Skyrim Gameplay Guide

Latest posts by Adam Braunstein (see all)

It’s not often you can say a game is one of the greatest of all time, but it’s really hard not to call it that when it comes to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It’s been released on countless platforms, has been referenced by every video game developer under the sun, won countless awards, and is still one of the most played games on Steam to this day.

While it’s become a well-known statement at this point, all of the above is true and for good reason. The experience of Skyrim is just that, an experience. This is a new world you are discovering and with that comes all the wonder and terror that comes with such a thing.

I began my Skyrim journey on its release date in 2011 and I’m still firing up the game in regular form as well as VR to this day. For some reason, I can’t get enough of the mixture of music, environments and characters this game has to offer. I love exploring for hours and discovering places I’ve never even seen before.

Would you believe that I’ve been playing for 10 years and have never even bothered to beat the main storyline? I’ve gotten very far, but I’m often too distracted by the countless other paths you can travel that I’ve just never gotten around to taking down Alduin once in for all. That’s over 500 hours I’ve spent wandering around this gorgeous and wondrous world and I have no intention of stopping any time soon.

You are free to wander the entire map of Skyrim to your heart’s content without the game stopping you at any point and this is part of what drew me into this game so heavily in the first place. Invisible walls are a classic way that developers keep the player from seeing things they haven’t earned the right to see yet but in Skyrim, Bethesda doesn’t use such primitive barriers and instead, lets you explore the world as you see fit.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you’re ready to explore the world at the start of the game. When you are low level, wandering into places unknown is a very dangerous undertaking. If you take a few wrong turns, you might find yourself getting smacked into Oblivion (see what I did there?) by enemies that far outclass you.

If you want to learn how to survive in Skyrim, I’ve got your back. You’re the Dragonborn, so here’s everything you need to know to start your legendary quest.

skyrim

Combat

You’re going to be fighting a lot in your quest to take down the evil dragon Alduin, so regardless of what path you choose to get there, you need to know how to defend yourself. In Skyrim, you have a bunch of options when it comes to how you’re going to fight. Do you want to be a thief? Assassin?

What about a mage or a dual-wielding warrior? Maybe an Archer suits your style more? There are so many ways to go about combat here and that’s a good thing because Skyrim’s combat doesn’t exactly feel too modern these days. Animations are a bit stiff, but luckily for you, there are tons of mods that can improve the gameplay in ways so drastic that it’s often you’ll see videos of Skyrim that look like a completely different game. Let’s explore how each playstyle works.

Melee Combat

The hallmark of any good fantasy RPG is a rock-solid melee system and while Skyrim’s is not exactly famous for its excellent combat, you do have the benefit of having multiple options to fight. As a melee fighter, you can equip one-handed weapons, dual wield, or equip two-handed weapons.

Your options for weapons are vast and you’ll find steel swords, bare fists, iron daggers, Dragonbone greatswords, Elven Axes, Dadric Warhammers, and tons of variety in between. You have your basic attack combo as well as power attacks.

Your basic attack is generally similar between each of the weapon types. All one-handed swords will have the same attacks as all axes. Your power attacks add a bit of flavor to the system. By holding the attack button, you active various power attacks, with each one being different based on the direction you’re moving.

If you’re moving backward, your power attack will be different than your power attack moving left to right. Suppose you manage to finish off an enemy with a power attack. In that case, you’ll be treated to one of several different finishing animations which are suitably brutal and act as instant kills.

Depending on your weapon type, your swings will be all different speeds. Your daggers will be way faster than your one-handed swords, and your one-handed swords will be far faster than your two-handed Warhammers. This gives you a bit of strategy to consider here as some enemies might be better dealt with by quickly dispatching them while others might have lengthier health bars and require some really powerful attacks.

You can also use a shield with any one-handed weapon as well, giving you a defensive option. You can block with your normal weapons, but depending on your block skill, you will likely still take on a decent amount of damage unless you are high level. As you progress through the weapon skill tree, you will unlock more devastating skills such as decapitation.

Each weapon type has its own set of skills to unlock. Melee combatants in Skyrim will be able to deal damage quickly and efficiently but are always in the most danger as they’re up close without cover the majority of the time.

Archery

If melee combat isn’t your thing, you might be more comfortable taking on your foes from afar, and if that’s the case, then archery is the way to go. As an archer, you’ll have a selection of bows to choose from and a ton of skills to unlock as well.

You can use your bow in the third person, but the most effective way is definitely first person so you can take more precise shots. Going for headshots will be the most effective way of dealing with combatants. Still, you’ll also be able to deal double the damage by sneaking as well. Stealth archery is a great way to wipe out an entire dungeon without alerting others, but you’ll have to be good with your aim as there is no hand-holding here.

As you progress up the skill tree, you’ll unlock the ability to slow down time while aiming, pin down enemies, knock people unconscious, and cause damage based on the enemy position. Arrows come in many forms as melee weapons do and options range from iron to ebony arrows and beyond. Fire arrows, magic arrows, poison arrows, and more are out there as well, so any kind of effect you desire your arrows to have will likely be out there to be found somewhere.

As an archer, you’re going to want to approach combat a little bit differently than melee. While your arrows will do a ton of damage up close a , you also need to consider the time it takes to draw your bow and that extra second could be all an enemy needs to land a killing blow on you.

Suppose you’re thinking of being an all-out assault archer. In that case, I recommend taking followers with you who specialize in melee combat so that you can hang back without having to worry about getting swarmed. You also will have the ability as an archer to take out the archers in hard-to-reach places, so you’ll no longer have to worry about any of those annoying snipers perched high up on towers as a well-placed headshot will take care of them every time.

Archery is probably the most highly skilled playstyle you can specialize in, but keep in mind you can always just switch from weapon to weapon, so regardless of your specialty, you can take out your bow at any time. A fully leveled archer is among the most powerful characters you can create, so while it’s a tougher way to play than most, it’s still an incredibly rewarding one.

Mage

Melee and Archery are fun and all, but if you want to be prepared for any and every situation in Skyrim, you are going to need to have some magic skills up your sleeve. You get started very quickly with some basic spells, so you don’t need to worry about unlocking anything too fast.

Once you have access to the three basic spells of Flames, Sparks, and Ice Spike, you’ll have access to the base three elements in the game. As you travel throughout your journey, you’ll find more powerful spells and you’ll even be able to purchase new ones at various shops throughout the world.

If you’re confused about where to buy spells, any hold that has a Jarl in it will also have a sorcerer in a nearby room. After talking with the sorcerer or court wizard, you’ll be able to access their wares which largely consist of new spells.

Magic gets even more interesting in your skill tree as you can unlock tons of abilities that change how your spells act. For example, one of the earliest abilities to unlock is called Duel Casting. This allows you to perform powered-up versions of your basic magic attacks by equipping the same spell on each hand and casting them simultaneously.

This does not work for every magic attack, but the ones it does work on basically double your damage output, so its good to find out which ones work early on. As you level up in the game world, you’ll start finding apprentice-level spells and eventually master-level spells.

Master-level spells differ a bit from your normal spells because these generally have entirely new animations surrounding them. For example, the master level Ice spell will cause a massive blizzard to form and freeze everything in the area and the master level lightning spell will automatically put two hands together to launch a massive lightning stream at your enemies.

The damage increases exponentially between spell types, but the biggest leaps you can make in damage as a spell user is by unlocking the skill tree as well as donning magic equipment.

In your skill tree, the behavior of your spells will change the more you progress. If you use Ice spells, you’ll want to unlock the ability to turn foes into ice so that you can shatter them with melee weapons. Lightning can jump to multiple foes and cause consistent electricity damage and Fire spells can consistently burn enemies as well.

What if you’re not a long-range fighter but you want to use magic anyway? Well, enter Bound weapons. Bound weapons are essentially magic versions of swords and bows and they’re often far more powerful. If you’re worried about taking damage as a Mage in Skyrim, you can utilize a spell called wards. If you haven’t come across any early on in the game, head to the College of Winterhold and join the college. Once you’ve joined, you’ll be given the spell shortly after.

This is just the lesser ward, but it gives you the idea of what to expect from the higher-level ones. Once you equip the ward, activate it and it casts like a shield in front of you. If an enemy launches a magic attack at this point, it will absorb the damage. Physical attacks like swords and arrows will not be absorbed at all though, so make sure you know who you are going up against before activating this ability.

Followers

Your journey throughout Skyrim is going to be an arduous one. You’ll be traversing dungeons, ancient Dwarven ruins, doing battle with dragons and the undead and after a while, that can get awfully tough when you’re on your own. Thanks to Followers of Skyrim, you don’t have to travel on your own if you don’t want to.

There are tons of Followers to find and have join you on your adventures. Each one has different combat abilities to consider before hiring them. Most Followers will join for a small fee. Still, some require certain circumstances to be fulfilled before becoming part of your adventuring crew.

Once your party is assembled, you can customize them in any way you see fit, and your weapons, armor, and spells are all transferrable to them. You might be wondering if your Followers can die just as you do. The answer is a bit tricky. See, Followers technically can be killed, but it’s very, very tough to actually have this happen. When a Follower’s health is depleted, they start to kneel and crawl on the ground while begging for mercy.

Often, your enemies grant this mercy and from there, they recover their health perfectly fine. However, suppose either your enemies or yourself decides to damage your follower in this state. In that case, they can be permanently killed. If this happens, you either have to hope you saved recently or mourn your fallen friend and move on.

The same goes for falling great heights. For example, if you Fus Ro Dah Lydia off a mountain, she’s not coming back. Some Followers are unkillable though and those are generally the ones linked to quest lines. That means even if you try to get rid of Serana, her absence is only possible by asking her to part ways.

Followers are great to aid you in combat and even discuss the current happenings in the plot or mission with each other. Still, they have some more benefits as well. A good amount of Followers you can recruit can train you in various areas.

Some Followers will make you a more proficient Archer while others might up your smithing, magic, or other areas. You can never learn everything all at once, though, so keeping a Follower with you for the long haul will benefit you as you level up over time.

As if that wasn’t enough things to do with your Followers, you can also romance them and start a relationship with them and even marry them and have kids. This is only able to be done with some of the Followers, so after you acquire the Amulet of Mara, try your luck with your Followers and see what happens.

Your Followers aren’t without a soul, so you need to learn their tolerance for certain actions. Looks are a good way to tell what your Follower is going to accept vs. be offended by. If you’re recruiting a noble-looking knight, you can be certain that stealing items will upset them greatly and if you decide to murder someone while they’re with you, they could completely turn on you and attack you.

Finding out what your Followers will tolerate is an intricate dance that can be tough to get a handle on. For example, the majority of Followers will be totally fine with you being a vampire, but Faendal will absolutely despise what you’ve become and become hostile immediately. Once this happens with a follower, say goodbye to that partnership as there is no coming back from it and you’ll either have to run or put your former teammate down for good.

Along with just morality on actions like stealing and murder, certain Followers will react to the path you decide to take in your quests as well. Some Followers might react very negatively to you becoming an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood and attack you for joining them.

If you happen to run into one of these Followers who disagrees with everything you do, there is a quest you can discover that lets you sacrifice them for a great reward, but you wouldn’t ever do something so cruel….would you?

Not every Follower has a strong morality though, so you may be able to get away with stealing and even murdering depending on who is following you when you do it. This system adds so much immersion to Skyrim and is tons of fon to figure out.

Skills and Leveling Up

Skyrim approaches skill building in a very unique way compared to most games. Your typical RPG will have you reach a certain amount of experience points through combat and whatnot and then you’ll be able to increase an attribute or unlock a new skill from there. Games that utilize this are the Assassin’s Creed series, Dark Souls, Mass Effect, and pretty much any other big RPG series out there.

Skyrim does have this as well, but it’s much more unique. In Skyrim, you only increase a skill when you perform that skill in the game. This means that even if you level up 15 times as a one-handed fighter, your bow skill will still be extremely low. The reason this matters is because in order to unlock abilities on your skill tree, you have to be at that level first.

For example, let’s say that I leveled up twice and I unlocked the first ability on the Archery skill tree. Even though I reached the next tier of the tree, I would not be able to unlock another ability because my archery skill is too low. That means that specializations in Skyrim actually matter.

If you want to be a melee fighter, attacking enemies with melee weapons will increase that ability incrementally over time. If you want to be a mage, cast spells any chance you get. If you want your stamina to increase, run and jump a lot.

Let’s say you want to be a better stealth player, well, start sneaking around! This applies to just about every system from the game including your persuasive abilities during conversations. The feeling of growth within Skyrim is incredible and these systems go a long way into making you feel like you’re growing into the legendary Dragonborn everyone hails you to be.

skyrim legendary skills

Questing

What good is all that great combat going to do if you have nowhere to use it? Luckily for us, Skyrim has literally 100’s of hours of content to dig into, but it can be a little bit overwhelming at first. There are tons of options here, and your journal can get filled up very quickly, and soon, you’ll have markers all over the place on where to go, so here’s a breakdown of how we can approach our adventure.

Main Quest

No matter what you do, the opening of Skyrim will immediately thrust you onto the path of the Dragonborn. That path starts with you walking to a chopping block and subsequently facing a horrifying dragon attack. From there, you discover your fate as the Dragonborn, travel to incredible places, fight terrifying enemies and fight for the fate of not only the world but existence itself.

It’s an epic quest and will last you a good amount of time. If all you want to do is experience the main storyline, you’ll be shepherded along that path with no issue. At any point, though, you can veer off this path to explore a wealth of other storylines.

skyrim main questline

The Companions

The Companions are pretty rude and cold to you off the bat, but by completing some intromissions, you’ll end up joining one of the more interesting guilds in the game.

The seemingly goody-two-shoes guild of Whiterun might seem pretty lame at first, but join them, and you’ll follow a pretty intriguing questline for 3-6 hours that will give you new equipment as well as some impressive new abilities as well.

You’ll be able to start this questline by entering their building in Whiterun. Without spoiling anything, they are not the normal group they seem to be and their dark secret is one of the coolest abilities in the game.

skyrim whiterun

The Dark Brotherhood

Everyone’s favorite questline is generally the Dark Brotherhood, and they return in this iteration of the Elder Scrolls to give you some epic and creepy as hell moments.

By following the Aventus notification you’ll get after wandering around Windhelm for a bit, you’ll alert the Dark Brotherhood to your presence. After you finish that short quest that involves killing a sadistic teacher at an orphanage, a courier will appear with a letter for you letting you know the brotherhood is watching.

From there, sleep in any bed, and you’ll awake in a strange shack which is quite terrifying in VR, and then you’ll have started the Dark Brotherhood questline. This quest will send you on various assassination missions culminating with some game-changing events and have you interacting with some creepy characters as well. When you finish it, you will still get radiant quests from here all the time so you can continue assassinating to your heart’s content.

the dark brotherhood

The College of Winterhold

If only we could visit Hogwartz in real life…. well, Skyrim VR doesn’t have the Harry Potter license to play with, but that didn’t stop it from trying to recreate the experience with the College of Winterhold questline.

If you ask around at inns about rumors, you’ll likely be told to check out the College of Winterhold and so will begin a long trek up north to the wintery part of Skyrim and the location of one of the better questlines in the game.

It’s not the longest, but it certainly is unique, and by approaching the College of Winterhold, you will be asked to demonstrate your spellcasting, and from there, you’re sent on a journey that will leave you as an ultra-powerful mage. For magic users, this is the quest for you as you’ll find some awesomely powerful spells and staves here that will make you that much more dangerous of a Mage.

the colleage of winterhold

Thieves Guild

The Thieves Guild is a crucial component for any stealth player as it provides some of the best stealth missions in the entire game. You’ll discover the Thieves Guild in the sewers of Riften and as you enter the city for the first time, you will encounter a character who will task you with pulling off a small mission, and once you’ve completed that, the passage to this mysterious underground is yours.

The questline is lengthy and will likely take you 5-6 hours to finish. As you can imagine, it has some fantastic rewards, and you’ll learn to be as silent as the wind as you steal and blackmail and kill through an intriguing storyline that is among the best in the game.

These are just the guilds you can join in Skyrim, but there are far more factions to join as well. The Blades, the Bards, The Dawnguard, The Nightingales, and much more factions are available to join with their own missions and special rewards involved.

the thieves guild

The Civil War

If the opening mission didn’t give you a hint, there is all kinds of conflict going on in Skyrim when you arrive. The biggest conflict is between the Stormcloaks and The Imperials. You’ll meet Ulfric Stormcloak at the opening of the game, and from there, you can visit him in Windhelm to start the Civil War questline.

If you don’t feel like the Stormcloaks are your vibe, you can journey to the west to the Imperial City of Solitude and join the Imperials instead. You’ll then have to complete a mission to be accepted into each side, but you’ll begin your war on the opposing force once you do. Some of the most significant battles in the entirety of Skyrim happen in the Civil War questline, and it involves some epic battles in cities you’ve been to throughout the game.

Each side has its own characters and outcomes to discover as well as new equipment to find. It’s a great questline to play out alongside the main story mode, so it fits right in perfectly with everything going on.

If the structure isn’t your thing, don’t worry, you don’t have to follow any questline at all. Skyrim gives you the freedom to explore at your leisure, and there are hundreds of side quests that you will just happen upon by accident. Whenever you approach a new icon on the map, you will discover a new location that can now be fast-traveled to.

If you’re looking for things to do, always visit these new locations. You might stumble upon an ancient ghost, a vampire coven, necromancers, crazy-looking new enemies, and some incredibly strong bosses. Skyrim is the ultimate game for exploring, and you will find something new every time you play.

the civil war

Crime

Since the world is your oyster here in Skyrim VR, it doesn’t mean that you have to be a good person. If the mood strikes you, you can be a terror to this land of epic proportions. Whatever you want to do to destroy the world, you can pretty much attempt it here.

While there are unkillable characters, you can steal everything in the game, kill countless NPC’s, frame people, incite riots, or even sacrifice your Followers to a Daedric god. Now, you won’t be able to cause all this chaos unchecked.

To thwart your evil ways, the city watch will come to a stop you, and from here, you can try to bribe, fight or submit and go to jail. You’ll be accumulating a bounty, and the worse your crime is, the worse your punishment is going to be. The Stormcloaks and Imperials will also be ready to destroy you on sight if you commit a crime too, so just make sure the juice is worth the squeeze when trying to commit a felony in Skyrim.

Crime isn’t the only thing that gets you attacked on site either. If you happen to be a Vampire or wander into town while in Werewolf form, I’ve got some bad news for you as the guards will not like that. When the guards attack you, for this reason, you’re pretty much either going to be killed or will have to run away as they have no tolerance for you draining the townsfolk of their blood or even looking like a monster.

If you’re a vampire, you can at least hide your identity for a time, but the second you’re caught sucking blood in sight, you will permanently be an enemy of that hold.

Something to keep in mind is that when you accumulate a bounty, that bounty is not just for that town you’re in. For example, if you commit a crime in Riften, when you leave and go to a nearby town, you’re still going to be approached by the guards. That’s because your bounty is accumulated by holds and not individual cities and towns. In this case, your bounty would be enforced all over The Reach and until you leave there you will be constantly approached or attacked by guards.

If you are caught and go to jail, you can choose to wait out your sentence, or you can try to pick the lock and escape. If you succeed, you have two options of getting out.

You can stealthily recover your items from a nearby equipment chest, or you can grab your equipment and fight your way out. If you manage to sneak out unseen, you’ll have your bounty completely cleared. If you fight your way out though, you’ll be accumulating a whole new bounty in the process, so if you want to live the life of an outlaw, that’s the way to go.

While you can’t kill certain NPC’s in the game, there are tons that you can, and doing so will cause certain things to happen. If you a shopkeeper dies, whether by your hand or another’s, the show will permanently be shut down and you’ll no longer be able to legally get their wares. If it’s a shop run by a family or multiple people though, the next person in the shop will take over duties.

During Dragon attacks, you can sometimes have a valuable NPC like this die and if you don’t want to reload a previous save, you have to live with the consequences.

Dragons

You are the Dragonborn in Skyrim and with that territory comes an abundance of Dragons. You’ll be fighting them aplenty, but you can also ride the, summon them as allies and use their shouts throughout the game as well. Dragon encounters are incredibly intimidating, and when they land near you, it’s like a house is coming to attack you.

They are huge and dangerous, and while you’ll be seeing them a lot during the main quest, you’ll also find roaming dragons as well and they might come to attack you or just attack anything they see in the area.

Often, Dragons will attack cities, and you and the guards and whatever brave citizens will start fighting them, creating an epic scene. In order to fight them effectively, I would suggest using your bow and arrow as your new and improved accuracy in VR will turn these fearsome beasts into pin cushions in no time.

When Dragons are defeated, you absorb their souls, and with these, you can unlock Dragon Shouts, which are first learned on ancient walls scattered around the map. The Dragon Shouts are incredibly powerful and can do everything from slowing time to sending your opponents flying.

Eventually, you unlock the power to ride Dragons in the game. This opens up not only an entirely new method of travel but also combat. You unlock this ability by completing the Dragonborn DLC, which takes you to the land of Morrowing and, specifically, Solstheim. This is a massive quest that has you exploring a strange land and then teleporting to even stranger places as you seek to take out Miraak, who believes himself to be the Dragonborn

. You can start this quest as soon as you’re attacked by Cultists in a town. Once you defeat them, you can then take a ship in Winterhold to Solstheim.

You can return to Skyrim at any time, so don’t worry about being bound to Solstheim while you take on the quest. One thing to remember is while doing this quest, Miraak will constantly show up and steal any new Dragon Souls you’re about to absorb, and this can be very frustrating when trying to unlock your new shouts.

Crafting

Skyrim VR lets you immerse yourself completely. That comes complete with having to scavenge for your weapon materials to craft the ultimate ones. You’ll likely only have access to Iron and Steel weapons at the start of the game. Still, as you level up your crafting skill tree, you’ll unlock better and better tiers of weaponry and armor.

Those items will start appearing in the world as well as the materials needed for them. What starts out as a dull experience weapon-wise soon produces some incredible-looking items like glass weapons, Daedric weapons, and Dragonbone weapons. Searching for the materials needed is a tough task as you won’t have any guaranteed way to find them, but searching through Blacksmith item lists and scouring the depths of dungeons will likely get you what you need.

If you can’t find the items this way, seek out the ore mines and make sure you have a pickaxe to mine the material with. This will yield you tons of valuable types of ore to forge your weapons and armor with.

Alchemy

Although it’s not required, alchemy can not only aid you in medicinal ways in the game such as healing and providing several helpful effects, but it can also turn you into a deadly combatant. In order to learn an effect of an ingredient, you simply eat it, and while that is definitely not how you should go through your real life, in Skyrim VR, it’s the best way to figure out the effects. Once you have an effect, you’ll notice there are 3 unknown effects as well.

These remain unknown until the ingredient is mixed with an ingredient that causes the same effect. Recipes are on sale in all alchemy shops in the game. You can find tons of upgrades in the skill tree that make your potions and creations even more effective.

For combat, you can create potions that add several effects to your weapons. The most useful one is the ability to poison your weapons. This will cause your attacks to have a lingering effect on your enemies and be incredibly helpful when taking on ultra-tough enemies. It’s not the most obvious way, but becoming a master of potions and recipes can turn you into a more varied combatant that can take on or recover from any situation.

Races

At the start of the game, you create a character. This is one of the most intricate create a character’s out there and it can take you a long time to figure out the exact mix and match of what you want your character to look like. Looks are one thing, but Races are an entirely different matter. See, your race in Skyrim is not just some arbitrary thing. Depending on your race, your character will not only look different, but your base abilities will be different too.

You can gain powers that can be activated during battle, additional magical abilities, or be able to get into certain areas easier depending on who you are. Racism happens in Skyrim and you’ll be particularly ridiculed as a non-Nord in several parts of Skyrim.

The Khajit characters are generally received better by their brethren and the same goes for the Argonians. This incentivizes multiple playthroughs because you never know what choosing a different race could do to impact the game.

Living a Real Life

Your call to action in Skyrim is to essentially save the world from the Evil Dragon Alduin. But what if you felt like doing something else? While most games force you on the path of a grander story, Skyrim doesn’t exactly do that. Instead, you’re given quest after quest with the choice of following it or not.

There is no time limit here, so your freedom is yours to choose what you’d like to do with it. Some people play Skyrim by endlessly exploring to see what new armors and enemies they can unearth. Others go around as an evil character, stealing and murdering in the night. You can also be a Vampire, a Werewolf, a Vigilant of Stendarr, or even a servant to Daedric lords. This world is truly your oyster in so many ways.

One of the more interesting ways is by starting an actual family. Most games just give you a family at the start and either murders them in front of you as a way to kick the story off or just have them support you throughout. In Skyrim, your family has no impact on the story, but still is an amazing addition to pursue if you so choose.

You can marry a large number of NPC’s in the game, so if this is the route you’d like to take, you can start up a relationship with them and eventually be able to marry. Once you’ve done that and you’ve bought a house, you have the option to have children as well and while they admittedly don’t add a ton to the game, it’s a nice touch to come home to your family after a long day of fighting Draugrs in ancient crypts.

FAQs

Question: Can I play multiple characters at once?

Answer: Some people love to have multiple playthroughs going at the same time and thankfully Skyrim supports this greatly. In order to have multiple playthroughs going at once, you just need to create another character under a different name and save it once in-game. Then, from the main menu, you can switch to whichever character you’d like to play as.

Question: Is Skyrim multiplayer?

Answer: Skyrim is a single-player game. There is a multiplayer mod available for it, but it is not supported by Bethesda and like all mods, carries a risk to using it. For those seeking an online experience similar to Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls Online has a tremendous fanbase and plays very similarly while letting you play with friends and strangers around the world.

Question: What do I do if I can’t get past a certain point?

Answer: Skyrim can get very difficult at certain points and you might often find yourself overpowered by higher-level enemies. There are a few options for you to overcome this. You could leave, take on some smaller quests, and level up your abilities some more. You could also gather money around Skyrim and buy better equipment.
If these still aren’t helping you overcome your challenge, then head to the menu and change the difficulty. This will greatly alter the damage your enemies can take and also make you more powerful as well, though this option should never be relied on as it is a bit of an easy way out.

Skyrim Gameplay Guide:  Conclusion

Skyrim is one of the most played games on earth for a reason. I’ve been playing it rather consistently for 10 years and with the deluge of mods available both on PC as well as Consoles, there really has been little reason to slow down.

It offers 200+ hours of gameplay and a world that to this day has not been matched in its wonder. It’s one of the most incredible artistic achievements of all time and anyone that tries to tell you video games aren’t art needs only to explore Skyrim for an hour. I guarantee they’ll feel emotion like they didn’t think a video game could ever evoke.

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