Warning... This is very much a work in progress. I brainstormed the skeleton of it after a mildly bumbling playthrough, then while writing it began testing the ideas with a fresh crit on max difficulty. Lots of rewording and clarifications and details re-remembered, but the idea has definitely withstood testing so far... However, I've also stopped developing and elaborating this doc. Something "cracked" in my Morrowind psyche when I discovered (for myself) the crazy bug(s) involving Mercantile and merchants' buy/sell behavior. These issues are supposedly resolved by MCP but are definitely not resolved by OpenMW. Feels like I'm probably stopping for good. Been wanting to try several other more modern games anyway, so I guess it's the Hand of Fate.
In late 2023, I set out to cheese TES3 as hard as I could. But also as lazily as I could. Laborious exploits and alchemical trickery were shunned. I wanted the build to require as little button-pushing as possible, while also being able to steamroll through every corner of Vvardenfell, Mournhold, and Solstheim. Like speedrunning, but minimizing number of inputs rather than minimizing time.
I succeeded.
What follows here is a very rough guide to repeat what I did, but more lazily and more powerfully. More cheesily. And what's more, with no alchemy and with no spell-casting. Found and store-bought potions and scrolls are fine, as well as any (including custom) enchanted items. I think the path laid out here is one that can be followed relatively easily on difficulty 100.
If you like RP builds, this is probably not an approach you would like. I wouldn't say I did no RP, but the most RP thing I did was to be an extremely radical & violent abolitionist. And frankly, this took a backseat to the minmaxing.
These notes are not a replacement for a resource like UESP. They should be read with UESP to supplement many details, e.g. 3x5 leveling.
| Abbreviation | Meaning |
|---|---|
| C-* | "Common" item |
| P-* | "exPensive" item |
| T-* | "exTravagant" item |
| Q-* | "exQuisite" item |
| CoU | Cast on Use |
| CoS | Cast on Strike |
| CE | Constant Effect |
| BoBS | Boots of Blinding Speed |
| CotSH | Cuirass of the Savior's Hide |
| DI | Divine Intervention |
| AI | Almsivi Intervention |
| CalmH | Calm Humanoid |
| WB | Water Breathing |
| WW | Water Walking |
| SF | SlowFall |
| FA | Fortify Attribute |
| FH | Frenzy Humanoid |
| DF | Damage Fatigue |
| BBa | Bound Battleaxe |
| d* | daedric |
Money is everything. Well, it's training, and training is essential to minmaxing in TES3, for the easiest and most efficient 3x5 leveling. You need lots of money for training.
You also need lots of money for persuasion (of trainers mainly), at least until you've maxed Personality and Speechcraft.
Fortunately, it's not so hard to get to a point where you are constantly bombarded with massive piles of incredibly valuable loot. So much loot, in fact, that you will begin to simply leave the glass armor & weapons where you find them, because you just don't need all that money right now.
- Survive.
- Make money.
- Level efficiently.
All guidance below assumes you are also being careful to watch your major/minor skills and level efficiently with the help of appropriate trainers.
I recommend leveling on Personality (for maxing Mercantile ASAP), Agility, and Endurance until Personality maxes to 100 (at about level 8 with the Lady starsign), then you replace that "slot" with Strength, then on the next max (should be Endurance) you start leveling Luck plus any two (prioritizing Agility, Strength, Speed, Intelligence). Each time you max an attribute to 100, pick another one to focus on.
This build's only leveling armor skill is Light Armor, but you'll want to have your Medium Armor and Heavy Armor trained up as you discover higher-level gear (see below).
By the time you're leveled into the high 20s (edit: during testing, realizing this point can be reached by level 5 or possibly earlier...), you'll probably have enough loot laid away to buy all your remaining levels through trainers. The trainers will need to be found, and the hostile ones will need calming & persuasion.
Minmaxed builds tend to converge when 3x5 leveling and trainers are used. However, it's important to start off on the right foot. Otherwise, growth will be annoying. And minimizing annoyance is part of the goal here.
- Race
- Breton
- Mainly for the Resist Magicka 50. With early-game retrieval of the CotSH, this is essential to the laziness of the build.
- But also for the Dragon Skin ability, which is a great bootstrapper for the very early game.
- Breton
- Starsign
- The Lady
- Endurance is great for maxing HP, and the Personality will help you spend a little less money on persuasion.
- The Lady
- Custom class
- Specialization
- Stealth
- You'll be doing a lot of combat, but your most important early game skills are in stealth.
- Stealth
- Favored attributes
- Agility
- You will fight a lot. Early on, you need to hit more than you miss.
- Strength
- You will fight a lot. Early on, when you hit, you need to hit hard. You also want to carry as much loot as possible as early as possible.
- Agility
- Major skills
- Axe
- BBa-enchanted bow.
- Marksman
- Daedric bow from Dram Bero.
- Light Armor
- Dark Brotherhood surplus & BoBS. Then CotSH for total Resist Magicka 110 through to late game.
- Sneak
- Damage x4. And stealing.
- Mercantile
- You will be bribing, buying, and selling, a lot.
- Axe
- Minor skills
- Enchant
- Only for efficient use & recharge of enchanted items. You will never enchant something yourself.
- Athletics
- Keep fatigue high.
- Acrobatics
- Reach odd spots, and escape tight spots.
- Armorer
- Lots of fighting.
- Security
- Locks, until you get a custom Open 100 enchant. Then traps.
- Enchant
- Other skills
- Speechcraft
- Eventually, you'll want to replace your bribes with words.
- Speechcraft
- Specialization
If you're playing at high/max difficulty (and perhaps even if you're not), it's always a good idea to drink a sujamma or two before combat.
- Equip yourself thusly:
- Grab a "shard axe" (iron battleaxe enchanted with some variable frost damage) from a hollow log next to the Seyda Neen lighthouse. This will require a couple small jumps.
- Go to Balmora. Deliver the package to Caius. Join the TG, FG, and MG. Grab the health and fatigue potions from the FG.
- With your Dragon Skin ability ready to immediately cast, go rest in a bed (e.g. in the MG basement) until a Dark Brotherhood assassin attacks you. Modulo drinking potions to stay alive and at high fatigue, cast Dragon Skin and then kill the assassin. Equip the assassin's armor.
- Guide-travel to Caldera and walk northwest along the road until you
encounter the sketchy trader with the BoBS. Agree to escort her, then turn
around and kill her. Take her stuff and, unless you're in combat (until you
have the CotSH), wear the boots.
- DO NOT FORGET TO TAKE OFF THESE BOOTS FOR COMBAT!!! (until you get the CotSH...)
- Go to Vassir-Didanat Mine, enter and immediately leave, then go to Dram Bero
in Vivec (St. Olm's canton plaza "haunted" manor, through a locked door with
a good pick found in the same room). Tell him about the mine, then choose
the daedric long bow.
- You'll need about 5k gp to get a max BBa enchantment on this bow. Once you have the BBa, ditch the shard axe.
Messy notes to integrate later: Forget the Ring of Surroundings. Buy a Shadowweave Ring from Irgola (Caldera) to complement the Amulet of Shadows (if it's a fixed item in that vendor's inventory?), then use the AoS (or maybe also the SwR) to go get a Shadowmask Ring (actually a Ring of Surroundings???) from Dren Plantation, Tower Shack (and if you kill the guy there, he's apparently got a daedric dai-katana, worth 120k, which is nice but useless until you get some smaller denominations built up in Creeper's inventory). Also, don't level Strength to start. Level Personality instead, until you get to 100. In your leveling skills, train only Mercantile. Otherwise train Spear and Block. Buy the Amulet of Recall from Verick. Buy a Potion of Marking from Nalcarya (in Balmora). Carefully make your way (avoiding isolated Ashlander camps and wildlife) to Zainab Camp and bribe Abibael Timsar-Dadisun up to 100 Disposition (definitely can cheese the persuasion a little by making a ton of small Barter transactions with him). Mark in the middle of Zainab Camp. Use Amulet of DI to extract yourself to Sadrith Mora and guild-guide from there. Use Amulet of Recall to get back to Zainab when you level up and need Mercantile training again. ALWAYS MAINTAIN SOME LIQUIDITY. Do not overspend on training. You need the liquidity to apply persuasion during quests. But also: Once you have the 100+ Chameleon, you can go raid the Tower of Dusk at Ghostgate for a ton of glass equipment. (You still have to sneak! They can still spot you if you're too obvious...) There's also a few pieces of ebony armor in the Tower of Dawn vault. Once you have this loot... you're basically set. The game will be, temporarily, all about cashing it in with Creeper (and possibly Mudcrab Merchant, but he's out in the boonies), and then flitting hither and thither for training.
- The immediate goal is the CotSH.
- You will need a lot of money, primarily for a very expensive custom-enchanted "Ring of Open" (Open 100 on Touch), about 15k gp. This ring can be a general tool, but it's specifically meant for the armoire in Tel Fyr that contains the CotSH. You probably don't need a huge soul for the enchanting, but do try to get the largest soul you can reasonably find. Minimum soul size 100 probably. Keep in mind that you will need at least a T-ring to hold this enchantment.
- To get up to the top floor of the Tel Fyr tower, you'll also need one or more potions and/or scrolls of levitate and/or jump. Fortunately, there are two potions of levitate waiting for you on a shelf in the lower level of the area which calls for them.
- To facilitate looting and the completion of some quests, you will want the
Amulet of Shadows from the bandits north of Gnisis. Top this off with the
Ring of Surroundings from Larrius Varro (or the Dren plantation tower shack),
and you're basically all set for stealth work. A single ring with 100
Chameleon is more convenient, but this will do fine for now.
- [TEST] Varro's quest is easier if you have the Ring of FrenzyH (about 3k
gp). Your early speechcraft is garbage and bribing will get annoying and/or
impossible if you try to prep taunt attempts with high disposition.
- Big problem. Frenzy on any of the 3 central thugs will trigger all of them. On max difficulty, that's a big problem. Might be better to simply sneak and murder with Amulet of Shadows. Maybe also the potion of shadow to pull the whole deed off. More problems, though: Low agility means I can't hit these dudes even when sneaking.
- [TEST] Varro's quest is easier if you have the Ring of FrenzyH (about 3k
gp). Your early speechcraft is garbage and bribing will get annoying and/or
impossible if you try to prep taunt attempts with high disposition.
- You can get a couple amulets of Divine & Almsivi intervention as a reward for
an MG quest given by the guild leader in Ald'ruhn.
- There's an Amulet of Recall for sale at the trader in Caldera, but I don't recall where I found an Amulet of Mark. Apparently there's one on a mid-level boss NPC near Gnaar Mok. Doesn't matter, it's better (and pretty simple) to have a T-ring enchanted with it.
- Favor TG quests over FG quests. Otherwise do whatever you want.
- Sell loot to Creeper (in Caldera). He won't buy unenchanted clothing, books,
paper, light sources, ingredients, or alchemy equipment. You can sell that
other stuff to any trader, e.g. Verick Gemain (in Caldera).
- You can steal (even openly) the orcish armor in a crate on the top floor of Ghorak Manor. It's very valuable at this point, and Creeper is right there waiting to buy it.
- Later, when Creeper's funds are too limited and you have easier access to the Mudcrab Merchant, you can try going to the latter as well. He doesn't buy quite as broadly as Creeper, but he has twice the funds. (Plus a little restocking supply of sujamma.)
- You can get repeated visits from Dark Brotherhood assassins until you go talk to a guy in the Ebonheart castle yard about going to Mournhold. This can be good, and it can be bad. Good for the loot. Bad if you're unable to handle the potentially multiple assassins that can arrive all at once.
- Try to get a Ring of Charm 50/2s or so. Bribing is nice, but it's best for folks with whom you will have repeated dealings. Like trainers. One-off interactions (e.g. for quests) are best handled with a long-term cheaper method.
- Daedric shrine north of Indoranyon, good spot for grinding daedra at the entrance (by exiting the shrine in sneak mode, assassinating the daedra immediately in front of you, then rinse-repeat). To remove loot and return easily, you can mark here, then DI to Sadrith Mora, then recall back.
In addition to fancy gear that is more or less permanently equipped on your person, you'll want to have an inventory of enchanted items (some custom, some found) to handle common challenges. You'll equip a selection of these items to meet the moment, as appropriate.
You won't be able to find or create all of these immediately, but they're things to search for and/or work toward.
Several of the custom-enchanted items below can hold "filler" effects (usually Fortify Strength for a couple points or so) to reach the maximum enchantment size for the item. For items "smaller" than Q-*, you can upgrade the item for more "room" for fillers. This is only recommended for CE enchants.
Some items might be hard to find (e.g. daedric tower shield), in which case you can substitute a similar but more common item (e.g. daedric shield).
You might want to reduce the magnitude of some enchants, e.g. BBa, to reduce the casting cost when the longer duration or larger magnitude wouldn't usually be helpful. For example, a melee encounter might take 30s or less, so the cost-benefit ratio might not be sensible for a 400s duration on a bound battleaxe. On the other hand, for high Enchant skill and large souls, there might not be a good reason to hold back on the better effect. Another example is the custom Ring of Open. Using Touch instead of Target halves the casting cost.
These are items you'll probably wear/wield a lot (once you have them).
| Name | Slot |
|---|---|
| CotSH | cuirass |
| Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw | helmet |
| Fist of Randagulf | right gauntlet |
| Fist of Randagulf | left gauntlet |
| Wraithguard | right gauntlet |
| Sunder | weapon |
| Ebony Mail | cuirass |
| BoBS | boots |
| glass/daedric | greaves |
| glass/daedric | left pauldron |
| glass/daedric | right pauldron |
| Boots of the Apostle | boots |
| dwarven darts | weapon |
| Name | Raw item | Effect(s) | Trigger |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amulet of Nighteye | Q-amulet | Nighteye 100 | CE |
| Belt of Strength | Q-belt | FA Strength 8 | CE |
| Pants of Strength | Q-pants | FA Strength 12 | CE |
| Robe of Movement | Q-robe | Resist Paralysis 40 | CE |
| Shirt of Movement | Q-shirt | Resist Paralysis 60 | CE |
| Skirt of Vigor | Q-skirt | Restore Fatigue 12 | CE |
| Axe Bow | d* longbow | BBa for 109s on Self | CoU |
| Shield of Health (1) | d* shield | Restore Health 6 | CE |
| Shield of Health (2) | d* tower shield | Restore Health 9 | CE |
The "found" items are generally things you'll encounter early and then replace with the custom-enchanted items.
| Name | Effect(s) | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Amulet of Shadows | Chameleon 80 for 60s on Self | CoU |
| Ring of Surroundings | Chameleon 20--30 for 30s on Self | CoU |
Lots of rings, because they're light and can hold large enchantments.
Some of these have relatively accessible and cheap counterparts among the vendors and loot you'll find. (Amulets, clothing, etc.) If necessary, feel free to use whatever is at hand. These are listed here as "the ideal" in that they are all as light as possible while achieving the desired effect.
| Name | Raw item | Effect(s) | Trigger | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ring of AI | P-ring | AI on Self | CoU | |
| Ring of CalmH | T-ring | CalmH 100 for 8s in 26ft on Target | CoU | |
| Ring of Chameleon | Q-ring | Chameleon 100 for 24s on Self | CoU | |
| Ring of DF | Q-ring | DF 100 for 4s on Target | CoU | |
| Ring of DI | P-ring | DI on Self | CoU | |
| Ring of FH | P-ring | FH 100 for 1s on Target | CoU | |
| Ring of Levitate | P-ring | Levitate 1 | CE | |
| Ring of Mark | T-ring | Mark on Self | CoU | |
| Ring of Open | T-ring | Open 100 on Target | CoU | |
| Ring of Recall | T-ring | Recall on Self | CoU | |
| Ring of Soultrap | P-ring | Soultrap for 106s on Target | CoU | |
| Ring of Strength | Q-ring | FA Strength 24 | CE | x2 |
| Ring of WB | P-ring | WB | CE | |
| Ring of the Wayfarer | Q-ring | WW, SF 1, Jump 3 | CE | |
| Ring of Charm | ? | Charm 50 for 2s on Touch | CoU |