I used the leather trick. I didn't do any online searching for tricks.. still haven't. Basically leather is very easy to come by and fairly light, so I loaded up on it and just made a bunch of leather helms or something. I can't remember but it was like 1 piece of leather and 2 leather strips to make it.
Lydia died.
🙁 I keep her dead body on the bed in the second room of the first house.
She's only in her skivvies too. I took the armor and stuff off to keep/sell.
I stick to swords. They're quicker and with the combo of using the shield and sword, I can do quick damage and it really screws with spellcasters. Seems everyone goes for the higher damage but slow weapons. Using the shield bash and charge, you easily can defeat anything without taking much damage. Though, some spellcasters can get really annoying from a distance.
Everything I have is legendary too. I've been working on enchanting stuff but that's kind of annoying at how weak stuff starts off.
Making potions.. blah. I only find the paralzying ones good and some poisons, but I haven't figured out how to make good ones yet. Again, no searching the internets for help at all.
I killed a bunch of dragons.. 30+ I think? I shot one down with arrows and he crashed into the ground and left a huge skidmark across the ground. It changed the landscape. I was really surprised by that and wasn't sure if that was designed into the game to do that, or if it was a random thing that could happen. I went back later on and the bones are still there and the changed landscape.
Reynod:
You can only be as civil as the least civilized. When a group of people are not afraid to die, in fact openly embrace human sacrifice/suicide, the civil become very endangered.