What am I supposed to do to get started in this game? I rode in the cart to the town, saw someone get their head chopped off, & followed the guy to the tower. I went up the stairs, the floor collapsed, then am I supposed to escape the area? I'm just running around while the dragon is killing me. What am I supposed to do?

Barb

After the tower collapses, go up the stairs to about the center of the tower. There is a big opening that the dragon made, and you jump out of it to the house in front of you. Then you drop down one floor and keep following the guy with the arrow on his head.

After the wall gets blown out by the dragon, follow the instructions of the blonde Stormcloak, Ralof. He tells you to jump down through the roof of the damaged inn below.

Once you move forward through the inn, jump down to ground level and exit through the broken wall. There is an Imperial soldier (has a quest marker floating over him if your settings allow it) with a young boy and old man. The big dragon lands, the Soldier tells everyone to stay back as the dragon spews out fire. He'll then tell you, "Stay close to me if you want to stay alive prisoner."

Follow him to the keep, you have to wind through a broken down building that pops you out into the main yard. General Tullious should be there barking out orders, telling Hadvar (that's the Imperial Soldier you're following) to get to the keep. Once you follow him there you'll meet Ralof again. At that point you'll need to make a choice, follow Hadvar the Imperial Soldier or follow Ralof the Stormcloak insurgent. Understand, you can change your alliance at any time up until you actually join one or the other factions.

This video shows you the way to go. In this case the gamer chose to follow Hadvar.

Chapter 1 Skyrim

One thing to know about Skyrim, it's a sandbox game. You can go anywhere, do anything, but your actions have a direct impact on how people deal with you. Don't rush through it, the game is huge. Don't try to finish the main quest right away, do some exploring, do some side quests (there are tons.) Don't get discouraged if you get killed now and then, especially in the early part of the game, it can be tough, Dragons aren't exactly push-overs Myself and other have thousands of hours into the game and still keep going back to it, so have fun.

Thsnk you so much, Trail. It may take me some time to follow your directions, but I'll figure it out eventually.

Sure thing Barb, it goes pretty fast once you run into Hadvar (the Imperial Soldier.) Just follow him all the way to the Keep.

Took me many attempts to get through this opening section, Barb, because I found it really confusing at first. But once through it I started to enjoy the game a lot

Yeah, me too, the first time I played I had a terrible time figuring out the opening sequence.

Skyrim is an awesome, huge game. I've played for about 850 hours now and will probably come back to it at some point.

Couple other hints Barb; don't be afraid to run, especially in the early levels. Dragons and if you have a GOtY version or Dawnguard loaded your first encounter with a Master Vampire and their Thralls can be insanely difficult. Once you get to around level 6 or so, those random attacks will start, so it's a really good idea to save before entering or fast traveling to any hold/city. Work with the city guards and if you can't defeat them, just run away to fight another day. Same goes for dragons, don't give them the advantage by staying rooted in one spot. As a matter of fact, don't do that during any fight. One of the most successful strategies to winning a fight in Skyrim is hit and run, bob and weave. Make your opponent work for their hits. If you are having a really hard time with a dragon, try to lead them to other participants and you might be able to get them distracted enough to run. Although, they do have a habit of showing up again, so don't be surprised if you get hit right after exiting a dungeon or cave.

Fortunately a lot of the time dragons will attack when you fast-travel to a town. The town guards will help you fight the dragon, and you'll end up getting the dragon goodies; the dragon souls are what gets you Shouts, which become helpful later in the game.

unfortunately, though, sometimes a shopkeeper or blacksmith will get toasted. I lost three blacksmiths that way. Bummer.

Later in my game, the dragons became more pest than challenge. My archer just blasted them out of the sky.

Mods to the rescue! Sorry I didn't mention these before, they work like a charm:

Run for your Lives! This mod makes NPC's run indoors when dragons attack.

When Vampires Attack Same deal only they hide when Vampires show up in town.

Oh yea, hagatha, that common bug about dragons not showing up that you and I both had? I think it can be resolved by verifying your game files through the Steam menu function: Right-click the game in your library, select Properties, go to the local files tab and hit Verify Integrity of Game Files... Might have been something gone wonky after those last updates they made a short time ago.

I also disabled and then re-enabled my mods, ran LOOT again and all seems to be working fine now...knock on woodelf. I don't think you need to do that since you aren't running as many mods as I have (around 200 now, LOL)

I did verify my game files several times through the game and that didn't seem to help. I never did try disabling all the mods I had installed,though there were only about four or five.

It's not a huge issue anyway since I'm now obsessing about Witcher 3 and the Gwent tournament (I am an evil gwent player ) BUT it will be when I do decide to start a new game of Skyrim.