I've just been noodling around with the game so far, trying out various types of characters and styles. Here are a few things I've learned.

1. Firewood is ridiculously overpriced at 5 gold per piece. Okay, I get it: It's cold in Skyrim. It's frickin' cold, and people need to keep the hearthfires burning, so it's a matter of supply and demand. But if you spend a little time chopping wood, you get six pieces of wood that you can sell to the sawmill foreman for 30 gold. It's a very safe way to make a whole lot of money very quickly if you don't mind spending time watching the wood-chopping animation over and over. And apparently the mill foreman is the richest man in Skyrim, because no matter how much wood you chop, he'll buy it all from you.

2. The pickaxe is your friend. Acquiring a pickaxe is one of my first objectives, because the character without one is the character who sadly passes by the veins of metal ores that dot the landscape. I like to craft my own weapons and armor from scratch, and that requires lots of ore (as well as doing my part to put wolves on Skyrim's Endangered Species list).

3. It is very satisfying to watch your enemies burst into flame when you run them through with a greatsword that you enchanted yourself. 'Nuff said.

4. Soup is good food. Cooking is a nice way to come up with low-level stamina and health replacement if you don't want to work on Alchemy at the moment. Although you would think that farmers would object to you going into their fields and picking the crops tha they work so hard to grow. It seems that's about the only way you can find leeks, which are important to certain recipes. They don't seem to show up in barrels like the other vegetables.

5. I don't kill foxes, although I'll take the pelts of dead ones found in the wild. It might be because my favorite Nord character's name is Floki Foxbeard, and it seems like it would would be bad karma for him. The foxes aren't bothering anyone. Wolves, however, I'll dispatch with extreme prejudice.

6. Other favorite character names: Eredhel (male Wood Elf), Signy Raven-Feeder (female Nord), Runs-With-Scissors (male Argonian). Of course, "Raven-Feeder" can end up cutting both ways. Top of the food chain to ya!

Runs-With-Scissors.

Be right back, I'm going to go rewrite my entire views on the Argonian race.

I can't stand to kill them either. Foxes are amazing, awesome, splendiferous, wonderful little dudes. Why anyone would want to strike them down ...
Bunnies, on the other hand ... Bunnies? Bunnies, I kill.

Foxes would still eat my chickens, so I find your misinformed love of these creatures upsetting... But anyways, I found that an arrow in knee is more commen the rickets in skyrim. Also that the only time you won't find a dungeon with the right appliances is when you are looking, making it hard on my nomadic character.