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Some Questions Regarding High Elves

Mon Aug 05, 2019 2:34 am

Hello everyone,

I am fascinated by the 'Elder Scrolls' lore, especially when it comes to Altmers since they are my favorite Race of them all and how they integrate in Morrowind. I was recently reading a great deal about the High Elves culture
and came up with a few questions:

1-Is there any informations revealed as to why Altmers are so proficient in Magic but have a natural weakness to Magic and Elemental Spells? I would also like to know why such weaknesses disappeared in Skyrim but were present in Oblivion & Morrowind.

2- I intend to create a new Altmer Character (in Morrowind) with certain inclinations to Money, Artifact Collections, Clothing & Magic. Some sort of well-spoken scholar that seeks both magical and economical power at once. While preparing this character, I looked at the faction charts and noticed that it would be quite hard to make this work for several reasons:

There is the Imperial Cult to Worship the Nine Divines but I doubt an Altmer would join a fundamentally Imperial Faction considering the past historical conflicts between the two races.
There is the House Telvanni but they are quite against outlanders so that's quite unlikely.
The Blades are also not very lore friendly but I don't have much of a choice when it comes to the main quest.
Finally, I believe House Hlaalu along with the Three Guilds would make more sense.

What are your opinions on the best approach for a lore friendly Altmer in Morrowind?

3- Finally, I intend to try and push the Resistances to Elements as much as I can despite the natural weaknesses Altmers have to Fire, Shock, Frost & Magic. I was wondering if it was possible at all to create a constant effect Resist Shock or Resist Frost piece of equipment. I searched everywhere on the internet but could not find any informations on that topic.

Thank You Very Much.

Re: Some Questions Regarding High Elves

Mon Aug 05, 2019 6:18 pm

ElderScrolls wrote:I was wondering if it was possible at all to create a constant effect Resist Shock or Resist Frost piece of equipment. I searched everywhere on the internet but could not find any informations on that topic.

It's certainly possible to create a CE Resist (Element) piece of equipment, as long as you have learned a spell with the appropriate spell effect (i.e. a Resist Fire, Resist Frost, and/or Resist Shock spell). You'll need equipment with high enchant values to get any decent amount of resistance, though. For example, an Exquisite Ring (120 enchant points) will allow you to create a Constant Effect Resist (Fire or Frost or Shock) 12pts on Self item -- which isn't really a lot when compared to artifacts such as Denstagmer's Ring or the Ring of Phynaster. But creating your own could be useful for filling in any gaps left by using such artifacts, if you're aiming for 100% resistances.

Re: Some Questions Regarding High Elves

Mon Aug 05, 2019 6:46 pm

It's certainly possible to create a CE Resist (Element) piece of equipment, as long as you have learned a spell with the appropriate spell effect (i.e. a Resist Fire, Resist Frost, and/or Resist Shock spell). You'll need equipment with high enchant values to get any decent amount of resistance, though. For example, an Exquisite Ring (120 enchant points) will allow you to create a Constant Effect Resist (Fire or Frost or Shock) 12pts on Self item -- which isn't really a lot when compared to artifacts such as Denstagmer's Ring or the Ring of Phynaster. But creating your own could be useful for filling in any gaps left by using such artifacts, if you're aiming for 100% resistances.


Thank you! I did not knew that Elemental Resistances could be used for Constant Effects Items.

Re: Some Questions Regarding High Elves

Mon Aug 05, 2019 7:44 pm

As a general rule, any spell effect can be used on Constant Effect items (and enchanted items in general), with the following exceptions / caveats:

    1. Call Bear, Call Wolf, Summon Bonewolf, Summon Centurion Sphere, and Summon Fabricant cannot be used on enchanted items (and may not be used for custom spells, either).

    2. An item with sufficient enchant points to accommodate the cost of the enchantment must exist. For example, it is impossible to create an item with Constant Effect Summon Golden Saint because such an item would require 275 enchant points, which exceeds the maximum number of enchant points available on any item in the (unmodded) game (the Daedric Tower Shield at 225 enchant points).

    3. Constant Effect items are always "On Self", so certain spell effects (e.g. Burden, Paralyze) may not be particularly useful. :P

Hope this information helps you out by possibly suggesting CE items you may not have considered before.

Re: Some Questions Regarding High Elves

Mon Aug 05, 2019 7:52 pm

Hope this information helps you out by possibly suggesting CE items you may not have considered before.


Very Helpful Wolfborn, you are a goldmine of Informations.

Are you aware if it is possible to boost Health the same way it is possible to exploit Mana with Alchemy?

I know there are Tricks out there to create very powerful potions that basically give you an incredible amount of Mana and it would put my mind to rest if doing the same thing with health was possible.

Prioritizing Endurance on every characters really tickles my 'OCD' and I am always Torn between my two Main Attributes and character choices.

Thank you for your help!

Re: Some Questions Regarding High Elves

Sun Aug 18, 2019 6:40 pm

ElderScrolls wrote:Are you aware if it is possible to boost Health the same way it is possible to exploit Mana with Alchemy?

I know there are Tricks out there to create very powerful potions that basically give you an incredible amount of Mana and it would put my mind to rest if doing the same thing with health was possible.

The Super-Potion exploit can be used to create super-potions with any effect that it's possible to get through Alchemy, so creating a super-Fortify Health potion is certainly possible. Whether it's a good idea to do so is a different question; if your super-Fortify Health effect runs out without you noticing that it has (or in the middle of a fight), your character could very quickly get killed when the next NPC starts taking far bigger chunks out of your health than you're expecting.

The ingredients necessary to make Fortify Health potions include Large Kwama Eggs, Shalk Resin and Vampire Dust.

Large Kwama Eggs are not restocked by any vendor, but you should be able to collect more than enough of them from egg mines.

There is no single restocking vendor of both Shalk Resin and Vampire Dust, but there are restocking vendors of each ingredient who at least live in the same town: Pierlette Rostorard (Shalk Resin) and Anis Seloth (Vampire Dust) are both in Sadrith Mora, while Larara Omayn (Shalk Resin) and Nalcarya of White Haven (Vampire Dust) are both in Balmora.

As an aside, if you're going the super-potion route you might want to consider using Resist potions rather than Resist equipment to boost your Altmer's resists. You should be able to create potions that provide much higher resistance percentages than you can get on CE-enchanted equipment. The Alchemy Effects page on the wiki lists the ingredients necessary for the various Resist potions; all of them are relatively cheap and easy to obtain. (As a bonus, a Resist Shock potion created using Alchemy will also provide a Lightning Shield since the only two ingredients that will create a Resist Shock potion (Crab Meat and Scrap Metal) carry both effects. Two for the price of one!)

Hope this gives you some more food for thought. :mrgreen:

Re: Some Questions Regarding High Elves

Mon Aug 19, 2019 1:31 pm

As an aside, if you're going the super-potion route you might want to consider using Resist potions rather than Resist equipment to boost your Altmer's resists. You should be able to create potions that provide much higher resistance percentages than you can get on CE-enchanted equipment. The Alchemy Effects page on the wiki lists the ingredients necessary for the various Resist potions; all of them are relatively cheap and easy to obtain. (As a bonus, a Resist Shock potion created using Alchemy will also provide a Lightning Shield since the only two ingredients that will create a Resist Shock potion (Crab Meat and Scrap Metal) carry both effects. Two for the price of one!)


That is absolutely amazing informations for my Character, thank you very much!

I am currently playing a very complicated route where I mainly use 'Ring of Aversion'. My Character sees Weapons & Conjuration as Inferior and believes that nearly all situations can be dealt with peacefully and intelligently rather than by destructive forces.
For that reason, Chameleon, Invisibility, Sanctuary, Mark, Recall and Damage Strength are the way to go for my character. I intend to only kill the characters that are absolutely necessary for quests since I don't believe it is possible to kill an enemy without affecting the 'TKS' kill count in the console command (which is the only Console Command I intend to use at the end of my playthrough). My character is also very much against slavery but I went with an interesting roleplay route where I use 'Fliggerty Slave Mod'. Basically, he bought both Yakov & Ciralinde and hired them as his personal knights. When I go through a Dwemer Ruin or a Shrine, they simply wait out side and after I cleared the ruin with invisibility without conflict, I get the loot back to them.

Really fun stuff so far and thanks to your informations, I will be able to one day, become the most powerful Altmer Mage in Morrowind :)
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