In Which Delga Quests through Vahlok’s Tomb and Fahlbtharz

More finishing up of loose ends on Solstheim before I take on Miraak and finish up the Dragonborn plot!

Highlights

• Play date: 1/21/2022
• Session number in this run: 80
• Did a little alchemy in Severin Manor
• Set out into Raven Rock market for shopping purposes; sold stuff to all three vendors
• Speech back up to 40 so I recovered 25 points of it just by selling stuff by this point!
• Headed east out of town
• Hostile Khajiit at Old Attius Farm
• Headed north-ish from there and reached Kagrumez
• Did not find the body of Raleth Eldri in the tent outside
• But this time at least all three reavers spawned inside so I was able to get the other two gems and start running the gauntlet!
• Found the friendly spider and sphere but could not get either of them to follow me, probably because of losing my dog much earlier in the game 🙁
• But at least I did make it to the Dwarven Black Bow of Fate (which would have been a bitchin’ bow for Merawen to have, I feel)!
• Headed out from there towards Vahlok’s Tomb
• Arrived there and met up with Tharstan; ran and cleared the place
• Fell into the water on the last magical bridge and had to kill a bunch of corrupted shades, but not difficult
• Vahlok’s remains disappeared before I could loot him, but oh well he has no mask anyway
• Fast traveled back to Raven Rock for loot drop; shopped with Fethis and Milore
• Did some crafting for a while, improved assorted weapons, enchanted more jewelry, did a few new potions
• Finally headed out again to target going to Fahlbtharz and Benkongerike
• Pyromancer vs. cryomancer at Old Attius Farm
• This time i conjured a dremora lord and kinda stood back and let him take both of them out 😀
• Headed to Fahlbtharz and ran the place
• One-handed leveled up to 100 while fighting initial rieklings, so I decided to set it Legendary and get a few perks back; put them on Conjuration to make adept spells cheaper to cast, also Restoration 
• Leveled up to 69 shortly thereafter; took Dragon smithing perk again
• Got Eydis’ gloves to round out my set of Skaal clothes
• Got the Visage of Mzund and other valuable loot off the centurions and out of the treasure room
• Fast traveled back to Raven Rock for loot drop after
• Made a full set of dragonplate armor and improved it up as far as I could get it; also improved assorted weapons to burn through backlogged dragonbits and other materials
• Set out again after sleeping to head for Benkongerike
• Hostile Imperial at Old Attius Farm; sicced Iona and dremora on her
• Pyromancer vs. cryomancer near Tel Mithryn; this time they were ARCH pyromancer and cryomancer; dremora still kicked cryomancer’s ass though 😉
• Reached Tel Mithryn; bought a bunch of things from Elynea
• Took Conjuration training from Talvas; also sold him my extra spellbooks
• Headed north along the shore
• Fought two frost trolls; sicced dremora on them, he killed one, I took down the other after his summons ran out
• Passed Skaal village but didn’t stop
• Third frost troll
• Got ahead of Iona
• Found oddly frozen ice wraith who didn’t interact until I hit it
• Iona caught up with me then just as I was realizing I had overshot Benkongerike
• Swung back around to go there
• Passed friendly hunter and dog
• Heard respawned Saering’s Watch dragon so had to go after it, but it killed me with fire, ow
• Second time through thrown back only as far as just after the ice wraith
• Saw friendly hunter and dog again
• Iona and I engaged Saering’s Watch dragon this time on the ground by the ruin for easier shooting
• Also I hit it with the Slow Time shout for a few more extra shots!
• No sign of Miraak this time, good
• Returned to entrance of Benkongerike and saved for the night

Commentary

After my failure to run Kagrumez in Merawen’s playthrough, it was nice to be able to hit the place with Delga! But even though I was able to successfully run it, there were still at least a few bugs involved.

One, I didn’t see a corpse for Raleth Eldri in the tent up on the walkway around the Kagrumez pit. This didn’t seem to be a problem for purposes of getting into the ruin, though, and I was at least able to find his notes.

And two, I wasn’t able to take either the friendly spider or the friendly sphere as a follower. But this isn’t Kagrumez’s fault in particular. I think this was because of my animal follower slot having been borked much earlier in Delga’s run, where I had that dog mysteriously disappear on me!

But I did at least successfully run the dungeon, and got the Dwarven Black Bow of Fate. Which, as observed above, I feel like would have been rather an appropriate bow for Merawen!

Meanwhile, I am delighted to finally have the Conjure Dremora Lord spell with this run. I loved the hell out of that spell with Merawen’s run, and I expect to be exercising it quite a bit for what time remains with Delga!

Also as noted above, kicked One-Handed over to Legendary during this session, then proceeded to get back several points on it. Two-Handed is about to roll over, too. I suspect Delga’s about to start getting a lot more practice at magic while I work on leveling up the weapons skills some more.

Last but certainly not least, I want to remark upon trying out the Slow Time Shout in combat against the Saering’s Watch dragon. I went !!! when I saw that Shout talked up in this guide about doing an archer build, and in particular, the video provided in that post. Because I mean damn. I hadn’t really had an appreciation before of the possibilities with that Shout.

But after seeing that video, I wanted to try it out very much. Delga’s got all three words of it, since I hit Korvanjund as part of running the civil war plot. And it worked splendidly against that dragon. I will definitely have to try it out more as this playthrough proceeds!

Next time

I paused the last session at the entrance to Benkongerike, so that’ll be my next objective.

There are a few other locales on Solstheim I haven’t hit yet, and I’m thinking about whether I want to try to clear those: Frossel, Bristleback Cave, and Damphall Mine all come to mind. And I also want to go after Karstaag!

That ought to fill out the next session nicely, I think.

Screenshots

Two things I want to call out in the screenshots: a recurrence of the bug I triggered in Alarrah’s playthrough, where a dragon skeleton is never properly cleaned up by the game and keeps following me around in various places. This has started happening to Delga, and this time, the skeleton manifested right through the door of Severin Manor, just as I was coming outside. :O

Also, it was very satisfying to take potshots at a hostile Khajiit and actually send him flying into the air with my arrows!

Editing to add

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