I've only just got round to picking up Skyrim (finally!) and am now a level 7 mage. I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far, but I'm not sure on the best way to play it - what I get most out of a game like this is the sense of awe and excitement that comes with exploration. I love travelling to new places and having new experiences there. So happening across a cave or a dungeon is right up my street. BUT do you think it's better to dungeon crawl as you come across them or wait until you're given the appropriate quest line?

I'm a bit concerned that I'll a) bug some of the quests and end up doing the same dungeons twice which could take some of the fun factor out. But being disciplined enough to walk straight past a dungeon that I've stumbled across will be pretty tough...

Would appreciate people's views on this please..

Dungeons reset themselves in the game.

I believe there is a bug or two.......but, nothing major.

So, if you visit a dungeon that would be a quest that you pick up say right away for the same dungeon......then,
the quest system will reset the dungeon to make sure it is filled for you, and has the proper quest elements.

Run the dungeons, ignore the quests.


That's what I do, at least.

I have came across various quests that came to find out was bugged (or picked up items that were suspicious) Bard's Collage as a lot of these. But others as well.

Its not as bad to me though since as you I just want to explore..

I have entered so many dungeons first......then gotten quests later for same dungeons, and have yet to have one
not have it reset........all the stuff is sometimes even new......with the correct quest elements within.

IT is a dangerous thing to do in my experiance so far, if you run into dungeon that are quest related you ru nthe risk of breaking quests. I have well over 8-10 quests in my journal that are now broken because of this and various other methods that you can break quests. I I only venture out and put caves dungeons on my map then let the quests bring me into the dungeons. I use Radiant quest for general exploring of dungeons.

I was in a dungeon and cleared it...or more like it came to a dead end so I was fine with it and went out. Not 20 min longer and I got a quest to enter in to the same damn cave to kill some necromancers and once I walked to the dead end I was before there was a freaking 10m hole (big hole, you can't miss it) down and the dungeon continued.
So in other words that damn cave had limited access at first because I didn't have the quest at the first time.

I do every dungeon I run across. I've only seen 3-4 that required a quest, and those had the main entrance blocked/locked. Now, I have done dungeons where I picked up items, that later on I couldn't sell or store in a chest because they were quest items. Got about 7 of those with me, and eventually I'll get the quest for it.

But, yeah, I love to explore - going off-road through the wilderness. Between my 3 characters I've probably done around 75-80 dungeons (that includes forts, caves, etc.)

There are some real big ones out there, and depending on your character, they can take a while to complete. My assassin sneaks in every dungeon, so it takes her a while in the large ones. But, I play every day, about 7-8 hours per day, so I'm in no hurry. Just went over 270 hours.

Good luck.

If you don't like broken quests then for gods sake NEVER go anywhere if it's not part of a quest.

Okay maybe it's not that bad but my first play though was a nightmare of broken quest after broken quest. And I wasn't doing anything crazy or stupid like killing NPCs willy nilly. But I explored everything I came across and after doing some research, it turned out that quests were breaking due to me exploring. Boethiah's Calling and The Companions quest line broke for that very reason, just to name a few.

Of course there will be people who disagree with me on this topic but if you want to be on the safe side follow my advise and also use the UESPwiki to check for bugs and glitches involving quests and dungeons.

My Nord cleared out Bleak Falls Barrow immediately after leaving Riverwood, and then I later found out that that dungeon is also part of the main quest. I wondered what that dragon stone was for. At least I didn't have to return the second time for the dragonstone.

I thought this would be a simple quest, with a short dungeon, since it was available so early, but that dungeon was quite lengthy.

Knowing that I can break some quests by exploring at will is nice. I'll certainly avoid unknown dungeons without doing research first.

Hmm OK thanks for the responses all.. some conflicting advice though. Not sure I want to have to google every cave I come across to see whether I should plunge in or not. I think i'll take the risk. It does seem like a design weakness though. The game's set up for exploration - that's sort of the point of an open world game - so they have to expect you to wander into dungeons that you come across. I quite like the idea of the whole dungeon being barred or at least only partially accessible without the quest line though...

Take the risk. Exploring is the best part of this game and it would be a shame to miss out. Keep lots of saves and you should be fine.

Exploring is fun until I learned the hard way that several quests get broken if you clear out the dungeon associated with it before you get the quest. I plan to play it safe in my next play through. Hopefully Beth will fix it in their next update as they have promised.

Could people actually start to list the quests that "break" ?

I explore and go into everything - and I've found that either 1) the dungeon is sealed or part of the dungeon is sealed if quest related 2) I can pick up quest items but then simply give them to the NPC when the quest starts, immediately solving it

For example, how is Boethiah's quest broken?

I have yet (170+ hours) to break a quest and I have been all over the map and in tons of places...... I'm not saying it isn't true, but would appreciate some specifics since quite a few dungeons are locked to me and clearly quest related.

J

Lots of times, those quest Items you find never leave you iventory. Alternately sometiems yoru asked to kill things and or find things that aren't there anymore, or you do a step in a quest before your "supoosed to" and it will perminatly break the rest of the quest progression. Really goto the USEP wiki or the Eldar scrolls wiki and just look at the quest bugs.

You can usually avoid breaking stuff by not picking up named items unless you were sent for them specifically.

I've broken the Radiant quests a fair bit (having them send me after an already dead target and becoming stuck), but not the actual ones.

Majority of Bard Collage quests break if you do discover the location and pick up said item. The quests are linear by this way if you don't do it right you can't do it at all. Let's say I get billy's bat I go to billy he said go pick up the bat I already have the bat in my posetion but billy does not have a dialouge and won't take it because I did not trigger the said event or a message saying "you picked up billy's bat. Of course this is just made up and I would go into detail but then this would be moved into the spoiler section.

Actually the bards college quest are broken either way, if you do them right or not the Items will stay forever in your inventory. It's a broken script to remove the quest items.

If you want to get out and about without running the risk of messing too much stuff up, do some generic quests/missions for jarl stewards where they assign you bounties/rewards, and find out about caves through rumors and that sort of thing. That should set you up and make sure that you don't bug anything.

After I got comfortable with my characters and their survivability against the potentially deadly unknown, on my way to missions I'd usually run into whatever caves/crypts I could find. It was pretty fun. Only on occasion did I have a quest to clear it out, in which case I'd just go back, take down one guy, and be done with it.

Also, as for glitching quests.... in general, I'd say that if you find an item that seems "special", hold on to it.

Can't really give many criteria for this. After playing Elder Scrolls for a while, you'll just know what you should probably hold on to sometimes you can't drop stuff because it's quest related, so there's that. But other than that, if it has a unique name/stats/other properties. Hold on to it. If it seems especially expensive or otherwise out of the ordinary... hold on to it.

You'll find enough loot on the side that a couple hundred gold here or there won't hurt.

The longhouses that are spread over Skyrim also have this problem if you want to gain entrance they make you fetch something if you gone to the area even entered at all they will not tell you sadly.

But ya, some break some don't some are broken in general but those that do break certainly does not outweigh the exploration that you have done. So I would say continue playing the way you want and hope BGS fixes it in a patch.

I must be really lucky compared to some of the people in this thread, i have always gone into random dungeons when out exploring and have never had any trouble with broken quests.

The worst i have had is when i accept certain quest sometimes i have already killed a person that needed to be killed or found the item etc. In which case i can normally just hand the quest in immediately.

That has been my experience in Morrowind,Oblivion and to a lesser extent Skyrim. I am not actually sure if you can even kill any quest related people anymore.

skyrim has that new radient quest system, from what I understand this quest system will send you out to places you have not discovered first, weather or not a radient quest sends you to the same location of another pre-scripted quest is probably random. not only will it send you out to unexplored areas but it should tailor combat to your strengths and weaknesses.

so explore up if you want, the radiant quest are typically random and will eventually send you back to places you have already been weather you have just found it or cleared it

as for bugs, theres still lots on some, like the thane of Solitude and a few others, just have to hope patches will eventually fix them. (one day)

If you to get a quest for a dungeon before doing it you won't explore most of them. I've got 190 hours in and haven't had quests for easily 1/2 of the dungeons.

Try NOT to explore if you are on console (x360/PS3) and does not have the godlike powers of the command console to set things right.

Do the quests as you are given. There are a fair number of misc quests that gets struck when you acquire the quest item before getting the quest. This applies mainly to the bard quests.

Also, should you stumble into Hags End before you reach a certain point in the DB questline, you might find a certain set of unique armor not in the place it should be when you visited the place again to claim it as part of the quest as the body containing it has "decomposed" since your first visit.

Another bugged quest is if you touched the body of a particular Nord in a hidden door in a small cave, a quest will appear tell you to inform his family of his demise. The problem is the correct order is to look for the body AFTER talking to the family. Doing it in the wrong order prevents the completion of this quest.

Visit the UESP and look up the Riften house.

You can lose the ability to buy that house permanently if you clear a certain cave before you get the associated quest.