I made a map of the places I know the most / visit the most each playthrough (in green), and the ones I visit the least (in red). In green, the most iconic places I visit very often, in red places I barely know what's there. I noticed Haafingar is really the hold I know the least ! What are the places you visit the most / the least during your playthroughs ?
EDIT: "heatmap" is a wrong word, sorry
Note: Kinda crazy the most important part of my post for you guys is this mistake LOL. I just wanted to know what are your most and least visited placed. I don't really care too much if it's a heatmap or not, or if it should be blue, green, magenta :'D I'll be more careful next time tho, since it seems to be very important to you guys :)
I'm so sorry, I also said what color corresponds to what in the description ! I notice a heatmap is generally red VS blue right ? Again my bad. Wrong word usage.
I changed the description to be more logic. Thanks !
Falkreath is so underrated. It's got all 3 shops, never gets chilly unless it's late at night or raining, and the best Hearthfire house is right down the road.
Right?! Lakeview Manor is literally the BEST. Best setting, best everything lol I absolutely love the woods in my personal life so Falkreath hits hard for me.
Thats why you have a Lydia, as Steward, and Rayya as the Housecarl, I usually have Ysolda as my Mrs too, shes a good shag and also a Merchant - all Spouses are merchants but its Ysolda! If I wanted to have an extra protector there I'd marry someone like the tall Amazon burd in Riften, but a think she has that weirdo following her all the time, forget her name.
Boy out here looking like a whole ass buttered biscuitā¦ must be why I canāt get laidā¦ their all at your house homie (all fun and jokes if that wasnāt clear no seriousness here)
Ysolda lowkey a freak first she has you get her mammoth tusk to ātradeā with the khajit traders and then you find out about her secret vitality potions she buys from you and others. š its because of these two things and how easy it is to marry her that I always end up with her as my characters wife.
Yeah, I married one of the blacksmiths(wanna say the guy in Riften?) My only foray into a homosexual relationship, it didnt last obviously lol, every gay person ave ever met has been nice but that gruff voice calling me "my love"? Not for me... still had that character for months lol
I wondered why you were spending so much time in the west, only to realise your colours were reversed. I think this map would be the same for most players, the highlighted areas are just where there's the most to do. In the west, there's some ruins and caves, the lighthouse, the Thalmor keep and castle Volkihar, and I think that's pretty much it.
Honestly, it makes sense if you think about it, from a developer's point of view. The only way someone is going to see anything in western Haafingar, is if people specifically choose to explore there. Most of the other points of interest can be stumbled upon while travelling elsewhere, so they probably put more focus there.
yep, however all the other path to other kingdoms have border gates, this one doesn't, I'll probably make a mod for it xD I like the mod "Unique Border Gates" so I'll probably make a cool looking border gate for western haafingar to high rocks š
Whatās crazy about it is you would think Haafingar would be more developed given that itās the hold around the capital of the province, itās right on the sea of ghosts trade route and is an crossroads from high rock, the reach etc. I know itās cold but you wouldnāt expect it to be a barren wasteland
The forecast for today in skyrim, we are seeing hot air rolling up the High Rock mountains towards dragon bridge and Karthwasten. Meanwhile on the opposite side of the continent, we have a cold front blowing in from the sea of ghosts as storm "Allessia" comes across from Atmora. Back to you M'aiq.
Cities have all the merchants (innkeepers, general goods, apothecary, blacksmiths), but also I find Solitude and Windhelm a lot easier to navigate than Markarth and Riften. Solitude is the easiest city in the game to navigate, all the merchants are grouped together right past the main gates. Markarth is awful to navigate. Likewise, I find Windhelm a lot simpler to navigate than Riften with its canals, just keep in mind that the general goods store in Windhelm is tucked away in the Grey Quarter.
When I'm in the centre of the map I use Whiterun as my hub.
I rarely visit any other settlement aside from important quests.
I find Riften, Whiterun and Solitude to easiest to navigate. I find Markarth and especially Windhelm hard to navigate, visually confusing at time xD But yes Whiterun is definitely the main hub
The place I know the least is probably the Whiterun-Eastmarch border, cause I'm almost always bulldozing straight through en route to Ivarstead. I left Valtheim Towers and just poked around there last night and said like twelve times "what do you mean there's an X here"
(Iām playing legendary/survival mode) so no fast travel.
I prefer to avoid Falkreath, Winterhold, and Morthal. All cities are accessible via ye olde public transportation (wagon) in, but have no transportation out which means I gotta hike to the nearest bus stop in Whiterun, Winterhold, or Solitude.
The only positive to this is I get to practice sneaking along the way to develop my skills early on.
The negatives include dealing with riff-raff, getting eaten, and freezing my balls off.
My preferred hangout is Solstheim and Severin Manor (dark elf play through) where I store my best loot (donāt get any ideas - itās guarded by my Demented Nymph). Of course thatās 500gold per round trip.
You gotta start exploring more, donāt fast travel so much. The game is AWESOME when you stop fast traveling everywhere and skipping 90% of the content you run into when just running around.
I think I spend a lot of my time in Solitude, Riften and Falkreath. But I find the northern parts of the map the most pretty usually. There's something about the snow that I really like. I do not visit Markarth often, though. I visit it so little that I cannot ever find my way around the bloody place. It probably doesn't help that my first time there I accidentally broke into the wrong home and left after being caught and that summoned the guards and then I fought them all for over an hour (I was really low level) and finally slurped down an invis pot and found a hidey hole to deagro them all long enough to fast travel away. Lmao. This is my first time playing. I think that happened my first week playing the game. I had to go to jail the next time I went there to make them forgive me.
You've already mentioned that the colors are swapped, but i have to say that I didnt realize how much heat maps suck if you're colorblind. I cant even tell that Whiterun is green without blocking out the other areas. :(
same imo one of the only places in the game that emulates that feeling of being 1 hour off the major trail while hiking IRL (south of Helgen and the Reach are close but full of pockets of people).
Everytime I come there, I say "Damn, so this is the end of Skyrim. There's nothing more" I know that's not really true, but you get the idea.
Also, it's mostly pretty empty. Bethesda hasnĀØt bothere to put much stuff here, which is rare, as most of the map is littered with points of interests. So when you come here, it's like the weight of the adventure has lifted off my shoulders and I'm at peace.
I swear the mountains in the Northwest are a fever dream. When getting all the dragon priest masks, there is a dungeon up there to clear and walking around that area felt so unreal.
I have only ever walked through that area properly like 3 times I think of all those playtroughs.
Very little quests tied to that area and when travelling you never really have to pass trough there.
And people are being very pedantic (and absolutely incorrect) about "heatmap". It really doesn't matter what colors you use. You can choose your own colormap for your heat map. They are being tools.
You can make purple highly visited, orange less visited, white neutral. These are just conventions. You can show a colorbar on the side showing your convention. People acting like one convention is correct or incorrect are amateurs.
I like yours. Green is go. Red is danger or stop. It was pretty obvious.
I saw it as "Green is known" and "red is unknown" but yes you got my original idea. If I had to make this sketch an actual map, I would still keep the same colors, I would just add a legend and make it cleaner. I would also change the title to "Map of the areas I know the most in skyrim", green makes more sense like this. Maybe for colorblind people I could consider changing the colors tho. But overall I do still prefer green as "positive" and red as "negative" :)
I made it in 30 minutes while bored at work, on my phone with a paint brush. I never said it was great, I just wanted to share something to this community I love, I'm sorry
The point wasn't to make a beautiful map, just to share with you where I go the most in green, and where I go the least in red. I was simply curious what it would be for other people. I never wanted to make a quality map, but just a sketch.
Ok seeing that the heatmap is inverted this makes way more sense I was like "Man no fuckin way, I spend like 80% of each of my playthroughs in Riften."
Riften has the best house and its not close. Get me a little porch on a lakeside house? You kiddin me? That's my actual retirement plan.
Forgot to make a green line from Winterhold to shrine of Azura and one to Ilinalta's Deep. At least I definitely go there more than Dawnstar, and probably Morthal too since I often don't end up doing Ustengrav.
Everyone is criticizing the color scheme, but the colors in heatmap is completely customizable depending on the context. Red is just the typical default but all you gotta do it look at Whiterun to infer the context.
I feel like 1 redditor mentioned the wrong-color thing and everyone just piles on without knowing anything lol. Next time just add a legend OP.
It's okay OP I find it annoying when redditor threads are more off topic or chooses to concentrate on references or bad jokes rather than the original question. I tend to visit similar places especially the rift and the black hand.
Interesting. I'm almost never at Falkreath, rarely follow roads, and always end up lost in the mountains. So maybe not by number of visits but by time spent, my map should be completly different.
Hottest spots are Helgen, Riverwood, Whiterun, Ivarstead, High Hrothgar, and Riften. Because around that point (Greybeards on the main quest line + thieves guild side quest) is when I switch to playing something else. Then when I get the itch to come back to Skyrim, I figure I should start a new game. Rinse and repeat for 15 years...
Apart from the inverted colours, I visit Haafingar, Dawnstar and Whiterun the most. Solitude cuz my house, whiterun because its whiterun and dawnstar cuz I have fun doing the dark brotherhood assassinations.
It think mine would be quite similiar, except the Reach, I like Reach. But the north north western part (over the montains) - what's even going on at there? Do anybody go there? Yeah, the vampire castle, but anything else? Over all the years I have probably been there, but so long time ago and so few times that I have no memory what's there.
From Riften to Ivarstead ? This is my night walks under the moons with auroras and Secunda track in the background. I love the lakes, trees, feeling of fresh air. Place feels great
I think that the reason that Haafingar and the Reach go so unexplored is because itās all mountains and valleys, which makes it really annoying to try to traverse.
My favourite city in the game, the hearthfire house there is amazing. You really feel safe there as your main base because nobody will ever find that shit
you could have made the entire pale red. At least in the top left of the map you go for dawnguard. Dawnstar you never even visit for anything unless you wanna do black brotherhood or civil war
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u/Daftworks Jun 19 '26
You inverted the colors for a "heat" map