One of the most critically acclaimed and renowned games of our generation, "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim," is a blend of sincerity, exploration and absolute hilarity. After logging over 450 hours on the game, completing each official expansion, and accumulating more than 80 mods (or modifications) running on top of the original game, I can condense my experience within this game into 15 life lessons.
1. Chickens are Big Brother.
In Skyrim, chickens, cows and goats can serve as witnesses to crimes, so if you steal something or kill anything within a city and one of those animals sees you, you will be arrested.
2. Environment and lifestyle definitely compensate for diet.
The typical foods you'll find in restaurants, vendors, and the occasional dead bandit include meats, cheese, bread, mead and beer. How can I eat all of these and not gain weight?
3. You lose weight by eating food.
In Skyrim, all items have a weight value. Therefore, when you can't carry a valuable item such as a weapon or armor set, you'll have to get rid of some of your burden somehow. One common way to do this is to eat all of the food in your inventory. This could include 47 cheese wheels, 20 bottles of wine, and countless sweet rolls.
4. Dead bodies are the ultimate storage containers.
It's possible to store a war hammer the size of a fully grown man inside a dead chicken. You may be worried that someone will notice the war hammer stuck inside a chicken, but on the outside, the chicken will still look like a normal chicken.
5. Horses do not have a concept of gravity.
It is possible to ride them in a near vertical incline if you feel inclined to climb a mountain.
6. Shopkeepers have very poor senses of priority.
You can place a bucket over their head to obstruct their vision and they won't bat an eye, but when you try to take a bowl worth one coin off their counter, the whole town will attempt to murder you.
7. The soldiers in Skyrim need better knee armor.
The leading cause of retiring from adventure and conquest is an arrow to the knee. Fact: there is a chance that town guards will not attack you if you shoot them in the knee with a bow and arrow.
8. Crypts are the ultimate refrigerators.
You're exploring a burial crypt that is thousands of years old. You open a chest and what do you find inside it? Red apples and a potato.
9. The developers at Bethesda Studios have never seen human feet in their lives
Seriously. The vanilla character models' feet look like one on a bootleg action figure.
10. You learn about unknown ingredients by eating them.
Chemistry majors will cringe at this one. Were you ever curious as to what a human heart, a giant's toe, or a saber tooth tiger's eyeball would do if you threw them into a potion? To find out, all you have to do is eat the ingredient in question. For some ingredients, such as garlic, grapes, and juniper berries, this makes sense. But I'm much more curious about what a human heart would do, but there are ethical reasons not to harvest one and eat it.
11. Children are practically gods.
Children can summon assassins and wield daggers that can kill you with only a scratch, but no matter how hard you try, you just cannot kill them without mods.
12. Mods (modifications) will allow you to turn the game into anything you want.
A hammer made of feces? Sure. Firearms? Why not? Full frontal nudity? Absolutely. Whatever your heart desires, you can find it within the Skyrim modding community. That is, unless you play on Xbox or Playstation, since those consoles do not support mods.
13. Pastry theft is one of the most common crimes.
In a land marred by civil war, alcoholism, and reckless magic, the most prevalent crime appears to be theft of sweet rolls. "Let me guess, someone stole your sweet roll..." -- Whiterun Guard.
14. Your cousin has a better job than you.
"My cousin is out fighting dragons, and what do i get? Guard duty." -- Windhelm Guard
15. Everything isn't what it seems.
You will notice that all of the beverages (excluding milk and potions) are alcoholic. With that said, perhaps there are no dragons, civil war, or magic, but everyone is always extremely inebriated.
