Anyone who plays this, i would appreciate a few words of wisdom

Last night i began to play this on the xbox. Ive just dont the initial escape and im out into the big wide world it would seem. My main questions are how long until i begin to understand what on earth is going on? What am i supposed to be doing? Im hoping it all becomes a bit more obvious as i progress a little. Any tips and things to look out for may be much appreciated.
Its not a type of game i would normaly go for but ive heard so much about it i thought i would give it a go, and at the moment ive got to be honest i dont really know what im doing!

It took me a little while to get into it - the status screen gives you your current goals. If you don't know where you're meant to be going then click the "Show on map" button, set a marker, walk there and look for somebody with a little arrow hovering over their head.

To be honest, at the start of the game you're better off wandering around for a little bit in the wilderness. You might get killed (and you'll probably get sick of wolves attacking you every 2 minutes), but it means you'll find some locations, build up some key skills and probably get a couple of little side quests.

It might take 5 or 6 hours until you really get into it, but once you do it's very addictive. I was much the same as you at the start; not really a video games player and not sure what I had to do, but I've put in about 70 hours on the game now and I'm really hooked.

Thre is a 'main questline' which as you progress down, it will unveil more and more of the story, however you get the 'point' soon enough.

The problem is identifying which of the opening quests is the main questline. Also you dont want to just follow that becuase you gain so much necessaries experience and skills from doing all the various other side quests and bits and bobs you stumble onto, and if you just did the main questline you would get very frustrated by the dificulty level of the game, and how you dont seem to have and nice weapons, armour spells etc.

Yeah, the main quest line isn't that long. If I was playing again I'd follow it until the point where you first meet the grey-beards and then just go off and do side-quests.

If, like me, you've got no idea what you're doing then following the main quest will introduce some side-quests. So, for example, there's a point in the main quest where you have to visit the College at Winterhold, which will kick off the quest line associated with the College.

You can ignore that and carry on with the main quest, or, you can do as I'm doing and ignore the main quest for a bit and follow the Winterhold one (not sure how smart that was, it's a *tough* quest line).

The one bit of advice I'd give to new players is decide early on if you prefer to fight using weapons, magic or by sneaking around and trying to avoid direct confrontation. If you don't focus on one of those things you end up sort of OKish at everything, which can make some battles very tough.

Skyrim can be a bit overwhelming to start with

a lot depends how you want to play the game.
ie magic or just beat everything to death/ranged weapons or even a thief.like has been said.

i choose the kajhit so done the thiefs guild quest line. i also helped the people of whiterun before doing the main quest line. aswell as other small quest .

i have got good destruction/light armour/one handed weapons too so along with the high sneak/thief skills.
i just sneak up on my prey shout off with their head and hit them with a power attack not much stands in my way now.

other then dragons and few others . i did see my follower fly off into distance when i attacked giant and they got attacked as the giant couldnt see me. due to my armour and theif skills

I haven't got a clue, but when my son comes back from walking the dog I'll see what he has to say. He has had the game now since Christmas, and he still appears to be on with it; most games he buys he will finish before I've finished reading the instructions . Must be an age thing!

I'm with you, Cheech - sneak is my highest skill (up to 75, as of last night). My destruction is somewhere in the mid 50s and everything else is nowhere, really.

As I'm playing a high elf I should probably have spent more time on magic, but I get by OK and only really struggle in fights where sneak isn't much good (fighting The Caller in the Winterhold quest line has been the toughest one to win so far).

ive got sneak onehanded and light armour all over 80 destruction is 60ish

i like the nightingale armour and sword , i cant be seen if sneaking and with sword charged up with soul gems i dont take much damage.

now im at point of being a game breaker , which i dont want to do .as my smithing enchant and alchemy are now also nearly up to 80 or higher. i built a armour set and weapon that could kill a dragon with one hit!

There is another sword with identical properties to the nightingale sword, using those two together duel-wielding and all you have to do is keep slashing away at people and you're pretty much invulnerable.

it seems to not matter which race you pick as you can level what skill you like .

for sure they start with different base skills , which helps for that role but you can make a orc a mage or a high elf a axe weilding psyhco

truffle i will keep my eye out for this other sword.

but to be honset i can stand in the face of doom and laugh at it , wait then wait some more then OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!!! as it is

I too am enjoying this, I take turns in knocking off main quests interspersed with a few side ones here and there. I only recently sussed what I need to do with perks though.

I just learned tonight how to recharge magic items, dur.

But sneak still rocks - just took down my first Dragon Priest (Morokei) without him ever laying a finger on me.

Yeah keep them weapons charged up .

I had battle with dragon priest too (koris) I manged to trap him against word wall and me and follower just laid in to him .

Have joined the dark brotherhood now, my char seems to be a troubled person

I have no idea what you just said.

Koris is the one floating around Shearpoint, isn't he? Taking him down is my mission tonight.

Yeah thats the one , didnt even give him chance to pop out his tomb and stand up before i hit him.

now iam a vampire as well , said i was troubled

Cheers guys. I played it for a fair while last night, and whilst i still havent got into any real understanding of storyline, i am at least controlling quite easily and leveling up and allocation the points etc. Life did get easier once i realised i could use my spare hand to fire magic!
Having read some of the comments above i have to ask what the different armours are about. Every time ive found better armour ive put it on. I just assumed this would be beneficial. Whats the benefit of staying in light armour?

Light armour allows you to move faster and make less/no noise. It can also be very strong as you become more skilled with it and the armour itself gets better.

It also has the benefit of being, well, light! so it takes up alot less space in your inventory.

However i think that ALL armour weights can eventually not cost you any inventory space once you level it up high enough and choose the appropriate perk (or whatever it's called).

Cool. Light is the way forward then. Is there a limit to inventory space then? i had just been picking up everything i saw and wondering how he still moved

Also as you progress you'll get less magpie like about what you choose to pick up.

You'll end up with a lot of stuff which is too valuable to just drop, but not useful enough to lug around everywhere you go (especially dragon scales and dragon bones). The easiest way around this is to have some property you own, then you can store things in any chests/wardrobes/cabinets in that property.

In the main quest line as soon as you kill the first dragon at Whiterun you'll be allowed to buy property there (and, as luck would have it there's a house up for sale).

If you don't fancy spending 5,000 gold then as soon as you join the college at Winterhold (demonstrate a shout to them to get in) they'll give you a room, where you can also store your crap. If you're still quite low level I'd leave the college quest-line as soon as you've got your room - it gets very tough very quickly.

What makes this game so addictive? Have the creators tapped into part of the human-psyche somehow so gamers keep coming back?

I was thinking of getting it as I bought an Xbox360 for Christmas, but I don't like addictions.

I'm watching this - I don't do games, much - but I'm fascinated how close it is to the game in Stephenson's 'REAMDE'...

There is definitely an element of not wanting to leave things unfinished.

For example from the word go there is an over-arching mission thread, but very quickly you end up getting in the middle of other people's problems, or helping people, or joining a guild/faction etc, and before you know it you have 20+ 'quests' on the go.

So you are constantly thinking "i'll just complete this quest" only for, in the course of completing it, 3 more quests get added becuase you spoke to someone who needs some help with something/ read a note/book that shows the location of something etc.

So that urge to do "one more thing" quickly becomes a never-ending journey.

After not doing much with spare stuff apart from dumping on the floor in my house for weeks, last night I decorated it, put all my books on the bookshelves, put my my clothes/spare armour away, put ingredients next to my alchemy lab and tonight I may lay out all the plates on the table in neat rows to store any food that won't fit on the shelves. I wonder if there a fridge and larder that you can buy in this game? In all my years of playing computer games (and I am talking back to Hungry Horace etc) I have never spent time in a game doing non-essential household chores, do I need help?

I also wish I had a access to a rocket launcher and grenades sometimes. Or maybe even a chainsaw.

Go to Shearpoint and defeat the dragon priest there and you get a fairly awesome staff of fireball (although, not awesome enough to stop you kicking the ass of the dragon priest wielding it), if that helps.

If you don't know where Shearpoint is ask the grey-beards where you can find more shout words.

Its been ages since i last played Skyrim, guess i'll have to have a good sesh this weekend. I kind of dropped off playing it after i completed the main storyline as suddenly I didn't really care what happened to my character.

Or how close T'Rain is to this!

Hopefully this doesn't come with the associated Islamic fundamentalists and Soviet nutters