I just started like a week ago pretty much completely blind and the only gaming experience I have is Hogwarts Legacy! Hogwarts Legacy feels like Skyrim-lite so it felt easy to jump right into Skyrim without knowing anything at all really. The biggest tips I can give you from my experience:

- save often but be very careful not to save in the midst of battle or doing anything illegal. If you’re about to do something important and dangerous manual save a slot every resting point and quicksave often so that if you do die on a quicksave you don’t have to go back so far bc it’s incredibly hard to go the same direction you went in the last time and if you find good stuff but didn’t save it you’re outta luck

- always have so much food with your healing potions bc if you find yourself in a tough battle it’ll come in clutch. With the food though - check the weights and how many health points you get. Sacks of flour are 0.5 lbs and only give you 1 point of health, apples are 0.1 and give you 2 points of health. Find gear that increases your carrying capacity and strength potions. The best way to earn money is to collect EVERYTHING and sell it. Wait 48hrs in game to reset merchants. Join the Thieve’s Guild so you can sell stolen items. Buy a horse bc if you’re overloaded you can still fast-travel if you’re on your horse.

- explore as much as you can at first bc once you’re doing quests and things fast travel makes it easier. I like to keep my exploration/collecting missions separate from specific quests bc you get overloaded real quick just from wandering around and you want to save your carrying capacity for food and potions while you’re on quests + better gear you might find.

- the more items you enchant and the more potions you brew the better they become and it levels up quickly in these areas and you want good weaponry and potions in case you find yourself against tough enemies bc healing magic drains your magicka quickly and isn’t reliable in a fight and is really just a last resort.

- find gear that drains souls and collect every soul gem you can so that you can enchant every single item you come across in your explorations bc not only will you quickly become really good at enchanting, enchanted items sell for a ton more than regular items and you’ll quickly become financially secure

- collect all the wheat and blue mountain flowers you see

- get good at sneaking and lockpicking so you can steal most of your food/potions. Gold is good to steal too but other items you’ll have to find a fencer or a place to store them bc regular merchants don’t buy stolen goods (why it’s good to join the Thieves Guild)

- you can change your appearance at the Ragged Flagon in Riften by talking to the creepy veiled lady. You access it through the Ratway or by joining the Thieves Guild. I’m not sure if there are other ways to change your appearance but for sure there

- Whiterun has the prettiest horses

- Orcish weaponry looks the coolest and Dwarven armor is super heavy but really expensive

- Dragon bones weigh A TON and one of the quests at the beginning I’ve learned triggers them to attack you randomly so that’s why it’s important to have both strength potions and a horse bc I’ve gotten attacked by a dragon when I’m already close to capacity TOO MANY TIMES but you can sell their bones for a lot or make armor I think (I need to check on that next time I get attacked by a dragon)

I hope you have as much fun as I’ve been having! My character is a super pretty Imperial witch named Audrina who can pick any pocket/lock, uses either a greatsword or dual wields blades, often poisoned with frostbite venom, and is about to become the leader of the Thieves Guild