I have put in over 400 hours on different charcters, and just as I start to feel like I have seen all the game has to offer I walk towards Whiterun like I have so many times and see three random imperial soldiers fighting three stormcloaks in the middle of a field. The stormcloaks won without one of them dying. Then a minute later under all the rocks the city is built on I see some sort of cave in the rocks so as I get closer I notice there is a bunch of bandits, who then attack me. After I killed them I looked around this place and find some skooma and a cart with weapons and a coin purse.

Also this place wasn't a dungeon and wasn't even marked on my map just a random place. Anyway just saying I love this game.

Yeah, there are multiple of these little cave/shelters shattered around the map, usually with a few bandits or hunters in them. There are also some pretty nasty ones, with dead hunters and some live bears around them. Little places like that make the game just that much better.

Agreed. It just makes the world seem so much more real and alive, it's fantastic.

Agreed. I put many hours in many characters, thinking I've run dry on Skyrim. I boot it up two weeks ago and load the level 20 mage that completed the college questline, thinking I was done with him because the mages quests were bad.

Man was I wrong. I've had so many epic battles and ridiculously awesome encounters and dungeon delving. They really upped the scale of exploration. I go into a random cave that has no importance, there's a ruined fort buried under it with skeletons up the ramparts and vampires inside. Awesome.

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Random_Encounters

By the way, here is a list of all random encounters in the game. Most of them are pretty good, and some genuinely funny. Some are deeper than I expected (Sven sending thugs after you because you helped Faendal in their relationship? Pretty brilliant if you ask me).

My favorite one so far is the burning house, with the burned corpse kneeling on the ground still clutching the scroll of Summon Flame Atronach

I love that house. Great stuff!


The best part of that shelter is that its right below Dragonsreach. So much for law and order...

Haha, lucky I was there to enforce the law.

Yea, that little shelter is usually one of my first stops when I come to Whiterun on a new character. LOL The thing is, there are 2 bandits you can deal with pretty easy, then when you think the coast is clear and you get to looting, out of no where 3 tougher bandits appear. One is a mage and man, i try to be ready for him, since he killed me more than once hahahahaha

I just played on my 5th Character and after 500+ hours, I also thought I've seen it all. I took a small trail across the mountains to Iverstead (I've never used that one before) and I run into a Whispmother near a ruin of a house. Once I take care of her, I find a skill book on top of a barrel behind a broken wall. I love TES games!

Yeah I killed the first two then I was like ooh skooma, then I got whacked by a sword. Lucky I was playing a Mage used lighting and drained the other mages magicka.

Nice! All my toons are either Archer or dual wielding 1-H swords, so that mage always does a number on me. Thankfully, my last toon was a Breton, so she had some magic resistance. LOL

I haven't tried an archer yet might go for it on my next character, thinking an archer who only wears fur armour, hmm.

Is that the place where more bandits show up after you go rummaging through the chest?

Yeah, just when you think you are safe.

Haha there are couple of places like that I think... I found one today.

I think those were the first bandits I encountered on my first character. I also learned a valuable lesson about stealing horses, lol. It's amazing the things you'll see even having been through a place a thousand times before. Just yesterday I was escorting a kidnapping victim from the north coast back to Windhelm. We were running down the hill into Dragonsbridge when I noticed a fork in the road. So, remembering Yogi Berra's sage advice, I took it. It's just a bypass around the town proper, nothing else. Yet in all the times I've passed through I've never noticed it before.

An archer character like that might enjoy wearing the enchanted Forsworn armor. That armor looks great on a female character.

That reminds me of the other night I was playing Super Smash Bros. 64 with some friends on Sector Z. Saw Zippy coming in to pop off some laser shots so I throw up my shield. TAKE 3 SHOTS TO THE FACE AND IT BREAKS MY SHIELD! I fly into the air and land directly on top of the ship, which then lifts me off the screen and kills me. After 10 years of playing that game I never saw that happen.

I'm bored at work.

This.... I found this just a couple of days ago, after playing this game since release. I was - MEGA-surprised.... And it was a heck of a fight too - sure the first couple weren't too big a deal.... but just as I was calmly looting the chest, reading the note, etc..... AAACCCK! Three more of them! Heh.

I got lucky the first time I came across that one veeeeery low lvl, good thing Lydia was paying more attention than I was.

Well, I was amazed when I was doing this bandit cave near Whiterun. I sneak in and sitting at a table is a bandit called Blind Ulfr. He is reading a book called Ulfr's Book. I pick up and read the book. All the pages are blank. I split my sides laughing.

Oh yes... White River Watch.... Kill the bandits outside, one will have "Rodulf's Note" - which gives you some info about the situation (including Ulfr....) You don't even have to sneak in - Ulfr will say "Rodulf, that you?" Answer "Yeah" and he gives you a message, then you can walk right by him. Or even stop to look at his book, then walk on to wipe out the rest of them....

The problem I have is that my little Khajiit is very good a killing but has very weak defence and so has to avoid stand-up fights as much as possible. So when I enter a place and there is a person there who, by their mode of dress, may or may not be dangerous they die, usually before they know we have arrived. For example, I remember going into a tower and on the ground floor was a woman dressed in the same black robes as are worn by witches, necromancers and the like. When I was searching the body a few moments later I saw that it was that of a named character, Illia or something similar, so that was probably a quest I missed out on.

Poor blind Ulfr, went the same way, had a dagger in him before he knew he was in danger. Memo to the visually challenged in Skyrim: Don't dress in rags and hang out with bad people. Go talk to the Skyrim Association for the Blind and get on one of their Safe, Independent Living in the City programmes.

Lol, I killed Illia on my first character for that very reason. Got it right this time round. But I agree with the dress code. I keep hitting Farkas or Vlikas in those dark dungeons, and why? They are dressed and even sound like the Silver Hand or bandits. That and the fact that they deliberately get between me and my target, sigh. I've also killed a few hunters at range, but I now know the signs to look for.

Back to the topic of seeing weird things at this late date. The other day I needed to get to Ysgramor's tomb, so I started west out of Winterhold and went over the pass. I could see some fighting going on ahead. It was some bandits and a conjurer. I think they were all hostiles, but so absorbed were they that they took no notice of me. That wasn't odd, though. Last night I took the same route on my way to Saarthal. I came across the weapons dropped by the bandits, and just then I perceived a new altercation through the blowing snow. I could see some flashes and heard the growl of a troll. Well, I stumbled across the troll corpse, but whatever had killed it had moved off down the hill. So I crept forward and found... spriggans! Spriggans, in an ice field, without a tree in sight. The cold must've sapped their strength, haha, 'cause they dropped pretty quickly to my sword.

But spriggans... nowhere near any grove. Maybe I have seen everything.

That was a random encounter?

There a lot of things in Skyrim that I haven't seen either with 140+ hours character. And I still can't find the woman that wants to be wabbajacked!