7 Side Quests You Should NEVER Finish 

By the time I got to finishing the Thieves' Guild quest in Skyrim, my Lockpicking skill was so high and I had so many lockpicks that I didn't need the skeleton key. I WAS the skeleton key.

"the wronged woman" is such a clever title for that side mission, because by the end of it there is still a woman who was wronged

The other reason not to complete the Skippy quest is that it's one of the unique guns you can display on V's weapon wall in their apartment, so you'll never be able to complete the display without it.

A cool trick you can do with the skeleton key is use it at the beginning when your lockpicking is low, to boost your lockpicking skill all the way until you can get the unbreakable perk and then complete the quest.

I hate being railroaded. That RDR quest gives you no option to back out or find some other solution once you start getting more info: the conversation in the bar inevitably leads to the duel, shooting to disarm results in Marston eating a bullet, and you never get the choice to just hand Clara $200 of your own without the confrontation, despite Marston having a fully-upgraded Deadeye skill and likely rolling with thousands in cash by the time he can get to Blackwater. It's just "Haha, sucker - that'll teach _you_ to take pity on people sobbing in church!" You don't even get a cool hat for it.

The ultimate example of this that takes it to a ludicrous extreme is in Fallen London, the browser game that Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies are based off. There's a side quest called "Seeking the Name" that the devs have explicitly called an experiment into how far players will go to complete it. It requires you to make it pretty far into the game and then destroy pretty much everything you have. Sacrifice your main plotline, kill your spouse, cut off your character's head. Completing the quest literally bricks your account, and yet several people have done it.

I remember an old PC game called Dark Stone where there was a starving village that tasked you to get the horn of plenty, but keeping the horn and never finishing the side quest would let you have unlimited food, a great way to save ever needing to waste money or your very limited inventory space.

I’m surprised they didn’t mention the “Man’s best friend” quest in Skyrim. You basically get an extra companion that’s also immortal. The dog is a beast in a fight and if your conjuring skills are high enough, you can summon two atronocs. So, there’s you, your follower, the, dog and two conjured assistants totaling 4 extra aides to assist you in battle. Start the dog quest but don’t finish it, you’ll lose him afterwards and he’s very useful. He does ruin your sneak skill though. If he’s around, you’re always detected. If you tell him to stop following you, you can go get him in the quest cave, just don’t talk to the statue

I remember when I first completed Travis' quest. I turned the radio on and he thanked me for helping him and then immediately after he forgot who I was and to be on the lookout for me for I was presumed dangerous. Gotta love Bethesda.

Lockpicks are so common in Skyrim that losing the skeleton key never seemed like that big of a deal to me. The one side quest I've never completed on any playthrough however would be Paarthurnax.

Shoutout to one of the sidequests in Elder Scrolls Oblivion, where the Arena champion asks you to find proof of his apparently noble lineage, only for it to turn out that he's actually the offspring of a vampire. He's so devastated by this news that, when it comes time to fight him for his title, he's completely lost all will to fight back and just stands there and lets you kill him. And just to drive the point home, although there are no other repercussions for killing him, doing so actually counts as murdering an innocent person in order to kick off the Dark Brotherhood questline.

In my first play through of Deus Ex I was very close to taking that upgrade, but something about it felt too 'convenient' and my suspicious conspiracy-theory skepticism made me avoid it. When the conspiracy was revealed I was grinning ear-to-ear when the alternative cutscene had the control attempt fail.

I was hoping that "The beard makes the man" side quest from Borderlands 2 would be on this list, because having it active means you can use the Grog Nozzle which is the best enemy de-buffing/self healing weapon in the game and because its a quest item it doesn't take up inventory space

When I saw Skyrim mentioned, I was actually expecting the Paarthunax sidequest, not the Skeleton Key one. Fun fact: At Lockpicking Lv.100 you can make ordinary lockpicks unbreakable too, so the Skeleton Key isn't _completely_ unique here.

Honorable mention to “The Beard Makes the Man” in Borderlands 2. The Grog Nozzle pistol you receive to complete the quest is absolutely insane for the absurd self-healing it gives, as well as turning almost any enemy into a threat about as dangerous as a paper cut.

Personally, I like the Confidence Man quest, because it gives me a chance to actually see the positive impact my actions have had firsthand.

One you missed, In RDR Undead Nightmare, never finish the Bigfoot killing quest. If you accept it then do nothing there's now just bigfoots in the world. That's a better world.

Honerable mention to the "a beard makes the man" side quest from the tiny Tina dlc for Borderlands 2, while the mission is active you get to use what is considered to be one of the best pistols in the game "the grog nozzle", turning the completed mission in removes the gun from your inventory.

Another fun one is the Bullymong research quest in Borderlands 2, where Hammerlocke decides to call them different things, and the game/UI changes the names to match. If you get to the last stretch, and then never finish it, the game will just keep labeling them as "Bonerfarts." And theres nothing quite as Borderlands as fighting a Badass Bonerfart.

The Skeleton Key is weird, they build it up as this powerful mystical artifact that can open literally anything, including stuff that can only be figuratively unlocked like potential, and yet the Dragonborn can only use it as an unbreakable lockpick

Thought you were going to talk about how you “have to” kill Paarthurnax in Skyrim. I’d never do that to my big lizard buddy. His voice is too good to be silenced.

"The beard makes the man" side quest from Borderlands 2 dlc Tiny Tina's assault on dragon keep is a great example of this. Not completing the quest grants you infinite access to the "grog nozzle" aka the best slag AND healing weapon in the game.

16:17 As a cybersecurity professional I would like to remind everyone to always upgrade software. The majority of software updates are just bugfixes and security updates.

Barbas and Farkus are radiant quest followers, meaning they will accompany you until their quests are finished, even if you already have a follower. Now, if you choose to be a werewolf and choose Aela as your follower, you will have what I call the “Canine Crew” party. What I like most about it is it doesn’t use glitches or unrealistic exploits to utilize. Just what this video implies. Don’t finish Barbas’s or Farkus’s quests.

I think the quest “Paarthurnax” is a more fitting example for Skyrim. Once you get it your options are either keep it in your quest log forever, or kill the noble philosopher dragon who has been nothing but helpful and has never done anything wrong. Your reward? Some generic randomized side quests for The Blades, I think? I honestly don’t know because I’ve never done it. It’s so worthless, in fact, that one of the earliest Skyrim mods is one that just gives you the option to decline it.

The quest to become the arch mage of Winterhold was kind of hilarious in my run because my character did not even have enough mana to do the spell I needed to qualify without having to wear a special helmet. It was fun hearing them marvel at my magical powers when my greatest trick consists of cutting draugr in half with my giant greatsword.

Skippy is my favourite sidearm in the game because you don't need a smart link for him to work. Also, he's very entertaining.

The real reason to never complete the Thieves Guild questline is because Brynjolf will stop chatting with you. I've never experienced a worse heartbreak than going to talk to essentially the thief version of Obi-Wan and having him brush me aside like he no longer had time for me. Soul. Crushing.

You missed the Borderlands 2 side quest, "The Beard Makes The Man", where you get the incredibly unbalanced, even for Borderlands 2, "Grog Nozzle". If you turn the quest in you lose the gun. It is so good it is a crucial part of most of the game's meta strategy around speed running and endgame raiding builds.

Unconfident Travis has possibly the funniest bit of Audio in the game, which begins with the sounds of him accidentally knocking things over in the studio, cutting off his sentence followed by screaming "WHYYY DO THESE THINGS KEEP MOVING!?!?" "...because I move them.... and then I forget"

Confidence Man is a great quest. Travis being confident makes Diamond City Radio much better

The Deus Ex twist completely threw me for a loop. Not because I went to the clinic and got an "upgrade", no I forgot to do that... but because Jenson was all "I know all about your schemes!" and I had no idea wtf he was talking about lol

In Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, there is an immensely powerful one handed sword called Umbra. You can get this while doing the quest for Daedric Prince Clavicus Vile. You can return to the shrine and return it or keep it--- unfortunately the prize is either the ugly Masque of Clavicus Vile or the Umbra Sword that is no longer a quest item and now weighs a MASSIVE 45 weight. The best choice here is to never go back to the shrine and you have a powerful sword that is weightless.

When the Blades asked me to kill Paarthurnax I knew I was never going to work with them again.

I really liked cyberpunk 2077 on launch. yes it was glitchy and I had to load past saves a couple times but I've played a lot of games like that and I could see the effort they put into the story especially the different endings and when I found out that there was the Don't fear the reaper ending it made it so memorable that I played it again with the song (don't fear) the reaper by blue oyster cult playing on repeat the whole time.

There’s one particular quest from Pathologic 2 that comes to mind, but perhaps it’s better to leave it as a surprise. It’s a great way of teaching the player that doing exactly what the other characters tells you to do isn’t always the only or even the best way of playing the game.

No see what you do is you go to the last part of Confidence Man, meet Travis at the brewery, and then never go in. Travis will follow you for the rest of the game and you can reverse-pickpocket weapons onto him- he might even pick up a minigun or steal some power armor. One time I saw him steal the Nuka-World power armor that can only be unlocked by finding all the star cores. He's a total badass companion.

I'm glad someone else is honest about playing Skyrim for hundreds of hours yet not completing the main story. I'm glad I'm not alone.

My main issue with the skeleton key is that usually when you're doing the nightgale questline you've already ground out lock picking due to being part of the thieves guild already that it's only main benefit is being unbreakable amongst the 80+ lockpicks you have that you 100% basically have infinite of.

Star Ocean 2 was one of the greatest rpgs ever. It had nearly limitless options and had so many secrets that even with a guide it could be crazy hard to figure out the best path. So many amazing skills, characters joining your roster, and yes, accidentally buffing the final boss, all done without you ever realizing it until it was too late.

The thing that bugs me about confident Travis is that some of his dialogue still makes it sound like he never met the vault dweller, despite it being literally impossible for Travis to become confident without your help. I guess it’s possible he never put two and two together. Regardless, I always do Confidence Man ASAP.

Playing Deus Ex and finding out about the upgrade was hilarious, 'cause when I played through it I just forgot to go and get my chip updated, then the boss goes "Have you been to a LIMB clinic lately?" and my first reaction was: "Shit! I knew I was forgetting something!" Click "Oh, nevermind, then!"

I would argue that you should never finish "The Beard Makes the Man" in Borderlands 2. You get access to probably the best gun in the game for utility, the Grogg Nozzle, during that quest. If you finish it, you lose the gun. The gun was temporarily lootable years ago, but nowadays the only legitimate way to keep it is to never finish that quest.

The LIMB Clinic quest is absolutely genius. Like your enemies are all people who own these augmentations in some form or fashion so of course they know to exploit the fact you have paid into their service.

Binging through older videos and being notified that a new one has arrived, that is definitely a good quest reward.

I like the Travis quest on fallout 4. I hated hearing him struggle so I wanted to make it where he can be more confident on the radio

“Show him what a bad idea it is to cross a thieves guild member who also happens to be the archmage of the college of winterhold and the head of the dark brotherhood.” You seem to have forgotten the whole “and just so happens to be the almighty Dragonborn, slayer of Alduin.”

I... didn't know you could use the skeleton key I always finish the last part of this quest line super fast because I really like it, I never thought to use the skeleton key on any other door

"The Beard Makes the Man" in Borderlands 2 gives you the Grog Nozzle, arguably the best utility item in the entire game without exploiting it. It gives you by 65% of all damage done as long as the gun is in your hand, none of the damage has to be from the gun itself. But when exploiting it you can make yourself drunk using the gun, swap to another weapon quickly and get at least 4 more projectiles. When you finish the quest, instead of keeping this amazing piece of gear you get some XP and some cash.

I’d say a more fitting side quest for Skyrim is “A Daedra’s Best Friend” because choosing either ending results in losing your immortal talking dog follower who doesn’t actually take up a follower slot. The Skeleton Key becomes redundant once you’ve used it to reach 100 lockpicking and get the “Unbreakable” perk, letting you have infinite lock picks and the agent of Nocturnal effects.

Skyrim's mystic tuning gloves from a quest in The College of Winterhold, makes your magicka regenerate while holding spells and p/s spells are basically free, albeit only for a limited time, and you can only have this ability three times. But I guess it's essentially built into the quest so I'm unsure if this counts.

The other Skyrim quest I never finished with some characters was the one with the Daedric doggo. I mean, if you're an archer or a squishy mage WHY would you give up on this nice unkillable tank that's also low enough to the ground to not get in the way of shooting or casting as much as the human companions sometime do ? Only problem with him is some weird aggro in a few situations where NPCs would otherwise not defaut to hostile. And maybe pushing you off a few cliffs :D

I thought for sure I would see "The Beard Makes the Man" from Borderlands 2 here. The Grog Nozzle is an absolute beast of a weapon that you lose upon completion of the mission.

To be fair about the skeleton key, if you max out lockpicking then you can get a perk that makes lockpicks unbreakable

The thing with the Star Ocean side quest is that in order to activate the last scene with Filia, which in turn removes the final boss's limiter, is that you have to get to the final save point in the final dungeon. You can't remove the boss's limiter without getting one screen transition from the last fight and then backtracking through a large final dungeon, with random encounters, and no shortcuts. Additionally, you have to enter the first town in the world via the Private Action prompt, which you would normally have no reason to do so, as there's almost never any Private Action events after your first visit to a town. The intention was that players use the final save point, beat the game, and then reload their data to explore the "post game" content. Such as the side quest that allows you to go back to the first world, but with the airship you didn't have, and access the secret (and hard) bonus dungeon. Indalecio Limiter Off was supposed to be a post game superboss. It's just that if you do everything you weren't supposed to, you can make it a lot harder on yourself. You can still get to the previously mentioned bonus dungeon and gear up/grind to make it more manageable at least.

I really hope that there's a mod for travis that makes him confidant but keeps the weird charm from before.

“The Beard Makes The Man” and “Doctor’s Orders” from Borderlands 2. The first one gives you the Grog Nozzle, which is a very good slag weapon, and the second one has a glitch that almost always spawns one to four loot midgets in the Hyperion Exploitation Preserve. And if you don’t know, loot midgets are a very effective (and rare) way of getting good loot.

confidence man is the most wholesome quest, building Travis' confidence hit real close to home for me, so I'm all for supporting his growth

Really love that you guys shouted out Star Ocean 2. It's my favorite RPG of all time.

Fallout 76 has damaged me beyond repair. At 10:19, I tuned everyone and everything out and just found myself saying: "Grab the fan. Grab the fan! GRAB THE FAN! WHY AREN'T YOU GRABBING THE FAN?!"

If you start "confidence man" and never go to the brewery you will have Travis as an unkillable companion forever .

Tenpenny Tower from Fallout 3. I thought I found the good ending, where everyone reached a compromise to live together peacefully. Then I came back later and, well....

"A brilliant questline that sees you undertaking all manner of daring heists, and also burning down bee hives for some reason." Given the reason was "destroy some of the sources of honey to teach a lesson to the meadery's proprietor", I have to assume this was recorded before the Drinks Cabinet video, otherwise I'll bet Mike would have been all onboard with hindering mead production ;)

In borderlands, there was the “check up on TK Baha” quest that still hurts me to this day. The details are exact, you get the quest, when you go to ,our friend, Baha’s shack near Fyrestone, you don’t find him on his chair relaxing, instead you are horrified by the sight of TK hung by his leg cold dead in his own shack with psychos that attack you as you see his hanging corpse. That is a quest you should never take or finish. Period.

One of the best examples is in Pathologic (2005), a simulator of surviving a horrible mythical plague in a small secluded (and even more mythical) city. On the second day as a Bachelor you can recieve a side quest of "gathering food for the Shelter", which involves gathering a hilarious sum of money from rich people of the town and then buying incredibly expensive (due to the news of an epidemic outbreak) food. You won't get enough money so you'll have to invest a lot of money of your own. And what will you recieve for all this effort? A handful of nuts. For food that costed around 75 000, and that you could probably use yourself since nobody expects a 10x price increase on the second day of a pandemic survival game. What makes it even more hilarious is that you can easily just pocket the money you gathered and do nothing at all. This will not have any concequences whatsoever. And, as a final nail in the coffin, the Shelter will be a complete failure anyway. So you are well punished for doing an obviously good and moral choice.

Oblivion should be on this list. It's best to start the quest for Clavicus Vile. What you have to do is kill a wood elf holding the sword Umbra. If you don't finish, Umbra remains a quest item, which means no weight. (Also means you can't drop it, ever.) Much better than the helmet he gives you, if you give him Umbra. (Which btw, is actually surpassed in its quality by the Helm of the Crusader in Knights of the Nine.) Now, you can officially keep the sword, as part of the quest, but now it actually has weight. A downside to not finishing is you can't do the quest for Hermaeus Mora, which can only be done if you finish ALL the Daedric quests, and enough progress on the main quest.

I feel like with the thieves guild quest line if you walk out and don’t return it you should be tagged as a traitor too and have thieves guild members occasionally hunt you down to try to get the key back

Star Ocean 2 is one of my all time favorite games, pretty awesome to see it getting some love on a list. I would always do the sidequest to unlock the limiter, though I do feel bad she dies, I've got to beat the final boss at his strongest, especially on 4D.

I do the Confidence Man quest solely for the XP since I never really listen to Diamond City Radio (or any radio, really). It's funny when it turns out that Travis becoming smooth means Scarlet doesn't like him anymore, though 😂

Fun fact. In the German version of Cyberpunk 2077, Skippy has the same voice actor as SpongeBob SquarePants.

ANY of the Tenpenny Tower quests from Fallout 3. One has you blowing up a town of people for "speculation rights," so a rich guy can build luxury apartments for no one to live in. Another has you convince the residents the Ghouls who want to move in aren't all murderers and thieves, but then a minor disagreement convinces the Ghouls to murder everyone and pillage everything. The last one involves helping out slavers by bringing people to them to sell. Nothing good comes out of Tenpenny Tower.

There is a side quest in the original KotOR that I don't start, much less finish. The one where the lady on Dantooine wants you to find her missing droid and it turns out she uses the droid as... a replacement husband. Your options are to kill the droid or send it back to it's very unwanted home life.

What about the drunken dwarf side quest in the Tiny Tina DLC for Borderlands 2? The pistol you get from that, the Grog Nozzle, is quite literally the best gun in the game and its stolen from you at the end of that quest.

Wait, Sheng will become the DJ? Wow, over 1000 hours in several playthroughs of Fallout 4 and I never thought to kill Travis.

Travis after confidence man > Travis before confidence man

The little girl's quest in BloodBorne. It's depressing with no happy ending unless you never talk to her at all. Out of all the dark and creepy things in bloodborne, this one stung players the most. Her parents are dead (you kill her dad btw), she dies trying to get to safety (and it's both unavoidable and your fault once the quest begins) then you bring her ribbon back to her sister, who promptly goes insane and jumps to her death. All you get out of it is a bloodgem, a music box, and an endless feeling of guilt.

Also from fallout 4 is Preston's side quests. Just because they never stop and I still have a twitch every time I hear him say "Another settlement needs your help".

In Dark Souls, you can save Laurentius of the Great Swamp and he comes to chill at Firelink and teach Pyromancy. Eventually, you'll find some Chaos Pyromancy elsewhere, and Laurentius will ask where you found it. If you tell him, he runs off to Blight Town and goes hollow. There's not even a reward!

Unshey is still waiting for his Girdle of Piercing in Baldur's gate. In a game where so much of exploration is walk into soo many archers kill half the party, reload. Everything became so much simpler to have one tank being the designated target pin cushion with a swanky belt and having the rest of my party shooting them one by one.

I miss Skippy, didn't know it was gonna switch an lock on me so I obviously picked the murder hobo mode, after he switched to non lethal I was fine with getting rid of it, when I start NG+ I won't make the same mistake again

In the original Dark Souls one of the characters you meet is Siegmeyer of Catarina a knight who wears a suit of armor resembling an onion, if the player chooses to fully complete his side quest then they will repeatedly intervene on his behalf as a result he ends up losing faith in his skills as an adventurer, goes hollow and has to be put down by his own daughter.

Skippy is actually a reference to an AI in a book series. It's expeditionary Force by Craig Alanson. The Skippy AI spends the entire series talking about how disgusting and what stupid monkeys humans are.

What about the Tenpenny Towers side quest in Fallout 3 where you basically have a choice to side with an anti-ghoul security chief OR cause all the residents to be killed by ghouls?

Why do you need the Skeleton Key in Skyrim? You can use the fortify restoration loop to enchant a Ring with a loop enhanced fortify lock picking enchantment making all locks instantly pickable. You can also do the same thing for pickpocketing making everything 100% stealable

Totally forgot about the Grog Nozzle quest in Borderlands 2. It's one of the best utility weapons in the entire games, and so many end game builds require it in order to complete content.

Travis Mills has the energy of Griffin McElroy "reading" a final Yahoo lol

Honestly I thought they were talking about Parthanaax, since you can get a perk that makes all lock picks unbreakable

Yeah... I'm playing my second play though of skyrim and had literally just gotten to that thieves guild quest. Since I'm really good at picking locks (to the point I made the skill legendary so I could keep leveling it) and have over 100 lockpicks, I'm planning on hanging onto it for a bit then returning it after I'm done messing around for a bit. Still a funny coincidence that the last thing I did in the game was kill mercer then go to mzulft to continue the college quest that I'd only done the first piece of while I was gathering the atherium shards. Then I got a headache and turned it off and have been taking a break from it for a few days.

The quest "Return to Crookback Bog" Depending on how you act in 'The Whispering Hillock" It ends either with the death of the bloody baron, or the bloody baron leaving crows perch. Either way it sucks because another guy takes charge instead and he isnt as cool as the baron lol, also you are confronted with your actions whenever you go to crows perch if the baron killed himself (he hangs himself on a tree in the courtyard)

Dark souls 3 the Greirat side quest, I felt awful when you basically sent Greirat to his death in Lothric he was the few who didn't kill you on sight.

Star Ocean: The second Story. One of the few old school games I have played repeatedly to this day. If you haven’t you should, this is by far one of funnest games to play even in today’s graphics. WITH tons of unique endings based on relationships.

“From the ground up” from Breath of The Wild. Once you finish the wedding sequence, DONT talk to Bolson. He’ll go back to sitting in front of your house and NEVER LEAVES.

I was thinking of the save all the trapped grubs quest in Hollow Knight. The Collector was right

Another Skyrim one is A Daedra's Best Friend. Finishing the quest means that you lose an immortal follower that doesn't take up either your pet or companion slot.

You can complete Confidence man without losing Shy Awkward Travis. Just tell him to stay back during the final mission.

Honestly, I was happy to get rid of the Skeleton Key. It put some (albeit minor) challenge back into picking locks and I'd actually feel accomplished when I opened a locked door or chest. Also I was so good at lockpicking by that point, and had saved up so many lockpicks, a locked door was never actually concern anyway.

I remember playing Deus ex and forgetting to go to the limb clinic, which is funny cos I was doing a no aug run and just used a grenade launcher on the boss instead so it didn't even matter

NOT finishing the thieve’s guild questline and maxing out your lockpicking tree with the skeleton key is a reward in itself

You forgot the Fallout 3 quest with the gouls wanting to get into tenpenny tower. There is no positive ending, and three dog will talk mad shit over the airwaves behind his brotherhood guard detail.

Farcry 6: Releasing the chickens, makes litirally the most annoying enemy in the game spawn regularly, especially if you want to unlock that DAMN HORSE