Hello. I just began my first game in Skyrim and am only Level 8. After I was forced to kill most of the people in Riverwood, including my Follower, I headed West using the Skyrim Wiki as my guide and made Anise's Cabin my base. After clearing out Bloated Man's Grotto, I'm now considering heading further West to Sunderstone Gorge.

My current stats are 28 Alchemy, 25 Destruction, and 24 Heavy Armor. I've discovered I really enjoy collecting flowers and catching butterflies (I'm an enviro-science student, so no surprise there), and, thanks to the Wiki, I now have sufficient ingredients and know-how to make virtually any potion I want. My preferred attack seems to be a one-hand-weapon with fire in my other, but I've been forced to change tactics alot lately because this doesn't always work. The question now is, would I have a realistic chance against three or four mages in the Sunderstone Gorge?

While I'm aware that enemies typically scale to the player, I understand they have a minimum level in which they begin with. I was honestly in over my head in the Bloated Man's Grotto. I only succeeded after dozens of reloads, the consumption of copious amounts of valuable potions (I'm glad you don't gotta pee in Skyrim), the use of one irreplacable mass-paralysis scroll, and game bugs (a Spriggan got "stuck" chasing me up the stairs, so I just sicced my conjurred wolf on him). I'm stronger now, and I learned a hell of a lot from that experience, but I've never encountered mages before. What level do mages start as, and how should I fight them? Spriggans apparently start at Level 8, and they were HARD. When I had to deal with 2 at the same time it was nearly impossible. The Level 12 Cave Bear I encounted was quite difficult too.

I'm real interested in the Gorge because it's close by and there are alot of things in there I want - fire salts, a human heart, silver ore, moon sugar, a conjuration spell book, And I'm also curious about getting what would be my first Dragon Shout. So any advice would be appreciated!

if your new , stop using the wiki and get out there and do some stuff first , join a guild, or the MQ , you need some raw experience of combat before you should try that.

Agreed...stay away from walkthrough guides or wiki's,enjoy the experience of exploration,trial and error,and the pure fun of the unknown.

I can only recommend highly that you stay away from Sunderstone Gorge (at least for the time being). Its one of the harder dungeons in the game.

But if I follow your advice, I shouldn't even ask for advice on this forum! BTW, what/where/why/how should I join a Guild or MQ? I'd normally just look it up in a Wiki, but apparently I'm not supposed to do that lol.

Got it. No Sunderstones then. Thanks.

Just ask smiths and innkeepers.

My suggestion would be to reflect a bit on your character's race and maybe what sort of playing style you want to specialize in - sounds like you are interested in alchemy and destruction magic, right? And consider perhaps what your character was doing, how he or she ended up in Helgen being led to execution, and why you fought with those people in Riverwood.

With this character concept in mind, you can consider a bit more easily where you think your character might want to go next, how your character would respond to various NPCs you may encounter, what your character would want to do, which faction your character would want to join, etc.

I highly recommend not doing all the guild questlines with your first character, just take your time and do whichever quests fit with your character concept. This enhances the replay value, because next time you can try a totally different character, who would choose to do different things and specialize in a different kind of playing style. For example, in my case, I've been doing one or two factions with each new character, played for hundreds of hours and still quite a lot of content left to explore in future playthroughs.

asking for advice is not a bad thing, but the thing with rpg's are if you use a wiki to find out everything you are missing half the game. Half the game with Skyrim is to explore and learn where things are and how they work rather then read it on the wiki. Each to his own tho, but by using wiki you quite possibly reduce the amount of fun and hours you would get from Skyrim.

Your first experience of Skyrim should be blind. No prior knowledge, except perhaps for some basics of how weapons and magic work.

To find things to do is not hard. In fact, the game is set up so you are constantly presented with new quests. For instance, in Riverwood, if you hadn't killed everyone (why on earth would you do that?) just speak to people and you will pick up all kinds of quests. Select every dialogue option and see what they have to say. There is a love triangle you can resolve. You can chop wood for the mill owner. The owner of the Riverwood trader wants you to retrieve a stolen item. The smith will teach you how to make and improve weapons and armor. The bartender at the Inn will tell you how to make a potion and let you know about different quests you can undertake.

Just talk to people and you will end up with lots and lots of quests.

Yeah I prefer to research backgrounds before I actually take action. It's actually part of the fun for me. And I find Wiki only gives me the most basic info. Just now encountered some random hunter and then I got killed by some blasted lightning-shooting monster, all in the span of 5 minutes from leaving Anise's Cottage. I presume it's a vampire - the wiki certainly didn't mention one though! I also learned something - apparently you can only poison a weapon once until you actually use the weapon, even if you're using the identical potion/poison. It's rendered my powerful health potions useless after the first drought when I came into long-range combat with the vampire because I'd bound them with poisoning properties as well. Sigh. Time to reload.

Trust me, turning Riverwood against me was the last thing I expected. I talked to everyone and finished the love triangle quest, acquiring the elf as my Follower. However, as soon as I exited the Smith's House, I was assaulted by three "Thugs", which I later learned were sent by Hilde, presumably for stealing something from her house. Since the thugs were too powerful, I fled to the river, where I discovered the thugs couldn't swim well, so I picked them off one by one. Somehow the fact that I'd drawn my weapon in Riverwood, turned the entire town hostile towards me as well. But again, everyone seemed to have problems swimming, so I'd run into town, someone would chase me, so I'd run back to the river where I'd set them on fire as they tried to swim feebly. It was actually quite fun, though I admitted a felt kind of bad when I killed the blacksmith after he'd me given his hospitality and half of the stuff in his house. I felt downright rotten when I went back in the house after I'd killed him to see if there was anything else worth taking and having his kid go, "People think I'm too friendly with strangers, but you seem alright."

Oddly enough, my Elf follower fought by my side against everyone... until I tried to talk to him. Doing so immediately turned him hostile and he tried to kill me, so I had to kill him too.