UESPWiki:Reference Desk/2013

Critical Damage
Where is this concept best described for Skyrim? I can't find it at the moment!  
:I'd say . --Alfwyn (talk) 14:15, 31 December 2012 (GMT)
::Hmmm... I'd think the same, but that's the page I'm trying to see if I can improve. Maybe the info on there is good enough already. Or maybe I didn't look at all of it yet. I thought I remembered reading a better treatment of it somewhere else. But I searchy and no findy. Thanks. --JR (talk) 17:33, 31 December 2012 (GMT)
:::Waaadhaminnit. What is critical damage? Are we (or should we be) actually referring to damage multipliers related to sneak attacks when we talk about critical damage? --JR (talk) 17:34, 1 January 2013 (GMT)

LOST WOODEN MASK!!!!

uesp tells me that the mask will respawn with the note in a few days. well, after waiting i can get the note to respawn but not the mask. any one have any ideas? im on 360 btw.  

:The mask no longer respawns, according to the Creation Kit. That's odd, as I've acquired several legitimately in the past. Your only option is to find your old mask, reload to a save where you had it, or roll up a new character if you don't want to continue without it. --AKB   01:04, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

::damn that sucks. i know i have either sold it or left it somewhere because the character i'm playing as was the first one i made :/
::thanks anyways  

:::You're welcome, I personally apologize about that note. I added it based on my own experience, but it doesn't seem to be true (at least not now). I've removed it to avoid any further incidents like this. --AKB   01:23, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

Possibly the most common question out there - Unadoption in Skyrim

Is there a console command for unadoption? I've just spent ages googling this and can't come up with any answer. Many of them say "check UESP" but there doesn't seem to be anything here. I've never used the console commands in my life, but for this, I'm willing to type them in like I'm writing an essay. Anything to get rid of this kid. Please help! 85.250.99.84 21:41, 12 January 2013 (GMT)
:I do not believe that there is a single unadoption command, but you could probably do it with a combination of faction changes, script calls, and quest stage setting.  Not 100% but, I would say that it is possible, but very difficult. Jeancey (talk) 02:17, 10 March 2013 (GMT)

"bat bandit" ramifications

On the Skyrim Console page, there is a description of how to do a alternative start.  
The scenario and character created are NOT involved in the main quest ("does not start").
My question:  What happens to other, more developed, characters I am playing that ARE
involved in the main questline?  
:Are you asking if the actions of 1 of your characters affects the world for other characters? If so, the answer is no. Each one of your savegames is an independent "instance" of Skyrim that does not affect any others. --Xyzzy     21:32, 29 January 2013 (GMT)

::Thanx a bunch for that quick answer.  I was concerned about the possibility of the main questline being broken for other characters by intentionally voiding it for the "Bandit".  Figured the authors would say so if that were the case, but still worried about it.  Again, thanx...  P.S.  Handle is ta192; thought I was signed in...

Hjaalmarch- Waking Nightmare problem

I downloaded Hearthfire on PS3 and went to buy the land from the Jarl of Dawnstar however I cannot since I couldn't complete the Waking Nightmare quest due to a bug in the game, is there some way of getting around this without having to start a new game?  
:Unfortunately at the moment there is not a way to bypass that. You could get the land at one of the other holds and build there but if you are determined to build in The Pale you're going to need to start over. Lord Eydvar   10:15, 21 February 2013 (GMT)

Remarriage

Is there any way to remarry on PS3 or Xbox? If your wife is killed, is it possible to find someone else and remarry?  
:No. Console commands are the only way.         20:04, 21 February 2013 (GMT)

Nightingale Armour

I seem to have misplaced my Nightingale Armour on the PS3 version of Skyrim. Is there any way to retrieve another set or a way to recover lost items?  

:There is no way to retrieve an other set of Nightingale Armor, however some tests I did one or two months ago show that it is a permanent item and as such should never disappear under any circumstance. I recommend checking the places where you think you could've put it. Elakyn (talk) 15:28, 10 March 2013 (GMT)

Updates and betas.

Is there a window or timeframe between betas and when they are released as updates?  
:In the past, there has generally been a period of 2-4 weeks of beta testing, and then around a week for Bethesda to get the update past Microsoft and Sony's inspections. Jeancey (talk) 17:09, 14 March 2013 (GMT)

::I noticed that a known issues on the latest patch beta 1.9.26 was not addressed in the list. I emailed Bethesda about it and asked a question about the possible cause. I'm not a programmer of any kind and have the PS3 version of Skyrim but is there a place I should be posting or looking up possible causes or solutions for various issues I discover? Here is what I sent to Bethesda. 

::I noticed in the list of fixes for patch 1.9 it doesn't mention the issue where the Housecarl's Quarters does not get furnished once you become a Thane of Solitude. 
::Would this have happened if items had been stored in the barrels in that room prior to becoming thane? And could this happen in other residence?  

Not Healing

Whenever I summon Lucien LaChance to battle I use the console command "getav health" afterwards to check his remaining hp. I've always noticed that he never heals. Is this a bug or is he not supposed to regenerate health? If so, can I force him to regenerate health using console commands? 107.47.33.137 16:40, 18 March 2013 (GMT)

Editing etiquette.

I'm new to the contribution  thing. What's the etiquette for listing a bug work around I discovered when another solution has already been provided? Should I contact an editor first or simply enter it and let them evaluate it later?  

:I'm not completely certain what you're saying here. Bug is on a page, and has a solution, but you have another solution you want to add?

:I don't know if you're looking for format tips, but if so, just add the solution under another bullet point, like this (with the green being what you add):

:   
: 
:   

:If in doubt, you can always contact a mentor or ask on the talk page. but it's certainly acceptable to go ahead and make the edit! If someone thinks it needs discussing, they'll say so. As long as the edit adds info, it's quite alright to add it. Multiple solutions and workarounds for bugs are always welcome, too, since not everything works all the time.         01:05, 19 March 2013 (GMT)

Friends potion effects are around 25% stronger after drinking them??? anyone know how cause we cant figure it out

My friend drank a 41% fortify enchanting potion. We aren't using the fortify restoration bug tho. Any he drank a 41% FE potion which is the highest we could make but under his active effects turns it to 51%. Same with strength potions. He drinks a 60 one and it says 73 under active effects  
:Is your friend a vampire with the Necromage perk? That causes restoration-type effects to be 25% stronger, including on yourself. --Xyzzy     17:50, 3 April 2013 (GMT)

Dark Brotherhood

So a long time ago I started the "with friends like these" quest, and i ended up killing astrid because i thought that she was evil when she was having me pick someone to kill, and after that I went to the dark brotherhood sanctuary and murdered all the other members that were there. So now after months of playing and several new quests being completed, i would like to go back and do the dark brotherhood ones.  I used the placeatme console command to bring the dark brotherhood members back to life, and i also used the console to force complete the "with friends like these quest" and now i would like to go right back into the dark brotherhood quests but all the brotherhood members seem disengaged from the game since i resurrected them. My question then is what do i do to either get them to resume the questline or to start the dark brotherhood quests from the beginning without clearing out everything that ive done in the game??  
:I really doubt that there is any way to force the game to completely reset the quest. When you kill Astrid, you immediately fail the quest, which ends the scripts that would progress the quest. You could try using the console command to reset the quest, but since you killed and then resurrected the DB members, there is no guarantee that their individual scripts will trigger properly, making it likely that quest would break at some point. Your only sure bet it to reload a save from before you killed Astrid, or start a new game. --Xyzzy     16:09, 6 April 2013 (GMT)

Skyrim Marriage

My question is about doing quests for NPC's after marrying them. I'm not talking about the quest that is a prerequisite for marriage, but other non-marriage-related quests for one's spouse. I'll give an example. If one marries Ysolda from Whiterun BEFORE finding the Sleeping Tree Sap, can one still begin that quest, finish it, and sell the Sleeping Tree Sap to Ysolda? Will the necessary dialogue appear if she is living in one's home or if one moves in with her? Thank you for your time, and I appreciate all the work people are putting into this site.  
:Sorry for the late reply. AFAIK, marrying an NPC doesn't prevent you from starting or completing their associated quests. There may be individual cases where their quest dialogue doesn't appear after marrying them, but these would most likely bugs and have workarounds. --Xyzzy     16:41, 4 May 2013 (GMT)

"Returning Persistent Reference" message

I had a new experience today playing the game that baffled me. I had acquired The Pale Blade a long time ago and placed it in the weapon's plaque above the door in Breezehome, then took it down today for some testing. When I placed it back in the weapon's plaque, I received a game message stating "Returning Persistent Reference". I removed it from the plaque and replaced it again and received the same message again. I don't recall ever seeing that message before. I googled it and found a forum topic on the Steam website under Skyrim Creation Kit, but I felt like I was reading ancient Sanskrit trying to understand it. Does anybody know what it means? --Xyzzy     16:51, 4 May 2013 (GMT)

mine not respawning

the iron ore mine outside whiterun is not respawning. its been like 500 days and still doesnt respawn. i need a good supply of iron/silver/gold ore can someone tell me some nonglitched mines that actually respawns?  
:Here's a list of mines. All of them should respawn, and hopefully won't glitch on you.         15:16, 7 May 2013 (GMT)
::Do the ore deposits located outdoors respawn the same way as dungeons, as in if you revisit them too soon, the respawn timer resets? I wonder if that's what happening here. --Xyzzy     20:08, 7 May 2013 (GMT)

Ayleid Information - Help, Please

I need someone playing Oblivion or someone who can reference the game data directly (without using CSList) to check Umbacano's dialogue which gives the Ayleid name for the White Gold Tower as the "Temple of the Ancestors". I can find no source for this. CSList just pinches off this incredibly unhelpful turd.

Rpeh posted the dialogue at issue in this 2011 discussion, but I cannot corroborate it. Numerous searches in multiple places for key phrases and sentence fragments have turned up nothing. I even watched a few "Let's Play" videos on youtube; I cannot find a trace of "Temple of the Ancestors".

While I'm at it, if anyone knows a source saying that the Ayleids are called "Ancient Ones", that would also be very helpful. Both of these phrases were added by reputable contributors, but I can find nothing to back them up, almost like they may have been adding false info as bait, like when Google inserted nonsense words into their search codes and caught Bing copying it.

Anyways, it's very frustrating, because anything without a cite is getting scrapped.      05:52, 14 June 2013 (GMT)
:For your first request, I checked directly with the CS and found "Temple of the Ancestors" as a player dialogue topic text, and Umbacano replies to that topic with, "You know it as White Gold Tower -- the center of the ancient Ayleid capital of Nibenay." and "It was brutally sacked thousands of years ago by humans led by Alessia. The Imperial City is built over the ruins of that ancient city." Unfortunately, he doesn't say anything about Ayleids being called Ancient Ones. --Quill-Tail (talk) 09:47, 14 June 2013 (GMT)

::I found a source that calls dragons and draugrs "Ancient Ones", but not Ayleids in any of the games I have dialogue dumps for. I did find enough references to Temple of the Ancestors in Oblivion, however. --AKB   10:03, 14 June 2013 (GMT)

:::Due to the quest structure of The Collector, it is very hard to initiate the dialogue about the Temple of the Ancestors if you go directly to Umbacano and do not sell an Ayleid Statue to a merchant before. When you visit Umbacano for the first time and show him an Ayleid Statue, he’ll say ''“Ah! One of the Ten Ancestors! Hold it up to the light ... yes! Exquisite! You did the right thing by bringing this to me. I am interested in obtaining the complete set of these statues. If you bring them to me when you find them, I will pay you double for each one. I would be happy to take this statue off your hands right now. I assume that's why you came to see me?” and you’ll be on stage 15 of the quest. If you sell the statue to him now, the quest will proceed to stage 20 before the dialogue is over. However, the dialogue “I am looking for the complete set of ten for my collection. They were once part of the Temple of the Ancestors in the ancient Ayleid capital. Through my research, I have learned that they were removed from the temple before its sack by Men. I believe they were hidden in various Ayleid settlements across Cyrodiil, although I do not know the exact location of any of them. Are you ready to part with your statue now?“ can only be triggered if you talk to Umbacano about “Ayleid Statues” while you are on stage 15. So you have to refuse to sell him the statue (“The statue is not for sale right now.”) When you talk to him about “Ayleid Statues” again (which can be right after the refusal, without even leaving the dialogue before), you’ll meet the condition, he will tell you that the statues were once part of the Temple of the Ancestors, and a new topic, “Temple of the Ancestors” (MS21TempleOfAncestors), will be added, to which he will answer “You know it as White Gold Tower -- the center of the ancient Ayleid capital of Nibenay. It was brutally sacked thousands of years ago by humans led by Alessia. The Imperial City is built over the ruins of that ancient city.”'' As far as I see it, this is the only way to get the dialogue/topic about the Temple of the Ancestors if you haven't received the note from Umbacano to start the quest. --Holomay (talk) 10:14, 14 June 2013 (GMT)

::::Excellent; thanks for the help!      16:31, 14 June 2013 (GMT)

Maximum Difficulty Walk-Through (Oblivion)

I have recently started to create a very in-depth walkthrough for Oblivion. The page itself can be found here. My talk page concerns this, but I have no concrete answers. Will a high-level administrator or moderator answer this question after looking at the unfinished guide: When the guide is finished, would it be possible to either add it to the  The Hardest Difficulty Strategy Guide, or to place a link there leading to mine? Grim765 (talk) 04:25, 18 June 2013 (GMT)

Shadowmere and Frost vanished????

I did the Dark Brotherhood quest line for Shadowmere and then did the quest line to obtain Frost. I started to use Frost and left Shadowmere at the Black Briar Inn where you get Frost. I then used a different horse during the Civil War quest line, that horse died but now I can't find Frost or Shadowmere. Any suggestions would be great.  
:See this article for ways to find Shadowmere. For Frost, if you are on PC, use the console command  , followed by the command   to bring Frost to your current location. If you are on Xbox or PS, you'll have to try to remember where you left him and search there. It's always possible that Frost was killed by some critter, though, so no guarantees that you'll be able to find him. --Xyzzy     05:16, 3 July 2013 (GMT)

::I'm on PS3, I tried going to the area where I left Shadowmere but he wasn't there. It's the inn where you steal Frost's identification papers, I left him outside in front of it. Is there a possibility that he's wandered off somewhere? Or could he be at a stable or re-spawn somewhere?  
:::The most likely place for Shadowmere to respawn is either his last location before you mounted a different horse (Black-Briar Lodge in this case) or at the dark pool in front of the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary near Falkreath. If he doesn't appear at either one of those places, you could try buying and killing another regular horse, then fast-traveling back to the Sanctuary or the stable where you bought and first mounted the regular horse. It can take awhile, but once you acquire Shadowmere, he will usually rejoin you at some point after you lose whatever horse you replaced him with. I have been surprised more than once by Shadowmere suddenly appearing next to me after I fast-travel somewhere, long after I lost him or replaced him (usually with Arvak). I don't have much experience with Frost, but I believe he tends to die much more often than Shadowmere, so you may be out of luck with him. --Xyzzy     23:28, 3 July 2013 (GMT)

Black Books

What do you do with all of the black books once you have them all ?  
:You can use them to revisit Apocrypha, but other than that, they are useless. Jeancey (talk) 02:29, 8 July 2013 (GMT)

Moonrise and -set

I was wondering where in this Wiki I could add information about the rising and setting times and cardinal direction of Masser and Secunda in Skyrim. I couldn't find this information anywhere on the internet, so I researched it myself. It's specially interesting if you're roleplaying without your compass and/or limited access to your map because at night the moons are the only reliable directional source (since there are no fixed stars).

So where should that information be put? On the Lore articles about Masser and Secunda? Or the Lore Astronomy article? Or somewhere else or nowhere at all?

78.48.102.250 16:06, 31 August 2013 (GMT)

:I don't think we've tracked the data you're looking for. The closest thing I think we have is this.      16:12, 31 August 2013 (GMT)
::@Minor Edits: I think the IP was looking for a page to put information on the cardinal direction and rising and setting times for the moons in Skyrim and how it can be used as a good directional source. According to IP the information couldn't be found anywhere.

::Since this is game-specific information, I don't think putting it in lore pages would be appropriate. Maybe ? Since as you put it, the information will help you navigate Skyrim.      16:49, 31 August 2013 (GMT)
:::Thanks for clarifying, my bad. If the moons' cycles are the same in each game, it would seem fitting to put it on Lore:Astronomy. But you would need to propose it on the talk page first, as this is undoubtedly original research.      23:12, 31 August 2013 (GMT)

Hearthfire Improvements

So I have recently built my second house (Winstad Manor) and i can't seem to get my improvements to my house. I've bought the bard, horse , chicken etc. and waited 4 or 5 Skyrim days and the still won't be there, I've bought them multiple times and still they are not there. Is there anyway to fix this???  
:Have you changed zones (i.e. entered the house or left the immediate area) since you purchased the improvements? Sometimes, changes aren't made to the game until you leave the area and return, forcing the game to respawn the zone. --Xyzzy     22:45, 19 October 2013 (GMT)

Barenziah Karliah

HI not sure if theis is the right place for asking this but How exactly are these two related, Barenziah was living in the imperialcity when she got pregnant for the tihrd time, but she was living with Tharn, now we since know nightingale was the dark elf master thief but he couldnt have gotten her pregnant cos he was out of the picture at this stage? am i right or wrong?  

:Wrong. "The Nightingales Vol. 2" states Barenziah had a child named Dralsi with Drayven, and Dralsi had a child named Karliah. It later goes on to confirm that it is indeed the same Karliah in Skyrim.      18:49, 11 December 2013 (GMT)