Convenient Locations for Skyrim: White River Watch

As you head out from Whiterun to go see the Graybeards, you may want to stop by a few places and pick up some useful items and experience.  One of the first really convenient ones is White River Watch.  By heading uphill from the path that leads North around the Throat of the World, you can come across the base camp of this small cave, manned by a pair of guards.  One of them is equipped for melee combat, the other fires at you from afar with a bow- neither of them is really anything remarkable so just kill them and be done with.  Their camp contains a few useful items, as well as a wood-chopping stump and a woodcutter’s axe, just in case you haven’t got such an axe yet.  Inside is where the real adventure takes place.

On entering, you are met with the sight of a guard!  Don’t worry, though, he’s blind.  As you step forwards he asks if you are one of his companions- you can answer that you are, or you can threaten him.  Don’t bother threatening him- all that does is give him a chance to call for the other bandits and bring them all down on you in the cramped entrance.  Instead, lie- he believes you and tells you that the leader is at ‘the summit’- in this case, outside the upper entrance to the cave on the mountainside.

With the guard duped (rather easily), you can start rooting around.  The entrance area is pretty indicative of the rest of the cave- there are mushrooms positively everywhere, and a good deal of other supplies lurking around hither thither and yon.  If you have any carrying space at all, grab all the mushrooms you can- alchemy doesn’t actually require talent points or monetary investment, after all.  Climbing the stairs, you soon reach a tunnel into a new area- there are a couple more bandits here and a bunch more mushrooms, as well as some supplies.  Clear the bandits out and you can head up into the next area- which contains no bandits, tons more mushrooms- and an alchemist’s table.

Apparently the bandits noticed the mushrooms too, putting them several candela brighter than any of the other bandits you’ve been seeing, who would rather kill one guy and take his money than stick around and rob fourteen people.

At any rate, if you continue further, there’s another small clear area with some furniture and mushrooms- followed by a tall cave, which you hear before you see it- several bandits are in here, three archers and a melee fighter.  They’re discussing the rabid, starving wolf that’s caged up in this cave.  Use their distraction as a convenient means of ambush- and then smack the door of the cage.  Wolves aren’t very dangerous, after all, and there’s a health potion in the back of the cage, on an overturned chair.  You can also find an iron ore vein up near the top of this cave- if you don’t have a pick, go back and check the shelves again, there’s one in the cave.

There are no more bandits in the cave, so feel free to check everywhere for even more potion ingredients before heading out the upper entrance.  Once you do, stop cold.

Just downhill of you is the bandit leader, Halvarr Iron-Hand.  His greatsword is on the table- but don’t charge him.  He -will- pick it up, and his gauntlets make him hugely dangerous with a two-handed weapon.  Instead, shoot him with arrows or spells- he sucks rather badly at archery.  Once he’s dead, you can take his gauntlets- if you use a two-handed weapon, you’ll love them and their enchantment- and his sword, journal, and the supplies out of his chest.

Now that you’ve killed all the bandits and filled your pockets with alchemical supplies, and killed a bandit leader for his gloves (also to stop the raids on merchants), go ahead and fast-travel away- you’re outside, you can do that.  You can also use White River Watch’s bottom entrance as a convenient fast-travel location.