First thing's first;

Skyrim is without a doubt in my mind (and imho), the greatest video-gaming experience currently in existence.

I try to think of other video games that have had a similar effect on my life, and I tend to come up short (other Bethesda games coming up pretty darn close) - believe it or nor, I tend to not actually spend much time at all playing games, with SKYRIM being a massive exception. Remember that this is simply my personal opinion.

That being said, I don't think anyone is naive enough to suggest that this game is bug free (perhaps a vast understatement).

Only relatively recently, after thousands of hours of gameplay, have I started to notice the one thing that exhausts me about playing Skyrim:

The amount of time I spend trying to plan out my character's actions in order to avoid potential glitches - game-breaking/immersion-breaking - is kind of ludicrous.

I realized how hard it is for me to simply play the game and relax through my character's progression, because things are always occurring to me like "make sure to do that quest before that one, otherwise that quest becomes unfinishable" or "never pick up that book because it will stay in your inventory" or "don't go into that dungeon before being given the official quest to do so or else respawing issues."

Those are only a few of MANY examples.

I tend to feel like I can barely leave Breezehome without planning my actions and ensuring that there are no bugs associated with them.

Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, and it speaks volumes about Skyrim considering that I am forever willing to labor through these motions for it,

but I was simply curious as to whether or not anyone else shares this exhaustion. And if anyone has tips on how to manage such things in-game, they would be much appreciated

It's also worth noting that I am on Xbox 360, so 'unofficial patches' as well as mods are not options for me sadly.

playing on the PC with mods would solve a lot of your mentioned issues. You can delay the start of some quests or set requirements to trigger them. The unofficial patches are to good to pass up as well.

But I used to play Skyrim on the PS3 so I know where your coming from.

I'm always planning things but never to avoid bugs. I rarely get bugs.
I have done

Skyrim is not the greatest video gaming experience. It is the greatest 2nd life thingy.

My best response to the topic: ignorance is bliss.

LOL!

@Hammer: Dude no. Skyrim on console, no, no, no. If you can't afford a decent pc I'm sorry, but an unmodded Skyrim is a joke. I'm thankful to Bethesda for making Skyrim, but the love they put into this game doesn't compare to the love part time modders have given this game for free.

Or maybe ignorance is bliss

If unmodded Skyrim is a 'Joke' How can you explain that I have played over 5,200 hours on xbox.

Agreed. out of my many many characters I've only had one bug that really irritated me. Its in relation to one of the radiant quests for the Companions. Its a respawning issue. Master Vampire isn't where he's suppose to be so the quest just kind of hangs there. I'm kind of hoping that one of these days a master vampire will spawn in there so I can "accidentally" finish he quest.

But no, worst I've had to do other than that is load a slightly earlier save. Kind of impressive considering my vast amount of characters with vastly different playstyles, and the fact that I just kinda take quests as they come.

I play on PS3 and suffer from similar bugs (but I would also add that playing on PC doesn't guarantee bug-free playing either), and I vacillate between 'pretending' to be ignorant, and therefore if it seems that my char wants to go in a particular dungeon, or similar, then I do, regardless of the consequences - just means I might not be able to finish a particular quest, but then, that's a bit like life really - some choices cut off other choices. I also find it a lot less stressful to play this way.

Or, if I know that a particular character definitely wants to complete that quest, or clear that dungeon at the right time, then I'll purposefully avoid it.

So, my advice: be character led - if it feels like they'd do something, even though you know it'll [censored] up a later quest, don't worry about that - let the character lead, and see where it takes you.

not possible!

(the xbox breaks before you could ever reach 5200 hours played)

Just kidding.

But seriously though. Skyrim unmodded is fun and I played a good 1000+hours on my PS3 with it. However for a much more indepth and immersive experience... Skyrim+PC+Mods=absolute heaven. Ignorance is bliss when you really don't know what your missing. Sorry to say but thats the truth.

And I don't say this as a means of saying you can't possibly enjoy Skyrim as much as I do. But I would wager you would enjoy it 10 times more then you already do if you played it on the PC.

Soon I'll get a PC..... in about 2 years. I know having mods will improve the game a lot but I love Skyrim how it is.

This. I started Skyrim on Xbox and found similar problems that broke my immersion. Switching to PC greatly helped due to the implementation of mods, though it also introduced the problems with crashing. Worth it, IMO.

I'm only in for about a thousand hours on the xbox and I carefully plan my playing time (see some of my earlier threads soliciting input for future builds) but I almost never think about glitches. First, figuring out what causes which glitch seems exhausting (how do do you do that, comb the threads?) and second, creating an appropriate itinerary feels too rigid. I really like the discovery and open aspect of the game so, even though there are some things I tend to do early, I'll just blunder my way through whatever. I think the difference between me and the OP is that the glitches with inventory or unfinishable quests don't come up frequently enough to bother me. I'm not averse to reverting to an earlier save either and I don't play DiD, so there you go. Planning is appropriate but there's a time to just play and not sweat the details.

yeah, see - this crashing thing and tracking/handling mods seems 10 times worse than the issues raised by the OP. Never mind all the hassle that goes with running a Windows OS. The Xbox just works, turn it on with one action and you're good to go. When I'm getting ready to play for an hour or two at the end of the day, I can only imagine how dreadful it would be to start wrestling with windows.

I must respectfully disagree with this. I play on both PC(modded), and vanilla on my 360 and get along just fine.