It's nice and all to feel so rich, but by the time I collect all gems, I'm already rich anyway. That's my issue, but to be rich for the sake of being rich, it can be entertaining
I tried a character once who was a professional thief and came to Skyrim specifically to get these jewels and the crown. She'd been hired by an unknown party (turned out to be Vex) and was given good info on where to look. So it was just a beeline from Helgen to get all of them before doing anything else. This made it fun and useful.
Most fun was getting the one in Dragonsreach without even being accosted by Irileth. The one in the cave below Thalmor Embassy is also a little tricky. And my character had to bluff her way into the college and Dark Brotherhood to get at those ones.
\[Edited to add: It was not bluffing with Grelod.\]
That sounds awesome. I’ve never done a character like that. I kinda just replay the same type and do mostly the same quests. But my question is what race did you play with that character?
And would you have any recommendations for perks or maybe standing stones to use for that play through?
That was a Nord, I think I started with Thief Stone, hit Pinewatch for the first gem, then went sort of clockwise around the map, so I switched to Lover Stone when I reached Markarth. As far as perks, honestly I do most characters the same -- light armor, sneak, a mix of archery and spellsword. I like to level up those skills by sniping elk and thrashing bears out in the wilds a lot a lot, smithing loads of leather armor. I suppose this is a ranger build?
[Edited: Nord, not Bosmer! I don't always sweat race very much except for character reasons. Wanted a Nord to blend in.]
Yeah, by the time I’ve gone to all the places the stones are stashed, I’ve got more gold then I know what to do with. I just started dumping it all into safes in my mansion, just to see how quickly I get rich again.
I use it to help with smithing when i want some quick easy levels. Make smithing legendary and then craft a bunch of diamond gold necklaces or other gemmed jewelry with all the gems you pick up. Very efficient and profitable.
Right? A lot of the stones in the holds are easy enough to grab, but the ones that require you to go to dungeons? Meh. At its peak, I usually have over 60 quests active just in the base game alone and just find an area with 3 or more active quests in a general area and bang them out.
Even then, you hit a point where gold is pointless. More often than not, you are generally crafting your own armor and weapons. It's fun to cover the floor of a house with nothing but gems, but that gets old quick
Seriously I need 5 stones cause I'm not using an online map and have never actually fully completed this quest but my main right now on ps5 has about 166 hours he's level 228 and I have over 300k septims like is it still worth completing
I do this quest super early. Like, usually before I head to whiterun, early. It makes it so much easier to sit back and enjoy the game without worrying too much about money.
The downside, of course, is eventually you end up with 200lbs of gems you gotta DO something with.
Honestly, I would only use this for other gem related quests.
"When you no longer need it, any rare item becomes common, but when you need it, all common items become Myths."
I could save up so many gems without thinking about it. The second I need a specific gem? I'm gonna find 298 Flawless Diamonds, the next upgrade for my weapons and armor, complete 6 side missions, all before I find what I need after looking up what I need to do
"Game breaking" at a point in the game where money is virtually meaningless and your Smithing (the only day-to-day use for gems, other than selling) and Enchanting (the main use for all the jewellery you make with Smithing) skills are probably maxed as well.
Once you’ve used telekinesis, no other level grinding feels worthwhile and no other skill is really worth making legendary. Telekinesis is actual free levels.
The line between what is and isn't an exploit in Skyrim is pretty blurry. In my opinion power leveling in any form is an exploit, and not really any different than things like Telekinesis, Soul Trap or Muffle shenanigans. One just takes longer while accomplishing the same goal. I'd much rather spend my time actually playing the game than grinding out levels in a single player RPG just because it's "not as much of an exploit" as a faster method.
I mean, not a lot of reason not to if you hoard ingots. Warrior stone + lovers comfort helps trivialize the re-leveling, smithing gear + smithing pot for improving makes a joke of it. Hell, even with no ingots, go clear 2 dwemer ruins of all the scrap to make dwarven ingots and spam dwarven crap forever (might need some iron tho)
You can improve weapons and armor tho, which adds more points on top of the initial crafting. But yes, unless you are crafting ebony or higher, the value of jewelry tends to be higher.
I usually work on maxing smithing before I even have 12 stones, so dwarven shit is my go to
Smithing 100, make all the gear you need, legendary it, spend the next 2 irl days grinding it. You now have 100 perk points to use (especially when running ordinator mods)
You could just legendary any other skill though. Get alteration enchants and telekinesis and you can get it to level 100 in like 30 seconds. Smithing is so much more time for the same reward
Don't forget alchemy. Get a good set of enchanted alchemy gear and you can make potions that easily sell for 1k apiece. Clean out an alchemist's stock and you can pull down 20k+ in one sitting with some extra ingredients you found along the way.
It can provide fuel for the Atronach Forge. Rubies, Sapphires, & Amethysts can make fire, frost, and void salts, which are great for crafting explosive arrows or bolts. Hat tip to Skypothesis for this one.
I'll also use the glitch where you can 'pick up' two or more stones at once by clicking rapidly. Usually only need to collect 12 or so.
I don't think its been patched. By clicking I actually mean hitting the 'e' key on my keyboard. I always quicksave before I try. The extra stones don't show up in inventory but the quest counter does increase.
Yea, it's crazy how many gems you find with it. Now, i only get it if I have mods to make the merchants richer and to make armor and weapons out of gems.
I don't see this as game-breaking, especially on AE. Everything that it does, is already done by something else, but better.
1. Money: Goldenhills Plantation
2. Smithing: Dwemer ruins, especially one in Markarth behind Nimhe
3. Enchanting: it doesn't really make anything for enchanting. You will have the same amount of XP even if you enchant iron daggers.
And every single one of this is available right after Helgen. Just get staff of storm atros from atronach forge before attempting to clear Nchuand-Zel.
Edit: but I definitely do enjoy just dropping all the gems on the floor of my house and then acting like Scrooge McDuck.
I agree for the most part but there is one thing it can do that these others don't provide fuel for the Atronach Forge. Rubies, Sapphires, & Amethysts can make fire, frost, and void salts, which are great for crafting explosive arrows or bolts. Hat tip to Skypothesis for this one.
Ohh! Now we are talking. I never even considered this, I almost never play with those arrows because of how scarce resources for them are.
Edit: also, where they recommend that? I've seen several of their builds, but not this one.
It’s one of the first things I do when I start a new play through. I just like having stupid amounts of money. It does get irritating trying to sell them because it takes me forever to get the perk where the shops have more money. That’s way harder than getting the stones in the first place, for me at least.
Yeah, kind of. Though by the time you get that done you're not likely to be short of cash anyway.
For me, the really game breaking point was when I maxed out the trade skills and made myself top tier weapons, jewellery and armour. I killed Alduin in two hits shortly after. Breaking the combat system is far more of an issue than just breaking the economy..
Nah by the time you’ve completed the quest you’ve already got to be rich enough to buy the most expensive house in the game, I’m already practically printing money buy then with alchemy and the transmutation spell
I agree. For a while I thought that some stupid bug locked me out of the whole companions quest line (plus some other minor bugs) and I was grumpy as hell about it. I had never encountered anything that bad in 20+ years of gaming (pc and xbox) so I decided to use the glitch to pick up two or three stones at a time to.. I dunno, get back at the game or so 😅🤷♀️ Prowler’s profit is insane though. I have never even been able to sell all the gems I picked up since I got it, no matter how hard I tried.
I don't need more things to sell. I've collected 1000 things I've enchanted and put in a chest in my house, ready to sell whenever shops refresh. I already can't possibly gain more money through selling...
You can put it to good use if you use a jewelry mod and one of the perk overhaul mods. Then you can make different kinds of jewelry and enchant them with more power.
I used to throw all the gems I found in a playthrough into one of those open trough style chests in Proudspire's basement since you could see them all shine in the light. Things were fine until I got that perk and entering Proudspire and the game became a slideshow.
Most of the time, when you complete the crown, money is no longer important and the gem drops is just a reminder that you did a chore. It's not really game breaking, the game auto-breaks at high level/end game.
Yes it gets you loads of money.
But by the time you usually complete it you could have a few levels in alchemy and clean out every merchant by buying all alchemy ingredients and selling resulting potions...
It’s exactly why I do the thieves guild asap. Besides unlocking fences that have more gold on hand, all future exploration pays for itself with all the extra gems you find.
Its one of the ones I do really early on purpose specifically for that perk. Basically infinite money? Yes please.
Plus I make gold rings to level up my smithing and if you add gems to the rings it makes it go way, way faster
Yeah, too bad I can’t SELL them! They’re great for crafting but merchants only have so much gold. I’ve gotten to points where I’ve had like 20 flawless diamond and all I could do was craft diamond jewelry just to up my smithing, but then I can’t sell the necklaces!
It’s almost too much at certain points
I mean, by then you could already be absolutely loaded from the enchanting/alchemy treadmill. Get a good set of alchemy gear and you can make a ton of cash just by buying out the alchemist stock and using whatever ingredients you have to make a good 10-20k in potions.
Gold is too easy to come by, it isn't fun having millions of gold and nothing to spend it on
I wish you could build a vast estate and hire guards, Cooks etc and have to pay them on a regular basis.
Endless gold and nothing to spend it on is pointless.
Doesn't break anything for me. I got it pretty early on a thief character, level 12. She gets a few more garnets and amethysts now, regular and flawless. Yay, I guess. Nothing really game changing. She is not much of a smith yet so I guess selling them for money is handy, but she is not short on money for her level anyway.
As far back as 2020, Prowler's Profit is actually bugged so that it's not functional.
The only thing you can do with money in this game is buy a bunch of houses. After a certain point, your gold has a pointless existence.
That Imperial Luck perk is bugged too. Every race actually has it.
I've been playing Skyrim for way too long to NOT power level smithing via eurland grey-manes vendor chest the second I get whirlwind sprint at which point I also have the early game equivalent of infinite money that snowballs as the game goes on. If I ever find them while playing that'd be great. But I never have
I did it for the first time in the game I got going now and it's ridiculous. I average like 10 flawless everything every time I come back to unload my stuff
Not really. To get that, you have to be able to throw away $25,000 gold to acquire the Solitude manor. So by that point, money is not an issue for you anyways.
Money is never a problem. Raid a dungeon, grab everything good, smith a bit, sell, repeat. I don't even bother with potions. Basically when I did this I just went to the general Solitude area and screwed around until I had $25K.
It's nice and all to feel so rich, but by the time I collect all gems, I'm already rich anyway. That's my issue, but to be rich for the sake of being rich, it can be entertaining
It’s a cherry on top, that’s how I look at it. Sits there, looks pretty, may get to it after the main dish is done if at all
I tried a character once who was a professional thief and came to Skyrim specifically to get these jewels and the crown. She'd been hired by an unknown party (turned out to be Vex) and was given good info on where to look. So it was just a beeline from Helgen to get all of them before doing anything else. This made it fun and useful. Most fun was getting the one in Dragonsreach without even being accosted by Irileth. The one in the cave below Thalmor Embassy is also a little tricky. And my character had to bluff her way into the college and Dark Brotherhood to get at those ones. \[Edited to add: It was not bluffing with Grelod.\]
That sounds awesome. I’ve never done a character like that. I kinda just replay the same type and do mostly the same quests. But my question is what race did you play with that character? And would you have any recommendations for perks or maybe standing stones to use for that play through?
That was a Nord, I think I started with Thief Stone, hit Pinewatch for the first gem, then went sort of clockwise around the map, so I switched to Lover Stone when I reached Markarth. As far as perks, honestly I do most characters the same -- light armor, sneak, a mix of archery and spellsword. I like to level up those skills by sniping elk and thrashing bears out in the wilds a lot a lot, smithing loads of leather armor. I suppose this is a ranger build? [Edited: Nord, not Bosmer! I don't always sweat race very much except for character reasons. Wanted a Nord to blend in.]
Yeah, by the time I’ve gone to all the places the stones are stashed, I’ve got more gold then I know what to do with. I just started dumping it all into safes in my mansion, just to see how quickly I get rich again.
I use it to help with smithing when i want some quick easy levels. Make smithing legendary and then craft a bunch of diamond gold necklaces or other gemmed jewelry with all the gems you pick up. Very efficient and profitable.
Right? A lot of the stones in the holds are easy enough to grab, but the ones that require you to go to dungeons? Meh. At its peak, I usually have over 60 quests active just in the base game alone and just find an area with 3 or more active quests in a general area and bang them out. Even then, you hit a point where gold is pointless. More often than not, you are generally crafting your own armor and weapons. It's fun to cover the floor of a house with nothing but gems, but that gets old quick
Seriously I need 5 stones cause I'm not using an online map and have never actually fully completed this quest but my main right now on ps5 has about 166 hours he's level 228 and I have over 300k septims like is it still worth completing
It’s worth it for the gratification, especially if you’re trying to get as close to 100% as you can
I do this quest super early. Like, usually before I head to whiterun, early. It makes it so much easier to sit back and enjoy the game without worrying too much about money. The downside, of course, is eventually you end up with 200lbs of gems you gotta DO something with.
Honestly, I would only use this for other gem related quests. "When you no longer need it, any rare item becomes common, but when you need it, all common items become Myths." I could save up so many gems without thinking about it. The second I need a specific gem? I'm gonna find 298 Flawless Diamonds, the next upgrade for my weapons and armor, complete 6 side missions, all before I find what I need after looking up what I need to do
>"When you no longer need it, any rare item becomes common, but when you need it, all common items become Myths." This hurts so fucking much
"Game breaking" at a point in the game where money is virtually meaningless and your Smithing (the only day-to-day use for gems, other than selling) and Enchanting (the main use for all the jewellery you make with Smithing) skills are probably maxed as well.
Good thing there’s this thing called legendary skills so “maxing out a skill” is meaningless
If you legendary smithing you’re an insane person
??? It’s free levels?
Once you’ve used telekinesis, no other level grinding feels worthwhile and no other skill is really worth making legendary. Telekinesis is actual free levels.
It’s an exploit and I don’t like doing it
The line between what is and isn't an exploit in Skyrim is pretty blurry. In my opinion power leveling in any form is an exploit, and not really any different than things like Telekinesis, Soul Trap or Muffle shenanigans. One just takes longer while accomplishing the same goal. I'd much rather spend my time actually playing the game than grinding out levels in a single player RPG just because it's "not as much of an exploit" as a faster method.
I've done almost everything thereb8s to do in Skyrim, so I don't mind exploiting
I mean, not a lot of reason not to if you hoard ingots. Warrior stone + lovers comfort helps trivialize the re-leveling, smithing gear + smithing pot for improving makes a joke of it. Hell, even with no ingots, go clear 2 dwemer ruins of all the scrap to make dwarven ingots and spam dwarven crap forever (might need some iron tho)
Just get the transmute spell, then get iron ore and transmute till you have gold and make jewelry. The more valuable the more points you get
You can improve weapons and armor tho, which adds more points on top of the initial crafting. But yes, unless you are crafting ebony or higher, the value of jewelry tends to be higher. I usually work on maxing smithing before I even have 12 stones, so dwarven shit is my go to
I alwayhsve to have crafting every playthrough. I used Madness armor
Just get the transmute spell, then get iron ore and transmute till you have gold and make jewelry. The more valuable the more points you get
Smithing is one of the best skills to legendary for the levels and perk points because it's so easy to re-max, what are you on about?
Smithing 100, make all the gear you need, legendary it, spend the next 2 irl days grinding it. You now have 100 perk points to use (especially when running ordinator mods)
You could just legendary any other skill though. Get alteration enchants and telekinesis and you can get it to level 100 in like 30 seconds. Smithing is so much more time for the same reward
Because the telekinesis exploit is cheating, imo. I don’t like it. I’ll keep doing smithing since it’s the route I enjoy
Exactly
Don't forget alchemy. Get a good set of enchanted alchemy gear and you can make potions that easily sell for 1k apiece. Clean out an alchemist's stock and you can pull down 20k+ in one sitting with some extra ingredients you found along the way.
It can provide fuel for the Atronach Forge. Rubies, Sapphires, & Amethysts can make fire, frost, and void salts, which are great for crafting explosive arrows or bolts. Hat tip to Skypothesis for this one. I'll also use the glitch where you can 'pick up' two or more stones at once by clicking rapidly. Usually only need to collect 12 or so.
I can never get the "clicking rapidly" to work. I just pick it up. Has it been patched?
I don't think its been patched. By clicking I actually mean hitting the 'e' key on my keyboard. I always quicksave before I try. The extra stones don't show up in inventory but the quest counter does increase.
Still works for me with the unofficial patch running. It’s a “cheat” I love.
You have to have the stones ID’d by vex first… once you do, it’s possible to get up to 4 stones at once with rapid clicks
Yea, it's crazy how many gems you find with it. Now, i only get it if I have mods to make the merchants richer and to make armor and weapons out of gems.
If there were 12 gems instead of 24 I might actually finish the quest without already having 8 houses and gold falling out my pockets with every step
I don't see this as game-breaking, especially on AE. Everything that it does, is already done by something else, but better. 1. Money: Goldenhills Plantation 2. Smithing: Dwemer ruins, especially one in Markarth behind Nimhe 3. Enchanting: it doesn't really make anything for enchanting. You will have the same amount of XP even if you enchant iron daggers. And every single one of this is available right after Helgen. Just get staff of storm atros from atronach forge before attempting to clear Nchuand-Zel. Edit: but I definitely do enjoy just dropping all the gems on the floor of my house and then acting like Scrooge McDuck.
I agree for the most part but there is one thing it can do that these others don't provide fuel for the Atronach Forge. Rubies, Sapphires, & Amethysts can make fire, frost, and void salts, which are great for crafting explosive arrows or bolts. Hat tip to Skypothesis for this one.
Ohh! Now we are talking. I never even considered this, I almost never play with those arrows because of how scarce resources for them are. Edit: also, where they recommend that? I've seen several of their builds, but not this one.
They talk about crossbow bolts in the Saxhleel Vagabond and possibly arrows in the Tonal Scholar?
Thanks! I'll watch these.
Honestly watch them all, each video is a work of art :)
I love it because i can just accumulate massive amounts in storage and then break them out if I want to power level smithing/speech.
It’s one of the first things I do when I start a new play through. I just like having stupid amounts of money. It does get irritating trying to sell them because it takes me forever to get the perk where the shops have more money. That’s way harder than getting the stones in the first place, for me at least.
Yeah, kind of. Though by the time you get that done you're not likely to be short of cash anyway. For me, the really game breaking point was when I maxed out the trade skills and made myself top tier weapons, jewellery and armour. I killed Alduin in two hits shortly after. Breaking the combat system is far more of an issue than just breaking the economy..
Nah by the time you’ve completed the quest you’ve already got to be rich enough to buy the most expensive house in the game, I’m already practically printing money buy then with alchemy and the transmutation spell
Not game breaking, just fun late game stuff. Takes too long to get to be game breaking.
Considering how difficult and long it takes, i'd say it's worth the effort. Money isn't too valuable lategame anyway.
I agree. For a while I thought that some stupid bug locked me out of the whole companions quest line (plus some other minor bugs) and I was grumpy as hell about it. I had never encountered anything that bad in 20+ years of gaming (pc and xbox) so I decided to use the glitch to pick up two or three stones at a time to.. I dunno, get back at the game or so 😅🤷♀️ Prowler’s profit is insane though. I have never even been able to sell all the gems I picked up since I got it, no matter how hard I tried.
I don't need more things to sell. I've collected 1000 things I've enchanted and put in a chest in my house, ready to sell whenever shops refresh. I already can't possibly gain more money through selling...
You can put it to good use if you use a jewelry mod and one of the perk overhaul mods. Then you can make different kinds of jewelry and enchant them with more power.
I always complete it as I go to all those places anyways. I just collect the gems. Money is pointless for me in the game. I make my own stuff.
I used to throw all the gems I found in a playthrough into one of those open trough style chests in Proudspire's basement since you could see them all shine in the light. Things were fine until I got that perk and entering Proudspire and the game became a slideshow.
Not in the slightest
Something in Skyrim being game breaking? It could never
I always have all the money I really need and maxed enchanting/smiting long before I achieve this perk.
Most of the time, when you complete the crown, money is no longer important and the gem drops is just a reminder that you did a chore. It's not really game breaking, the game auto-breaks at high level/end game.
Yes it gets you loads of money. But by the time you usually complete it you could have a few levels in alchemy and clean out every merchant by buying all alchemy ingredients and selling resulting potions...
It’s exactly why I do the thieves guild asap. Besides unlocking fences that have more gold on hand, all future exploration pays for itself with all the extra gems you find.
Selling the gems is too much work. Also run into the issue were merchants don’t have enough gold to buy most of them anyways
Its one of the ones I do really early on purpose specifically for that perk. Basically infinite money? Yes please. Plus I make gold rings to level up my smithing and if you add gems to the rings it makes it go way, way faster
Yeah, too bad I can’t SELL them! They’re great for crafting but merchants only have so much gold. I’ve gotten to points where I’ve had like 20 flawless diamond and all I could do was craft diamond jewelry just to up my smithing, but then I can’t sell the necklaces! It’s almost too much at certain points
I've gotten to where I'll just take what the merchant has. It's better than having to just leave them somewhere.
I mean, by then you could already be absolutely loaded from the enchanting/alchemy treadmill. Get a good set of alchemy gear and you can make a ton of cash just by buying out the alchemist stock and using whatever ingredients you have to make a good 10-20k in potions.
I'm still chopping wood in Riverwood!
Gold is too easy to come by, it isn't fun having millions of gold and nothing to spend it on I wish you could build a vast estate and hire guards, Cooks etc and have to pay them on a regular basis. Endless gold and nothing to spend it on is pointless.
Doesn't break anything for me. I got it pretty early on a thief character, level 12. She gets a few more garnets and amethysts now, regular and flawless. Yay, I guess. Nothing really game changing. She is not much of a smith yet so I guess selling them for money is handy, but she is not short on money for her level anyway.
As far back as 2020, Prowler's Profit is actually bugged so that it's not functional. The only thing you can do with money in this game is buy a bunch of houses. After a certain point, your gold has a pointless existence. That Imperial Luck perk is bugged too. Every race actually has it.
I've been playing Skyrim for way too long to NOT power level smithing via eurland grey-manes vendor chest the second I get whirlwind sprint at which point I also have the early game equivalent of infinite money that snowballs as the game goes on. If I ever find them while playing that'd be great. But I never have
I did it for the first time in the game I got going now and it's ridiculous. I average like 10 flawless everything every time I come back to unload my stuff
Not really. To get that, you have to be able to throw away $25,000 gold to acquire the Solitude manor. So by that point, money is not an issue for you anyways.
Not if you're trying to raise $25k right at the start of the game, just to get that one!
if money is the prob, why not just raise 5k and buy heartfire house and plant mora tapinella/scaly pholiota/creep cluster and craft potions?
Money is never a problem. Raid a dungeon, grab everything good, smith a bit, sell, repeat. I don't even bother with potions. Basically when I did this I just went to the general Solitude area and screwed around until I had $25K.
I get more than enough gems in vanilla