I have that one, but mine is 2 seconds. I think that should fall under game mechanic abuse.
I’m with Tom - I’m just too lazy to care. I buy lockpicks in batches of 300. :)
You know, as much as I like that minigame, the one thing that really irks me is after you are done and the NPC says “Wow, you are good” or whatever. Completely breaks the immersion. Like maybe we were just playing rock-paper-scissors, and he knows it.
I also get tired of the same canned responses, though I do realize that there’s a hard content limit on how many of those you can have. It would however have given it a double helping of interesting if there were random statements you could hear from the NPCs that were character specific, or maybe even led to quests like the random town gossip can.
Level 4 character, jokes told: 263.
If you’re hearing the npc’s entire pie-slice response, you by definition do not rock hard. You should be hearing “You don Get a That’s h I wish Okay then!” And even that’s probably too many phonemes getting out! There should be an animation at the end of your character giving their head a good solid whomp to get their brain needle firmly in place again.
I could use that video, because every damn time I wind up with a slightly lower disposition than I started with. That combined with my abysmal lack of personality (there’s a reason ninjas don’t get invited to many tea parties) means that I have a hell of a hard time getting anyone to talk to me at all.
Hell, Jensine won’t fess up about the freakin’ corrupt guard no matter how much money I dump on her ungrateful head. Can’t get her approval over 70 no matter what. Looks like I need to get training in ol’ Illusionville…
I definitely helps to have the Speechcraft pie rotation skill. Without it, I’d probably be as retarded at Persuasion as I am at Lockpicking.
-Tom
I can do it via sound or watching the speed with which it flies up, but the problem with sound is if you start doing it to fast it’s easy to get confused by the ratcheting sound it makes. Not impossibly so, but it’s just easier to do it visually I thought. I restarted as a battlemage style character with low security, but all the time spent as a thief ment I could do the very hard locks with an abysmal security score and just one lockpick. Sorta disappointing that stats are taking out of the equation so much, though I guess pickpocketing makes the skill still useful.
Yeah, you have to be level 10 to do the quest, but the quest itself isn’t that tough. The skeleton key gives you +50 to security as long as you hold onto it, and is unbreakable.
No, really…try closing your eyes and use your ears only and listen for the ding.
Here’s how it works: When you first “nudge” the tumbler, it plays this click. When the tumbler hits the top, it plays the “ding”. Usually these two things happen so close together that the sounds overlap. Do not click then. Wait until you can hear the two sounds distinctly one after the other. “Cliing” = Don’t Click, “Click Ding” = Click.
I had a ring in Morrowind called “Spanish Fly”. Same thing. Made disposition way too easy though.
I enjoy the disposition game in Ob, so I’m not going to make any spell based tricks this time.
Its a decent game, but a bit of a drag after a while. Also it makes speech craft useless.
I think there are definitly 3 useless skills in oblivion:
Securty which is trumped by the mini game and alteration magic.
Speech craft which is trumped by the mini game and illusion magic.
Merchantilsim. On low level loot, this is a good skill, however, better loot is so valuable, even if you are only getting 30% of its value, merchants only have such small amount they can only pay 15% of its value.
This does bring up a question: Are there merchants that pay over 1200 gold? If so, what is the highest paying merchants? Id love to find a 10k one.
Mercantilism is far from useless: At Expert level, you can choose one shop and increase its allowance by 500 gold. At Master level, all shops get this bonus. (Additionally, a Journeyman can sell any item to any shop, which can come in handy.)
Dang it, I didn’t want to get dragged into any Oblivion threads (right now, I’m enjoying the sense of discovery), but how do I improve my Mercantilism skill? It’s lagging behind everything else, even though I’m selling stuff left and right. Do I need to fiddle around the haggle slider more?
-Tom
Yeah, the Mercantalism mechanic is completely retarded. It rises for every buy/sell transaction.
Thus, selling 127 arrows one at a time will give you 127 times more Mercantalism skill than selling the entire stack at once.
Like I said, retarded. I haven’t seen a mod to correct this yet.
As a workaround, I joined the mage guild and made 5 second, 100-point buff spells for mercantalism, armorer, and all the other hard-to-raise skills.
Does buffing those skills give you the perks, or just the power?
–GF
You mean talk about him at all, or testify?
You’d be better off finding someone else to testify.
Anyway, here’s the cheap guide to winning at speechcraft. Four principles.
-
The only thing you need to really worry about is not hitting the smallest wedge on the thing the NPC hates.
-
After you do the first round you should have a picture in your head of where the “bad zones” and “good zones” are. When you can ride a small wedge through the bad zones or a large wedge through the good ones, that’s most of your work done.
-
At low Disposition, everything changes it much more. At high Disposition the bar may not even move when you do something wrong.
-
After every round, the difference between your Speechcraft and the other NPC’s is checked to see whether you can continue. So it pays to start out with topics the NPC hates and finish strong.
–GF
I already figured out the sound (now to find a way to separate the sound-
channel I’m interested in to its own set of speakers…), but the video is
very helpful. Now I can use all three methods - sight, sound and precognition!
Speechcraft is barely useful once you have magic, but those are good tips
until then, Glazius.
Depends.
For mercantalism, spell buffs give you the ability to invest in a store.
For armorer and alchemy, spell buffs merely raise the power. This lets you produce more powerful potions, and repair stuff without breaking hammers. To get the perks (repair magical items, identify more ingredient effects) I had to raise the skill past 50 the old fashioned way.
Man, I hate practicing speechcraft with an Argonian. I can’t tell the difference between the most loved and most hated expression on that lizard’s snout. Takes a few tries to gauge the response.
Best way to judge the right responses in speechcraft is the eyes IMO.