I've recently started a new game on Skyrim and wanted it to be as immersive and realistic (within TES reality) so I thought up a few guidelines to play by and thought I'd share them with you all. These are all optional, use as little or as many as you like.

1. Change your difficulty to suit your playstyle, if you prefer using Iron Armor and weapons, you should put the game to Apprentice or Novice to balance the difficulty. I'm playing on Master as I am using the best armor which comes available to me.

2. Turn off HUD, crosshair and ALL subtitles. It doesn't make archery as hard as you would expect and interacting with the world is not an issue. It's amazing how much more immersive the game is without any screen clutter.

3. No fast travel... at all. Use carriages if you want but Bethesda has put a lot of time into making a beautiful world for us to explore and admire.

4. Turn off the music. As much as I love the Skyrim soundtrack, the game is more immersive with it turned off. It also makes it more realistic not knowing when an enemy is attacking (no danger/combat music).

5. Sleep, eat and carry a believable amount of supplies. I think Bethesda has done a great job in giving us the tools for roleplaying. Eating cooked meals buffs your health, magicka and stamina regeneration. Sleeping makes skills increase quicker (unless you're a werewolf). I like to carry a reasonable amount of supplies, just enough for what I think I'll need for my quest.

6. I don't do this one but some of you might. Try not using perks, when you level up leave it to your skills numeric value to determine your effectiveness with the relative skill. (I have not tried this, just an idea).

7. Take some time off. When do you ever just have a day off in this game? Try just going to a tavern to listen to some inspirational music (Age of Aggression is my personal choices), have something to eat and drink, chat to the locals. You could even get a day job chopping wood for Hulda at the Bannered Mare. Just don't do quest after quest after quest.

8. Don't grind your skills. Come on, we've all done it, befriended Faendal only to use him for archery training and then taking the money back, crushing his dreams of friendship. Don't make 10000 iron daggers to grind your Smithing skill, just let them increase as you use them. Training every now and then is fine, just don't abuse it.

9. Don't sprint everywhere, only when you need to. I prefer just walking sometimes, but jog when going cross country.

10. Roleplay. You don't need to have a backstory that holds great magnitudes of depth, just a small one so you can make decisions based on it. Try roleplaying as yourself, what would YOU do if you were in your characters shoes?

10. ENJOY THE GAME! Don't worry about what you're going to do next in the game, just play it naturally and have fun, don't force yourself to do quests just to have that feeling of completion.


I hope these little tips can give you a greater experience with the game, they did for me. Let me know how it goes if you try these out.

Hope you like it, I typed this on a touchscreen phone so it's like 10x the effort of using a keyboard so I hope you appreciate it haha.

First post!

I disaggre on 1,2,4,6

Music in skyrim is amazing, and could really hype up some moments, HUD is a must for me, when it is off i steal things i thought I could take

Perks really aid in roleplaying

And fo number 1: no matter what build you are, if you play hardcoe you must play expert - master. Adept is the lowest I could go only if your going to wear no armour and use iron daggers the entire game.

everything else is just around right

It's all optional dude, some people will choose to do different things but I appreciate you're input.

1: Novice lets you 1-shot things naked with fists, so no.

2: Quests give absolutely no indication as to where something might be, in dialogue or text. So no compass/quest markets = no dice.

3: Agreed.

4: I think it's more immersive with the music, to be honest. It's a preference thing.

5: Bethesda did a hideous job in giving us "tools" for RP. Tools would be dialogue options and consequences-- that's what RPG's are all about. Being able to eat a potato and sleep on a bed doesn't mean they've succeeded.

6: This would make the game even more shallow and "classless" than it already is. The perk system allows for custom classes (with a bit of pre-planning), without perks you're just.... meh.

7: If the game actually had decent dialogue this might be doable, but only 2 of the 5 total people in the tavern say anything, and it's the same 1 line over and over again.

8: Agreed.

9: Again, preference. I hate walking, it's way too slow.

10: But you can't, because many of the dialogues offer ONE option, or options that all lead to the same end.

Just my two cents.

You've never tried searching through a bookshelf with the HUD turned off I see.

I never grinded any skills. I am lvl 48 and highest skill is 89. Game is neither too hard nor too easy on default difficulty. I eat when i want to. I do a little bit of everything but only make the potions i need and only enchant some, improve some, rarely create items. I think i play the game the way they intended and don't have to gimp myself

I honestly have learned to take opinions on the forums with grain of salt. It is not all that hard to play the game as intended and just have fun exploring. The whole game is way balanced and glitch free and i think they did an excellent job . Repeat myself enough?

I do agree with no fast travel although i need few more dragon souls

These quests are far too shallow for this. Perhaps if someone took the time to mod the heck out of this game then yeah.

Quests used to be...um...quests. The game would immerse you by making you talk to residents of towns, find clues, etc etc...now developers throw an open space at you with an arrow where to go. My theory is WoW spoiled gamers and devs feel they have to cater to this mindless lot, but I digress.

I do all of this except for 5 limited supplies thing (I have a Mod that does the sleep, drink thing for me). I will attempt to improve some weapons but it`s very ad hoc. I don`t ever try to play by numbers but simply by what`s helping me fight better as needed.

I think the most important thing is to just choose at the start who you aspire to be. A warrior, mage, Mercenary or simple adventurer seeking fortune and go with that. Don`t worry about `What if by level 50 I can`t do this?` or `what if I break quest 2.xy?` This is rubbish to put it bluntly.

Just play and adjust the settings as you go along. I found Master not to be anywhere as hard as I had hoped it to be.

I am honestly doing most of these with my new, and first, pure mage character.

I sleep, eat, take days off reasonably. No fast travel, occasional carriage. Talk to everyone, limited map, no compass...

I have to say, it's much more enjoyable than my first playthrough, where I fast-traveled/quick-quest/blasted through everything.

MUCH more enjoyable

Nice guide! The one thing I disagree with is that music breaks immersion. I know that in real life you don't have music when you're walking around but I think it is a real positive to the experience of playing and you will enjoy it more with the music. Also I think the most important of the tips is roleplaying. This can make the game so much more interesting and will keep you from getting bored longer

This guy/girl gets it.

I think this is great but I"ll leave the subtitles on as my English is not so good.

im brainstorming all the self important deuchebags on the forum. you sir are not one of them, i like your list. gotta have the music though, combat music does get annoying i wish i could just turn that off. the no hud thing is crazy like someone above said you can't tell if ur stealing or not which i think is nice and realistic, you just don't know irl what belongs to who unless you grab it and someone gets pissed

If you don't mind, I want to add something that can give you another portion of emotions:

11. Stop playing Skyrim if you've died in the game.

While trying to survive, you will be more cautious and use every opportunity to avoid death and continue the play. Every potion, every scroll will be considered to use. You will be forced to think before action, to prepare for every danger you can meet.

P.S. Also Master difficulty is appreciated.

skyrim without the perks would be an even greater disaster.

as for the quest markers/locations problem, with blade watcher's pen/paper thread, i got to using a printed out map of skyrim that i fill in by using the in-game map. and, then from that point on i do not use the map to check out my current position. i shouldn't have to do this, since, it should obviously be an option in the settings, but, it does add some fun and gratification.

i turn the hud down low, but, never off, since, that function is a disaster.

optional music for the combat was an idiot call, since, it should be a toggle.

and, as for all the stuff that was insanely not included in a hardcoe: eat/sleep doesn't cut it. it's not enough. there should have been a huge amount of optional toggles that would add to the gameplay.

i'm tired of being forced to roleplay and limit myself WITH MY MIND, instead, of through actual functional gameplay mechanics.

I might be committing blasphemy here, but how can anyone get the idea of playing hardcoe in a game as Skyrim?

I found other games to be more hardcoe in their nature than Skyrim is, and by a lot. After I had tasted hardcoe and PvP MMOs did I never wanted to go back. Skyrim is to me a vacation from hardcoe games, which is why I am playing it.

Agree. Skyrim is my "chill out game" being a
Ringer for l4d2 confogl skirmishes, that can get stressful.

I think the hardcoe- vocab that cropped up is a result of FONV, and it means treating your character more like a mortal (sleep/eat/drink/avoid death/ect)

for me, hardcoe means gameplay elements that make it more realistic for your character. sleep/eat is the very basic minimum and barely equals "hardcoe" in my book.

very difficult combat or multiplayer has nothing to do with my definition of "hardcoe."

If we're going to get hung up on what constitutes hardcoe gaming, I would say competitive online FPS gaming (PC only) is the only form of gaming worthy of such a title.

It's funny really... the FPS genre can range from being one of the most casual gaming experiences (group of dumb jocks playing CoD on an xbox) to being the closest gaming gets to being a professional sport (intense league competitions, hours of team training, etc).

...

As far as games like Skyrim go (and RPGs in general), it's never going to be a hardcoe gaming experience. But the term hardcoe can be used to refer to playing the game with increased realism, difficulty, self-imposed limitations, etc.

I try to dispose of food that wouldn't realistically stay edible. For instance, I'll only keep raw meat for a day maybe two - another day if I've cooked it. Bread, cheese and apples longer. Soups/stews for a day maybe two (if it seems cold enough).

Certain meats I consider "preserved" and will give it a week.

Erm why using Iron armor with novice difficultty?

Im playing on master since lvl 1 using worst possible gear in game and i still can kill almost all mobs.

Mage killing anything - even if mage dies with 1-2 hits

Warrior killing anything if warrior can survie 3-4 hits.

My suggestion for evryone is STOP using smithing,enchanting and conjuration at all - because they making Skyrim too easy,even on master difficulty.

jaberkaty-

that's a perfect example of what i think is wrong with rpg games.

great idea, but, it should be an optional functioning gameplay mechanic that can be toggled.

i don't want to have to do this in my mind. it's not the same thing. i want to be able to disable auto-regeneration and fast travel. just not using it means there is no actual in-game consequence or meaningfulness.

edit: wrong with console games, i should say, lol.

Maybe those of us who want to have a different approach to quest markers can start a database where we create written directions, illustrations, maps and other creative ways to describe the way to locations we have found, and then when I get a quest to find for example "Valtheim Towers" I go to the database and download directions that someone else who has been there has created and use that instead of the in-game map and quest marker.

How do you deal with not knowing what your health is? I play with crosshairs off, and I wish I could turn off sneak crosshair and compass without loosing health bar. I like to know when I am about to keel over dead.

eh- edit.