A few useful Skyrim tips to keep in mind.
Save often: This may be obvious, but it needs to be mentioned again. You have unlimited save slots, use them. With Skyrim, you never know what will happen, so be prepared and have a few different save files ready.
What not to sell while you adventure: Don't sell armor and weapons with magical effects, you can disenchant them (and learn how to enchant those effects on other gear). Early in the game, if you need to find an "Arcane Enchanter" (which lets you disenchant weapons and armor) there is one on the first floor of Dragonsreach. Pick up all the soul gems you find, as they are used when enchanting gear. Spells and enchantments that trap your enemies' souls are used to fill soul gems, so be on the look out for those, as well. Also don't sell ingredients and materials, you can use them for alchemy, smithing, etc.
Where to sell weapons, items, loot, etc. in Skyrim: Early in the game, it may be a little confusing as to where you can sell all of your hard earned loot. A good place for a new character to sell their loot is in Riverwood. When you enter Riverwood for the first time, the second building to your right is "Riverwood Trader". Another general goods trader can be found in Whiterun. Once you arrive at Whiterun, run straight and follow the road all the way past the first 2 buildings on your right (Warmaiden's and Breezehome). The third building you will see is Belethor's General Goods.
Merchants Restock: Merchants restock their gold after approximately 48 hours.
Sometimes it seems to be a little less, but it's always safe if you:
1) Change maps (leave the room)
2) Wait 24 hours twice (48 total)
3) Re-enter room
4) Profit! (literally)
A place to store items: The Bonestrewn Crest fast travel point has chest for storing your items.
More inventory space: When you increase your stamina you also increase your maximum carry capacity by 5.
Companion Storage: Your companion can carry an unlimited number and weight of stuff, but only if you tell them to pick them up in command mode.
You can skip the dialog and go straight to command mode by pointing your reticle/cursor at your companion from far enough away that the "talk" option doesn't appear, and holding the 'use' button. With these two tips combined, you can go through a dwemer ruin, point at Lydia (or whoever), hold 'use', point at a heavy metal object, press 'use', and she'll pick it up.
Keep the following items for quests: (1)gold ore, (2)flawless saphires, (1)black-briar mead, (1)flawless ruby, (1)silver ingot, (1)deathbell flower, (1)vampire dust, (1)mammoth tusk
Don't rush: Don't rush. It's amazing what you find by not rushing, forget about the main quest for awhile and just explore. There is more content in Skyrim than in Oblivion (Including a radiant quest system which is capable of generating an infinite amount of quests) so the amount of side quests and things to discover is staggering.
Sprinting Buttons: Xbox = LB, PC = Alt, PS3 = L2, you can also sprint on a horse.
Zooming in and out with the third person camera: The camera can actually be zoomed in and out. Push and hold the right analog stick in and then push / pull the left analog stick to move in / out the camera.
Rotating items in your inventory: If you need to take a closer look at an item in your inventory (like for a quest), click the right analog stick.
Useful spell for new characters: The clairvoyance spell is extremely useful if you are just starting out, and you can pick up the spellbook for it in a mine between the three Guardian Stones and Riverwood. Just walk towards Riverwood from the Guardian Stones and you will see a pickaxe and hammer icon on your "radar", and enter. The spellbook is on a table behind a locked door. When you use it, a purple trail will show you how to get to your current objective. If you have no quest objectives set, it will even lead you to the map marker you set on the map.
Free Holding Items: Instead of pressing A (Or whatever the use button is on your platform) to pick an item up, you can hold A to move an item within the world environment.
Multiple Weapons / Spells on Quick Select: When you are within the quick select menu for weapons/spells you can assign multiple spells when holding left or right on the D-Pad.
Shield Bash: While holding block, hit attack to shield bash your enemy.
Hotkeying on the PC: You can hotkey weapons and spells to the 1 - 8 keys. First make the item a Favorite. Open the Favorite menu ingame (Q), highlight the item you wish to hotkey and press the hotkey (1-8) you want to use. You can also rebind all of your keys in the control menu on all three platforms. (Xbox 360, PC, PS3)
Stock up on health potions: Early on, health potions are very useful (And are much more powerful than your starting healing spells), so having an abundance of them for tough and unexpected fights is essential to your survival.
Why are my stats red? To cure your stats use a potion of cure disease or pray to a shrine. If you can't find a shrine, there is one in Whiterun. If the NPCs are asking you about your health ("feeling sick?" or "You feeling alright?") that means you have a disease.
Don't Neglect Combat Skills: Be careful when leveling non-combat skills to early in the game, I had a thief character who spent his time pickpockting everyone in town and then everytime I left I would get one-shotted by sabres and other big animals.
Instant rejuvenation: Waiting (or resting) will fill up your Magika/Health/Stamina bars instantly.
More experience points: Resting in a bed will give you rested status, allowing for bonus XP gain, resting in your own bed (inside your house) will give you a well rested status allowing for even more bonus XP.
Reviving Creatures: You can revive every living creature except dragons with the Reanimate spells in the Conjuration tree.
Summoned Creatures: Don't underestimate the usefulness of summoned creatures. Even if they only do a little bit of damage, at least it's their health being thrown away and not yours. This is a great way to kill off tough enemies that you normally wouldn't be able to at a lower level, as they can pull the aggro while you get to safety. Beware that some enemies are able to steal your summoned creature from you.
Atronach Immunity: Atronachs are completely immune to spells of their own type, so if you are mainly a fire spell user, the best atronach to use is the fire one, as you can use your spells without needing to worry about damaging your minion.
Looting Dragon Priests: Dragon Priests can be looted for their masks. The masks look badass, have high armor statistics, and give crazy useful enchantments. Some give high damage boosts, more carrying capacity, and underwater breathing. Dragon Priests are a total pain in the ass to kill, but their masks are very, very worth it. Don't run away from them. If you must, swallow your pride and lower difficulty to kill them.
Knowledge is power: Try reading every book you see, the bigger the value of it, the more likely it has a free skill up or a quest inside waiting for you. If you don't want to look for them yourself, check out our skill book locations guide to find the skill books which raise your skills.
Keep Sprinting: If you want to keep sprinting don't let your stamina run out fully as it takes a few seconds to start regenerating.
Tracking Side-Quests on the Map: If you just check Miscellaneous on your quest tracker, it will not track your side quests on the map. What you have to do is after ticking Miscellaneous, go right and also tick the side quests you want to track. A little arrow should show up when you are tracking that particular side quest. After this the side quest will show up on your world and local maps.
Light armor benefits: There are some good reasons to prefer light armors.
- 50% faster stamina regen perk
- 10% attack avoidance perk
- 10 points to get everything useful while heavy is 12 points with 2 arguably useless perks (50% damage from falls and fist fighting) needed to unlock lightweight perk
- Less weight in your inventory
As for heavy armor, it has a higher armor rating and 50% less stagger skill.
Dragonbones and dragon scales: If you are wondering whether dragonbones or dragon scales are useful later in the game, you can use them to create dragon armor with 100 in the smithing skill. But since dragons are infinite, you can sell both until you are ready to craft the dragon armor.
Dragon fighting tips:
- Dragons vary in strength depending on their color: Green is common and weak, bronze, metallic and white are strong.
- Dragons drop scales and bones which as mentioned above are used for crafting dragon armor (with 100 skill in smithing.) The other loot that they drop is random.
- Dragons give souls which you can spend on shouts.
- They are like random encounters and can be encountered near dungeon entrances that you may have already explored.
- Fighting them in areas without sufficient space for them to land is a bad idea because they will snipe you with their fire breath attacks. Lead them into the open for the kill. When they land, engage them.
- Warrior class characters should use power attacks as they deal a considerable ammount of damage to the dragons
- Dragon fights are tougher for stealth type characters, but are doable. You just have to improvise.
Is an enemy kicking your ass? Sometimes you just have to run away. The best way to deal with an enemy you can't handle is to come back later when you are stronger. Attacking tougher enemies like polar bears as a low level peon is a death sentence.
Skyrim Storyline and the previous games: If you are wondering whether you have to play the earlier Elder Scrolls games to understand the story in Skyrim, the answer is no. Skyrim picks up 200 years after the events of Oblivion, and it tells a completely different story.
Don't lower the difficulty right away: Although you may be tempted, the default difficulty of "Adept" is perfect for most people. Some fights are supposed to be hard, so don't expect to win them all. This game was designed to be hard, so switching the difficulty to something lower than adept without giving it a few shots first (leveling, doing some other quests first), could potentially ruin the game for you.
Save before you create your character: You may have noticed that you're forced to watch about 5 minutes of the intro before actually being able to access the character creation screen. To skip this in future (for new characters), create a save when the guardsman is calling out names. Make sure you do this before he says "You, step forward", as at this point the game will enter a cinematic and you will not be able to access the save game menu.
Try out different races and keep your changes: Ever created an "okay" Breton and wanted to see if you could do better with a different race but didn't want to lose your changes? You wont! If you make changes to a preset on say, a Breton, so long as you do not change the preset of that Breton, you can go to the race screen and select another race. You can then make a face for that race and so on and so forth. Scrolling back down to the Breton will show your custom face.
Put that weapon away: Wielding a weapon in a town can be deemed as hostile.
Don't kill that chicken: Even killing a chicken could cause a town to turn hostile against you, so watch what you do, and who you do it in front of.
Don't neglect magicka: In Skyrim magicka can be used at the same time as a weapon, and it can also be dual wielded. For who want to major in any kind of magicka skill, it is recommended to stick to using one-handed weapons, so that if you run out of magicka, you can swing that trusty axe with your other hand.
Shield Tips: Avoid using a shield for your first few levels. Blocking increases your block skill, obviously, but every time you block, you get no experience in the skill of the armor you're wearing. A good tactic to increase armor rating early on is to have the healing starter spell in your left hand, and your weapon of choice in your right. You can always equip a shield later.
Mage College: If you are playing a mage character, make sure you check out the Mage College in Winterhold. Just be ready for a very challenging quest chain. You can complete the chain at a very low level (I completed it at level 9, starting at like level 4), but it gets extremely challenging towards the end, so beware. Also check out our Skyrim Mage Guide for an in-depth look at playing as a mage.
When do dragons start spawning? (MINOR SPOILERS) They only start spawning once you've talked to the Jarl of Whiterun as part of the main quest and fulfill a quest from his mage (the Gold Claw quest I mentioned above). The next main quest will have you battling a dragon, and from then on dragons can and will spawn from time to time.
Two-handed weapons still viable: Since Dragon Shouts fufill all your occasional magic needs ("Man, some fire damage would be good right now") the only thing you'll need magic for is healing when the potions run out. Burning my entire starting mana pool of 100 is enough to bring me to 1/2 - 3/4 at a little under 200 HP max.
Is the smithing skill useful? Should you level it? Besides making weapons and armor, using the smithing skill you can improve weapons and armor you already have. You can also get the arcane smith perk allows you to enhace unique and legendary weapons.
The only time smithing is 100% useless is when you are a pure mage and wear robes, since you can't improve cloth or your hands.
Starting out with smithing: People who can usually be found around smithing equipment can help you get started with the smithing skill. They will show you how to use each type of equipment (except for the forge), and even let you keep the equipment you make. Again, a great way to start off a smithing character. The earliest you can do this is in Riverwood (I forget the guy who runs their smith).
Skyrim Smithing Tips: You can find ingots in lots of places or mine for materials.
Leveling Smithing Faster: Making Iron daggers and Leather Bracers is a quick way to level up early smithing, use them for enchanting skill ups or sell them to a vendor for speech skill ups.
Mining Points: Look at a wall or ground that looks different and then approach. The option to mine will appear. Remember that you need a pickaxe for this to work. (Note: You don't have to equip the pickaxe, just have it in your inventory and interact with the material.)
Finding a pickaxe: There is a mine with a pickaxe right in between the three Guardian Stones and Riverwood. Just walk towards Riverwood from the Guardian Stones and you will see a pickaxe and hammer icon on your "radar", and enter. Beware - there are some bandits inside, but you can use this mine for iron ore once you've cleared it out. This is a great location to hit if you plan on picking up the smithing skill.
Where to find mining points: Dungeons / Caves / etc. have mining points, and so do mountains, just climb around and you'll find some veins. Check out our ore locations guide to find some ores.
Leather comes from animal hides: just click on a tanning rack and select your hide and bam, you have leather.
Click on the forge to make new weapons, and use grindstones to improve your weapons. Also use the workbench to improve your armor.
Where to buy Spells in Skyrim: If you are looking to buy some new spells early in the game, there are good spells in Whiterun, Dragon Search. There is an alchemist there that sells all kinds of spells. The catch is you have do a story mission there first.
Hope this helped
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