http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Arniel

Uh, I never had trouble talking to him. Try talking again. I don't recall there being any necros in the college to be honest.

Arniel Gane is the Dwemer enthusiast, Phinis Gestor is the Conjuration Trainer.

As a long time TES player.... what I do with a new game is: find a savegame manager and install it; then make one toon of each race; run each of those toons a few levels (practically concurrently) while learning any changes in moving, attack/defense, magic use etc.; note differences if any that racials make; figure out which if any race I simply CAN'T stand to play (Argonian, in this game); delete them all, and start playing for real.

As far as things I wish I'd known - nothing. I spent the weeks before I got the game reading all the stuff on the wiki, and the blog etc. I even knew basically how NOT to do the MQ at all, though I did start it on the first half dozen toons.... Just like when I first decided to play WoW - I spent weeks reading. I read the entire Blizzard forum site - every board, most posts. I read the whole knowledgebase....

I'm anol that way.

I did that, which is why my first playthrough I did not make as many mistakes as I usually do with RPGs, however, I kinda lost that sense of discovery. Dragons would have actually have seemed cool for a little while if I had not actually known they existed in game, for example

Well.... I've been actively reading these fora for YEARS (in fact, I had thousands of posts under another username - but I quit actively posting shortly into Oblivion, and I forgot the username in the intervening time - across 3 different computers....) so literally years before we had Skyrim, I was already pretty sure dragons were part of the game. Also, I'm not ever worried about "spoiling" things for myself, since no matter if you know something empirically, actually experiencing it is still new and fun. At least once.

Not me, spoiling a story line beforehand can absolutly svck all of the enjoyment out of it. For example, when the first LOTR movie came out, my idiot friend blurted out that Boromir died, and I went through that entire film thinking to myself 'yup, he dead,' and then when he did finally die, which normally was a very sad and dramatic moment, I just thought 'finally'

I hated my friend for that

Um. I take it you'd never read the books.

I read them after, but fellowship was my first real introduction into high fantasy. (I was 9 at the time)

Ah. Well.... It's hard for me to empathize then. I first read The Hobbit in 1960, and LotR in 1961 (because back then it took a LONG time to get books like that in the town in which I lived). I've reread them at least once a year since, along with much of the other associated material.

I just don't care if I know stuff beforehand, because experiencing it in game is different.

Wow, you must be in your sixties then, at least.

Congrats, you are the oldest person I know who plays videogames.

Not fail but not receive the item that counts towards the achievement

Ah oh yes. I had to spend several extra hours on my second character to get that achievement just because I didn't want to kill those dudes for the Merunes, Namira, and Vaermina quest. Was that so bad of me?

I wish I had beforehand knowledge on what quests would break, and in what order I need to do things to prevent more breakage.
Cuz I certainly can't wait for DLC to set things straight.

Which ones do you mean. There are a couple of radient quests that are broken, and the theives guild was broken for me until 1.4 was released.

On a side note, I like your location

Yup. I'll be 65 this year. I've loved RPGs since I first "met" D&D in the mid-70s. I also love computer tech (the rest of it like phones, not so much, though I DO appreciate the Kindle husband gave me for Christmas - especially since HE doesn't "get" tech at all, being nearly 78.... You would laugh like hell if you were here when he pushes the wrong button on the remote.... "Um. Honey.... how do I get the tv back?....)

Sorry, I meant "updates" not "DLC." The updates are late in coming, and don't apply to real broken stuff.

A couple examples:

To get Annekke Crag-Jumper as a follower you can't clear out the high elf thief dungeon (thieves guild) because their leader is necessary for her quest. I think it goes the other way, as well. So the mark for "kill the leader" has no one there, because you already killed him.

The other thing I would have done is regarding the Mages Guild - I would have summoned the Unbound Dremora AFTER completing the main guild quests. Because right now my unbound dremora camps out at the Jarl's house in Winterhold, and he's invincible and hostile. He kills guards, citizens and anything except me. The part where the forcefield appears around the mages guild, that tossed him from the roof. Then when the ghosts appear in Winterhold, he ran down there to fight them, and decided to stay forever.

That one I did. He was creepy and I feel like he wasn't completely innocent.

It got to a point where I would glean walk-throughs of quests to make sure I wasn't f-ing something up for future quests. While I'm somewhat like Serethil on knowing versus experiencing generally I'd like to be slightly surprised. Thanks, Bethesda.

These youngsters! I don't know, they seem to think anyone over sixty sits around drooling all day. Well, some of us do, but we are also capable of having fun with a computer game.

For your information, young man, there are at least half a dozen regular posters on this board who are drawing their pensions.

P.S. Serethil, I can't work the TV remote either. On a good day I can change channels and get the one I want best out of three, other than that I have to ask my wife. I can use the Kindle she bought me for Christmas (a fantastic bit of kit), but the smartphone she gave me last year is in a drawer somewhere while I continue to use my ancient Nokia. Like wisdom, selective ability with technology comes with age.

Heh. It's a good thing one of us in our marriages can figure stuff out, right? I loved my old Nokia too - but AT&T insisted I get a new phone when they merged with our previous very small provider - a 4G phone for cats'sakes when I can't even get "normal" cell service at my house.... *shrug* It was free, but as with the Nokia, it sits in my purse waiting until I need to make an emergency call (a whole 4 times that's happened since 1994....)

On my first playthrough I sold some Dragon Priest masks, the Staff of Magnus, and many more. Oh, the fail.

Yeah, we shouldn't have to research wiki's before we do anything & everything--it should all be a smooth playthrough. I shouldn't have to go out of my way to make sure Skyrim's glitches fall in a more "acceptable" order.
I like surprises too, but not the ones that say guess what?!? You'll probably have to make a brand new character again!
I'm on #3, and trust me when I say it's my last one.

The only "mistakes" were from doing things that are actually bugs (doing the Civil War before completing the Hired Muscle quest for the Companions). Also, doing the Scroll for Anska quest before the Alteration Ritual Spell quest. But like I said, those are bugs that screwed up my game and weren't a result of me doing anything I shouldn't have.

The rest is pretty straightforward. If you found you've taken perks/spread yourself too thin, you can make up for it. It just takes a little time. For example, I turned a pure mage at level 38 or so into an effective Thief/Assassin by level 61.

I note, and my friends confirm this, that it usually the lady who knows how to work the TV system. I thus suspect that the designers of the user interface of such apparatus are all women. Its that or there is genetics involved, i.e. only ladies have the ability to read the manual.


AT&T are, of course, the spawn of Satan and the Company policy is to make the lives of their customers as difficult as possible. To be fair, though, the last time I did some work in the USA Sprint were doing a fair imitation and nowadays all the UK mobile companies seem to have adopted the same business model.

Anyway, to get back on topic, in my two play throughs so far I have had a couple of minor glitches and one that was annoying (by accident I spoke to Maul after completing the TG quest line whilst carrying some of those wretched gems, which led to me getting a quest to become a full-member of the thieves guild whch I couldn't because I was already the Guildmaster). So I don't recognise the problems Dagoth_jeff talks about. What I do wish I had known he first time around was that I could postpone the appearance of the dragons.

Yeah, I also sold the dragon priests masks. I imagine very few people only figured out about the secret ninth mask on their own, not through wikis or other people

From playing Fallout 3 I knew there would be points of no return so early on I asked specific, pointed questions here (hence my outrageously high post count ), but, yeah, having to do that for bugs is bad. I like being surprised (ie I never looked up what Ebony, Daedric, and Dragon armor looked like before I made it), but I don't like playing partially through the game 10 times to get one 'clean' playthrough.

Ouch. I'm a pack rat so I don't sell unique stuff anyway, but I would've been pissed at myself had I sold a Dragon Priest mask before hearing about the 9th.