I'm still on my first playthrough here, so I have a quick question for all you Skyrim veterans. I like to keep my characters in-character, so unless I'm on my mage, I don't want to have to join the College of Winterhold to enter for non-College oriented quests. In one particular case, this is proving difficult to avoid. Spoilers just in case:


So... that being said, would it break anything if I simply added an alternate way into the ruins (such as a container with a key)?

You have do to some mini quests that are mage related to get deeper into the ruin, and dealing with the dungeon boss is a little different.

It is a poorly designed quest, there are no alternate valid options to obtain the necklace apart from joining the college.

It makes some sense, the College is excavating the ruins so they wouldnt allow anyone in there unless it was on College business.

But if you wanted to see if it breaks anything you could just console the key to yourself then do a quick run through the area to get the amulet, then go through with the College quest(though if you have no intention of doing any College quests on that character anyway, breaking the questline isnt a big deal).

I dont -think- it would break it though.

You can't defeat the Gauldur brother and thus claim the amulet fragment without Tolfdir's help.

Right I completely forgot, its some scripted shielding thing.

They could have made it so you had the option of being hired as a mercenary once they ran into trouble (so it wouldn't quite be the same as entering when a college member and then finding the trouble).