Just bought Skyrim :)

[Snowsong]

I say just walk the lands until you have pretty much mapped all the locations. Be warned, picking items up from chests and trunks and off bodies can and will break quests. Do all the easy ones first. The misc quests. Those are ones that often become abandoned and broken due to you already clearing out a cave/den/camp/thingy. If you find an item with a name, like " Hammer of Tanoman" then its probably a quest item. Also, if a book is in a chest don't take it. Don't even read it as you may accidentally grab it.

I'm not sure why this person wrote this. I've never had problems with quests breaking because of picking up items when you find them. This has literally NEVER HAPPENED in my game and I've been playing Skyrim on PC since the very first day it released. ... Well over 200 hours of play, and probably closer to 300. I've done the main quest twice, done the civil war quests twice (once as Stormcloak and once as Imperial), and done all of the faction quests (thieves guild, mage's guild, etc). Maybe they're playing on a console or something? I've heard there were/are more bugs with the console versions.

Edited July 19, 2012 by Snowsong

[kevkiev]

I say just walk the lands until you have pretty much mapped all the locations. Be warned, picking items up from chests and trunks and off bodies can and will break quests. Do all the easy ones first. The misc quests. Those are ones that often become abandoned and broken due to you already clearing out a cave/den/camp/thingy. If you find an item with a name, like " Hammer of Tanoman" then its probably a quest item. Also, if a book is in a chest don't take it. Don't even read it as you may accidentally grab it.

I'm not sure why this person wrote this. I've never had problems with quests breaking because of picking up items when you find them. This has literally NEVER HAPPENED in my game and I've been playing Skyrim on PC since the very first day it released. ... Well over 200 hours of play, and probably closer to 300. I've done the main quest twice, done the civil war quests twice (once as Stormcloak and once as Imperial), and done all of the faction quests (thieves guild, mage's guild, etc). Maybe they're playing on a console or something? I've heard there were/are more bugs with the console versions.

 

Well, I think at least the part about "don't pick up any books you find in chests" is good advice. I avoid doing that because I've read numerous posts (and on wiki) that if you pick up a book that later becomes the subject of one of the college orc's radiant quests you can't give it to him and therefore can never complete the quest. I haven't pressed the matter to verify personally, mind you. One of the first things I noticed in my current game was a book in a giant camp chest near Whiterun. Sure enough, much later on it became the first target for one of those book quests.

 

Maybe the book thing isn't correct but, yeah, I've read enough stuff about it that I take the "better safe than sorry" approach.

 

Having said that, I have looted a couple non-book that I couldn't sell or store and were (obviously) quest items, but I've been able give them to whatever NPC the items were associated with when I eventually found them to trigger the quest. Still, if I knew before looting that it was a quest item, I wouldn't take it just in case. Again, just better safe than... And, worse case scenario, you have to go back to the location once the quest is triggered. AND you don't have the annoyance of an unstorable item cluttering up your inventory. (I'm recalling accidentally finding that corpse of the missing husband before you're supposed to, and not being able to trigger that quest or get rid of the journal entry. Maybe no huge deal, but still...)

 

 

edit:

 

Go download steam mods ASAP , and DO NOT fast travel. Skyrim is made to be explored.

 

regarding Steam mods: not to discourage the OP, but I'd advise to take the time to understand how steam workshop works before doing that. In particular, know that Steam automatically updates mods when a new version is issued. Personally, I avoid them for that reason (and stick to stuff here on Nexus). Automatic steam updates for the game are, imo, bad enough. Automatically updating mods is, again imo, insane.

[tanoman]

I say just walk the lands until you have pretty much mapped all the locations. Be warned, picking items up from chests and trunks and off bodies can and will break quests. Do all the easy ones first. The misc quests. Those are ones that often become abandoned and broken due to you already clearing out a cave/den/camp/thingy. If you find an item with a name, like " Hammer of Tanoman" then its probably a quest item. Also, if a book is in a chest don't take it. Don't even read it as you may accidentally grab it.

I'm not sure why this person wrote this. I've never had problems with quests breaking because of picking up items when you find them. This has literally NEVER HAPPENED in my game and I've been playing Skyrim on PC since the very first day it released. ... Well over 200 hours of play, and probably closer to 300. I've done the main quest twice, done the civil war quests twice (once as Stormcloak and once as Imperial), and done all of the faction quests (thieves guild, mage's guild, etc). Maybe they're playing on a console or something? I've heard there were/are more bugs with the console versions.

 

Well, I think at least the part about "don't pick up any books you find in chests" is good advice. I avoid doing that because I've read numerous posts (and on wiki) that if you pick up a book that later becomes the subject of one of the college orc's radiant quests you can't give it to him and therefore can never complete the quest. I haven't pressed the matter to verify personally, mind you. One of the first things I noticed in my current game was a book in a giant camp chest near Whiterun. Sure enough, much later on it became the first target for one of those book quests.

 

Maybe the book thing isn't correct but, yeah, I've read enough stuff about it that I take the "better safe than sorry" approach.

 

Having said that, I have looted a couple non-book that I couldn't sell or store and were (obviously) quest items, but I've been able give them to whatever NPC the items were associated with when I eventually found them to trigger the quest. Still, if I knew before looting that it was a quest item, I wouldn't take it just in case. Again, just better safe than... And, worse case scenario, you have to go back to the location once the quest is triggered. AND you don't have the annoyance of an unstorable item cluttering up your inventory. (I'm recalling accidentally finding that corpse of the missing husband before you're supposed to, and not being able to trigger that quest or get rid of the journal entry. Maybe no huge deal, but still...)

 

 

edit:

 

Go download steam mods ASAP , and DO NOT fast travel. Skyrim is made to be explored.

 

regarding Steam mods: not to discourage the OP, but I'd advise to take the time to understand how steam workshop works before doing that. In particular, know that Steam automatically updates mods when a new version is issued. Personally, I avoid them for that reason (and stick to stuff here on Nexus). Automatic steam updates for the game are, imo, bad enough. Automatically updating mods is, again imo, insane.

 

 

Now, this is an enlighting answer, I'll try not to pick everything I see, although it'll be hard to keep my fingers from the "E" key :) :)

[Brandy1123]

I say just walk the lands until you have pretty much mapped all the locations. Be warned, picking items up from chests and trunks and off bodies can and will break quests. Do all the easy ones first. The misc quests. Those are ones that often become abandoned and broken due to you already clearing out a cave/den/camp/thingy. If you find an item with a name, like " Hammer of Tanoman" then its probably a quest item. Also, if a book is in a chest don't take it. Don't even read it as you may accidentally grab it.

I'm not sure why this person wrote this. I've never had problems with quests breaking because of picking up items when you find them. This has literally NEVER HAPPENED in my game and I've been playing Skyrim on PC since the very first day it released. ... Well over 200 hours of play, and probably closer to 300. I've done the main quest twice, done the civil war quests twice (once as Stormcloak and once as Imperial), and done all of the faction quests (thieves guild, mage's guild, etc). Maybe they're playing on a console or something? I've heard there were/are more bugs with the console versions.

 

 

If you've never broken a quest from picking up an item early, you''ve done nothing in this game. There'e several instruments, a few books, at least 1 sword, 24 gems (stackable/unstackable), a potion bottle, a 2nd Sphere, and probably a few others i am forgetting. counsole? almost as funny as your 200 hours of game time. I have over 200 hours trying to help people get rid of broken quest items and fixing bad mods. When you get near 1800 hours, let me know, we'll talk intelligently about this game.

Edited July 21, 2012 by Brandy_123

[SoulofChrysamere]

If you're going to play on Master level difficulty, I would advise you to NOT advance the main quest line past escaping to Riverwood from Helgen with Hadvar/Ralof until you are around level fifteen. Even the weakest of them, "Dragons", are hellish on Master and I've never gotten high enough in the levels to meet anything worse than a Blood Dragon (the next rank up).

[tanoman]

If you're going to play on Master level difficulty, I would advise you to NOT advance the main quest line past escaping to Riverwood from Helgen with Hadvar/Ralof until you are around level fifteen. Even the weakest of them, "Dragons", are hellish on Master and I've never gotten high enough in the levels to meet anything worse than a Blood Dragon (the next rank up).

 

Luckily I'm playing in Normal then . Maybe the next playthrough. :)

[Deleted1848331User]

Please, I play on Novice so I can one shot everything with my Dragonbone gear :P (I play on 360)

 

It's really good advice to never pick up books in a chest, I've broken the radiant quests involving them so many times...

[SFBryan18]

I play the quests in this order:

 

College.

Stormcloaks & Dark Brotherhood, side by side.

Forced into Main quest by the piece of **** Jarl of Whiterun.

Finish all three side by side.

Then I join the Theives gulid just because of boredom but I really hate them.

So far, mods have prevented me from going further on PC since I've had to start over several times but I played every trophy quest including Companions and Daedric on PS3 when the game was released. I hate the Companions because their dialogue is retarded and they force you to do something really stupid just to finish their quest.

[Bettafighter]

Go download steam mods ASAP , and DO NOT fast travel. Skyrim is made to be explored.

 

 

hmm if you do not want to download mods its fine with me, but quoting KIVKIEV steam mods update automatically, and might run into some issues, so if you want to install mods i would recommend nexus mod manager on skyrim nexus. If not you can just suscribe to a mod on steam by clicking it, and next time you launch skyrim on steam it will automatically install the mod. To uninstall the mod do the opposite (unsuscribe and relaunch) skyrim will be stock/factory clean again.

[Bettafighter]

Go download steam mods ASAP , and DO NOT fast travel. Skyrim is made to be explored.

 

 

Hmm but BHANQWA if you limit the use of mods to just 1 to 10 and manage yourself well, you won't catch the 'modding disease' whereby you keep changing mods cos you're not satisfied. Also load order wont conflict or have less chance to conflict the lesser mods you have.