I am much happier playing with no HUD whatsoever... it makes the game much more immersive.

Rather than navigate with the compass, learn the valleys, mountains and regions by heart.. sometimes I pop open the map just get my bearings, but for the most part navigation is easy. No crosshair? you only really need that for archery... and archery with no crosshair is much more instinctive, it actually requires skill from you the gamer, rather than a statistic. No NPC names, building names? Well knowing NPC names isnt that much of an issue, and most shops can be identified by the signpost outside. No heallth/magic/stamina meters? since they all recharge you'll be fine. Battles are a lot more intense when you dont know how much health you have.

And finally to no item names. This is the most difficult to let go.. ie not knowing what potions are scattered over a table, what books are on shelfs etc.. but ultimatly looting everything you come across is itself not neccessary... I RP it like how does my character know whats in every random bottle he comes across?

If you want immersion no HUD is where its at.. plus the obnoxious level up messages no longer appear. Its not at all difficult to play with no HUD considering Skyrim is not a difficult game to begin with.

If you want more immersion, play with no music and play on expert (I find master unfairly hard to the player)

I was all about playing HUDless but the fact that you don't know when you're going to die is a problem to me. You have no idea when you need to heal and you'd pretty much die at random. Plus pickng up items are kinda eh because you don't really know what you're picking up (since the crosshair is a bit off calibration) so you could steal something by accident or something. It certainly looks a lot better with no HUD, with this I do agree, but I feel I lose all sense of control. I play with the HUD with no crosshair and I deactivate all quests so I have no waypoint to any of them. This way I have some calibration and a sense of knowing what's going on. I think I will make the HUD a bit transparent but that's as far as I'd go. If it works for you however, hats off to you good sir.

Well you know you're near death when the edge of the screen becomes red each to their own though.

Yes, battles are much more "intense" when you've got no feedback at all that the Bandit Thug or Blood Dragon (oh, wait, no HUD, you can't see those names)... that the Guy In Hide Armor or the Big Flying Snake Thing that are swinging a sword at you/breathing frost at you, are doing much much more damage than the one you fought five minutes ago that was a pushover.


Right.


Yeah.

Not ever knowing that you might need to take a potion, or that the hit you just took had Magicka Poison on it and you've got no mana to run your healing spell. Or no stamina, or whatever. So, no reason to ever carry potions, since you'll never know if you need to use them.

If the game gave you some sort of feedback for these things, it might work... oh, but wait - in most games, the "feedback" about special events (like "I've been poisoned" or "'That third swing was a critical hit" or whatever) are generally handled through a HUD. There's only so much you can get from "GASP!" "UGH!" "CLANG!" and the screen splattering with red.

So how do you go HUDless on PC? I assume it's a console command?

HUD opacity in options menu.

Could be too late to do anything about it by then though especially since NPC can do finishers on you. And healing spells... you wouldn't know when you're good. idk people have their different ways of playing.

If they separated compass opacity from HUD opacity it would be perfect IMO.

I just turned the compass off, the rest of the HUD is fine and kind of needed for me, that alone improves immersion a ton. But I feel like my character should now how badly injured he is or how tired since he obviously feels it, that's what stam/health represent and I assume they'd have a sense of their magicka as well..