» Sun Dec 18, 2011 1:33 am This means you may not buy anything, ever. Everything you obtain must be found, looted, stolen, or crafted from materials you do not buy. You can work on your smithing, enchanting and alchemy all you like, but you can never buy any ingredients, components, or soul gems.
You can never hire a carriage, as doing so costs gold. You may fast travel, but being unable to use carriages means you must walk to each hold the first time you go there.
You may not rent a room, and you may not buy a house. This means your well-rested bonus will be rather hard to come by. You can marry, but you cannot buy the Amulet of Mara from the monk who starts you on the quest.
There is one (1) exception to this rule. If a quest absolutely requires you to buy a good or service, you may do so. "Requires" means exactly that: there is absolutely no other way possible to complete the quest without doing so. Example: in order to progress in the main quest, you must rent a room at a particular inn. There is no way around this, you must do so, and so you may, without violating this challenge. In order to enter the mage's college, the guardian offers to sell you the spell required to enter: you may not do this, because it is possible (however difficult) to find that item out in the world. If you have the option to persuade somebody or bribe them, you may not bribe them, even if you know your persuasion is likely to fail. Come back when your speech skill is higher, find/craft some +speech gear, get a blessing of Dibella and come back to try again.
Strategies? Challenges? Thoughts? Problems?
Go forth. I'll be starting this when I make my next character, which sadly will be after the holiday break. Until then, I hope others will come into this thread and share their stories of how far they were able to get, what they were able to accomplish, and if they choose to do so, how much gold they were able to hoard.
