I've heard that there is a main story line in Skyrim, and that you have the main quests and procedurally generated quests besides that. How can I identify whether a quest belongs to the main story line, or whether it is procedurally generated by someone.

I would somehow like to focus on finishing the main story line first...

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4 Answers

Quests can belong to one of several categories which give them unique "knotwork" in the journal. The main quest is one such category, and has knotwork depicting a dragon breathing fire:

There are 19 individual quests making up Skyrim's main quest. They are as follows:

• Unbound
• Before the Storm
• Bleak Falls Barrow
• Dragon Rising
• The Way of the Voice
• The Horn of Jurgen Windcaller
• A Blade in the Dark
• Diplomatic Immunity
• A Cornered Rat
• Alduin's Wall
• The Throat of the World
• Elder Knowledge
• Alduin's Bane
• Season Unending
• Paarthurnax
• The Fallen
• The World-Eater's Eyrie
• Sovngarde
• Dragonslayer

The name of the quest is found in your journal. (Quest summaries redacted to avoid spoilers)

Here is a list of the main story line quests.

Don't delve too far into this page if you don't like spoilers

The main quest line has a decoration in the shape of a dragon head, dark brotherhood quests have a skull, deadric quests have the oblivion symbol. The thieves guilds quests have a odd sort of design maybe a lockpick? But the other side quests have a plain decoration.