User:Lordvader178/Sandbox

The One And Only Spoiler Warning

This guide is intended for people who have already beaten most of the game’s missions and are looking for something new to do to make the game more interesting the second (or fifth, or eighth) time around. This guide contains, among other things, a huge list of people that are killed in the game, and requires expert knowledge of many of the game’s missions, rare items, and spells. I will not be telling you where to find the Staff of Worms or Skull of Corruption, for instance, so if you don’t know what either of these items do or where to find them, you would be well-served to play the game some more before trying these tricks out.

The One And Only Danger Alert

Use any and all of these tricks at your own risk!! This is Oblivion, after all – sneezing at the wrong moment can cause a game-ending glitch. I’ll say it once more so I don’t have to repeat myself every few paragraphs: Use At Your Own Risk!!!!

Basics

Items Needed For Tricks

• Skull Of Corruption
• Staff Of Worms or Risen Flesh (Obtained in Shivering Isles)
• Ring Of Vitality (You do not need this, but it will help alot)
• Having at least 100 in all your magic skill will help, but is not neccassary as long as you have boosts.
• Also, being able to get yourself up to 100% chameleon is helpful in any situation, so I would also recommend having the means to do that.
• Abbreviations:

# MG = Mages Guild
# Patsy = The target of your experiment
# SI = Shivering Isles

Spells

(You can change these spells to suit your own needs, these are all custom made spells)

• Disintegrate Weapon for 100pts on touch - Break
• Dominate Humanoid of level 25 for (at least) 30 seconds on touch - Control
• Dominate Humanoid of level 25 in 10 ft for (at least) 30 seconds on touch - Range Control
• Silence in 15 ft for 30 seconds on target - Silence
• Invisibility on self for 30 seconds - Invisibility
• Paralyze for 6 sec on touch, frost damage 80 pts for 6 sec on touch - Super Freeze
• Paralyze for 20 sec on Touch - Super Stun
• Paralyze for 10 sec in 15 ft on target - Super Stun Range
• Shock Damage 10 pts in 10 ft for 1 sec on target - Corpse Dancer
• Drain Hand to Hand 100 pt for 15 sec on touch, Fortify Blade/Blunt 100 pt for 15 sec on touch - Pick up

A Note On Domination

When using either of these spells (or whatever Dominate Humanoid spell you wish to use), you might be tricked by the game into thinking that you can only control NPCs up to level 25. However, if your magic effectiveness is at 100% (you have to be wearing no armor, including shields), then you can control NPC’s of any level with a level-25 spell. This also works with any other leveled spell effects.

Last But Not Least

One other thing, you will need several strong poisons to use against your clone. Just gather the ingredients for these two poisons and brew or dupe them like crazy:

• ‘Freeze’ – Harrada, Frost Salts, Spiddal Stick, Milk Thistle
• ‘Burn’ – Congealed Putrescence (found in SI), Spiddal Stick, Frost Salts, Vampire Dust

(Note that you need to be at least a journeyman in Alchemy to get the full effects of these poisons.)

To get Risen Flesh go here >> http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Shivering:Ghosts_of_the_Hill_of_Suicides

The Perma Clone Guide

Making A Clone Of Your Character

Before you head out to try this, make sure to load up your character with as many items as he or she can carry that you want to have cloned, especially rare weapons and armor that can't be cloned by the arrow or scroll dupe trick (but take care as to what you take, because your clone can use them against you!). Now chose a dungeon that you do not use frequently, one that either contains bandits or marauders.Capstone Cave is a good choice, located a brief walk west of Bruma, because it is boring and well suited for this endeavor. Before you enter Capstone Cave, if you do NOT have the ring of vitality or some other method of becoming invulnerable to poison, either drop your poisons on the ground or store them in the barrel next to the door before going inside; this will keep them from appearing in your clone’s inventory. Also make sure to unequip the Ring of Vitality until after you have successfully summoned the clone. In the case of Capstone Cave, there is usually a bandit and a bandit archer right at the entrance. Kill the archer but leave the regular bandit alive, and without attracting his/her attention. Getting yourself up to 100% chameleon and hit everyone but the intended patsy with Super-Freeze. Kill every enemy in the area but your patsy, and most importantly be sure to pick up ALL their weapons and store them in a treasure chest. Now head back to the entrance, where your patsy should be the only one left alive. Drop the Skull of Corruption on the ground near him/her and start a fight. Make sure to drop the Skull before you start the fight, otherwise it won’t register as a possible replacement for your patsy’s weapon when you disarm them. I would advise saving just before you start the fight. Get in a fight with them, and use the spell "Break" repeatedly until their weapon is broken, or disarm them with a journeyman attack; if you choose to disarm rather than disintegrate, make sure and pick up their weapon as soon as they drop it. If there are no other weapons to choose from in the area, your patsy will pick up the skull and hit you with it, creating your clone.

Making Your Clone Permanent

These next few steps must be done before your clone vanishes as per the cloning effect of the Skull (30 seconds). First, go to your menu and equip the Ring of Vitality and your strongest weapon (hopefully you followed my advice and left the ring of vitality off until the clone was summoned - if not, reload your save and try again). The purpose of the ring of vitality is to keep your clone from obliterating you with your own powerful poisons (also, leaving the ring off ensures that your clone does not start off with it equipped, which would be disastrous). Ignore your clone for now and concentrate on killing the patsy. This must be done very quickly, so use Super-Freeze or something else that can kill them in a matter of seconds. VERY IMPORTANT - Once your patsy is dead, immediately pick up the Skull of Corruption, go to the item menu, and drop it on the ground again. The Skull must stay in the cave if this is to work, and picking it up and dropping it again ensures that it will remain there even if you don't come back for it. Weapons left untouched after they are dropped by a slain enemy have a tendency to disappear when the dungeon respawns, so picking it up and re-dropping it ensures that it won’t disappear. With that done, dart past your clone and run out of the cave and onto the world map. If you are successful, the clone will follow you out the door after a few seconds. At this point, the clone is now permanent. How does this work? I'm no programmer, but I imagine that because the skull stays behind in the dungeon, the spell effect will continue forever until you go back into the cave. If you decide to go back in the cave, the thirty-second timer resumes and your clone disappears, no matter if it is miles away. As I stated before, you cannot re-enter the cave and take back the skull, or else the clone will disappear. But if you followed my instructions, the skull will stay lying on the floor should you want to ever have it again - you'll just have to give up your clone.

Defeating Or Controlling Your Clone

Whether you’re killing your clone for items or just for the sake of facing a truly challenging foe, here’s some tips to save some grief. If you kill your clone outright, you will immediately get kicked out of every guild you are in, because, in effect, you just killed yourself. The answer to that riddle is to kill your clone by using all those wonderful poisons I told you to make. If you didn't already know, killing someone with poison will get you no murder credit and no bounty, since the poison is killing them, not you. Simply lure your clone out into the snow and poison him/her to death. Three or four doses of Burn and Freeze should kill your clone (Burn is more powerful, but Freeze adds paralysis). You can fight them down to their last Hit Point if you want, but just make sure that it's the poison that does them in if you want to stay in your guilds. If your character/clone is a Redguard or other race with poison resistance, you'll need a healthy supply. If you’re playing as an Argonian, you will have to be more creative, possibly by leading your clone to a contingent of town guards and hoping they have the power to take down your clone.

Now, if you are more interested in having a very powerful buddy, hit them with Control as soon as they are summoned. After killing the patsy, re-dropping the skull and leading them out of the cave, fast-travel away to a nearby location (in the case of Capstone Cave, Applewatch works perfectly). Walk back to the cave, and your clone will be waiting for you. If you don’t fast-travel away, there’s a chance your clone will attack you when the spell wears off; by fast-traveling away, you insure that your clone will not be aggressive towards you (it will be visibly annoyed at you due to its bottomed-out disposition, but it won’t attack you). You’ll have to lead it around with Control if you want it to follow you, but this is still one of the best followers you can possibly have in Oblivion.

Bear in mind that your clone will eventually optimize whatever gear it has permanently, so if you want to control what your clone wears, make sure and have nothing but your desired weapons, armor and outfits in your inventory when your clone is summoned. Also make sure and drop all your torches; otherwise your clone will be permanently carrying one.

Looting Your Clone

This can be a bit tricky, since the game with not immediately allow you to loot your dead clone. The only way around this that I have found is to save after you kill your clone and either turn off the console and reload that save or load a different save file and then immediately reload the dead-clone file. You'll know it worked if your dead clones eyes are now open instead of closed. Now you can loot your clone! Everything in your inventory, including mission items such as the unenchanted Blade of Woe and the Ring of the Vipereye (or more useless items like the Amber and Madness materials list) are cloned, as well as your money, which effectively doubles your wealth each time you do this (restrictions on cloning items are described in a later section).

If after this you wish to use your clone as an undead minion, you can use the Staff of Worms to lead it around and have it fight for you. The clone counts as a perma-body (likely due to all the cloned mission-items in it’s inventory), and will never disappear so long as you don’t go back for the skull.

Multiple Clones

For starters, here are the limitations to this trick: First, this trick only works on generic, unnamed NPCs such as ‘bandits’ or ‘conjurers.’ Second, these clones are not permanent in the sense of a regular perma-clone; they will disappear shortly after their original bodies, somewhere in the neighborhood of seven days. However, this seems to be the only method of making multiple clones with the skull. You can use the aforementioned Range Control spell to lead them around and a have a band of tough warriors fight for you. On my last playthrough I took a band of five cloned bandits to the Battle of Bruma and had them fight alongside me when the gates opened – needless to say, they fought better than most of the town soldiers I had spent hours assembling. First, find a dungeon inhabited by the type of NPC you want to have cloned. Kill everyone in the dungeon and then use the Staff of Worms to lead your intended victim or victims as close as you can to the entrance of the dungeon. While they are reanimated, hit your victim with the Skull to clone them. As soon as the original and the clone start fighting each other, exit the cave and immediately fast-travel to the closest location to the dungeon as possible. Walk back to the dungeon as fast as you can and re-enter. The clone should be standing there, while the original body is dead on the ground. You can do this as many times as you want, using the same corpse or a different corpse, until you have a sizable army of clones. Also, if you put any weapons or armor in the original corpse’s inventory, both the corpse and the clone will have them equipped when you return (more on this in the Dress-a-Corpse section of the Undead Army Guide). As I said before, these clones will eventually disappear, but like any corpse in the game, they will not disappear even after seven days so long as they stay in the same room or area as you. So if you keep them with you at all times, they will stick around as long as you want. Bear in mind though that they cannot fast-travel with you, no matter how powerful a Command spell you hit them with. This trick also works with humanoid summon spells, namely dremora and the saints and seducers you can summon after making your way through the SI storyline. Simply summon them instead of reanimating a corpse and do the trick normally. These will also disappear after the usual amount of days, but you can just as easily amass an army of dremora to fight for you (cloning the saint and seducer summons is more limited, since you can only cast their respective spells once a day).

Perma Cloning Others

You can perma-clone any named NPC in the game just as you can perma-clone yourself, and it’s actually much simpler than cloning yourself, so if you’re in this for cloning non-mission items, this is the way to go (the previously-mentioned cloning of generic NPCs works just as well if you’re simply after cloning items). Simply lead your intended NPC victim (Control if alive, Staff of Worms if dead) to a cave or dungeon. Hit them with the skull to make the clone, then immediately hit them with the Range Control spell so they won’t fight each other. Drop the skull on the ground and exit - just like the self perma-clone, the skull has to remain behind for the clone to be permanent. The clone and the original should follow you outside, and now you can do whatever you want with the clone: kill it for its loot or lead it around as a partner. This is another great way to have an NPC follow you who won’t get killed so easily. Umbra is the best example of this: whether or not you like her sword, there is no denying that she’s one of the game’s most powerful NPCs. Personally I turned her into a perma-body (more on that in the Undead Army section) so that I could make a clone of her anytime I wanted, dressed her in some heavily-enchanted armor, and put a powerful blade in her hand. I used this trick a couple of times and her corrupted clone will easily help you tear through just about any of the game’s challenges. Another helpful tip is that if you make a clone of someone with essential status, their clone will retain the essential status as well. So, in essence, you can have an unkillable clone following you around. The possibilities include Modreyn Oreyn, Raminus Polus, and Lucien Lachance (while he’s in Fort Farragut), as well as countless others. You could likely even keep a clone of Martin around if you are so inclined.

"Unobtainable" Items Only Available Through Glitching

Basics

These are unique items that cannot be obtained normally during the game – they can only be gotten though cloning.

Most of these items are obtained through the same method – make a clone via the Skull of whoever is carrying the item, kill the clone or wait for it to die, save the game immediately before it burns up (lining up your crosshairs so you can immediately access its inventory), load a different file, then re-load the original file. Tap the A button rapidly during the loading screen so you can instantly access the clone’s inventory before it disappears.

WARNING – nearly all corrupted clones have one or several ‘Missing Name’ boxes in their inventory (a.k.a the Ponder item). Generally these refer to items that were intended to be removed from the game by the developers but weren’t – you might have come across them before in the regular game (Delphine Jend is in possession of the most infamous one). Whatever you do, DO NOT take these items!!!! They have no benefits, you can’t do anything with them, and dropping them will immediately cause your game to crash. Just leave them alone and they will be removed from the game along with the clone.

The Grey Aegis

The real challenge behind getting the Aegis is working around the very thing you’re after – the 100% magic resistance it gives your opponent. If you kill him outright, he will drop the Aegis on the ground and you will be unable to pick it up, and since you can’t use magic on him to disintegrate his weapon, you have to let him break his weapon on you. This can take almost 15 minutes real-time, so go get a snack and wait for his dagger to hit the ground broken. Don’t worry too much about your health; his weapon is weak and his magic isn’t impressive; you might have to heal yourself once every few minutes. With his weapon broken, he’ll un-equip the Aegis and put it into his inventory. Kill him, reanimate him, clone him, kill the clone, save and reload, and loot the clone before it disappears.

Shimmerstrike

This one is a bit simpler. Hit the combatant with the Skull and kill the clone – the copy of Shimmerstrike that it drops doesn’t have the same script as a normal Arena item, and you can just pick it up off the ground.

Necromancer's Amulet

When fighting Caranya, make a clone of her, kill it, loot the clone for a copy of the Amulet, kill Caranya without taking the original, give the copied Amulet to Traven, and go back to Fort Ontus and remove the original from Caranya’s corpse. The Amulet is no longer a mission-item – it has weight and can be dropped and displayed. There is another trick for getting the Amulet – since it is an item that is ‘created’ in her inventory when you kill her, a new one will be created every time she ‘dies.’ So, if you have Risen Flesh, reanimate her, and a new Amulet will appear in her inventory when the spell wears off (this is the same trick that works for vampires with vampire dust and dremora with daedra hearts). If you make her into a perma-body as I did (more on that later), you can keep reanimating her and end up with as many Necromancer’s Amulets as you want – I personally have around 50 or so. Now I should mention that I only discovered this trick after giving the cloned copy to Traven. I’m fairly confident it will still work even if you give him the original, but I’m not positive, so skip the cloning process at your own risk.

Emperor's Robes And Shoes

First and foremost, these can ONLY be obtained BEFORE taking the Amulet of Kings to Jauffre and BEFORE the DB mission ‘Scheduled for Execution’ (the layout of the prison sewers changes for that mission and the path to the emperor’s corpse becomes sealed off). Getting them is pretty straightforward – re-enter the prison sewers and head back to the point where the emperor was slain. His corpse will still be there, as will Baurus. Reanimate the emperor, clone him, kill the clone, save-load-and-reload, and loot. You will get one set of robes and two pairs of shoes. Both items are dupable and can be enchanted.

Others

• - Yellow Team Light Raiment – can be gotten from either combatant while getting the Gray Aegis or Shimmerstrike. Don’t waste time cloning for the Heavy Raiment, though - you can get it by pickpocketing from the Yellow Team Champion while she sleeps.
• - Agronak’s Raiment – some people seem to want to clone Agronak’s Raiment, despite the fact that the Heavy Champion Raiment you receive from Ysabel is identical. However, I suppose this is the only way to have both light and heavy versions, but be aware that it retains its mission status and you will be stuck with it forever.
• - The Unfinished Staff – you can get a copy of the Unfinished Mage’s staff by perma-cloning yourself, giving the staff to Delmar, and taking the copy from your clone after the mission is over. It becomes a weighted item, and you can enchant it yourself. The bad news is that it’s effectively useless since it’s treated like a regular weapon and not a staff; enchanting it with fire will not cause a fireball to shoot from it. But still, it’s available if you want it.
• - The Bloodworm Helm – again, make a perma-clone of yourself with the Helm in your inventory, give the original to Traven, and take the copy from your clone. It will keep its mission-status however, so you’ll be stuck with it forever. You can’t obtain it like the Necromancer’s Amulet because Irlav Jarol suffers an ‘off-screen death’ (he dies before you get there); such characters cannot move upon reanimation and cannot be cloned by the Skull.

Items Still Unavailable

The items in the first list are automatically removed from a corrupted clone’s inventory upon summoning, so there is no chance to copy them in this manner:

• - Umbra sword
• - Wabbajack
• - Dreamworld Amulet
• - Any book that has an associated one-time text, such as a spell tome (and yes, sadly this includes the Oghma Infinium)

(There are likely other items that fall under the automatic-removal category, but these are the only ones I’ve discovered.)

The items listed below are unobtainable because the game has no script to support them as items – they are there for decoration and little else. And before you go refuting any of these claims, know that these were discovered to be unavailable through hours of frustrating playtesting by myself and countless other Oblivion fanatics who are far more knowledgeable about this game than most. So if you still believe these items can be obtained in some way, knock yourself out by proving us wrong, but be prepared for disappointment.

• - Mythic Dawn Armor
• - Imperial Palace Guard Armor (the white legion armor worn by guard captains)
• - Syl’s Dress
• - Thadon’s Robes
• - Dark Seducer and Golden Saint Armor (the suit you get during the SI storyline is in a separate class and has its own script)
• - The armor Martin wears during the Battle of Bruma
• - The robes Martin wears during the ‘Light the Dragonfires’ mission

Also, it is possible to clone the Skull of Corruption itself by having it in your inventory when you fight the Dark Clone in Milchar during the SI storyline. You can’t get into the Dark Clone’s inventory even by saving and reloading, so clone the clone and loot the second clone in the normal fashion. With a second skull in your possession, you can then clone for more copies to your heart’s content. However, the bad news is that these copied skulls are completely useless – only the original Skull has the power to create clones. So sadly the dream of having infinite perma-clones is all but dead.

Undead Army Guide

This is a guide to creating your very own undead army, made up of the hapless corpses of those killed by others or murdered by your own hand. With the Staff of Worms at your disposal (or, if you have no other option, the sheer disappointment that is ‘Risen Flesh’ – only once a day? Are you ****ing serious, Bethesda?!), you can lead them anywhere you want, fighting enemies for you and generally being more useful than the follower NPCs the game provides for you. And even if you aren’t interested in using these bodies as an army, if you are a particularly sinister character, you can use this guide to decorate your house or lair with your victims to give said lair a more evil touch.

List Of Permanent Bodies

This is the list of all the perma-bodies I have found in the game thus far, and I’m probably only missing a few. A perma-body is one that doesn’t disappear after seven-odd days, but stays in the game forever and ever. These are usually mission-related NPCs who either die during the course of the story or you murder yourself after their particular mission has run its course. Even though I’m assuming you know enough about the story to know who needs to be murdered and who doesn’t, I’ll place an indicator next to each name of ‘M’ for murder and ‘S’ for storyline death. I’ve broken the list up by towns and areas, and next to each person/victim/minion is the M or S indicator as well as a brief description of how to find them, if needs be. Again, I’m assuming that you know enough about the game to know where to find all these people. And obviously, if a character has an ‘M” next to their name, you should probably finish whatever missions they’re involved in before killing them.

ANVIL

• - Maelona (M)
• - Maeva the Buxom (at Whitmond Farm N of town) (M)
• - Aenvir, Dranas Llerano, Storn the Burly (Lelle’s Merchandise, FG Mission) (S)

BRAVIL

• - Delphine Jend (M) (I wouldn’t recommend removing her ‘ring’)

BRUMA

• - Arnora (S)
• - Tyrellius Logellus (S) (Must choose not to kill Arnora during her mission – Tyrellius will do it for you, then you can fight and kill him. But beware – since Arnora will then suffer an ‘off-screen’ death, she will become a body that will not move or follow you if you reanimate it. But if you choose to kill Arnora yourself, Tyrellius will disappear from the game – your choice. It should also be noted that if you kill Arnora you can get both her red amulet and her blue amulet – both are cool to have and are easily duped.)
• - Jearl (S) (‘Spies’ mission for Jauffre – her dark-elf partner Saveri Faram is not a perma-body)
• - Raynil Dralas (S) (Boreal Stone Cave, ‘Brotherhood Betrayed’ mission)

CHEYDINHAL

• - Llevana Nedaren (M)
• - Telaendril (S) (DB ‘Purification’ Mission – if she disappears before the mission, it means she has been killed by monsters on the road. If that’s the case, look for her body on the road between Cheydinhal and Leyawiin.)

CHORROL

• - Chanel (M) (don’t rat her out to the Countess during the ‘Canvas in the Castle’ mission, or she’ll disappear from the game. And don’t remove the ‘Private area’ key from her inventory! More on this below.)
• - Anyone else employed at Castle Chorrol (M) (don’t take those keys from them! More on this below.)
• - Dar-Ma (M, if you manage to keep her alive during the Hackdirt mission)
• - Prior Maborel (S) (dies when you are bringing Martin to Weynon Priory)

IMPERIAL CITY

• - Matthias Draconis (S)
• - Agarmir (S)
• - Herminia Cinna (M)
• - Ralsa Norvalo (M)
• - Astav Wirich (S) (This is the Mythic Dawn agent that attacks Baurus in Luther Broad’s Boarding House)

LEYAWIIN

• - Black Brugo, Alonso, Roxy Aric (S) (Ayleid ruin Telepe, NW of town, during Magoza’s second mission)

SKINGRAD

• - Bernadette Peneles, Toutius Sextius (S) (choose to murder Glarthir’s ‘stalkers’)
• - Glarthir (You’ll have to murder him if you don’t rat him out to the guards)

BLEAKER’S WAY (MEPHALA’S MISSION)

• - Every citizen (9 total, including Nivan Davilu and Hrol Ulfgar. When they start fighting, I usually choose the bald Nord to keep alive with healing spells while everyone else kills each other. If the people you want don’t get killed in the fight, you can just murder them afterward and it will be fine. Beware that if you do not leave at least one person alive in the town, you will get a message saying that you have fallen out of favor with Mephala. This probably doesn’t make a difference if you already have her reward, but bear it in mind nevertheless.)

WATER’S EDGE

• - Every Citizen (S) (4 total: Biene Amelion, Jolie Retiene, Eduard Retiene, and Marie Alouette. They are killed as a result of the FG ‘infiltration’ mission.)

BATTLE FOR BRUMA (CLOSING THE GREAT GATE)

• - Jauffre (S)
• - Captain Burd (S)
• - Baurus (S) (I imagine his body is permanent even if he dies before the battle, but I haven’t played a file without him making it to the fight so I can’t be 100% sure.)

HACKDIRT

• - Marlena Brussiner and Natch Pinder (S) (if they catch you trying to rescue Dar-Ma they will attack you)

FORT GRIEF

• - Kurdan Gro-Dragol (S)
• - Ra’jhera the Keeneye (Kurdan’s archer) (S)
• - Kurdan’s 3 Hunters (S) (Orc, Nord, and Imperial)

Shivering Isles

(Bear in mind that I’ve tried several times, but SI bodies CANNOT pass through the gate to Cyrodiil, be it reanimation, domination, or simply attacking them and having them chase you – they have to stay in the Isles.)

• - Relmyna Verenim (M) (Xaselm Secret Entrance)
• - Second-in-commands at Pinnacle Rock and Brellach (M) (I remember that the Dark Seducer’s name is Adeo, not sure on the Golden Saint’s name)
• - Cindanwe (M) (Fellmoor)
• - Hirrus Clutumnus (S)
• - Ma’zadha (S)
• - Syl (S) (choose to replace Thadon as duke, fight her at the end of SI story. She does not become a perma-body if you choose to usurp her, and the same is true of Thadon.)
• - Thadon (S) (choose to replace Syl)

Cylarne

• - Vika
• - Azumarl Kaneh (only if you side with the Seducers – Grakedrig Ulfri does NOT have perma-body status if you decide to side with the Saints)
• - Every unnamed Dark Seducer (doesn’t matter which side you pick)

Milchar

• - The Dark Clone - As long as you reanimate it before leaving the room and lead it away from where you killed it (take it outside of Milchar to be safe), it will be a perma-body. Eventually though it will lose its ‘dark’ status and just be a regular clone of your character.

OTHERS

• - Corrick Northwode (M) (Harm’s Folly)
• - Alval Uvani (S) (DB assassination)
• - Ri’bassa (M) (Border Watch, Sheogorath’s Shrine mission)
• - Belmyne Dreleth (S) (portal to Shivering Isles in Niben Bay – he’s the crazy dark elf who attacks the Bravil guardsman)
• - *Falcar (Silorn) (but don’t at any point take his key! More on this below.)
• - Zarhasha (the Khajhiit who is killed by necromancers in Wellspring Cave – however since she suffers an ‘off-screen’ death she will not move or follow upon reanimation.)

Finally, any body you find in a dungeon (for example ‘dead bandit’ or ‘dead treasure hunter’) is a perma-body (‘dead marauders’ usually disappear for some reason). However, they will not move or follow you when you use the Staff of Worms on them – they’ll just stand in place until their time is up. This obviously makes them useless as soldiers, but I wanted to point that out nonetheless.

I’ve suggested using these perma-bodies so that all the work you put into your undead army doesn’t disappear after a few days. However, any corpse in the game will not disappear as long as you keep it in your sights and/or stay in the same area as it. This really isn’t as crucial knowledge for named NPCs since there is now a way to make any of them into Perma-Bodies, so this really applies to generic NPCs that you would want to keep around as long as you can.

• AN IMPORTANT NOTE:

It is a rare occurrence, but some of the perma-bodies on this list only have that status because of a defunct mission-item left on their corpses upon death – if you remove this item, they will lose their status and disappear like normal. The only examples I can think of are Falcar (Falcar’s key) and anyone in Castle Chorrol such as Chanel (the Chorrol private area key is the mission-item in that instance – since the Countess removes the key from your inventory after the ‘Canvas in the Castle’ quest, everyone else’s copy of the key retains the mission-item status). Again, if you remove the mission-item from their corpses, they will disappear soon afterwards, so if you aren’t sure, save, remove the item in question from their corpse, and see if you can drop it from your inventory – if you cannot due to its mission-status, reload and leave it on them.

Making Any Named NPC In The Game A Perma Body

This is by far the most difficult trick in the guide to do, and requires lots of patience and mastery of the perma-clone trick. But the reward is even greater, because you can now choose who fills the ranks of your undead army rather than letting the game choose for you.

As this is a very detailed trick that requires every step to get it right, please save yourself some grief by reading the entire section before attempting it.

The whole concept behind this trick is getting a mission-integral weapon into an NPCs inventory – this will give them game-essential status and their corpses will never disappear. Obviously you can’t just put a mission-weapon into their inventory since you can’t remove them from your own, so here’s what you do:

First, you need a mission-related weapon that is still integral to said mission – one with zero-weight that cannot be removed from your inventory. Here’s a list of weapons that fit the bill:

• - Rockshatter
• - Blade of Woe (before completion of the DB missions)
• - Honorblade of Chorrol
• - The steel weapons you bring to Desolate Mine for the first FG mission
• - The unfinished staff for the MG
• - The unfinished staff of Sheogorath
• - The Fork of Horripilation

(I can’t verify whether either staff option will work – I only added them since they fit the bill of a mission-weapon).

Personally I use Rockshatter, since it is related to the mission with the least consequence (‘When the Vow Breaks’ is an inconsequential side mission with only a small amount of money as a reward). Sadly, if you have already completed all these missions, I’m afraid you’re out of luck for this trick. But before you get mad and hit your computer, or xbox, you should realize that this trick is something that should really be planned out at the beginning of the game – if you have already done most of the missions anyway, such desirable NPCs as Umbra and Mannimarco are likely dead and gone by this point.

Anyway, on to the trick. First, make sure you have the mission-weapon you want copied, all the items necessary for the perma-clone trick, and all the spells listed at the beginning of the sticky, especially Break, Silence, Invisibility, Super-Stun and Super-Freeze. You can start the trick one of two ways: 1) Find a bandit or marauder patsy. Make sure you have the skull dropped on the ground before starting the fight and keep your mission-weapon EQUIPPED AND DRAWN until your clone is summoned. Hit your patsy with Break until their weapon is broken, and they will pick up the skull. 2) If you are a master conjurer, create a spell called ‘Clonemaker’ that summons a regular dremora for 120 seconds. This is also a decent alternative to the original perma-clone trick, but is better suited for this since you can do it anywhere. Drop the skull, draw your mission-weapon and attack the dremora 3 times to get him to fight you. Use the Break spell to destroy his weapon and he will pick up the skull. However (and I’ll repeat this later so you don’t forget), ALWAYS disintegrate the Skull so it drops out of his hands before he dies or disappears; otherwise he will take the Skull with him and it will be gone FOREVER!!!

Once your human or dremora patsy picks up the skull, immediately make a new save so you can reload from this point if things go wrong. Move in close to your patsy, and as soon as they hit you with the skull, kill them with Super-Freeze (but for God’s sake, if you’re using a dremora, MAKE SURE to use Break and destroy the skull first). Now if you’re like me, once you get good at this trick, you may want to make multiple copies of the mission-weapon in one go for multiple perma-bodies – if that’s the case, simply hit your patsy instead with Super Stun to keep them incapacitated while you deal with the clone, repeat the process until you’ve gotten all the weapon-copies you want, then kill the patsy with Super-Freeze.

At this point your patsy should be dead or paralyzed, and your clone should just be materializing from Oblivion. Now, you can outright kill a regular clone without fear of getting kicked out of your guilds – only when they are made permanent do you have to finish them with poison. However, it is much easier to do this trick with poison. If you insist on using magic, make absolutely sure to silence your clone before they have a chance to cast a bound weapon over their copy of the mission-weapon, as this will ruin the trick. This is my personal technique: hit the clone immediately with Burn to silence it, then Freeze after it’s had a chance to draw its weapon, then Burn again as it’s falling to the ground paralyzed. Be careful as to how you use paralyze on your clone, whether through poison or magic, because if they die while lying face-down due to being paralyzed, they will likely drop the cloned mission-weapon through the ground and it will become lost. Before it gets up, use Invisibility to hide. The clone will look for you for a few seconds before dying of the poison, and if its weapon is drawn, the copy of the mission-weapon will fall to the ground. The hard part of the trick is over.

Now first and most importantly, DO NOT PICK UP THE MISSION-WEAPON COPY!!! You can move it around with the left bumper, but putting it into your inventory completely defeats the purpose of what you’re trying to do. Instead you will have to lead whatever NPC you want to turn into a perma-body to wherever the mission-weapon fell, with Control if they’re alive or the Staff of Worms if they’re dead. There are two ways to get them to pick up the weapon 1) (If they’re still alive) – simply get into a fight with them – if they’re unarmed and there’s no other weapons about, they’ll pick up the mission-weapon. If they’re armed, hit them with Break until they drop their weapon. Obviously you run the risk of getting a bounty this way so either wear the Gray Cowl or summon a monster first and attack the monster until it fights you – your victim will join in the fight and pick up the mission-weapon. 2) (If they’re dead) – this way is more detailed but is actually more reliable. Start by putting a weak weapon in their inventory so they’ll equip it (an iron dagger works best). Then reanimate them, and once the animation is done, hit them with the skull so they’ll fight their clone. As soon as the original draws their weapon, hit them with Break so they drop it, and they should pick up the mission-weapon. Don’t worry about them keeping hold of the mission-weapon at this point – reanimated bodies won’t drop their weapons when the reanimation wears off.

Either way you might run into some hiccups, so here’s some advice:

• - First and foremost, NPCs living or dead WILL NOT pick up weapons in safe areas (houses, towns, etc. – you can tell the difference between areas by what music is playing in the background). I’ve tried many times with the same frustrating results, so make sure you make the mission-weapon in either an outdoor, non-city area or a dungeon.
• - Magic-geared characters will be more interested in casting spells than picking up the weapon, so hit them with Silence before instigating the fight.
• - A few rare characters have a much higher hand to hand skill than anything else, and will not pick up the mission-weapon because their fists are more powerful. If that’s the case, hit them with that obscure Pick Up spell I told you to make and make the fortify skill portion of the spell correspond to the mission-weapon: if you’re using the Honorblade, make it blade, and if you’re using Rockshatter, make it blunt.

As long as your victim picks up the mission-weapon and it remains in their inventory, they will be perma-bodies and will never disappear. Just don’t ever remove the mission-weapon from their inventory, as it will invalidate their mission-essential status and cause them to disappear like normal.

An added bonus to this trick is that the mission-weapon is easy enough to hide in their inventories (i.e. they don’t have to keep it visibly equipped); simply equip a more powerful enchanted weapon on them and subsequently remove it after they equip it – the mission-weapon is now unequipped in their inventory. Your new perma-body can be used and abused just like a regular perma-body – put clothes, armor and weapons on them, lead them around with the Staff of Worms, turn them into statues – as long as the mission-weapon copy stays in their inventory, they will stick around forever. And there’s no apparent limit to how many times you can do this – I personally have over 60 created perma-bodies on my current character’s file and there have been no disappearances save the few I’m going to mention in the next sub-section…

The Sweep Effect

Now there are a rare few bodies that cannot be kept even with this trick – these are corpses that aren’t given the usual seven-day reprieve and are cleared from the game almost immediately from the game due to story reasons. For instance, after Traven dies, if you leave the area and immediately return, you’ll find his corpse is already gone. The game seems to give a ‘sweep’ command that overrides everything else, including the mission essential status brought on by putting the mission-weapon in their inventory. Sadly there seems to be no way around this. Here’s a brief list of the other examples I’ve encountered:

• - Faustina and Signy Home-Wrecker – this is likely because the door to Gweden Farm becomes permanently locked after you kill them, and the game removes everything inside. They may stick around if you kill them at the Flowing Bowl (which will forfeit the mission), but I haven’t tried that myself.
• - Perennia Draconis – I stumbled across this one when I was trying to keep every slain member of the Draconis family as a memorial to my dark deeds. Perennia is ‘swept’ away when you return to Applewatch and find the Black Hand waiting for you – since the dynamics of the farmhouse change with Lachance’s corpse and the Black Hand members, the game puts out a game-wide sweep to make sure Perennia’s corpse isn’t still around when you return (for further proof, I always leave her dog Jake alive, and he is similarly removed from the game). It should be noted that the other Draconis family members are unaffected by the sweep (who’d they end up putting in those graves, anyway?).

There are likely a few more examples, so if you do this trick and your intended perma-body still disappears, then it probably falls under this category. But don’t worry too much – as I said it’s very rare, and a body getting ‘swept’ away will not affect other self-made Perma-Bodies in the area.

Good Suggestions

• - Umbra – as I said earlier, whether or not you like her sword, there’s no denying that she is one of the most powerful NPCs in the game. She resilient, hits hard and can move like lightning in heavy armor, so put a powerful sword in her hand and she’ll carve up foes almost as well as you can. And since she has no magic powers, she will concentrate solely on swordplay. If you make a perma-clone out of anyone other than yourself, you would be wise to make it from Umbra because she’s also got the defense of a rhino – unless she’s getting ganged by a group of very tough enemies, you won’t have to constantly be worried about healing her in the thick of battle.
• - Caranya – not only is she a reasonably powerful mage, but keeping her around ensures that you can have an unlimited supply of Necromancer’s Amulets, as she creates one every time she dies after reanimation.
• - Bosmers from Hrota Cave – The ones you fight and kill for the FG mission ‘Den of Thieves.’ There’s about nine of them; they’re all pretty good warriors and all the women have magic powers. They can be a bit slow however, so don’t outfit them in heavy armor or you’ll be waiting around forever for them to catch up to you.
• - The Fugitives (Hlofgar, Ashanta, Dreet-Lai and Enrion) – these are the escaped convicts you fight and kill during the FG mission ‘The Fugitives.’ The first three are very good bandit-type warriors who move well in light armor, and Enrion is a decent mage.

Moving Your Undead Army

The most effective (and pretty much only) way of moving your corpse minions is with the Staff of Worms. Reanimate them and they can walk behind you, follow you through doors and into dungeons, and obviously fight enemies for you. If you want to save charges on the Staff, an easy way to move corpses is to hit the ground beneath them with a cheap area-effect damage spell of either fire of shock, like that Corpse Dancer spell I suggested making. This is obviously not as effective as the Staff, but still a good technique to have if your minions ever get stuck on the side of a mountain or something.

RESTRICTIONS The first and most important thing you should note is this: reanimated corpses CANNOT pass through city gates. This even includes the doors between districts in the Imperial City. I’ve even tried –sigh- Risen Flesh to see if the extended reanimation time would work, but it doesn’t. Other examples of doorways that always repel reanimated corpses are the doors between districts in the Imperial City, the Red Door to the Cheydinhal DB Sanctuary, the portal to Shivering Isles, and the Gates of Madness. Also, you cannot take reanimated corpses into Oblivion Gates.

DOMINATING VICTIMS If you’re going to start gathering bodies for your army, you’ll have to take into consideration where they live and what obstacles, such as impassible city gates, will be in your way. Let’s take Bernadette Peneles, for example – if you murder her within Skingrad, you’ll never be able to get her out of the city. So either wait for her to go out to the grape fields and kill her there, or use a Dominate Humanoid spell to lure her out of town and then kill her. Dominate spells will let a person pass through as city gate, but the spell will wear off as soon as they step outside, so you have to hit your victim with the spell as soon as they you see them outside, or they will immediately walk back into the city. Most city-dwellers are at low levels, so you can save magic by using a lowered-leveled dominate humanoid spell on them, but if it doesn’t affect your victim, stick with the Control spell.

MOVING BODIES BACK INTO OR OUT OF THE CITY If for some reason you want to move a body into a particular city the easiest way is to Dominate them, lead them there, and kill them within the city. If they are already dead, however, it becomes much trickier. There are only two cities that have passages within city walls that lead to the outside world: Bruma (through Jearl’s house and out the Bruma Caverns) and Bravil (through the castle and out Fathis Aren’s tower – it’s a long road, but it should work.) The Imperial City, however, is much more user-friendly. You can use the guard towers along the outer edge of each district to move corpses from district to district, and you can use the Arboretum entrance to the sewers to move them out into the world map. If you need to move corpses into any other city, you will need the Wizard’s Tower DLC. You’ll have to lead your perma-body all the way to the Wizard’s Tower and use the provided teleporters to transport them to the Mage’s Guild of the city where you want to move him/her/them. And for the love of God, if you’re approaching the Frostcrag Spire from the west, don’t try to lead your minions up the mountain – you’ll pull your hair out in frustration. Take them north to Dragonclaw Rock, then east. You’ll pass an unmarked campsite with two bandits. Shortly thereafter, turn south, and a path will take you up the mountain to the tower. After you’ve teleported them to the Mage’s Guild, simply move them out the door and on to your house or wherever you plan on keeping them.

BEWARE – if you decide to move corpses into any city other than Bruma, Bravil, or the Imperial City, you will never be able to get them back out as they cannot pass through the city gates.

As for the Shivering Isles, the only passage that exists out of New Sheoth is through Syl’s chamber, which only becomes available if you choose to replace Syl as the Duchess of Dementia. Syl’s chambers will not open if you replace Thadon (and don’t try opening the door by going through the Xirethard ruins outside of town and coming up the other side – it’s a glitch and you’ll be permanently trapped in her chambers because the passageway shuts behind you.) Be aware also that the doors leading between districts and from the town to the palace have the same status as city gates, and you will not be able to pass your reanimated minions through them.

On a related note, sometimes a body will repeatedly refuse to pass through a door that it should be passing through; this is due to loading problems that become more likely the longer you’ve had your console running. If this keeps happening, simply create a new save, shut off your console, and load up that save when you restart. Clearing the cache can also help. The loading should go back to normal and you can start moving your minions around again.

MOVING YOUR ARMY AROUND THE WORLD

This is the most important rule for this section – always SAVE after every two or three rounds (A ‘round’ is what I call the duration of the Staff of Worms’ effect on the corpses – if you have three bodies and reanimate them one after another, paired with the time it takes for the reanimation animation to run it’s course, you have about 15-20 seconds to actually lead your minions from one place to another before you have to repeat the process.) (Also, I will make several references to the reanimation animation. This refers to when you use the Staff of Worms on your corpses, where they float and dangle in the air. It ends when their eyes open and glow purple)

I realize that I’ve been toting this trick as the ‘undead army,’ but the highest amount of corpses that you can realistically move at a given time is four or five. Say that you’re moving an army of 10 corpses around – given the awesome yet very limited ability of the Staff of Worms, by the time you’ve reanimated corpse number ten, number one would already be dead again. Now that’s not to stop you from leading a big army into, say, a dungeon and just reanimating corpse after corpse to fight the inhabitants, but as far as moving your army from place to place, I wouldn’t recommend moving a group larger than 4 at a time. Also, there are several annoying problems that come with moving your troops through the wilderness, and they are:

Deer! – deer are your worst enemies. If a reanimated corpse sees a deer, it will go chasing after it until the spell wears off and your minion will be lost in the wilderness. Unfortunately the little pains are everywhere, even in Blackwood, so my advice is to keep a wide-ranging destruction spell (ex. Shock damage 30 pts in 40 ft for 1 sec) hot-keyed so you can take out deer as soon as you see them.

Flying off for miles! – Occasionally when you are reanimating three or more bodies in one go, after the reanimation animation runs its course, there’s a chance that one of them will go flying off in a random direction for no apparent reason. Sometimes they only fly a few yards away, and sometimes they can fly so far away that you’ll have to give up hope of ever seeing them again. The most important thing to do, like I said earlier, is to save your game every two or three rounds. If the body only goes flying a short distance, it will usually run back to you before the reanimation spell ends. If you’re worried that your minion is gone for good, just reload your save and try again. I’ve noticed that this flyaway glitch mostly happens on hillsides when you are standing lower than your minions upon reanimation, and an effective way to get around it is to stand uphill from your corpses as you reanimate them.

Disappearances! – While not as frequent as the flyaway glitch, sometimes when corpses are reanimated in a big group, one or more will disappear altogether. Occasionally they will reappear when the reanimation wears off, but other times they just vanish completely. This glitch actually occurs more often in dungeons than outdoors. Aside from saving often, the best advice I can give is to keep your character’s vision focused on the corpses until the reanimation animation is over. It sounds odd, I know, but the disappearance glitch usually occurs when you don’t watch the animation. You don’t have to watch your minions the whole time they are reanimated, mind you – just until the animation runs its course.

Grass! – This isn’t a glitch, but definitely a nuisance. Finding anything in tall grass is a pain, even something as large as a body. So be wise and try to keep your minions from wandering away from roads and paths. It’s a good idea to already know the area you’re in before you try to lead your minions through it.

Dress A Corpse Trick

Most perma-bodies in the game are not suitably dressed, either for combat or whatever other sinister ends you’ve got planned for them. This trick is designed to dress corpses in the clothing and armor of your choice – plain or enchanted, common or unique; any piece of clothing or armor in the game will work for this trick. Obviously you shouldn’t be worried about arming them for safety’s sake, since they’re already dead, so this is a purely cosmetic trick (unless you’re planning on making a perma-clone from them, at which point you should suit them up with some good defensive gear). Personally I like to suit up my minions in Ebony Armor to make them uniformed and more intimidating. Another fun thing you can do is combine armor on them for a themed army – on my last playthrough I outfitted five of my soldiers to look like the Judge Magisters from Final Fantasy XII.

Anyway, putting a weapon on a corpse is easy – just put the weapon in the corpse’s inventory and it becomes automatically equipped, provided that they have only one weapon. Incidentally, this is a good way to keep an undead soldier’s weapon in good condition while they’re fighting – just remove it from their inventory while they’re inanimate, repair and/or recharge it, and put it back in their inventory. Clothing, armor and accessories are much trickier, since they won’t automatically equip (Arrows, too). The trick is to lure the corpse with the Staff of Worms to a city gate or any other doorway that the corpse cannot pass through. Due to occasional loading problems, any doorway has the potential to reject a corpse once or twice - in my case, this seems to happen more often the longer my console has been running - but only city gates work 100% of the time. Put the clothing or armor (including rings and necklaces) that you want to have equipped in the corpse’s inventory, reanimate it, and enter the city. Naturally the corpse will not follow you, so exit the city as soon as you enter. When you step outside again, you should see the corpse fall to the ground in front of you, now equipped with the clothing and armor you put in it’s inventory. Clothing usually works on the first try, and armor may take a couple tries but usually works immediately as well. Mixing clothing and armor can be difficult though, as the game tends to choose one or the other to equip. First, make sure to put the armor in their inventory first and pass through the door to equip it – once the armor is equipped, put the clothing and accessories in their inventory and repeat the trick to equip those. If you try several times and the corpse still won’t equip everything, save, turn off your console, and load up again – this usually fixes the problem.

Turning Boides Into Statues

This is a minor glitch but a fun one, and really doesn’t have any bearing on the concept of the undead army – it’s more for those sinister characters who like decorating their houses or lairs with their victims. Personally I think it’s cool to dress a few of them in suits of armor or fancy dresses and turn them into statues, effectively converting my house or lair into a macabre house of wax. This trick is ideally performed in a small room, but definitely indoors. Reanimate a corpse, and as soon as the animation runs its course, hit them with a paralysis spell lasting at least ten seconds. As quickly as you can, before they have a chance to slowly fall over, run out of the room. Wait in outside for at least thirty seconds, then re-enter the room with the corpse. The paralysis effect remains even though they are dead, and the corpse is essentially afflicted with rigor mortis. It’s pretty funny to move their bodies around in this condition, since they’re rigid as a board. If you want to make them into statues, reanimate them again, and as soon as the reanimation wears off, grab their head or shoulder with the left bumper and try to steady them. It takes a lot of practice to get it right, but if you manage to steady the body so that it stays in place, it will stay in place as long as you wish to leave it that way.

GLITCH WARNING!! This glitch is capable of affecting multiple similar files! For example, if you save a backup file before you paralyze a corpse, but decide you don’t like it and load up the backup file, the same corpse in the backup file will be paralyzed too! Also, don’t paralyze them again when they have already been paralyzed – their bodies will melt when the reanimation wears off. If you’re trying out this glitch and things get too hairy, save, load a different file, then re-load, and things should be fine. But as always, keep a few backup files in case anything turns permanently bad.

Now if you want to have multiple statue-bodies in the same room, you’ll have to follow a few guidelines. Every time you exit and re-enter the room while doing this, any statues you’ve already set up with tip over slowly and fall to the ground, so you need to set them all up at once without leaving the room. The technique that works for me is to put all the bodies close together, reanimate them, and hit them all at the same time with that Super-Stun Range spell I suggested making. Exit the room, re-enter after 30 seconds, and everyone will have the statue effect – you can then move them where you want them, reanimate them, and steady them into place when the reanimation wears off. I should note that certain corpses don’t react well to the statue trick, and do this annoying little ‘hop’ when the reanimation wears off, making it impossible to stand them upright (it’s hard to describe, but you’ll know it when you see it). High elves will always do this hop, as will Saints and Seducers; maybe it’s an issue of height. I don’t know why this sometimes happens or what causes it, but if a body does it once, sadly, it will do it all the time. If the corpse won’t stand up on it’s own, push it up against a wall after reanimating it, and try your best to steady it with the left bumper. Or, as soon as you reenter the room the first time, try to catch the body before it falls. It’s almost impossible to prop up a statue body that’s fallen to the floor. Another infuriating problem I’ve noticed is that certain corpses shake uncontrollably when turned into statues; these are usually regular NPCs that I have turned into perma-bodies. Sometimes the shaking will go away a few seconds after the reanimation wears off, but others will just keep shaking. Sadly, this makes it impossible to turn them into statues, even by leaning them against the wall, because they will just shake themselves out of position and fall to the ground. As of now I have no idea how to deal with this problem.

Now, if you want to keep your statue bodies as statues permanently, read the next few paragraphs very carefully. After you turn off your console or load a different save and resume play later, the dynamics of the rigor mortis-like paralysis change. Essentially the rigor-mortis effect wears off, but the corpse is still suspended in the same place. If after this you try to move the statue body with the left bumper, or if any object happens to touch them, the lingering paralysis effect will immediately wear off and they will fall to the floor. You can do the whole process over again if you accidentally cause this to happen, but it’s a big pain, so it’s easier just to reload a recent save. Also, and this is most important, after the dynamic of the paralysis effect changes, you can no longer enter the room more than twice in a short amount of time. It’s hard to explain, so I’ll use an example – say I set up a statue body in the top floor of Rosethorn Hall (assuming I’ve had the body that way for awhile and have turned my console on and off several times). I enter the upstairs room once, head downstairs, realize I’ve forgotten something, and head back up to the top floor. As soon as I enter the room again, the effect would wear off and the body would collapse to the floor. As such, it isn’t effective to create a permanent statue body in a well-traveled room with multiple doorways – in the case of Rosethorn, you can make a statue body in the basement and on the top floor, but not in the main room. If you have your heart set on making statues in a well-traveled room, though, there is a way around it: save before you re-enter the room, immediately re-load that save, and re-enter the room with the statue-bodies. As long as the loading screen comes up before you enter the room, the bodies will retain their statue status. I realize this may not make sense on paper, so if you’re serious about making a few statue bodies, you might have to test the waters for yourself so that you get a feel of what you can and can’t do. Single-room houses such as the ones you buy in Bruma or on the waterfront are ideal for starting out, then you can move on to bigger locations like Rosethorn or Frostcrag Spire. You can still sleep and wait in the same room as a statue body, and loading a save in a room with statue-bodies works too, provided you aren’t immediately reloading the same save.

Final Tips For The Undead Army

Never put more than seventeen bodies in a room at once – if you do, a random body will disappear forever to bring the total number in the room back down to sixteen. I don’t know why the number is seventeen, but I’ve tested it several times in different houses with the same results. If you’re going to put bodies in a dungeon for some reason (Relmyna’s chamber in Xaselm in SI is a cool place, for instance), the number is slightly higher, but I wouldn’t recommend pushing your luck further than 19 corpses in a dungeon.

To recap – NEVER put more than seventeen corpses in a room at once!

You probably have already noticed this, but using the Staff of Worms is not a crime. You could reanimate the corpse of the Emperor himself and have him walk down the street with you, and no one would even notice. I prefer to keep my dark acts in the dark just for Roleplaying reasons, but you can use the Staff of Worms anytime, anywhere, without anyone batting an eye.

Along similar lines, if you feel a bit awkward leading a group of corpses down main street and want to hide yourself, there’s a glitch that occurs if you reanimate a group of corpses when you are in 100% chameleon mode. They will oftentimes go into battle mode (this happens more often if they were fighting you when they were killed), and if there are any living NPCs around, they will usually attack them. So beware.

Other Tips And Tricks

Hang Around NPC's

In addition to the NPCs you can have follow and wait for you (MG apprentices, DB murderers, etc), there are a select few NPCs in the game that have no schedules and nothing to do; they just stand around in one spot all day. Using this to your advantage, you can lead them wherever you want with the Control spell and they will remain there forever, much the same way a perma-clone will remain wherever you leave them. If your houses always felt a bit lonely, this is a good way to liven them up by adding some houseguests. Here’s a list of all the Hang-Around NPCs I’ve found in the game:

- Rienna (^) - Elidor (^) - Brag-gro-Barok (^) - Thalfin - Merete - Ivor (these three are the battlemages that fight with you at Silorn) - Elante of Alinor (&) - Every named soldier who survives Kvatch (Salvian Matias, Ilend Vonius, Tierra, etc.) (I haven’t tested any of the Kvatch NPCs yet, but they all fit the bill of a Stand-Around NPC as they always stand in the same place).

• (^) - If you commit a crime and are caught (either by paying the fine or going to jail), these three will revert to waiting outside the jail when you leave, so you’ll have to lead them away again.
• (&) - If you want Elante of Alinor, I highly recommend going back for her immediately after talking to Azzan and completing her mission. If the dungeon has a chance to respawn its enemies, they will likely kill her before you have a chance to rescue her.

A word of warning for this trick – as you probably know, Dominating someone dramatically lowers their disposition, sometimes to the point where they will attack you. While this isn’t as important in the other tricks, you definitely want to keep the Hang-Around NPCs as friendly as possible, because if they attack you in a city while you’re trying to lead them to your house, the guards will kill them. The only way I know around this is to dominate and lead the Hang-Around NPCs one at a time; dominating people in a group increases the chances of them fighting you, and they will often get into fights with each other as well.

Cool Weapons And Magic Tricks

Make a spell called ‘light saber’ that disintegrates weapon 3 pts on self for whatever amount of time you desire; your weapon will become aflame. If you’re worried about the spell damaging your weapon, don’t; powerful weapons like Umbra and the Crusader’s Sword only lose one point of health for the whole duration of the spell.

If you didn’t already know, you can enchant weapons with ranged destruction effects, and they have some pretty neat graphical effects that can’t be achieved any other way. Ranged fire engulfs the screen in a fireball based on the range of the spell, and frost and shock fill the entire screen with a spell cloud on each strike. The best part is that these weapons will have the same effect as a ranged destruction spell on your surroundings, sending objects and people flying with every strike. The most fun thing you can do is paralyze or knock down your opponent and keep hitting them with your enchanted sword (fire works best for this); you can juggle your opponent in the air like a ragdoll until they die.

Along similar lines, a weapon enchanted with absorb effects creates a red absorption beam for each absorbing ability. So the more absorb effects you put on a weapon, the more beams there will be. You could potentially enchant a weapon with drain health, fatigue, magicka, every attribute and every skill for a monstrous total of 32 beams sucking the life out of your opponent. It’s about as close as you’ll get in this game to becoming a Ghostbuster.

As I mentioned before, ranged shock spells sometimes pack a supercharged punch. It seems that the more powerful the spell, the more likely the supercharge will occur. The spell I use, 100 pts of shock damage in 15 ft for 1 sec, packs the supercharge about 1 in 3 times. It helps if you hit the ground near your enemy rather than hitting them directly. This is one of my favorite things to do in the game, as you can potentially send enemies flying off for hundreds of feet. Generally the supercharge only sends an standing enemy flying if it is either the killing blow or very close to it, but very rarely such spells pack an even greater supercharge (you’ll know it when you see it, or rather hear it, as it’s incredibly loud) that will literally send your enemies into the clouds without having to paralyze them or knock them down.

Create a spell that damages fatigue 100 pts for 5 seconds on touch (master level required). Get yourself up to 100% chameleon and then cast it on a random NPC (guards work the best). They will run around in fear for a few seconds before passing out at full speed, plunging face-first into the pavement. You can create a spell to do this to yourself as well for similar effects – you can be the town drunk without having to drink insane amounts of booze.

Zombie Eyes

This isn’t a permanent effect, but it is worth a try for kicks. Save, kill someone, and reanimate them. Before the reanimation wears off, reload the save, and the NPC will still be alive, but their eyes will be glowing purple as though they are reanimated zombies. This effect will last until you leave the area. Another thing you can do along these lines is this: save, find an NPC and hit them with an attack. If you press start at the moment when they open their mouth to shout at you, you can reload the save and their mouth will be fixed open (they generally look like they’ve just been lobotomized – it’s pretty funny).