I had originally said I was going to wait until this game went on sale but after hearing about other people playing it, I had to get it. I started playing with Morrowind and have been hooked ever since. I'm about 50 hours in and it's great. I can't even guess how many hours I've spent mixing potions, enchanting items or making weapons. I didn't know about the patch issues so I've got it installed. Hopefully it won't cause any problems. So far the only issues I've had are the occasional freeze and when I went to find the treasure chest from Treasure Map IV, it was not there. That was frustrating because I looked for almost an hour, got fed up, went online, followed a video of someone finding it step by step, only to end up in the exact same place I had been before. Everything was the same in the video save for the treasure chest actually being there.

yeah lvl 81 is the highest you can go because that would max out every single skill to 100.
I am running the dark brotherhood quests right now. I am about midway through it. So far I like the story line better than Oblivion even and I thought Oblivion was about the best game I ever played.

although i feel as though the main quest line didn't take as much time as oblivion's did. it just felt much quicker.

So I guess that the new xbox dashboard update will clear your cache, and will force you to DL the 1.2 patch for Skyrim because you will have gone back to 1.0 with the clear. So you won't be able to load any saved games or something. I was going to play Skyrim offline, but now I'm going to continue to not even try and play until they fix it.

I currently play offline with 1.0. I'm just cruising around Skyrim in bliss waiting for 1.3 to be released in the next day or so.

I bit the bullet and put Skryim in over the weekend, I couldn't take it anymore! I just declined the update and it let me play offline just fine. It was awesome to be able to play again, that game is way too good.

I started yet another new game this weekend. I'm going to go with a 2-Handed Nord Warrior. I figured playing the archtype of the whole game would get it out of my system, then on the 2nd playthrough I'll do something a little more odd.

I'm at Winterhold right now. I didn't realize how not far I have traveled. I have so much left in this game it's crazy. But I spent some time doing alchemy, enchanting, and smithing. Now that I'm out there exploring again, it's just so freaking good.

Let me suggest that until you get some of your combat skills up, don't spend too much time smithing. In one game I spent all my time collecting ingredients then smithing the hell out of them until that skill was at 100. Suddenly I had leveled up as an expert blacksmith, yet I had no fighting ability. It kind of made combat tough.

My armor rules though so it kind of balances out. I thought it would make the game broken by basically making me invincible, but I just increased the difficulty, so it's balanced back out.

So I had read on here you could become a werewolf. Didn't realize how FREAKING AWESOME it would be! Bahahahaha. I totally forgot that I still had the companions quest line to go thru. Man this game is just all over the place good. Gah!

yeah i finished the companions first

I probably should have but it's so easy to get side tracked I totally forgot they were even in that first town. I don't think I'll ever finish this game, which is fine. I'll never get rid of it.

Yeah the game is so expansive. Im probably 100 hours into it by now and ive finished the main quest, companions, thieves guild except the last part, mage's college, and dark brotherhood. i still have a lot of the misc quests left and minor faction quests.

Oh yea I have killed 5 dragons, but I have only found 2 shouts. One of them is the fire breathing one, and I just found it yesterday. I try to unlock it and it says "you need a dragon soul to unlock a shout." I have killed and absorbed 5 souls. Am I missing something? Or did the game glitch? Or did I do something wrong?