Yeah I had to google how to use the numeric keys too, it's a really crap explanation in the manual. It's quite useful once you work it out though.

agreed. I'm not sure how I figured it out... I'm sure someone told me. Or maybe I read a tip while loading. *shrug* Exceptionally helpful, but buggy with dual-wielding, as J seems to know.

Yeah, I never used that haha. To be fair though, if you're mostly a fighter character (and a smith too, at that) you're probably not going to be changing weapons all that often anyway so it wasn't a big deal for me. The only thing I routinely changed in the favorites menu was which racial/shout ability was active. I barely ever casted a spell.

Smallish update:

i hit lvl 20, but haven't progressed much really. Was still doing things in and around Whiterun, and then i suddenly woke up in Markarth with a serious hangover.

Since then i've been doing quests in that general area. Managed to kill another dragon that killed some citizens outside of Markarth, hope he didn't kill anyone too important.

I'm still killing most enemies with a sneak attack from my bow (x3 damage), some with a sneak backstab with my dagger (x15!) and some with some good shield and mace/sword/... bashing. I bought some rune spells that could be used as traps (which seems to fit with my character), but i lack the magicka, so i'll have to lvl destruction another 5 lvls to pick a perk so i can start using it. And hope i don't find out then that those spells just suck.

So besides Markarth and Whiterun, i haven't visited any other area i think. And still exploring those areas, doing tons of quests. So much to do still.

Cool, keep at it. And that hangover quest is awesome.

Yeah, had a lot of fun with that one. You own a house yet J?

Yeah the one in Whiterun (Breezehome or so), i need it badly to store all my stuff. I like to hoard stuff (i might use that later ..) and usually end up with tons of stuff i never use.

Maybe i should organise a garage sale or something.

Haha, just do like me and at certain levels (like 10, 20, 30) make an inventory of all your stock and then see what you never gonna use anyway - because it doesn't suit your character, because you got better stuff by far alraedy, etc. I even sold some Daedric Artifacts like light armor off because I wasn't gonna wear light armor anyway...

The only things that were unsellable to me were one-of-a-kind items like Rinox's daedric artifacts and rewards for becoming a Jarl and whatnot. I will get back to that game, some day. Probably by that time I'll have a better graphics card and there'll be texture upgrade mods.

Well i'm still running around in the area between whiterun and markarth. Lvl 23 now, most of my enemies are dead before they know they're under attack.

I have been using my destruction spells some more, so i could get my lvl to 25 and i could get the apprentice (i think) lvl perk. As my style is 'assassin' i thought it would be cool to buy some runes that i could place as traps, in case i had a whole mob chasing me, or to buy me some time against stronger opponents. Of course right after buying them, i found out that i didn't even have enough magicka to cast those spells. So i had to lvl my destruction.

I don't know if i mentioned i'm a wood elf, i guess i haven't contracted much diseases because of that. But i recently found out the glory of my other skill: command animal (for 60 s). I had to use it before when sneaking out of the mine in markarth on my own and running into spiders, but yesterday it allowed me to avoid certain death in a fight with a dragon.
I suddenly got attacked by a random dragon, which wasn't that good since i needed backup in my previous fight. After our first exchange of blows, he flew up to catch some breath probably. But oh horror, when i looked up i stared in the eyes of a sabre cat. When i run into these guys in the wild, i can manage one on it's own, but with 2 i'll have to do a lot of dodging of attacks to survive. So dragon + sabre cat wasn't my idea of a fun party!

Luckily i still had my skill/shout button bound to 'command animal', i looked the cat into it's eyes, and next thing i know, i'm standing behind a dragon, whacking away with my ebony (small brag for me) sword untill it went down. Afterwards i was frantically looking for the cat, since i didn't want to be surprised by it. Had a similar experience with a friendly-but-turned-out-to-be-friendly-no-more bear in the past, so i was happy to found out it had been killed by the dragon.

Some notable things i have found:
- mace of Molag Bal
- volsung (mask)

Lol i just had to google for that last name, to discover this guy was a dragon priest. And is hard to kill. Fortunately, most magic users (hagravens for instance) try to take me out by shooting things at me from distance, which suits me fine if there are enough obstacles for me to take cover. I think this Volsung guy looked like a hedgehog after our fight.

Damn you're right, should have taken a screenshot

During that fight, i even ran out of iron arrows for the first time in the game. And i hadn't noticed earlier that i was running low on those arrows. And no i didn't miss THAT much.

Just had some fun with giants:

* command animal works on mammuths as well, and you can imagine they act as pretty good tanks
* when it's dark, or when they're busy with things, i can sneak up behind them: one hit with my dagger takes about 3/4 of their health bar, before they realise where i am i hit a second time and they're dead!

I feel pretty badass right now, get ready for a next post where i got omgwtfpwned!! in a random encounter

Wow, you can backstab a giant?! Man, those things are tough. Good job. And it's pretty awesome you can force them to fight their own mammoths.

IMMERSION BREAKING!!

A Bosmer stabbing a giant, that is.