I am still very new to the game, so I could be missing something, but it seems to me that there are very very few shops in Skyrim.

I have such happy memories of Vivec, Ald'ruhn, the Imperial City and so forth, where I would find so many interesting places to wander and people all over the place selling different kinds of things.

Shops are needed for practical reasons of course: there's always loot to offload, and it's useful to go shopping for equipment to help with quests. But for me they serve a more important purpose, which is making the world seem like people actually live in it. Who could forget Jobasha's Rare Books store from Morrowind, or the Mystic Emporium in Oblivion? Such shops were a huge part of what made their towns seem big and full of life.

So then I come to a town (I can't really use the word 'city') in Skyrim.. any of the towns I've visited so far, anyway.. and, gosh, it looks very pretty. At a glance some of these places look just amazing. But then I try to go shopping, and there's pretty much guaranteed to be something like: one smithy/weapon shop, an alchemy shop, and a general trader shop. Their interiors and exteriors are very similar from one town to the next. There's nothing about them that sticks in my mind. I couldn't tell you the name of any of the shopkeepers. The settlement begins to feel small, no matter how majestic some of its buildings may be.

The problem must surely be the dialogue. If everything that every character (shopkeeper or otherwise) says has to be voice acted, then dialogue has a price and there will be much less of it. If you're Morrowind and you can have as much dialogue as you want without the hassle of voice acting, then you can be full to the brim with interesting characters who have endless interesting things to say. Or you can impose the crippling limitations of full spoken dialogue on yourself, and suffer the consequences.

I'm not sure if I'm trying to make a point, really. Going back to text-only dialogue wouldn't be accepted in this day and age, so there's no use campaigning for it. But wouldn't it be nice to transform the lonely, deserted Skyrim into something that feels alive?

Bumped because I would like a few more people to read my ramblings before they sink to the bottom of the sea..

There are quite a few shops in Solitude, including a snobby altmer clothing store and a smith who's a wannabe soldier.

Also the travelling Khajit traders are fun. I always trade with them if they're around: they are in Skyrim because the war is good for business but they are not wealthy.

I actuality think there are some memorable shops in whiterun too. What about the woman who thinks all the guys in town like her? The drunken hunter guy or the potion woman who thinks you have ataxia? And the smith for the companions.

I'm pretty sure my dark elf got some racist flak from the yokel nord retailers in Morthal too. Maybe explore some more? I haven't even been to Dawnstar yet

There are plenty of shops, and don't forget Skyrim is not Cyrodiil it's a much more rural and rustic kind of place. The towns are smaller and the people heartier with fewer of them spending their time shopping and gossiping all day. Nords are much more practical people. Most of the towns have a marketplace that boosts the types of wares available. Whiterun is a good example of a well stocked town with shops, stall holders and independant vendors.

Are the shops really the same from town to town? o.o i remembered there were some differences between them.

I think OP needs to play the game more. :wink_smile:

I think text would be way better to flesh out characters. (Morrowind)
Much cheaper and easier to write things down instead of hiring voice actors and all that.

Don't worry about spending tons of money for a voice actor with no emotions, just use the unlimited power of your creativity to write down something interesting!

Random: I miss the Dunmer voice from Morrowind. Sounded like a boss.

Alright, alright, the general consensus seems to be that I should play the game more. Well, by a happy coincidence I am planning to do exactly that

Are there any bookshops anywhere? I've never seen one. I've stored up a few books which have multiple volumes, but I don't want to read them until I've got the whole set.

I'm not remembering any book shops or fine clothes merchants or specialists in enchantments and of course no dedicated magic shops or purveyors of household wares. In general I feel the the number of traders per settlement feels about right given the size of each but the world would feel more credible if a few settlements were home to at least one specialist vendor.

What I'm not seeing at all is variation. There are so few base item types, so few items of any given type - with the possible exception of vegetables, and of course some item types are missing altogether: few weapons, little by the way of armor or clothing, household items have become more rare than soul gems so you can appreciate my excitement last night when I found a fork. The scaling of items further reduces the variation seen at early levels and the unwieldy shopping list presentation does little for the imagination.

Back to Morrowind, my very first visit to Caldera was memorable not because of some epic battle or flying lizards. It was memorable because of the architecture, my fear on entering a certain manor and mostly because a certain trader had an enchanted cephalopod helm for sale that was beautiful and powerful and very expensive at level 2 - I was determined that some day it would be mine.