MacSuibhne Posted June 24, 2012 Share Posted June 24, 2012 What are the pros and cons of finishing the main quest before the Civil war Quest...and vice-versa? I read somewhere that if you defeated Alduin first the Civil War quest is a lot less complicated and conflicting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ita Posted June 24, 2012 Share Posted June 24, 2012 If you finish the civil war first you don't have to negotiate a truce between the Legion and Stormcloaks during the quest Season Unending. I've never found any point in defeating Alduin first, it certainly doesn't have any greater impact on the civil war questline. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrettM Posted June 25, 2012 Share Posted June 25, 2012 I have characters that have done it in about all different ways it can be done: start the civil war after finishing the main quest, start and finish the civil war before finishing the main quest, and start the civil war before and finish it after the main quest. In general, I don't see a huge difference between the different options. Doing the peace conference gives you a lot of options and your choices there determine how many followup civil war quests there will be after the main quest. The choices available at the peace conference will depend on whether or not you've started the civil war before doing "Alduin's Bane". But we're only talking a difference of one or two quests, not a dramatic change in complexity. For the most part the quests just involve taking a fort in each hold controlled by the opposing side, so anything that affects the alignment of a hold is going to determine the number of such quests. Three of the hold takeovers have a little something extra to do, and whether you have to do any or all of those depends on whether your side already controls that hold. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JanusForbeare Posted June 25, 2012 Share Posted June 25, 2012 I've only every played the CW through once, likely because it just didn't thrill me enough the first time through. As Ita mentions, "Season Unending", a quest towards the end of the MQ questline, involves negotiating a (very temporary) truce between the belligerents, so that Skyrim can stand united against Alduin and his cronies. Apart from that, there is very little interaction between the two questlines. Personally, I wouldn't say that completing the MQ first makes a hell of a lot of difference on the way one perceives the CW. After all, the CW is straightforward: capture fort A, capture city A, capture fort B, capture city B. Until someone turns the CW into a RTS mini-game, I probably won't play it again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
breakwind Posted June 25, 2012 Share Posted June 25, 2012 I do the Main Quest last now, as I dislike Delphine, Esbern and the Greybeards. I do like having fun at the Embassy Party however.... :whistling: ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kraeten Posted June 25, 2012 Share Posted June 25, 2012 (edited) I do the Main Quest last now, as I dislike Delphine, Esbern and the Greybeards. I do like having fun at the Embassy Party however.... :whistling: ... I can't stand Delphine and Esbern either. Delphine especially. The Greybeards are all right though, at least they're polite. Plus, Christopher Plummer is just plain awesome. Edited June 25, 2012 by Kraeten Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgiegril Posted June 25, 2012 Share Posted June 25, 2012 Well I have always saved the CW quest for last, but this time I solved it earlier. The most annoying thing about doing that are the innumerous references by NPCs to the war, as if it is still going on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
breakwind Posted June 25, 2012 Share Posted June 25, 2012 I do the Main Quest last now, as I dislike Delphine, Esbern and the Greybeards. I do like having fun at the Embassy Party however.... :whistling: ... I can't stand Delphine and Esbern either. Delphine especially. The Greybeards are all right though, at least they're polite. Plus, Christopher Plummer is just plain awesome. Nothing against the Greybeards personally...just that the initiation rites into their little sect can sometimes take a long time. Especially if one of them is out back sneeking a peek of the latest Lifts Her Tail volume in privacy :happy: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonslayer2k12 Posted June 27, 2012 Share Posted June 27, 2012 My first playthrough I did the civil war last simply because I thought there would be a better way to solve the civil war problem after beating the main quest but that wasn't the case. Early in my travels to the west I wandered into a fort with a bunch of dead stormcloaks laying around. The fort was occupied by some evil magic types so I slew them all but it was hard to do at a low level. After they were all dead and looted I went outside and some stormcloaks walked up into the fort and began to occupy it and told me about ulfric blah blah. Later on after traveling through there again there was just one stormcloak there all by himself just standing there in the middle of the fort outside. I could talk to him but he wouldn't move from there. I guess after the civil war is done if you fight for the stormcloaks maybe more of them are hanging around there but if you fight for the empire do the imperials occupy that fort normally or does just one of them stand around there? As you go through the game you get some more help the stormcloaks quests even though you aren't with them or with the imperials either. Makes you think the stormcloaks are the good guys but later things are different. If you do the civil war first you miss out on the interactions you can get with both sides for example if you are not fast traveling and need to sell some stuff but the only place nearby is a stormcloak or imperial camp and you are on the other side in the war you can't go there unless you want to fight them. But if you are neutral you can sell stuff to them and make money faster. By waiting until after the main quest to do the civil war I was able to accumulate a lot of money and a lot of loot because I also did the thieves guild quests earlier too and I had no problems with buying things I needed or wanted I just wish I had something to do with all that money at some point. I got to sit at a table and listen to two sides bicker at each other and feel all important making decisions lol. Also got to decide the fate of dawnstar and winterhold. Dawnstar needed a new jarl badly but winterhold would have been fine either way who cares what the locals think of the college there. Too bad that drunk guy never came back after I completed his find the lost friend quest for him. It was strange that he just never came back. I wish that the stormcloaks could have maintained control of falkreath though so that jarl stuhn could have been put back into power and get rid of his lazy good for nothing son. But I don't understand why the lazy jarl's assistant had to go she could have just helped stuhn or worked in town somewhere instead of hating on me in windhelm. Oh but I bet things like that will be left up to future DLC darnit forgot about that:-( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrettM Posted June 27, 2012 Share Posted June 27, 2012 There are a number of forts in Skyrim held by assorted bad guys (bandits, necromancers, etc.) instead of soldiers. If you clear one of those forts, it may then be taken over by either Imperial or Stormcloak soldiers, depending on which side of the civil war controls the hold where the fort is located. I'm not sure this will happen, though, unless you've at least started the civil war quest line. I usually don't clear forts until after the civil war is over and the sides are settled. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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