Winds of the North makes many changes to the game. My goal with this guide is to highlight some of the most important ones, and prepare newcomers for their first few hours in game.

I highly suggest giving this guide a brief look at the very least. Its not a completely comprehensive list of every single change, but it should give you a good idea of what to expect.
Some of the pages, like the Leveling and Creation Club Integration pages, double as documentation to be referred to later if need be.

Also, there is no shame in turning the difficulty down to "Adept" from the default "Expert". In fact, if you are brand new to Simonrim, I would even advise it until you get used to some of the new mechanics.

Creating your character is the first step in starting your Skyrim playthrough. Visit the Creating Your Character page to learn more about what has changed.

Perhaps some of the most subtle but impactful changes are those to player leveling. Primarily, these are accomplished by SimonMagus's WIP mod called "Crusader" with a few additional tweaks on my end.
The amount of changes are rather large, and explaining every one of them requires a rather dense amount of info. If you are interested in reading that, check out the Leveling page.

Otherwise I will summarize here:

• Leveling has been slowed down quite a bit. You will no longer blast past level 10 in a few short hours.
• Sources of XP rate increases are now more important. Keeping your needs tended to and finding skill books (from Reading is Good) will increase the rate at which you learn skills.
• The soft cap is now level 50. Even though the overall leveling speed is slower, you will gain 2 perk points every 5 levels and 3 perk points when reaching level 50.
  • It should be easier to perk up your desired build without having to level other skills just to get perks.
  • You can still level up passed level 50 and gain stat increases with every level like normal. However, you will only gain 1 perk every 5 levels after 50.

Combat in Winds of the North is probably one of the more important aspects to grasp early on. You may find it to be more difficult than combat in vanilla, at least at first.

These changes primarily come from "Blade and Blunt - A Combat Overhaul".
Blade and Blunt encourages you to think more methodically in combat. Carefully manage your stamina, and try to hit enemies when they are vulnerable.

• Stamina is a very important stat for combat oriented characters.
  • When you've exhausted your stamina, you will move and attack slower, and combat related actions like attacking will be much less effective.
  • Sneaking, jumping and swimming now cost stamina.
  • In combat, sprinting costs more with heavy armor than light armor.
• Timing your attacks is now very important. Hitting enemies that are power attacking, casting, or drawing a bow now deals 50% more damage, and vice versa.
• You now have a chance to become injured in combat if you get hit with low health.
  • To cure these, you can sleep at least 4 hours (for a minor injury), or use a cure injury potion.
• You may now parry attacks with a correctly timed block if you are using a 2 handed weapon or 1 handed weapon with an empty off-hand.

If you would like to read even more about how exactly combat has changed, the Blade and Blunt modpage is very informative.

Winds of the North is packed full of changes to existing core game mechanics, as well as new mechanics to interact with.

Winds of the North includes several mods that add brand new content to experience and/or change when certain quests are made available. Visit the Quests And New Content page to see what levels you should be able to start these modified quests.

Winds of the North includes many mods that work to improve integration for the Creation Club content. You can find a detailed list of the creations and what changes them here.