I agree there should be more unique loot that isn't tied to Daedric quests and such.

Maybe a few could be hand-placed like in Morrowind but I think most should be in random locations - the more challenging the dungeon, the better the chance of finding something unique and great. That would encourage exploration on every playthrough.

That said, I'm pretty happy with the way it is, to be honest.

I started looking up WIKI or UESP because I killed the stormcloak quest guy. I basically entered a dungeon and screwed up a quest. I also look because I have to make sure I'm not ruining a quest. So yeah.

Why don't understand this concept at all

Quest dungeons are QUEST Q-U-E-S-T dungeons only for QUEST

Dud dungeons are dungeons you explore just because

I'm so sick and tired of having to explain this to people

Yep. I found NV to be pretty lousy for random exploration. So many places you'd wander into, and all it had was a couple rooms and then blocked hallways.

Both SK and FO3, it's fun to just kick around the landscape and see what's there. FO3 had a bit more story in locations, since it had a bit more narration in the terminals (compared to little notes and journals in Skyrim), but they're both quite good.

re: crafting makes loot pointless.... not really. I did plenty of Smithing on my first character, and still used plenty of loot from dungeons. Why? Because I didn't do enchanting on that character. I couldn't Smith better enchanted gear than the stuff I found. (And this is, of course, ignoring the whole concept of looting just for the joy of it. Not for any shallow things like "I only loot to get a better item". Yeah, finding better items every so often is nice, but looting - for me - is like the classic "Why climb Mt. Everest" question. Answer? Because it's there. I could be decked out head to two in triple-enchanted Uber Daedric God Gear?, and I'd still loot. )


...this sounds more like a personal problem rather than a game problem. "I go to UESP". So, you don't explore for the fun of it. You consult hint guides and cheats to see what everything is before you even check it out. I really don't see why anyone who was really interested in "exploring" would do that. Me, I found Haemar's Shame on my first character.... and wandered inside to explore it! Amazing, no? And then I got slammed by the Master Vampires near the back of it (I was only in my teens, on my way to the base of the 7000 steps), so I abandoned that dungeon and left it til later. And you know what? That character never ran across the Daedric quest starter. So I never even knew the dungeon had anything to do with it. I just got to explore it for the heck of it. Excellent!

The only "quest related" dungeons I didn't explore were the ones that truly were "quest related"... i.e, the ones that had an unbreakable lock on the front door.

I stated this before. I only ever started doing it after I killed an important quest person for one of the dungeons.

As Kiralyn2000 said, yours is more of a personal problem and the way you like doing things and not a problem of the game itself. The game encourages you to go out and discover new places and go into them. You can enter, clear the area and enjoy exploring it without as much being aware that further down the road you may meet (or you may not) some NPC that will send you again to that dungeon on a quest. I've had this happen to me several times already. Just yesterday I was revisiting Bloated Man's Grotto while doing the Daedric Quest "Ill Met By Moonlight". Thing is, you don't have to take up the quest to explore the dungeon and if you do not take up the quest it doesn't really takes away from exploring the dungeons for the fun of it. You can have your cake and eat it too in Skyrim, you can explore the areas for the fun of it and then revisit them if you are given some quest related to the area.

As far as broken quests goes, for all the exploration I've done, I have gotten very few broken quest and only one of them was broken because I went to the area before receiving the quest (Disrupt the Skooma operation). Others like "Kill the Hagraven Petra" were broken due to my own decision of not freeing the Hagraven in the cave and a quest like "Investigate the Bards Collage" was broken not by exploring and area but due to it apparently conflicting with a Dark Brotherhood quest or with joining the Bards Collage.

Aside from that I've had no issues with quests and I've completed all Guilds, the Civil War, the Main Quest, 15 Daedric quests and a great number of other quests.

Interesting either/or proposition. I actually loved exploring in Fallout 3 and I also love exploring in Skyrim. They are different games to be sure, but I love(d) exploration in both.

One thing that enhanced the exploration aspect in Fallout 3/New vegas, was that you felt like a scavenger. Everything you found could be use for something. Ammo is a must,, weapons/armor is used to repair items, and lesser clutter items could be used to make unique weapons.

Skyrim has all sorts of items that are useless. It also breaks exploration cause you find too many valuable items in a single dungeon/cave. You simply gets wealthy too early, wich quickly makes exploration boring.

I have a problem with exploring in both games. Every location i find the more it feels like im rushing the game lol

I just shook my head when I read this part. And you wonder why you aren't enjoying skyrim's exploration. Try playing without running to the internet and explore things for yourself.

On topic I couldn't disagree with your original post more. Many of the points of interest are not tied to quests and some are just radiant. Exploring Skyrim and its different terrains is one of the better things Skyrim has going for it. I run across alot of interesting things along the way.

That's Ok , I have no clue why you find it boring but I thank God I don't think like that. I find dungeon's with histories and stories fasinating myself but then I'm steange I guess but at least I'm happier with them than Oblivion.

Dude what r u like 15?

if you mean me "dude" actually I'm 54 just a little tired of the nonsense. I think its time to take a break from the forums and just enjoy the game and skip the "community" except for Emma's site.

And people wonder why we have "Locked" Dungeons.

Still, there's plenty of dungeons not associated directly with quests. (Can be the target of Radiant quests, but do those really count?)

Just off the top of my head, Brittleshin Pass, Darkshade Copse, Kagrenzel (The only Dwemer Ruin not involved in a quest I think), White River Watch, Embershard Mine, Fort Snowhawk, Abandoned Prison, Lost Valley Redoubt.

I think the complaints have more to do with how Skyrim functions in rewarding players. Fallout 3 was a game about mere survival. Gathering resources, living as best you can. Regardless of "Sweet Treasures", every place you explored meant you accumulated more stuff (Usually ammo), so you always felt like you were gaining something for exploring. This is what I was HOPING crafting in Skyrim was going to do, but since you can go to any merchant in the game and buy 40 Ebony ingots, they kinda pooped the bed there.

I just hate having to stumble into a dungeon and know exactly what to expect. Draugr, a quick puzzle, some more draugr, a boss (usually a named draugr with some minions) then word wall + loot = Skyrim Dungeons.

Fallout works better for exploration, conceptually. I'm a survivor in a nuclear wasteland. It makes sense that I duck into some blown-out house and scrounge for supplies. It doesn't really follow for me in Skyrim, logically speaking. Why is my dude traipsing into some ancient mausoleum? He's got a dozen quests tying up his time, many of which seemed pretty urgent, but he just has this compulsion to rattle some old bones and burgle the dead? It's too gamey for me to rationalize. I'm doing this for the loot, not because it's meaningful to my character.

Too much focus is put on random exploration of wilderness dungeons without any in-game motivation your character can latch on to. Couple that with the generic rewards one comes away with, and you're left wanting.

And that's different from any other Elder Scrolls game... how?

Morrowind: Ghosts -> More Ghosts -> Locked chest with a trap -> Loot

Oblivion: Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Minotaur Lord -> Amulet of Blades/Axes.



At least most of Skyrim's dungeons have an element that make them unique. Visual or otherwise. The Dwemer Ruins are usually the Stand outs, sadly, most are tied to quests. But you could show me a (Reasonable, not just a point-blank of a wall) screenshot of any Dwmer ruin in the game, and I could tell you which one it is.

In Oblivion I got lost in a lot of dungeons so it went more like:

Where the hell am I going, look at map, lead myself into a trap, minotaur lord, oh crap monkey balls, look around again, get lost again, antoher minotaur lord and a troll or some skeletons, crap, find the right path, get back, fight some skeleton, more skeletons, minotaur, get lost, find my way back, find boss find out I used all my health potions

But I do agree when it comes to crafting resources like ebony. Blacksmitsh shouldn't sell it. It would be cool if like iron and steel are the most common and easy to find, but ebony, moonstone are not.

And even the blacksmiths ask you to find them some and pay you for it.

In small dungeons, sure. Which is fine. I kinda liked Morrowind's little dungeons, they were cozy. Skyrim has a few of these, too. I think the best dungeon I've stumbled upon was a one-room bandit den with a note about a shipment of dead bodies. Bandits were dead, dungeon was populated by a couple vampires. Short and sweet.

Morrowind also had long, winding dungeons with multiple paths and hidden areas and hand-placed loot, and doors you couldn't get past without a high security skill or some locksplitter spells, and other areas you couldn't reach without levitation. Too often it feels like Skyrim's dungeons were really small dungeons strung together with highly linear hallways. I find it pretty tedious. But then. I always enjoyed town quests more so than dungeon-delving ones. Skyrim is heavily tilted toward the latter.

I know... I would understand partially in certain places that have mines. For example, The Reach has the only functioning Moonstone Mine, so if you do the quest where you clear that mine out, the Smiths in Markarth start offering (Limited) amounts of Moonstone ingots.

Dushnik Yal and Shor's stone would be the only places you could buy (Again, very limited) amounts of Ebony, after the appropriate quests.



I really think you're not remembering Morrowind in a clear light. You're remembering the extremely rare exceptions as the rule. 99.9999% of the Dungeons in Morrowind were tiny, single-path deals, with little to recommend them.

Levelled merchants are a [censored], my friends.

I concur. Mostly.

A couple "Leveled" and a couple "Random" slots is okay (To simulate active trade), but a lot of the merchants in Skyrim should have dealt in a bit more... selective wares. Solitude would have Glass and Elven, Riften and Windhelm would have a bit of ebony available. Whiterun would be the most "Leveled" and "Random" merchants, given it's location, Markarth would deal in a lot of Orcish.

I think you mean Markarth would have tons of Dwemer crap.

Skyrim needs more unique weapons like New Vegas. Not just artifacts. I want to walk into a cave and unexpectedly find some new awesome weapon, and no, not just some steel sword slapped with and enchantment with a cool name. I want new skins or reskins.

Pine watch was amazing...
Black reach was amazing...
The glittering caves were amazing...

That's precisely what I'm saying. Morrowind dungeons are small and straightforward, or long and complex. Skyrim has long, but straightforward dungeons which makes them tedious. Even in the case of small Morrowind dungeons, you still had side rooms and short hallways that led to places other than the dungeon "end". I can recall one or two dead-ends in a Skyrim dungeon, the vast majority simply lead you through a long hallway with the occasional open room

(Random selection of Morrowind dungeons)
http://images.uesp.net/c/c8/MW-map-Salmantu.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/a/ab/MW-map-Rissun.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/8/87/MW_Map_Assemanu.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/4/4e/MW-Maps-Berandas.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/a/a2/MW_Map_Dun-Ahhe.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/2/2e/MW-Map-Endusal.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/9/9d/MW_Map_GinithAncestralTomb.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/f/fe/MW-map-Ilunibi_Caverns.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/9/95/MW-map-Pinsun.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/1/18/MW-Maps-Saturan.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/6/6c/MW-map-Tin-Ahhe.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/1/13/MW_Map_Valenvaryon.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/8/83/MW-Maps-Yakin.jpg

These are the kinds of dungeons I like. They aren't long for it's own sake. They're designed like a real location would be. They aren't leading you by the nose to some ultimate, final boss room with big, leveled chest. 99 percent of them will have hand placed loot. There will be unique items hidden behind a boulder in a tunnel cave in. There will be magically trapped diamonds. None of this is present in Skyrim, you simply move forward. And moving forward inevitably leads you back to the beginning so you never even have to backtrack. It's predictable, and because it's predictable, it's boring.