In Which Nona Takes a Crack at Bleak Falls Barrow

Play by play

Play date: 11/14/2024
Session number in this run: 2
Picked up again in Whiterun, after having been thrown back from being killed in Bleak Falls Barrow
Started off the session in the Bannered Mare with a bit of testing of mod settings, adjusted things more to my liking, then got started
Gave a coin to Lucia when I found her in the room I was going to sleep in
Decided on agenda of trying to go get Amren’s sword from Valtheim Towers, to give myself a chance to level up a bit and make more coin before tackling Bleak Falls Barrow again
This however did not go well; tried about half a dozen times, and kept getting killed by various things
Splitting remaining notes up into area since I looped through all of these areas a bunch

In the Bannered Mare

Spoke with unfamiliar NPC Eldawyn, but she seemed to be another NPC there for atmosphere; she didn’t have any way for me to recruit her as a follower
Found her kind of amusing though as she was a big wine fan
Not a fan though of her snarking on giving Farengar an enchanted dress to go with all the enchanted jewelry she’s selling him
Had several smart-assed dialogue options to take with her, but ignored all of them as not appropriate to my character
Also, this woman seemed surprised that more people didn’t get skilled at both smithing and enchanting; never met a Dragonborn Player Character before, then? 😆

Out and about in Whiterun

Stopped to talk to Sigurd, who had an expanded set of lines! And also an overhauled look

On the way to the crossroads

Hoofed it over there with Gorr
A few times through stopped at the iron ore veins I knew to look for
And one of those, at one point, gave me a primitive hedgehog fossil! And a fossil fragment!
Talked to Alfhild Battle-Born once walking past the meadery
Picked nirnroot at one point and was stunned that it wasn’t chiming

Just past the crossroads

Got usual cranky wolf just past the crossroads
Had different encounters spawn in the spawn point just past the wolf
- Scavenger looting dead Imperials and Stormcloaks, successfully killed that guy both times I got him
- Bandits who’d just killed Imperials and put on their gear hit me with a shakedown, those guys actually killed me
- Novice Fire Mage vs. Novice Ice Mage, once I had Eris on board as a follower

Area right around the Ritual Stone

Investigated the area around the Ritual Stone a couple of times, just because Tuxborn has an expanded version of it there, with an actual little hideout and two necromancers
Had a few fights there the multiple times I tried to clear the place:
- General skeletons
- A headless skeleton, which was kinda cool
- A bone wolf
- A regular wolf fighting a zombie
- Killed the Novice Necromancer both times I fought him
- But the Adept Necromancer was a problem, successfully killed that one once but got killed by her another time
Tried going into Graywinter Watch once but OH SHIT TROLLS and yeah that didn’t go well
Re-doing this place multiple times also meant that I discovered the Ritual Stone multiple times, but then eventually lost that discovery

Valtheim Towers

Made it to Valtheim Towers twice but both times, was killed by bandits
Tried a few strategies to get through there
Swapped out the Moon Monk gear I was wearing for a set of Traveler’s gear I was able to make at Warmaiden’s
This required a few rounds of buying additional leather from Adrianne, and also harvesting some Tundra Cotton, because the vest requires you to have that to improve it
That only let me go so far as to make a set of the gear though, and didn’t leave me much gold to spare for anything else
Also tried to suit Gorr up better
Gave him the steel armor I got from the Jarl, and at least once or twice tried to give him some of the gear taken from the Scavenger encounter
Finally also looked up what other custom followers I could find–and discovered Eris, who was hanging out in the Bannered Mare
Found her and engaged her, more on this below
Still wasn’t able to make it past Valtheim Towers’ bandit chief with her and Gorr, though

Bleak Falls Barrow, take one

So screw it, new plan! Go run Bleak Falls Barrow instead!
Headed to Riverwood and picked up the Golden Claw quest
But timing was not ideal, since it was pretty damned dark by the time we started up the mountain
Cleared the initial watchtower
Also cleared the exterior bandits and got in and started running the place
This time, with a party of three, was able to make it past the first two bandits
And we made it a fair way in to the barrow, freed Arvel the Swift, and killed a bunch of draugr
Made it just past the point where there’s an iron ore vein and a pickaxe
(Though by this point I’d found my own pickaxe and didn’t need to take the one on the ground, but did anyway so I could sell it later)
We took out the draugr on the bridge just past there–but then got killed by a wraith 😢
Thrown back to the entrance into the barrow, and stopped there for the time being
Meanwhile, noted that even though Nona has not yet actually gone to the museum (since my previous attempt was retconned), I was still nonetheless able to turn on the Stash Supplies spell

Tweaking Tuxborn’s settings

Tuxborn’s gigantic pile of mods means this run looks a lot different from what I’m used to from my previous Skyrim runs, even the modded ones. And it behaves a lot differently in many ways, too. So when I got this session started, I took the time to do a bit of tweaking of some of the settings, just to try to make things a little bit more to my liking.

The main thing I worked on here was the settings for Improved Alternate Conversation Camera. This is the mod that, among other things, makes conversations with NPCs zoom in a bunch on their faces–the thing, as I’d commented before, that reminds me a lot of Oblivion.

And I’m not actually a fan of that zooming, so I tried to dial that down some once I found the section for that mod’s settings in the sizable number of MCMs (mod configuration menus) that Tuxborn gives you.

I expect I’ll be digging a lot into more of the MCMs as this playthrough continues.

Meeting Eldawyn

Going through a loop of trying to head over to get Amren’s sword in this session meant I had multiple rounds of being in the Bannered Mare. I don’t remember which one was the one where I talked to Eldawyn, though–another NPC added in by Interesting NPCs, and another one who’s apparently mostly there for atmosphere.

I don’t think I like her very much, though. She was pretty much obsessed with drinking herself into a stupor, and I didn’t care for her snarking about how Farengar kept buying all her enchanted jewelry, and whether she should sell him an enchanted dress. I did like glimmers of something else in there besides snark–I got her to open up a bit about what she actually knows about wine, and also about the melding of smithing and enchanting skills. That, I figure, was the reward for doe-eyed Nona continuing to talk to her even though she was prickly and surly, I guess?

I tried taking screencaps of that conversation, but they were all super dark and didn’t look good when I tried to adjust them. I may have to swing back to the Bannered Mare later (now that I have a lantern to wear), so I can get a better look at this character.

Conversation with Sigurd

Sigurd, Belethor’s assistant, is of course a familiar character. But like everybody else in Whiterun, Tuxborn gives him an overhaul. And he’s also had his conversational options expanded!

I did some chopping of firewood to make a little coin, and since Sigurd regularly also stops to chop wood, I took the time to speak with him. Nona being friendly, and all that!

This version of Sigurd had options to let you ask him about working for Belethor, and also his opinion on the war. Nothing ground-breaking, to be sure. Just some nice little additional detail to liven up the character a bit. I approve.

Still though, my favorite line of his remains one in the vanilla game:

Shop at Belethor’s for the best prices and selection. He pays me to say that.

LOL.

Cool, Legacy of the Dragonborn v6 has fossils 😀

I was very pleased to discover, while mining ore veins during this session, that I could get fossils out of mining! And I confirmed by checking Legacy of the Dragonborn’s wiki that yep, fossils are a thing added into version 6. A previously separate mod for fossils just got rolled into the main Legacy code base.

And I really like this idea. It fits in well with the archaeology theme of the museum! (And if Kendeshel could see across the worlds to Nona, I think she’d be a trifle jealous that she doesn’t get to play with fossils, LOL.)

Surprisingly silent nirnroot

At one point during the loop of trying to go to Valtheim Towers over and over, I picked nirnroot along the stream that runs between Whiterun and Honningbrew Meadery, as you do.

And I was shocked to discover that the nirnroot was not making any noise.

I’m not a fan of this change. Apparently a lot of people out there find the nirnroot sound annoying, but I’m not actually one of them. To me, it’s iconic. And in the case of crimson nirnroot, it’s an important audio cue when I’m looking through Blackreach!

If there’s a way to undo this in Tuxborn, I haven’t found it yet. The load order does include a “Nirnroot Sound Replacer” mod. But there are a lot of mods by that name on Nexus, so I’m not sure which one Tuxborn uses.

I’m going to need to poke at this further.

The Ritual Stone

Tuxborn has a significantly more developed area right around the Ritual Stone. There’s an entire little building there, including a niche being used as a bedroom, and there are two necromancers, not one.

I don’t know what in Tuxborn fleshed that area out, but it looked neat. I can say for sure that this change wasn’t in Legacy version 5! But I’m not sure it’s a Legacy version 6 thing. And there’s so much other content besides Legacy in v6 that it could be anything changing the area, really!

Regardless, it was cool and I’m sad I kept having to roll back from clearing it. I need to go back there, though, because there was a spellbook there for “Conjure Spectral Wolf”–Tuxborn’s version of Conjure Familiar. And I definitely want that in Nona’s magical arsenal.

(And now that I have an entire posse of followers, I should hopefully be better able to clear it! More on this in my next post.)

Making Traveler’s armor

Since I figured out pretty quickly that the armor I’d snurched off of Tanita had visual issues at the shoulder, I knew I’d have to swap over to something else. Usually at this point in previous playthroughs, I’d have made myself some Leather Scout Armor by now–but Tuxborn’s got a mod in it that rejiggers when you can run all the Anniversary Edition stuff, so at this point in Nona’s playthrough, that’s not an option.

However, I noticed I could make some Traveler’s Armor. This is one of the armor mods that Tuxborn runs, and it’s kind of like the Hedge Mage Armor in that you can continue to upgrade it as you advance your smithing skills.

I also had an eye on Seasoned Traveler Armor, which comes in a variety of colors, and is another thing I could apparently make immediately at the forge. But it took more expensive materials than the Traveler’s gear, so I opted for the other stuff for now.

I think eventually I’ll probably want to shift over to the Seasoned set, because I like the overall look of that better. For now, though, I like the look of the Traveler’s on Nona.

Whether these two sets remain primary armors for me as the playthrough proceeds, well, we’ll see! Tuxborn’s adding in a lot of gear, and even the gear I’m familiar with has been heavily retextured. So who knows, I may swap off between different sets a lot!

And once I get access to the museum, I will certainly have a bunch more fun sets to put in the armory!

Follower number two: Eris

After failing to clear Valtheim Towers or even get past the Ritual Stone several times, I decided one follower wasn’t going to cut it.

So I looked up whatever other custom followers Tuxborn has that could maybe help me out with this little adventure–and discovered Eris. Who, ever so conveniently, was hanging out at the Bannered Mare.

I found her, talked to her, and engaged her, and she seems real interesting. She’s a blind mage whose core character concept appears to be that in D&D alignment terms, she’s True Neutral. So she’ll have no judgment for you regardless of what kind of character you opt to play.

She’s also apparently doing the trope of “I’m blind, but the rest of my senses are compensating for it”. I’m not really a fan of that trope–though in the right hands, it can be cleverly done. As an example, Toph the earthbender in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Toph’s blind, but she “sees” through her earthbending, and the connection of her feet to the earth. Eris so far does not seem to be magically compensating for her blindness; we’ll see if I learn anything new about this as I learn more about her.

That said, so far she seems pretty badass. And she did help turn the tide a bit, though I still couldn’t clear Valtheim even with her along. But this was entirely because I was squishy!

Also noteworthy: Eris is an Imperial. And she reacted to Nona being one, too. Though she called me “kinsman”, which I side-eyed a bit. But her going on to observe that it’s rare for her to see “citizens venture to the North” had to hit Nona square in the WTF.

Because remember, Nona’s amnesiac, and here’s somebody who seems to know at least a little bit about what she is.

This, I think, will result in a little side conversation with Eris at some point, starting with her trying to figure out how to ask her exactly what an Imperial is, and how she could tell Nona is one. ;D

When I activated her as a follower, I got two things: a piece of armor, and a “Soul Link” spell. The armor I was dubious about, just because it was Heavy Armor, and historically I am not a heavy armor type person. Nor do I expect this to change with Nona.

Noting also that the armor was explicitly called “Eris’ Armour”. UK English spelling, not American English.

The Soul Link spell, as I discovered in the next session, turned out to be a way to move Eris back to me if we got separated. Nice. Though as a player, I find it slightly unnerving that the spell I’ve been given to summon my follower is a soul link! Little bit much to commit to on the first follow there, Eris?

And now, some notable lines of hers. So Eris is picking up a stronger vibe of Nona’s character than Nona is herself, is what the narrative’s telling me here? HA:

Hmm… I admit, there is something intriguing about you. A strength of character that I have not felt in many years.

This is the line I side-eyed as noted above, because, well, Nona is not a dude:

Well met, kinsman. It is increasingly rare to see citizens venture to the north.

I didn’t actually talk to Eris about the Dragonstone on camera, but it makes sense that I would, so sure why not. Also, Eris isn’t wrong. Because yeah, the Dragonstone being in an old ruin within reasonable walking distance of Whiterun is convenient:

Convenient that the stone would be found here. Let us hope it is still intact.

I had a notable line back to her, too:

Because something tells me there’s more to you than that.

I’ll call this Nona’s otherworldly sense of things kicking in! Eris isn’t the only one able to pick up on vibes!

Bailing on Valtheim and going to Bleak Falls Barrow instead

Since I couldn’t clear Valtheim still, I decided to bail on that plan and go to Bleak Falls Barrow instead. And this time, with Eris along, I made it a fair distance into the place.

But the barrow threw me a surprise: a wraith right near the bridge partway through, which totally killed me. I didn’t even really get a good look at it, besides having a quick impression of a thing that looked like a wispmother.

And this was definitely not a vanilla Skyrim creature. Again, no clue which of Tuxborn’s mods added this in there!

A few other things I want to note about running the barrow, too.

One: I started finding “Ancient Nord Drakr” coins in the chests. This is courtesy of the Coins of Interesting Natures mod, and I really like its concept: that you shouldn’t be finding modern coinage, i.e., septims, in ancient ruins. Or being carried around by draugr. It’s a lovely small detail that nonetheless punches well above its weight class!

The mod adds five different kinds of ancient coins. By and large they are not considered valuable to merchants, so you can’t exactly get much out of selling them. But they do auto-convert to a small amount of gold when you find them, which is helpful. And even though I’m kind of mentally whining a bit about looting in Tuxborn likely being less profitable than I’m used to, I nonetheless really like this change.

Later on down the line, it’ll be real interesting to see how Nona’s eventual wealth stacks up against my prior playthroughs. Especially Kendeshel, the closest comparison, since Kendeshel’s the v5 Legacy playthrough.

Two: there were of course plenty of draugr to fight. But they had different names than I was used to! Several of them were Draugr Vandals, and several were Draugr Churls. I think, but am not certain, that this is courtesy of The Restless Dead (A Draugr and Skeleton Overhaul). So far, liking the variety there too.

Three: once I started getting into chests, I saw with pleasure that there was a variety of locks! I’d known there were mods out there that varied up the appearances of locks on chests. And it was delightful to see Tuxborn making use of that. Again, a little detail–but a bunch of little details add to a massive change in look and feel of the game.

Four: Glowing Mushrooms look different in Tuxborn, like everything else in Skyrim. In Tuxborn’s version of the game, they’re an eerie blue sort of color rather than an eerie green. I think I prefer the original look, but the new look isn’t bad. It may grow on me!

Stash Supplies spell, ahoy!

Those of you who’ve been following Kendeshel’s adventures know that one of the biggest things I love about Legacy of the Dragonborn is the Stash Supplies spell. I love, love, loves me some Stash Supplies.

And since I was sorely feeling its lack in this session, I impulsively decided to see if I could actually activate it even though I haven’t actually joined the museum yet! (I’d tried, but as I noted in my first post, that got retconned by the Winking Skeever crash.)

Answer: yes. Yes I could.

Which seems like a loophole to me, LOLOLOL. I’m not sure I should be able to throw things into the Safehouse’s storage space if I haven’t even seen the place yet!

And all I can think now is Nona playing around with her magical power with a piece of found armor in one hand, and throwing the spell with the other. And she’d be all “Ooh, what happens if I do this? Hey, where did that armor go? Spaaaaaaaaace!”

Meanwhile, at the Safehouse, Auryen’s walking through the Safehouse to just doublecheck it’s all in good order–and suddenly very confused about why mysterious random pieces of armor and ancient Nord weapons start showing up in there.

Because why yes, I am absolutely taking advantage of this spell. I used it shamelessly as Kendeshel, and will be doing so as Nona as well. I will definitely need a stash of stuff to sell, with Tuxborn’s different trading and bartering behavior! And since I can’t carry all that stuff, it has to go somewhere.

So boy, is Nona going to be surprised when she gets to the Safehouse and finds all that stuff she’d made disappear. 😆

Next time

Nona’s next post will feature a successful run of Bleak Falls Barrow! Which I then had to repeat, because of getting my ass charboiled repeatedly by Mirmulnir at the Western Watchtower.

Also, stand by for the addition of Aviendha to Nona’s posse–and then Lydia! But a Lydia who, this time around, has a rather different opinion of the assignment Jarl Balgruuf has asked her to take on…