In Which Harrowhark Recovers Azura’s Star and Stolen Books

Single session here, but with a decent amount of action! Main highlights: running both Ilinalta’s Deep and Fellglow Keep, then returning to the College of Winterhold with the recovered books.

Play by play

• Play date: 1/10/2023
• Session number in this run: 19
• Installed new mods:
  • Campfire
  • Cloaks of Skyrim
  • Convenient Horses
• Picked up at Lady Stone
• Swam from there over to Ilinalta’s Deep
• Ran the place, not hard at all with three followers, even the higher tier mages were no problem
• Tromped slowly through because I was overloaded, but got the broken Star and other loot as well
• Swam back to Lakeview’s side of the lake
• Got Lydia to buy logs then did more building in the bedroom wing
• Experimented with new Campfire items to build at the tanning rack, including tents and backpacks
• Also experimented with cloaks added by Cloaks of Skyrim
• Slept in coffin overnight
• Triggered the Convenient Horses tutorial quest
• Rode to Whiterun and experimented with harvesting ingredients while mounted on the way
• Sold assorted things to Belethor and Adrianne
• Attempted to buy new horse gear from the guy at the stables, which had a slightly annoying quest because the horse kept running off; finally wound up with ability to whistle for the horse and a horn to call him
• Fast traveled back to Lakeview
• Stored assorted materials and racked a couple weapons to get the carry weight down
• Then set out again on horseback to ride over to Fellglow Keep
• Ran into wolves near Riverwood and got to practice the last two things on the Convenient Horses tutorial quest, charging at an enemy at a gallop, and killing and looting an enemy while mounted
• Shortly after, fought a random fire mage who hurled fire at us from across the river
• Rode through Riverwood and fought a few more wolves just past
• Made it to Tundra Homestead and yet more wolves fought there, then a bear
• Took out conjurers vs. bandits battle at spawn point near Fellglow Keep
• Took out the combatants
• Paused to do new settings on the horse, then took out the mage and the flame atronach outside Fellglow
• Ran the Keep; again, went pretty easy with three followers
• Weird thing though with my bunny getting combative? Freed the vampires from their cages and all three of them started attacking the bunny, WTF? Followers briefly attacked bunny as well
• Freed Orthorn and told him to get himself to safety, no seriously my dude we got this, get out of here
• Made it to the Caller and since we outnumbered her, told her i wasn’t leaving without the books; that provoked her into fighting; first time though the game locked up, and I had to restart; second time through, we got her and her two flame atronachs as well
• Got the books and got out
• Mounted up and fast traveled back to Whiterun
• Did assorted selling
• Gave Valdimar money so he could buy himself a horse; confirmed I could not have Lucien do so
• Set off with the party to ride for a while because I wanted to cut through Windhelm and get creep cluster
• Found bandits + dead woman with pendant encounter near White River Watch; killed the bandits
• Killed cultists at bridge near Hillgrund’s Tomb
• Took out a bear just past Mixwater Mill
• Got my creep cluster! Bumped up the fortification on the Hedge Mage Armor
• Lucien got in a line I LOL’d at: “Lucien, why don’t you ride with me? Why thank you, I’d love to, my feet are killing me!” <snerk> sorry, I’d get you a horse if I could
• Headed on over to Windhelm to sell things
• Lucien also had commentary about this, he does not like Windhelm; with you on that, my friend
• Went into Windhelm long enough to sell stuff to Oengul and Niranye to get unburdened
• From there, fast traveled to Winterhold, so I could go up the college bridge on foot without the horses in the way
• Slept in my room at the college
• Got up the next morning and headed over to the Hall of the Elements
• Saw familiar NPCs and at least one unfamiliar one practicing in the hall
• Sold things to Tolfdir and got him to train me in Alteration
• Went to the Arcaneum to report in about the books; Urag sent me back to Tolfdir
• Tolfdir started in on his enthusing about the Eye of Magnus–while everybody was working on calling flame atronachs, LOL (think Valdimar got a little singed there, oops)
• Ancano showed up and demanded my attention, so I went up to the Arch-Mage’s quarters to have the conversation with Quaranir
• Saved after that for the night

Updates to mods

I’m probably playing with fire by trying to put additional mods into this playthrough 19 sessions in. But I wanted to go ahead and play around with Convenient Horses, Cloaks of Skyrim, and Campfire without firing up a whole separate playthrough. So I brought those mods in for Harrow.

Immediate takes on these mods as follows:

Convenient Horses

The tutorial quest is a good idea and played out well, mostly. But I found the part where I talk to the hostler and get gear for the horse unnecessarily complicated, what with the horse being antsy and trotting off three or four times before I was finally able to get him back over to be geared up.

Aside from that bit, though, I did appreciate the opportunity to practice some of the new things this mod lets me do from horseback. Gathering ingredients while mounted is super helpful, and so is being able to talk to NPCs.

Very pleased that this mod lets me have vanilla followers, anyway, go and buy their own horses. I gave Valdimar money to get himself a horse. And I was a trifle disappointed, but not surprised, that I couldn’t do the same for Lucien. But given that Lucien is a custom follower, one presumes his code isn’t set up to talk to Convenient Horses. And he’ll get his own horse later when I run his quest, anyway.

(Though now I feel guilty that Lucien’s the only one not riding! He even had a line snarking about that, too. I’m starting to think I may need to take that boy to Solstheim just so we can get him his eventual horse.)

Cloaks of Skyrim

I suspect this one will be more useful in a Survival Mode (or equivalent via mods) playthrough, just for the opportunity for additional Warmth stats. For Harrow’s purposes I mostly just wanted to see what the aesthetics and mechanics of the added cloaks were like.

I was kind of amused that I was able to make the book with crafting recipes right at my tanning rack. Once I did that, I got access to a whole bunch of different cloak types, and I wound up wearing a crimson one that looks pretty nifty with the Hedge Mage Armor.

Also tried a fur cloak but did not like that one, it looked way too big and bulky on Harrow.

I’ll be interested to see what other cloak types I run into. In theory niftier ones should present themselves to me eventually. And spinning wheels should now be a thing I can find, to make much nicer cloaks. I’ll have to see if I can get one of those into one of my houses.

Campfire

My biggest point of interest with Campfire was to see if its mechanics for building tents was better than the Camping tents provided in the Anniversary Edition. By which I mean, mainly:

1. Where can I put Campfire’s tents?
2. Do I have to rebuild the damn things?

So far, the answer to 1 appears to be “in more places than the Camping tents” can be. I tried dropping a crafted tent in the cellar at Lakeview and was interested to see it give me an alert that “camping here is illegal” and that I could get arrested for trespassing, ha!

It’s okay, tent, I do own Lakeview. I promise not to arrest myself.

What this also tells me though is that perhaps I could drop one of those tents somewhere I couldn’t use the Camping Supplies–like, say, inside the Glenmoril Coven cave. Which is what prompted me to want to grab this mod to begin with.

I like as well that you could build different styles of tents, and you can play with how you place them. I will need to experiment with this some more.

Also still to explore:

1. How making a campfire works with this mod, since that doesn’t automatically come with the tent, you have to make a fire separately
2. Campfire apparently has its own skill tree, I need to see how that works

Mind you, since I’m not running Survival Mode with Harrow I don’t have to give any actual fucks about camping. But I can’t experiment with this on Kendis’ playthrough, so Harrow gets to experiment for her!

Running Ilinalta’s Deep

This went very smoothly with three followers. Neither of the two big powerful necromancers in this dungeon gave me any issues. My posse made short work of them even really before I got to the fight myself. Which was good, given that I was overloaded for most of the dungeon!

So now I have the broken version of Azura’s Star.

Running Fellglow Keep

Likewise, this also went very easily with three followers.

Really, the weirdest thing about running Fellglow this time was the weird behavior surrounding Thistle the bunny. I have no earthly idea why the various vampire NPCs decided to attack Thistle. Or why my followers did so, for that matter. Thistle is not a combat pet, so really confused by that.

Maybe I started triggering some weird bug involved with the weird scenario of a) non-combat pet, b) multiple followers, and c) multiple NPCs primed to be hostile? Things did appear to settle down once those NPC vampires were killed, I think. At least one of them was killed, anyway, don’t know if all of them were?

And as a change of pace I actually just went straight to intimidating the Caller, this time. That provoked her into fighting, and since she was quite outnumbered, this did not go well for her.

Yeah, after the dismissive greeting the Caller gave her when she walked in, I figured Harrow had zero fucks to give about playing nice with her.

Back at the College of Winterhold

It was pretty cool seeing students actually calling up flame atronachs in the Hall of the Elements, even if this added an extra layer of distraction to Tolfdir’s entire gushing about the Eye of Magnus. Heh. Tolfdir’s been around and seen some shit, three students calling up atronachs right behind him doesn’t throw him off his stride in the slightest. 😀

Next time

I need to find the Augur of Dunlain now, which should hopefully let me explore anything interesting added into the Midden by the Immersive College of Winterhold mod! And I need to see if I can start getting some additional training in magics. I’d like to see whether I can show up for a class, too.

I may just go ahead and play through the college plot for a bit? With my posse in tow, running Mzulft as well as Labyrinthian ought to go pretty swimmingly. (Though I also need to swing by the Shrine of Azura and take out Malyn Varen, too.)

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/25/2023: Restored missing gallery.