Hello there, i have a handful of questions that i have been unable get definitive answers for in all my time playing Skyrim. Some of these would only require a little playtesting although i'm unable to really play the game on the laptop i own at the moment.

Bounties - I would like to know more about the situation of the player being in a town while having an active bounty in that town (assuming they were able to infiltrate the town undetected). Specifically, will guards patrol regularly until they detect the player, and will civilians act normally and traders still trade with the player. In essence, is it possible to go about business in a town with the added challenge of having to avoid all guard detection. One potential issue i foresee is that traders will only be accessible during the daytime and stealth may be much more difficult. In addition to all of this, i would like to know any info on what happens to crimes committed while being in the town with the active bounty (which could be from a previous visit). For instance if i killed a lone guard, would my bounty increase automatically (psychic guards assume you were the perpetrator due to existing bounty) and if a single guard spotted me, would the whole town psychicly zero on my position.

Persistent Battles - This question is in relation to some of the civil war battles, where both sides are largely (or wholly) filled with re-spawning NPC's of a set limit, that will spawn and charge and battle, again and again for eternity. Speficially i wish to know what is requires to set this up, and whether this can be accomplished in a totally isolated cell that also functions as a player home. That would mean that storage and general item locations would need to remain and yet the respective ally and enemy corpses would need to continually fade out to allow fresh fighters to join the fray. I imagine that every time the cell is entered, the fight would seem to restart (with both enemies spawning at either end, rather than looking like it was in progress).

Many thanks to anyone able to help me with these issues.

Bounties are only added if a person catches you commit the crime including murder. But if you manage to kill the witnesses of the act your bounty will be removed. As for already having one in a city, no none of the NPCs will attack you. They won't attack you even if you kill a guard it civilian in front of them (though another bounty will be added). The only people who will attack you (if you ignore them when they try to arrest you) if they see you are the guards.

From my experience guards do tend to do patrols but it's only one who typically walks around in a section of the city. If you have good stealth you can slip past them easily during night.

But yes traders are only available during the day time. With my characters I usually reach a point where all the holds guards are nothing for me and I just have fun slaughtering them any time they try an arrest and go about my merry way publicly in the city. But that won't be until high levels and it sounds like you are going more towards a stealth build not a warrior or mage who can eventually slaughter all those pathetic guards out of his path to go sell a spoon to a terrified trader lol.

In that case I recommend you join the thieves guild in Riften. They will have a trader there you can not only sell anything freely too (with no guards around) but sell stolen goods too. And as you complete the quests for them you will gain three other traders in the same spot including an alchemist and a blacksmith. So that will help. And it will also eventually allow you to bribe any guards to clear your bounty (for half your bounty price) in all the major holds except the towns like Dawnguard and Raven Rock if you have the Dragonborn DLC add on.

That's another thing thing though...bounties only cover the one hold where you got it. So if you have one in Whiterun example you may not have one in Solitude and so all the guards in the Solitude hold won't try to arrest you since you aren't wanted there. So if you have some annoying bounty you can't get rid of in one hold then just do all your trading in another one where you don't have a bounty.

In the end though, if you are looking for stealth you should combine it with illusion magic and you will get invisibility spells which will allow you to move freely in daylight in the cities without anyone seeing you. Although it will be hard to escape the guards if you try merchants outside (you have to reveal yourself to talk to anyone) you can use invisibility to get through the doors without notice to barter with inside traders.

As for your other question I only play on the 360 not PC so I have no idea. Good luck!

I'm actually asking these things because they have always been ideas for mods that i would personally like to add to my game. I would like the ability to use all of the towns fully while i have bounties in every hold. The first step is ensuring the stealth element in the town functions fine, so that i can go about by business unseen. I'm aware of invisibility, fast travel or other mechanics to exploit this, but i'd like to know if it works in it's bare bones. Ideas i have to augment this whole scenario are adding hidden entrances to all walled cities (only whiterun and markarth actually lack one) and also more rowing boats as forms of fast-travel out of the ports of solitude, riften and windhelm. If required, i could see myself adding additional pathways in some towns to augment stealth, or adding new interior cells that function as hideouts and stolen goods traders. However i would like to keep this as streamlined as possible, which requires that using stealth in a town, day or night and without any augmentation, functions correctly. This means being able to do any NPC activity while avoiding any combat.

I think Bethesda should of added a respawnable default "Civilian" in all the holds. It's just silly there are more guards in all the cities then civilians because all the civilians are named people who don't respawn if killed and half of them have some sort of quest tied to them directly or indirectly.

I just think the named NPCs should of begin diminished so only people who give quests have names and they don't interact in the crime world as to ensure their survival. But they should add loads of "civilians" in each city that respawn eventually like guards if killed but actually interact in crime screaming and pointing you out to guards if they catch you doing any crime, some running away from you if they see you commit a murder while others call the guards and attack you.

Unfortunately I can't play skyrim on a PC so I will never experience that.