The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Tips and Tricks for New Players/Beginners Guide (2024)

A beginner’s guide to Skyrim. Helpful tips and tricks to help you on your journey as well as an overview of character creation and the leveling system.

Introduction

In this guide, I will show you the basics of Skyrim’s character creation and give a few helpful tips. If you are one of the few people on this planet that hasn’t yet played this game, please contact Todd Howard for he would like to know how you’ve managed to avoid playing it for so long.

Character Creation

Once the game starts, you will go through a cinematic cutscene unless it bugs, then just start a new game. Once the cutscene is over, you will be presented with menu that allows you to create your character. The most important part of character selection is choosing a race but not really, it doesn’t matter.

• High Elf – The Magicka Bonus and the power to regenerate it quickly makes High Elves ideal mages.
• Khajiit – Thanks to their natural stealth and night vision abilities, Khajiit are ideal thieves and assassins.
• Orc – Due to their skills and Berserk ability, Orcs excel as warriors.

Any other race you see is a figment of your imagination and should thusly be ignored.

Customize the appearance of the character to your heart’s content.

Skills

When you make a character, it is important to keep an archetype in mind. Do you want to be a Warrior, battering people with your weapon of choice while in the thick of combat? A Rogue that waits in the shadows, waiting for the opportune moment to strike with dagger or bow? A Mage that uses magic and underwhelming spells to defeat their foes? Do you want to mix different elements of those three archetypes to create something like a Spellsword, Nightblade or Duelist? Do you want to just completely ignore any sense in your build and just do whatever? Either way, forget what I said earlier because it doesn’t actually matter. In case you do think it matters, here are a list of skills and a brief over view of them to help you create a character the way you want.

Magic Skills (for nerds)

• Alteration – KEKW
• Conjuration – Make zombies that don’t aggro enemies half the the time. Summoning Daedra ftw.
• Destruction – Your main damage dealer as a mage. Spend 15 seconds charging a master spell that costs most of your magicka and deals less damage than one swing of a weapon at high levels.
• Enchantment – Give weapons and armor enchantments that aren’t as good as the ones on random loot.
• Illusion – Good for starting small scale wars in cities.
• Restoration – Healing, just use it no matter the build.

Martial Skills

• Archery – Favor the bow, eh? I’m a sword man myself.
• Block – What is it Imperial?
• Heavy Armor – The best offense is a good defense am I right?
• One-Handed – You’re like me, eh? Don’t fancy those clunky two-handed weapons.
• Smithing – I’d be a lot warmer and a lot happier with a bellyful of mead…
• Two-Handed – The gods gave you two hands, and you use them both for your weapon. I can respect that.

Stealth Skills

• Alchemy – How to make 10000 Septims by level 1.
• Light Armor – Better than Heavy.
• Lockpicking – The least interesting skill in the game. Everyone uses it though because it’s useful.
• Pickpocket – Take people’s clothes right off them.
• Sneak – Walk right in front of people without them noticing. Make people think they’re just hearing things after you shoot an arrow in their faces.
• Speech – (Persuasion Failed)

Sample Archetype

Stealth Archer
Important skills: Archery, Sneak, Light Armor, One-Handed, Alchemy, Smithing.
One of the least played and appreciated playstyles in Skyrim is that of the stealth archer. The goal is to sneak around and using your bow to pick enemies off from a distance.

Increasing Skills
Once you spend hours upon hours increasing your skills by using them (Or just pay for training), you will eventually level up! Pick between a Health, Magicka or Stamina increase and select a perk.

What to do?

Once you follow Hadvar or Ralof out of Helgen, the world of Skyrim is now open to you. In this section, I will go over the different factions, groups and quest-lines you can join in order to find quests.

Main Quest
The meat and potatoes of the game. Has a story so good and quests that are so much fun that you’ll never want to do them again.

Civil War: Imperials & Stormcloaks
Choose between two warring factions vying for control over Skyrim, go through two FASCINATING, EXTREMELY DIFFERENT and NOT REPETITIVE quest-lines, participate in a debate that has been going on in innumerable forums and comment sections for 10 years. Also if you don’t support the Empire, you’re objectively wrong.

Bard’s College
Want to learn to sing, play music or write poetry? Well you’re out of luck. Why don’t you do a fetch quest in a dungeon or something and leave us alone, okay?

Blades
KEKW

College of Winterhold
Whether you know master level spells, have a basic grasp of magic or have never cast a spell in your life, I have some good news for you. You have met the requirements to become the next Archmage! Congratulations!

Companions
Join the Honorable-ish Nordic-ish Warrior-ish faction and find a quest-line that is slightly better than the Bard’s College quest-line. Make your way up the ranks(?) to get into the Inner Circle, an idiotic and obnoxious group of elite Warriors who will give you a “reward” whether you like it or not. I hope you like dogs.

Dark Brotherhood
Do you like killing people? Do you like betrayal? Do you like Jesters? If so, this is the faction for you.

Thieves Guild
A guild all about delving in dungeons and ruins and killing things. What? You wanted to steal stuff? Not when we have Draugr to kill!

Dawnguard DLC: Dawnguard or Vampires
Choose between two warring factions, be a Vampire hunter or a Vampire. Start a new play-through and be shocked at how similar the quest-line of the completely antithetical faction is.

Dragonborn DLC Main Quest
The better main quest.

Helpful Tips

To finish this guide, I will give you 10 tips that will hopefully help you out at the start of the game.

1. Kill Nazeem.
2. Steal things from Riverwood at the start of the game, they’re all weak and pretty much defenseless.
3. If you have to much social anxiety and can’t talk to the guard to get into Whiterun or Riften, you can attack them, they’ll take you right in.
4. Steal the Limeware Platter in the first room wait wrong game.
5. If you’re stuck on your current quest because of a bug, you can go in the console and enter “caqs”, it will complete your current quest instantly.
6. If you need gold fast, go to a Dwarven ruin, they’re usually quick and easy to complete.
7. Kill Nazeem.
8. Mods only dilute the Skyrim experience, play how Todd would have wanted you to have.
9. Kill Nazeem.
10. ~~~Kill Nazeem~~~.

Thank you for reading my guide, enjoy your playthrough!

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• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim