In Which Ysani Goes to the Greybeards

Major action here: finishing off the Halted Stream Camp bounty run, acquiring a bunch more spells, making it to High Hrothgar, and beginning the run through Shroud Hearth Barrow!

Highlights

Play date: 1/28/2022
Session number in this run: 4
Trudged back to Whiterun from Halted Stream Camp
Kept throwing Transmute spell on the way to work on converting my ore
Reached Whiterun, smelted a boatload of ore, and made a bunch of jewelry
Had some of it be silver and some gold, just to use the amethysts and garnets I’d found
Improved several of the bandit loot items and then sold them all to Elrindir to get unburdened
Rented a room at the Bannered Mare and slept for a few hours
Sold things to Belethor in the morning, including all the jewelry, and bought healing potions
Went up to Dragonsreach to collect the bandit bounty
Bought a pile of spells off of Farengar! including your friend and mine, Conjure Flame Atronach; but also Candlelight, Muffle, Fast Healing, Clairvoyance, Soul Trap
Ran Farengar’s quest to take the frost salts down to Arcadia
Also sold Arcadia several potions, and got blisterwort from her to make Smithing potions
Sold a few more things to Belethor to really beat the weight down and get more gold
Then went back and got the spellbook for Bound Sword from Farengar! Because no sense carrying around a heavy steel sword when I can just whip one up on demand
Tried to head out from Whiterun to go to High Hrothgar
Hostile creatures encountered: skeever, flame atronach (which killed me, ow ow ow ow)
Take two leaving Whiterun! Passed young Lars Guerrier-Né!
Hostile creatures/people encountered: skeever, thief; took out thief with the help of Lydia and the familiar! Bound Sword and getting the fuck out of the way a lot helped
Took his leather armor because va te faire, voleur! And now I have a full set of leather traveling armor
More hostile creatures encountered: total of five wolves; frostbite spider; two skeevers
Reached Valtheim Towers and was confronted by toll bandit; actually bought her off by persuading her to accept 50 gold instead of 200, which is good because I didn’t have 200 😉
(And did not want to risk fighting all those bandits)
Found the revelers with the mead! Hi guys! (word of note here: fétard)
Got ahead of Lydia as i left the road to cut over to Ivarstead (Fort-Ivar); she caught up while I was taking out a wolf with the flame atronach, which leveled me up to 9; dropped perk point on Illusion for half cost of novice spells
Found unmarked ruined remnants of structure with the Conjuration spellbook and the strongbox underneath the basket
Mined iron vein
Ran into relatives going to Vittoria Vici’s wedding–but also ran into troll, and was killed by same, dammit
Thrown back to killing that last wolf; leveled back up to 9; decided to take Steel smithing perk
Re-found the aforementioned ruined structure and re-mined iron vein
Took a different path this time and actually made it to Ivarstead! Go me!
Talked to the innkeeper; got the pointer to go investigate Shroud Hearth Barrow; got a bounty to take out the bandit chief at Treva’s Watch
Came out of the inn and got a courier! With the letter from the Jarl of Falkreath—which is translated to Épervine
Got Temba Wide-Arm to give me her quest for killing 10 bears
Headed up towards the Greybeards; got Klimmek’s quest to take his supplies up
Frostbite spider! and I sparked it to death \0/
Met Barknar at the second emblem, then realized it was in fact the second emblem and had to swing back to read the first (side note: Barknar’s kind of cute!)
Took out total of three ice wolves; number three got blown down the mountainside by the flame atronach
Chatted with Karita at emblem number four
Gah killed by frost troll past emblem five; thrown back to emblem one 😛
Started taking saves at each emblem on the way up
Re-killed the frostbite spider and the three ice wolves
Second time through got that damn frost troll with the flame atronach, and also running away a lot while the atronach beat it up
Hit nine before realizing it was nine and I’d passed eight, swung back to get that one, then made it to nine and ten! Voice of the Sky blessing achieved!
Klimmek’s supplies dropped off
Hello Greybeards! Did their trials to get the next word of Unrelenting Force and to unlock Whirlwind Sprint (Impulsion)
Got the quest for the horn and headed back down the mountain
As expected, cultists ambushed me at Ivarstead; this took a few tries because they kept fucking frying me with a flame atronach; another situation of instant ward, then back the fuck up and let the guards and Lydia handle this problem
Spent the night at the inn; got up the next morning and checked back in with Klimmek
Went to go investigate the barrow
Ran the first part of this dungeon; Wyndelius killed me the first time, but got him the second, throwing a ward and then immediately throwing Bound Sword to engage him hand to hand
Returned to the inn to give the innkeeper the journal; got the sapphire dragon claw
Saved there for the night

Commentary

Four sessions in and I’m already feeling how kicking the Difficulty setting up another notch is impacting my progress. I can’t really compare to Alarrah just because Alarrah’s run started off with me being a raw newbie, so it took me much longer to get significant progress with her.

But with Merawen and Delga, getting to the point of reaching the Greybeards at High Hrothgar took a little less time. Merawen did it in her second session, Delga did it in her third, and now I’ve done it with Ysani in session four. As I write this, though, I feel like I can attribute taking a bit longer to get that far only partially to the higher Difficulty setting. Some of this also simply has to be because I’m trying to play a mage here.

And a mage who’s the diametric opposite of Delga the tank, in particular. Ysani is small and fragile, and this is definitely requiring me to get used to different ways of dealing with powerful opponents. Ysani is definitely, definitely going to invest heavily in Conjuration training! And I really want to get her to the point of being able to have two summoned atronachs. ;D

This also bumps up the importance of Lydia being able to smack things on my behalf. Which likewise suggests that I need to get her better armor and weaponry ASAP. That default steel stuff she’s wearing is not going to cut it too much longer!

I’ve also got some planning to do as to how fast I can get enough appropriate gear for a full mage outfit. And until I get to that point, having actual light armor to wear will be useful.

And I’m getting into a groove of how to handle a fight, as long as I see the enemy coming:

Immediately conjure a ward with one hand and the flame atronach with the other
Back off hard to give room for Lydia and the atronach to take on the incoming enemy
Run circles around the melee and look for angles to hit the enemy with Destruction magic

This seems to be more useful outside where I have more room to maneuver; it worked well on the way up to the Greybeards, for example.

Inside a dungeon, though, I may need to refine this and focus more on ward + Bound Sword.

Language commentary

I’m a little surprised that Ivarstead is Fort-Ivar in French? I was expecting it to be Ivarbourg, given how Rorikstead got translated over to Rorikbourg. But maybe they wanted to vary it up a bit?

Fétard was a fun word to learn, once I ran into the mead revelers. From what i saw looking it up, there’s a definite connotation here of “party animal”, which is appropriate to those guys!

Once I made it to the Greybeards, I have to admit it was odd to hear Arngeir not sounding like Christopher Plummer! But he did have an excellent “elderly French gentleman” type of performance, nonetheless.

Also intrigued to see Whirlwind Sprint translated to Impulsion. And that Jurgen Windcaller becomes Jurgen Parlevent. Presumably because parle = speak, vent = wind, so I guess is Windspeaker?

Amused to note that when Lydia yawns after you’ve been dragging her through a dungeon for a while, that yawn sounds different in the French build than it does in the English. Hee!

Next time

I need to run Shroud Hearth Barrow, and after that, I’ll jump back to Whiterun and do some crafting and selling. If I have enough gold available, I’ll see about getting a few more spells from Farengar!

And then see about heading to the mage college!

Screenshots

Only one screenshot this time, but I wanted to capture the look of Ysani in leather armor even though she’s not likely to actually keep this armor long!

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11/20/2023: Restored missing gallery, and added play date and session number markers.