Skyrim Tips and Tricks » Discussions


Necronomicon Vol. 9: Cheating Death

Tags: #Tips and Tricks Exploits  #Tips and Tricks Guides  #Tips and Tricks Leveling  #Tips and Tricks Magic  #Necronomicon 
  • May 26, 2016

    Hello everyone and welcome back!  For those of you who are new to this series please go check out the Prologue for and introduction to the series and links to all of the previous discussions.  Last time we talked about the Restoration skill and how it fits into necromancy.  Today I want to discuss some of the ways to overcome necromancies limitations.  These are methods that have been mentioned before in the comments and they are tricks that aren’t new by any means.  But in the spirit of this series I will cover them here. 

    The Philosopher’s Stone

    This is an old and well documented technique most commonly known as the “resto loop”.  This is a technique that forms the back bone of my Chirurgeon character build below is an explanation of how to pull this exploit off, pulled from the character build that uses it.

    The Philosopher’s Stone is a powerful trinket created by gifted alchemists which allows them to transcend the laws of the physical universe and create concoctions of unimaginable power.  I’m sure most of you are familiar with the restoration potion exploit and how it affects enchanted gear.  If not here is a quick refresher.

    Step One:  Equip a full set of fortify alchemy gear. (Head, Neck, Hands, Finger)

    Step Two:  Create a potion of fortify restoration.

    Step Three:  Un-equip the fortify alchemy gear.

    Step Four: Drink the potion of fortify restoration that you just created.

    Step Five:  Reequip the fortify alchemy gear.  You’ll notice that the enchantments power has increased.

    Step Six:  Repeat steps two thru five until you create a super potion that makes your gear ridiculously over powered, i.e. fortify alchemy 100,000%

    This is the basic loop to create overpowered potions.  To create the Stone we will have to go a few steps further.

    Step Seven:  Create a super potion of fortify enchanting.

    Step Eight:  Drink the potion of fortify enchanting then create a necklace of fortify alchemy.

    If done correctly the necklace will be supercharged.  Now any potion created while wearing the necklace will be overpowered and you will no longer have to perform the restoration loop.  There are many uses for the Philosopher’s Stone however, the main purpose for the necromancer is the creation of fortify conjuration potions.  These potions will boost the duration of any reanimation or enthrallment technique listed in volume two.  This means animals and monsters can be reanimated for a nearly unlimited amount of time.

    Below are a few notes on this technique as it can be finicky to pull off if you aren’t used to doing it. 

    It’s sort of obvious but the stronger you fortify alchemy gear the better, I’ve found that anything over 12% to be the real sweet spot for pulling this off. 

    A few Alchemist perks can be used to offset weaker fortify alchemy enchantments.

    Remove all clothing, potions, and ingredients that aren’t being used for the exploit from your inventory.  It will make navigating the multiple menus quicker and smoother. 

    Most instances take me about 12-15 loops to create a sufficiently powerful potion.  However I suggest you have more than you need, I usually gather enough to create 30 potions.

    As always save before you start just in case things don’t work out the first time.

    This will level your Alchemy skill to 100 and is the quickest way to level said skill, taking just a few minutes.

    Selling one “super potion” will level your Speech all the way to 100.

    The best necromancy technique to use in conjunction with this exploit is the Vampire’s Servant ability with stage 4 vampirism.  This ability will allow you to raise a dead body up to level 30, not just people but animals and monsters as well.  My favorite target is the Lurkers you can find patrolling the shores of Solstheim (giant lovecraftian horror for the win).  The once a day limitation is mitigated somewhat by the extended duration of the spell and when the creature dies (or your thousand hour long spell somehow expires) the body won’t be destroyed allowing you to swig another potion and raise them again.

    Check out my character build The Chirurgeon for an example of this technique in action.

    Zombie Apocalypse

    The other technique that I want to cover today is the well-known Aetherial Crown exploit.  The crown is a fantastic piece of gear and is one of those items that an entire character can be built around, or that can dramatically change the way any character is played. 

    The Aetherial Crown allows the player to benefit from an additional standing stone power whenever it is worn, i.e. one could stack the Mage Stone for leveling with the Lord Stone for defense and benefit from both at the same time.  The real beauty of this is when you load the crown with one of the daily power stones.  After using the power simply un-equip the crown and then reequip it, the daily power will reset allowing another use.  Below is a list of the stones that this will work with.

    The Serpent Stone:  Once a day the player can use a ranged paralyzing poison attack.

    The Shadow Stone:  Once a day the player can become invisible.

    The Ritual Stone:  Once a day the player can reanimate nearby corpses to fight for them for 200 seconds.

    The ability that most interests us as necromancers it the unlimited uses of the Ritual Stone power.  The potential for this is astounding.   This exploit allows the necromancer to create an undead horde of staggering size and the level 75 cap has the potential to create very powerful minions (like giants and mammoths).  My favorite use of this power is to start casting it at the start of a dungeon and recast it after clearing every room slowly growing my undead horde in both numbers and power until finally confronting the boss.

    Check out Henson’s character build The Necromancer for an example of this technique in action.

    Finally I should caution you that these techniques can be game breaking both by removing challenge and literally causing your game to crash in the case of the zombie apocalypse (too many zombies).  I suggest upping your difficulty if you plan on using one of these techniques just to keep things interesting.

    If you know of any other methods of cheating death please leave a comment and share it with the rest of us necromancers.  Hoarding knowledge is the crutch of the Synod and is unbecoming of us free thinkers.

     Whew!  I think that about covers everything I wanted to share on this subject.  If something comes to mind I’ll be sure to add another volume but for now that’s it.  Thank you all for reading, commenting, and sharing.

    Sincerely yours in service to the Great Distended One,

    Vargr

     

  • Member
    May 26, 2016

    Great to see that you've managed to complete this; now we can say that the Vault is home to the definitive treatise on necromancy. Nicely done. 

  • May 26, 2016

    Thanks Albino. 

  • May 27, 2016

    Very nice, Vargr. Congratz for completing it. It´s really a piece of work you did here. 

    Good job, mate. 

  • Member
    May 27, 2016

    Very nice guide! I have a couple suggestions for the ultimate necromantic abilities. 

    Corpse Nova

    Requires: Weakness to Fire & Frost poison, Staff of Paralysis, Ahzidal's Ring of Necromancy, the Ritual Stone, Unrelenting Force; 

    Alok-Dilon: Dark Exorcism

    Requires: Weakness to Fire & Frost poison, Staff of Paralysis, Ahzidal's Ring of Necromancy, the Ritual Stone, Fire Breath, Dragonborn Flame;

  • Member
    May 27, 2016
    You could make another one with Dawnbreaker and spell absorbtion.
  • May 27, 2016

    Those are certainly some very powerful combos thanks for sharing them. I would like to note that there is a bug with the ring, it is rendered useless if you take the Dark Souls perk, on console anyway. So there is a trade off to consider.

  • May 27, 2016

    You both have brought to light something I hadn't considered, special techniques and combos involving necromancy.  Hmmm perhaps there should be a tenth volume...

  • Member
    May 28, 2016

    Completely forgot about that! It's been some time since I last played my daughter of coldharbour... Anyway, allow me to be of further assistance. You could add info on buffing undead minions with positive effect poisons (heal, restore stamina, fortify health, resist magic) since illusion works on undead only after taking Master of the Mind. I wrote an article on this. You can find poison recipes and more info there. As for special abilities, I have a couple more.

    Flesh Golem

    Requires: Raise Zombie / .... / Revenant, Concentrated Poison (Perk), any poison with positive effects, Rally;

    Raise an npc which was not immune to poisons when it was "alive", and buff him up with poisons and illusion.

    Vampire's Thrall

    Requires: Concentrated Poison (Perk), any poison with positive effects, Rally, Bend Will;

    Basically empower any hostile npc with positive effect poisons and different variants of courage spells then turn it into your slave.

     

  • May 28, 2016

    Thanks Noodles!  You make a good point about the poisons with positive effects. I actually use some in my Chirurgeon character build.