You take on the role of Dovahkiin, the Dragonborn which instantly gives you powers like Dragon shouts, and you’re the only one that can free Skyrim from the Nordic Dragon, Alduin. However this is easier said than done. This is not due to game’s difficulty but the amount of stuff you can actually do in the game will easily distract you from playing the main campaign. Fighting against a dragon while an epic score is being played in the background really brings the entire atmosphere alive. It’s amazing how the game’s score still holds up five years after its original release.

"Skyrim is what gaming stands for, according to us: Freedom. Be free; do whatever you want and have a lot of fun."

The game begins with you making an adventurous escape from a dragon and making you way to the Jarl of Whiterun. Eventually you will kill one of the dragons and absorb its soul unlocking Dragon shouts. More shouts can be learned by clearing out dungeons or completing side mission and the main campaign. There are a ton of dungeons in the game, each intricately designed with enough puzzles, enemies and mysteries to uncover.

The game also features a comprehensive leveling up system allowing you to upgrade several parameters such as  Destruction, Restoration, One-handed, Smithing, Sneak and more. Unlike the previous entries in the series Skyrim underwent major changes in the way it handles its combat and it’s great to see that it’s very much intact in the remaster. You can be stealthy or use magic to take our your enemies or use a combination of everything to get the job done. You can also recruit companions but they can be annoying due to their dumb AI. Further customization includes creating your equipment through blacksmiths or developing your own potions through alchemy.

The game’s world is massive so be ready to spend tons of hours in it if you did not got the chance to play the original. It’s literally amazing that after investing over 200 hours into the original, the remaster still feels so fresh and intriguing. The music accompanies the atmosphere extremely well and the game’s updated visuals goes a long way in creating a vibrant experience, specially for new players.

"Bugs and glitches still rule the roost here. Frequent clipping, character weird movements and the good old ludicrous horse physics are all pretty much intact here."

We played this game on the PlayStation 4 and there are a ton of differences compared to the PS3 version. Better performance, increase in foliage density, high resolution textures, improved lighting and much more. This is a remarkable remastering effort by Bethesda and although they haven’t changed and updated every nook and cranny of the game, it’s still an admirable effort given the scale of the world. However minor performance issues (at least early on) and some of the dumb AI/glitches are still present but at this point they have become so attached with the internet culture, Bethesda wouldn’t care to fix them, right? On a more serious note, bugs and glitches still rule the roost here. Frequent clipping, character weird movements and the good old ludicrous horse physics are all pretty much intact here.

Besides the visual upgrades, Skyrim on consoles features mod support. Although the basic installation is rather easy, the amount of mods on the PS4 are pretty low. On the Xbox One, there are already over 100 mods. We expect this to change over time but PS4’s file size limitations make some mods impossible to support. The PS4 version’s space for mods is limited to just 1 GB, while the Xbox One has 5 GB reserved for the same. This immediately gives the Xbox One version the upper hand as far as mod support goes and it’s rather disappointing to see the PS4 version suffer a due to this.

"The PS4 version’s space for mods is limited to just 1 GB, while the Xbox One has 5 GB reserved for the same. This immediately gives the Xbox One version the upper hand as far as mod support goes and it’s rather disappointing to see the PS4 version suffer a due to this."

Once you are done playing the main game  (which will take ages!), it’s now time to take on some reasonably good DLCs for the game. The remaster, as expected comes along with all three pieces of downloadable content: Hearthfire, Dawnguard and Dragonborn. Hearthfire is disappointing with its adopting and home building system still feeling archaic. Dawnguard suffers from rehashing the same locations along with unimaginative quest lines on the vampire’s front. Fans can look forward to the ability to turn into a vampire but that is the most you are going to get out of Dawnguard. And finally, Dragonborn,  which is perhaps the best DLC out of the three. Dragonborn sees you follow the quest-line of the original Dragonborn, the Dovahkiin Miraak. After Miraak turned evil, he was banished to Oblivion, and he is now trying to return to Tamriel. While the story fails on several occasions, the variety in quests and dragon riding never gets old.

Skyrim was one of the defining games of 2011, and if you are an RPG fan, do yourself a favour and pick up this remaster. It’s absolutely a no brainer if you haven’t played the original. Skyrim is what gaming stands for, according to us: Freedom. Be free; do whatever you want and have a lot of fun.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

Of course, in the five years that have passed since the original game’s release, you may have forgotten that Skyrim was a massive game (the modern open world craze certainly owes itself to Skyrim). There’s a whole lot of ground to cover in Skyrim, and a lot of gear, armor, weapons, and items to collect, not to mention a lot of quests and dungeons to complete. That’s where we step in- from helping you find rare and unique spells, to cheat codes, to finding unique heavy armor, light armor, one handed weapons, two handed weapons, shields, clothing, and all collectibles in Skyrim and all of its DLC, this guide has it all.

Let’s get started.

Cheat Codes

Skyrim is an open world game- and one of the big pleasures of an open world game is to just say ‘screw it’ to the story and mess around in the world, interacting with it in all sorts of hilarious ways. Skyrim enables that kind of mucking around and power fantasy- especially for the PC version of the game, where console commands can help you break the game in all sorts of ways.

Hit the ~ button to call up the console in the PC version of the game, and then input the following codes for their respective effects:

AdvancePCSkill (skillname) # Add levels to your skills

player.addperk ######## Add perk (ie Light fingers is 00018E6A)

Player.modav Dragonsouls # Adds dragon’s souls to your pool, allowing you to improve your shouts.

fov x Adjust field of view (insert fov value as x )

advskill # Advances the targeted skill by xxx amount

psb All Spells

player.setscale # Change scale of player; 1 is normal

Setownership Changes ownership of target so you can safely take without stealing

caqs Complete all Quest Stages

duplicateallitems Duplicate items (click container\NPC and copy the RefID)

COC Fast travel to location, e.g. coc Rivertown

tfc Freeflying camera

player.additem [ItemNumber] # Give player item (i.e. gold is 0000000f, lockpicks are 0000000a)

help “NPC Name” 4 Gives the ID for the companion or NPC

player.modav burden # Increase Burden by #

AdvancePCLevel Increase your Level

player.setav speedmult X increases movement speed where X is a percentage multiplier (eg. player.setav speedmult 250)

Kill Kill enemy (Must select with arrow first)

killall Kills all hostiles in your immediate vicinity

help list all commands in console

qqq quits the game instantly

removeallitems Removes all items of selected NPC

markfordelete Removes selected object from your game

resetinventory Reset NPC to original inventory.

resethealth Restores targetted NPC’s HP to Full

player.resethealth Restores the player’s HP to Full

Resurrect Resurrects targeted dead

saves game with “name of file” savegame [name of file]

help keyword # Search by the keyword, the number is what mode to search by. Modes are listed by help every time you use it.

player.modav carryweight # Set Carry Weight

player.modav fame # Set character’s fame.

player.modav infamy # Set character’s infamy.

player.setav Health # Set health

player.setcrimegold X Set it high if you want to fight, set it at 0 if you want to be free.

player.setav Magicka # Set Magicka

player.setlevel # Set Player Level

player.setav Stamina # Set Stamina

player.setav *skillname* # Sets skill to # level without leveling character.

setgs fpickpocketmaxchance 100 Sets the maximum percentage for a successful pickpocket to 100%.

setessential 1 Sets the NPC corresponding to the ID essential

setgs fpickpocketminchance 100 Sets the pickpocket success rate to 100% (Does not bypass the maximum set by the game. Use with set maximum pickpocket percentagege for best results).

STR # Sets the refractive value of the target. 0.0= normal, 0.000001= invisible,1.0 = full refraction

showracemenu Show Race Menu

tmm 1/0 Show/hide all map markers 1=show 0=hide

player.placeatme X Spawns an NPC at your location. (Replace X with NPC ID)

saq starts all quests

movetoqt teleports you to quest target

coc qasmoke This brings you to the testing hall with all items in the game. Be careful as opening enchanted armor and weapons cabinets may cause your game to crash

enableplayercontrols This command is used to enable controls during cinematics when they’re disabled. Occasionally the game will glitch, instead of reloading put in this c

TDetect Toggle AI Detection (You can steal all you want and no one will see you, doesn’t work with pickpocketing)

TAI Toggle Artificial Intelligence (freezes npc, they can’t walk, move, or anything.)

tcl Toggle collision

TCAI Toggle Combat Artificial Intelligence (same as TAI; however only makes the NPC not being able to combat)

tfow Toggle FOW

TG Toggle Grass

tm Toggle menus (HUD)

unlock Unlocks anything that may be locked by typing unlock then clicking the chest or door you want unlocked then press enter

Player.IncPCS [Skill Name] Will increase the level of a skill by one.

lock X You can lock chests and door, or people by targeting them and typing “lock” followed by the level of difficulty you wish to set it at.

Plus, a video to demonstrating Infinite Carry Weight, Infinite Items, Unlimited Gold:

All Rare And Unique Spells

There are a whole lot of rare and unique spells and dragon shouts in Skyrim for you to hunt down and learn, which could end up making you completely, totally, entirely overpowered. You’re likely to stumble upon some of these in the course of playing the game ordinarily- others, however, you will need to have to hunt down yourself. The video below has the locations for all of them:

Armor and Weapons

There’s a lot of loot in Skyrim– while it’s definitely not on the same level as Fallout 4, which goes crazy with the sheer amount of weapons and armor that it offers you, things can still get a bit out of control, and no sane player is likely to be able to keep track of everything by themselves.

That’s where we come in! Since we’re not sane, we decided to collate a list of videos that will help you track down gear of all sorts all across Skyrim.

Unique Heavy Armor

This kind of armor is best for players who prefer tank builds, or builds with extreme damage output, and the ability to take a beating. The trade off? You move extremely slowly, and lose a whole lot of your agility and stealth, while it also depletes stamina faster.

But there’s definitely something to be said for heavy armor builds. You can check the video below to track down all the unique heavy armor around Skyrim:

Unique Light Armor

While decidedly not as effective at blocking damage as heavy armor can be, light armor lets you bound about the battlefield, dodging blows with a ferocious rapidity, while also delivering blows of your own. The video below helps you track down all unique light armor pieces and sets:

Unique One Handed Weapons

One handed weapons come with a lot of advantages- you can dual wield two of the same (or different) kinds of weapons in each hand, you can wield them with shields to try and block incoming damage, and they’re extremely quick, meaning high DPS. The trade off? You can’t dish out as much damage with them. Nevertheless, one handed weapons are definitely the more popular types of weapons in Skyrim. The video below will help you track all of the unique ones down:

Unique Two Handed Weapons and Shields

Two handed weapons are slow, and have wind up times and animations, not to mention they drain stamina very quickly. On the other hand, they dish out devastating amounts of damage, which means that they are probably very well suited for the tanky kind of player. You can check out the video below to find all the unique ones in Skyrim. As a bonus, the video also helps you to track down all the Unique and Rare shields.

Unique Clothing

Be on the cutting edge of Nord fashion! There’s a lot of great clothing to be found in Skyrim, and the video below will show you exactly where to find some of the more unique articles.

All Dragon Shouts Locations

The signature feature of Skyrim? The ability to use your voice to affect the world around you. From Fus Roh Dah to other, more advanced shouts, each of which give you unique powers, these Dragon Shouts are some of the most powerful weapons in your arsenal. The videos below help you track almost all of them down.

Collectibles

There’s a lot to collect in Skyrim– it’s basically the precursor to Fallout 4‘s loot whoring, basically. But unlike the useless trinkets that are littered around the world in open world games to collect, Skyrim‘s collectibles are actually worth collecting. The videos below help you track all of them down, across Skyrim, as well as its expansions, Dawnguard and Dragonborn.

Skyrim

Dragon Priest Masks

Stones of Barenziah

Daedric Artifacts

Krosis Mask

Dawnguard

Paragons

Dragonborn

Dragon Shouts

Dragon Priest Masks

DragonBorn Ahzidal’s Armor

Deathbrand Armor

Black Books

Hearthfire Guide

Hearthfire was the second expansion released for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It introduced the ability to construct houses to the game- sort of like a precursor to the extremely sophisticated settlement building in Fallout 4.

Hearthfire is like its own neat little minigame in Skyrim– and the videos below walk you through it best.