In Which Shenner Attends to Loose Ends

After taking out Miraak, anything else I do on Solstheim is entirely clearing up loose ends. But that’s okay! It made for a somewhat more relaxed play session, as I journeyed around the island doing assorted side quests.

Highlights

• Play date: 9/12/2022
• Session number in this run: 58
• Started in Severin Manor; did some alchemy, enchanting, and smithing
• Sold a few things to the dremora merchant, then went out and sold things in Raven Rock shops
• Headed afterwards to Tel Mithryn
• Saw first odd graphical behavior of the session–embers in the ashy logs not rendering right
• Checked in with Neloth who checked me to make sure I wasn’t crazypants
• Checked in with Elynea to give her some of the taproots (of which I somehow had six? I thought i only had three?)
• Then went back next door to plant the taproot in the wall of the house
• Only realized while doing this that I’d forgotten to go get Drovas as steward; boinged back to Raven Rock to take care of that
• And while fast traveling back to Raven Rock, I saw that the world map was messed up
• On the way into Raven Rock, I saw the braziers in various places showing the same problem the logs had, with weird blocky fire-colored shapes instead of actual flames
• Saved and restarted, and that did help, but didn’t eliminate buggy behavior completely
• Went up to Ashfall’s Tear to try to sell stuff to the smith there–and got more weird buggy behavior as a bunch of items mysteriously showed up in my inventory
• Went into the temple and sold things to the smith to try to unload, and snurched a Her Hand helmet out of the armory, along with Magebane
• Overloaded, so called Daedric horse, and returned to Severin Manor to drop off things
• Boinged from there to Northshore Landing searching for juniper berries
• Killed assorted mudcrabs, then tried the riekling camp at Bristleback Cave; no juniper berries, damn
• Spotted Blood Dragon and it came over to engage; killed it with crossbow
• Headed west back towards Northshore and cleared out the rest of the mudcrabs
• Headed on around the island; killed a couple of frost trolls by a dead reaver
• Found a snow bear fighting an ice wraith; dispatched the bear
• Then a little further on found another dead reaver–and Torkild! Hey Torkild, your brother is looking for–ohnoez, you’re a werebear
• Boinged to campsite near the Skaal village and slept a few hours
• Then checked in with Wulf; gave him his brother’s letter and got skill bumps
• This let me level up to 64; took Health bump and Steel Smithing perk; also bought Two-handed training from him
• Sold a bunch of things to Baldor
• Edla had no juniper berries, sadly
• Boinged to Tel Mithryn
• Hi Drovas! Yeah Neloth’s kind of an asshole, but on the plus side, um, I think there’s a plus side here? And important safety tip: Just stay out of the way when Talvas conjures Ash Guardians
• Hi Neloth, yep I sure did bring you a steward, so thanks for access to your staff table
• And okay fine I’ll go get you a briar heart
• Boinged back to Raven Rock
• Hi Mogrul, why yes I did send Drovas to Tel Mithryn, why? Is that a problem? Howsabout I give you have of the money and don’t break your legs? Deal? Pleasure doing business with you
• Returned to Severin Manor; stocked up on stuff to haul back to the mainland
• Daedric-horse-boinged to Windhelm
• Saved there for the night

Commentary

This was another oddly buggy session, and I mean odd even by Skyrim’s standards.

First bug was one I noticed on the way to Tel Mithryn. If you’re heading over there from Raven Rock and following the shore, there are several spots where you see ashy logs with some bits that are still clearly on fire, presumably because they recently got hit by falling ash.

This time through, I saw the burning embers not rendering right. Instead of flickering little bits of fire, I saw these weird blocky fire-colored shapes on the logs.

Second bug was one I’d actually noticed in the previous session, once I dipped Elynea’s taproots in the headwaters. I was pretty sure I showed up there with three, but afterwards, I had six. Not a hundred percent sure of this, but it seems like something caused those taproots to duplicate. This may or may not have been a factor of my having all three taproots already when I got the quest from Elynea.

Third bug was trying to fast travel back to Raven Rock, and seeing some weirdness with the world map. It looked like cloud patterns on the map fucking up being rendered, maybe.

I saved and restarted, which appeared to get rid of the rendering problems. But I wasn’t done with buggy behavior!

Because when I went up to Ashfall’s Tear to try to sell stuff to their smiths, I got hit all of a sudden with the usual messaging about carrying too much to run. Which startled me, because I had not been overencumbered when I’d left Tel Mithryn!

I checked my inventory and saw i was suddenly carrying an almost complete set of Indoril Armor, and three Her Hand armor pieces as well. And some extra robes! And I’m pretty sure I had duplicates of several of those items as well.

How I had any of these things, I have no idea. They showed up as soon as I set foot in Ashfall’s Tear, so I’m kind of wondering whether NPCs previously killed by ash zombies were in a weird glitchy state after that and I wound up getting all their inventory items? Dunno!

At any rate, I wound up selling most of that stuff to the temple smith. And as long as the game was going to drop Indoril and Her Hand armor on me, I went ahead into the armory and picked up a Her Hand helmet to go with the armor. And I grabbed Magebane as well, the only weapon in there I was halfway interested in.

Still overloaded at that point, so I called up the Daedric horse and rode back down to Severin Manor to unload properly.

Other than the buggy behavior, mostly this session was all about tying up remaining loose ends on Solstheim. All of this stuff, aside from the visit to Ashfall’s Tear, was stuff I’ve done in previous playthroughs. So nothing much new to talk about there.

Next time

Since I do have Neloth’s quest now to go look at a Briarheart for him, and I need to do that in order to get to the point of taking out Ildari Sarothril, I’m doing another boing back to Skyrim to drop off loot items in various places and sell them in others.

And then I’ll figure out which Briarheart I should go after! I need to doublecheck which Shouts I’m missing, which should help me narrow down which locations to target.

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/23/2023: Restored missing gallery.