Developers Foresight / The Elder Scrolls

Examples of Developer's Foresight in The Elder Scrolls series.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

• Normally, if you kill a councilor of a Great House outside of certain quests where it is required, you will offend the remaining councilors, making it impossible to be named Hortator of that House and breaking the most straightforward way to finish the main quest. However, House Telvanni practices Klingon Promotion, which means that if you are a member of the house, then kill all the other leaders, you will not be expelled; instead, the game gives you a journal entry in which you dryly note that as the last surviving councilor of House Telvanni, you have appointed yourself Telvanni Hortator.
• The strait between Vvardenfell and Solstheim (the location of the Bloodmoon expansion) is completely mapped out. Therefore, if you were so inclined, instead of taking a boat, you could swim all the way to Solstheim. Why you would want to do that is a different question.
• The developers included a "backpath" method to completing the main quest so that the player can still complete it even if they've killed someone otherwise essential to doing so (which is quite easy to do, considering that not every essential NPC gives you the message letting you know to reload save). It requires only one NPC to be alive and, if you complete it via this method, the "beat the game" dialogue of a few major characters is changed slightly to reflect this fact.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

• Martin will acknowledge whichever Daedric artifact you bring him during the Blood of the Daedra main quest... even the Oghma Infinium, a book awarded from a Daedric quest that isn't even unlocked until the aforementioned main mission begins. Even if you know where Hermaeus Mora's shrine is, you can't actually access said side mission until you've completed every other Daedric quest at the temples around Cyrodiil. That means that if you wanted to get this item, you'd have to wait until the late game (Level 20+ and up) to meet the level requirements on the Daedric quests, complete them all and finally do Mora's quest (which is also difficult). Doing all of this and giving the book to Martin nets a unique response where he pledges not to give into temptation before destroying the book.
• Following the tutorial, Baurus will make a guess at the player character's class based on how the player chooses to deal with the tutorial opponents (killing them with melee, a bow, sneaking past, using spells, etc.). There are a few magical classes that he will never guess because spells from those classes aren't available to a starting player character. However, if you mod the game to include them and use them, he still has dialogue for these guesses.
• Near the end of the Dark Brotherhood questline, you are tasked with finding out who the traitor that swapped your dead drop orders is. During one quest, you'll find a shrine in the lighthouse basement the traitor lived in that's dedicated to a severed head. Should you take that head with you to the location where you later meet the Black Hand and drop it there, it prompts a unique set of dialogue from Black Hand Speaker Mathieu Bellamont, heavily hinting the identity of the traitor.
• Sheogorath has an impressive amount of alternate dialogue if you visit his shrine (to complete his Daedric quest) at any point after you've installed the Shivering Isles DLC. Depending on when you visit him, his responses range from confusion that you're talking to him (when you've already visited his palace in said region) to near-anger that you've purposely stepped out of the Isles to handle a trivial matter back in Cyrodiil. If you hold off on doing the Shrine quest until after Sheogorath has become Jyggalag, you'll be greeted by Haskill instead. If you do it after you've mantled Sheogorath, he'll also sass you for praying to yourself.
• In the Knights of the Nine DLC, the Prophet who sends you on your first mission ("Pilgrimage") has a number of different responses for what the player has done up to that point. This includes all of the side mission chains, as well as whether you've already completed the main quest or not. He will even acknowledge whether you performed a Face–Heel Turn and joined the Mythic Dawn during the main quest to infiltrate their shrine. Amusingly, if you attempt to interact with the Wayshrines during the Pilgrimage while wearing the Gray Fox's mask, the final reward from the Thieves' Guild questline, the gods themselves will chide you for wearing a "false face" instead of your true identity.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Main Game

• NPCs will interact with items you drop on the ground, and react differently depending on the item, their social standing, and their relationship with the player. They may just take the item, or they may approach you and return it. If two NPCs approach the same item, it's even possible for them to argue over which of them saw it first, and they'll fight over it. It even works on enemies, allowing the player to get them to kill each other if they can sneak into a room and leave an item behind without being seen. If the items you drop are weapons, a guard will approach you and tell you not to leave weapons lying in the streets, because someone could get hurt. If you're a jerk to them about the warning, they'll issue you a small bounty as a fine for disrupting the peace.
• You can "pickpocket" the Briar Hearts out of Forsworn Briarhearts, who have had their natural hearts replaced by Briar Hearts to give them magical power; doing this kills them instantly.
• There are variations in dialogue between characters depending on if you spoke to them before other characters in the conversation got to them. For example, early in the game, if you get to Hadvar's uncle first and talk to him before Hadvar does the conversation goes a little differently; i.e., "Yes, Player Character told me about the dragon too and I hardly believed it." NPCs will also have different dialogue if you've already looted the objects required to complete their quests.
  • Similarly, if you've killed Grelod the orphanage owner before starting the Dark Brotherhood initiation quest, Aventus Aretino will be amazed at the guild's efficiency when you go to talk with him about his Black Sacrament. Muiri will also have changed dialogue if you cleared out Raldbthar before "Mourning Never Comes", expressing disappointment that she didn't get to cause Alain Dufont's death herself, as well as the fact that she didn't get the chance to take care of something else that she wanted to at the same time (that is, requesting that you also kill Nilsine Shatter-Shield while you're at it), but trusting that you already killed him. This does lock her out of being a marriage candidate, however, as killing Nilsine is her requirement for the option.
  • Another sort of example can be seen in the mission "The Way of The Voice" where the player learns the words to shouts Unrelenting Force and Whirlwind Sprint. If a word for Whirlwind Sprint such as "Wuld" has already been learned (the layout of the game means you will already have exactly one word of Unrelenting Force at that point), Arngeir will point it out and have Borri teach them the next word in the shout instead.
  • You're expected to complete the Thieves' Guild questline without killing anyone, and if necessary, only killing nameless enemy guards instead of important NPCs. However, none of the NPCs you interact with (with a few exceptions like Calcelmo) are essential, meaning you can kill almost all of them, even the ones you're specifically ordered to not hurt. Doing so nets you unique (and angry) dialogue from Mercer, Brynjolf, and Maven.
  • While completing the Dark Brotherhood questline has no effect on the Civil War questline, choosing to join the Imperial Legion afterward has the oath you take being changed to reflect the fact that Titus Mede II is obviously no longer Emperor.
  • When doing the quest "Season Unending", Delphine and Esbern will exchange words with Arngeir, and their dialogue changes depending on whether or not the Blades have given you the quest to kill Paarthurnax as well as whether you actually chose to do it.
  • During "The Golden Claw", Arvel the Swift has different dialogue if you manage to talk to him without killing the Wounded Frostbite Spider that has him trapped (by Calming or sneaking past it).
• You can snatch arrows out of the air in mid-flight, and knock arrows out of the air with your own. Nearly impossible to do either of these without the Slow Time shout.
• During the mission "Diplomatic Immunity", you can disguise yourself as a Thalmor officer. The effectiveness of your disguise, however, is actually based on your race: Beast-races will be spotted instantly due to their vastly different anatomy (most notably a tail); humans will be all right at a distance, but will get caught if they get too close to other guards; non-Altmer elves can get a little closer. Altmer, of course, have it best, as not only can you walk freely all the way to the Solar, you can actually talk with the guards and order them away from their posts. At no point is this tactic ever suggested to you, leaving it purely up to your own initiative. The only catch is you need the Hooded variant of the Altmer robe to conceal your face from a distance if you're not Altmer. Interestingly, the guards have dialogue for checking your face even if you're wearing a hooded Thalmor robe.
• Normally, when asked about the "attic room" Delphine just says that there is no attic room and you can have the one on the left. If you rent a room beforehand Delphine says something akin to "Why didn't you say that before? We don't have an attic room, but I know what you mean".
• In Elenwen's Solar during "Diplomatic Immunity," you can eavesdrop on a conversation between a Thalmor agent and one of their spies, Gissur, who is looking for Esbern. If you don't kill the spy before he's dismissed and leaves, you can find him later in Riften in the Ragged Flagon. Pickpocketing him reveals orders that he's there waiting for you to show up. He has nothing to say to you, but once you ask around about Esbern, he leaves the Flagon and you can follow him to eavesdrop on him talking to his Thalmor contact. Evade detection from them and head back into the Flagon (or just wait in there for them in the first place) and you can witness the Thalmor soldiers come in and question the owner, then leave when he refuses to cooperate while Gissur stays behind to keep an eye out for you.
• A merchant in Riften is in debt to Sapphire, a member of the Thieves' Guild. The player can persuade her to let him go... but if they've joined the guild, they can demand a cut of the profit, and if they've become Guildmaster, they can pull rank and just tell her to back off. The latter option particularly has her grow nervous when you bring up the subject because you've found out she's doing business on her own without giving the Guild a cut.
• One of the first quests in the main questline is to head to Bleak Falls Barrow and get the Dragonstone for Farengar. However, you may have already been there thanks to the quest to retrieve the Golden Claw, and if you already have the Dragonstone you have the option to tell Farengar so and he's surprised and impressed. However, if you do have to go get the Dragonstone after he tells you to, when you come back you'll find a disguised Delphine in his lab discussing ancient texts from the Dragon War, and he tells you she was the one who located the stone. This small addition also changes dialogue with Delphine several hours later in "A Blade in the Dark" — if you didn't see the scene of her with Farengar, she just talks about investigating the old burial mounds and tracking the patterns of resurrections, but if you did see the scene, she brings up the player retrieving the Dragonstone, which is a map of the burial mounds, and the player remembers her from the meeting.
• In the Civil War questline, once you prove yourself to either Tullius or Ulfric and take the oath to join them, you cannot just switch sides by changing your mind and take the oath to join the other side instead. The quest immediately after this is to find the Jagged Crown, and once you have it you have to take it back to your leader. However, as an optional objective (which is never suggested in the game), you can deliver it to the other leader in exchange for letting you switch sides. They will comment on you trying to play both sides, and the next quest, defending or besieging Whiterun as the first major battle of the war, shifts to a test of loyalty to make sure you're sincere.
• You can shield bash by attacking while blocking. If you're blocking with a torch, this will set the enemy on fire.
• Casting Calm or Courage on an NPC is a good way to grind your Illusion skill. However, try casting Calm on Colette at the College of Winterhold; her response will make you feel dirty.
  Colette: Stop that! I will not be violated by some...half-Septim magician!
• When you first enter Markarth, a small scene will trigger where a visitor to the city named Margaret will be murdered by an agent of the Forsworn. If you're fast enough, you can kill the agent before he gets to her. Talk to her, and she'll thank you for saving her life and reward you with a piece of jewelry. Later, during the quest "The Forsworn Conspiracy" (which is started after said scene), you're able to ask her directly for information, rather than having to search her room.
• During "A Blade In the Dark," Delphine will talk about Kynesgrove and the dragon burial mound there. On the off chance that you actually made your way all the way out to Kynesgrove and went all the way up to the top of the hill to where the burial mound is located prior to the quest, then when Delphine brings up Kynesgrove, you get a unique dialogue option to mention that you've seen the mound - but not if you just visited Kynesgrove. You have to actually walk all the way up the hill to the mound itself to trigger this.
  • If you have the follower Roggi Knot-Beard from Kynesgrove with you when you learn about the dragon soon to be arrived at Kynesgrove in this quest, once you leave the building, Roggi shouts "Don't you know there's a dragon attacking!?" and starts running to Kynesgrove - his hometown.
• "Necromage," a Restoration skill perk, increases the effects of all spells on undead. If the player is a vampire, their self-targeting spells will also be more effective. Though, it is not entirely clear whether this is really intended or a bug - The Unofficial Skyrim Patch seems to think the latter and removes it.
• Almost every single door that is opened via a mechanism (lever, pull chain, secret handle, etc) has a mechanism on each side of the door, so it can be opened from either side. This is even if you couldn't logically get to the other side of the door from any in-game method.
• If you have Erandur (a noted priest of Mara) as your follower, and head to the Temple of Mara in Riften, he may remark that he's always wanted to make a pilgrimage there, and that you've made him happy by bringing him.
• During the prologue, Ralof makes a passing comment as he enters Helgen to be executed. "I wonder if Vilod is still making that mead with juniper berries mixed in." If the Dragonborn returns to Helgen later in the game and jumps from the tower onto the second floor of the inn, like they did in the prologue, they'll find a few bottles labeled "Mead with Juniper Berry".
• You can mine for ore by attacking the ore vein with a pickaxe. It's actually faster than the "Mine" action. You can also use the Elemental Fury shout - which speeds up your weapon attack speed - to mine in a matter of seconds.
• If you go all the way back to Ustengrav after completing "The Horn of Jurgen Windcaller", you can return the horn to its resting place, which will grant you a free Dragon Soul.
• If you hurry into Farengar's quarters after sending news of the dragon attack to Jarl Balgruuf, you can ask about his dragon project before the Jarl comes in. If you have raised your enchanting, destruction, or alchemy skill high enough, you can show off your knowledge of said skill by using jargon that only someone proficient in that skill would know. Like J'zargo, Farengar is impressed by your knowledge.
• Attempting to Soul Trap Legate Rikke, Ulfric Stormcloak, or Galmar Stone-Fist will not work, and they will resist it. This is because you can meet them in Sovngarde. Tullius is fair game, though.
• If you get married, the game keeps track of people you've helped, with whom you've become guildmates, and/or with whom you've become close allies. Three of these people will be at your wedding, even if they have to travel from another part of the game world to do it. Unfortunately this may cause the bodies of long-dead NPCs to spawn at the ceremony, which will cause an uproar and shock your fiance into calling off the marriage. Apparently the dev team doesn't always think about the permanence of death.
• When you first meet J'zargo, he'll ask you if you've yet mastered the Expert-level Destruction spells. Normally, you can only say no, causing him to gloat that he'll be the first. However, if you take the Expert Perk in the Destruction Tree, you can tell him that yes, you have. J'zargo is legitimately impressed, and a little surprised.
• If your follower somehow manages to get in trouble with the guards, such as accidentally hitting one, they'll complain about the mess you got them into. You can assure them that you'll handle the guards.
• During Sheogorath's Daedric quest, you can't directly open the character menu. However, if you manage to access your inventory by pickpocketing Pelagius or searching the dead goat, you'll find a unique item description for the Wabbajack: "It's all you've got..."
• The dragon attack that starts the game ultimately turns out to have been Alduin trying to find the Dragonborn and kill them before they realize their power. Therefore, if you wait around during the fight for too long, Alduin will eventually identify you and start attacking you specifically.
• If an NPC is carrying firewood (as in doing the 'picking up chopped wood from a pile and carrying it in their arms' animation), and you kill them, firewood will drop as an item. You can also pickpocket it right out of their hands.
• Generally, when going to meet Balgruuf, Irileth will intercept you en route and demand to know why you're intruding. But if you manage to bypass Irileth without getting too close to trigger her challenge and go for Balgruuf, he'll angrily demand to know what's so important that you'd barge in on his council with Proventus.
• During the dragon attack in the Prologue, when following Hadvar to the keep you have the opportunity to approach Tullius. Hang around him a few seconds and he'll turn to you and exclaim, "Run, you idiot!"
• During the quest "In My Time of Need", after telling Saadia about the Alik'r chasing her, you can kill Kematu easily by travelling to Rorikstead and telling them about her location. After Saadia has been paralyzed during the ambush and before speaking to Kematu, kill him and Saadia will wake up and, although angry at first, will thank you for helping her and give you the reward.
• Unrelenting Force, when used underwater, kills any fish it touches, making them float to the surface. As a shock wave traveling through water would indeed be lethal to fish.
• When you enter an inn and sit down, the owner will get someone to come wait on you, and you can order food and drinks from them.
• If you progress far enough into the Companions' questline to become a werewolf, then join the Dark Brotherhood, Arnbjorn, who used to be in the Companions and is also a werewolf, will know you're one the first time you talk to him and hopes you have better luck with them than he did.^note The trigger is actually whether you're a werewolf rather than whether or not you're a Companion though, so if you use a mod to make yourself a werewolf he'll also make the same remarks even if you haven't joined the guild.
• After completing "Season Unending," when she's leaving High Hrothgar, Elenwen is still essential, and she'll walk all the way back to the Embassy. It's difficult to even get into her Solar after "Diplomatic Immunity" since you normally can't get back into the Embassy without glitching, mods, or console commands... but if you can, you'll find Elenwen's essential flag is disabled and you can kill her for what she's done. There's no reason to disable the essential flag because normally a player would never meet her again afterward, but Bethesda expected someone to try.
• During the quest to capture Odahviing, he'll grab and throw a guard off the Dragonsreach balcony. Afterward, if you go outside of Whiterun (through three separate cells and loading screens) and go all the way down to the foot of the cliff beneath the castle, you can find that very same guard's corpse. It will also change between a Whiterun guard and a Stormcloak soldier depending on who controls Whiterun.
• You can encounter bandits trying to raid a giant's camp north of Rorikstead in Whiterun. Usually these bandits will be wiped out quickly, but on the off chance one survives and flees, he won't just randomly run away. He has a custom AI package that causes him to run to a cavern named Oritheim north of the giant camp, where some more bandits live who are surrounded by mammoth remains, and the bandit leader had a journal complaining that they're running out of food and desperate for anything, including mammoth meat. What really makes this a case of Developer's Foresight is that once you've cleared this bandit cave out, the attacks on the giant camp will stop.
• If you've reached the point where you can assassinate the Emperor in the Dark Brotherhood questline, and also are at the point where you can start the Battle of Solitude in the Stormcloak Civil War questline, Ulfric will hold off on any attacks on Solitude because of the Emperor's presence in the city. Ulfric will mention that as much as he would like to kill the Emperor, he knows that doing so will trigger a full-on, all-out war with the entire Empire rather than just a local provincial rebellion.
• There's an otherwise unremarkable NPC in Nightgate Inn named Fultheim, who has no connections to any quests and only mentions that he "wants to drink [his] memories away." He seems completely meaningless... unless you pickpocket him, which reveals that he has a Blades sword. Furthermore, equipping a set of Thalmor Robes causes him to instantly go hostile if he sees you.
• In the base game, the only way to effectively "join" the Penitus Oculatus is to eliminate the Dark Brotherhood. However, if you're allied with them and wearing a set of their armor and the Emperor is dead, there are special lines spoken by the guards regarding your inability to save the Emperor. This is, however, impossible in an un-modded game because the only way to kill the Emperor is to complete the Dark Brotherhood questline, which is naturally impossible if you've already wiped them out. That didn't stop Bethesda from recording these lines.
• Entering the Ragged Flagon Cistern requires to properly join the Thieves Guild; the door is initially blocked and unpickable. If you enter the Cistern anyway without belonging to the Thieves Guild (possible only by cheating or using a mod which alters the Thieves Guild questline), the action is registered as "trespassing".
• If you're caught while stealing only food or potions, then eat/drink them before guards catch you, it doesn't count as you committing a crime because there's no evidence. This also happens if you pass by a guard, he notices you from your bounty, and then eat the food before talking to him.
• Frost Atronachs will not fight Wispmothers, as they are both frost elementals. If you're fighting a Wispmother and summon a Frost Atronach to help, he will kneel before her and neither will fight each other, meanwhile her Wisps will continue to attack you.
• Playing hide-and-seek with the town children will level your Sneak ability.
• During "Missing in Action", if you ask the Thalmor guard standing outside Northwatch Keep to release Thorald Gray-Mane, he'll coldly tell you that "the only way he'd be released is by order of the Imperial Legion". He's actually completely serious, and you can go to Solitude and request General Tullius to give such an order. However, unless you've joined the legion and completed "The Jagged Crown" quest, he will always refuse. But if you have, Tullius will give you the order and the Thalmor guards at Northwatch Keep will release Thorald without a fight (only in the Special Edition, though; this option is bugged in the original version and will never work).
• When you join the Companions, you must fight against Vilkas (the sequence ends when you strike him three times or bring his health to 0). At the fight's conclusion, Vilkas' dialog changes slightly depending on the amount of damage he received, and sounds a bit impressed if he is reduced to 0 hit points.
• Even though the Healing and Flames spells are available by default for all races, they still have spell tomes associated with them (which are normally just glorified junk), just in case you mod in a character that doesn't have those spells at the start. Those spell tomes even appear in various vendor lists and the Whiterun court mage Farengar Secret-Fire (who you must meet early in the main quest) always sell them.
• Bound Weapons function as normal ones in every way except one: They are fully blocked by Ward spells.
• If the Dragonborn changes into werewolf form in Jorrvaskr, the Companions will not become hostile.
• If you leave Dustman's Cairn after Farkas transforms but before finishing the "Proving Honor" quest, going back to Jorrvaskr and speaking to any member of the Circle will allow you to ask them what it's like being a werewolf. Aela, Skjor, and Vilkas will warn you to keep your mouth shut, reminding you that you aren't a proper member of the Companions yet. Kodlak, however, is shocked that you found out and promises to talk to you about it after completion of the quest.
• Early in the main questline, if you stop by The Sleeping Giant Inn after retrieving the Dragonstone from Bleak Falls Burrow, Delphine will be missing and you will be unable to rent a room there.
• If you approach Captain Aldis while wearing Stormcloak armor, he'll angrily demand to know why you're dressed as a traitor. Your dialogue options will be to either apologize and say you didn't mean anything by it, in which case he'll let you off with a warning not to do it again, or declare allegiance to Ulfric, in which case he puts a bounty on your head and attacks, likely resulting in you being chased out of Solitude by the town guards (unsurprisingly, given Solitude's experience with Ulfric).
• Angeline Morrard will offer you a side quest to ask Captain Aldis about her daughter in the Legion. Normally, you'd have to persuade or intimidate him into giving up the information, but if you're a Legate in the Imperial Legion, you can instead pull rank and order him to tell you what you want to know.
• If you reach the main questline quest "A Cornered Rat" without having spoken to Brynjolf first, he has unique dialogue where he will refuse to tell you about Esbern unless you complete his scheme.
• Meridia infamously has a speech that plays when you pick up her beacon, starting the quest "The Break of Dawn". She also has a second tirade in the game files that only plays if the player drops the beacon, which is normally impossible to hear because the beacon is a quest item and as such cannot be dropped, but clearly Bethesda expected someone to find a way around that.
• Nilheim is home to a unique encounter where an injured merchant named Telrav will ask you to escort him to the ruins, luring you into a bandit ambush before turning around and attacking. If you clear out the bandits before talking to him, he'll express outrage at his men's deaths before attacking you by himself. Note that the bandits in this ruin are initially non-hostile and given the name "Guard" if you don't talk to Telrav, so unless you've done this encounter beforehand, there's little reason to do this.
• If you follow "The Forsworn Conspiracy" normally, you'll follow both leads, and when you return to Eltys, he'll be dead, and you'll be framed for his murder. However, you don't actually have to follow up on both leads - you only have to investigate up to either Nepos the Nose (if following up on Weylin's story) or Thonvar Silver-Blood (if following up on Margaret's story), and can completely ignore the other lead; doing so will still land you in prison, but you'll only have dialogue regarding the one lead you followed up on when you're arrested.
• If you manage to have enough money to buy Breezehome at the moment the option becomes available right at completion of main quest "Bleak Falls Barrow", and visit it prior to completing the next quest "Dragon Rising" (in-game dialog urges you to proceed), you'll notice Lydia's bedroom doesn't spawn until she's assigned as your housecarl.
• Valmir introduces the "Siege on the Dragon Cult" quest by telling the Dragonborn that the faction's leader (he spawns as a NPC of the Civil War faction you choose, or as an Imperial if you didn't start the Civil War questline) tasked him to retrieve a powerful weapon from the nearby ruins. If you start "Siege on the Dragon Cult" after finishing the Civil War questline, you can say "General Tullius/Ulfric Stormcloak never mentioned you..."; Valmir retorts Tullius/Ulfric would deny because spies are everywhere, and the briefing proceeds as intended.
• Some Speech checks (notably, the one where you need to convince Whiterun guards to let you in the city early in the main quest) are supposed to be impossible to fail because the required skill level is lower than the starting level of the skill at game's creation (15), but those challenges still have a failure answer which triggers if needed (e.g. if playing with a mod changing the skills' starting level).
• When fleeing Helgen with Hadvar at the start, if playing without an alternate start mod, and if you didn't wander too much before proceeding with the main quest, you normally reach Riverwood during daytime. Alvor will be working in his forge, and he will temporarily stop working to welcome Hadvar and the Dragonborn; the dialog ends with Alvor mentioning he'll go back to work. If for some reason you enter Riverwood at a different time, Alvor will conclude the dialog with a different line. If he was currently sleeping when you arrived, he'll say he's going to get some rest; if you meet him outside of his worktime but when he isn't sleeping, there's no specific ending to the discussion.
• The effect of the Speech skill on prices is capped at 100. It normally has no effect since skills are supposed to be capped at 100 anyway, but this limitation prevents players to break the economy if playing with mods or tweaks which change the skills' caps: if this feature weren't capped, a higher than 100 Speech would result in the player being able to sell items for more money than the merchant sells them (in other words, free unlimited money).
• If you bring Mjoll the Lioness to Mzinchaleft, some of her ambient dialog will comment on never expecting to return there, after being severely injured by a Dwarven Centurion there.
• If you somehow (via modding, console, or otherwise) manage to chase Alduin over the ridge of Bleak Falls Barrow after exiting Helgen at the very start of the game, you will find that he does not actually vanish, but flies over to the Throat of the World, heads two thirds of the way up the mountain, and then heads due east. If the player is skilled and determined enough, and has managed to disable invisible barriers, they can chase him all the way to the Velothi mountains, and see him circling in one particular region: Skuldafn.
• During the main quest "Diplomatic Immunity", animation at the embassy party is normally provided by the Bard College's student Illdi. If she dies prior to the quest, the game spawns at the party another bard named Grete, who shares Illdi's voice set and most of her lines for the party, but also has an unique line (stating she didn't attend Bard College but would like to).

DLC/Add-ons

• If you proceed far enough in the Dawnguard questline to meet Durnehviir without completing "Dragon Rising" (that is, killing your first dragon and learning you're a Dragonborn), he comments that it was his first instinct to refer to you as a "dovah" but he's not sure why, and perhaps you'll find out for yourself in time.
• If you side with the eponymous group in Dawnguard, you will be sent to recruit a Nord hunter, who will be waiting outside a random bear cave. If you had cleared out that cave previously, the hunter will complain about you killing the beast he spent two weeks tracking.
• Once Harkon is killed in Dawnguard, you can travel back to the Soul Cairn and tell Valerica. She will then return home to take up residence in her study.
• During the "Awakening" quest in Dawnguard, you get Serana as a follower and the objective to bring her home to Castle Volkihar. Bringing her to Fort Dawnguard instead will prompt her to comment that she doesn't like the look of the place and wait for you at the entrance. You can then discuss your findings with Isran; this doesn't change the objective as he'll suggest that you play along for the time being (although he'll still be surprised that you basically handed an Elder Scroll to the vampires afterward since there's no dialogue option to tell him about that).
• If you've acquired the Oghma Infinium, and talk to Neloth in Dragonborn about Hermaeus Mora, you can genuinely impress him by saying that you've read the book. However, the dev team didn't truly think of everything here, as there's no special dialogue for talking to Neloth with the book still in your possession.
  • In addition, if you acquired the book when you first go into Apocrypha and meet Hermaeus Mora he will refer to you in familiar terms as his champion. Likewise if you happen to complete the Dragonborn story before initiating the Oghma Infinium, Hermaeus Mora will reference the events of Dragonborn when he speaks to you.
• An unfortunately under-thought instance in Dragonborn, it's possible to get the first Word of Bend Will and use it to cleanse the All-Maker Stones before getting the quest to do those tasks. However, all that happens if you do this is that the story jumps to this point, resulting in Storn thanking you for completing a task he hasn't given you yet and the player's dialogue responses being like they understand what he's talking about when he mentions cleansing the Stones. It's somewhat mitigated by the fact that nothing in-game tells you to use Bend Will on the Stones until Storn gives you the quest to do so, so if you did skip ahead, you probably knew what you were doing and thus know the story you skipped. On the practical side though, not getting the quest to cleanse the Stones before doing so means you don't get the unique powers from them you would have for cleansing them (at least said powers aren't very good so you won't miss them).
• In Dragonborn, if you order your follower to interact with an All-Maker Stone that is still corrupted by Miraak's influence, they'll enter a trance and begin working on the shrine/temple like everyone else, complete with reciting Miraak's Mantra.
  • If you directly interact with a corrupted All-Maker stone, you'll go into a trance and start working on the stone as well. However, unlike NPCs, you can come out of the trance whenever you want. Furthermore, Neloth will be observing the first stone you encounter; if you touch the stone in front of him, he'll have unique dialogue, with a few more unique lines when you snap out of it.
• Normally, the fight against Miraak in Dragonborn has him absorbing his own dragons' souls first before absorbing Sahrotaar, the dragon you rode to get there. If you choose to re-mount Sahrotaar and fight from the air, Miraak may opt to absorb Sahrotaar first, thus forcing you to fight him on foot.
• Lydia has very specific dialogue options on Solsthiem. For example, during the quest to explore Miraak's temple, if you stop to talk to her, she'll mention that Frea is "pretty good in a fight, for a Skaal." She won't say this anywhere else, and will only say it while you actually talk directly to her.
• Bringing Frea to explore the Dwarven ruins with Neloth in the Dragonborn main quest will prompt unique lines from her. It's worth noting that only Frea has these lines, and this is the only time she uses them.
• When you start the main questline of Dragonborn, Miraak will appear to steal the souls of Dragons that you've killed with an irritatingly high frequency. With one exception: when you get sent to Saering's Watch to learn the first word of Bend Will, you'll have to fight a Dragon there. If you had no other Dragon Souls to spare, Miraak will not appear, ensuring that you can at least learn one word of Bend Will and make some progress without having to laboriously hunt down more Dragons. Similarly, after exiting Nchardak after having learned the second word, Miraak will send a dragon named Krosulhah to attack you, and won't appear after you kill Krosulhah.
  • On the subject of Krosulhah, he is more talkative then your average dragon and will comment upon being hit with Dragonrend.
• In the quest "Lost to the Ages", the ghost of the adventurer Katria can accompany you, and when you pass by her corpse, she'll ask you to grab the journal from her body. You can, of course, loot everything else she had on her; and if you take her armor, she has a unique line complaining about it and asking why you couldn't leave her "with just a little dignity".
• When bringing Serana to Castle Volkihar, the quest marker directs you to a small jetty with a boat near Northwatch Keep. That being said, the Dawnguard DLC also adds ferrymen to Windhelm, Dawnstar, and Solitude that normally take you between the three, and you can pay them to take you to the island instead. However, since they normally avoid the island due to the (fairly justified) belief that it's cursed, they will gouge the hell out of you.
• In the Forgotten Vale, there's a certain waterfall flowing underground that will trigger some unique dialogue from Serana warning you to stay away from it. If you decide to jump down anyways—which is actually quite difficult to do without using the "become ethereal" shout, as the water heeds your jumping and hitting the wall of the falls on your way down is likely to kill you with the fall damage—you'll find yourself in a small river grotto with nothing much of interest besides some feral falmer and a river that will lead you back to the entrance of the vale. Serana will have another piece of radiant dialogue where she complains about the player haphazardly jumping down waterfalls.
• Normally, Dawnguard's main quest starts when you're approached by Durak in any of the main cities, who will give you the quest marker and map icon for Dayspring Canyon, where you can find him practicing with his crossbow. If you manage to stumble into Dayspring Canyon before it is marked, Durak will be there, and he'll give you unique dialogue on joining the Dawnguard and meeting Isran, and the main quest proceeds as normal.

Modded Content

• Using the Live Another Life mod, you can start off being in Whiterun or going anywhere else in Skyrim before visitng Helgen and starting the main questline. However, once you start the questline running from Helgen to Riverwood and then to Whiterun to warn Jarl Balgruuf, the fast-travel icon to Whiterun is disabled until you've talked to the gate guards, just in case you tried to break that vanilla quest by skipping the gate greeting scene.
  • The mod starts the game inside a dungeon and offers several alternative backgrounds for the Dragonborn^note it affects the starting gear and the place in Skyrim from where you really start the adventure. To properly start the game, you must choose a background (by interacting with the Mara statue) then go to sleep in the bed located next. If you decide to use the console to teleport yourself elsewhere before completing those starts, the game immediately teleports you back to the starting area.
  • There is also how there is a fully recorded line for Jarl Balgruuf if he is a stranger to you, which never played in the unmodded game for obvious reasons.
  • The similar Skyrim Unbound mod, which allows the player to play a non-Dragonborn character, tweaks Ulfric's last words accordingly: instead of saying that the Dragonborn should do it, he'll simply ask for it to be "a good kill", recycling a line from the Stormcloak version of the questline.
• Inigo is standout example of this in modding, because he responds to everything you could possibly do in the vanilla game and its DLC content. No matter where you go or what you do, he has a comment on it, and his commentary can get extremely specific is you ask him how he thinks you're doing, such as remarking on how long you've been wearing armor, what political affiliations you have, or even if you're carrying certain items like animal meats, human flesh. He even has an in-universe justification for repeating dialog, "Too much skooma back in the day."
  • Inigo even gets special dialogue for fighting certain unique characters. If you're fighting Elenwen, for example, he'll call her an "arrogant bully."
• Likewise the Sofia Funny Companion mod is very much a Distaff Counterpart to Inigo, mouthing off at most every single thing imaginable from the ease of puzzles and traps to how skilled the Dragonborn is in a specific area, how long they travel without rest, what items she is given and a preference to something like Elven armour over the better Nord and Ebony crafts, what armour and clothing the Dragonborn wears, comments while sneaking, and never-ending jokes.
• In VIGILANT, a couple of early quests expect you to go full Knight Templar and execute people who you're ordered to kill due to Daedric influence. There's no indication that you can refuse, but if you go back to Altano and tell him you refuse to do the killings after speaking to them, he'll first insist you do it, and then go do it himself. The first target is a valid threat with genuine Daedric powers, but the second pair of targets are an innocent woman and her daughter, and if you kill them you'll be cursed by Stendarr for murdering innocents. If you pay attention to notes and dialogue, you'll be able to determine the second pair's innocence and avoid the curse.
• A somewhat-example is the dialogue mod Khajiit Speak. Every line the player can pick (except Dark Brotherhood one-liners) is rewritten to reflect Khajiit verbal tics and sarcasm. One conversation in Whiterun has a line re-written to mention that, like in Vanilla, the player is a Cathay, and there are options to change this to Dagi-raht or Suthay to reflect other mods that make these sub-races playable.
• In The Forgotten City mod when you have to kill Rykas for his unique armor, using console commands to kill him and then resurrect him after taking it, or wearing it on any time loop after the one you killed him on will have him comment that your armor looks very familiar.
• In the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal mod, if you have completed Molag Bal and/or Sheogorath's quests beforehand, they will acknowledge that this isn't the first time you have met.
• The Ordinator — Perks of Skyrim mod consists of a whole overhaul of the perk trees and includes a few examples as well:
  • "Aurification" allows to insta-kill a paralyzed target by turning it into gold. Characters flagged essential are immune to this, to prevent it from breaking the game (or to make sure smart players don't use this power on purpose to get rid of critical characters).
  • "That Which Does Not Kill You…" (Alchemy) gives three free perk points and a passive buff to crafted potions' potency if you survived a powerful poisoning effect granted when you take the perk. If you reset Alchemy's progression after already having taken That Which Does Not Kill You…, you won't be able to gain the perk again, to prevent you to gain unlimited free perk points this way.
• The Glimma berserker Nord follower, as well as using tons of dialogue from other characters played by Corrie English, will sometimes have a glazed look in her eyes after battle like she had gone berserk. After a few seconds, she will return to the beautiful look and personality she has.
• Epic Restoration contains the spell "renounce", which allows the player to rid themselves of Daedric influence if cast at the right time. Notably, it works on the Thieves' Guild questline (since Nocturnal secretly backs them) but does not work on the Dark Brotherhood questline (since Sithis isn't a Daedra).
• In the Kaiden follower mod, once you've started a romance and get to his quest where you confront his daedra-worshipping ex-lover, her dialogue to The Dragonborn changes depending on a number of factors. If you've gotten married, and/or have children, she'll taunt you about it. Additionally, she'll have a different comment depending on your race or gender—most notably, if playing as a female Breton, she'll comment slyly that Kaiden Has a Type, given that she is also a female Breton.
• Helgen Reborn redubs all of Froki's vanilla dialog with a new actor, as he plays into a side quest later on with new dialog. It prevents a notable difference in actors later on.

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