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Author: u/None *
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Score: 6
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Created: 2014-11-05T12:07:28
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u/alexanderwales [+10] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
You could literally do an intelligence explosion in Morrowind. It went like this:
- Buy up the ingredients for a bunch of Fortify Intelligence potions.
- Make lots of crappy intelligence potions.
- Drink the best one, sell the rest, buy more ingredients.
- Enhanced intelligence lets you make better potions (stronger, longer lasting, worth more).
- Better potions further enhance your intelligence.
- Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you are the smartest creature on the planet.
The game wasn't really designed with that in mind, since it broke pretty much everything. Once your intelligence was orders of magnitude higher than the game anticipated (in the millions instead of the double digits), your potion-making was also so good that any potion you made would last essentially indefinitely, so you could make a potion of Strength which would let you kill a god with a rusty spoon, or a potion of camouflage that would make you invisible, and these enhancements would be so good that they'd never run out. Permanent flight, the ability to leap across continents - basically do everything to the integer limits of the engine.
This could all be accomplished within the first half hour in the game - I discovered it on accident, and then had to reload from a save because stomping around in god-mode wasn't terribly fun.
u/alexanderwales [+7] Time flies like an arrow (10 hours later)
If you're looking for stuff that should be possible in-game if it was a narrative about a rational protagonist instead of a videogame:
- Undead and summons can do useful work beyond simply attacking your enemies. There's no reason that anyone should be doing farmwork (or factory work) when that can be delegated to minions. That frees up more people to study magic, who can then use it for labor.
- Almost all of the forms of magic have practical applications. Flame magic can power a steam engine. Frost magic can preserve perishables (and on a large enough scale, probably make ice ships). Shock magic essentially produces free energy.
- There should be soul trapping farms, and dangerous creatures raised in captivity for their souls. Enchanting is ridiculously powerful.
- Very few people seem to have defenses against invisibility or 100% camouflage, which indicates that they're not really prepared against intelligent foes.
- Given magic, there's no real reason that there should be torches, since magic gives you permanent light for much cheaper (going by in-game prices, anyway).
- The ability to transmute mineral ores makes metals worth only marginally different prices (though this doesn't seem to be reflected by in-game prices).
u/FeepingCreature [+3] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (3 hours later)
In Skyrim, they got smart and integrated recursive self-improvement into their design - you can still do it (potions-enchant loop), but you cap out relatively quickly. Of course, people figured out how to break it anyways - afaik the Fortify Restoration part of the loop was not planned for, so it's rather imbalanced.
u/Sceptically [+2] (a day later)
afaik the Fortify Restoration part of the loop was not planned for, so it's rather imbalanced.
Not just imbalanced - actually completely broken. I very quickly ended up with equipment that was no longer worked properly because it was overenchanted.
u/Rouninscholar [+1] (3 hours later)
Unfortuneately I learned this glitch watching my cousin play it before I ever played lol
u/Putnam3145 [+5] (10 hours later)
TES magic is already exploited to hell and back in-universe. Let me warn you first off by saying that this is a rambling post that lists off every way of munchkinry I can get to that's related to the first topic, Numidium.
So, Numidium. The Dwemer found a way to change reality through sounds and called it Tonal Architecture. They used this to make a giant robot and a trio of tools used to manipulate the Heart of Lorkhan, the literal heart of a dead God. When Kagrenac used his Tools on the Heart, the entire Dwemer race disappeared and became the golden skin of the Numidium.
The Numidium's very nature makes its word fact; unfortunately for reality, much of what it says is NO. The Numidium is also used for other purposes; it was held by the Tribunal, a set of 3 gods, all of whom reached godhood through exploiting the Heart of Lorkhan and one of whom reached further godhood elsewhere (more munchkinry...). Tiber Septim used the threat of unleashing it to force the Second Aldmeri Dominion to surrender to him and join his Empire.
A warning about the following paragraph: I'm reciting this from memory and have no idea where a few chunks of it came from; however, AFAIK the end result is about the same.
Tiber Septim's munchkin as hell, too. Born a Breton in High Rock/Born a Nord in High Rock named Hjalti Early-Beard/Born a Nord in Atmora named Talos, he rose to power in the ranks of Cuhlecain with the help of Ysmir Wulfharth, who earlier had been shouted to pieces by the Greybeards but still lives on as a shade/storm of sorts. Wulfharth was a Shezzarine, an incarnation of Lorkhan/Shezzar/Shor; he could also shout like nobody else, once having his shout turn everyone in Skyrim into babies. Wulfharth and Tiber's power combined were great, and he became known as the Stormcrown due to the way Wulfharth appeared in. Cuhlecain was eventually murdered by a High Rock nightblade... which fits Hjalti/Talos/Ysmir/Tiber well.
After Cuhlecain's death, Tiber began taking places over himself. His supreme shouting ability from being Dovahkiin combined with Wulfharth's supreme shouting ability and the fact that both are incarnations of Shezzar/Shor/Lorkhan makes the invasion quite a force, even beating out such people as Vivec (the deal they made is not known exactly, but Tiber somehow manages to get the Numidium out of it; Vivec is later known to claim that he killed Talos). He eventually achieved CHIM, a state of something resembling, but greater than godhood attained through deep understanding of the universe (and its nature as the dream of Anu the Amaranth); he also underwent an Enantiomorph, a mythologically significant story involving 3 people, where they are all difficult to tell apart (thus why you get the Underking claiming he's Zurin Arctus in person but claiming he's Wulfharth in the book he wrote, which is named after Arctus) and which creates a God. This made him a God 4 times over. Munchkiny as hell. The only person who was ever even remotely able to stand up to him was Cyrus, who insists that he is not the HoonDing.
Speaking of which, sound-magic in general. Cyrus learned Sword-Singing and claimed to know the Pankratosword, a technique in which the sword is made so sharp and swung so precisely that it cuts atomos, creating devastating power. Yokuda was sunk through this. The Thu'um is something most TES players will know well, but its true power isn't even remotely shown in-game. At one point, Orkey (a weird amalgam of Trinimac, Malacath and Arkay, it seems) took the lifespan of the Nord people and gave it to the Orsimer, the Orcs. Wulfharth got it back with the shout "What Happens When You Shake the Dragon Just So", which gave all of the Nords... a bit too much youth. Tonal Architecture is somewhat self-explanatory. Akatosh was created by the Marukhati Selective by standing atop Adamantine tower and singing the song that is the Aurbis... then switching the tune to one with a Man-loving time-god (the primary time-god "before" Akatosh was Auri-El, who is very, very Mer).
And that's all the windbag I have for today.
EDIT: Atomos is not a typo, it's how it's spelled in-universe. Physics work differently in TES.
u/ulyssessword [+3] (25 minutes later)
Is it always cold? The simplest exploit would be an infinite source of temperature gradient for power generation.
u/None [+3] (56 minutes later)
That's a nice idea, but I think we should assume that it's simply solid at room temperature rather than that it can never get warm. I remember some stalhrim armor, and the armor that sucks out all the warmth sounds like a way to freeze yourself to death. I don't know exactly the lore says about it, though.
u/Topher876 [+3] (an hour later)
Maybe the process of forging causes it to stop drawing heat? the raw ore veins have vapor I believe. It could be the Nordic pickaxes with proprietary magicness that makes it safe to wear.
u/puesyomero [+2] The Culture (7 hours later)
well if you want munchkin'd stahlrim there is this mass effect/skyrim fanfic: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10288115/1/The-Effect-of-the-Dragon where clever modified use of the breathe under water enchantment plus stahlrim hulls enables the people of tamriel to create spaceships with destruction magic drives/weapons.
u/puesyomero [+3] The Culture (8 hours later)
There is the point that any mage in nirn outputs a lot more energy than their caloric intake allows. One master in destruction magic with perks on enhanced flames could outperform any other fuel for a generator, and the flame or storm thrall spell would do the same without the need to be there yourself all day long. The transmute spell shows the magic can easily create or destroy mass (lump of gold with same volume as iron lump) with a simple adept level spell! There is no spell crafting in skyrim but in other TES there was, so it is not beyond imagination a modified transmute lead to uranium-235 or whatever. stalhrim is consistently about 15% stronger than skyforge steel (the strongest steel in the realm which I will take as average modern steel) so you have a plentiful building material that is about 9 times less dense than steel, I'm thinking boats, skyscrapers, heck maybe even space elevators (the stalhrim bow demonstrates it can be ductile).
u/Putnam3145 [+1] (9 hours later)
heck maybe even space elevators
Battlespire was a game released between Daggerfall and Morrowind that took place on a space elevator of a sort, believe it or not.
u/Putnam3145 [+2] (9 hours later)
To be fair, there are already spaceships in TES lore. Battlespires are one, and there are moon colonies mentioned in the Pocket Guide to the Empire3rd edition.
u/Traiden04 [+2] (3 hours later)
CHIM is a state of being reachable by mortals allowing them to become akin to gods.
Potion of intelligence enhancing loop. From the enhancement potions you can go from a normal human to a paragon to a god in under a hour. You don't have to limit yourself to just intelligence either. Even without the potions there are ways to make scrolls that enhance mortals to near impossible levels of skill and ability as demonstrated by the scrolls of Icarian Flight. Magical suits of predator level camo. The whole system is rife with ways to cheat built in.
u/Putnam3145 [+1] (9 hours later)
CHIM is a state of being reachable by mortals allowing them to become akin to gods.
It's not just intelligence, however; there's more to it than that, most certainly. I don't think potions could help you with that. While the intelligence enhancing loop might help you study and meditate, it likely won't help you mentally prepare for CHIM, which is described often as a constant battle to keep your existence around.
u/TimTravel [+1] (13 hours later)
CHIM is BS made up by Vivec to cover for the fact that the religion he founded around himself and his two best buddies has gods that were awkwardly mortal before they borrowed the power of Lorkhan. 99% of the sources on Vivec are either Vivec himself or his worshippers. There is essentially no credible evidence of any of his feats.
u/Putnam3145 [+2] (a day later)
Tiber Septim also had CHIM, and there is credible evidence of his feats through that (ridiculous amount of pre-Tiber literature talking about the jungle climes of Cyrodiil).
EDIT: Mankar Camoran also speaks of CHIM and uses Tiber Septim's usage of it as a specific example of the things it can do.
u/TimTravel [+1] (a day later)
Sources? I'd like to learn what fraction of it is legit.
u/Putnam3145 [+1] (a day later)
From the Many-Headed Talos. An out-of-game Michael Kirkbride text, but the part that's actually relevant to CHIM was quoted directly in Skyrim by Heimskr. CHIM literally means "Royalty", and can be found in other things, such as CHIM-EL ADABAL, the Amulet of Kings.
The Mythic Dawn Commentaries also mentions CHIM; the entire third volume appears to be about it. "CHIM. Those who know it can reshape the land. Witness the home of the Red King Once Jungled." refers to the event mentioned in the Many-Headed Talos up there.
u/TimTravel [+1] (a day later)
He unjungled Cyrodiil and he was an absurdly high-level Voice user. He ascended to godhood, whatever that means. I'm not getting a good clear picture of what he can and can't do. I'm particularly interested to hear if he did anything interesting after ascending. If not then it's doubtful what it means to say he did or didn't become a god.
Mankar Camoran is pretty crazy and I was under the general impression that a lot of the stuff he said was contradicted by earlier lore.
u/Putnam3145 [+2] (a day later)
He unjungled Cyrodiil through CHIM, not absurd voice use (though he may have been able to do that...). The usage of the term "I breathe now, in royalty" combined with Camoran's saying it's CHIM (the latter I wouldn't take as a source, but it bolsters the former) makes it more likely CHIM than Thu'um.
u/TimTravel [+1] (a day later)
I wasn't suggesting it was Thu'um usage. I was just talking about his overall abilities, independent of what CHIM can or cannot do. Voice stuff seems around mountain-busting at best.
u/Putnam3145 [+1] (a day later)
Voice stuff can turn an entire race into (literal) babies. Shouldn't count that out. Seriously, alternative explanations abound for pretty much everything. One writer in Elder Scrolls Online has a book saying that the "transcription error" idea is foolish and easily disproven and that Cyrodiil changing from jungle to upland is due to White-Gold's extreme mythological significance changing the land to whatever is most suited to the local rulers (which had been humans for ~3500 years at that point).
u/TimTravel [+1] (a day later)
My main problem is that the Elder Scrolls writers are too lazy to follow their own continuity. I maintain a glimmer of hope that a consistent narrative can be salvaged.
u/Putnam3145 [+1] (a day later)
There's a multitude of consistent narratives. Expecting just one is kind of odd.
u/TimTravel [+1] (a day later)
No, there's a multitude of mutually inconsistent narratives.
u/Putnam3145 [+2] (a day later)
They've got a patch for that, though; the time god's insane and the space god's dead. Time god's insane because he was created by an ape and his cronies, not to mention all the shit that keeps breaking him. It's not just a patch, either; they didn't just make that up for Daggerfall's weird ending, it's used all over the place. All of Elder Scrolls Online has an assumption that Akatosh is having an episode, thus the books from the future showing up all over. Morrowind has at least one book from the future (funnily enough, "The Dragon Break Re-Examined", which is explicitly about the phenomenon of the dragon break not existing). Oblivion's ending involves a dragon break, though only really on retrospect will you realize (there's a speech that takes place that could not possibly have happened given events that transpired immediately prior). Skyrim has a dragon break as part of the main plot, and you learn a shout from it.
What separates lame handwaves and interesting plot points is exploitation, and I'd say the ES writers are pretty damn good at it.
u/TimTravel [+1] (a day later)
The point is that with the standard interpretation of ES lore in place, essentially anything can happen. That guy turned into a cow because the world is insane. The game crashes sometimes because the world is insane and there's no fourth wall. The main plot has a plothole because the world is insane. This girl has plot-induced stupidity about her powers because the world is insane. This logically impossible thing happened because the world is insane.
If anything can happen then nothing is interesting. It's just arbitrary. I am still hoping that some kind of rules can be deduced, if only by coincidence, and the rest of the sources can be discounted as in-story characters being mistaken or actively lying.
u/Putnam3145 [+2] (a day later)
The game crashes sometimes because the world is insane and there's no fourth wall.
That whole thing came from a single blogpost that anyone who actually has a say in the game's lore has either failed to acknowledge or outright stated is false. Other than that... yeah, most of that makes some assumptions that aren't quite right. The "anything can happen" kind of thing can also be said about many worlds with not-too-fleshed-out magic systems; you could easily write something that's very rule-based in ES mythology, and most crazy things tend to have a common source. It would actually be a very interesting thing to write rational fic for, huh.
u/TimTravel [+1] (a day later)
Eventually I plan on writing one, but I have two more in the works first and not as much free time as I used to. Title: Nevervarine. Something initially like Morrowind but sidetracking into something radically different and sorting out a lot of lore stuff along the way while attempting to minimize the number of in-game sources who are simply lying or mistaken.
That whole thing came from a single blogpost that anyone who actually has a say in the game's lore has either failed to acknowledge or outright stated is false.
At least we agree on that much. It's frustrating and time-consuming to explain why it doesn't work.
The anything-can-happen-ness is too high for my liking. It's higher than other canons. It seems to actively enjoy being directly inconsistent with itself and logically impossible (according to some lore people), but all the sources are in-universe and therefore potentially propaganda or mistaken so there should be a minimally complicated true timeline of events that explains the sources claiming the claims they claim. It will still be complicated but hopefully not absurdly complicated.
Poorly explained magic systems aren't so bad when there are limits implicit from the fact that some powerful wizard didn't just explode all their enemies or rewrite the universe optimally along their objective function. The power level of TES magic / gods is high enough to be very problematic without understandable rules. It leads to anything-can-happen-ness.
u/nerdguy1138 [+1] GNU Terry Pratchett (17 hours later)
What's CHIM?
u/Topher876 [+1] (18 hours later)
A resident of Nirn can come to the realization that the world they inhabit is is simply the dream of the god Anu, at that point they either cease to exist or become a part of Anu, but a few deny their nonexistence and become individual lucid members of Anu's dream so to speak, with the ability to manipulate the world around them.
I haven't read it in a while but thats what I remember, the people at /r/teslore can probably help you more
u/nerdguy1138 [+1] GNU Terry Pratchett (18 hours later)
Um, ok but what I meant is what does the acronym mean?
u/TimTravel [+1] (a day later)
Not an acronym. It's all caps for no reason.
u/Putnam3145 [+2] (a day later)
The Ehlnofex language is always rendered in all-caps, much like Latin (as written at the time). AE ALTADOON GHARTOK PADHOME means "I am the weapon and the hands of change" or something along those lines, for example.
u/TimTravel [+1] (a day later)
Interesting. Does it have a direct translation?
u/Putnam3145 [+2] (a day later)
CHIM means "royalty".