You can also shoot the trap triggers with an arrow like you can the deadfall tripwires.
Be sure you're not standing where the trap actually goes off, though! I usually do it from off to one side.

There's a lot of little "mini-stories" (or at least their aftermaths) lying around Skyrim- especially up North, it seems. Though not quest related, if you look around, you can find out what happened to all the missing apprentices from the Mages' College.

Theres a hunters camp south west of Eldergleam Sanctuary where 3 hunters are relaxing in the hot springs. I was really surprised when i found it.

Yeah, I found those nudist hunters too. That made me chuckle for some reason.

Yeah, I found those nudist hunters too. That made me chuckle for some reason.

And miss a chance to level lockpicking....?

Hehe, yeah. I've gotten lockpicking up to 86 just by pickin' 'em every chance I get... never once bought any lockpick training from an NPC. All those skillups from it helped a lot to level my char, too.

There I was wondering in the wilderness outside of Riverwood. In a tree I notice a hawk in it's nest take off as I approached. I started wondering to myself whether or not I could get up there and take some eggs out of it, or maybe if I shot it? Nope a few arrows later and all I succeeded in doing was giving the nest two legs. Maybe if I wait for the hawk to get back I then I shoot at it, the hawk will knock them out for me. So I started scanning the sky and to my left I noticed the hawk circling back towards the tree coming in low. It was at this point I started wondering if I could even shoot the hawk at all. So I took out my bow, knocked an arrow and drew the bow back with all of my strength. Leading it by a little bit I let loose my arrow as it flew with a swooshing sound towards the hawk. "Thud!" Went the arrow into the fowl as it plummeted to earth.

It was at this time I felt a joy inside myself. A profoundness that I shot a hawk in mid flight with 1 arrow. At that point in time I felt like a bad bleepity bleep.

in short I was amazed you could shoot hawks in the game I always thought they were decoration and that was a really epic moment for me.

When you go around the bend in a mt or from around a large boulder and see people or animals interacting. I once stood on a bridge and watch a bear catch fish.

I like watching the shadow's move across the ground and through the trees.

Attention to detail... My mage characters are fond of elsewhere fondue and are always on the lookout for ingredients. My sorceress spotted 3 wheels of eidor cheese on a shelf in the pawned prawned, and decided to see what he had for sale. There were three wheels in his inventory which she purchased. She glanced back over to the shelf, and the three wheels of cheese were gone.

All of my characters love dining on the deck in the evenings at Honeyside; then diving off of it for evening swims. This is the preferred way that they relieve stress and enjoy downtime.

That's great, the evenings are quite nice on that deck. Wish we had eating animations.

Also, Becoming Ethereal and jumping off high places while looking around, I love that.

Those Fairy Rings are making me wonder... Because, when I think about "Fairy Rings" I think the ones in RuneScape that allow you teleport around the world to different rings. Maybe they are there for a future DLC? But most likely, just for looks.

I did, I always assumed it was one of the first boats to come from Atmora and they just couldn't bring themselves to let it go, which would explain how it got so far inland.

I love beehives, only really noticed them a few days ago, now I see them everywhere.

My ultimate draw dropping moment had to be walking from Rorikstead to Markath at early morning. Then as I crested over a hill, just seeing all these craggy mountains and small sweeping valleys filled with billowing mist. Astonishing.

As for nightstalkers, I was headed to Ivarstead from riften once and got the Fugitive/hunter random encounter, the Fugitive gave me the weapon then ran then the Hunter came by and asked if I'd seen anything. I decided to to the honourable thing and tell him, but before I could even read the dialogue options a Nightstalker pounced out of the bush INCHES away from him and killed him with one fatal blow. But it didn't attack me, it turned and ran after shooting me with that wierd poison web stuff. So I chased it, it ran quite far until eventually it entered a small clreaing, where 4 more of its buddies were waiting for me. http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/222/508/1295287513-clever-girl.jpg

A similar things happened with wolves where they attack from different directions at different times, but never so that it seemed like they where leading me to the center of the web so to speak.

Once I was walking to Whiterun across the tundra when I came across a wolf chasing a deer, a Whiterun guard was hiding behind a rock saying "Get him, kill him!" as if he was watching the wolf kill the deer.

It was so cool.

Oh.

Here's another thing I like. Any NPC, who isn't following you but is on your side in the current fight, will literally talk to you during the fighting saying something like "Over here!" or "I hear something over here." etc. They are trying to get your attention on the enemy. I see this with Bandits saying to other Bandits before but I never saw another NPC actually saying this stuff to me before.

I love how 95% of dungeons tell a story, you got to look very carefully sometimes to find it. Playing as an assasin on master, one random dungeon i heard about the "boss" was drunk and was fighting random things, as I progressed they were talking about how they locked a saber cat and how the boss wanted to fight it, the other bandit responds to the guy saying he got the key. I kill the 2 silently take the key and very carefully open the cage dorr before running. I then hid in corner and admired my work as the saber tooth cat killed nearly everyone

Another time I was being followed by thugs 3 of them and i was a very low level. I'm about the cross valenti towers (the one near white run with the small bridge) The thugs were getting closer and I decided to run right into the towers. The thugs seeing me do that run in after me. I run across the towers with a few bandits chasing. What I didnt know was the badits were protecting their towers from the thugs aswell and an epic fight broek off between the two. I took a leep of fate and jumped into the river below me. After I landed in the water i saw a bandit corpse land in followed by 2 other corpses falling into the river flowing down. That was the most epic thing that happend (and it was all non scripted)

The Lusty Argonian Maid

This has been a staple since Morrowind. I remeber when I first bought a load of stuff from a vendor in Morrow and when I looked at his shelf half the stuff was gone. `what you see is what there is`, I liked that.

Anyway, I like the way that all traps are actually avoidable or can be disabled in some way. I didn`t really notice this until I used deadly traps which made me a LOT more careful. You can avoid a chest trap just by not standing in front of it but to the side sometimes. But some of those traps do get sneakier, like one which got me because it was partially hidden under rubble.

The fluidity of the game is what I like; how things happen suddenly and without warning. It makes the game very suspenseful when you use stealth.

During the Thalmor Embassy mission, for example, when the two guys are talking (the interrogator and his friend). The friend left and was on his way out when he saw me and pulled a dagger. I already had my bow drawn and gave him two quick arrows to the gut. It was so real the way it happened so quickly. He saw me, tried to do something, and went down.

I loved Oblivion (well, except for the A-Bomb), but the attention to detail and the random AI in Skyrim just blows past OB like it was "soooo, last century". Skyrim feels alive to me in a way that OB only hinted at. In fact, there's so much of it, I was hesitant to add to the thread because the things I could mention would take me all night to list. Alas, the temptation is just too great ...

* I think my first "Wow!" moment in the open world (i.e., past the beginning tutorial), besides the overall beauty of the environment, was first seeing a butterfly, getting closer as it was so lifelike, and accidentally realizing I could catch it. Shortly thereafter I found an active beehive and, thanks to the butterly, quickly found I could catch bees too -- Yehaaa!

* The first time I travelled to Whiterun from Riverwood, I came across two imperials standing next to their dead prisoner and the, now dead, mudcrab that'd killed him -- guess they shouldn't have stopped to rest that close to the river shore. Incidentally, that's also when my first gripe surfaced: What, no more crab meat? Wth!

* Seeing other wildlife interact with one another (e.g., prey vs. predator) is amazing. My favorite is seeing a fox chase a rabbit.

* Random npcs interacting with one another. The first time I saw a Fire mage in the wild, he was doing battle with an Ice mage ... nice. Yesterday I was travelling from Rorikstead to Whiterun and encountered a random farmer taking his cow as a sacrifice to the local giants camp. I sooooooo wanted to follow him but, alas, I was overburdened with loot and low on potions and had to hurry to Whiterun as it was. Compared to the lonliness outside of town in OB, Skyrim almost always involves these kinds of encounters, if not several, when walking between locations. After 400 hrs. of playtime, I still see new, random stuff (such as with the sacrificial cow).

* The detail added to some of these random encounters is a bonus to boot. E.g., I recently approached two farmers (Helgen refugees I learned) on the road only to see a sabre tooth leap out of the bushes and attack the woman, My companions and I (Eola and Meeko) ran up and killed the beasty right quick, only to hear the woman say, "Thanks for the help" as they hurried off down the road.

* I've really begun to appreciate that all the dungeon environments were handcrafted this time around. I'm a sneak, so it's really fascinating sometimes to see how they created the layout in certain spots. Sometimes, e.g., it seems they went out of their way to make it a dream situation for a sneaky type, and others almost the exact opposite.

Anyway, bugs and glitches all, the little and strange things are huge as far as how glad I am to have skyrim to play around in.

The sacrificial cow reminded me of some tombstones I've encountered. They're basically a small cairn with an un-hewn headstone that's covered in swirled, painted patterns. They're so distinctive from most of the ones in Falkreath (though I'm fairly sure I saw a few there, too).

Running across the altars used by mages and necromancers out in the sticks is cool, too. Sometimes, the mage is already dead and the area seems to tell a little story.

I was quite amused when I was fighting some forsworn today, one of them killed me and during my death animation, I saw my Orc follower (Lob) run up in a beserker rage and skewer the offending enemy with a present I gave him (Ebony blade) he then proceeded to shout something over my body that sounded strangely like "NUUUUUUUUURSE!!", I laughed quite hysterically.

Also, the weather today in Skyrim is rain, of the sacrificial cow variety. I was walking through the rift when I noticed a large flying object moving toward me, it hit the ground some distance infront of me and upon further inspection I saw that it was a cow covered in painted runes. I looked at my map and headed to the nearest Giant camp where I found a dead mammoth, two dead bandits and a dead farmer. I deduced that during the fight with the bandits, the giant must have accidentally been hit by the farmer or the cow and proceeded to attempt skyrims first cow manned launch into space. Turns out that Dragonborns are more aerodynamic for space launches.

Why just now I loaded up my game to find myself camped out near a nice stream, in a slightly wooded area. I was sitting there, enjoying the ear-gasm that is the Wilderness Audio pack, when I hear a cockerel. So, even though I am pretty sure it's added effects, after literally 20 metres, I discover a mill around the bend with chickens and some hot lady.

I couldn't believe I was camped next to anything, it was so dark when I pitched my tent. So I go on over and say hello to the nice lady, Herts. She askes me to chop her some wood. So off I trot to find an axe, to no avail. I return to my campsite and put out the fire, and decide to go for a wander.

I follow the stream some way and lo and behold, I discover another encampment. Upon further investigation I find....

After all that excitement, I returned to the mill, whereupon myself and Herts worked the mill, I operated the switch as she loaded the logs, switching over when she was tired.

This right here is why I love this game!