My MO with Nei is, play differently. At this point I've started enough characters, going back to the 360, that it's easy to slip into the comforts of routine, heading to the same places (Riverwood, then Whiterun) and hitting the same caves (Embershard, Bleak Falls Barrow) and playing them the same way.
I'm trying to come at things with fresh eyes. That led Nei to circle back and re-explore the newly destroyed Helgen right after leaving the opening dungeon:
Not much loot to be found, though I did scavenge some from nooks and crannies, but it was neat to see the town in the immediate aftermath and without the carnage of Alduin smashing the place up. I didn't grab a shot of it, but there was a large deer running through the main courtyard, nature filling the vacuum. Later bandits will repopulate Helgen, and then I'll clear out the bandits. Helgen gets cycled like an old sweater passed down from kid to kid.
From there I went straight to Falkreath, rather than Riverwood. My last two characters had their charters, but I was mindful to leave a lot left behind for Nei. I'd barely passed through the Falkreath hold, much less explored it, and left ample side quests in all the towns I did make it to, so there's plenty to do without repeating content. She's already got a small makeshift house in the hold, up on her homestead.
An example of playing differently was down by the bandit-infested towers along the river, southeast of Whiterun. Normally I make it a point to clear the place out, but my neophyte Nei is no match for a bandit chief so early; it would take 20-30 arrows and they can one-shot me. Instead, I ran through it, tagging the lower bandits with Fury and looting the place in the ensuing chaos. At the end I had the chief on my tail as I heisted the big chest at the end, before scrabbling down the cliff wall and off to Riften to join the Thieves Guild. Making the decision to pick and choose my battles, rather than stubbornly chip away at everything, was a major turn for how I play.
Some things never get old though, like a dagger in the dark.
This is my first time playing a Kajiit, and I'm surprised and impressed at how different the dialogue is with everyone. Her fellow wandering Kajiit traders greet her warmly and with familiarity, while most of the town guards eye her with suspicion. A bandit told me, "You remind me of my cousin's cat. I killed it, as well." Another said I'd make a nice rug. It's a small but thoroughly realized detail that has made me dig into Nei's role playing a bit more. Pretty neat.
For reasons I'm still not entirely certain of, Nei has started collecting the shoes from everyone she kills. Sometimes the armor as well. But
always the shoes.
(I think quirks like this were planted back when Skyrim was released and someone mentioned that they had "gathered every cheese wheel in Skyrim" and filled a room with them. Most of my characters have had a similar quirk since. Nei likes shoes.)
The first batch of what I'll call Untimely Demises in Skyrim:
Frozen to death
almost making it out of a cave in the deep south, reaching toward the exit in their last moments, and staying that way:
Abducted by bandits and then locked in a small chamber in a mine, and forced to work himself to death:
Crushed to death by the very gold he was after. This is one of my favorite small cave stories, a tale of two friends who go prospecting and one who gives up on the other, thinking his friend abandoned him. In reality, he'd found the gold, if you look hard enough. Or rather, the gold found him:
Unrelated, I forgot to post one of my favorite screenshots from my last character, from the Aetherium Forge:
I thought it was a nice display of the Dwarven architecture's symmetry, beauty and mystique.
