Has anyone made a mistake, such as doing a quest in the wrong order, or making other mistakes, which made you want to start your game over? If so, what was your reason or reasons? I want to avoid messing anything up. I had to start my game over again after 100+ hours in Oblivion for screwing some things up, and I want to avoid that in Skyrim.

Nah, never for that kind of reason.

Technical issues or mod conflicts, however....

*starts 20th character*

I've done it for sillier things such as being bothered with my character's chin length, back when Galathil's services weren't available to PS3 users.

I deleted my Altmer vampire because I'd created him to be morally good, and for the longest time I didn't realize what a terrible contradiction it was.

Also, my Nord werewolf because he would be the third Nord among my characters and that would've been too much.

There are others I started over, don't really remember why.

Won't ever be able to smith stalhrim armor (Dragonborn DLC) because the important character from the questline DIED by a lurker near one of stones on Solstheim. I have no idea why Bethesda didn't make it so that he gets down on one knee when "dead", but whatever that is typical Bethesda logic. This made me want to start a new character til i said screw it and realized i can still purchase stalhrim equipment.

No, there are sometimes ways to work around quest glitches. Even if quest tells you to go to X-cave and kill so and so and you've already cleared out the cave then going back every thirty days till you've killed a requisite number of enemies can do the trick.

It becomes more problematic however if you have the DLC's DG or DB installed and a quest giver is killed by random town attacks. At that point you have to make the decision to restart from a previous save or continue on without the quest. It is good for just this reason to have a working knowledge of the UESP Wiki although it is a heavy spoiler. Better though than having a quest short-circuited because someone essential has been slain.

Are there really no quests that you can do out of order, which if done too soon, or too late, this messes up other quests?

In Oblivion there were allot.

My biggest mistake in Oblivion was picking up leveled gear too soon, being STUCK with low level weapons and armor for the rest of my game, instead of waiting until I was above the cap for a leveled item before getting it.

Fingers of the Mountain was my favorite spell, and I got it at a measly low level.

So, does this mean that waiting to install the DLC, and installing even after a quest giver has been killed, resurrects the dead quest giver?

It sounded like you were making a point of the timing of the installation in regards to dead NPC's.

Also, about these random town attacks:

Is it common for vital NPC's to get killed like this? If so, what are the problem areas, and what advice is available for how to keep vital NPC's alive?

No, if a quest giver is already dead the they're dead. DB and DG however load their own NPC's to add quest givers to the storyline so no need to worry about that. Problem is that DLC random attacks CAN and will kill vanilla quest givers. Also on Solstheim Lurkers can kill Skaal vital to "A New source of Stahlrim" questline which leads to being able to smith your own Stahlrim weapons and armor. Without that quest you can't smith the materialthough you CAN improve existing equipment.

For your last question any town or village you walk into after installing DG can result in NPC deaths due to vampire attacks.

This is very good advice. I will definitely wait before installing DG.

That really svcks about the lurker issue.

That issue can easily be settled during the

quest by insuring no Skaal die during the .

Also a good idea for DG is after you install the DLC to hit and finish the DLC MQ quickly while staying out of towns and cities. This will keep your vital NPC's safe.

Wow! Thanks for the heads up on that!


Are there any other examples like this, or similar, where certain quests should be done a certain way, or sooner rather than later, to ensure that there will be no issues affecting the main game?

Aside from DG there are none I can think of.

The example you gave about staying out of towns or cities is an example that I was looking for.

There is no worse feeling for me, than to be deep into my game, only to realize the hard way, that there are irreversible game ruiners, impossible to fix (I am on 360 by the way).

I don't want to come across like I want something to hold my hand while I play, I just want to know a safe way to play without being forced to start my game over again.

I had to restart my very first game. I didnt realize how much more powerful certain enemies would become, and placed my skill points in things planned for long term use, without focusing on any single combat ability. After a few levels i could not really even fight Bears, let alone Dragons. I realized that trying to fix it (by gaining more levels focused exclusively on combat) would take much longer than just restarting the game.

I only made that mistake that first time though.

That actually happened on my very first Meleineth Elbenin character for 360, the 2nd was light years beyond him at the same level because I allocated my perks more wisely.

What were the "bad" perk investments?

I had to restart my character due to my own Idiocy once.....


I was opening up my machine to throw in some new DDR3 RAM, and to get to my RAM slot I had to take out me HDD..

so take out the HDD, and put it on the edge of my work space, this was roughly 1AM.. I hear a large bang downstairs in my study, and immediately think I was being robbed. so I end up flinging my HDD across the room while grabbing something to defend myself.. I go downstairs and turns out the cat knocked over some stuff on the book shelf....

that HDD never worked again... so I wen't out and bought a new one...


only other time I had to restart a character was simply because I am bored of my current one...

Anything other than your major skill base dependent on the type of character you play. As he was/is a stealth/archer/light armor/melee character I invested heavily in light armor, one-hand, block and perked them heavily then moved to archery and stealth. Once you have a working idea of your character type you can break him down into major/minor skills. At level 30 or so you can start branching out into other things with this build like smithing and enchanting or alchemy.

My Nord warrior on PC is heavy armor, one-hand (For now), shield and bow. These are the ones I am perking heavily. I have already invested one perk in smithing but all my melee skills are being maxed from the bottom up. Since he is going to use no spells I am not going to perk any spell classifications, lockpicking or pickpocketing though I am going to invest some perks in two hand and perhaps stealth later as he goes to a two-hand weapon. Stealth if iffy as is alchemy.

No. I do not compute with mistakes, except for killing an NPC that automatically makes it impossible to complete a quest that grants you the ability to craft Stalhrim.

How does this NPC usually end up getting killed?

I pretty much have had to do that with every open world rpg since the days of the Ultima games. I remember in Ultima 6 I killed a gargoyle that was actually an essential npc and since there was only one save slot and I didn't find out that gargoyle was important till many many hours later....... *sigh*

Unless you are an evil character and want to depopulate Solstheim look at my spoilers for DB and the Skaal. same NPC.

Got it. Thank you.

there are some unique items/rewards that are leveled but to start a game over behind not getting them at their max level means that you would have to be level 40+ before doing most quests. There's also items that can be missed as you only get 1 chance to get them