Creating Characters

I've played around quite a bit with all the options under creating characters and thought I'd share some of my observations.

- The Nords are noticably larger than the other humans.  The Bretons are the most petite.

- The Imperials tend to look older because their eyes are smaller/narrower, while there are larger/rounder eye options under the Bretons and Nords which can lend a more innocent look if you're going for a youthful character.

-  Also, it's a lot easier to make young looking women and elves, while all the human men tend to look older due to the width of their jaws and complexions.  Even the fairest complextion option for men looks coarser and more shaddowed or dirty than for the women.  The men's noses also tend to be on the large side.  I might add that this trend carries over to the characters you can marry as well.  There seem to be more young/pretty looking women to choose from, while the majority of the men look older or generally more thick-set and weathered. 

- When using lighter colored hair, facial hair doesn't always look the same color as the rest of the hair, even if you've selected the same color, because of the way it's shaded or something.  For example, and old man with the whitest hair option will appear to have a grey beard rather than a white beard.

- The Orcs have some of the most complex and even beautiful war-paint.

- It's possible to make orcs look almost elven if you move the jaw setting as far back as possible so it doesn't jut out, and select one of the smaller mouths without big teeth.

- Often the various eye options will all look really wierd, but if you play with the width and height of them they will actually look much better than expected, so you really can't just scroll through the shape options - you have to adjust everything in order to tell which you'll actually like.

- Occasionally when starting from a preset, if you change a feature you won't be able to find the same one again AT ALL in the rest of the options.   Most of the time, however, it's in there somewhere, but not in the location the arrow seemed to indicate orriginally. 

- In most cases the options for men and women of the same race are all pretty much the same, however, I have noticed a few instances where there are additional options under one gender or the other.  Examples are:  Argonian males have a purple hair-color option not available under the females.  Nord males and females have a few differing war-paint options.

Something that is really handy is that after playing with options under one race and then switching to check out another one, if you decide to come back to the first race, all the options you picked will still be there.  The same goes for switching between male and female under the same race.  This is nice for comparrison between different possibilities. 

"Free" Skill Set Boosts

The Bard's College in Solitude, which you're likely to hear about frequently, doesn't seem to have a whole lot of purpose considering the fact that you can't play instruments in the game, and becoming a member of the college doesn't even give you a bed to sleep in there (although you can take a large number of books if you are a book collector like me).  None of the members of the Bards College are Marriage Candidates either.  However, there are three quests given by the professors which are well worth the time.  The nice thing is that you don't have to receive the quests first for the quest items to appear, so you can skip becoming a member of the college entirely.  You may want to pick up all three items and then return them all at once. 

There are three special instruments you may randomly come across in the game, and though they are quest items, picking one up may not trigger the quest objective telling you who to return it to unless you've actually started the quest officially, so you're stuck with the thing till you just happen to talk to the right person....which you probably won't since they all hang out in the Bard's College. The reward for returning them is pretty good though.  Each of the three professors will train you not just one level in one skill, as is usually the case with these types of quests, but instead you will get a boost in all the skills of a particular type - combat, stealth, or magic. 

Finn's Lute is probably the easiest of the three to obtain.  It's found in Stony Creek Cave over between the Rift and Eastmarch.  The cave consists of a long narrow pasage populated by 4 or 5 bandits and is filled with a flammable gass which can be ignited to help take out the two bandits who are patrolling the main pasage.   There is one little side room where you'll find the Lute guarded by a magic user who is the 'boss' of the cave.  Return it to the old lady Inge Six Fingers for a one level boost in all Stealth skills: Sneak, Lockpicking, Pick-Pocket, Light Armor, Speech, and Alchemy.

Pantea's Flute is a little more difficult to obtain.  Finding Hob's Fall Cave may prove fustrating, particularly without having it marked on your map, as the northern coastline where it is located has many cliffs and gorges to navegate and blizzards often make visibility almost nill.  If you want to kill two birds with one stone, talk to the Jarl of Winterhold before coming here as this is one of the likely places he'll send you to retrieve the Helm of Winterhold, which you need to return in order to become a Thane of Winterhold (not that there is much point in doing that, since there is no house to buy and no Housecarl available in that unfortunate little city).  Be prepared to fight magic-users in this cave, as well as a few skeletons, though usually you will meet only one at a time so it's not too bad, epecially if you take them out quietly.  Returning the flute to Pantea Ateia (whom you may meet outside the Blue Palace wearing green Fine Clothes) will give you a one level boost in all Magic skills: Illusion, Conjuration, Destruction, Restoration, Alteration, and Enchanting.

Rjorn's Drum is the most difficult to obtain as it is found in Halldir's Cairn in the Falkreath area which has a pretty difficult undead boss to battle at the end.  Return it to Giraud Gemane who will be one of the two people to greet you the first time you enter the Bard's College.  He's wearing a Fine Hat and will tell you that he is the history teacher, though he is actually a trainer in Speech.  When you return the drum to him he will give you a one level boost in all Combat skills: Smithing, One-Handed, Two-Handed, Archery, Heavy Armor, and Block.

Planning Ahead

Some of your seemingly unrelated, random choices may cause you to be unable to access the necessary quest in order to win the affection of the person you want to marry.  I'll be compiling a list in this post as I discover what some of those may be.

Sadri / Viola
The good news is that there is only one favor quest which actually makes another marriage candidate impossible to marry.  This is the favor which Revyn Sadri will ask you to do for him if you ask if anything in his shop is stolen.  He will tell you that he bought a ring by mistake which he believes actually belongs to Viola Giordano and requests that you sneak the ring back into her house so no one will know what really happened, or that he was involved in any way.  If you choose to hand the ring over to Viola directly she will become available for marriage, but Revyn will be out of the question.  If you choose to secretly plant the ring as Revyn requested then he will be available for marriage (and also for speech training), but there won't be anything else you can do to raise Viola's disposition toward you high enough to make her available.  Luckilly since they're not the same sex (not to mention race or type of person, etc.) it's unlikely you'll be trying to decide between those two.  Still, it might be easy to make the mistake of helping Sadri without realising that it's excluding Viola as a marriage prospect. 

Ysolda
It's very easy to accidentally rule her out.  According to this site:  http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Ysolda if you do the favor for Carlotta at the vegetable stand in Whiterun (telling the bard Mikael to stop bothering her) before you've obtained Ysolda's favor quest to retrieve a Mammoth tusk, she may not give you the option to do this for her, making it impossible to win her affection.  In my experience this certainly seems to be confirmed, so if you have any interest in Ysolda, be sure to speak with her first!  --  Sooooo, after many many in-game hours have passed (from level 3 to level 60), and countless other quests done, Ysolda finally gave me the dialogue for her mammoth tusk quest.  I'm not sure why she suddenly did, although the most recent thing that might possibly be related is that I finally went ahead and completed the Bleak Falls Barrow/Golden Claw quests which I'd been putting off because I didn't want to deal with dragons.  Possibly returning from that had some effect?  I speculate this because it was right after this that I saw her on the steps to Dragon'sreach for the first time, which is also where I obtained the quest from her with my other character.  So... it's possibly related. 

Sorex Vinius
It's all too easy to loose the opportunity to win Sorex's favor, especially if you head straight to the shops after entering Solitude.  Sorex is the son of the owner of the Winking Skeever and can either be found in the inn or browsing the stands in the outdoor market.  He will ask you to do him a favor by delivering some rum to Falk Firebeard.  Unfortunately, according to this site (once again): http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Sorex_Vinius the speech option for his favor will not show up if you agree to do a favor for Angeline Morrard in the Alchemy shop first.  I can confirm this issue as well.

Brelyna Maryon
If you join the Mage's Collge in Winterhold, Brelyna will ask if she can experiment on you.   Agreeing will gain her friendship.   The trouble is that, apparently, if you have any kind of Spell Absorbtion effect at the time (according to this site: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Brelyna%27s_Practice), you can get stuck in the "wait for Brelyna's spell to wear off" stage permanently and can never become her friend (or spouce).  I have had an issue with this myself, although I don't believe I had a spell absorbtion effect.  Instead I speculate that a Resist Magic effect might interfere with this as well.  Thus I advise doing this favor for her before you take any Resist Magic Perks under Alteration, and before becoming an Agent of Mara.  I will have to do further experiments to confirm this. 

Free Shout Wall #1

Here's another random tip for you:

Up in the mountains near Solitude is a Monument to Meridia and just up the hill from it is a Shout Wall which has no enemies around it.   The word is for the Elemental Fury Shout which makes you swing your weapons faster, but only if they are unenchanted (I suppose because it acts as an enchantment).  This is a great shout for two-handed weapon users since they are normally so slow, and is probably most valuable early in the game before you've acquired enchanted weapons.  There is a similar Perk under the One-Handed skill if you dual-wield weapons "Dual Flury", but you can use this shout sooner than you will be able to unlock that perk at skill level 30.

"Free" Restoration Training

In order to do these character reviews I'll have to do all the little quests related to each of them first, and although I'd thought I would end up playing only minimally with this character, it's turning out to be a lot of work, soooo I thought I might as well also add a few tips about other things in Skyrim as I come to discover or think of them.  So for the first random tip:

A very easy way to level up Restoration, once you have obtained the apprentice level spell Turn Lesser Undead (or any of the other turn undead spells) which can be bought from any of the court Wizards, is to go into the Hall of the Dead in Whiterun (the one in Solitude works nicely as well).  Tell your follower to wait outside in the Lobby area while you go into the Catacombs by yourself.  You might as well speak to the priest and obtain his miscleaneous quest to retrieve his amulet while you're at it.  Once inside the Catecombs there will be three skeletons which are never very high level enemies so even your weakest turn undead spell will work against them.  To 'train' your restoration ability, simply keep hitting the skeletons with turn undead.  It will staggar them and make them flee and hide in corners, but it won't actually harm them so you can just keep this up all day long.  Just chase them from one side of the crypt to the other repeatedly hitting them with the spell (you don't have to wait for it to wear off for it to count). The reason you want to leave your follower outside is that they will simply kill the skeletons too quickly, probably with one hit, and you need them alive to act as valid targets.  Now this can be a bit tedious, and using higher level spells will level you up more quickly, but even using the weakest spell can advance you 30 levels in a short ammount of time and is still probably faster than normal training which only allows 5 sessions at a time and then you have to wait till you reach a new character level before you can train again (not to mention it can be expensive).  This method is also usefull if your character is a higher level but has lagged behind in the development of Restoration, because the skeletons in the Hall of the Dead don't become stronger along with you like enemies in most locations do so your low level spells will still be effective.

And of course another thing to remember is that as long as you have magicka available, you should always heal yourself after a battle rather than just waiting for your health to naturally regenerate because you only advance your skill when casting on a valid target, which means casting healing on yourself does nothing if you're not actually hurt.

I reccommend leveling up your Restoration quickly at the very beginning of the game so you can buy the higher level spell books which allow you to heal faster and block greater spells.   Plus there are some very useful Perks under Restoration, such as:
* "Respite" which is particularly good for those using weapons and heavy armor as it heals your stamina as well as your health, and can also be used to allow you to sprint indefinitely while repeatedly casting the healing spell on yourself.

* "Regeneration" is great for mages at low levels as it causes your magicka to regenerate faster which is important when you haven't got very much to begin with.

* "Avoid Death" will once a day automatically heal 250 points of health if your health drops really low, something which tends to happen all too quickly early on when one hit can take a third of your health (and when you aren't in the habit of remembering to drink a healing potion after every hit you take).

* "Ward Absorb" is indispensible if you plan to utilze ward spells at all because they tend to really drain your magicka, but this perk recharges your ward with every spell that hits it allowing you to keep it up indefinitely.  It should be noted that wards are very effective against dragonbreath, even the novice level "Lesser Ward" can almost completely negate a dragon's fire or frost breath effects.

* "Necromage" is another very helpful Perk for those using magic instead of weapons because it makes all your spells stronger against Undead enemies - of which there are many.  Probably the worst enemies you'll come up against are the undead Dragon Priests and Draugr Deathlords, not to mention the hoards of draugr whenever you go into Ancient Nord Ruins; Necromancers are hard enough to battle on their own but often raise zombie minions; and then there are also vampires (particularly with the Dawnguard add-on).

This does in fact tie in with the theme of Marriage since Mara the goddess of Love and Compassion is associated with Restoration.  Activating a Shrine of Mara will fortify your restortation 10 points for 8 hours and your healing spells will restore 10% more.  There are shrines of Mara in three cities: Solitude, in the Temple of the Divines; Riften, in the Temple of Mara; and Dawnstar, in Nightcaller Temple which is actually up the hill a little ways from the town and requires the quest Waking Nightmare to be completed first.  If you build your own home with the Hearthfire add-on, you can build your own shrine of Mara in your basement, so you may want to pick up an extra Amulet of Mara in order to do this. 

Obtaining an Amulet of Mara

When you go to the temple of Mara in Riften, you'll probably be looking to speak with Maramal about getting married, but I'd reccommend speaking with the priestess Dinya Balu who will give you the 'Book of Love' quest which consists of three relatively simple mini-quests where you run back and forth speaking with different people to help them sort out their relationships, and at the completion of this quest you become an 'Agent of Mara' which gives you 15% resistance to magic which is better than the first level of the Alteration Perk "Magic Resistance".  She'll also give you an amulet of Mara so you don't actually have to buy one. 

Something to keep in mind with this quest is that during the second stage of it if Markarth is in the hands of the Stormcloaks you'll have to do some serious traveling since two of the people involved will have relocated far and wide (one in windhelm and one in Solitude).  This is another good reason to do this quest early on before you've done much with the Civil War questline. 

Introduction

Since Marriage in Skyrim is a one time deal, even if your spouce dies, it's important to make the right choice.  This can be difficult when you may not even run into some of the candidates without going out of your way or until getting pretty far into certain questlines, and there may be little opportunity to interact with them before getting married.  Unfortunately, the two main elderscrolls pages I've looked at only give minimal information about many of the marriage candidates themselves even if they do give details about how to befriend them to begin with. Thus I decided to create a character specifically to test out each of the potential spouces and figured I'd write up some reviews including their dialogue and my assessments of their personalities.  I wish I had the ability to actually make videos of life with each of them, but I'm playing on the XBox, not my computer, and I don't know if there's any way to reccord on this.