These are universal tips that you can(and should) use for any path you decide to take in your Skyrim game. These are the tips that will make your entire game much more enjoyable. Some of them require a bit of effort upfront but the pay-off is well worth it.
Get a Follower
Find a follower who can train you.
Many followers in Skyrim are also skill trainers. For every character level, you are allowed to make use of a skill trainer five times. Usually, skill trainers are more of a luxury because of their increasingly expensive training costs. Because they are your follower, these training costs become free of charge(sort of). You still need to pay your followers for training, but since you can access their inventory, you can just take your money back.
This brings us to the other huge reason why you need a follower ASAP. There is so much loot in Skyrim, especially if you’ve been fighting dragons. With loot comes weight issues. You won’t be able to hold all of that loot, but you know who can? Your follower. Simply place all of your heaviest loot in their inventory and they will happily carry it all for you
Find Azura’s Star
One of the Daedric relics that can be obtained through a unique storyline(The Black Star). The quest requires a bit of travelling and going back and forth with some NPCs, but it is well worth it.
What does it do?
She wants you to find and cleanse a unique soul gem called Azura’s star. Once you complete the quest, you get to keep the soul gem. This is a soul gem that can never be consumed. This means you will always be able to recharge your enchanted weapons or add enchants to items that you may have otherwise used without any enchantments.
Where can you find it?
This quest is started by traveling to the Shrine of Azura. There, you will find a woman named Aranea Lenith. She will send you on a quest to retrieve the broken star of Azura.
The broken star of Azura will be located at Ilinalta’s Deep, just west of Riften. There, you will find a sunken fort with just a small part of it sticking out of the water.
The shrine of Azura is located in the mountains just outside of Winterhold. The fastest way to get there would be to take the carriage outside of any city to get to Winterhold, and then travel through the mountains by horse. If you keep looking up into the moutains, you will spot the statue(pictured above) in no time.
Get Fast Travel to All Main Cities
Outside of every city is a character with a horse and carriage. For a very small amount of gold, he will take you any main city instantly.
Once you use his service, be sure you enter the main city to unlock it on your map. This will only take you about 5 minutes to get all the cities. You can now travel to all corners of Skyrim.
Pick Flowers and Eat Them
One of the easiest ways to make some quick cash in Skyrim is through alchemy. Even if you don’t plan on getting too involved in Alchemy, it can really help you get that extra couple hundred gold for acquiring some nice new items.
Skyrim is littered with plants, fish, and insects that you can interact with. These are all ingredients for creating potions. At the start of the game, you won’t know what any of their effects do. If you consume one of these ingredients, it will reveal the first effect to you, and this the first step to creating potions.
It is also worth mentioning that doing this will automatically increase your alchemy level to help you with gaining some easy character levels.As you discover more alchemy effects, you will start to notice a lot of options start to appear when you visit an alchemy table.
To create a potion, just put 2 or 3 ingredients together to create a potion that will produce that effect. Most times, you will discover more effects by accident. This will set you on a chain reaction of creating expensive potions that almost any vendor will want to buy from you.
Protip: Potions have the lowest weight to gold ratio. This means you can carry a lot of expensive potions with you at all times to drain the cash from most vendors. The trick to pulling this off is to sell your potions often. You may find yourself hoarding potions, and soon having to toss them. Sell often!
Buy(or Steal) a Horse
If you plan to go exploring, you will definitely want a horse to help you. One of the first places you can buy a horse is right outside of Whiterun. It costs 1000 gold or it can be free if you want to steal it.
I would advise you to get the money together and to just pay for it because it can become a real pain to have a main city hostile towards you.Horses can move way faster than you. Their walking speed is faster than your sprinting speed. To add more value, they can also sprint.
A horse can sprint for about 15 seconds without stopping. You can cover a lot of ground in that time.
They also have an incredible ability that is often overlooked. While riding a horse, you can walk up and down extremely steep slopes. With a little bit of trial and error, you can learn how to get across entire mountains without breaking a sweat.
This is especially handy if you are doing a quest that requires you to get to some difficult areas(whether you are having a hard time getting there, or you want to take a shortcut to avoid certain areas altogether).
Bonus Tip: Join Imperials or Stormcloaks
These factions are always at war in the province of Skyrim. They both have their own ideals and reasons for occupying different areas of Skyrim. The Skyrim Civil War goes a lot deeper than the surface. Most of the details are tucked away in the dialogue from characters you don’t even need to speak to.