Basically I want to play an NPC. I want to have an honest job, and I will make a living as such. I will not be a thief, an assassin, a mage, a warrior, or even a good hunter. I can get by with a dagger for self-defense, or maybe manage to shot the occasional deer with a bow, but I won't be a hunter for a living. I will earn my money through honest work, and slowlyl be able to buy a horse, a house and get a husband. I can accept menial quests like simple fetch quests that doesn't involve dungeons, but no guilds or main quest. So I'm looking for ideas or tips and how to best do this. Any particular race? What skills or perks to choose? My ideas so far:

- Not a Khajiit or Bosmer (simply because I want to be able to marry someone of the same race).
- Earn money through selling firewood to the Bannered Mare
- Pick alchemy ingredients outside Riverwood and Whiterun
- Smith what I can from what I can get or find easily
- When I have enough gold, hire a bodyguard for protection

My problem is that mining ore requires to delve through dangerous dungeons, and getting your own pelts require you to be a skilled hunter. Buying these things from vendors is far too expensive to earn money from it. I'm thinking firewood and alchemy is the way to go to earn money in the beginning. What do you guys think?
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Definitely firewood. Also, you can 'farm' for a while around Whiterun and other settlements

Ah, of course. I can join as a help hand around the farms, and get some ingredients there as well. Unfortunately, I tried once being a cook who sold her dishes to the local taverns, but you don't get much gold for food.

How long until this gets boring usually? Wouldn't the novelty of only chopping wood and alchemy wear off in about 30 minutes?

I know, that is why I'm asking for tips and more ideas.

There are a number of ore veins that are out in the open. There's a corundum vein West of where you exit Helgen from the Tutorial on the side of the mountain, and at least one iron ore vein on the far side of the river west of Riverwood. Sorry I can't give you exact directions. But they can be found around; keep your eyes open. Ore veins should replenish once a month. It's not much, but it could give you some supplies for your own crafting. If you save up about 600 Septims while doing work in Whiterun you can also buy an excellent set of lightweight steel "traveling armor" from the Skyforge: Wolf Armor.

Tried something like this for 30 min, alchemy actually brings in more money than smithing or wood chopping in the beginning. Hunting svcks, that’s going to be one of the first things I fix when I get a CK. The investment in arrows + time means you’ll make 10x more chopping wood. Plus at low levels elk don’t go down in one hit so it ends up being a waste of an arrow.

Exactly, i tried playing a Hunter and even that got boring pretty fast.

If you pray to Zenithar and make potions that fortify barter it will be easier buy stuff for crafting.

Also, there is a bards college that I think is along the lines of non-violent honest work if you feel like making a musical character.

Woodelves would make a good race to try so that you can befriend animals while collecting ingredients or hunting.

Imperials would be good for the calm effect. Also the extra coin can't hurt, even if you aren't dungeon diving there will be chests in mines.

I'm not sure where, but there are probably some mines without enemies in them.

I'd be interested to hear how this works out for you, it seems like Bethesda wanted to allow for this play style, but the seeming lack of good natured quest options makes me wonder if it will pay off.

I am quite sure it will work, if I just give it some time. I have tried being a hunter/smither, and it went great. I managed to get to level five, just hunting outside Whiterun.

I will do some research into where I can find ores that aren't close to enemies. But yeah, alchemy and firewood is the way to go. I wish food would sell for more, though.

I also need to figure out if there's a house I can buy without doing hero-like quests for it.

Thanks, guys, I love your tips, keem 'em coming.

Not sure if this goes against your philosophy, but level illusion and get the calm spell. Then you can go into the mines and get ore while the bad guy just watches you.

if you marry someone then they give you 100 gold everyday from the shop takings and you don't have to work. you can become a man or woman of leisure!

if you join the bards college then can you learn songs and sing to people in Inn's to earn money? im not sure.

why dont you marry early by hiking to riften and getting the amulet of mara and finding your husband/wife. set up home and then go on a pilgrimage all around the main cities once, staying in Inn's and helping as a farm hand. No fast travelling. Remembering to eat regularly and sleep every night.

When you get home to your spouse you will be ready to settle down for a while and they will have a nice little amount of gold waiting for you.

However, it wont be long before you get that urge again to put on your hiking boots. This time, it will be to visit all the Shrines (eg Azura) in Skyrim and to leave a specific offering at each one (eg snowberries), talk to npc's there but dont start any quests.

You get home, tell husband/wife about your adventures, and get back to normal life. Once in a daily routine you get that itch again for adventuring. This time to visit, by foot, all 13 Standing stones.

etc etc. Visit every Jarl in Skyrim.Collect every book. Collect every jar with a bug inside. Collect every type of flower. When saved up enough money buy a new home etc etc etc

But by the Nine, stick to the ROADS!!!!!

Thanks, these are some awesome tips! I willy indeed go for such pilgrims, especially when I rstn empire to hire a bodyguard.

Yes, do keep us informed about how things are going. Consider keeping a "Travel Journal" here in this thread.



If you marry someone with a home/shop, you can move in with them. There are a number of "abandoned" buildings like the Alchemists Shack near Ivarstead, but you can't have a spouse move into those as you don't properly "own" them.

when levelling up speechcraft will be good for the perks. just talking to everyone increases it quickly and it means you buy things cheaper and sell for more of a profit!

I just thought of Ysolda in Whiterun. Her quest required to gain favor with her is just to bring her a mammoth tusk she can trade to the Kahjiit caravans. You can buy or find one of those and bring it to her as a "dower". She has her own home which you can move into after marriage, but apparently she won't go into business for herself unless she's living in a player-owned house.

i've read about people findingthings in jars eg a bee in a jar. i dont know if you get anything for finding them all or if you have to steal them.

dont forget you have to buy your husband/wife a present when out on your travels eg a ring, or else they'll be upset with you when you get home.

You could either marry a character with a house to have a place to live or use one of the free shacks that have storage space in them.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Houses

I like this idea, and if the Elder Scrolls ever go multiplayer, characters like this will be a lot of fun, and hopefully could provide a real economy to those doing the adventuring. It would not take very many of these characters to service an area.

A few of the mine's are safe and monster free if mining is ok, look for the ones with gaurds outside.

Laughing because now I HAVE seen everything. Cant believe someone would buy this game in order to role play the most boring role possible and only experience about 20% of the content
This is as wierd as the guy who wants to just explore Skyrim and never do a quest and just do whatever jumps infront of him as he goes along
No there is nothing wrong with it but its kind of like buying an iphone because you can play angry birds on it...or like buying a Ferrari because of the car stereo system.

Are there any good sources of moon sugar? Can you make Skooma?

What are the most expensive potions you can make out of the most common ingredients?

I am going to play it this way on my next character. With my first character I played 107 hours, got the Platinum trophy, completed the Main Quest, College of Winterhold, Thieve's Guild, Imperial, Dark Brotherhood, Companions and Daedric Quests.

This is just a different way of playing and is a good way of adding longevity. Just the same as Dead Is Dead roleplay. With my 3rd character I will be a vampire, a child of the night, breaking into random homes and drinking their blood, muahwahahaha

You lost me at honest.

Okay, this is easy: Start with alchemy. Collect flowers, and kill any wolves or other nuisance animals that bother you. Collect flowers. In particular, Red Mountain Flowers and Tundra Cotton. They make fortify magicka potions, and they're abundant and respawn eventually. I'm sure there's other ingredients you can gather in safety as well, but the point is you can perk up alchemy, getting green thumb, which should double your rate of ingredient gain. You can also create leather from the wolf pelts you collect, turning them into leather strips. Then take the money you earn from alchemy, and invest it into a weapon with the 'absorb health' effect, filled petty soul gems, and iron ore from your local blacksmith. Craft iron daggers, and use the soul gems to enchant them with the absorb health enchant, and you can sell the finished magic daggers to the blacksmith at a price which should more than cover your costs. If you're not above enchanting your own dagger, put soul trap on it, so you can fill some of your own soul gems when you get jumped by hostile creatures, it will save you some money.

Eventually you'll be able to buy other gear to learn their enchants. Fortify speech is going to be hugely useful for you, as it will have you improve your profit margin on your iron ore and soul gem supplies, and give you a better price from selling your potions and enchanted daggers. With enough time, you'll have maxed alchemy, maxed enchanting and maxed smithing, and will be sitting on a mountain of cash. You'll be able to enchant a full set of smithing/alchemy gear, which will further improve the quality of the wares you make, along with a high quality speech amulet to ensure the prices you get are the best possible.

If you really want to avoid combat at all costs, you can practice sneaking, and should be able to get a lot of ingredients that might otherwise be too heavily guarded to reach. Just prepared for a long boring grind.

PS: Why not just spend the time at the gym and get sick abs? Gotta be a better use of your time than this.

The crafting skills can feed on themselves after a while. There's no reason not to build all 3, using materials you can buy from other vendors. It might be interesting if you travelled with the Khajiit on occassion as well.

Alchemy is a the best place to start, since the materials are free. I think you should still consider Hunting as a valid option.. but you're targets are Deer and Elk. Wolves, Bears, etc, you should run. Enchanting is fantastic for cash once you get over the initial hurdle, which you can do with Alchemy.

Alchemy, Enchanting, Smithing, and Speech.

I can't help you with housing, but I do love the Riften house, if the questlines don't bug on you. Abandoned Houses are scary, in that all your stuff can disappear in a flash. Markarth requires quite a bit of heroics, and Riften requires heroics, and it's bugged, although most of the other quests for Riften are gather quests. Whiterun is the obvious choice, except you still need 2 heroics quests; the dragonstone, and the watchtower in the MQ. I don't know about Solitude or Winterhold...

I guess, you could claim the Alchemists shack or the Witches shack, and use the console to change the ownership to yourself, so they don't reset. They're a bit far from town though.

I still think you should pick up some Restoration skills, so you can heal your bodyguard if things get ugly.

I'll think on this some more.