Unfortunately I don't have screenshots so I try to explain as clearly as possible. First you can only obtain these before leaving Helgen at the start of game. Play starting normally until you need to decide to go into keep with either rolaf or hadvor. When you get to this point don't go into keep but rather remain outside and let alduin kill all soldiers. once he has killed most or all he will try to target you by landing near you and using melee attacks or unrelenting shout, if you are close to northern gate of helgen, alduins shout has chance to knock you down so that you fall under gate (there is little crack between ground and gate at left corner of gate if looked from inside courtyard). When you fall under gate and try to get up you get glitched to outside of helgen, might take few tries before you manage to get yourself outside.

After this you need to run to Winterhold, take into account that you are level 1 with no equipment and hands bound so you can't do anything but run if you encounter enemies. When you get to Winterhold go talk to Faralda and ask to enter college, say that you take test and then say you don't know spell and want to buy it. Next say that you're not interested (as you don't have money either way ), then you can access her store and sell your handcuffs to her. Then you just need to run back to helgen, you can get back in from mountain at northside of helgen, climb it and jump on top of eastern gate then jump back in helgen and complete story normally, once you get out quicktravel to Winterhold and buy your cuffs back from faralda. There are few things you should note

1# if you go back to helgen at any point using cave where you come out it get's bugged and rolaf nor hadvor will come inside keep no matter what.

2# If you go near riverwood you might get bugged and can't move anymore, avoid this by going over mountain near bleach falls barrow, also avoid going inside any caves as it also might bug rolaf and hadvor.

3# you can't open menu so you have to run all the way to Winterhold so save often if you happen to die.

4# fun note if you ask faralda to teach you destruction she will say she has nothing more to teach you.

5# I don't know if this has been posted already so sorry if I'm just repeating something everyone already knew.

6# I'm not native english so sorry if there are grammar mistakes.

7# I have skyrim on xbox360 so haven't tried in PS3 but I think it should work there too, computer version you can just use commands.

8# It would be great if someone would confirm this as I know word of single man is hard to trust, especially someone like me who just made this account to post this thing I discovered.

Welcome to the Forums. Here, have a http://images.uesp.net/c/c4/Fishystick.jpg.

This sounds super fun, lol. I'm going to try it

I'm at the North wall looking at that crack.

I suspect not, but is there any to help ''trigger'' a Shout instead of flames or bites from Alduin?

Should I be crouched. What angle, can you give me an idea? I've only managed to get him to shout twice in the last 45mins. However, I got it saved at a spot where he drops down so I might see more shouts with the opportune save

edit,

It seems you can. Get face to face with him, he'll bite. Than after the first bite you back up and he'll shout.

edit, edit

It works! You can't have your back up against the wall, you can't be almost leaning on it. You gotta be a slight distance away so when he shouts, he knocks you to the ground and then you slide under that crack!

That actually sounds pretty awesome and fun to try... I must do it now.

When I first enter Winterhold, Birna is nagging Ranmir. Every time.

Birna: "We need coin, Ranmir, and you're not bringing home any."
Ranmir: "And you'd have me do what, join the College and prance about casting spells all day?"
Birna: "Don't just walk away from me! Where do you think you're going?"

Then my character locks up as soon as that dialogue is delivered. No matter how far I roll back my save and start over.

So I circled around outside of Winterhold on the mountains to the left, but not actually discovering Winterhold. When I saw a good angle, I saved, then slide down the mountain at a 90 degree angle and when I hit flat I ''discovered'' Winterhold, the dialogue had begun and the gauntlet was thrown. I had a few seconds to get to the Wood Elf, I made it at the last second and we triggered her talking me. I sold my Prisoner's Gloves and when I was finished my character still locked up (note: just me, not the game itself).

I'll keep fooling around and see if I can get there faster and if that would make a difference, but I think I gotta start all over with no patches and if that's the case I'll try again tomorrow.

Do the Prisoner Cuffs prevent wearer (Follower/other NPCs) from using their hands? Why are we going through such great lengths to get them :S

If by doing this I can get 3 wives then I might do it, but for Prisoner Cuffs? What's so good about it?

As far as I can tell, you get nothing from this other than something to do for an hour. You don't even get your hands unbound until you go back to Helgen.

I didn't have this problem I did see their conversation but it didn't bug me.

They don't prevent followers using hands they are just one more glove style you can get if you don't have PC version for commands. There is nothing special about them, stat wise they are just normal gloves without any weight. To get them you have to deal with lot of annoying things so unless you want them for looks there's no real reason to get them.

My fault then for probably unlocking almost every location I could on my map, Whiterun was a real problem as I was trying to get in it and had to roll back a handful of saves just to ignore it and continue on with my MO. I made sure to check off a bunch of fast travel spots between Helgen and Winterhold, that is likely what was glitching me. I avoided Riverrun like you suggested, but that advice seems to go for any kind of city with NPCs in it. Perhaps the less involved I get with the world, other than running from wolves or bandits, the better? I have yet to try again though, I'll have more time tonight

yeah could be that, first time I got outside I too run across world, had discovered every major town and many caves and such, then got to winterhold and discovered faralda thing by accident then went back and noticed rolaf and hadvor didn't come in so next run I made by avoiding all things possible. Well I still heard Birna/ranvir discussion and didn't bug me, might be that it randomly crashes if ppl talk near you.

Also it might be possible to do same thing with someone else than Faralda but so far I haven't found any other I could do it with.

Maybe, but I think you stumbled on the perfect (and only) one.

Alright, thanks.

You, errrrrr, playing Game of Thrones or Skyrim? lol

I've been reading the books, I'm having trouble keeping names straight as you can see lol

Yeah, I think the freezing up thing has to do with how many things you discovered in your travels to Winterhold, or something similar. Right when I got to the College of Winterhold, I froze up.
Going to retry sometime today, avoid discovering as many locations as I can possible.

These kind of things excite me though, regardless of the value of what you're actually getting. It's simply just something you're not supposed to have in the game, and you have to go through a long ritual kind of thing to get them, the effort required puts the value into the cuffs for me.
Something similar to this was the Scarab gun from Halo 2, or the Giant Soccer ball / Football. Either you wasted your time getting a gun you can only keep for a mission you've already completed, or waste your time playing with a useless Soccer ball / Football. But simply how much crap you had to go through to get them put the value in them.

Nevermind, I successfully traveled to Winterhold without discovering a single place, and still discovering the college freezes my character up.
Time for further research.

Then there's the time Ordun learned how to fly in Skyrim and taught the rest of us the awesomesauce technique that is a bucket and shield using telekinesis! I agree with the majority of responders that figuring out how to get the cuffs without the console is ingenious, fun and for many of us just the challenge of doing it is enough!

Well, you never know when you'll find something practical too. Some of the best exploits came from people just mucking about.

With that said, I deleted all my patches and cleared my Xbox cache and started a new game, I still cant' get to the College of Winterhold. Bulbbis, the orginal post, must have done something different. If he can remember what I'll give it another try, but I'm out of ideas.

I came into town from the West path initially, switched to the North (coming in from the hills seperating the town and college), then the South path last and circled around the East side of town (couldn't find a proper way into town from there) back up North to try that one more time and no luck. I was coming in from every angle and only managed to actually get to Faralda from dropping into town from the Mountains on the West side of town. As I said earlier, I came down and dropped into town and sprinted to Faralda and made it, but after selling the gloves and exiting the chat with her my game was locked up.

Without patches I finally saw some random encounters with NPCs like M'aiq, Talsgar the Wanderer, Cicero and Ahkari's Caravan on my way to Winterhold which gave me some hope but it was still not yet to be.

Unless Bulbbis here can give me an idea on what he did different I'm going to have to bookmark this one and hope someone else figures out what we're doing wrong.

I've tried this again with new characters but I have encountered same issue as rest of you as game freezes when I reach Winterhold same way it did in Riverwood, I can't remember what I did differently first time, I also checked all cities with new characters and they froze no matter what city I got close to. I can't play today but tomorrow I will try and trace back everything I did first time. I could also add that I have all dlc and patches but I don't know if that helps as I'm freezing too