The trick is to stab upwards from the rear entrance, hitting the spine on the way up. Make sure you clean your weapon thoroughly every time though.

Well i didn't even remember making this thread, ran into it reading Pevil's. She made me decide to pick up the game again. I was surprised that my old saves are still available, always thought you had to transfer save games to other computers.

I did decide to start from scratch again, since i basically haven't got a clue on how the controls/shouts/etc. work. Now that i played the game a bit again, it's getting back, so i might end up playing with the wood elf again. Seems like he caught he bad case of vampirism though during my absence.

Made me an orc, fighter type, no magic, just heavy hitting, one-handed for now, not sure if i'll use block a lot. Might pick up dualwielding, might add in some smithing. Rereading this thread made me rediscover the key bindings, good find. I happened to do the Golden Claw quest at first, which saved me some time in the main quest as appearantly they wanted to sent me that way. So the first dragon has been slayed as well, bit of a similar story as Pevil: once he landed and i started hitting with my axe that does extra health and stamina damage, he didn't put up much of a fight anymore.

Will have to slowly progress, think i'm lvl 4 or 5, gaming time is limited with 2 kids and a wife needing my attention.

Yay good to see you jumping on board J! It'll keep me motivated to keep mine going too (no pressure ) as I've also been getting distracted by Elder Scrolls Online and Diablo 3. Sounds like you're playing Ox "Hurrrr me hit things"

Have you got the free upgrade to the special edition?

I just looked, if you owned all the dlc before sometime in 2016 you should have the special edition for free. No clue what is so special about it though!

I think i'm ahead of schedule (= end of 2027), not sure though.

Progressed to about lvl 16. Bashing skulls with a skyforged axe from the brotherhood quests and smashing faces with my shield. Onehanded is over 50 so i got 2 perks that make my powerattack stronger. I have a chance to decapitate foes now, pretty cool.
Also trying to build up my smithing skills. In my previous play i never even mined a single ore. I can make dwarven armor now, but not sure if i want to buy the ingots needed for it.

There's so much in the game that i haven't seen, there probably will be a lot of things i'll never see. I got sidetracked all the time previously, so only in this playthrough I encountered the Blades.

Sounds like you're doing my original playthrough! Sword and board, decapitations all over the place (love the slow kill cam on it ) and mining everything in sight to make the best armour (and of course enchant the hell out of it). I think I bought very few ingots, you can often find plenty lying around. If you find random dwemer 'junk' you can usually smelt it into ingots.

Small update:

still bashing skulls with my shield and decapitating things with the axe. Slowly making progress, smithing is near lvl 50, but i'm not sure if i'm going to bother with enchanting. Of course it would be better if i would, but it kinda doesn't feel right for my orc. And there are already too many things on my to-do list.

Basically i'm pretty randomly running around, discovering awesome sights, occasionally exploring ruins. At times i feel like crossing things off my quest list, and start working on those, only ending up sidetracked again, taking more random quests.

Haven't been in a few major cities yet, so still got tons of exploring to do.

My previous character stranded at lvl 25, now i'm at 26 so technically i'm further than in that playthrough. Didn't get involved in the stormcloak/imperial army discussion yet. I also ended up with a major bug in the Companions questline, really got stuck there. Then i realised why i had 100+ saves on that other character. Took me some good internet searching and putting some bits and pieces together, but ended up fixing the bug (it involved teleporting, don't ask).

I also wonder why i stopped playing previous game. Probably lack of time, but still enjoying myself so much with this game.

Awesome, I had intended to get a few updates going myself last week as I had a week off work but felt crap so didn't do much at all. I also may have become obsessed with Oblivion after re-reading our old threads (I really need to stop doing that, or maybe I just need to finally complete Morrowind ) so I'm splitting my time between the two at the moment. Have you any idea if you'll go imperial or stormcloak? Or just go with what seems right when you finally do it?

I must've been really lucky in my first playthrough, I don't remember coming across any major bugs. Either that or I just didn't realise. Sometimes it can be hard to tell when a game is designed to give you freedom what is a bug and what is just sheer bad luck. I have run into tons of small bugs though, mostly just amusing things.

Yeah for me it was really a gamebreaker at that point, it was in the Companions quest, during the funeral, everybody seemed frozen, being "busy". Nothing helped, turned out the smith got stuck somewhere on a hill outside the city. Idiot.

Not sure about imperial or stormcloak. I was thinking Stormcloak, untill i started talking with them some more. Seems like it's a big Nords first attitude which i'm not that fond of, being an orc. Haven't talked with the imperials yet, i have a feeling nobody likes orcs.

Time for a small update. Few gaming time i have goes into Skyrim, resulting in a lvl 37 (or about) character now.

I started dabling around a bit with the enchanting table, mainly because i wanted to get smithing enchantements on my gear. Turned out i can't get it at a decent amount (yet?), but at least i'm getting a good amount of money from it. Went past the 100k gold mark.

In that regard, i've been getting several achievements, like my first 100 skill (one-handed) and i joined the thief guild and mages guild. Don't plan atm to really use a lot of magic, but since my lockpicking was at almost 80 anyway, thief guild didn't see that wrong of a choice. And i'm following that quest line now, enjoying it as well.
Keep getting sidetracked, because my first intention was to keep progressing in the war questline: i went for the empire troops, even captured 2 forts with them. But now i'm doing other stuff again. Soo many quests, so many things to visit.

I also thought i had never been in Markarth before, untill i recognized the Mace of Molag Bal in some questline. I had it on my previous character, but couldn't remember ever being in the city. Weird, you'd think i would remember walking around in a big Dwemer ruin.

Love the little things and jokes that are in the game, like finding "The lusty Argonian maid" next to a lot of beds, running into a guy named "Hamelin" or something raising an army of skeevers and much much more.

There's just so much in the game, I've been a bit like that although I know I've been in every town but don't instantly recognise much. But then it's cool when you get that "oh wait, I remember, if I go right here there's the blacksmith" moment. I've just started the thief guild questline too; I failed miserably at the induction test to plant evidence on that guy in the market. Stole it easy enough but they saw me plant it, hadn't had that happen before. I haven't played for a few weeks as I was feeling pretty crappy and when I get like that I can't concentrate on stuff, planning to get back to my playthrough sometime this week.

On the enchanting side of things, save all the clean rings and amulets you find and enchant those. Skill gains plus even more money, think that's how I made my fortune on my original playthrough.

I don't think I've ever noticed the details like that! I do remember Hamelin and his army of skeevers but hadn't noticed the Lusty Argonian Maid next to beds. I suppose even in Tamriel "50 Shades" is popular bedtime reading