I never bought much from shops, though I do miss the bookshops, as those I would buy from when I was bored.

I couldn't have said it better myself.


No evidence off the great collapse? How about the fact that the college essentially sits atop a spire? Who would purposely build something of the colleges scale in such a precarious location?


There's a carriage in Winterhold?

The woman at the general goods store would be the one to travel, either that or the Jarls men would do the collecting, I'd assume. What? Did you think that the stores would really magically restocked out of thin air as they seem to in the game? No, someone wold have to deliver/collect stock, even if they are not represented in the game

Agreed in Skyrim the cities are a joke.

I would like bigger cities right now we pretty much have small villages classified as "cities" with higher cities I would assume and hope comes a bigger shop collection. More is certainly more, and in Skyrim the cities are definitely lacking. The stalls do make up some but some proper shops in a proper city would be superb.

I haven't played Oblivion but ya the cities do seem small. I mean how is Winterhold a city! Morthal and Dawnstar are okay i guess? But they felt rushed and only reason i go to dawnstar is for the chest glitch.

I agree with you cities do feel rushed as many things do in this game. The so called cities consist of like what two or three buildings, and four and five in other places, Oblivion and Morrowind had far better cities.

Lol at this statement, the cities are indeed lackluster at best.

It seems to me that in creating vastly improved dungeons (comparing to Oblivion) some of the settlements do seem to have suffered a bit, but bear in mind this is a game being designed with what are actually quite outdated consoles in mind now.

Big cities in Skyrim = Small cities in Oblivion

Cities in Skyrim look more aesthetically pleasing and unique than those in Oblivion. But their sizes are really underwhelming.

My hope now rests on mods.

Better "cities" ? put a mage/warrior guild in every Skyrim "city" ,consider the surroundings (farms,mills..) and you'll have the same size probably. If you read some of the in game books its clearly explained that these "cities" are most "settlements" -due to the nord's climate harshness.


Winterhold was Skyrim capital and its in this state after the great collapse. Reading the lore/Uesp wiki will help perhaps

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:On_the_Great_Collapse

And bear in mind that all is scaled down,even if i agree that "more life" in these so-called cities - and the whole game -would have been great.

What are the farms and mills a building and a windmill and there is only a few around some cities what like two and three building on each farm.

Balmoral, Imperial City, Ald Ruhn, Sadrith Mora, and Chorrol were far better cities in their design and what they had in them. Winterhold is a joke and so is the "great" port city Solitude.

Making the stalls into dedicated shops? That... honestly sounds like it could be really easy to mod in. Are you thinking what Im thinking?

Is there not?

If there is, I haven't seen it.

There's a carriage in Winterhold if you pay one to take you there, but only for as long as it takes the driver to turn around and go somewhere better.

Carriages are only stationed outside the five main cities: Solitude, Windhelm, Markarth, Riften, Whiterun. You can take a carriage from one of those places to any other hold capital, but the minor capitals do not have carriage services of their own. If you take a carriage to Winterhold, Dawnstar, Falkreath, or Morthal... be prepared to walk back.

What I think people find strange is that there aren't any ruins around the College at the Bottom of the cliff. The scale the city apparently was means that it can't all have been washed away. It would have made more sense to maybe have some collapsed buldings around the cliff itself.

The only city I though would have been bigger was Solitude. Other then that all the cities/towns/settlements make perfect sense for the province of Skyrim. Regarding the OP's post those specialty shops were only in the Imerial City, which made sense for the imperial city and its population. For Skyrim it makes sense that shops are more general goods shops given that the settlements are smaller. It would be out of place if Whiterun had a staff shop, a shield shop, a book store, a potion store, etc. The stores would out number the population. Personally I like the addition of the small booths set up as they fit the setting.

Also to the poster who commented on how every town should have a blacksmith, I can say for certain but I am pretty sure they do, other then maybe the small settlements.

Yeah, well I played Morrowind, and the worst part about it IMO was Vivec. Navigating those mazes of closed-ended three-story (4 W/sewers) mounds was brutal to the fun side of the game, it was not fun. I had the hardest time remembering where things were and the in-game maps were no help for that (until you got close). I hated having to go to Vivec, and the visits always took several game-days, sometimes a week or more! It was the biggest drag on the game.

So in comparison, the cities in Skyrim are wonderful and refreshing. In comparison the in-game maps tell you everything you need to know. However, I wish the merchants (sometimes?) had more GP for purchases, without having to spend multiple precious perks to get them to have more. By the time you can spend your precious perks on anything but combat-enhancing perks, directly or indirectly, you no longer need the merchants to have more GP because you now have no money crunch. At the very least they could've varied the merchant's GP a little over time.

Also, regarding merchant prices, I think the smithing merchants should've given slightly better weapon/armor prices than the non-smith merchants, similar W/apothecary for ingredients and potions, etc. Not a big difference, like 10-20%. It would have been nice to also be able to become a traveling merchant, buying when prices for certain items were low, and selling when/where the prices where higher; but you would need to be able to do this before mid-game, when you still really needed the money to purchase things.

Admittedly, the lack of ruins at the base of the cliff doesn't help matters

The game explains the awful rage of the sea, the years of incessant bashing. IMO that explains it to my content.

As I like geography it nags me. It doesn't make much sense. Especially what the land round there is. A great collapse is easily possible in real life and the area the college is on is basically a stack. But still the water is extremely shallow down there and no amount of hydraulic action or abrasion could have eroded it that fast. I suppos they left it out becasue of the effort it would take. If Winterhold was rebuilt it woild be massive and easily imperial city size. I wish they'd left it in.

Its my understanding it was a tsunami action the sea had that destroyed the town. With the shallow nature of the water in the area, its entirely possible to me that a big enough tsunami event would create havok, especially if the bedrock in the area of the collapse was undermined over time with water errosion from the normal water course.

However I agree with the others that winterhold is rather pointless as an additional settlement. How can there even be a Jarl of there are no subjects and no commerce? The only reason imo its even been added is that Beth thought they needed a pub at the college.

And besides which, you can always fall back on the plot device of "magic".

That would only be a valid argument if any of the last three TES games were actually to scale. They aren't. There's no reason to limit the size of your new cities because you don't want to overshadow one ostensibly huge city you created half a decade ago. Especially when you consider the size of Morrowind's cities.
This. Redundancy is important.

Take Balmora, where you have three general goods shops (an outfitter, a pawnbroker, and a trader), five bars/taverns (Lucky Lockup, the Razor Hole, Eight Plates, Council Club, Southwall Cornerclub), an armorer, a tailor, and an alchemy shop with guild equivalents of each located within the local branch of the fighters and mages guilds, a bookseller, and the local temple with various merchants and spell sellers inside. This isn't even getting into the large number of residences and manors that already tend to dwarf most Skyrim cities.

This idea that there should never be more than one instance of any given service in any given place is boring. Every town just feels like another extension of the game (instead of an extension of the world), giving the player only what they need. Instead, towns should be designed with believability and logic in mind. Skyrim lacks this philosophy.

Agreed. But I would also like to point out, in the aforementioned example of Balmora it also conformed to this "only what they need" philosophy. Each of those taverns mentioned were part of a quest, mostly the reason for the different taverns was the different factions hostile to other factions.