There are a few things that confuse me about the menus in Skyrim, making it hard to see information that you need:
- You can only see your health when you select a health potion (ditto with Magicka/Stamina) If you don't have any, then you can't check it from within the menu. So, in the middle of a battle, you don't know if you need to equip a healing spell without exiting the menu, looking, then bringing up the menu again.
In the middle of battle, your health or stamina or magicka bar will appear (independently of one another) at the bottom of the screen if any amount has been depleted. Even banging into junk on the floor will bring up your health bar. If it doesn't show up, you don't need it replenished.
Although, to play devil's advocate for myself, you may want to double-check your settings to make sure you didn't turn off anything having to do with the user interface appearing. I'm not aware of all the settings, but I thought there was something you could do to turn off the UI for screenshots?
- Several spells/scrolls only work on adversaries with a specified level. But where in the game do you find out the level of your adversary? Am I missing something?
You aren't told the level. You'll need to learn the different varieties of beasts, monsters, and humanoids. Easier ones are lower levels.
- Where does it specify which souls fits in which soul gem? Is it just guesswork?
Same as above if you're talking about monsters. Deer, foxes, regular wolves, bunnies, mudcrabs and the like provide petty souls. There are also some draugers that provide petty souls, but as you go up in level and move out of your starter areas, you find less of these as the draugers you run into will be stronger and provide lesser or common ones.
To be honest, I don't even look at the names before I kill them. I just carry a bunch of different soul gems, making sure I have plenty of petty and lesser ones so I don't waste the common, greater, and grand gems on petty and lesser souls. A grand soul gem can hold any "grand" or weaker monster/beast soul. However, soul gems cannot hold souls rated higher than it's value; a petty gem cannot hold the soul of a common monster/beast. Black soul gems are the only ones that can hold a humanoid's soul.
- When trying to enchant items, you're often told that enchantment can't be applied to that item. How do you know which can be applied to which? Trial and error? I've kind of learned that it's better to select the enchantment you want first, then select which item you want to enchant rather than the other way around.
Select the item to enchant first to filter out the available enchantments, that you have access to, that can be applied to the item. I use this web page often to plan out my enchantments:
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Enchanting_(Skyrim)
- It's a pity you can't select a place on the map and be told who told you about it, and which quest involves going there. I've loads of places appearing on my map and no idea why or what I need to do there (apart from kill/loot everything).
I agree. It would be nice if the map would provide a list of releated quests in your log when hovering your mouse over a location. Instead, you'll just have to check your quest journal and read them to see if there's a common location for any of them. I tend to look at the quest journal and just decide on what I feel like doing, rather than trying to be travel efficient.
- I'm still having the problem that I can't tell if I'm meant to talk to someone or attack them, so I've gotten into the habit of walking up to them, seeing if they attack me, and running away so I can sneak up on them again!
Again, you'll have to learn your enemies. Humanoids can be recognized by what they're wearing. You'll see a pattern.
One person in steel armor surrounded by a bunch of people in fur armor, is probably a group of bandits with a bandit leader in steel.
Forsworn will be in yellowish gear, often times wearing an antlered helm.
Stormcloaks will wear armor that has blue cloth.
Imperials will wear armor with red cloth.
Random groups of mages are evil and will attack you if you get close to them.
A single person staying close to the roads are almost always friendly.
If you're a sneaking character, you at least get the opportunity to come in close to inspect them without making yourself known. With my mage and my "paladin" I just go up to them and smash them if they draw their weapons. I guess that's the benefit of not using stealth, I always have a follower decked out in heavy armor to back me up.
