When you first start the game, you are on a boat and must make your way to the Census Office. There you pick your name, race, gender, appearance, skills, class, attributes and star sign.
Because you can turn any character into exactly what you want them to be you might like to choose a race based solely on visual appeal. Each race's skill bonuses are notable only for the first few levels; with a little effort and careful skill advancement you can take a character that is mediocre or even weak in a certain skill and make them a master of it.
Race
Bretons and High Elves are the champions of magic, but you could turn one into a fighter with a little extra effort. Redguards and Orcs are the combat specialists. Khajiits and Wood Elves are natural thieves. Argonians can swim any distance underwater (useful for treasure hunting). Imperials are the most balanced race, as other than a slight combat leaning they're pretty much mediocre at everything.
When picking your appearance you can use the scrollbar (on PC) or the right thumbstick (Xbox) to spin the head. This is especially useful when choosing a hairstyle as some are longer than they look from the front. When it comes to gender, females of some races have slight differences in their skill bonuses, but as a rule you should choose a gender based on personal taste.
Skill bonuses
Each race has a total of 45 skill bonus points. The weapon and skill bonuses most races have are less important than magic skills as those points can quickly be made up with use; intelligence/magicka bonuses are not nearly so easy to build up.
Note that after picking all these things, you will come to a final confirmation page where you can change them all. At that point, you can also see all the numbers that go with various racial modifiers and other choices.
Class
The most important part is choosing or creating a class. If you feel adventurous you could try answering the personality questions; if you don't want too many choices you might like a premade class; however for the most well-rounded long-term character you will probably want to design your own.
Class design is more complicated than it looks. Due to the way levelling works you don't necessarily want to put your favoured skills as your majors. There are four things to pick for a class, the name, specialization, favored attributes and skills. Major skills start out with a higher score than Minor skills, however both can increase at exactly the same speed, unlike those affected by your favoured attributes. The name can, of course, be anything from Lowly Janitor to Grand Inquisitor. The Specialization is generally whatever category you choose the most skills in. Favorite attributes will start a little higher than others.
The way skills and attributes improve in the game is with use. When you use a skill you get better at it, and eventually it goes up. Improving your skills by at least 10 points (up to 30) will give you bonuses to the governing attributes when you go up a level. This means that skills you use more will go up faster, so they need not start out as high, with a few exceptions. It also means that you should have at least one skill for each attribute, and focus on improving skills for a particular attribute before leveling up. In general, you only need one type of armor (including unarmored) and weapon (including hand-to-hand), and can use other slots for more interesting things. You start with all the skills, you are just assigning bonuses. On the other hand, skills with low scores tend to fail, so it is harder to use and improve them.
For combat, weapons are better than spells, especially in the beginning. There are, however, many good spells for other purposes. Speechcraft, Mercantile and Alchemy are probably the best general skills to have. Acrobatics, Athletics and Alchemy are the easiest skills to improve, which gives nice bonuses to those attributes. I found Alteration, Conjuration and Mysticism to have the most useful spells, although you will eventually want them all.
Specialisation and Favoured Attributes
Once you have picked your skills, pick the specialization and favorite attributes. Specialization improves the skills, so pick whatever you have the most skills in. On a tie, pick the one with more minor skills. Whatever attributes you have the most skills for will go up the fastest, and whatever skills have the best attributes will be the most usable. But once you get to 100 there is no more improvement, so you could pick luck which has no skills. Whatever attributes you pick get a little bonus.
Star sign
The Mage, The Shadow, The Tower and The Warrior are all nicely balanced stars for a first-time player. If this is your first time through, then an attribute boost or Ritual healing might help. Don't be deceived by the impressive Fortify boosts offered by signs like The Lady; it sounds nice in the beginning, but feels like a waste once you cap out your attributes at 100, and you can generally gain skills equal to those bonuses within a few hours of play.
More advanced or more daring players might want to instead aim for skills that are impossible to gain during normal play. The Atronach is a prime example. This is a significant limitation for spell casters in the beginning, but the spell absorption is huge and magicka bonus makes up for it later in the game. The magicka and absorb bonuses are even more useful than they sound. Although Stunted Magicka means you cannot regain magic by resting (making the early hours of the game more difficult), you have a 50% chance of absorbing an enemy's magic attack; if successful you not only take no damage but also have a strengthened magicka pool.
An Atronach mage will need to always carry some Restore Magicka potions with them just in case, but as a rule the huge bonuses give Atronach mages the potential to be the most powerful mages in the game. It is also a good sign for fighters and other classes that can't use magic shields and resistances as easily to protect against attacks.
Skills
Combat skills
The choice between heavy and medium armor is mostly a personal one.
Example character
Here is an example of a "jack of all trades" sort of character.
High Elf male
- born under the Atronach.
- Majors: Block, Heavy Armor, Long Blade, Speechcraft, Mercantile
- Minors: Alchemy, Alteration, Conjuration, Mysticism, Athletics
- Attributes: Personality and Luck
He will be an adept speaker and trader throughout his whole career. He will be a fairly decent fighter in the early hours of the game, and thanks to the High Elves' natural tendencies he can also become skilled at using magic to fortify his combat skills. Template:GFDL Article