Bethesda recently showed off Skyrim at the Eurogamer Expo, revealing much that we haven't yet seen of the game, including details about its races and skills. Elder Scrolls forum user Sammuthegreat managed to spend some hands-on time with the game, and helpfully shared his experience.
Skyrim's character creator contains a tiny bit of information about each race's abilities.
- ORCS: Beserker
- REDGUARDS: Adrenaline Rush,
- WOOD ELF: resist poison, resisit disease, command animals
- NORD: Battlecry
- KHAJIIT: night-eye, claw attacks
- IMPERIAL: Voice of the Emperor, find more coins when looting
- HIGH ELF: regenerate Magicka more quickly
- DARK ELF: Ancestor's Wrath (surround self in fire), resist fire
- BRETON: Dragonskin (absorb spells), resist shock
- ARGONIANS: Histskin (regenerate health quickly), resist disease 50%, breathe underwater
Additionally, the character development screen comes with a new weight slider that allows you to modify your character's girth. Female characters range from skinny to muscular and slender, while male characters can get massively buff.
Different races will have different stats to begin with. The baseline statistic is 15, with +5 or +10 in certain cases. For example:
- Argonians start with 25 in Lockpicking, 20 in Pickpocketing, Sneak, Light Amour, Restoration, Alteration
- Orcs start with 25 in Heavy Armour, 20 in Enchanting, Smithing (didn't see any more.
- Bosmer start with 20s in most of the thieving skills – Sneak, Alchemy, Pickpocket, Lockpicking – and a 25 in Archery
Additionally, Skyrim will see the addition of perks from Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. Each skill can be further improved and specialized upon with these perks.
Speech
- Buying and selling price 10% better (5 ranks)
- 10% price buying from opposite sex
- Invest in shops and increase available gold permanently in invested stores
- Master Trader every merchant in world gains 1000 gold for bartering
- Buy and sell from any merchant regardless of what they normally buy and sell
- Intimidation attempts twice as successful
- Persuasion attempts more likely successful
Alchemy
- Potions 20% stronger (5 ranks)
- Potions for restore health, magicka or stamina are 25% more powerful (maybe ranked)
- Poisons 25% more effective (maybe ranked)
- Poisons last for twice as many hits
- Two ingredients are gathered from plants
- 50% resistance to all poisons
- All negative effects removed from potions and all positive removed from poisons
- 2 effects of an ingredient are revealed when testing it for the first time (instead of just one)
- Another (unclear recording, sorry!)
Illusion
- Dual casting overcharges effect for more powerful spell
- Cast Novice spells for 50% less magicka
- Cast Apprentice spells for 50% less magicka
- Cast Adept, Expert, Master etc spells for 50% less magicka (more levels this time around)
- Spells work on higher level animals
- Spells work on higher level people
- All spellcasting (from ANY school) is done silently
- Spells work on undead, daedra and automatons
- One I genuinely didn't understand, and it wasn't clear on the recording either – something about "Kindred Mage" or something.
- Fear spells work on higher level enemies
Conjuration
- Novice for 50% magicka etc (up to Master)
- Dual casting overcharges –> greater spell effect
- Bound weapons do more damage
- Bound weapons cast Soul Trap on target
- Bound weapons banish certain creatures (and I think summon creature in their place, not 100% on that though, dodgy recording)
- Reanimate undead with 100 more health
- Summon 2 Atronachs or reanimated zombies
- Summon Atronachs at twice the distance
- Summoned Atronachs twice as strong
Destruction
- More damage for each school (fire, frost and shock) – ranked
- Novice for 50% magicka etc.
- Shock damage chance to disintegrate targets if their health is under 10%
- Frost damage chance to paralyse targets if health low
- Fire damage chance to make low health enemies flee
- Place runes 5x farther away
Restoration
- Healing spells also restore stamina
- Novice for 50% less magicka etc
- Healing spells do 50% more healing
- Something about recharging healing spells (sorry about poor recording quality, it was in my pocket!)
- More is recharged with each hit with healing spells (again, sorry not 100% sure what this means!)
- Spells more effective against undead
- Once a day chance to autocast 250HP restoration when health drops low
- Magicka regenerates 25% faster
Alteration
- Novice for 50% less etc
- Alteration spells have greater duration (probably ranked)
- Absorb 30% magicka that hits you
- Another couple – bad recording again
Enchanting
- Enchants are 20% stronger (ranked)
- Enchanted armour 25% stronger
- "Soul gems provide extra magicka for recharging" again, dodgy recording but that's what I heard, even if it doesn't make much sense
- Death blows to creatures but not people trap souls for weapon recharge
- Health, magicka and stamina enchants stronger
- Extra effect on already-enchanted weapon can be applied
- Shock, Frost and Fire enchants 25% stronger (individual perks for each element) (probably ranked)
Heavy Armour
- Increase armour rating 20% (5 ranks)
- Unarmed attacks with heavy armour gauntlets – damage increased by gauntlets' armour rating
- Half fall damage if all in heavy armour
- Heavy armour weighs nothing and doesn't slow you at all
- Additional 25% armour if in matching set
- 25% armour bonus if all in heavy armour (not necessarily matching)
- 50% less stagger if all in heavy armour
- 10% damage reflected back to enemy if all in heavy armour
2-handed weapons
- 2h weapons do 20% more damage (5 ranks)
- Attacks with warhammers ignore 25% armour (ranked)
- Attacks with battleaxes do extra bleeding damage (ranked)
- Attacks with greatswords do extra critical damage (ranked)
- Power attacks cost 25% less stamina
- Standing power attacks do 25% bonus damage, chance to decapitate
- Sprinting power attacks do double (critical) damage
- Sideways power attacks hit all targets
- Backwards power attacks have 25% chance of paralysis
Archery
- Bows do 25% more damage
- Zoom in
- Zooming slows time
- 10% crit chance
- Move faster with drawn bow
- Recover twice as many arrows from dead bodies
- 50% chance of paralysing for few seconds (might be 15%, can't really hear…)
- Draw bow 30% faster
- Another about arrows – can't hear
Sneak
- 20% harder to detect (ranked)
- Sneak attacks do 6x damage with 1h weapons
- Sneak attacks with bows do 3x damage
- Sneak attacks with daggers do 15x damage (end perk on skill tree)
- Noise from armour reduced 50%
- No longer activate pressure plates
- Sprinting while sneaking performs silent forward roll
- Running does not affect detection chance
- Crouching can make hostile enemies lose sight of you and search for a target
Sammuthegreat mentions that the perks he managed to record aren't the full list contained within the game. Certain ones can be ranked up multiple times for further improvement.
You can look forward to more details about Skyrim's in-depth skill system in the coming days and weeks as more information gets out.
