In Which Delga Begins Questing through Raven Rock Mine and Bloodskal Barrow

This Skyrim post is for the play I did on Thursday 1/6, which happened to be the same day our internet went down. So I spent a lot of that night trying to deal with the fallout from that, which resulted in this play session being a lot shorter than I might have liked. I will not be crossposting it to Dreamwidth, as there is already a version of this post here.

Main thing accomplished here was to get the quest to clear Raven Rock Mine and Bloodskal Barrow underway. I didn’t finish it in this session, that was done on Friday 1/7, but I’m doing this post separately just because the 1/7 one will be long.

Highlights

• Play date: 1/6/2022
• Session number in this run: 68
• Gave out sujamma to a few more of the Raven Rock townsfolk
• Started the quest to go through the mine and Bloodskal Barrow
• Talked to Crescius about his great-grandfather
• Headed with Calder down into the mine
• Got as far as the stalhrim deposit and realized shit, I’d not gotten the Ancient Nord Pickaxe from Crescius
• Tried to proceed anyway
• Got the two samples of netch jelly and other ingredients at the alchemy table
• Made it as far as the flooded chamber with the waterfall, but I was overloaded at this point and Calder got ahead of me
• He also got overwhelmed by multiple draugr deathlords, and got killed! I decided this was unacceptable and rolled back to the start of the session
• So re-ran the entire session, minus talking with a couple of the town NPCs (like the two Dunmer living in the abandoned house)
• This time through I actually also got the Ancient Nord Pickaxe before heading down into the mine so I’d have it for the stalhrim deposit
• Made it back to the flooded chamber
• Saved for the night before going back into that chamber

Commentary

Okay so this session was by necessity short. This is what happens when your house internet completely collapses, and you have to spend most of the night fighting with Comcast about that.

However, I did at least get in a bit of play. I started off by trying to hand out more of the sujamma from Geldis in the Retching Netch Inn, and by extension, talking to a couple more of the townsfolk that I hadn’t talked to much in previous playthroughs, like the two who’d been living in the abandoned house at the edge of town.

And after that, I went into Raven Rock Mine to get the Final Descent quest underway–the one where you find out what happened to Crescius’ great-grandfather, get the Bloodskal Blade, and re-open the mine for the benefit of the town.

Technically speaking this quest involves two locales, Raven Rock Mine and Bloodskal Barrow. But it’s really one great big dungeon crawl, and it’s fun! But since it’s big I did not have time to finish it in this session.

First problem I ran into though was realizing that I had neglected to get Glover’s Ancient Nord Pickaxe back from Crescius, which meant I was not able to mine the first of the two stalhrim deposits you can find during this quest. I tried to proceed anyway, but eventually ran into a more serious problem.

Namely, the three draugr deathlords in the flooded chamber where you can find a second stalhrim deposit behind a waterfall. Those guys were on multiple levels of this room, and the ones up on the upper tier were able to snipe at Calder and me with both arrows and Unrelenting Force.

Which, unfortunately, eventually resulted in Calder’s death. He kept having his ass handed to him, and he kept running ahead of me before I could catch up and heal him.

I decided this was entirely unacceptable. Calder may not have as much outright personality as Lydia does, but he’s still my housecarl, and goddammit I’ve already had one steward die this run. I didn’t want to lose a housecarl too.

So I rolled back to the beginning of the session and started over. This meant I lost the earlier interaction I had with the two Dunmer beggars, but I did at least get the quest underway again. And this time through, I got that Ancient Nord Pickaxe before I headed down into the mine!

Took the replay as far as the same flooded chamber, and saved at that point for the night.

Next time

The session after this one saw the conclusion of the Final Descent quest! With a side helping of popping back to the Skyrim mainland for some Fort Dawnguard action!

Screenshots

Just a couple of screenshots from this session, and I’m pretty sure they’re both from the earlier part before I had to rollback from Calder’s untimely death. But I’m keeping them here anyway on the assumption that Delga spoke with these two characters, even if I didn’t play through doing the exact same dialogue again!

Editing to add

• 11/20/2023: Restored missing gallery, and added play date and session number markers.
• 10/7/2024: Converted gallery to native WordPress one.