1: everything is effective against everything. just hack at it till it dies. nothing seems to make any difference in the speed things die. 2: shield usage is useless. 3: seems right to me, that way you cant just make some beast armor and power level your smithing, instead you make about 200 iron daggers for next to nothing and level it...ooh wait, thats not supposed to be so easy. maybe well be lucky and get a mod for it, dunno if there is one yet. 4: i dont throw anything into lockpicking for the simple fact that picking expert locks at the beginning of the game is pathetically easy. pickpocket however gives you an extra 100lbs, which i speed my way to as fast as i can always. 5: are you talking about the perk to make steel armour? seems like a good idea to me. 6: no. you should never become a vampire except to do the quest to not be a vampire, and make sure you get married first or youll forget to feed and then NEVER BE ABLE TO FEED AGAIN, because everyone will attack you, and wake up when you sneak into the room to attack you. 7: if you plan to use sneak attacks then just stick with the sword and shield, since a dual wield power attack only gets the damage bonus on the first hit, draining your stamina and making you wait a moment, where as if you have only one weapon you can continuously attack at the weapons max speed, and sometimes do it quick enough with certain daggers that youll get in 2 sneak attacks. only dual wield if you plan on rushing into a group of enemies and destroying everyone in 3 seconds.
