Skyrim Sidelines: Questing in the Land of the Nords

As you play through the main story of Skyrim and then progress to exploring the various mountains, valleys, streams, roads, cities, villages, caves, and other interesting terrain features, you’ll come across a staggeringly huge number of quests.  Some of these will be convenient to what you are doing, some will be terribly out of the way, some will be short, some will be long...

The variety isn’t endless, literally speaking, but it is as immense and varied as the things and people you’ll see as you traverse the land.  With that in mind, I’ve started this series of articles.  My intent here is to explain what the quests are and how to do them.  Note that I did not say ‘all’ the quests, and that is with good reason.  With far and away beyond a thousand separate quests available, it would be pretty ludicrous to insist that I will definitely reach all of them before the information becomes irrelevant: there are other games to write about, and will be more such- including the next in the Elder Scrolls ‘series’, Elder Scrolls Online.

I will, however, endeavor to ensure that I cover all of the quests that are likely to be convenient to your trip through the main plot of Skyrim, and as many of the large chain-quests that you can find elsewhere as I am able, in addition to any smaller quests that occur in places you will pass through attempting either of these prior groups of quests.

There are going to be two kinds of articles that thus compose this series.  ‘Questing In _____’ will signify that an article is about a city, town, fort, or other major location where you can find a lot of quests.  Most of these will be small quests from individuals that will let you gain their favor by way of a simple chore- bring them something, bring something they give you to someone else, talk to someone about something, kill this or that nearby, that sort of a quest.  Since these quests don’t have attached dungeons or other sorts of locations or large plots, they don’t really need to be given the individual depth that a more complex quest needs- and may not even have a name.  Usually these quests will show up in your Journal under the very last tab, which collects all the minor quests you have at any given time.  This doesn’t mean that the rewards are never significant, only that the quest itself is simple, short, or very generalized.

The second kind of article will be titled with what looks like a quest name.  This won’t necessarily be the name you find it under in your journal (for instance, none of the quest ‘steps’ for the College of Winterhold questline is named ‘The College of Winterhold’, but that is almost certainly going to be the primary title for the articles about those quests), but it will be followed by the quest name if there is one.  These quests sometimes start out in the Journal group of minor quests, and a few even stay there.  These quests have separate articles because they are large, they are long, they involve some sort of intricate interaction, there is something especially noteworthy about their requirements or rewards, or they have a dungeon somewhere in them.  Most often, they will have more than one of these qualities, but they only need to have one.

That said, let’s get some sidequest on!