In Which Kendis Slays Harkon and Does Side Quests

Main action in this post is finishing up Dawnguard, then also doing a bunch of side questing. And forgetting that if I’m going to do the quests to de-wolfify Vilkas and Farkas in the Companions, and I’m on a non-modded build, I have to do Farkas first. Oops.

Play by play

Play dates: 5/14, 5/21-5/22/2023
Session numbers in this run: 63-65

Sunday the 14th

Slept at Honeyside
Headed out from there towards Ruunvald
Fought en route:
- Trio of bears and trio of Volkihar vampires at the same time
- Right after that, Thalmor execution squad!
- Serana resurrected one of each, LOL
Got another blood sample off the Thalmor because Altmer of course
Mined a nearby iron vein after the Thalmor fight
Made it to Ruunvald; mined quicksilver just outside there
Looted exterior tent
Realized I was overloaded already though, and that’s no damn good
Fast traveled on Yngvi back to Lakeview for supplies dropoff
Major graphical failure at Lakeview 🙁
The game locked up on me as I was trying to drop stuff off
Did a hard restart–and then got rendering breakage coming back into the house, and then everything vanishing even after fast travel
Tried to go back to Ruunvald and still had everything black
Hard restarted the game again and finally got back to playable state
Returned to Ruunvald and started running the place, pretty much as per previous playthroughs
Rescued Florentius and sent him along to Fort Dawnguard
Boinged there myself, but did not engage Isran immediately
Sold boatload of things to Sorine; turned in her crossbow bolt schematic and got the exploding crossbow bolts spec
Could not get a new quest off of her though possibly because endgame of Dawnguard in play?
Didn’t immediately see Florentius, but he did show up once I engaged Isran and Isran gave his speech
On the way out to Castle Volkihar, stopped Florentius for a chat; got the Stendarr’s Aura and Vampire’s Bane spells off of him
Then went out and boinged to Castle Volkihar
Not killed once during the fight, surprisingly, but Celann and Durak were not so lucky
Took out Harkon with Serana, and Isran had his final scene with Serana
Looted a few gargoyle remains on the way out
Boinged over to the balcony so I could get into the soul cairn and retrieve Valerica
Had 26 soul husks, so stopped at Morven Stroud and got a spellbook off of him (Flames, not useful)
Returned Valerica to her lab and got her permission to take anything I wanted
Ciao Serana, pleasure questing with you
Boinged around between Whiterun, Lakeview, and Heljarchen
Sold a bunch of things and organized building supplies
Did some additional building at Heljarchen (and oh yeah right, forgot I put Marcurio in there as steward, LOL)
Returned to Lakeview and organized wardrobe there
Saved there for next time

Sunday the 21st

Picked up at Lakeview
Boinged to Forgotten Vale to run the paragon portal; did so as per previous playthroughs and got all the loot
Took items over to Bloodchill Manor; left the paragons there as well as Auriel’s Bow and Shield
Boinged to the College of Winterhold and sold Urag the four unknown books
Got five rounds of Destruction training from Faralda
Bought a few more spellbooks from her as well
Sold assorted bits of enchanted jewelry to Faralda, Drevis, and Tolfdir
Boinged off to Morthal to run the fishing contest
Did it twice because the first time through, summoned dremora killed Brutus and threw him into the water; when I looted Brutus’s body, he had two journals in his inventory, and I could not read either to successfully complete the quest
Second time through everything was more normal–mostly? There seemed to be extra fighting, I think the third of the three bandits got into a side fight
Killed a frostbite spider as part of this battle
This time read the journal, fished up the Warlock’s Ring, and concluded the quest
Found a dead Nord and a dead Orc near the shore, and the dead Orc let me get the final blood sample needed for Septimus; these guys may or may not have also been fighting the third mage, dunno?
Got objective to return to Viriya for more fishing bounties, but instead went to Eldersblood Peak to find the Word of Power there
Summoned Durnehviir! Got him to help me fight the dragon 😀
Also got his first Word of Power
Lost track of Yngvi after the battle though, and I was overloaded, so had to summon Arvak to get back to Whiterun
Sold assorted things, trying to unload more of the enchanted jewelry I was hauling around, including selling things to Farengar in Dragonsreach
Weirdly, found Amren at Farengar’s desk in his chamber while Farengar himself was at the table eating
Went to Jorrvaskr and tried to go get a job from Farkas, who bitched at me about already having a job with Vilkas OH RIGHT (and saw Vilkas standing by at the door, missed him on the way in ;P)
Went to Breezehome and got Rulnik following me
Went back to Lakeview to drop off things
Saved there for the night

Monday the 22nd

Started off in Lakeview
Noticed upper shelf of bookshelf in Lakeview seemed borked? Said I could add 16 more books, but the shelf looked empty, WTF
Boinged around to a few different houses seeing if I had a copy of Night Falls on Sentinel anywhere; answer: apparently not
Turned on the quest to find it and it directed me to Swindler’s Den
Boinged there to partially re-run the place; book was only partway in; got it and made a bunch of bandits have very bad days on the way in and out
Got One-handed bump off the book
Came back out again and hoofed it over to Goldenhills to crash for the night there
Got the farm’s profits from Golldir which bumped up my gold to nearly 200K
Boinged from there to Markarth
Gave Ghorza the Last Scabbard book; got a bump to smithing off that
Sold assorted things to Lisbet
Came out of the store and a guard was all “by Shor you’re carrying a lot of junk, you should go to Arnleif and Sons and sell it off.” Tad late there, Chet!
Stepped outside the city to see if the Khajiit were on hand; their tents were, but not the Khajiit themselves, oh wells
Boinged from there to Icewater Jetty to get within range of minor quest locales
Found Lower Steepfall Burrow; not entirely sure I’d been in there before?
Killed a few ice wolves in there
Could not find a way up to the upper burrow from there; only exit out appeared to be an underwater tunnel, which surfaced in a pool that appeared to be the bottom of the aforementioned steep fall
Came back out again and headed up to the other Steepfall Burrow entrance
Killed a couple of frost trolls in there and got Noster’s helmet
Came back out again and started traveling the beach eastward
Killed assorted critters, and one cranky random Imperial
Went past Ravenscar Hollow but did not engage
Reached and ran Broken Oar Grotto
Got the iron greatsword for the Companions quest
Came back out again and summoned Arvak so I fast travel to Solitude
Gave Noster his helmet and got Sneak boost
Sold a boatload of bandit loot to Sayma
Tried to head out again to see if the Khajiit were outside–but an Ancient Dragon showed up :O
Saw it coming just outside the city gates and then it flew in overhead
Guards, Rulnik, Gogh and I all started in on the dragon
Gisli threw a line about getting out of there, because LOL, Gisli is not stupid
Dragon crashed in Castle Dour’s courtyard, and as previously noted that’s a very bad place for dragons to be landing 😉
Assorted cranky Imperials also started attacking it
One guard casualty, so I took his stuff and sold it to Beirand (consider it Imperial requisitioning)
No Khajiit outside
Boinged from there to Dawnstar
Crashed for the night at the inn
Then came out and gave Rustleif the book; got him to bump my Smithing again \0/
Boinged back to Whiterun and sold assorted stuff to Belethor
Went to Jorrvaskr to check in with Vilkas and give him the sword
And finally Vilkas wants me to de-wolf him
Took that quest and Rulnik returned home until I need him again
(Yes hon, go watch over the girls please, I gotta go de-wolf my friend here, and for that matter also me)
Left Whiterun and finally did find Khajiit! Bought a bunch of soul gems and ingredients off Ri’saad, then sold him a boatload of enchanted things
Reminded that oh right, the Purity quest is glitched if I do it with Vilkas first >_<
Quest marker vanished and the quest moved to done in my list
Vilkas returned to Jorrvaskr, as I discovered when I boinged back to Whiterun and found him there
Could not take Vilkas back as follower or Rulnik
Got new regular errand quest off Vilkas to kill an escaped criminal, so went to run that
Took me back to Ustengrav; killed three respawned bandits outside there
Criminal’s quest marker shifted to Morthal then back to Ustengrav, throwing me off
But finally found him at the same bandit camp and took him out
Boinged back to Whiterun to check in, but this still didn’t let me get either Vilkas or Rulnik back as follower
So found Aela and got a quest off of her, to take out a bear in Fallowstone Cave
Wound up doing two bears as well as a giant
Boinged back to Whiterun
Got payment and then second quest to take out a snowy sabre cat at Ragnar’s house in Karthwasten, which was the miner barracks
Stopped at Lakeview first to drop off stuff to get under carry weight (lots of heavy dragon bits)
Then boinged to Karthwasten and took out the snowy sabre cat
Then returned to Aela for payment for that, and that led her to trigger a totem quest and ask me to come with her; got message she replaced my follower, good
Saved at that point for the night

Graphical issues on the Switch

Let me start off this post by noting that it’s increasingly apparent to me that the Switch is really just not very happy running the Anniversary Edition. I’ve had too many glitches in Kendis’ run that I just did not see in prior playthroughs. And I say this fully cognizant of how much I’ve bitched about bugs in prior playthroughs!

But for all the prior bug bitching I’ve done for everybody from Alarrah up through Faanshi, none of those playthroughs ever featured game graphics actively breaking. Only in Kendis’s playthrough have I seen things like graphics splintering all over my field of view–or graphics not rendering at all.

So this is me coming in firmly on the side of, if you want to play Skyrim on the Switch, maybe don’t bother with getting the Anniversary Edition, y’all. Because it seems to me like the Switch is struggling really hard to deal with it.

Now, in fairness I will also note that these problems seem to have gotten more pronounced the longer I’ve played this playthrough. For much of Kendis’s run, things were fine. So I don’t know what’s going on here, if this has been a question of this build of Skyrim having a harder time with a longer-running save file or what?

I also see that if I search for “screen goes black in skyrim coming out of house”, I see a bunch of posts and articles that talk about black screen issues when the Anniversary Edition originally dropped. And now I’m wondering if fixes for these issues which fixed things on the PC side, or on the higher powered consoles, maybe didn’t make it into the Switch port?

I see in some of the articles about AE black screen issues that a root cause for them appears to be how game scripts in the AE run faster than scripts in previous versions of the game–and that the game may not be fully up to speed on handling the faster scripts. If so, this might be at least a partial explanation for why the Switch is struggling with this build? Because it’s not as powerful a console.

Anyway, moving on!

Tail end of Dawnguard

I think this is perhaps the latest I ever got Florentius to come to Fort Dawnguard. Literally right on the tail end of the plot, which meant he showed up just in time to join the force going to Castle Volkihar. HA.

This did at least let me finally get his two spells. And I then proceeded to finish off the plot.

The battle at Castle Volkihar went well for me, but not so much poor Celann and Durak. RIP you two, you fought valiantly!

And I did the followup as per usual to get Valerica out of the Soul Cairn, and dismissed Serana to let her go about her own business.

I don’t think I’ll bother to proceed through the rest of Sorine’s crossbow quests, though. Feeling pretty done with Dawnguard in this run.

Dragon in Solitude

Getting another dragon attacking in Solitude reminded me that I do hardly ever see dragons inside the major cities–the ones with walls. But I’ve had dragons in Solitude a few times now across my playthroughs.

Searching about this topic shows me that absolutely, dragons can show up inside the various walled cities. Arguably, I haven’t seen them in Windhelm and Markarth just because I spend way less time visiting those cities in general.

In the case of Riften, I do frequently fast travel straight there, and I have noticed controller rumble a lot when I come into Riften. But so far that hasn’t resulted in a dragon actually inside Riften.

But so far, going clear back to Alarrah, I’m legit surprised I haven’t had dragons in Whiterun more often than I have. I do still recall having the one in Whiterun in Alarrah’s playthrough, but no sign of any since.

Broken Purity quest, and Aela workaround

I knew for a fact that the quest to de-wolf Farkas and Vilkas was actively broken and would not work if I did Vilkas first. I actively reminded myself of this, in fact, trying to go after Farkas first to get the quest off of him in earlier Kendis sessions.

And what do I do this time? Trigger the damn quest with Vilkas first. Augh.

However, this time I dug further into what the wiki has to say about fixing this. As always, since this is a run on the Switch, I don’t have access to console-based solutions.

But the wiki does talk about an in-game workaround, which involves getting Aela to follow you on one of the quests to get a Totem of Hircine. Because that’ll make Aela your automatic follower, and she kicks the “invisible” follower out of your follower slot, which will in turn give you access to another crack at getting the Purity quest. Note to Future Me: do it with Farkas first, dammit.

Running Aela’s quest, at least, will be a new thing I haven’t done yet. So that’s cool.