 Heavy Armor +5 Light Armor 120/80/120 85 75% Stamina cost for Power Attack.
Orc Strong Stomach* Berserker Rage - Orcs can fall into a wild rage that stops their ability to feel pain and greatly increases dealt physical damage and Stamina for 30 seconds. +5 One-Handed +5 Two-Handed +5 Block +10 Smithing +10 Heavy Armor +5 Light Armor 130/60/110 90 65% Stamina cost for Power Attack.
Redguard 75% Resist Disease 75% Resist Poison Adrenaline Rush - increases stamina regeneration greatly for 30 seconds, and also allows to act much faster than normal and renders immune to most paralysis effects in this time. +15 One-Handed +5 Archery +5 Block +5 Smithing +5 Alteration +5 Destruction 100/70/120 80 80% Stamina cost for Power Attack.
Wood Elf 75% Resist Disease Strong Stomach* Command Animal - All animals around you will become your allies for the next day, however they will not follow you on your way. +15 Archery +5 Light Armor +5 Pickpocket +5 Lockpicking +5 Sneak +5 Alchemy 90/110/120 70 * Loots Meat from Humanoid corpses* Power attack Stamina costs 110%* Can brew potions without a perk in Alchemy* Can sneak without a perk in Sneak
  • Some Foods require a strong stomach to be able to get the benefits from consumption.

Background

  • Acrobat: Lockpicking, Marksman, One-Handed, Pickpocket, Sneak, Speechcraft
  • Agent: Illusion, Lockpicking, Marksman, One-Handed, Sneak, Speechcraft
  • Assassin: Alchemy, Evasion, Lockpicking, Marksman, One-Handed, Sneak
  • Barbarian: Block, Evasion, Marksman, One-Handed, Smithing, Two-Handed
  • Bard: Block, Enchanting, Illusion, Evasion, One-Handed, Speechcraft
  • Battlemage: Alteration, Conjuration, Destruction, Enchanting, Heavy Armor, Two-Handed
  • Crusader: Alchemy, Block, Destruction, Heavy Armor, One-Handed, Restoration
  • Healer: Alchemy, Alteration, Destruction, Illusion, Restoration, Speechcraft
  • Knight: Block, Enchanting, Heavy Armor, One-Handed, Restoration, Speechcraft
  • Monk: Alteration, Illusion, Lockpicking, Marksman, One-Handed, Sneak
  • Nightblade: Alteration, Destruction, Evasion, Lockpicking, One-Handed, Restoration
  • Pilgrim: Block, Illusion, Evasion, One-Handed, Smithing, Speechcraft
  • Scout: Alchemy, Evasion, Marksman, One-Handed, Smithing, Sneak
  • Sorcerer: Alteration, Conjuration, Destruction, Enchanting, Heavy Armor, Restoration
  • Spellsword: Alteration, Destruction, Heavy Armor, Illusion, One-Handed, Restoration
  • Thief: Alchemy, Evasion, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Sneak, Speechcraft
  • Warrior: Block, Heavy Armor, Marksman, One-Handed, Smithing, Two-Handed
  • Witchhunter: Alchemy, Destruction, Lockpicking, Marksman, One-Handed, Sneak

STANDING STONES

Note: once you take a stone from given group, you will become locked to that group. For example, after taking Warrior you will be able to change your stone only to Lady/Lord/Steed and not others.

< The Warrior Group >

  • Lady: Those under the sign of the Lady regenerate Stamina faster. 50% faster Stamina regen

  • Lord: The Stone of the Lord grants those who possess its blessing increased damage resistance and weakened hostile spells. 120% damage resistance, 15% magic resistance

  • Steed: The Steed grants those who bear its blessing increased Stamina. Fortify Stamina 100 points

  • Warrior: The Warrior strengthens those who bear his blessing, allowing a more efficient use with all kinds of weaponry. +10 Fortify Marksman, +10 Fortify One-Handed, +10 Fortify Two-Handed, +10 Fortify Armor Penetration

< The Mage Group >

  • Apprentice: The Apprentice greatly enhances magicka regeneration. 200% faster Magicka regen, 25% decrease to magic resistance

  • Atronach: The Sign of the Atronach grants additional Magicka and a chance for Spell Absorption, but makes it almost impossible to passively regenerate magicka, reduces the efficacy of magicka potions by one third, and negates the long-term benefits offered by cooked meals. 0% chance of magicka regen, 50% spell absorption, fortify Magicka by 350 points

  • Mage: Those under the Sign of the Mage are granted additional Magicka and find it easier to focus their thoughts while running. Fortify Magicka 100 points

  • Ritual: Those under the Sign of the Ritual are capable of animating hordes of undead for a limited duration once each day. Daily power to raise the dead

< The Thief Group >

  • Lover: Those under the sign of the lover find it easier to be attractive, intriguing and also use speech to get what they want… Fortify Speech 25 points

  • Shadow: Those under the Sign of the Shadow are able of becoming invisible and inaudible once a day. Daily power of muffle and invisibility for 300 seconds

  • Thief: The Thief grants wide-spread abilities to those who bear her blessing. It improves sneaking, pickpocketing and lockpicking skills and grants lockpicking expertise. Furthermore it increases armor penetration with one-handed and ranged weapons. +5 Armor Penetration, +15 Fortify Sneak, +15 Fortify Pickpocket, +5 Fortify Lockpicking, +20 Fortify Lockpicking Expertise

  • Tower: The Tower grants a blessing of 20 extra carry weight and supernatural lockpicking skills. Expertise is increased by 40 and any effortless lock can be picked in plain sight with nobody noticing, creating a wax-molded copy of the key, if one exists. +20 Carry Weight, +40 Lockpicking

< The Serpent Group >

  • Serpent: The Bite of the Serpent will paralyze and poison a target for a moderate duration. ‘Venomous Splatter’ poison and paralyze spell

Starting your first day

Once you spawn into the world the first thing you should do is allocate your perks. The next thing a new character should make sure of is that they get to a safe location. For brand new players Riverwood is ideal to start with. Riverwood has plentiful trees for wood gathering, a river to drink from, a free wood chopping axe at the lumber mill, a tent, and cooking fire. The ideal Spawn points to get to this location would be Whiterun Inn, then run up. or more dangerous Helgan or Falkreath borders and run down.

To start earning money in order to feed yourself, you should get a wood chopping axe or a war axe and “Attack” to harvest trees (or use the chopping blocks at the lumber mills). Sell this wood to give yourself a bit of coin. Another good way to earn some early game gold is with fishing. You can purchase a fishing rod from a general merchant - Equip it as a weapon then "attack" a water source to start fishing. Follow the onscreen instructions. Once you have caught your first item - you can the hit "e" to cast again.

If you select “smithing” as a starting skill and have a building toolkit, use the gold to purchase some salt. You should then activate the cows to collect the milk they produce. Finally, move to a cooking pot and use the crafting (Hotkey “right shift”) to turn the wood into flutes and sell to the Riverwood Trader. If you are not a smith, you can still harvest the cows and drink or sell the milk. Building toolkits can be purchased from a smith.

You can also use the wood you obtain to level your camping skills by making kindling and tinder, which will allow you to make a campfire (Hotkey “<“) to keep yourself warm. You should also frequently use the forage(Hotkey “>”) ability to look for edibles and alchemy ingredients. And when the “drink” icon appears, use the river to drink (Hotkey “ ; “). You should also pick any herbs you spot on your travels - even if you don't plan on being an alchemist - everything sells.

Bathing should be done regularly using the (Hotkey “’ ‘/@ ”) in the river - there are penalties applied to speech and disease resistance the dirtier you are so before selling or buying anything, always bathe.

Food can be purchased from the Inn or by cooking raw meat at the fire using the (Hotkey Right Shift). More Complex meals can be cooked using a Chef's toolkit purchasable from a inn keeper

Up until you have a few levels under your belt - beware of wildlife - they will kill you.

One of your first purchases should be a hunting knife from the general store or the local Blacksmith - as any dead animals can be harvested for food, skins, and alchemy ingredients and having a knife improves your skills. You should also invest in a backpack, cloak and additional waterskins. As a mage character - as Research journal is recommended for training purposes. For alchemists, a mortar and pestle is suggested for crafting on the fly.

Skyrim is dark at night so torches or a lantern is highly suggested. Iron Lanterns are a misc item which can be turned on or off as needed with the ‘L’ hotkey. More importantly unlike a torch, they don’t require you to hold it in your hand so you can fight if needed.

Waterskins are a portable source of water that can be filled from any water source and pressing (hotkey ;), using a well bucket or by using them from your inventory screen.

Armor/clothing now has two additional statistics - Cover which protects you from wet weather, and warmth which protects from cold. So if upgrading your gear - make sure you pick appropriate stats for where you plan on traveling to.

Weapons can now degrade in quality, so tempering your weapons to keep them a peak damage either via providing the blacksmith with the materials to do so(for none crafters) or doing it yourself.. A well-made weapon is always better than a basic equivalent. Low quality bows can break if you are hit with a melee attack - so a good backup weapon should be aquired as well

For a free place to sleep before you leave Riverwood a tent should be purchased. A fur tent protects you from the cold, and a leather tent protects you from rain. If you need to cook while in the middle of nowhere then a cooking pot can be purchased to use with your constructed campfires. Checking the nearest cities missive board for delivery quests is a great way to get early gold to get you started.

Shopping list for Beginners before exploring

  • Primary weapon (2H weapon, 1H + shield, Bow, Staff etc.)
  • Backup weapon (Just in case)
  • Hunting knife
  • Armor pieces or Clothing suitable for your build
  • 1 full waterskin
  • Fur backpack
  • Cloak
  • Fishing Rod
  • Iron Lantern
  • Tent (optional - if you plan on camping)
  • Cookpot (optional - if you plan on camping)

Leveling your Character

Once you have the basics of food/water/cleanliness/warmth and shelter covered. You can now focus on leveling your skills.

Wildlander is a deleveled world - The importance of understanding this can not be overrated, and people misunderstanding it are a constant source for the kind of question I'm trying to answer with this guide. A very common occurrence is people who think they understand the concept, and promptly ask, why they get their butt handed to them at bleak falls barrow when they try it at level 1. The answer is simply:-

@@ If it kicks you in the teeth for the 20th time, it's above your paygrade. @@

Confronted with this, a lot of people ask what they are supposed to do on Lv 1-5, then. The answer is: anything. Save often, try to run from a fight when you start losing, hunt, chop wood, collect ingredients and mix potions, mine ore, craft stuff. Anything. As long as it gets you gold and/or level-ups do it! Following on from that - Training your skills and armor.

Damage Skills

For Melee , archers, or destruction mages - you can head to Whiterun and train on the training dummies at the Jorrvaskr in Whiterun, or to any town – most have dummies. Activate the Dummy and set how long you want to train for. Make sure you monitor your active effects and if you are too tired to train you won’t benefit from the experience. If you get too tired - sleep.

Magic

You can use the Research journal to research the spells you have equipped in your hands for “none offensive” spells e.g. conjuration’s spirit wolf. You will need a research journal in your inventory to do this.

Armor / Block

Running in armor will also slowly level it. You can also use the time-honored requiem cheat of allowing slaughterfish to nibble on your toes.

For block the only way to train this is to actually use the skill - head to a nearby mud crab and hide behind your shield.

Camping

Every campfire you build and tent you pitch will level these skills up. The skills menu accessible when using a campfire will allow you to build a fire quicker in harsher environments. Upgrading a campfire to maximum will give you a 6 hour 5% XP gain buff - so you should do this first thing in the morning, and every time the buff expires.

Building a campfire and using the skills menu is how you allocate perks from the camping and sunhelm mods.

Foraging

Using the skill will level this up. Higher levels are able to specify what to look for.

Crafting

Crafting is based on selling price, so anything crafted at a forge for low cost materiels, high sell price can level this. Smithing XP has diminishing returns so first craft will generate 3X base XP and second craft will generate 2X. You should always craft everything at least twice.

I’ve finished training - Now what?

Firstly - and always when in a major city - check the missive boards for quests which require “easy” kills (mudcrab, wolf or skeever parts are examples of such). You can also pick up quests for the easier item retrievals or dungeon cleans. Even if you’re not quite ready yet to take on the challenge or retrievals or clears you can pick them up as most don't have a time limit.

Early on, scavenging from battles is an excellent way to get starter equipment, gold and smithing materials. If you run accross a big skermish between Imperials / Stormcloaks, stripsearch those battlefields and keep what you can use, disassemble or sell the rest.

The next section covers combat tactics in detail, but once you have a few levels and more importantly perks under your belt you can start to pick off wildlife. A good place to start killing is in the Whiterun sewers where the first few rooms contain level 1 and 2 mudcrabs and a few skeevers - Be careful about venturing too deeply as there are a few surprises lurking. Once you're comfortable with whiterun sewers, you can venture to Markarth, solitude or windhelm which also have sewer systems. If you don't want to go north yet - then you can pick off the mudcrabs around the whiterun area, but this is significantly more dangerous with level 10+ sabercats/bears also in the area.

Get a Crossbow, Aas fast as possible - make sure you are not in combat when you equip it, and load it to that its ready for use. Ideally you want one that doesn't break from damage - Dawnguard is a good example. Crossbows make short work of lots of the wildlife and bandits that will make your life a big problem.

After the wildlife has been beaten into submission, you are ready to tackle more intelligent competition in the form of the open world bandit camps. And after those, you can move into the bandit camp inside of dungeons - Helgen, Embershard mine and halted stream camp are recommended “Starter” dungeons for you to test your capabilities.

In order of difficulty for starting content :-

  • Animals
  • Bandits
  • Forsworn (unless Hagravens are present)
  • Draugr (unless Dragon priests are present)
  • Giant
  • Mage
  • Everything else.

The final advice regarding early dungeons is that you should not attempt bleak falls barrow or any other draugr areas without decent tempered ‘silver’ weapons and perks in both of your armor and weapon at skill- level 50 at bare minimum!

Stamina Management

Stamina is one of the most important parts of combat - for all classes!

For Melee/Archer characters The new stamina system will change your gameplay even more. You will fall short if you hack and Slash or worse power attack too often. For a melee character low stamina is death penalty. When your stamina is below a certain threshold you start to be slow, you don't block effectivly anymore and your damage will drop a lot. If you run out - the enemies will knock your weapons clean our of you arms.

So don't sprint too much, don't attack too much, become a true warrior, observe and attack when you will hit.

For Caster characters, you dont escape either - Severe spell cost penalties apply if you drop below 20% stamina and you will be slower at running, allowing your opponents to be able to catch and kill you.

There are tools in order to help you manage your stamina at lower level : * Stews - 2 hours of stamina regeneration. Keep on on you at all times. (Apple Cabbage Stew for a quick and cheap to obtain , 1 Salt, 1 Red Apple, 1 Cabbage, 1 Bottled Water) * Bestial stew : 3 stamina / sec for strong stomach race. It's a huge advantage at low levels. * Stamina Potion are pretty rare. But easy to brew if you have alchemy. * Raw Ingredients : some of them can be eat in combat for 1stam/sec or 2stam/sec

Health Management

Wildlander has no passive health regeneration. You will not heal from your wounds by "sleeping it off".

When you get hurt fighting - the only ways to heal are :-

- Restoration spells (for the living)
- Conjouration spells (for the undead)
- Health potions (For undead, only max level healing potions (superlative) will work.)
- Healing Poultice (see note below) 
- Alchemy Perk
- Raw Ingredients
- Enchantments

Healing Poultice

Healing poultices are SLOW action healers, but heal for a lot. If you engage in combat or sprint while the effect is active, it will be suspended for the duration of said combat or sprint action, and reactivate a few seconds after. It is therefore recommended that you only use healing poultices in a safe place, and that you wait for at least an hour for the effect to work.

To Craft:-

Requirements:-

  • Alchemy Lore (Rank 1) Perk or Craftmanship Perk.
  • 5 Medicinal Salve.
  • 1 Bandage.
  • Survivalists toolkit.

All items are crafted From the “Right Shift” craft menu.

Medicinal Salve can be crafted from any ingredient with Restore Health (e.g Blue Mountain Flower). Requires Alchemy Lore Perk (Rank 1) or Craftmanship Perk and Survivalists toolkit.

Bandages can be crafted from any cotton or linen cloth using a Survivalists toolkit. You can also breakdown cotton/linen Cloth items into Bandages from the breakdown menu.

Basic Combat Mechanics

In this world everybody and everything hits harder. You, the wildlife and NPCs. You will die faster and kill faster. It changes the game, it's deadlier and each strike feels harder than the last. It's really Fun, with a real sence of achievement when you kill a difficult creature for the first time. But at the same time there is less room for mistakes - one wrong move and your staring at your enemies feet. Killing stuff isnt as simple as wading in and slapping enemies til they fall over, chugging the occasional health potion when you get a bit low. In simple terms you need planning & tactics. Never underestimate the power of scouting first. The main reason for this is: if you don't, you die. And you don't even know how it happened.

The questions you should ask yourself - What kinds of enemies do I face? Where are they? How will they try to kill me? How can I kill them? The first two of those questions you can usually answer by opening your eyes and liberal use of the instincts skill and identify target abilities. Use your ears to locate things we cant see. Luckily for us, almost everything in Skyrim sees it as a necessity to constantly make one noise or another. For the third and fourth question, I put humanoid NPCs in categories based on what they are wielding, and what armor they are wearing. Charging in Hacking and slashing without proper target planning will generally kill you. Trading blows is all well and good if your armor is better that theirs but if its the opposite way around - thats quick trip to the morgue (on in a vampire's case - the buffet table). You need to understand each opponent tactics an behavior in order to use the right tactics against them.

The most important thing is to know their strengths (so you don't die) and the second most important thing is knowing their weaknesses (so they die).

Strengths

Unless you invest in the respective perk (which you usually can't at low levels, due to skill requirements) arrows do nothing to heavy armor. Try it once, so you can learn from that mistake.

If you stay too still for too long too close, archers will kill you. Heavy armor helps, but also makes you slower.

Anything with a shield will very successfully block all your attacks, given the chance.

Anything that requires two hands to wield will kill you. Even when blocked, those power attacks take a big toll. And if not blocked, you better not be there when that hammer comes down.

Never underestimate the benefits of side-step-dodging - 2 handed power attacks leave the opposition vulnerable to a quick slash in the back as they fly past you.

It is very hard to outrun guys in light or no armor, especially when you are wearing heavy armor. You can, for a short while, but they will catch up. Because you run slower with less stamina.

Mudcrabs power attack can and does knock you down.

Wolves generally hunt in numbers and will try to flank you.

Weaknesses

Low-quality bows break - when you hit the guy who holds them. Yes. If you manage to close in fast enough, you can knock the bow, that would have killed you a split second later, right out of that archer's hands! (you won't be able to use it afterward, though, so keep that in mind)

Lightly armored bandits die so satisfyingly quickly when caught off guard. (like with an arrow, at close distance)

Heavy's are slow. Seriously. When one of those tries a power attack on you, you can dodge the attack, circle around him, and hit him as hard as you can in the back (unless, of course, you are just as slow)

Archers have a hard time keeping up with zig-zagging, ones with a crossbow have a long reload time, so use this wisely.

For those carrying two-handed weapons, there is a long time between the strike of the power attack, and the time they can do anything again. This means free, unblocked hits for you, which means death for a lot of not so heavy bandits.

Mudcrabs hunch up right before doing the power attack - if you see this it makes it easy to dodge.

A single wolf will always retreat, focus your attacks rather than trying to kill all at once.

Important note: Any other types of the enemy not covered above have their strengths and weaknesses covered in the “Bestiary of Skyrim” (or in the advanced combat mechanics section of this wiki). Some require specialist weapons or spells, others take less damage from certain types of damage, or have health regeneration.

Kill order and tactics

The first thing I always think about is ranged enemies, and because of them, cover. Where are they now? Where will they go when I go behind this cover? How long can I stay behind that stone before the melees reach me and I have to move?

The second thing is the armor. Or, more importantly, who wears which kind? Because lightly armored bandits are squishy. Even with no perks invested, a few slashes with a one-hander, or a few arrows at medium range, and they go down. They don't necessarily die, but surrenders are more permanent than vanilla.

Another important factor is speed. If you have enough ground between you and the bandits, and you play your cards right, you can kill off the light melee faction before the heavy melee faction even gets there. You could even go so far and try to rush to the ranged guys after killing the light melees, leaving the heavy's panting in the middle. But your speed is important as well. Mostly, because speed usually costs more stamina, and power attacks do as well. And power attacks are useful.

There is no shame in cheesy tactics like kiting stronger enemies to guards and letting them deal with them.

Don't be afraid to run away - if the content is too hard - recruit some friends or temper/enchant your gear (or get a mage or blacksmith to do it for you) and come back later. Enemies in Wildlander stay the same level, so there is no shame in getting more levels and skills under your belt and coming back later.

There’s power in numbers and wildlander is no exception, if you find somewhere too challenging go recruit some friends!