¶ Overview
Players can get access to a special version of a Lute, Drum, and Flute that they can equip to play music. This can be used in combat to buff allies, or outside of combat to earn coin from citizens.
¶ Unlocking Music Playing
After completing the quest "Tending the Flames", the player will be told of an orc named Olvus who can teach them more about music.
Asking Olvus about learning music will prompt him to tell the player they must earn their lessons and can do so by helping some of the other Bards find their lost instruments. The player will then be given miscellaneous objectives to speak to those three bards.
If the player has already completed the base game quests to find their lost instruments, Olvus will acknowledge it and offer the lessons.
The lost instrument quests are part of the base game.
Finn's Lute: Return an invaluable lute to Inge Six Fingers.
Pantea's Flute: Find a missing flute for Pantea.
Rjorn's Drum: Retrieve a drum for Giraud Gemane.
For each of these the player finishes, they can return to Olvus and ask about music playing again, and then choose one of the three instruments to learn to play (the player does NOT have to choose the one corresponding to the instrument they located for the quest).
Olvus will gift them a new instrument, that can be found under Apparel, and then teach the player how to play in a short scene. After learning it, the player also learns a Smithing recipe to craft the instrument and a backpack with it attached.
¶ Instrument Playing Details
Equipping one of the "Bard's" instruments from the Apparel section will put the player into third person and they will begin playing music.
While playing, the player is free to move around, sneak, jump, and even use Shouts and Powers.
At first, the player will be in a non-combat pose, with the camera free to be moved around them.
Pressing the left- or right-hand attack button once will switch to combat state where the camera is over-the-shoulder.
From this state, pressing the left-hand attack button again will unequip the instrument, while the right-hand attack button can be used to change to the next song in the list.
Once the player beings playing, their allies will be buffed (visually shown as a burst of musical notes appearing on them), after playing for 30 seconds, the player will receive an Inspiration buff that will last 15 minutes. Every 30 second thereafter, the buff will be refreshed for the player.
Inspiration increases the regeneration speed of a resource.
Drums = Inspiration: Rally - Increases Health regeneration speed
Flute = Inspiration: Serenade - Increases Stamina regeneration speed
Lute = Inspiration: Harmony - Increases Magicka regeneration speed
These buffs cannot be stacked, so there is no benefit in playing an instrument for 30 seconds and then switching to a different instrument.
If the player has the Bard backpack of the same instrument type they are playing, the instrument will be removed from the pack visually while they play. These backpacks can be found in various containers where other clothing type items are often found, or the player can craft a version with the Bards College texture on the instrument to better match what they play.
¶ Songs
Songs are chosen from a list of known songs. At first this will just be the small handful of tavern songs heard in the base game.
As the player completes major questlines in the game, and works with Olvus to create Ballads, the music for that song will be added to the player's list of available songs to cycle through.
When the player finishes playing a song, they will automatically start another until they unequip the instrument.
While in combat, a different group of songs is used that are higher tempo.
A special song called "Dragon's Dirge" can also be unlocked and cued up with a power of the same name. After using the power, the next time the player plays an instrument, they will play this song. When played outside in Skyrim, this triggers a dragon attack.
¶ Earning Coin
When playing near non-hostile humanoids (and not trespassing), some of them may gather around the player while they play and occasionally clap, cheer, or hand the player small amounts of gold. This will continue while the player plays, though the amounts will slowly diminish over time in a single session (this is both for immersion, and to avoid an exploit where players could leave their character playing all day and come back to a mountain of gold).
Several factors can influence the amount of gold earned:
- The player's relationship with the audience members - characters the player is friendly with will offer more; those they are at odds with will offer less
- The player's Speechcraft skill
- The status of the audience: those in clothing flagged as "Rich" will offer more, while those in the "Beggar" faction will offer less.
- Entertainer Bard Perk rank - this is part of the Bardic skill tree found physically represented inside of Sanctuary (a location introduced during the main quest)