Beginner pitfalls to avoid

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What are the things to avoid as plague when taking on Skyrim as a beginner?

The reason I'm asking is that I'm both a powergamer and suffer of severe restarters syndrome. It's one thing to play a somewhat weaker build if it suits ones playstyle but learning that you've made a serious mistake in the beginning affecting your options 10+ hours later into the game ain't fun at all.

Examples of such pitfalls in other games:
- Diablo 2: Pumping Strength as a caster to be able to wear that "ooh, shiny" new heavy armour, only to get your behind handed to you by monsters in Hell level when you'd need those 100+ points in Vitality instead.
- Baldur's Gate: Although Fighter/Mage is the power of legends, doing it as a dualclass FROM Mage INTO Fighter definitely has the qualifications of an.. eh.. interesting character build.
- Icewind Dale 2: Sure, adding a mix-in level of Fighter, Ranger AND Rogue gives some immediate tangible benefits for the party's Sorcerer, but later on it's all about the spellcaster level.. which is forever doomed to lag at least three levels behind by now. If not completely wrecked by a possible Multiclassing exp penalty!

So.. what are the beginner pitfalls of Skyrim that you really, REALLY would like to know beforehand, without even going into spoilers?

 

I am not really sure if there are any pitfalls in the game. I went for a standard heavy armoured 2handed wielding warrior, and I haven`t run into any situations that have given me too much headache. The only advice I would give is to be at least level 30 before you do the second half of the main quest. And buy a house as early as you can.

 

Be careful where you put your points, they are limited. You might feel like you have plenty to spare. You don't. Only put points in trees that will actually matter to you. It won't completely screw you over if you squander a few points but it is annoying and it might lead to you not getting that shiny talent point you found out later you really wanted. Focus on a very limited amount of trees in the beginning, visualise your character and go for it. Sometimes you can have up to five talent points you can't put anywhere but they will be needed later. You have around 50 talent points in total to play around with and some trees can truly eat them fast.

To reiterate, put serious thought into where you put your talent points. Might even be good advice to count how many you need in the 2-3 trees you have decided will be your main skills and then see how many points you have to "play" around with.

 

1) Stay on the roads as much as you can, lots of random encounters only happen in roads. Besides, the wilderness is home to dangers like bears and worse. If you wanna go exploring, return to the nearest road after.
2) If you plan on playing on higher difficulty levels, do NOT allow any of your crafting skills to out-level your main fighting skills. The way monster abilities scale in Skyrim, you do not want to end up fighting incredibly powerful monsters just because your character is over-leveled thanks to crafting skills.
3) Around most major holds there are stables that allow you to visit all other major holds in Skyrim for a small fee. Use these to travel to places like the colleges - traveling to these places on foot is an unnecessary torture (based on experience).
4) Followers help make the game more manageable for characters who struggle at low levels (most notably, mages). Get one asap - as tempting as it might be to strike out on your own, doing so might possibly be just another unnecessary torture.
5) Try to develop at least one crafting skill early on while getting a feel for others. Once you start powergaming, you'll be using all of them.
6) Rest often, visit divine shrines often and always have a standing stone enhancement up.
7) Pay attention to changes in terrain and peculiar flora/fauna. Chances are, these are alchemy ingredients you'll want to pick up. They take forever to respawn, so you'll want to harvest them as early as possible.
8) There's always more than one way to approach any battle in Skyrim.
9) Talk to guards often, and try to catch up on the latest rumors in taverns/inns every once in a while. Doing so also opens up certain subquests and locations you would normally have missed.
10) Open as many books if you can. Some grant skillups, some give you subquests.
11) Stay away from giants. Unless you want a really good aerial view of your surroundings.

Regarding perks, joacqin summed up everything pretty nicely. You should be able to fill 6 or so trees completely if you feel like wandering around Skyrim trying to max out your character level after doing the main quest, but I hear leveling past 50 is a slow grind. Max character level is 80 or 81 iirc, 100 points in everything.

 

I didn't see it mentioned anywhere and it took a while to deduct it from a FAQ:

You CAN eventually max all of your SKILLS if you really want to, but only a few (think 5-7 of the 18 available) can be backed up with corresponding PERKS (talents) to make them really shine. Rather obvious when you think of it, but this class/skill/stat jargon can get you confused at times.

Meaning that you essentially take 6 normal (e.g. World of Warcraft) classes, put them into blender and get the freedom of using all of their 6x3=18 talent trees at your will.

 

You may already know this, but just in case there are three major classes in Skyrim: the warrior, the mage and the thief. All skills in the game belong to one of three skill groups each reflecting the playstyle of one of the three major classes.

Here are the 18 skills and the skill groups they belong to:

The Warrior (Combat)
-One-Handed
-Two-Handed
-Archery
-Heavy Armor
-Block
-Blacksmithing

The Thief (Stealth)
-Sneak
-Lockpicking
-Pickpocketing
-Persuasion
-Light Armor
-Alchemy

The Mage (Magic)
-Conjuration
-Alteration
-Destruction
-Illusion
-Restoration
-Enchantment

You'll find this classification useful when dealing with standing stones.

Beyond this classification, each particular skill is so diverse they easily overlap with skills from other skill groups in terms of function and synergy.

 

I think that's one of the best parts of the game actually. Even if you're a thief, you're probably going to want to invest fairly heavily in archery or one handed combat. Every character can benefit from lockpicking, persuasion, blacksmithing, and alchemy. And even if you aren't a mage, you'll probably be helped by having at least a little skill in restorative magic.

 

Even if you're not going to invest heavily into Enchantment early on, start collecting (and filling up!) those soul gems at your earliest convenience. You don't even need Grand ones, you train up just as well with Petty ones on some random loot you're going to sell anyway.

You'll find/buy/steal much better enchanted loot until you start nearing 100 in the skill, so having anywhere between 20 and 80 in it is kinda pointless unless you have the means to push it to 100.

 

Here are my key tips/pitfall warnings.

• IMO, alchemy is, for the most part, a waste of time. The world of Skyrim is littered with potions. It's good to be able to make some healing potions and poisons early on, and some that boost skills (conjuration, two-handed, etc.) are a good way to make some money early on. But I've found more enjoyable pursuits. Your mileage may vary.
• If you're a stealth character, forget having a follower. They blow your cover every single time.
• Don't worry about keeping dragon bones and scales until you're at least in your 20s of levels. They aren't exactly hard to come by and you only need about 10 of each to complete a full set of either heavy or light dragon armor. I'm level 54 and I have a useless stockpile of over 80 of each. Sell 'em.
• Be careful which skills you take, and if you're going to commit to a skill, go all the way. I had a spell sword character who was a crafter AND a heavy-armored melee fighter AND a destruction based mage AND an alchemist AND a stealthy archer. By level 28 I was getting thumped by bandits. For sad. Specialization is your friend.
• On that note - I highly recommend being a stealthy, light-armored archer.
• On arrows - Ancient Nord Arrows are just as good as Steel arrows and there are tons of them to be found in barrows.
• Also on arrows - every time you go to weapon smith, buy small quantities of nice arrows - Ebony, Glass, etc. By the time you get to fighting tough enemies and need the extra damage, you'll find you have hundreds at the ready. Arrows weigh nothing, so you may as well. I use Dwarven and Orcish arrows for most of the game. Sell the rest.
• Breezehome (the house you can buy in Whiterun) is probably the most useful home in the game. It has the fewest bells and whistles, but you get it early and cheap, and it's in the best fast-travel position (meaning - if you map-travel to Whiterun, you're virtually on your own doorstep - you don't have to trudge across town). My second favorite is the Windhelm house, but it's also the most complicated to get (you have to play out the Civil War storyline before it's available).
• Everyone knows the best way to level Smithing is to make iron daggers. But most people just sell the daggers. KEEP EM ALL. Because...
• ...once you find a weapon with the Banish enchantment, destroy it to learn the enchantment, and then embue all of your leftover iron daggers with that enchantment, even with petty souls. Not only is Banish the best enchantment for earning experience, Banish weapons sell for a TON. A complete economical mystery to me, since there are barely any summoned Daedra in the game...but whatever. They ensure you'll never have money problems again.
• I've found Lycanthropy to be completely useless. Werewolf form is always weaker than my character and I get sick of being told by guards that I smell like a wet dog. Never been a vampire, though.

 

You have a high chance of finding a bow with the banish enchant in Solitude at the bowyer. Even if it costs 5k gold it is well spent money as DR pointed out.

Another tip that I have used on my second run is to change signs when you are about to craft. For instance my warrior generally has the warrior sign but when it was time to level enchanting (which is horribly overpowered I would almost recommend giving it a pass) I switched to the mage sign and when I brew lots of poisons I have the thief sign.

 

Alchemy in my games was definitely not a waste of time. It was quite OP, in fact. But I was also playing a completely different kind of character.

Vampirism may be your dream affliction if you love stealthies. Personally I find both useless for an itinerant conjurer.

 

Only thing you need to know as a beginner is to have fun.

So long as you're accustomed to RPG combat, especially elder scrolls combat, even on the hardest difficulty the game is a bit easy (combat-wise). You do want to focus on 1 talent tree for the few levels, then a second after that (for 2h I went with 2h obviously, then heavy armor when I couldn't put more points in 2h - lack of skill levels), then smithing after that.

Melee combat is 100x better in this game than oblivion. Shields and blocking don't break the game, zomg!!!!

 

If you're on your very first playthrough, do yourself a service and STAY AWAY FROM SMITHING. Or at the very least, don't do alchemy or enchanting also at the same time. That way you might actually expect to go 'ooh, shiny' on the loot you find, rather than everything being substandard compared to the stuff you've made yourself.

Combining any two tradeskills is already borderline overpowered, putting all three of them together is "entire planet cracking" level of broken. And no, I'm not talking about any of the numerous exploits, just plain Fortify <skill> boosting items and how they interact.

I'm seriously expecting a major nerf patch soon. And not just minor adjustments, I'm talking all the way down to the ground, baby.

Edit: I raised the difficulty to the maximum and STILL expect to fare better than on normal (Adept) prior to crafting my current adventuring set and weapon. Unless the difficulty slider affects other (undocumented?) things besides reducing my damage and increasing enemy's.

 

I wouldn't count on it. They didn't nerf alchemy in Morrowind either. Plus Bethesda is usually pretty lazy in terms of patching their games. You probably can expect some mod to nerf it. In fact, if the construction set is out by now, it might already exist.

 

I'm not entirely sure if the gross imbalances in this game are there by oversight or by design. I mean, it's one thing to expect strict balance measures in a competitive MMORPG environment (such as World of Warcraft), while sandbox games need to make all sorts of funky stuff at least semi-viable to enhance replay value. Which, in turn, makes any sort of powergamed cookie-cutter build breeze through the game without much resistance.

However, I've kinda started liking the things the way they are. This way I can, if I really want to, try stuff that would be seriously lacking in competitive play. For example, I'm actually eager to try strictly ranged and/or stealth approach since I've learned that this game isn't all about top sustained dps, massive body count for grinding or being limited to an endless kill loop of the ever respawning top dude at the very end of the "last" dungeon. In fact, some of it can be directly detrimental to enjoyable play experience.

For comparison, although the JUPP party makes Heart of Fury difficulty mode a breeze in Icewind Dale 2, it's still only a matter of forgetting a buff spell, getting them dispelled, having your tank stunned or a myriad of other conditions that will quickly render that overpowered state into a Power Word: Reload. Powergaming to the max can't remove (most) of this.

On the other end of the spectrum, games like WoW and Diablo 2 are tuned with the assumption that you powergame. Sure, alternative odd builds exist and are widely played, but you can kiss goodbye to ever being able to really participate in current end game content with such a character.

This puts Skyrim into the "yes, you can and are actually expected to roleplay (at least some) for decent gaming experience" category. Not a bad feat from Bethesda in and of itself.

 

I am playing a stealth character now and find the game perfectly challenging and I am not even using the hardest setting. The only thing that really and truly breaks the game is maxed enchanting. Other things that are bit too useful are blacksmithing and the destruction perk that stuns the target when dual cast.

My little bosmer thief is almost maxed stealth, mid level bow and one handed and put some points in alchemy as well. She can slit the throat of almost all humanoid targets she can sneak up on but if she is spotted or if she has to fight a dragon it is potion chugging time or even run run run away to fight another day. Just the fact that I use both daggers and bow with her has split my experience over two weapon styles which add quite a hefty amount to the difficulty level nor have I had any spare points to put into light armour which I wanted. I have no idea what kind of character would have extra points to put in lockpicking, pickpocket or speech.

A stealth character really plays as a stealth character, I find myself sneaking around in the wild as well as any enemy is a real challenge if I cant get the first strike.

 

So far I've broken the game with conjuration, alchemy, speech, stealth, archery, blocking, destruction and yes, even restoration. I won't say I wasn't actively trying to powergame, but what originally drew me to these skills was a desire to (role)play a particular archetype, or character. Of course, I won't say I tried to hold back my character's progress for the sake of RP-ing either. Powergaming in Skyrim is easy once you learn to spot the patterns (the sheer power of gold, for example). RP-ing is trickier, especially since the game really just doesn't care about your character. You can expect some sort of response if you go on a killing spree, but then you can just sheathe your weapon and voila. If that doesn't work, kill more and try again.

 

Conjuration may be powerful but it still takes an eternity for any kind of summons to kill stuff, excellent for tanking though and I used them constantly when I played my mage.

Stealth breaks the game to a point but there are still fights you have to take head on and I for one find them refreshingly challenging. Not that it isn't ridiculously fun to just sneak around and slit the throat of people.

 

The atronachs aren't very damaging yep, but you can fight alongside them and you can keep resummoning them. Their stats also scale with difficulty. Dremora lords are deadly though and a dead thrall is basically an extra NPC. You can even outfit them by filling their inventory with legendary daedric items, if you so wished. Being a master summoner, I had two of these.

Alduin never knew what hit him.

 

Alduin never knows what hit him. He was easy on my confusingly built newbie mage and he was a joke on my enchanted up daedric clad axe wielding nord. I truly truly love this game but umm, the last boss isn't much of a boss. Hard to balance though, remember the end bosses in oblivion and I had seriously pimped up characters there as well and I had to constantly chug the maximum amount of potions non-stop to make that last run on all my characters. The potions trivialized it but I dont know if I could have done it without.