Go to Arngeir the Greybeard, and ask him if the knows of any words, go get word, come back and repeat, he'll basically give you the locations of all the "unquested" words in the world

Something to add to the list

I wish I knew the Advanced Armors perk was pointless to unlock for heavy armor wearers, because steel plate is not better than Orcish armor
I wish I knew Dragon Armor looks god awful, I would not have bothered opening up all the smithing perks, and would have stuck with unlocking Daedric only (or maybe even only ebony)

Agreed, but you can remap the keyboard, right? Using the [ESC] -> [System] -> [Controls], I believe.

First thing I did.

I wish I had know to get the perks right the first time (no perk refund )

This definitely. I still wish I didn't have to join that certain faction in order to get all the ingredients so to speak.

Can somebody elaborate on this whole "doing jobs = merchants get more money" thing?

Don't play Destruction. That was my first character and it left a long lasting, soured impression of the game.

Under your magic menu > shouts > lower right hand corner shows amount of souls you have > press X to apply them to desired shout!

Love this thread! Reminds me of how I played Fallout 3 all the way through several times then over 200+ hours in New Vegas before I realized you could click the little arrows at the top of item lists to sort them by Weapons, Apparel, etc. LOL!

To add one to this list:
There are goodies hidden underwater in some areas. I found out by accident while running from a bear and ran backwards into a lake.

I had no regrets about doing the main quest right away

Cheers

Amazing thread! Nice change of pace from all the complaints I've been reading! ..... Although, I guess every post here is a complaint by definition!!!!

I wish I new companions could carry your stuff sooner! Though when I finally figured it out I still forgot frequently! :S
Also, I wish I specialized with my first character! Spread myself too thin and in some areas I just get owned!

To add:

water = safety(usually)

I guess since we can't attack in water creatures don't follow us in to attack us either. Apart from those fish(whom's name escapes me) that can hurt you, but I'll tair them over a bear.

I wish I knew I could switch loyalty from Stormcloak to Imperial (or visa versa) before completing the entire quest chain and failing the other.

I did not know you could have more than one quest marker active. For the first 10 levels I thought the compass was worthless, because I had two sets of quest markers active. I can know find things.

:rofl:

It's spilled oil. Nothing magical about that.

Some Dwemer ruins also have gas leaks.

You can also extinguish them to help create dark ambush points for those stealthy sneaky stabby stabby types.

In Alchemy I thought that when I acquired a recipe for a potion, the option to make it would automatically appear when I used the Alchemy table like the rest of them do but it didn't. I thought maybe I had to have a higher skill level or something. Don't laugh...I finally figured out that I had to choose "Ingredients" and manually select what the recipe called for. A little thing but now I can make Cure Disease. :facepalm:

:tes:

Fast traveling RUINS the game! Seriously i missed some great times by fast traveling on my first char (and also smithed for epic l00ts!1). On my new character I have forced myself to walk everywhere (unless i have discovered a major city, then i will horse and cart it) and just got into some great adventure.

Dont fast travel, you miss so many great encounters and random things. For example taking a simple walk from Windhelm to Riften involved the following:

1. Bear fights
2. Dragon attacking Giant/Mammoth camp
3. An epic troll fight which lasted about 10 minutes
4. Coming across a mining community that needed a hero to cleanse the mine of spiders
5. A bandit camp being attacked by a horse (wtf?)
6. Tracking 3 trolls, eventually they made their way to the entrance of Riften and i joined the guards in killing them.

This took about 3 hours of play and i couldn't believe i'd sunk that much time

Can you actually extinguish the torches without picking them up?

Thanks, I didn't realize that.

My list would include:

Location of the steed stone.
You don't need a companion to beat most quests.
There is plenty of money without fast-traveling back and forth to sell all the armor/weapons from a dungeon.

Yes. You approach them, then activate them. (activating a lit torch actually extinguishes it).

1) To follow the civil war storyline more closely from the start. There's no skirmishes, no real feeling of war, unless you do. Its easy to forget about it.

2) I wish I had known to take my time and not fall for veteran tricks.

I ended up hoarding too much stuff, and while it was a successful tactic in the sense that I got tons of money, that also made me not care to do any of the jobs and interesting, immersive activites in the game. I do wish it was harder to make tons of cash so that it would actually feel like a struggle for ressources. I always face the same issues in Beth games. Same with Fallout 3. It should have been an epic struggle for survival, but instead with an hour of stepping out the vault, I had tons of bullets and caps. >.<

I'm not done with my first character yet, but I'm half tempted to delete and recreate him, play on a harder difficulty and throttle my actions to make sure I don't rake in tons of gold, steamroll the blacksmithing skill, ruin the civil war feel for me.

I wish I had figured out that I can improve my steel weapons and armor beyond the level of "Fine" WAAAAY long ago :facepalm:

This is huge. I haven't been finding many although I suspect where a few are. He can expect a visit soon; I have some dragon souls I haven't used and I've only had Fus Ro all this time and I need Dah!

:tes: