How does the economy and society of Skyrim truly work? This is a question I’ve often asked myself while I tear through bandit-infested caves and mines, and it looks like someone else has started to try and piece together the logistics of the open-world game‘s landscape as well.
The original questioning of Skyrim’s infrastructural landscape comes from Bailey Trappe on Twitter, and while her recently viral set of tweets are clearly having a bit of fun, it does raise the question as to how Skyrim actually functions, considering its in absolute chaos.
I know it’s a video game and that it’s not real, but it’s still fun to try and piece together how all those NPCs apparently survive with bandits, a civil war, and a number of farms that’s shockingly small for the general population.
The first major issue brought up in Bailey Trappe’s thread is food. There aren’t that many farms in Skyrim, so how do people eat? How many people even work? Well we actually looked at the Skyrim Whiterun unemployment rate, and it’s a lot higher than you’d expect.
Well, there are only 13 farms in the game and around 600 NPCs you can talk to, with just over 1000 characters having unique names. If you do the maths as to NPCs and enemies beyond that, you’ll quickly realise that there are going to be more than 1000 mouths to feed in Skyrim, and not enough food sources to feed them. These farms are also tiny, so while it takes ten or so in-game days for the food to regrow, half the population has had just one leaf of lettuce.
Trappe also notes that there are only two Meaderies in the world of Skyrim, and yet everyone is drinking mead all the time, so unless there’s secret stashes in basements or every inn is making its own, you run into another problem.
What about the bandits? Well this has been considered too. They’re absolutely everywhere and keep returning when you clear them out. They hold mines, strategic vantage points in camps and castles, and just attack people on a whim. It’s a wonder how everything isn’t on fire at all times.
“I don’t know if the bandit groups in Skyrim are organised in any way but if they are, they probably have a more legitimate claim to government than anyone else,” adds Trappe. “They control all the forts, most of the mines, and have approximately one million outposts just in Whiterun hold alone.”
Don’t even get me started on Skyrim’s exports, as whoever wins that civil war is going to come into a big shock when they realise they can only send off ten bottles of mead and a wheel of cheese to neighbouring regions.
It seems like Skyrim’s problems never end, and never mind the dragons flying around or the one person just shouting at people so hard they fall off cliffs. You’re never going to get anything done. If you want to hear even more though, you can check out Bailey Trappe’s Twitter thread.
Is all of this accurate? No of course not, but it’s still fun to think about how Skyrim, as a nation, is royally screwed because nobody does anything ever and there are bandits and dragons taking the meagre amount of resources for themselves.
If this has inspired you to revisit Skyrim we’ve got you covered, as we have a list of the best Skyrim mods to spruce up your game and even an in-depth look at all the Skyrim console commands and cheats that you can use during play. Maybe you should spawn in some more food, the people definitely need it.
