In Which Merawen Achieves Mastery of Destruction

This session was short, but long enough for me to do the majority of the Destruction Ritual Quest! Which required me to visit two new locations, and one I’d already been to.

Highlights

• Session number in this run: 88
• Worked my way east from Morthal towards college
• Started throwing Rout spell at any animal that attacked me
• Routed: three trolls, one snowy sabre cat, one snow bear
• Threw Clairvoyance around a lot, but it kept getting confused as to which direction I should go, sent me through Dawnstar and then tried to send me back through Dawnstar
• Takeaway here: Clairvoyance spell kinda sucks at directions
• Found possible unmarked ruined tower not far from Dawnstar?
• Also found orichalcum vein that also gave me iron ore wait what?
• Another snowy sabre cat, and two trolls; the two trolls kept coming back for yet another round of Rout
• Me: No, goddammit, trolls, I said fuck off.
• Trolls: OHNOEZ SHE IS SCARY RUN AWAY no wait we are scary trolls RAR OHNOEZ SHE IS SCARY RUN AWAY
• Made it to mage college
• Resolved Aftershock quest with Tolfdir
• Me: Hey Faralda any further tips on how to blow shit up?
• Faralda: Nope you have achieved all ways to blow shit up that I can give you, except for this one book I found, here, you should have this.
• She gave me the book Power of the Elements
• Fast traveled to Windward Ruins
• Killed a couple of skeevers
• Put book on the pedestal and hit it with Flames, which woke up the second page with the clue to the next location
• Hit the Adept-locked chest
• Fast traveled to South Skybound Watch
• Looted chest on second floor of that tower, then went in door to Skybound Watch Pass
• Crossed through the connecting pass, killed five bandits via Frenzy rune + Dremora Lord
• Also killed giant frostbite spider with Bound Battleaxe
• Made it out the other end to North Skybound Watch
• Heard but did not see another bandit; nobody stopped me from reaching the pedestal and getting the next clue, which required hitting the book with Frostbite
• Fast traveled to Four Skull Lookout which I’d already cleared
• (Hadn’t realized before that this was a Destruction Ritual Quest site, I think I had been confused about what the pedestal was for before, and now I know?)
• Hit the book with Sparks to get it to trigger the final stage, giving me the Fire Storm spell… which, lol, I cannot cast because it takes a huge amount of magicka
• Saved for the night

Commentary

Not too much to add here other than what I said above. I will note though that the magicka cost on the Fire Storm spell does appear to be super high, so it’s real unclear to me how I might actually be able to use it before I end Merawen’s run.

Clearly I’d need some seriously enchanted-out-the-wazoo jewelry and/or clothing to bump up my magicka. I do have some relevant items but I don’t know if they’d be enough to bring that 600+ magicka cost down.

Also, so far these Ritual quests for the mage college have been somewhat easier than I expected–though this might also be a factor of how I’m playing them over level 80. I suspect they’d be harder if I weren’t so high level!

Next time

Returning to the mage college to buy the remaining master-tier Destruction spells from Faralda. And hopefully, getting my Illusion far enough along on the way that I can do the Illusion quest too, and get the master tier spells for that from Drevis.

Screenshots

No screenshots this time, I only took a couple in this session and they weren’t really interesting.

Editing to add

• 11/17/2023: Added a session number.