In Which Faanshi Escapes the Soul Cairn

As expected, it took me an entire session to run the rest of the Soul Cairn. Because not only is there just that much to do in it, I was considerably slowed down by being overloaded!

Highlights

• Play date: 7/29/2022
• Session number in this run: 45
• Started running the rest of the Soul Cairn
• Got Arvak’s skull, and got the Summon Arvak spell ^_^
• Got the rest of Jiub’s pages
• Got the other two conjuration spellbooks, for Conjure Mistman and Conjure Boneman
• Killing the second Keeper was weird (see below); killed by him once
• Did however get my soul gem back, and all three Reaper fragments, albeit belatedly, LOL
• Found Valerica and got her to agree to help us
• Fought and beat Durnehviir
• Killed once though when three bonemen ganged up on me and i was overloaded, so couldn’t move fast enough to beat them
• Agreed to help Durnehviir by calling him in Tamriel
• Gave Jiub his pages back
• Got the hell out of the Soul Cairn and returned to Tamriel
• Tried to fast travel to Honningbrew to sell stuff; Elder Dragon showed up and killed me >_<
• Thrown back to coming out of Valerica’s lab
• Take two got another dragon, but this time it was a standard dragon and Serana and storm atronachs and I killed it
• Sold almost all the extra loot weight to Mallus
• Came back out and put on Jiub’s locket, then quaffed up so I could boing to Fort Dawnguard
• Gave Sorine her first schematic and got the quest for the second one
• Sold both her and Gunnar most of the rest of my stuff
• Bought some materials and improved various armor pieces, also did some enchanting
• Saved for the night

Commentary

This time through the Soul Cairn, kind of in keeping with previous playthroughs, I had issues with the second Keeper. I got killed by him once. And I tried a few more times, because I kept running into a problem I’d seen before: having to throw followers at him rather than killing him directly, which resulted in not actually finding his remains to loot.

I’m not sure what happens when this occurs. I’d thought maybe my followers–in this case, Serana and my two summoned dremora–were maybe knocking him off the island down to the ground below.

But I note with interest that when I did some looking on the two wikis I follow, the elderscrolls.fandom.com one says this:

It is possible for the Keeper to do the giant bug. Once defeated the Keeper shoots into the air without returning, causing it to become impossible to loot the Keeper.

Mind you, this is explicitly listed as a PC bug. But I’m real curious as to whether this might have made it into the Switch build.

I did circuits around the floating island that is this Keeper’s lair a few times, because I’d remembered from previous playthroughs that sometimes the Keeper’s remains wind up floating in the air. But I saw no sign of them that way.

Regardless, what this meant was, I didn’t get the Keeper’s dragonbone bow. But he was still counted as killed, so really that’s the important part!

Second time getting killed this session was during the fight with Durnehviir. I got ganged up by by three bonemen at once, and since I was overloaded, I couldn’t move fast enough to deal with them. I was also out of healing potions, and threw off my own timing trying to Become Ethereal my way out of the problem!

(Note to self: seriously, honey, you don’t need every last scrap of loot to be had in the Soul Cairn. Remember this for Shenner’s playthrough, mmkay?

Of course, Shenner has additional carry weight boosts, now that she has the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal and the Steed Stone active…)

And the third time I got killed in this session was actually after getting out of the Soul Cairn finally. I boinged on Arvak to Honningbrew, intending to sell stuff to Mallus. At which point of course an Elder Dragon showed up. Which promptly killed me.

But the second time through I got just a standard dragon, and that was all right! So I was able to take out that dragon, sell stuff to Mallus, and then boing back to Fort Dawnguard for some end of session crafting, and resolving Sorine’s first crossbow schematic quest.

Next time

More Dawnguard action, as I’ll want to go run Ruunvald and bring Florentius into the ranks, as well as run Sorine’s second schematics quest.

And then I’ll queue up heading to Ancestor Glade!

Screenshots

No screenshots this time.