INTRODUCTION
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Hello everybody, and welcome to the TES V:Skyrim Guide: All the essentials you need to know.
As you seen on the description, this will focus on all the basics, including movement,combat, and certain skills. I know the game is 7 years old, but hey, might as well help out some people. Now, without further ado, let the guide BEGIN!!!!

There is alot of good races. Skyrim is home to the Nords, which are mostly warriors with resistance to frost and frost related spells. The Imperials are versatile races for mages and warriors. Bretons have good magicka, and are good mages. Redguard are resistant to poison, and well. Nothing else much. Kahjiit (Kah-jeet) are pretty much cat people. They are the best sneakers ever. Argonians are reptile people. They're pretty much random. Orcs are... well, Orcs! They are LETHAL with weapons. Trust me. High Elves, or Altmer, are the ultimate mage races, because they are born with extra Magicka. Dark Elves, or Dunmer, are resistant to fire, and are decent spellswords. The Wood Elves, or Bosmer, are the best archers in all of Tamriel. Little and notable fact, Khajiit have claws that gives extra damage for unarmed attacks. Good for fisticuff builds.

The basic stats are just three bars. Health, Magicka (or how much Mana you have for spells), and Stamina. SImple!

There is also a wide range of skills to master. The list goes as...
One-Handed
Two-Handed
Heavy Armor
Light Armor
Archery
Alchemy
Blacksmithing
Destruction
Conjuration
Illusion
Restoration
Alteration
Enchanting
Sneak
Lockpicking
Speech
Block

This is the story of the beginning of the game, READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRECTION!

You've been unconcious for an unknown time. You wake up chained up in a cart with Nords. You fully gain vision, and one of the Nords, named Ralof, asks you that you've been trying to cross border also. A horse thief, Lokir, realizes the Imperials have captured the Stormcloaks, including Ulfric Stormcloak himself, the leader of the rebellion. you get carted off to a settlement called Helgen. The cart stops, you get off. Apparently, you're not on the "list", so an Imperial named Hadvar asks who you are. You create your character, and your head is about to get chopped off. Then, all the sudden, a dragon! Black as night, big as an inn, attacks Helgen! Fortunately, it (literally) saves your neck in time.

MOVEMENT BASICS
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Now before you go screaming in the comments, this is actually just in case if people just started playing video games EVER. So, now here is the basics for movement.

Be sure to HOLD the keys for moving, not just tap em'.

The "W" Key is to move forward.
The "S" Key is to move backward.
The "A" Key is to strafe (move to the side) right.
The "D" Key is to strafe left.

The Spacebar ( the huge, narrow key) is to jump. It isn't useful in this game but it is for moving up mountains.

BASIC COMBAT
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Combat is a sheer fundimental in Skyrim, because you're gonna be hacking and slashing, and blasting and casting all day long. So, you'll need a weapon. There's two main types that both have an individual skill on the skill trees. One-Handed, and Two-Handed. If you're a half-baked potato, One-Handed is a weapon that's held in one hand. Two-Handed requires both hands. But before we get into the categories of weapons, you got to learn how to swing!

The default settings in Skyrim for a keyboard mouse user is the left mouse key to swing your left, and the right mouse to swing your right. But, if you can tweak the settings, you can set it to left click being right hand and right click being left hand. It's the most preferable setting to maximize comfort, and combat efficiency.

ONE-HANDED
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Now, with that out of the way, we'll start learning the One-Handed weapons.
The One-Handed weapons are decent fast, and is only held in one hand, so you can use something else, or another one-handed weapon, in the other.

Swords - Decently fast with a good reach.

Waraxes - Average speed, with the same good reach with more damage.

Maces- The strongest and slowest of the One-Handed category, and with the little reach.

Daggers- The most under-rated weapon, due to it's small attack rate. But it's the fastest of the One-Handed tree, even if it has the smallest reach.

TWO-HANDED
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The Two-Handed tree is alot stronger in the right hands, but it requires both hands. There's alot of good, unique two-handed weapons, and it's a simple list.

Greatswords - The weakest and fastest of the Two-Handed list, with good reach.

Battleaxes - The middle of the bunch, and has good reach also.

Warhammers - The strongest and slowest of the Two-Handed tree and- okay all of them has good reach, I don't have to drill it into you.

BOWS
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Bows are pretty straight forward. You use arrows, you pull the string with the arrow, and let go. You can use high level Sneak, and it's one of the most OP ways to play. If you have the Dawnguard DLC, you can use Crossbows. You use bolts, and it's just aim and shoot. The reload time is slower, but the damage pays off. Pew! Dead.
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They come in all sorts of materials also, which will be listed in the Smithing section.

MAGIC SCHOOLS
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All the Nords, Orcs and a few other races may call magic barbaric, not something to bash people's faces in. But, with the right skill, it can become Oblivion on Nirn.
There is six magic schools you require to know.

We have Destruction, with Fire, Ice and Shock spells. It's a really direct school, because it deals physical pain among enemies. Fire spells will burn enemies for a few seconds. Ice, or Frost, spells will slow down enemies and drain their stamina. Shock will drain Magicka. Various races are weak/resistant to certain destruction spells. Like Nords, who are resistant to Forst, and Dark Elves, or Dunmer, who are resistant to Fire.

There is then the Restoration School, which prioritizes on healing and repelling the undead. Most priests in the game and holy builds on the Internet uses this school. There's sort of nothing else to talk about.

The Conjuration school is one of the most fun and favored school. Another name for this school is "Necromancy". You can summon elemental beings called Atronachs to help, or you can raise the corpses of the people you killed and make them serve you until they die or the spell wears off. Again, not alot to exactly talk about.

The Illusion school is a manipulative one, because it breaches the minds of your enemies, making them do either helpful, or just plain dumb, things. You can make bandits go into frenzies, make enemies turn calm. You can even muffle your footsteps, and turn yourself invisible! The possibilities is good.

The Alteration school is a special one. It's meant to give the caster a few extra armor points, but it alters a few things. You can summon a floating ball of light, and there's a spell in the Dragonborn DLC that can let you levitate items! Yeah.

The final school is half warrior, half magic. Enchanting. As the word says, you can use it to enchant your weapons and armor in many ways. You require filled Soul Gems to use these.

All these schools, except Enchanting, require magicka.

ARMORS
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Armors are the sheer reason you still live. They're either Heavy or Light armor. All the armors consist of a helmet, chestplate, gauntlets and boots. Again, they both come in different materials and have individual skills to level up, so your armor can become stronger.

Heavy armor is stronger, but it's heavier, louder, and makes you go slower. Not a fine armor to sneak in. It's mostly used by tank builds, using any weapon besides daggers.

Light armor is weaker if not skilled at using it. It's light, makes you pretty quiet, and you can be as nimble as much as you like. A lot of builds use this category for many reasons. Like sneaking.

JEWELRY
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Jewelry only comes in three forms. Rings, Necklaces and Circlets. All of these can be made with different materials, and can be enchanted. There's a few unique jewelry, but I cannot name them due to spoilers. Unfortunately, circlets completely replace your helmet. Rings and Neckalces won't replace your gauntlets or chestpiece. So, enchant them while you can!

CLOTHING
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Now, you're probably asking "But xXThe_CooldogXx, why do you talk about clothing in Skyrim???". Well, I know clothing may be ordinary, but there's few clothing that tops everything. I won't list them, but the enchantments are decent for sneaking. There's ragged clothing, like the roughspun shirt and the ragged robes. We have regular clothes, which is literally called clothes, miner clothes, or blacksmith aprons. And the Fine Clothes. They're meant for rich nobles and royalty. Mage clothing has no armor, and they're only robes and a hood. But all of it is enchanted. The right mage user with robes and a hood can completely destroy anyone in their path.

SHIELDS
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Shields are a sort of armor only meant to be used on the left hand. That means that most builds with one-handed weapons are most likely to use shields. They also have a skill of their own called Block. They come in heavy or light, even though it does not matter.

Shields come in many materials, which will be addressed in the Smithing section.

SMITHING
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Smithing is a craft of a blacksmith creates armor and weapons. Smithing has its own individual skill, and with good practice, and make make a normal sword become OP.

There is plenty of materials to choose from.

Iron
Steel
Leather
Hide
Corundum
Orichalum
Ebony
Dragon Bone
Dragon Scale
Dwarven Metal
Gold
Quicksilver
Refined Malachite
Refined Moonstone
Silver

There is advanced armor which is Scaled and Steel Plate, which is made by Steel, Corundum, etc.

You can used Daedra Hearts (Found in Dremora or in Skyrim as an alchemy ingredient) to make Daedric Armor. Corundum is made to make Banded Iron Armor and the Banded Iron Shield. They're more buffed versions of the Iron Armor and Shield. Steel Plate is only for the armor, and makes you look like a medieval knight. Scaled is um... Well, if you played the game long enough and find Studded Armor, as it's callled, because the studs on the "skirt" part of the armor has iron studs, imagine it with STEEL studs and a cool horn thing. The helmet is like a Hide Helmet but with two horns. Scale Boots have weird scaled hide. Same with Scaled Gauntlets. Now to the next part!

ALCHEMY
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Now we're going into a hard part of the crafting skills.

Alchemy is essentially a gimmick, in a way, but has it's uses if you really want to get into it. Below is the list of alchemy ingredients (DLC included).

Abecean Longfin Ancestor Moth Wing* Ash Creep ClusteAsh Hopper JellyAshen Grass PodBear Claws Bee Beehive Husk Berit's Ashes Bleeding Crown Blisterwort Blue Butterfly Wing Blue Dartwing Blue Mountain Flower Boar Tusk Bone Meal Briar Heart Burnt Spriggan Wood Butterfly Wing Canis Root Charred Skeever HideChaurus Eggs Chaurus Hunter Antennae Chicken's Egg Resist Magic Creep Cluster Crimson Nirnroot Cyrodilic Spadetail Daedra Heart Deathbell Dragon's TongueDwarven Oil Ectoplasm Elves EarEmperor Parasol Moss Eye of Sabre CatFalmer Ear Fire SaltsFly Amanita Frost Mirriam Frost Salts Garlic Giant Lichen Giant's Toe Gleamblossom* Glow DustGlowing Mushroom Grass Pod Hagraven Claw Hagraven Feathers Hanging Moss Hawk BeakHawk FeathersHawk's EggHistcarp Honeycomb Human Flesh Human Heart Ice Wraith TeethImp Stool Jarrin RootJazbay GrapesJuniper BerriesLarge Antlers Lavender Resist Magic Luna Moth WingLuna MothMoon SugarMora TapinellaMudcrab Chitin Namira's Rot

Making Alchemy is simple. You mix 2/3 ingredients of similar effects, and the duration and strength of said effect scales with you in leveling. You can make health potions, poisons, potions that cure disease, etc.

Credit to Steam user :happy: :foggy: tango salad for giving our the helpful suggestion to remaster this section!

SNEAKING
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Stealth in Skyrim is... unique, so to say. If you look up Skyrim logic memes, like the Arrow to the Knee, Sneaking is also a good meme. It represents the classic playstyle called "Stealth Archery". Shooting arrows at enemies while undected, is super overpowered. Just pew! Ded. So, there's a good feature to sneaking to help is the crosshair.

When you strat sneaking, you crouch down. The crosshair becomes a dot in the middle, and two horizontal lines between it. It looks like this.
----- - -----
The game calls this the "Eye". As the Skyrim tutorials say, "If the eye is partially open, the enemies are looking for you. If the eye completely opens, you've been found.".

There's perks that make you harder to detect, gives the ability to do a roll, and increase damage of bow and dagger sneak attacks. It's really insane how much potential there is in sneaking. You can even use Illusion spells, because it has spells that muffles your footsteps, make you invisible, and even silence spells COMPLETELY. Potential, says I. POTENTIAL!

BUILDS AND PLAYSTYLES
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Now that you polished up on the crucial skills, you can now learn what makes an RPG exactly what it is (or some that isn't a strategy game.)! You get to play the game any way you want. Mass Effect uses a morality system, and you can play it any way you want, if you wanna literally use a levitation power to put the enemy in a black hole! YA CAN! Wanna put a s**t-ton of bullets into a huge goliath? YOU CAN! Skyrim uses that whole sha-bang, but in a MEDIEVAL style!

Builds and Playstyles are sort of like classes in some games. Take like Team Fortress 2. Wanna be a Heavy? You can! Wanna be a Scout instead? Don't mind if I do! Basically, the Build or Playstyle you'll use in Skyrim is how you play the game in general. There's plenty of builds in the mystical dimension called... YOUTUBE. And the links to three of the best channels for them is right below.

PRO TIPS
Camelworks has excellent weapon guides, and works with one of the other youtubers on this list.
ESO - Fallout & Elder Scrolls Guides has a tiny list of builds, but he talks alot about Skyrim, so yeah.
Fudgemuppet is the #1 pick for builds. He has a LIBRARY of builds. You should look into that if you wanna do a decent build.

They each come in the order the pro tips were.
HUGE DISCLAIMER: MAY INCLUDE THE BIGGEST OF SPOILERS FOR UNIQUE ITEMS AND SUCH!
https://www.youtube.com/user/camellworks
https://www.youtube.com/user/FudgeMuppet/featured
https://www.youtube.com/user/MyTopGame

Be sure to look in the Playlists tab for Fudgemuppet and ESO to find the right thing you require.

I used these guys alot to help me in my quest to make a good build. And, sometimes builds can just pop in a few people's minds! Soon, i'll make a build discussion on the Skyrim SE thread, and will ask you guys to create a build, the requirements for the build will be in tthe description of said discussion when it appears. Good luck!

SHOUTING
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Now, this may be one of the biggest spoilers ever, but I wanna set this forth so some apprentice players may learn this.

Shouting is the power of dragons, and certain individuals who learned on the Voice, or "Thu'um". But, there is few people that learns it naturally. They are born with the blood of the dragon, and can even suck the knowledge and souls of dragons. They are called, Dragonborn. "Dovahkiin". Whatever key you use, you Shout. For each Shout, there are 3 words. The most iconic shout is "Unrelenting Force". "Fus", "Ro", "Dah". In normal tounge, it means "Force, Balance, Push". You can find other words of shouts in ruins, and you must use a dragon's soul to learn to use the shout. The more words you learn, the more powerful it gets. When you have all three words of a shout, you hold down the shout key. The full power of Unrelenting Force is... um... Well, look at the memes!

HORSES AND ANIMAL COMPANIONS
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Horses and other tamable animals may be a small detail, but it's something to point out nonetheless.
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Horses

Horses are the cars of Tamriel, transporting people and caravans for centuries. In Skyrim, they can transport the Dragonborn, although clunky, and faster, and somehow up mountains.
Horses in Skyrim have been breed by Bethesda to climb even sheer cliff faces, with ease.


Dragons
SPOILERS AHEAD; READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION

Dragons are the main antagonists of Skyrim. Big scaly flying lizards that can breathe fire or cold, and was the scourge of Tamriel for eras. But, if you have the Dragonborn DLC, you can in fact RIDE dragons. You will need to progress in the Dragonborn quest line to get all three words of the Shout, "Bend Will". This shout will make any enemy affected (with all three words), fight for you side. With all three words of "Bend Will", you are in fact able to control Dragons! You are able to fast travel, fly around the vicinity of where you tamed the dragon (sadly, because you can't fly around the whole map), target enemies, and attack them with that Dragon's power.


Dogs

There are many tameable dogs in the game, including someone that sells battle dogs at the Markarth Stables and if you have the Dawnguard DLC, the Volkihar Castle and Fort Dawnguard have canine companions in the form of Death Hounds and unique Husky-like battle dogs.

Thanks for spending your time on brushing up (or learning) the basics of one of the greatest RPGs of all time (in my opinion)! I hope you enjoyed, and I pray to the Divines that you will strike with the might of Ysgramor himself, shoot an arrow with the prowess of Hircine, the spirit of the hunt; deflect the blows like Stendarr... And shout mightily with the honor of Tiber Septim, Talos.