The Elder Scrolls XVIII: "What's So Civil About War, Anyway?"

[Batcathat]

I'm starting to feel the urge to play Skyrim again, but an entirely new playthrough feels a bit too time consuming so I figured a nice story mod or two might be good to scratch the itch. Does anyone have any recommendations?

I've played through a few story mods before (the only one I remember off the top of my head is the one with the the Groundhog Day loop, but I think I've played one or two others as well) but I suspect there are about a billion I haven't played. I don't have any demands, as such, beyond them being entertaining. I'd rather use an existing character than starting a new one, so I'd prefer something that works with a high level character.

[Rynjin]

Vigilant is always amazing. I hear Summerset is good too for a mage.

[veti]

Vigilant is indeed amazing.

The author has a couple of other adventure mods, Glenmoril and Unslaad. Can't speak for them, but I would guess they're also good. (Although Glenmoril is still described as "pre-alpha", which I find a bit daunting.)

Warden of the Coast is also impressive, though a bit fragile. Pro tip: if you meet a character with an actual name, try to recruit them there and then, don't rely on coming back later.

I've played through Maelstrom now at least six times, and I still love it. Unfortunately the author pulled it from Nexus, now you have to get it from Lover's Lab, but don't let that stop you. I assume the author just didn't like Nexus changing their terms of use. Best played about level 15-20.

The worst thing a mod can do to you, IMO, is draw you in, so you invest several hours of play and begin to care what happens, then throw up a bug that makes it impossible to resolve the story. Summerset did that to me, so did Project AHO. But other people like them both, so I guess I was just unlucky.

Edit: Also, you should be aware of a multitude of mods that change the vanilla game. By combining them, you can probably eliminate many of the things that put you off restarting. Particularly notable is "At Your Own Pace", to make the main quest and faction questlines less intrusive. Also overhauls to many of the most annoying or railroady sidequests. Or you can just delete them entirely.

[Batcathat]

Thanks for the suggestions. All the suggested mods so far looks interesting, though I'm kind of leaning towards Summerset right now.

Edit: Also, you should be aware of a multitude of mods that change the vanilla game. By combining them, you can probably eliminate many of the things that put you off restarting. Particularly notable is "At Your Own Pace", to make the main quest and faction questlines less intrusive. Also overhauls to many of the most annoying or railroady sidequests. Or you can just delete them entirely.

Yeah, I know. It's more that I want to jump straight into something new, instead of starting over from scratch (which is fun, but very time consuming). Also, is the main quest really that intrusive to begin with? I suppose you can't really avoid the first part, but after that I usually walk around doing whatever for a long time without much issue.

[Triaxx]

I run random alternate start, which as you might guess, randomizes your starting location, and doesn't drop you into the main plot instantly. In fact you have to actually visit Helgen to actively start the main plot, which means you can wander Skyrim without Dragons if you so choose. Visiting the various Word Walls provides an interesting look at what defends the word walls instead.

[Rynjin]

Vigilant is indeed amazing.

The author has a couple of other adventure mods, Glenmoril and Unslaad. Can't speak for them, but I would guess they're also good. (Although Glenmoril is still described as "pre-alpha", which I find a bit daunting.)

Glenmoril and Unslaad also notably don't have a Voiced mod like Vigilant does, which is a turn off for me. I'm waiting until they're done and the squad that did Vigilant Voiced swoops in.

The worst thing a mod can do to you, IMO, is draw you in, so you invest several hours of play and begin to care what happens, then throw up a bug that makes it impossible to resolve the story. Summerset did that to me, so did Project AHO. But other people like them both, so I guess I was just unlucky.

Yeah, Project AHO is pretty ass IMO. Not only does it have a few gamebreaking bugs, the entire start is just awful. It has the exact same issue as The Pitt from Fallout 3, which everybody rightfully dragged over the coals for how nonsensical the "talk to NPC, get bonked" start to a DLC is, with the added bonus that despite being a quest that can be started essentially RANDOMLY (the quest starter shows up at a random main town and will initiate a "death march" to you to activate the quest if you come within view range of them) it doesn't properly remove your companions like that DLC so if you didn't dismiss your companions beforehand you get stuck in the auction line and softlock your game.

And then if you manage to avoid all that trash, you go through a segment of the most inane, pointless drudgery videogaming can throw at you (a series of extremely boring fetch quests) only to finally, at the end, be asked "Hey I know we enslaved you and have a habit of not only enslaving others but cutting out their tongues so they can't speak, but out village is in trouble. Can you help us?"

NO! **** you, **** this whole city, and **** this mod. Why should I care? There's zero logical reason for the player character to be invested in this town or its inhabitants and the janky nature of even getting to that point doesn't really do ti any favors either.

[veti]

Glenmoril and Unslaad also notably don't have a Voiced mod like Vigilant does, which is a turn off for me. I'm waiting until they're done and the squad that did Vigilant Voiced swoops in.

I was inspired by this discussion to finally try out Unslaad, which has been sitting in my load order for years now without me ever actually finding the starting place. Which speaks well of its stability and general unobtrusiveness.

Visually: very like Vigilant, though much smaller. Has the same attention to detail in the gorgeous new landscapes and the castle it adds, similar absurdly proportioned weapons and lovingly customised NPCs and creatures. Somehow the author manages to make the snow look better than it ever does in Skyrim. The castle of Unslaad is a work of art in itself. It's seemingly built for humans to use - everything in it is human-sized - except the actual body of the building itself. The doors, corridors and ceilings are large enough to allow a dragon to amble about the place almost as easily as a human.

Level design: here I do have some criticism. The first act, Castle Unslaad, is fine - it's a moderate length dungeon crawl climaxing in a boss fight (with custom music) against an enemy with a weapon so outsized, it would be funny if it weren't freakin' terrifying. But later, I'm told to traverse an iced-over, mostly-impassable landscape with no more direction than "head north". Problem, it's physically impossible to head "north" most of the time, you have to follow an incredibly roundabout path through what amounts to a labyrinth - but a labyrinth where the paths aren't clearly marked. I never knew whether I should be trying to parkour my way up or over some obstacle, and there are countless dead ends and crevices where you can fall in and have a heck of a time getting back to something that seems to be "the path". It took me over two days to negotiate this obstacle, and I have to say it's not the most fun it could have been.

Soundtrack: there is an English "voiced" version, but unfortunately it (at least, the version of it I have) only covers a tiny part of the whole - just two of the characters, I think, for a fraction of the first act. To give them their due, those two voices are very good - better than anything in the English voiceover of Vigilant, which I've always thought very weak. But there's no getting away from the fact that they've only covered about five percent of the mod. Again like Vigilant, it has superb added atmospheric music, and even special dramatic music for some of the boss fights.

Plot: apparently (I hadn't realised this) Vicn's three adventure mods - Vigilant, Glenmoril, Unslaad - form a "trilogy", though I shudder to think how long it would take to get through them all with one character. In any case: this mod has callbacks to Vigilant, and does explain (if nothing else) why owls in TES should always be killed on sight. The rest of the plot is... either extremely straightforward or extremely confusing, depending how deeply you want to think about it. The integration of TES lore is, as I would expect from the author, amazing.

Characters: there are four major sympathetic characters, and even without voices for most of the content I find myself really caring about them. It's been a good while since a mod, or even a whole game for that matter, has made me feel so involved. When the adversary asks me to betray them in the big finale, I was delighted to see that all three of the available replies amounted to "go **** yourself". I couldn't imagine responding any other way, and apparently nor could the author.

Aftermath: the only real takeaways I got out of it are a rideable unicorn and a beautiful white dog. There are a few unique spells and artifacts, but meh. Oh, and if you care about mere character power, there's the option to earn more dragon souls, and to convert dragon souls into perk points. But for all that, it's definitely changed this character. After an experience like that, the whole of Skyrim feels different.

[Starlit Dragon]

Could anyone give me a plot summary of Vigilant? I like the Daedra Princes a lot, so I'm not sure I'll ever get around to playing it.

[Rynjin]

Could anyone give me a plot summary of Vigilant? I like the Daedra Princes a lot, so I'm not sure I'll ever get around to playing it.

Spoiler: Full spoilers for Vigilant Act 1 follow

Show

Vigilant is a story split into four acts, all of them fairly different in tone and content.

Act 1: In Which The Main Character Joins the Vigilants

Your character joins a branch of the Vigilants in Dawnstar, recruited by a Bosmer named Altano. He will be your "handler" for this act.

"Minor" decision point:

Some dude will ask you to kill Altano instead. Like, for no reason, he just wants Altano dead and you can agree to do it. Should you do so: do not pass go, do not collect $200, proceed directly to Act 4 of the mod; depending on your character's current level of power this could be considered a complete failure state/nonstandard game over because some of the enemies in Act 4 are VERY hard, you ARE stuck there until the mod is completed at this point, and you're gonna have trouble grinding skills against them. This is basically schmuck bait.

With Altano you investigate a series of episodic crimes; Daedra summonings, vampires, etc. and learn they are all connected to a mysterious female summoner. There are potentially conflicts between you and Altano on how to handle certain cases; your character may be uncomfortable with delivering "Stendarr's Mercy" to people who mean no harm but are inherently dangerous (mainly a man who drives anyone who looks in his eyes mad due to a curse), but you eventually go along with it anyway for The Greater Good.

You meet up with your brethren (chiefly a man named Jacob) at Stendarr's Beacon to pool resources with another vigilant branch that has made their base there; they give you a lead in Riften.

After reporting success in handling the Daedra eating all of the food in the Bee and Barb to Altano (yes, really; most of the Daedra that have been summoned are content performing petty crimes unless their ire is aroused), you report back to Jacob and Altano; the latter asks you to meet him in the Ragged Flagon, where another strange occurrence has been reported.

The relatively lighthearted (standard for Skyrim in any case) tone stops here.

Wandering the Ratways leads you to a Khajiit; Jo'vanni, who madly mutters to himself before attacking. You slay him, and upon searching his corpse are sucked into his mind, and live a day in the life of Jo'vanni and his loving wife Campaner'Ra, before their mutual friend Mar'so gets jealous, kills her, skins her, and wears her pelt in front of Jo'vanni; the latter snaps.

So begins a short quest to hunt down Mar'so, and reunite Jo'vanni with his wife so their spirits can be laid to rest.

Reporting back to Stendarr's Beacon, you find nothing but pools of blood and a mercenary in heavy armor guarding the place. He warns you to leave; you do not and kill him.

Descending deeper you find Jacob (injured) who says that a woman named Bal (those with keen observation note that she has been present at the site of two other quests, always as an inn or tavern patron) brought the man outside and a pair of Dremora Lords and slaughtered everyone in the Beacon. You make your way to the inner sanctum.

Along the way, Jacob is assaulted by images of his past crimes, which are revealed to the player. Many of these crimes were performed in service of the Vigilants, but a notable reveal is that before he repented and joined the service of Stendarr, Jacob was a cultist of Molag Bal.

Once at the inner sanctum, a fight ensues with Bal (wielding the Mace of Molag Bal) and her Dremora; in the process Jacob is fatally injured.

Bal is revealed to be Jacob's dead wife Rahel; their spirits pass on together.

Altano takes the Mace and leaves to turn it over to Thorondir (your chapter master back in Dawnstar), tasking you with killing a pair of witches near Ivarstead.

You investigate these witches and they are...a normal woman and her daughter, the forme rof which is practicing alchemy to find a cure for some disease afflicting her husband.

Decision point, the first major one of the mod:

Spoiler: Act 1 Split, option 1

Show

Quest Name: No Mercy

Killing these two outright is an option (yes, even the child; I think she's coded as an adult model scaled down)

Telling either you are a Vigilant will cause them to get terrified and become hostile

In either case they end up dead.

Stendarr is displeased, and you receive his Curse; a permanent (for now) debuff. The real witch (a hagraven) shows up and calls you a murderous dumbass then ca-caws away.

Thus begins The Endless Fall, the followup quest.

Returning to Altano at Stuhn Ravine (the Vigilant base near Dawnstar) reveals he has killed...basically everyone there, except for the librarian (who managed to hide from him).

Following him back to the Beacon you learn that he has taken possession of the Mace of Molag Bal (or perhaps vice versa) and is planning to summon an avatar of the Daedric Prince.

You try to stop him but are too slow and the Avatar (a dragon-like beast) emerges.

Molag Bal mocks the player and calls for you to surrender and submit yourself to him. If you submit, straight to Act 4 with you.

Should you fight back, and win, you will have regained Stendarr's favor, and begun The Landing. The Prince warns that you now have his attention, and he will make it his goal to break you. Should you ever slip toward the darkness again he will be there to drag your soul screaming to Coldharbour.

While you have fought back the threat, and clawed your way from the edge of darkness, the Vigilants are still all but destroyed in Skyrim, with all of its major strongholds slaughtered to nearly the last man.

You will rebuild it and carry on the fight against evil..

Act 1 concludes.

Spoiler: Act 1 Split, Option 2:

Show

Keep your identity a secret from the mother and report back to Altano. Tell him they're innocent and you won't kill them.

He'll challenge you, order you, and berate you, before finally attacking if you refuse to obey.

Being struck by his weapon is an instant loss; it results in you somehow coming under his control, killing Carene and her daughter, and putting you on the path above.

Defeating Altano (which requires you to defeat him without getting hit at all; not SUPER difficult but does provide an interesting challenge) fails the quest No Mercy...and begins the quest The Art of Mercy.

Carene shows up and reveals that the bigass merc you killed earlier? The one with the armor who asked you to turn back? That was her husband. The one she apprenticed herself to a horrid monster to in order to learn enough alchemy to save.

A fight ensues; you win, it's not hard.

But Carene is still alive, merely injured. You are given the choice to either save or spare her.

Saving her leads directly to the start of act 2; no Endless Fall, no showdown with Molag Bal (who is never summoned because you killed Altano before he could do it), no Curse of Stendarr...and frankly no real narrative weight.

I really appreciate this mod for putting this choice here, and actually dedicating an entirely separate quest branch to it...but it's not nearly as good of a story as the triumph of a fall and redemption that plays out in the original quest path.

Oh and killing Carene here leads, believe it or not, straight to Act 4.

And that's Act 1; both versions of it. Let me know if you want the synopsis for 2-4 or you'd prefer to play ti at this point. The mod starts off a bit rough, but I think starts to become very good narratively by the time of Thus Spake Khajiit.

[Batcathat]

Maybe I should give Vigilant a shot, too. I did play a fair bit of Summerset but while it was pretty impressive from a technical standpoint (some bugs, but nothing too bad), I found the plot and writing to be a bit lacking and eventually lost interest in continuing.

[veti]

There's no contest. Vigilant is a far better adventure than Summerset.

Act 1, as described above, feels kinda episodic and random at first, but by the end of the act - when Molag Bal declares personal vendetta against you - that feeling is gone, and what's left is a lot of trepidation and anger. (The only real problem with Act 1 is that it's very railroady in some places.)

Acts 2 and 3 are basically scary dungeon crawls - act 2 is fairly standard until the end, but act 3 is something quite different - a creepy haunted house with a horrifically tragic backstory and near-unfightable enemies. (Some people will tell you they're actually unbeatable, but that's not the case. It's just not worth trying to beat them. Much easier to run away.)

Then comes Act 4, and it gets really good. The interpretation of Coldharbor is so much more interesting than anything Bethesda would have come up with. And gives some real insights into Tamrielic lore. This is where you get to work out your anger against Bal, and - assuming you do it right - finally even get some grudging respect from him.

[WritersBlock]

I have been thinking about reinstalling skyrim and playing again, and hoping just maybe that they wont release another update and break most of my mods like last time. Last update was in september 2022 so fingers crossed.

[LibraryOgre]

I have been thinking about reinstalling skyrim and playing again, and hoping just maybe that they wont release another update and break most of my mods like last time. Last update was in september 2022 so fingers crossed.

The about due for a new complete graphics update, and a DLC that does very little, aren't they?

[Rynjin]

Simply disable automatic updates like everyone else did 10 years ago. =p

[WritersBlock]

Last time I had skyrim installed I played through Vigilant, Unslaad and Glenmoril. This time I am going to try the Alternate start/Alternate main quest mod "Redux" by Craftian, some of his mods like citizens of Tamriel are great, His mythos mod was cool but had a anticlimactic disappointing ending. (The 2 new followers were cool, but the whole mod derails if you gain to high of a level while questing, because you permanently lose the girl for story reasons once you level enough, yet both followers have dialogue throughout the main game and the 2 dlc's, so yeah, that particular mod could have been handled much better.) I do recommend Citizens of Tamriel regardless.

[veti]

Simply disable automatic updates like everyone else did 10 years ago. =p

The trouble with that is, then you're on an unsupported version.

I'm not talking about Steam or Bethesda support, obviously, they're not going to offer anything we care about. I'm talking about mods and modders, who will pretty much all be using current builds.

Updates breaking the game are a nuisance, but no more than that. Generally, it's been fixed within (usually) about two days. The really big breaks, like SE-AE, take a matter of weeks to get fully fixed, but all that means is playing without a handful of mods for that time, many others continue to work just fine. And that level of breakage has only happened, I think, three times in the history of the game. And two of those releases have been widely pre-advertised.

[Rynjin]

...No? The NEWEST version is the one unsupported by modders on launch. If you allow automatic updates you expose yourself to those gaps.

If you disable auto-updates and only manually update the game when mods have been updated, you run into zero issues.

[Starlit Dragon]

Spoiler: Full spoilers for Vigilant Act 1 follow

Show

Vigilant is a story split into four acts, all of them fairly different in tone and content.

Act 1: In Which The Main Character Joins the Vigilants

Your character joins a branch of the Vigilants in Dawnstar, recruited by a Bosmer named Altano. He will be your "handler" for this act.

"Minor" decision point:

Some dude will ask you to kill Altano instead. Like, for no reason, he just wants Altano dead and you can agree to do it. Should you do so: do not pass go, do not collect $200, proceed directly to Act 4 of the mod; depending on your character's current level of power this could be considered a complete failure state/nonstandard game over because some of the enemies in Act 4 are VERY hard, you ARE stuck there until the mod is completed at this point, and you're gonna have trouble grinding skills against them. This is basically schmuck bait.

With Altano you investigate a series of episodic crimes; Daedra summonings, vampires, etc. and learn they are all connected to a mysterious female summoner. There are potentially conflicts between you and Altano on how to handle certain cases; your character may be uncomfortable with delivering "Stendarr's Mercy" to people who mean no harm but are inherently dangerous (mainly a man who drives anyone who looks in his eyes mad due to a curse), but you eventually go along with it anyway for The Greater Good.

You meet up with your brethren (chiefly a man named Jacob) at Stendarr's Beacon to pool resources with another vigilant branch that has made their base there; they give you a lead in Riften.

After reporting success in handling the Daedra eating all of the food in the Bee and Barb to Altano (yes, really; most of the Daedra that have been summoned are content performing petty crimes unless their ire is aroused), you report back to Jacob and Altano; the latter asks you to meet him in the Ragged Flagon, where another strange occurrence has been reported.

The relatively lighthearted (standard for Skyrim in any case) tone stops here.

Wandering the Ratways leads you to a Khajiit; Jo'vanni, who madly mutters to himself before attacking. You slay him, and upon searching his corpse are sucked into his mind, and live a day in the life of Jo'vanni and his loving wife Campaner'Ra, before their mutual friend Mar'so gets jealous, kills her, skins her, and wears her pelt in front of Jo'vanni; the latter snaps.

So begins a short quest to hunt down Mar'so, and reunite Jo'vanni with his wife so their spirits can be laid to rest.

Reporting back to Stendarr's Beacon, you find nothing but pools of blood and a mercenary in heavy armor guarding the place. He warns you to leave; you do not and kill him.

Descending deeper you find Jacob (injured) who says that a woman named Bal (those with keen observation note that she has been present at the site of two other quests, always as an inn or tavern patron) brought the man outside and a pair of Dremora Lords and slaughtered everyone in the Beacon. You make your way to the inner sanctum.

Along the way, Jacob is assaulted by images of his past crimes, which are revealed to the player. Many of these crimes were performed in service of the Vigilants, but a notable reveal is that before he repented and joined the service of Stendarr, Jacob was a cultist of Molag Bal.

Once at the inner sanctum, a fight ensues with Bal (wielding the Mace of Molag Bal) and her Dremora; in the process Jacob is fatally injured.

Bal is revealed to be Jacob's dead wife Rahel; their spirits pass on together.

Altano takes the Mace and leaves to turn it over to Thorondir (your chapter master back in Dawnstar), tasking you with killing a pair of witches near Ivarstead.

You investigate these witches and they are...a normal woman and her daughter, the forme rof which is practicing alchemy to find a cure for some disease afflicting her husband.

Decision point, the first major one of the mod:

Spoiler: Act 1 Split, option 1

Show

Quest Name: No Mercy

Killing these two outright is an option (yes, even the child; I think she's coded as an adult model scaled down)

Telling either you are a Vigilant will cause them to get terrified and become hostile

In either case they end up dead.

Stendarr is displeased, and you receive his Curse; a permanent (for now) debuff. The real witch (a hagraven) shows up and calls you a murderous dumbass then ca-caws away.

Thus begins The Endless Fall, the followup quest.

Returning to Altano at Stuhn Ravine (the Vigilant base near Dawnstar) reveals he has killed...basically everyone there, except for the librarian (who managed to hide from him).

Following him back to the Beacon you learn that he has taken possession of the Mace of Molag Bal (or perhaps vice versa) and is planning to summon an avatar of the Daedric Prince.

You try to stop him but are too slow and the Avatar (a dragon-like beast) emerges.

Molag Bal mocks the player and calls for you to surrender and submit yourself to him. If you submit, straight to Act 4 with you.

Should you fight back, and win, you will have regained Stendarr's favor, and begun The Landing. The Prince warns that you now have his attention, and he will make it his goal to break you. Should you ever slip toward the darkness again he will be there to drag your soul screaming to Coldharbour.

While you have fought back the threat, and clawed your way from the edge of darkness, the Vigilants are still all but destroyed in Skyrim, with all of its major strongholds slaughtered to nearly the last man.

You will rebuild it and carry on the fight against evil..

Act 1 concludes.

Spoiler: Act 1 Split, Option 2:

Show

Keep your identity a secret from the mother and report back to Altano. Tell him they're innocent and you won't kill them.

He'll challenge you, order you, and berate you, before finally attacking if you refuse to obey.

Being struck by his weapon is an instant loss; it results in you somehow coming under his control, killing Carene and her daughter, and putting you on the path above.

Defeating Altano (which requires you to defeat him without getting hit at all; not SUPER difficult but does provide an interesting challenge) fails the quest No Mercy...and begins the quest The Art of Mercy.

Carene shows up and reveals that the bigass merc you killed earlier? The one with the armor who asked you to turn back? That was her husband. The one she apprenticed herself to a horrid monster to in order to learn enough alchemy to save.

A fight ensues; you win, it's not hard.

But Carene is still alive, merely injured. You are given the choice to either save or spare her.

Saving her leads directly to the start of act 2; no Endless Fall, no showdown with Molag Bal (who is never summoned because you killed Altano before he could do it), no Curse of Stendarr...and frankly no real narrative weight.

I really appreciate this mod for putting this choice here, and actually dedicating an entirely separate quest branch to it...but it's not nearly as good of a story as the triumph of a fall and redemption that plays out in the original quest path.

Oh and killing Carene here leads, believe it or not, straight to Act 4.

And that's Act 1; both versions of it. Let me know if you want the synopsis for 2-4 or you'd prefer to play ti at this point. The mod starts off a bit rough, but I think starts to become very good narratively by the time of Thus Spake Khajiit.

That's awesome. And a lot. Thank you, I might end up playing it after all.

[Rater202]

I was today years old when I learned that if you want you can just not go talk to Jarl Balgruff and thus never trigger the dragon Mobs to spawn in or the quest that reveals that you're the Dragonborn and you can still do most of the game outside of the main quest and certain bits of dialog being altered so you aren't acknowledged as the Dragonborn during some them.

[Lurkmoar]

I was today years old when I learned that if you want you can just not go talk to Jarl Balgruff and thus never trigger the dragon Mobs to spawn in or the quest that reveals that you're the Dragonborn and you can still do most of the game outside of the main quest and certain bits of dialog being altered so you aren't acknowledged as the Dragonborn during some them.

I... I thought that was common knowledge.

I think the best change is with Durnehviir.

[Taevyr]

It's why I like the Another Life (I think) mod: allows you to choose, among other things, whether the main quest is actually a thing, and if not, whether or not you can encounter dragons or not, and whether you can learn shouts. If I want to headcanon a character playing before the Dragon bizniz, or a non-dragonborn running around while dragons do terrorize the region, I can perfectly do so.

[veti]

I just discovered last week that it's possible to bypass the "visitor's tax" shakedown when visiting Riften for the first time, even if you flunk the speech check. Should have thought of that years ago.

[Triaxx]

I like the way Random Alternate Start does it, where you get a quest to investigate Helgen, and never get dragons if you don't run it. But can start it whenever you like.

[Rynjin]

I just discovered last week that it's possible to bypass the "visitor's tax" shakedown when visiting Riften for the first time, even if you flunk the speech check. Should have thought of that years ago.

How do you flunk the Speech check? I always thought the DC was set to like...5 or something.

[InvisibleBison]

How do you flunk the Speech check? I always thought the DC was set to like...5 or something.

According to UESP, there's a bug that makes that Speech check always succeed, which is fixed by the unofficial patch mod.

[thethird]

I was today years old when I learned that if you want you can just not go talk to Jarl Balgruff and thus never trigger the dragon Mobs to spawn in or the quest that reveals that you're the Dragonborn and you can still do most of the game outside of the main quest and certain bits of dialog being altered so you aren't acknowledged as the Dragonborn during some them.

Even earlier. You can not go to fight the first dragon.

I did that because I assumed dragons were a limited commodity and wanted to unlock dragon smithing before fighting the first one. I got strongly sidetracked too.

So I didn't approach the main quest line till I had done most of the secondary missions. That meant I wasn't used to having followers, and that I didn't develop the appreciation to Lydia that's pretty memetic.

[Rater202]

Even earlier. You can not go to fight the first dragon.

I did that because I assumed dragons were a limited commodity and wanted to unlock dragon smithing before fighting the first one. I got strongly sidetracked too.

So I didn't approach the main quest line till I had done most of the secondary missions. That meant I wasn't used to having followers, and that I didn't develop the appreciation to Lydia that's pretty memetic.

...You get the first dragon fight by talking to Balgruff and that's what triggers dragon mobs to spawn.

That's not earlier, that's the thing I was talking about.

[Fyraltari]

I didn't develop the appreciation to Lydia that's pretty memetic.

When I realized that I couldn't get my follower on horseback, I sent Lydia away because waiting for her would negate the entire point of having a horse and having her teleport to my destination would ruin my immersion. As a result I did every quest and dungeon where you're not obligated to have a follower alone.

So, I only really care about Serana.

[thethird]

...You get the first dragon fight by talking to Balgruff and that's what triggers dragon mobs to spawn.

That's not earlier, that's the thing I was talking about.

Apologies I might be misremembering. I honestly think I had the quest though. And that not killing the dragon was what kept the others from spawning. But you might be right.

[halfeye]

...You get the first dragon fight by talking to Balgruff and that's what triggers dragon mobs to spawn.

That's not earlier, that's the thing I was talking about.

The talking to Balgruff (spelt?) thing is as you say before killing the dragon, but it's a long time before killing the dragon. The first time you talk to Balgruff you get the dragonstone quest from his court wizard, that takes me a couple of hours or more. Then when you return from that the dragon attacks the watchtower.