In Which Shenner Quests Into Cronvagr Cave

Very short session this time, featuring questing into Cronvagr Cave–and going up a particularly noteworthy frostbite spider, while investigating the fate of two lost heroes.

Highlights

• Play date: 6/26/2022
• Session number in this run: 26
• Started in Honeyside
• Did a little bit of shopping with Bersi and Balimund; bought a bunch of iron, also improved some items and sold them, and improved the Remnant armor up another notch of Legendary
• Stepped out of the gates to pick up Swift Wind, and started riding north-ish to get to Cronvagr Cave
• Fought assorted wolves, bears, and frostbite spiders en route, and got overloaded while looting fallen critters, because bear pelts are heavy, yo
• Made it back to Evethra’s camp, and the materials there had respawned, ha
• Got attacked by the Bonestrewn Crest dragon when it spotted us
• Called up a Seducer archer to help take down the dragon, though it did me the courtesy of landing right in front of me, so I whacked on it with my ebony sword
• LOL triggered the “jump on the dragon’s head” cinematic but from the back end of the dragon point of view, which made me a little afraid it had eaten me until I actually saw myself jumping on its head
• Once the dragon was dead, rode up to Bonestrewn Crest to get the word for Frost Breath off the Word Wall, and also loot the boss chest
• Rode over to Cronvagr Cavern for the main action of this session, for the Caught in a Web quest, to find out what happened to the two heroes who’d gone in there in competition
• Answer: ‘big fuckoff spider’, i.e., the Web Mother
• Heh, apparently this was also the place where i could have found the pet frostbite spider?
• Called up a Golden Saint warrior to fight on my behalf since i was very overloaded
• However, Gogh and Iona got pissed off at each other 😛
• Gogh kept attacking Iona, she must have hit him in the melee or something; had to hit Gogh with a Calm spell to stop that nonsense
• Boinged to Solitude; sold a bunch of stuff to Sayma and Angeline
• Boinged back to Windstad and started working on building more of it, but had to stash materials first, boing to Lakeview and pick up materials from there, then boing back to Windstad
• Built out the full Main Hall structure
• Iona volunteered to be steward, as I kind of expected she would, so I let her
• I think it was somewhere in here, crafting a bunch of building materials, that I leveled up to 37; took Magicka bump and Unhindered perk in Light Armor
• Furnished up a bunch of the place, including beds, so Valdimar and Iona can actually have someplace to sleep
• Built up a bunch of furnishings until I ran out of iron, then boinged to Whiterun for more shopping
• Stopped in Breezehome and did a bunch of alchemy
• Sold a bunch of potions to Belethor and bought assorted useful items from him
• Boinged back to Lakeview
• Did some more smithing and kicked the Remnant armor up another level of Legendary; this stuff is now my best light armor since I can’t improve the studded dragonscale armor further yet
• Saved for the night

Commentary

This was a pretty short session, with only one main round of action: going to Cronvagr Cave to figure out what happened to the two heroes who’d run off there in competition with each other.

And only on the way there, as I saw its position on the map, did I realize that I’d mistaken which location this was. Cronvagr is the spider-infested cave I’d been in once before to recover Roggi Knot-Beard’s family shield. Not to be confused with Cragwallow Slope. The names aren’t exactly similar, despite both of them starting with C, so I’m not sure why I got them conflated!

But anyway, Cronvagr’s main thing is spiders. And for this plot in particular, there’s even a unique spider: the Web Mother, who of course was the cause of the demise of the two heroes.

Who I saw in ghost form once I finally got into the chamber and got done going “Holy shit that’s a big fuckoff spider.” Even more alarming than the usual giant frostbite spiders.

I was overloaded so couldn’t exactly fight it quickly myself, but I had Gogh with me, and the ability to summon help, so that got the spider dispatched easily enough. At which point I was able to search the spider-drained corpses of the two heroes, and recover their artifacts.

Not terribly enthused by either artifact, really? One was a steel greatsword that does frost damage, and I’m already doing way better than that with my ebony sword. (And while two-handers aren’t usually my thing, if i want to go two-handed, I can probably go back and get the two-hander I’d picked up during the Contest quest.) And the other was a pair of steel gauntlets which, admittedly, had some decent enchantments on them. But not decent enough to tempt me off my current armor.

Plus, the page for the Fists of Randagulf says the gauntlets are apparently bugged and can’t be tempered, anyway. So that puts me off trying to use them, regardless.

The other notable aspect of going through this cave was that Gogh got pissed off somehow at Iona, and kept trying to attack her. She kept smacking him down into recovery mode, and I healed him, but he kept getting back up and attacking Iona some more. WTF, followers? Settle the fuck down! Don’t make me send you to your rooms!

I wound up having to hit Gogh with a Calm spell to get him to settle down. Fortunately, he is only level 6, so a Calm spell actually works on him. And given that he is only level 6, it’s a damned good thing he’s marked Essential, otherwise Iona would easily have killed him.

I don’t know if I can use this solution though if I see Iona initiating the attack, though. I’ve seen her fighting Gogh’s storm atronach until it disintegrates. But I haven’t yet seen her directly attacking Gogh himself. Iona, however, levels with me, at least up to level 50. And unless I get a lot more powerful with Illusion spells, I can’t throw a Calm on her.

Meanwhile, this was apparently also the place where I could have found the pet frostbite spider? LOL. I’m still not entirely enthused by that prospect.

Next time

Now that I’ve got Iona installed as steward at Windstad, I think it’ll be time to go try out Rulnik Wind-Strider as a follower! Other than that, not sure yet what I want to do next.

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/22/2023: Restored missing gallery, and added play date and session number markers.
• 10/10/2024: Converted gallery to a single native WordPress image.