Really you just need to almost always be in sneak mode. Also, you'll find routes through the wilderness where there is a lack of aggressive animals and this helps a lot when travelling from city to city.

Also, try and grind your illusion (cast muffle on yourself constantly, or courage on guards constantly) to level illusion to 50. Once you have this you can cast spells and still remain hidden.

Get used to disengaging and letting the enemy become complacent again (think subsims :O: )

I'd really suggest getting the detect life shout (or spell if there is one) as that will really really help you find out of things are nearby you.

As for magic, I'd really only suggest using Illusion and Destruction (maybe conjuration too... Connjuring a flame atronach and dissapearing is fun). IMO Alteration is only truly valuable for a mage character. You're a sneaky build, the shadows should be your armor :O: . Also, if you can, finish the TG quest as soon as possible as the weapons and armor you get from it are truly awesome for sneaky builds (almost better then the DB armor IMO).

I think it was in this thread, in fact, where we were lamenting the fact that the standard Thieves Guild armor enchantments are woefully mismatched considering what work for the guild actually requires. The lockpicking bonus is nice, but with a lack of muffle and sneak enchantments you will find yourself unprepared for the questline, especially at lower levels. I always used the shrouded armor instead.

I agree with everything Krauter said minus one small detail.

Also, if you can, finish the TG quest as soon as possible as the weapons and armor you get from it are truly awesome for sneaky builds (almost better then the DB armor IMO).

I have to say that its in your best interest to hold off on getting the nightingale armor set until your at higher levels... picking it up at level 10-20 gets you a nerfed set.

Aye forgot about that.. I wish that when you buff your armor with the smithing skill you could buff it to what its max stats are.

Check out the latest anime "armor" by some dude who calls himself "Hentai" (That word should be a big clue).

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=11871


What is it with these people? What that looks like to me? Looking at the face.. its a child, with Bat ears, wearing lingerie, cause that's hardly armor. A pedophiles dream come true? :nope:

Gods, how i hate anime.

Well you can't hardly expect her to wear heavy armor... the way she is wielding that two handed great sword in one hand... with the majority of the weight centered behind her has to be an unbareable strain on her wrist...

Managed to get safely from Riften to Hillgrund's Tomb last night and went on in because IIRC I can get Golldir as a follower if I help him take care of the nasty business inside. He got killed the last time around but I'm pretty sure he got caught in some of the Magigolo's crossfire. Oops! :shifty:

Anyway he's handling himself pretty well in the fight so far, but we got to the final chamber and I died the first three times through. Can't seem to get through all the draugr to the point where the necromancer stays put long enough to be killed. Trying my best to stay out of the way and let Golldir go mano a mano with the walking dead and I just get an arrow in when and where I can, which is hard cuz I really don't want to kill Golldir since having him around was kinda the whole point. Made the mistake of running up to the highest point in the chamber trying to find a good place to shoot from and uh-oh I think that's where the final boss draugr pops out. :dead:

Pretty sure if we kill him we can then pop the real villain but dangit he's a necromancer and keeps reanimating the dead draugr which sucks. And I suppose if I could remember to use the Familiar staff that would help a little. :doh:

Anyway my last save was just outside the final chamber, thank Talos, so I'll just have to keep trying until I get it. Or I could just... make a run for it in the other direction with all the gear and coin I've looted. Perhaps open the door and push Golldir in and then get the hell out of Dodge. :haha:

Won't get me a follower but I have to pass through Riverwood, maybe I can pick up Faendal or Sven this time through. Anything to get me to Solitude in one piece.

Came across a mod where every house has a hideout that belongs to you, donate to the modders get yur name in a skyrim book along side those who donate - couple of pages of names in a book on a desk by the bed and yur own story book ingame. Pretty cool way of rewarding those who donate which I am going to do :)

Plus there is a quest to find an amulet then next part will be in the update, the guy done his own voice in the quest giver.

Edit
Mod - Dovahkiin Hideout

YAAAY! I remembered the Staff, finally. Helped a lot, if only to distract some of the draugr long enough to fight them one on one instead of three at a time.

Also remembered I had the Reverent Steel Mace. So when I finally have to switch to shield and hand-to-hand, that's what I pull out. My health is low so I'm running out of the chamber to recharge and suddenly realize that two draugr are also running out. I think oh hell no they're gonna chase me all the way back to the front door but then I realize... THEY are running away from ME. :haha:

*waves magic mace around "THAT'S RIGHT YOU UNDEAD MOFOS LOOK WHAT I GOT WHOOOOOOOOOO!!!"*

They were lower level otherwise the mace wouldn't have worked on them, so I was able to take them out in the tunnels... once I caught them. Got back to the chamber and put some poisoned arrows in the last draugr Golldir was fighting after which he was finally able to take his revenge on Vals Varen. Now him and me are best buds and he's tagging along yelling aggressive Nordie stuff at people who bother me and hacking them up real good with the Orcish axe I gave him and carrying all my heavy crap. Also found him a steel horned helmet but... seriously I don't know why I ever thought that was a cool item because he looks like a dork wearing it. Maybe it just doesn't go with his rusty old iron armor, which I'll have to see about updating after I get my property buying out of the way. Gave him a decent bow though and some arrows and he also uses those pretty well.

Headed back to Whiterun in search of work and coin and got the gig from Amren, and where do you think his father's sword is? Some bandit lair over by Rorikstead that Lydia and I already cleaned out on the quest with the Redguard mercenaries who were looking for the Redguard woman in Whiterun. Oddly enough they are still in there, even though they should be on the way back to Hammerfell. But they were still friendly and didn't seem to mind me getting Amren's sword and looting everything I wasn't able to take out in the first place.

Best part was, we headed out that way about midnight and we're only a couple minutes out of Whiterun when I hear the telltale roar that means: DRAGON. And I think holy crap, and I see it flying around, and it looks like it's gonna drop right on the city. But it doesn't, because this dragon flew in on the short bus and he decides to pay the nearby giant camp a visit instead. We were sneaking by there anyway and just keep our heads down and hope for the best because I got nothin' on me that will take down a dragon and I can't afford to risk Golldir at this point.

Anyway we are hiding on the other side of the rocky ridge that the giant camp sits up against so when the dragon drops down behind it on about the fourth pass, I can't see anything that's happening and I'm not going around there to find out but I can see two mammoths heading in that direction and no doubt the giant will defend his territory so I bite back my warrior instincts and just stay out of it. A couple minutes later I realize it's really, really quiet, no dragon roars any more, no jets of flame lighting up the night, and I never saw him fly off. Peer around the near edge of the ridge and see one mammoth calmly grazing.

Sneak around the other side of the ridge, on the far side of the camp, and there's both mammoth jus chillin and looking at me like "What?" and a dragon who is really most sincerely dead. Ding dong! Whose swag and soul I promptly stole and then got the heck out of there before the giant got curious. Awesome. :yeah:

Also cleaned out Silent Moons Camp and got the bounty for the bandits at Halted Stream Camp, hello Transmute Ore spell and tons of iron ore to use it on.

Now I'm back in Whiterun waiting for the local merchants to come up with enough coin to buy all the loot I need to sell. :arrgh!:

Yeah, Dovahkiin's Hideout. Had that with my last character. What it is, is a massive underground hideout with doors for each of the "surface" properties. So you can get there from all of them, but it's the same hideout every time. Rather immersion-breaking in that respect but I didn't mind that, it was other stuff that finally got on my nerves and made it more of a hassle than a help.

Problem for me was the constant addition of more clutter (all the books scattered around that are just shoutouts to supporters, fine, thank your supporters, but 3-4 copies each of books that are irrelevant to the actual game and have to be picked up and stored somewhere out of sight? No thanks) plus the addition of NPC after NPC who just got in the way. The whole point of the hideout for me was to have a place to store stuff and do crafting *without* some pointless NPC blocking the station I need to get to and then standing there repeating the same mindless dialogue the entire time I'm working. "You need something? You need something? You need something? You need something?"

Yeah what I need is to make potions in peace, you twit.

YMMV so give it a try. You can always disable/delete stuff you don't want, problem for me was I went through so many updates and had to keep doing that over and over again every time I loaded a new version. :nope:

Bethsheda add in a book titled 'Sagas of Icelanders' in skyrim that is the Nordic & Scandivians literature which I am going to try and find, bit of a history lesson for me wouldn't be suprise if I already have it from the 100's of books ive picked up ingame must check next time i load up the game.

Have you tried writing your own storybook for the game Fran I think you would be good at it :) from what you have to say about your adventures in skyrim I read here.

for starters:write own story
http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.ph...needs-writers/

Creation kit problem.
When I place stuff in the editor it doesn't show up in the game. Say if I add a chest full of good stuff go in game to where ive place it but its not there!? Anyone know what im doing wrong. Just to make sure i aint blind or something I placed a chest right next to the Riften doors go in game and there's no chest to be found. Its like the editor isn't updating do I have to do something like compile or debug before I leave the editor?

Edit: I am checking the mod in Data files on start up so it is loading with Skyrim

I could never compete with this:

http://m.fanfiction.net/s/7656938/1/

So glad s/he decided to continue on with it. I have laughed SO hard...

:yeah: Bookmarked for rainy days.

RE dovakiin hideout.

I 've been using the "compact edition"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGNTgXWP-90

but it seems the mod author's taken it down. I still have it on my hard drive though.

edit: Ok .. soo, it looks like the nexus deleted the mod for some reason. The author's under the hammer from skyrim nexus for some reason. Maybe it's because he's taking donations? I don't know.

edit: Nexus seems to have taken the dovakiin hideout off their site as well. He has other mods up, but im guessing its those two he was asking for money. That's my theory anyway.

I would've liked to have tried the compact version but the last time I looked it wasn't follower-friendly (they couldn't enter) and I had that with a couple other custom dwellings that I tried and it was a PITA. If I forgot to tell them to wait at a distance somewhere they would try to follow me in and end up getting "stuck" in some bizarre spot and then I'd have to mess around trying to unstick them before I could do anything else. Plus I mostly use owned properties for crafting and storage and my followers are generally carrying half or more of whatever loot and raw materials I have on hand, so not having them follow me in and hang around to give and take items gets old really fast.