A couple vanilla Skyrim tips that can be gamechangers:
- If you are interested in min/maxing, Altmer are kinda sorta the best player race in the game. While all races have different benefits and bonuses, Altmer have an additional hidden one: the way the game is coded, the player's size impacts movement speed and attack damage, and Altmer are the tallest race with a height multiplier of 1.08. They move 8% faster and hit 8% harder than almost everyone else (Nords are 3% and Orcs are 4.5%). If you spend 100 hours of your playthrough walking, playing as an Altmer saves you 8 hours. And their racial bonus is great as it is anyway, it's like starting with 5 levels already invested in magicka.
- Dragons are both a boon and a curse in Skyrim. Souls are great to have for unlocking shouts and their bones are great for crafting, but it gets very annoying being harassed by them constantly when you're just going about your business. Talking to some townsperson and he stops to run off and attack a surprise dragon, which might kill him, etc. You could hold off on starting the main quest and keep dragons from ever spawning, but that means you get none of the benefits above either. So what's the solution? Well there is one specific quest, part of the main quest called A Blade in the Dark, which pauses random dragon encounters for as long as you are on that quest. Also, it doesn't stop dragons from showing up in their nests at word walls, so you're still able to farm them whenever you like, but you won't have to worry about getting ganked every time you fast travel to the Mage's Guild anymore.
- If you don't want NPCs to be at risk of getting killed by vampires every time you enter a major town, you may want to turn off the Dawnguard add-on until you are prepared to play through it.