Hi there,

I am the kind of player who likes to try a lot of stuff, wander around, see some places and so on before engaging in the Main Quest.

However, when playing Fallout 3, this has caused me some problems, since I accidentaly wandered into a major Main Quest character (the female doctor in the city onboard the old ship, dont rember the names) and as a consequence "lost" a considerable part of the early Main Quest... (e.g. the whole radio station guy quest thing)...

Thus, can you point out some locations, areas and/or persons that i should avoid in order to not screw up the Main Quest?

Alternatively, is there a stage in the Main Quest that is a convenient occasion to let the Main Quest rest and engage in all kinds of side activities? (To stay with the Fallout 3 parallels, this would e.g. be the stage before you go to the Vault where your father is trapped inside this cyber-dog). For me this point would ideally as early as possible in the Main Quest. Right now, I am at the very beginning, where the next step in the Main Quest would be (I think) to go to see the jarl in Whiterun.

Let me know what you think!

Cheers,
Robert

With the two characters I've been playing, I took two different directions. With my first character, I went along and did the Main Quest as soon as possible, getting that done and seeing the story for what it was worth. With my second character, I have focused on side-quests and exploration, and as far as I have seen, the game does a great job in separating the Main Quest from the Side Quests. I'm sure, in a matter of time, your exploration might cause you to run into a Main Quest point or two, but I'm sure that you can go along and play the game without worrying.

There are two "main" quests. Civil war and dragons. Civil war will force you to start the dragon quest line. You can stumble upon a quest item that weights 25 pounds and can't be dropped, so that kind of forces you into the dragon quest line too.

And that's about it. You can't skip parts, like in F3, since the characters and items will not appear without meeting the prerequisites.

Nah, you won't screw up the MQ. You can mess up a lot of the other quests though by finding things early.

I also believe if you start the war quests, you have to fnish them before you can advance the MQ past a certain point.

There's a Dungeon, that leads to another dungeon that has an item you won't want to pick up, something about a scroll.
That quest item doesn't weigh anything but yeah you can accidently pick it up and almost start the main questline with the Dragons.

The character I have now only went to the point in the MQ were I dragons would spawn. I had tought about not even going that far but...Dragon fighting can be fun! ( even if I do die)


I visited the Jarl in whiterun, did his quests so I could buy Breezehome,. After the first quest with Delphine I AVOID HER.

I hope that's not to much in the spoiler area, but I don't know how to put the tags on them. My 1st character I stopped alot further along and while I have run into things that I can't unequip most seem to be related to other quests anyway.

quest items do not have weight even if it says so on their item card. to prove it, have the quest item in hand, check weight, relieve yourself of quest item by giving it to who ever needs it, check weight again.

If you find that the dragons annoy you, do the main quest up until the active one is "A Blade in the Dark". No random dragons should spawn while this quest is active.