Skyrim is filled to the brim with quests. Some send you out to fetch bear pelts from the nearby wilderness or to clear out a fort of bandits in exchange for a bit of coin, but others spiral down into long, winding storylines that require more effort than a reward could compensate for.
While each major questline in the game has its moments of glory, many of them tend to be disappointing by the time you reach the end. To spare you from boring yourself to death trying to hunt down strange stones or crimson nirnroot, we've compiled 10 quests from Skyrim that are not only annoyingly long but also lacking in reward.
10 Touching The Sky
If you happen to have the Dawnguard DLC, you'll eventually be given this quest towards the end of your adventure. Together with Serana, you'll be tasked with finding yourself Auriel's Bow, a special and uniquely enchanted weapon found within the Forgotten Vale.
Not only is the journey to reach the bow a tough one, as suggested by a Falmer book, which goes into detail about the trials one must go through in order to be enlightened, but the bow itself has a very narrow utility. Effective only against vampires and with the right perks, it's a letdown at the end of a grueling journey.
9 Forbidden Legend
According to a legend, three brothers once divided a powerful amulet before being defeated in battle and wiped from the books of history. It's this legend, which can be read from the book Lost Legends and from any Writ of Sealing found in burial sites, which activates the quest Forbidden Legend.
The quest sends you to find the parts of a supposedly powerful amulet from three locations, forcing you to fight every brother. In the end, you fight all three once more, which just makes it more redundant and annoying. Sadly, the amulet itself isn't anything noteworthy either, with just +30 added to your Health, Magicka, and Stamina.
8 Forsworn Conspiracy & No One Escapes Cidhna Mine
Upon your arrival to Markarth, it's likely you'll witness a commotion at the marketplace and then end up receiving a secret note. This sends you deep into the investigation of a Forsworn conspiracy of sorts, and eventually lands you into Cidhna Mine, a notorious prison from which no one escapes.
After all the effort you go through escaping with Madanach, you'd think you'd get something a little more than just a silver ring that increases your Smithing by 15% and some Forsworn armor.
7 A Return To Your Roots
If there's one place everyone dreads going into, it's Blackreach. Not only does it take forever to actually get down here and open up the multiple pathways and elevators you can take to reach this area, but it's also filled with powerful enemies from Falmer to Dwarven Centurions.
Sadly, one quest sends you down here to fetch 30 Crimson Nirnroot, which aren't easy to find in the dark of the massive underground cave either. Your reward? A 25% chance to create two of the same potion when using Alchemy, as well as a measly book.
6 The Companions
The Companions are fearless warriors with a dark secret: lycanthropy. As you enter their inner circle and help them to fight against the Silver-Hand, as well as reach the cure for lycanthropy, you'll most likely tire yourself out running around chasing Glenmoril Witches and contracting beast blood.
The end reward is decent, but a bit anticlimactic. You earn an ax, Wuuthrad, which will do extra damage against elves, as well as the Shield of Ysgramor, which gives you 30 more health 20% higher magic resistance. And sure, you become the leader of the faction, but you'd expect more after everything you did for The Companions than these two pieces, which will become obsolete quickly at a high level.
5 The College Of Winterhold
The College of Mages in Winterhold is a faction that's in shambles, and it really does show with how little we get from them after discovering the secret behind the Eye of Magnus. Not only does the quest send us to the Labyrinthian, one of the longest and toughest dungeons in the entire game, it gives back very little for everything we put in line for the College.
You become the Arch-Mage automatically, and gain access to the Arch-Mage's quarters, along with the robes. Unless your character is a hardcore spell caster or alchemist, which is a difficult build to run in Skyrim anyway, you won't find much of interest in Savos Aren's quarters.
4 The Civil War
One of the greatest letdowns of Skyrim is no doubt the civil war storyline. No matter which side you choose, you won't be having the time of your life just fighting waves and waves upon enemies to the point where you start to wonder whether you should have joined at all.
Not only are the quests incredibly repetitive - go to an enemy fort or camp, kill everyone - there's way too many of them. Depending on which side you choose, the final battle will either go down in Solitude or in Windhelm. Once it's all over, all you get is a leveled sword and a word of praise, a thank you for enlisting.
3 The Thieves Guild
One of the longer faction storylines is that of the Thieves Guild, because of how much it stretches out. Not only will you get involved with the Nightingales and Mercer's betrayal, but you'll also need to rebuild the Guild's influence by performing random quests for Delvin and Vex to unlock all of the shopkeepers for the Ragged Flagon.
The most important rewards are the two sets of armor you get: the Nightingale armor and the Guild Master armor. Again, both of these armor sets are useful purely for stealth characters due to how specialized their perks are towards Sneak, Speech, Lockpicking, and Pickpocketing.
2 The Main Quest
The main quest of Skyrim is a classic tale of a chosen one. As the Dragonborn, we discover our capacity to absorb Dragon Souls and use them to learn new shouts. Thanks to this ability, we're tasked with defeating Alduin and preventing him from returning.
The questline is so long it's divided into three acts and takes us across Skyrim from High Hrothgar to the depths of Dwemer ruins in search of an Elder Scroll. At the end, we don't really even get a reward. Sure, we've joined the Blades and become Thane in Whiterun, but where's all the cash reward we deserve from saving the entire province from the World Eater himself?
1 No Stone Unturned
At some point in your adventures, you'll most likely discover a very strange looking pink stone. In order to figure out its true nature, you'll not only need to join the Thieves Guild to have it appraised, but you'll also need to find twenty-three more of them. And that's not all: once you have them all, you must fetch a crown for them, too.
The quest is even more pointless since the crown is so expensive it's hard to sell at the end. You'll receive a special ability which simply gives you a better chance of finding gems in loot, a perk which seems far too little after all the searching and running around you did to find all these annoying stones.