Before moving your character

• Make sure you set up the “Q” Favorites menu with your weapon sets to make switching spells or ranged/melee weapons quickly. You can do this by Favoriting your spells/weapons and then, open the Q menu. Click the weapon and assign it a hotkey by pressing any number key up to '8'.
• Make sure to rebind your 'Fill' key in Sunhelm, and setup keybindings to your liking.
• Review the F11 keybindings.

Do's and Dont's

Do's

• Do check the Missive Board for quests ranging from simple deliveries to clearing caves. For beginners, the delivery quests are a good source of gold. Picking up the vampire quests will allow you to claim the reward even if the guards killed it, though you may have to travel to The Pale in order to deliver the missive to a Vigilant of Stendarr in order to collect it.
• Do plan what you want your character to be, and allocate your perks accordingly. Perks are precious - don't use them for the sake of using them. If you can't get a perk you want right now, save that perk point, especially if there's nothing else WORTH getting for your build at the time.
• Make sure you are clean and clothed before you try to buy from or sell to shop-keepers as they will severely overcharge you if you're dirty and/or naked. In addition, certain soaps also give skill bonuses, so make sure you use the correct soap for what you want to do.
• Craft yourself a chest or barrel. If you're setting up a permanent camp, give yourself somewhere to store excess stuff you don't need to carry with you while exploring. This is also recommended if your horse dies while you're in a cave or adventuring, just in case you're storing all your things in saddlebags. You never know if a body will remain where it is, so a box is a safer bet until you can acquire a new mount.
• Use the “L” to toggle off your lantern when sneaking. Enemies can see you in lantern light!
• Build campfires regularly to check the skills menu. Campfire perks are exceptionally useful! A max level campfire gives you a 5% XP gain increase, and some skills can make swimming in glacial waters less deadly, especially helpful in the Sea of Ghosts.
• Make sure you always have a stew buff as it provides stamina over time. Nothing will kill you quicker than being disarmed when you run out of Stamina.
• Favourite items you don't want to disassemble, such as Toolkits, lantern, Mortar and Pestle, and weapons.

Dont's

• Don't rely on a SINGLE save. You don't want to hit a game breaking bug due to Skyrim being Skyrim and lose all your progress. It's recommended to have a minimum of the 10 most recent saves (the more the better).
• Don’t expect to be tackling Bleak Falls Barrow at level 1. You wouldn't expect to be killing a bandit horde within 5 minutes of picking up a sword for the first time in real life. You need to train up first.
• Don't expect to be good at a skill if you don't invest perk points in it - This is best illustrated by the heavy armor skill. You can have 100 in heavy armor, but without perks, all that does is give your armor rating a minimal increase (with a full set of legendary steel plate armor it has 505 armor at (skill) level 6 and 550 at level 100). Without spending points on heavy armor skills, you lose stamina even while standing completely still, and when you are moving it’s at a snail’s pace! With the right perks, however, you can regenerate stamina while walking and move at normal speeds.
• Don't run around like a madman if you don't need to. You can toggle between walking and running using the “Caps Lock” key.
• Don't be afraid to run if you're outnumbered, but be aware some enemies can use doors just as well as you can!
• Never go north without some way to keep warm in case of snowstorm. A tent, kindling, tinder, and wood should always be in your backpack/horse.

Hints & Tips

Hints

• Mudcrabs on both north and south shores of lake Ilinalta are a good place to train Block to 20. Be careful swimming near the Lady Stone in the center as there's a giant slaughterfish nearby.
• Any damage you take will not heal on its own so having a way to heal yourself reliably is HUGE in Wildlander. You can use the alchemy perk that allows constant healing over time, as it basically functions as a slower, always-on Healing Aura spell (Both healing aura and perk function the same way, but Aura is time limited). Other options are health drain weapons, which is very reliable, or potions. However, potions are generally not fast enough unless you can make sure you're not taking much damage through heavy armor or the like. You can also use a Poultice and wait for an hour which will heal you when not in combat.
• Most sewers have lootable boxes which contain food for free, as well as ruined books which can be crafted into paper rolls for mages.
• For the first few bandit camps you clear: Take EVERYTHING. Clutter, such as Wooden plates and tankards can be processed at the forge into charcoal and metal fragments if you have craftsmanship, or else can be sold for some coins.
• Wildlander has completely reworked skill books. While they still give you an immediate 1-up in a skill you can also study them you can study the book over and over for the experience.
• Skills in Archery (Now Marskmanship in the skill menu) will allow you to hunt more effectively, which is a great source of food and cash as selling pelts and reagents to vendors is great early game money. With the Craftsman skill, you can even fashion hides into armor and clothing. This is also a great way to practice Marksmanship and gain experience if you are short of a skill you need to level.
• The "Bestiary of Skyrim" book is your best friend, it describes in detail ways of effectively dealing with some creatures which require specific methods of killing.
• As a stealth character, you should use shadows to your advantage and bathe regularly, this will ensure NPCs have a harder time detecting you. It’s not hard to find someone who smells like a bag of day-old slaughter fish standing beside a brazier.
• As a mage, the more “weight” you are wearing the more your spells cost until you get enchantments, so wear as little as possible. No, this does not give you an excuse to run around naked, shooting fireballs (As fun as that sounds).
• If you pick up a disease, alchemists offer a potion of cure disease, but you can also use shrines. If you get cursed by grime covered items, alchemists offer a potion of cleansing.
• There are also hidden hideouts in locations all around Skyrim which you can use for safe storage, sleeping, and some even have alchemy/cooking stations if you can find them.
• Don’t try to go into Windhelm if you are a beast race without some bribe money or high speechcraft or you won’t be let in. This can lead you to freezing to death! However, there ARE sewers that lead into the city...

Tips

• The main quest cannot be started until you have killed a dragon and absorbed its soul - depending on your MCM settings this will either be time-delayed or when you reach a certain level. Do note however you can still travel to Solstheim but you cannot complete the ‘main quest’ there, Dawnguard can be done as per normal.
• Wildlander allows you to recruit an army of followers - if you are finding the game too challenging don't be afraid to recruit any you encounter!
• Manage your weight - Gold and arrows have weight in this game - only carry what you need. For a quick tip – if you have a horse, you can craft a barrel, store your gold in the barrel, pick the barrel back up and store it on your horse for only the weight of the barrel. This applies to other items too!
• Use all of your senses - some animals sneaking around can be identified by the sounds they make. The Survivial ability from the center mouse button(Wildlander 1.0) or "Alt GR" keybind(V1.1 onwards) also gives visual indicators of paths noisy enemies have taken (white light), plants to harvest (white-purple or green light), and corpses to loot(dark purple light) or weapons/tinder - Yellow Light.
• If you are an enchanter or mage - keep an eye out for Enchanted weapon handles, filled soul gem fragments or Imbued bones, they can be used for spell research.
• Join companions if you're a warrior or College if you're a mage(note you need to pass a skills test to join), they'll be an excellent source of experience if you care to do those quests, and the Companions require quite a lot of questing to actually advance in. Winterhold would be the perfect place to learn magic if it wasn't freezing. However, the college itself is plenty warm as it has a training dummy in the basement – but be aware - he fights back!

Horses

• A horse is one of the best early investments in the game as it's essentially a mobile chest. It's always worth having a 12-hour fire’s worth of wood and a tent store inside in case of an emergency blizzard. There are a few you don't have to pay for a horse if you can find them. Horses can be adopted by stealth next to them, activate and select adopt. If the ‘adopt’ option is not available, ride the horse approximately 100 meters and try again.
  • There's occasionally a horse(or group of horses) in the wilderness - typically with a dead NPC by it.
  • Midnight is in a cave underneath Dragonsreach guarded by bandits - taking this one counts as stealing(although you almost never get a bounty for doing so).

Note: You horse is not immortal by default, so if you plan on keeping one, make sure that you keep all of your loot in a crafted chest and you place this outside of any dungeon you plan on entering (as your horse can be killed while you are inside if you havent checked the area before entering)

How to open locks

• Spells Knock, Knock II and Knock III can be used to unlock any item. Knock III empowered can open master chests.
• Knock spell also comes in scroll format.
• You can "Bash" (attack) Novice, apprentice and Adept wooden locks if your current health and stamina reaches the requirements. (boss chests and steel doors can’t be bashed - if your weapon makes a metal on metal noise, it cant be bashed) Note: Weapon doesn't matter
  • Novice Level Locks: If (HP * 2) + Stamina > 350 = Success.
  • Apprentice Level Locks: If (HP * 2) + Stamina > 450 = Success.
  • Adept Level Locks: If (HP * 2) + Stamina > 550 = Success.
• Expertise and pick-able locks.
  • You need certain Expertise threshold for each level of locks in Requiem. Expertise is not the Lockpicking skill level, but a different value that is used to determine your capability to open each levels of locks.
  • Pickable locks by Expertise:
    • Novice : challenging with 5 Expertise, moderate with 10 Expertise.
    • Apprentice : challenging with 10 Expertise, moderate with 20 Expertise.
    • Adept : challenging with 20 Expertise, moderate with 40 Expertise.
    • Expert : challenging with 40 Expertise, moderate with 65 Expertise.
    • Master : challenging with 65 Expertise, moderate with 120 Expertise.
  • You need at least 'challenging' level of Expertise to pick that level of lock. Meaning, to pick Adept lock, you need at least 20 Expertise. But it will be very difficult to open until you get up to 40 Expertise.
  • Activating locks that are either challenging or impossible will pop up a message box indicating the difficulty/impossibility to open the lock. Locks you can pick moderately will not pop any message box.
• Gaining Expertise
  • Lockpicking Expertise is not gained by simply leveling Lockpicking skill level. As mentioned above, Expertise and Skill Level are two different values.
  • Lockpicking Expertise can be gained by several ways. Taking Perks in Lockpicking that give you Expertise, choosing Khajiit race starts with bonus 10 Expertise. Fortify Lockpicking potions and enchantments provide Lockpicking Expertise. Standing Stone bonus of The Thief and The Tower provides 20 and 40 Expertise respectively.
• Lock Respawn
  • While the locks 'respawn' (unlocked locks being locked again) after reset time, they will not give you Lockpicking experience again. One object = One Lockpicking experience.