I may have had a late start but I started with a marathon.
After one long continous game yesterday, I have gone from zero to half way through level 8. I am quite happy with that considering it is the first time I have played this series. I also went the mage route, High Elf with all perks on destruction, and a few unallocated that I am uncertain what to use them on for now. I have recently bought several spellbooks so I have something else to try out. Any suggestions areas of focus for perks or it generally advisable to be patient?
All depends on what you want to do. The game soft caps around level 50 and hard caps around 80, so at the very most you have 80 perk points, but since leveling slows way down after 50, it's probably better to think of having 50 perk points. As there are over 200 total perks, you can't get everything. I could offer plenty of opinions of what I have and haven't found useful so far, but even at level 38 I'm still finding my mind being changed about skills and perks I'd previously dismissed, so I'd rather not ramble on here. I'll hit you up on Steam though.
The game is immersive enough I regret accidently killing my companion NPC (Faendal). He helps me out gets killed for his trouble and loses his girl to that Elf hating Sven. Granted not enough to stop me from looting his house with his key. Fortunately for me, I nearly completed my archery training with him, granted I rarely actually use a bow. A loophole which I am sure others have noticed is that you can train and reclaim your gold. For some reason, this didn't bother me although I skipped the putting pots and baskets on people's heads loophole.
I actually killed the chicken in Riverwood and then killed all four of the people who attacked me as a result, so I never got to know the person you mention
I've been a (mostly) law-abiding citizen since then though
The quest I completed after the default one was The Golden Claw variation of Bleak Falls Barrow, although I did it offline so no achievement for me. or as I am beginning to suspect becasue I have not yet done Enter the Court Wizard. I ended up wandering around for quite awhile after inadventantly setting a custom destination. Silly n00b, if it is blue and flashing it must be my quest and must be some kind of puzzle. In the Bleak Falls Barrow quest, it took me three trys to figure out how to kill the Draugr Overlord. After Faendal got killed, it slowed me down for awhile.
You may have already discovered this on your own but you can enable/disable quest map markers in the journal (hotkeys (M)ap and (J)ournal), including the individual quests under the misc. category.
As somone new to the game, I initially enjoyed Alchemy (nice to wander around and collect plants) and to a lesser extent Smithing/Forging but as time goes by it seems to be inverting itself. For alchemy, the fail button comes up too often for me, so I suspect I need to get over my reluctance to look up potion combinations on the web. It would be nice if you could get tips like making other things. Granted, I have not seen anyplace yet to enchant anything.
The Alchemy interface will grey out combinations you've already tried if they failed, and also categorizes any potions you've made and their respective ingredients on the left, so trial-and-error should yield results within a reasonable timeframe. Once you've discovered effects, they remain visible on those ingredients for good. Alchemy shops also sell potion recipes. Personally I have resisted looking on the web as I find it feels cheap, but furterhmore I've noticed that most of the "good" ingredients are rare enough that it wouldn't do you much good anyway. It's much more satisfying to find a reliable source of a particular valuable ingredient and then make a personal note of it.
But to each their own of course, I'm just set in my 80's RPG ways
Feel free to add me to Steam chat by removing the spaces in the following T h o m 2 0 2. Feel free to pass on to other WNFF folks if they are looking for others.
I got a search result for that and for your alias here... which one should I add?