In Which the Dragonborns Kill a Bunch of Bandits and Acquire Hendraheim

My Skyrim Together playthrough is on hiatus until further notice, but I did still have two pending sessions from that to post about. So here’s the first of those, from the session we played on March 2nd of this year. Main action here was the three of us aiming to get the thaneship of Falkreath, and then, acquiring Hendraheim. Come for the bandit killing, stay for the duplicating Thalmor!

Play by play

Main play on 3/2

Play date: 3/2/2024
Session number in this run: 12
Picked up again with Rhanys, Luciriel, and Kitty in Riverwood
We decided to hoof it out of Riverwood and head to Falkreath by road
Got into a fight with a wolf right around the Guardian Stones, and the wolf wound up down in the river
I had a crash right around here though, and got thrown back to Riverwood after I restarted
At which point EVERYBODY IN THE TOWN WAS PISSED OFF AT ME, yikes?
Could not safely surrender to a guard, so I let everybody in Riverwood kill me to hopefully reset the situation, then rejoined the party to catch up
We found the usual hunter and horse right around the area of Lakeview and Shriekwind Bastion, also the usual couple of skeletons
Then we hoofed it on past Roadside Ruins to get to Falkreath
We came in during nighttime hours though, and it was not an appropriate time to try to talk to the Jarl, so we killed some time
Went into the barracks and got the quest to get the Elven Hunter armor by reading the dossier on Aesrael
Kitty stole a bunch of stuff in general, as she does, but this was particularly hilarious in the actual guard barracks
Mel also talked to Sinding in the barracks to get Ill Met by Moonlight underway
Played through to the point of Sinding escaping, and of course the guard was all YOU WERE TALKING TO THAT MURDEROUS SAVAGE WHAT ARE YOU HIDING
Yet strangely the guard didn’t seem interested in keeping Mel in custody to question her any further ;D
Mel also got the quest to go find the missing hunters, and took the quest for the Bittercup by reading the book in the inn
We finally talked to the Jarl to get his quest to go take out a bandit for him–and this proved slightly problematic as the quest did not sync for us
Dara and Mel both got Knifepoint Ridge as their location but I got Bilegulch Mine
So we agreed to hit Knifepoint Ridge first
Went past Cracked Tusk Keep, and killed a dragon near there–but we had some differences in what kind of a dragon it was, Dara saw a regular Dragon and I think either Mel or I or both of us saw a Frost Dragon
Passed the unmarked location where a cart and passengers and horse had been burned in a dragon attack
Cleared Bannermist Tower
Stumbled across the Twilight Sepulcher just because we were wandering all over the place, but LOL, we’ll have to come back there later
Pretty much rampaged through Knifepoint Ridge
Dead bandit chieftain did some rather alarming gyrating as he clipped into the boss chest, at least in my POV 🤣
From there, we decided to work our way north and west
Stopped at Moss Mother Cavern to find the missing hunters and ran that place, helped out Valdr and killed the spriggans and bears
From there, aimed for Bilegulch Mine and Hendraheim
Ran into some Thalmor on the way and fought them, which caused some major weirdness; we had multiple instances of the same Thalmor clipping on top of each other
Tried to loot the guy after, and wound up with a fuckton of Thalmor armor in my inventory
Rampaged through Bilegulch too, and took a little time working on gear at their forge after
Claimed Hendraheim without any real trouble–and yeaaaah three Dragonborns vs. one warrior was not really a fair fight 😉
We played around for a while with the house, more on this below
Then last we discussed whether to go back to Falkreath to turn in the quest with the Jarl
I wanted to go to Whiterun though to sell stuff, since I had a lot of extra gear from the Thalmor and was overloaded, and Whiterun had more merchants to sell stuff to
We all sold a bunch of stuff and decided to call a halt there
While doing all of this, Mel tried to take out Heimskr on general principles–but did not actually one-shot him as she was hoping, because her bow wasn’t strong enough
He ran into Jorrvaskr, at which point every single NPC in the place all wailed on him since Mel is in the Companions and Heimskr was now marked as hostile 🤣
Meanwhile, I did a little bit of investigating to see if I could correctly get Hendraheim myself
I still did not have the quest properly in my journal, either finished or unfinished, so I fast traveled with Lydia back to Hendraheim
Walked in–and immediately spawned a whole bunch more elven armor AND an extra set of leather scout armor in my inventory and got overloaded again, more on this below
Had to trudge my way back to Whiterun
But at least the good news is, I sold enough stuff to get over 5,000 gold to buy the land for Lakeview ;D

Anna’s solo addendum 3/13

Did a brief check of my save, and saw I still had a quest objective for finding Valdr’s hunting party in my journal
Fast traveled to Moss Mother Cavern, but the game thought I’d already cleared it, and there was nothing for me to do there
So had to complete the appropriate quest objectives in the console
Initially went north to get back to Whiterun, at which point VULJOTNAAK SAYS HI
Went eep and backed out of that, because I didn’t want to kill a named dragon without Dara and Mel
Rolled back to coming out of Moss Mother Cavern, and went to Whiterun by going south and then east to avoid the dragon
Also tried to avoid any locations we hadn’t jointly discovered yet
Spotted Esbern just hanging out by himself near the road to Riverwood 😂
Killed a few wolves near Riverwood, including one that would not die for some reason, so wound up having to kill that one in the console
Also realized that the bow I’d regenerated for myself in the console, which was supposed to be a Dwarven Bow of Soul Snares, was throwing a Paralyze enchantment
Returned to Whiterun and saved again in Breezehome

Everybody in Riverwood hates Altmer, I guess?

The initial thing I want to note is that partway through this session, something synced up for Dara’s game–and she correctly saw Mel wearing the Dark Seducers armor. She did not, however, see the Leather Scout armor on Luciriel. So something was still a trifle confused under the hood.

We decided our main goal for this session would be to work on getting the thaneship of Falkreath Hold, so we could get access to Lakeview Manor. But we had a few issues getting smoothly out of Riverwood, or at least I did!

When we fought a wolf near the Guardian Stones, I had a crash–which threw me back to Riverwood. At which point everybody in the town was pissed off at me, yikes!

I think, but am not certain, that this was a holdover somehow of when we’d been playing with Unrelenting Force at the end of the prior session? Because I’d like to note for the record that I did not kill any chickens in the town, or any other kind of livestock. Also, I was not actually the one throwing Fus Ro Dah around, but I guess the townsfolk were willing to blame Mel’s shenanigans on me. ;D

To get out of the situation, I finally just had to let everybody in the town kill me in the hopes that that would reset everything. It did seem to. Which does rather remind me of how, if you piss off the guards in ESO, pretty much the exact same thing will happen: i.e., everybody in range will wail on you, and once you resurrect, everything’s okay again. LOL.

Killing time in Falkreath

A consequence of not being able to actually wait or sleep to pass time in Skyrim Together–another thing which, come to think of it, makes it behave more like ESO–is that if you arrive during late hours in a location and you need to speak to somebody there, you’re going to have to kill time until that person is available.

Like, say, if you’re coming late into the town of Falkreath and you need to speak to the Jarl about his offer of a thaneship!

So we spent some time picking up side quests. Mel nabbed the one for the Bittercup, which you can get by reading the book in Falkreath’s inn. And we also nabbed the one you get by reading the dossier in the Falkreath barracks, which lets you go after Aesrael to get the Elven Hunter armor.

I thought at the time, belatedly, that I should have remembered to go to the graveyard to pick up the quest to go after the Daedric Plate–but remembered much later after that, while working on this post, that that quest only triggers if you read the right book in the Dragonsreach dungeon. And I’m pretty sure we haven’t been in there yet in this run. So no worries!

We did finally talk to the Jarl and pick up the “go kill a bandit leader” quest. But this was less smooth than I liked–because we all had to get the quest separately from him, that quest was not shared. Given that player houses are not synced between members of a group in STR, I suppose that by extension, Falkreath’s thane quest had to not be synced either? This also suggests that none of the other thane quests would be shared between members of a group either, since all of them do have “buy property in my hold” as a prerequisite for being named thane.

Dara and Mel both got Knifepoint Ridge as their location to go to, but I got Bilegulch Mine. So we agreed to do Knifepoint Ridge first, and then Bilegulch.

En route to Hendraheim, and Hendraheim itself

I do not remember whether we hit Bilegulch Mine before or after we went to Hendraheim. I’m pretty sure it was before, not after, so I’m writing this post accordingly. If Dara or Mel remembers otherwise, I’ll update this post appropriately.

The main interesting thing about heading to Hendraheim was running into some Thalmor. We fought them, of course. But we also had a very weird issue with multiple copies of the same Thalmor overlapping on top of each other. As noted by Dara, that Thalmor had a dead one overlapping on top of him–and we couldn’t Shout them apart. Nor could we kill the live one, though the live one in turn couldn’t seem to do anything to us.

I tried looting the guy after we finally killed him–and wound up with a fuckload of elven armor in my inventory. Make a note of this, it becomes important later!

Three Dragonborns vs. Eydvina Shield-Hearth was not really a fair fight. But then, it wasn’t much different from the times I’ve fought Eydvina with a posse of multiple followers! Three PCs though is a different balance than one PC and her NPC followers. Even if one of those followers is, say, Barbas.

Needless to say that we didn’t have any real trouble with that fight. The house itself, though…

Mel confirmed that she had Hendraheim now. I am not sure if the game considers me to have Hendraheim–because I never got the quest for in my journal. But I was able to go in once Mel unlocked the place.

This was Dara’s first time seeing Hendraheim, since she hasn’t played the AE on her own yet, and she was very impressed by it. So we spent some time there, just playing around with things in the house, and letting Dara have a chance to explore it.

Me, I tried putting armor on some of the mannequins on the upper floor–and saw that armor did not register properly for me on those mannequins. I tried it with both the Leather Scout armor I was carrying, and the elven gear I’d gotten off the Thalmor. Since it didn’t seem to work, I then tried to retrieve it all for selling later.

Make a note of this, too.

Shenanigans in Whiterun

Since I’d gotten a lot of extra surprise gear off the Thalmor, I voted for going to Whiterun once we were done with Hendraheim, so that I could sell stuff. On the grounds that Whiterun has more merchants available than Falkreath, of course.

So we did that. And while I was selling things, Mel went after Heimskr to try to take him out on general principles. Which did not go as planned, because her bow wasn’t powerful enough to take him out in one shot!

He wound up running into Jorrvaskr, at which point every single NPC in the place started wailing on him. Because he was now hostile to Mel, and Mel was a Companion. LOLOL.

I did not witness any of this, but Mel did get a video of the melee!

Surprise! Armor duplication bug at Hendraheim!

Once we were officially done, I decided to try to see if I could get Hendraheim properly on my own. So I fast traveled back there with Lydia–and as soon as I walked in the door, I spawned a whole bunch more elven armor and an extra set of Leather Scout armor in my inventory. Which of course immediately overloaded me.

So I’d totally triggered the armor duplication bug I’d seen before in prior solo playthroughs–but this was a version of it where the armor just magically spawned into my inventory, rather than respawning on the mannequins where I’d previously tried to leave it.

That left me with no real choice but to do the Whirlwind Sprint + Sneak With Drawn Arrow thing all the way back to Whiterun. Where I sold stuff again.

Out of curiosity, I tried once more to repro the problem, and yep, it sure did repro.

Takeaway from this: assuming we return to this playthrough at some point, I’ll need to stay out of Hendraheim for a while, and maybe try again later to see if I get all that armor showing up again.

Unless I need free armor to sell or something. Snerk.

Solo addendum

Did a bit of solo play with my save on March 13th, with a couple of side goals in mind. I tried to see if I could correctly clear Moss Mother Cavern–but the game thought I’d already cleared it, and going there didn’t show me anything to do.

I wound up having to just resolve the quest objective via the console. The wiki thinks this is a known bug that the USSEP has theoretically fixed. But who knows, with the state of our game!

Seeing Esbern just hanging out at the side of the road near Riverwood was a bit of a shock! My dude, aren’t you supposed to be with Delphine? (Because he was! He was supposed to be heading to Sky Haven Temple with her!)

This was the point where I also discovered that the Dwarven Bow of Soul Snares I’d tried to create for myself via the console was not throwing a Soul Trap enchantment–it was throwing Paralyze. Which, y’know, useful, but not what I’d actually asked for. Which just goes to show that playing around in the console is unpredictable if you aren’t damn sure of what you’re doing!

But I honestly don’t know if I fucked this up because of using the wrong object ID, or whether this was a side effect of the weird state of our game.

Next time

I have one more post to get caught up on for this run. We haven’t been able to all get together for play for a while, so it’s unclear whether we’ll be able to pick it up again any time soon. So assume until further notice that this playthrough is on hiatus. I’ll definitely post if this situation changes.

But in that one last post to come, expect there to be thaneship achievement, and running the first stretch of the quest for Clavicus Vile!