lv 11 - no house, no follower, no money

[Xraptorx]

I just hit lv 11 and am starting Good intentions on the mage guild quests. I am playing a pure mage and want to go vampire and start that quest soon. Plan is to take alchemy, enchanting and the rest of the perks in magic and play either as vamp lord or necrowarp ( you tube video).

Problem is my house carl died ( the chick I get as Thane of Whiterun). She never came back or recovered???

Secondly, I tried following alchemy money path, Fortify health but only found 2 giant toes and that was not enough to make me rich. I do not have enough for a house or to buy the spells I really need.

Can I make profit potions or enhancements ( need to find Banish spell I heard to make Banish Daggers) or how can I get money to really get started.

Secondly, what follower is good for a mage - guess I need a distance attacker. Tanks are gonna get hit by my spells and think that is why my first follower died.

[Rook]

Have you been dungeon diving? It adds up pretty quick, especially if you go after bounties.

As for a mage follower, Marcurio, in Riften's tavern, is widely regarded as one of the strongest in the game. Alas, you require 500 gold to hire him.

[Snail's Pace]

Use your room at the the College of Winterhold until you have enough money to buy a house. Storage in the room is safe.

The College has three mage followers available. Each of them has a prerequisite quest. One of the quests is super-easy.

As Rook said, dungeon-diving and bounty quests will net you some pretty good coin. Alchemy gets more lucrative as your potions improve.

According to the wiki, Banish spells won't be available at level 11.
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Banish_Daedra

[FORKFARM]

Also if you are interested in making money via alchemy -- here's a simple to aquire recipie that will net you tons of gold:

Spoiler:

mora tappinella + scaly phollia + creep cluster

you can get the MT from around the forests of River Run (look for downed trees and tree stumps). The SP is easily aquired on fallen birch trees around Riften (most notably south of the lake) and all the creep cluster you can carry can be found north of Riften/south of Windhelm area -- in the hot springs.

The potion these make is a crazy carry weight potion with a ton of added affects (unless you have the level 100 perk in alchemy -- but they net a bunch of gold regardless (depending on your alchemy and speech levels).

If you have one of the homes from Hearthfire -- you can build a greenhouse and grow and infinite ammount

Hope that helps fellow alchemist!

[K Candyman]

become a bounty hunter the loot of the bosses is okay an most of the times enchanted, so you can train enchanting. The pay is low on your level but if you can sell the loot it would make up for it;)

[The SheoDovah]

Potions are an excellent way to make money but at lower levels, you'll be very luck to make expensive potions. It's worth investing in all of the Alchemy perks and hunt for ingredients. This could help you to make some septims. It's a list of the vanilla game potions and whilst it doesn't have the value of the potions, it will prevent you from wasting rare ingredients. It's also worth taking a look at this as you could discover something you overlooked.

There is another method of making Septims but it's long and tedious. Chopping wood. All you need is a woodaxe and a lot of patience. A few hours of it will result in thousands of septims, i think.

I hope this helps.

[Mattbott]

when i use fireballs i summon a flame atronarch first to get the enemy tied down, and blast the nearby area

i found enchanting a good way of making money, stick a soul trap on your weapon and keep collecting soul gems (buy the smaller ones if you have to). If you have the transmute spell you can make all your iron into gold ore, create a load of gold rings, enchant with the most expensive effect you have, and sell. There's amulets which give a bonus to speechcraft (one of the nine divines, cant remember which one) and this is very important cos it adds up after a while

the enchanting route was how i made most of my money with my current mage guy, i just found it much simpler and fewer raw materials to worry about

i also collect all ammo i find, it weighs nothing and one day my speechcraft will be high enough to sell my iron arrows for 1 gold each (i have around 2000) lol

[K Candyman]

when i use fireballs i summon a flame atronarch first to get the enemy tied down, and blast the nearby area

i found enchanting a good way of making money, stick a soul trap on your weapon and keep collecting soul gems (buy the smaller ones if you have to). If you have the transmute spell you can make all your iron into gold ore, create a load of gold rings, enchant with the most expensive effect you have, and sell. There's amulets which give a bonus to speechcraft (one of the nine divines, cant remember which one) and this is very important cos it adds up after a while

the enchanting route was how i made most of my money with my current mage guy, i just found it much simpler and fewer raw materials to worry about

i also collect all ammo i find, it weighs nothing and one day my speechcraft will be high enough to sell my iron arrows for 1 gold each (i have around 2000) lol

amulet of Dibella if I'm not mistaken

[The SheoDovah]

With my character, I just sold loot, crafted potions and smithed. She rarely has less then 1k. If it's worth less then 100 and i have almost reached my limit for items, i don't pick it up. If it's worth more then 100 and then it will be sold.

[K Candyman]

I always pick up studded armors they are worth 75 septims and weigh 6 if i recall correct. if you find an amulet of Zenhitar (prices 10% better)
that makes for a good start.

edit: I mean Studded armor thx CBR

[CBR JGWRR]

Worth 50, weigh 5.

[Mattbott]

one cheeky thing to do is go to all the boss loot chests on the dragon sites and giant camps, if you haven't triggered the main quest it's often easy money, though you might need to sneak around the giants and be prepared to sprint if they get a bit moody

[rcbecker123]

North of riften get the blessing of zenthar and his amulet then give a gold piece to a homeless guy to temporarly raise speech works every time to help earn more money for your stuff

[Ursula R. M.]

I did not see mention about Lydia, maybe being recovered in the Whiterun "temple?" Anyone know where again?
Also, if you can Craft enchant with your Char. Mine Gold/Make enchanted jewelry and sell it...This adds up real quick.

[Khali]

You might consider rounding up a 100 gold and going to the Bannered Mare and picking a fight with Uthgerd the Unbroken. It's a fist fight and fairly easy to win. When you do you can use her as a follower on top of the 100 gold you win from her as well. As a bonus you can take her house key from here and use it as your home. She never goes there so you not putting her out by doing so. Just be careful of the chests in her house. I have had some things I put in them end up with a stolen tag on them when I went back and took them out.

Grab a pick and go prospecting for gold and silver ore. Turn it into ingots and then into jewelry. Sell the jewelry for fun and profit.

On the Alchemy side you can find free wheat and blue mountain flowers all over the place, they make a weak healing potion. Those don't sell for much but hey, you got the ingredients for free after all. At low levels don't worry about making a lot of gold selling just one item. Sell a bunch of them and it all adds up faster than you think it would.

[ElGreg]

I had a no looting or stealing mage character, so money was scarce.

What I did was:
- no fast travel and pick all alchemy ingredients on the way and create and sell the potions when I reached a town. I wouldn't focus too much on only the high value potions at first and just make anything you can. In a short time you'll discover lots of properties and the high value stuff will come easily enough (slow, damage magicka regen, fortify * are easy to make with fairly common ingredients).
- buy ingredients and turn them into potions and resell. In the beginning this will cost you more gold than it makes so best wait until you're at a decent alchemy level.
- mine or buy iron ore, transmute to gold ore and sell it. you could say that crafting jewellery would befit a mage-type character. In that case you can make jewels from your transmuted ore and enchant them before selling.
- Don't spend money if you don't need to. Instead of buying armor, I just wore regular clothes and use oakflesh etc. in case of need.
- join a faction so you have a free place to sleep and some storage.

I had a fully equipped breezehome by level 15, but I did spend a considerable amount of time harvesting ingredients, making potions, buying selling ore/potions etc.

[Nord85]

Alchemy is a very easy way of piling money, actually. Gather every ingredient you find, and brew whatever potions you can from them in towns. That may get tedious, so try and get the best potion value to ingredient scarcity ratio. Slow is one of the most valuable effects, and needs only salt piles and deathbells to make, both of which are easily obtainable. If you have Dragonborn, Trama root has that effect also, multiplying your profits. Damage magicka regen is a good effect also, money-wise, and there are at least three very common ingredients that have the effect: blue mountain flower, nightshade and hanging moss.

Enchanting is a bit less effective in making money, as you need to invest either time or money to get soul gems and souls. Also, to learn an enchantment you need to find an item having that enchantment and unenchant it. One way to make good money with enchanting is to keep every cheap armor item and weapon you find, and learn Banish and Fortify Archery. Collect/buy even the smallest soul gems you find, fill them and enchant your stuff the next chance you get. Of course, the value of the things is not as great as with grand soul gems, but it's more effective when comparing to the time investment needed for gathering only grand gems.

Other ways to get easy money: If you haven't already, talk to Carlotta Valentia about men bothering her. Then go and either persuade or fight Mikael to leave her alone. That nets you a few hundred septims in five minutes.

If you are a sneaking type (or even if you aren't), go to Windhelm and do Revyn Sadri's quest. It's fast and fairly easy, and the reward is a few hundred septims.

Start the Forsworn Conspiracy in Markarth and after every stage report your findings to Eltrys. You'll get something like 1000 gold in all. If you just want quick money, don't kill Nepos or bother Thonar Silver-Blood until later.

When in Markarth, do also Omluag's quest. You need to be moderately good at speechcraft, but if you succeed you'll get some money for your pains. There are also two very quick delivery quests in Markarth. So, all in all you can get nearly 2000 septims without leaving the city.

[Baloth-Kul]

Followers keep dying? No problem! Simply crank your conjuration level up to 90 (easy way is to raise the corpse of everything you kill--every rat, bandit, everything--and kill them again), complete the Conjuration Ritual quest, and buy Dead Thrall. You can use that spell to raise any corpse permanently. So if you have another housecarl and they die while following you, you can cast it on them, and they'll get right back up like nothing ever happened! Of course, there's the spastic groaning, but you'll get used to that.

AND, if you get your conjuration skill to 100, and nab the Twin Souls perk, you can have two atronachs or zombies with you at the same time--which includes Dead Thralls. So you can have two permanent zombie followers with you, all the time. They fall over, you just hit them with the spell again and you're back in business.

...Or don't use followers, and you won't have to worry about them dying. I never used followers, myself.

[Yaije]

Dead thrall has some limitations you have to keep in mind. It has a level cap (around 40~) and only works on humanoid targets. I wanted it to reanimate bears and werewolves personally... but sadly =/

Also, OP, don't just try jumping into the 'good stuff' straight off. You need to work your way into them before they actually are good. Potion values tied to their magnitudes... The banish effect also won't really be available at lower levels unless you're really lucky. Best way to get some gold early on is to load up your inventory with junk to sell loading up with the best gold/weight items possible

Spoiler:

IMO starting out with 2 gold per 1 weight and dropping that when you find better stuff so only good sale items are littering your bags.

Making money through crafting isn't exactly good at first. You need some funds to start off or you'll be spending more time running around gathering supplies. Clear dungeons and haul the loot to town, or do radiant/faction quests (the thieve's guild and Dark Brotherhood had some decent gold rewards if I remember)

[rcbecker123]

When doing the companions quest with Farkas hull every item in the place back its a pain making trips but nets about 4000 gold and at low level thats alot. Also when your talking followers upgrade anything there using that you can. why should you have a sword doing 60pts of damage and there still doin 15pts. It creates a weak point in your party, Im still using Feandal at lvl 62 and he stands his ground against dragons, not for long but enough for me to finish said dragon off without him dying. Enchantments for followers that are good give them magic defense and hit points also stamina improvements.