User talk:Documentalist/Walkthrough (Skyrim)/Getting Started

Strategy: Complete quests first or train skills first?
The strategy "complete quests first" is: complete as many quests as possible and minimize training until all quests are completed. The strategy "train skills first" is: train all skills to the highest level possible without further questing, then complete only those quests required to get access to better trainers, and repeat this until training is complete. When the training is complete, complete the remaining quests.

It seems that "train skills first" is the better. If we follow this strategy:
 * The creatures The Dragonborn encounters during his quests will level and will be stronger. Stronger creatures drop better items.
 * The rewards The Dragonborn gets for solving quests are better. Examples:
 * Before the Storm: Leveled Heavy/Light armor.
 * The Golden Claw: Leveled gold.
 * Bleak Falls Barrow Leveled item.
 * etc.

Strategy: Train skill-by-skill or level-by-level to skill level 91?
Combining the above leads us to this plan:
 * Creating a character with large differences in skill levels can cause problems, especially if the skills with the higher levels are non-combat skills like Alchemy, Enchanting, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Smithing, and Speech. The non-combat skills level-up the character. The high character level increases the difficulty of the quests, possibly making them too difficult to complete.
 * Fighting cannot be avoided, when we let The Dragonborn pickpocket the trainers, these will hire thugs.
 * On the other hand training all skills to 16, and when that's done visit all trainers again for the next skill level is unnecessary time consuming, the combat skills are leveled-up before the non-combat skills.
 * Each time we level-up all skills we level-up the skills in the sequence:
 * Destruction (offensive)
 * Restoration (defensive)
 * Speech
 * Other skills in ascending alphabetical order.
 * We'll level up in three 3 steps: to level 51, level 76 and to level 91.
 * Before each of these steps we'll complete only the quests that gives us access to a trainer for each skill able to train the step ahead.