In Which Skyrim Together is More of a Mess Than the First Time

Dara, Mel, and I got together again over this past weekend to take another stab at Skyrim Together Reborn. It did not go particularly well, but this time for causes seemingly external to the game. We think?

Highlights

• Play date: 10/8/2022
• Picked up with Mel and Dara at the Sleeping Tree giant camp
• Ran that, and I think we cleared it, despite there being pissed off giants and mammoths?
• Then we went and cleared Broken Fang Cave to satisfy the Companions quest
• I had issues leaving arrows in a chest for Dara to pick up
• Headed back to Whiterun
• Found Khajiit on the way out again—I think Ri’saad’s caravan is in a weird stuck state, we keep running into them on the way out every time we enter Whiterun
• Then headed into Whiterun for general shopping and crafting
• I made a full set of Leather Scout armor but when I put it on Mel and Dara saw me as naked, LOL
• Sold a bunch of things to Adrianne, Belethor, and Arcadia
• Ran up to see Farengar and picked up a couple of spells
• Then we went back to Jorrvaskr to report in; Mel advanced us to the Proving Honor quest which got Farkas as a follower
• We’d thought we were going to head out to High Hrothgar to see the Greybeards, but decided instead to go ahead and run Proving Honor since Farkas was automatically our follower at that point, and also in a very buggy state
• Also spotted Uthgerd the Unbroken wandering around Whiterun, and heading back into her house, so apparently she wasn’t actually dead? So maybe Mel’s bounty was just for assault?
• Tried heading to Dustman’s Cairn to run Proving Honor plot, but I was having severe audio issues, and then Discord went haywire for all of us, so we paused for the time being
• Discord came back a little while later, so I ran Luciriel a little further just to try to catch up levels-wise with Mel
• Did some hunting on the Whiterun plains and got a couple more levels of Sneak; leveled up to 8
• Killed a couple of elk with sword rather than bow, LOL
• Killed by a sabre cat once, and then resurrected on the spot because apparently STR works like that?
• Returned to Whiterun for a bit more selling and crafting
• Got a couple more spells from Farengar, including Conjure Familiar and Muffle (though I already had Oakflesh, not sure if this was because Mel bought it or I did the first time we played)
• Then headed back to Dustman’s Cairn to park myself there
• Stopped there until the next time we try to play

Commentary

This time through, Skyrim Together was definitely a bit more of a mess than the previous times. Some of it, I think, was not actually Skyrim Together’s fault. I had some very strange audio behavior when trying to connect my headset to my Steam Deck, so that I could hear both the game and our voice chat at the same time. I kept getting regular pulses of static every few seconds, which were extremely distracting. So more than once, I had to disconnect from Mel’s STR server, restart my game, and restart my Discord connection. It got eventually bad enough that Discord idled out on all three of us–so it wasn’t just me with my setup being weird on the Deck somehow.

Still, we did manage to get in at least a little playing before Discord went haywire on us!

I think Dara and Mel mostly cleared the giant camp ahead of me, I got delayed trying to catch up with them (because of previous audio issues on my side). But I did get there in time to help clear out the cavern. And Mel got the note off the dead orc to take back to Ysolda in Whiterun.

We likewise cleared Broken Fang Cave, which was fairly trivial just because there were only a couple of vampires and I think a skeleton or two in there. The main challenge here, at least for me, was trying to figure out how I could give Dara some steel arrows. Dara and Mel had already figured out that dropping things for someone else to pick up wasn’t working–the presence of items wasn’t syncing. But they’d had better luck with putting things into chests.

So I tried that. But I had issues getting SkyUI to behave for me at that point. I’d previously observed that the Wait button on my controller would let me toggle between a merchant and my own inventory, but I couldn’t get that to work for storing stuff in chests. I will need to play with this some more.

There are definitely ongoing issues with Ri’saad’s Khajiit caravan being stuck at Whiterun. Every time we’ve come in there so far, we’ve seen the Khajiit trying to leave! And they wind up going the wrong way too if they make it out to the road. Ri’saad’s caravan goes between Whiterun and Markarth, and when we’ve seen them on the road so far, they’ve been heading east, not west. It’ll be interesting to see if this keeps up. If it does I may have to invoke the power of the debug console to unstick them.

Next amusing bit of WTFery: I made myself a full set of Leather Scout armor at Warmaiden’s and put it on, only to be informed by both Dara and Mel that my character was showing up naked to them. Oops. It’s not clear whether this is a question of that particular armor being AE armor or not. I’ll have to try switching off to a non-AE set of armor and see if I’m still naked for them next time we play!

(Which would be a shame, because I like the Leather Scout armor. None of the other early light armors you can get in the game look quite as nifty. And while putting on a suit of elven armor would be appropriate lore-wise, I also feel like it’d make me look too much like a Thalmor! I may wind up having to just find some mage robes again to wear for this alt.)

Mel wound up advancing us in the Companions quest line to the point of Proving Honor, the quest that requires you to go to Dustman’s Cairn with Farkas and take out some of the Silver Hand. We’d originally intended to run High Hrothgar next for main plot purposes, but decided to try Dustman’s Cairn–just because Farkas was now automatically our follower, and besides, he got into a very strange buggy state.

We kept seeing him trying to go in and out of doors, such as at the Bannered Mare, and I personally kept seeing him looking very staticky, like he was phasing in and out or something. Kind of wondering if this was a side effect of his AI not being able to keep track of three different Dragonborns to follow.

(Though to be fair, Farkas is on record as being kinda dense. Nice boy, but dumber than a sack of warhammers. ;D)

And while we’re on the topic of NPCs in a buggy state, while wandering around Whiterun I spotted Uthgerd the Unbroken, very much not dead despite Mel having apparently killed her by accident in our previous session. So apparently she was only mostly dead? Or maybe Mel’s bounty had just been for assault?

But Mel had had a murder showing in her Crimes stat before, so I dunno. We’ll have to see if that stat is still there next time we try to play.

We tried to go to Dustman’s Cairn at this point, but this was where Discord started being a problem for all three of us, not just me. So we called an official halt.

Discord came back a while later so I popped back onto the server long enough to do some things solo and try to get caught up levels-wise with Mel. Did some hunting, a bit more crafting, and bought some spells. Then parked myself at Dustman’s Cairn for next time!

Next time

Dustman’s Cairn next so we can run that plot with Farkas! And Dara and Mel both want to go to Riften after that, so we can join the Thieves Guild. So we’ll try that assuming Discord behaves.

Relatedly, Dara has decided that Kitty is an actual kleptomaniac, which ought to be amusing for Thieves Guild purposes. Especially if she tries to pickpocket Brynjolf. ;D

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/23/2023: Restored missing gallery.