In Which Elessir Slays Some Mudcrabs and Heads to Solstheim
Another catchup post for my now-finished Skyrim run with Elessir. After this one, there will be 17 more posts until I can finish up his writeup!
Main action here: finishing off all the fishing-related stuff, and heading on over to Solstheim to run Dragonborn. But this time, with Lucien and Serana!
Play by play
- Play date: 8/27/2024
- Session number in this run: 52
- Picked up again at Lakeview
- Headed out to the lake again, this time intending to fish for the rare fish I needed
- Nabbed a correct fish from the river in Riverwood
- Boinged briefly back to the Windward Ruins, and then nabbed crab meat from the fisherman’s shack on the Dawnstar beach
- Fished there and got an angler, but did not get the Arctic Char that I needed for Gisli’s meal
- Boinged to Solitude Sawmill to try for another fish–but forgot the fishing spot there was actually stream/river, so I got a duplicate Lyretail Anthias, oops
- Boinged back to Reachwater Rock to try for the the Scorpionfish, but did not get it
- Boinged to Crabber’s Shanty, and took out a dragon there
- Got into Brood Cavern to try for a scorpionfish there
- Killed all the bears and took the loot, but did not get the fish
- Did get the Ring of Phynaster though, so there’s that
- Boinged back to Lakeview
- Sorry Lucia, don’t wanna play right now, Papa is overloaded and REALLY needs to put some shit down
- Boinged to Whiterun to sell stuff
- Boinged to Fort Dawnguard to fish at the lake in Dayspring Canyon
- Got jumped by vampire scouts because apparently there were some stragglers
- Took them out, but one of them gave me Sanguinare Vampiris; quaffed Cure Disease potion to deal with that
- Boinged back to Lakeview
- Gave Lucia another 1,000 gold
- Finally finished making Gisli’s food! Next stop: Solitude
- Dropped off Gisli’s food at the Winking Skeever
- Hoofed it from Solitude to Chillwind Depths to have another try for a scorpionfish
- Passed noble on horse with Imperial guard on the way
- Killed bear outside the cave
- Finally got the scorpionfish
- Boinged next to Stony Creek Cave to try for the lake fish
- But actually hit the wrong map marker! Landed at Cragslane Cavern instead–which provoked a fight with the bouncer who’d respawned
- And we got jumped by dremora, so there must have been a dremora vs. Vigilants encounter spawning there as well
- Took out the dremora–and Serana raised one, which is a particularly tasty necromancer power move
- Did not get the correct fish from the lake
- Boinged to Heartwood Mill to try there
- Got courier with the Fisher King song from Viarmo
- No joy on the fish there, or at the fishing spot near Geirmund’s Hall, so boinged back to Riften
- Found another fight between a Riften guard and Imperials!
- Slept at Honeyside then got up again
- Fished by the house, and FINALLY got the angelfish
- Checked in with Viriya for more fishing work, and got quest for Bronze Water Cave
- Took all the fish back to Swims, and got the Fang of Haynekhtnamet
- Boinged to the College of Winterhold, and sold assorted stuff to assorted mages
- Tried training in the Hall of the Elements, but Faralda never showed up, so didn’t get any actual training in there
- Found her and Enthir in the Hall of Countenance
- Sold stuff to Enthir, and got five rounds of Destruction training with Faralda
- Took out Revered Dragon in college courtyard
- Boinged to Bronze Water Cave
- Puppy showed up there; where the hell was that puppy traveling with me? LOL
- Read the journal and got pointer to Alftand Ruined Tower
- Boinged over to Wayward Pass to get there
- Took the top entrance into the tower this time, and confirmed again that that’s how to get to the schematic without having to go through the fire trap
- Boinged to Markarth to talk to Calcelmo
- Got courier with the OH SHIT CRABS letter from Viriya
- Asked Calcelmo to make the Dwarven rod for me (and I liked that he acknowledged I was Arch-Mage)
- Sold stuff to assorted merchants, and boinged back to Lakeview
- Lucia gave me a potion of Prolonged Invisibility! Now that is thinking like a future thief, good job, kid, thanks!
- Dropped off Chillrend on a weapons rack to lighten the load a little further
- Boinged back to Markarth to get the Dwarven rod
- Boinged back to Bronze Water Cave to finish the quest
- Fished up Denstagmer’s Ring
- But before I could fish up both of the aetherium cores, Viinturuth flew over and started some shit
- So we had to take out Viinturuth! Guess Bronze Water Cave is close enough to his range to piss him off?
- Finally got both cores, plugged them in, and got the axes and the rest of the loot
- Took out the Dwarven spiders that showed up
- Boinged back to Windward Ruins to hit the Dawnstar beach for the final round of crabs
- Passed some Stormcloaks, including large Jeremy, LOL
- Took out the great big ghost crab
- RIP, Dawnstar guards that died valiantly fighting angry mudcrabs!
- Returned to Dawnstar, and sold a bunch of stuff to Rustleif
- Checked in with the Jarl to let him know the crab problem was dealt with
- Boinged to Riften
- This time the guards got pissed at a thief, rather than Imperials!
- Nabbed the stuff off the thief, because Guildmaster’s not going to let a perfectly good set of loot go to waste
- Got letter from Viriya to help her set up her market stall
- Bought all the stuff I needed in Riften, and used the chopping block there for her firewood
- Gave her all the stuff to set up the stall
- Boinged around a little to try to find where I left the Ebony Spell Knight armor
- Hendraheim: nope
- Tundra homestead: yes! Found it there
- Took out Revered Dragon right by Tundra Homestead
- Boinged back to Lakeview
- Gave Lucia the bear I’d brought from Whiterun–but noted that was the only toy I could give her
- The two dolls and the toy dragon from Immersive College of Winterhold did not show up as options, oh wells!
- Put them in the chest in the bedroom on the assumption that Elessir would give those to her anyway
- Did a little more crafting in the basement
- Leveled up to 71, took Magicka bump, and Advanced Smithing perk to be able to work with orichalcum again
- Boinged back to Riften
- Got 24 hour alert that I could talk to Viriya now about her market stall
- It was pretty late game time, but found her still at her stall anyway, so talked to her
- Got the charm and resolved her quest <3
- And then, finally, decided to head for Solstheim
- Told Lucien I was ready to go to Dumzbthar
- He excitedly gave me the key to the place, and I got the objective to escort Lucien there
- C’mon team, time to go back to Windhelm!
- Did the usual promising the boat captain twice his usual rate to go back to Solstheim
- Had initial convos with Adril Arano, Glover, Milore, and Fethis
- Got assorted initial quests
- Also had a convo with Serana in which she reacted to Solstheim!
- Lucien temporarily disappeared, but I got him back just by fast traveling to Raven Rock
- Puppy showed up as well
- Stopped there until next time
Commentary
Running this session, I learned that apparently there’s crab meat to be found at the fisherman’s shack right on the beach near Dawnstar, at the site where you fight all the frenzied mudcrabs. I really wish I’d known this before I’d spent the previous session hunting all over Skyrim! Because this turned out to be true.
(Hi fisherman, don’t mind me, I need this sample of crab meat you have here for important Dragonborn purposes. You can catch more crabs right here, right?)
Lucia hit me up again for money, LOL. Geez kid, that’s the third time in three days, are you trying to buy Whiterun or what? Or have you clued in that your Papa is in fact the Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild? I’m going to need you to refine your technique, kiddo. But don’t listen to Brynjolf, he’d try to have you pitching Falmerblood Elixir.
Serana dryly remarking “Charming name” about the Winking Skeever made me LOL.
And I also had to LOL about the guards that died in the final fight with the ghost emperor mudcrab. Did they go to Sovngarde? Did other heroes of Sovngarde give them shit about that?
“You died fighting what now? Bwahaha! OHNOEZ SCARY MUDCRABS!”
“Asshole, there were two dozen of the things and that’s not even counting the ghost of the giant one!”
“OHNOEZ SCARY GHOST GIANT MUDCRAB BWAHAHAHAHA”
“Look, Shor let us come here! Are you going to argue with Shor?”
LOLOLOLOL. 😂
Meanwhile, boinging around through various homes looking for the Ebony Spell Knight armor made me really miss the Inventory Insight addon I have in ESO. That thing is super useful, and lets me track all of the items owned by all of my ESO alts, and tells me where those items actually are.
I really wish something like this existed in Skyrim. But so far, in my poking around, I haven’t been able to find anything that works the same way as Inventory Insight.
The dragon I took out near Tundra Homestead made seven dragons slain since Elessir defeated Alduin. And that didn’t even count at least one dragon spotted as a flyby.
That suggests that taking out Alduin does not have any meaningful impact on dragon spawn rates? It certainly doesn’t eliminate them. (On the other hand, at the tail end of Kendeshel’s run, I had a distinct lack of dragons around much of Solstheim. So the counterargument there is that post-Alduin dragon spawn rates maybe do drop at least a bit? Because normally I kill multiple dragons on Solstheim if I haven’t slain Alduin yet.)
I tried to give toys to Lucia when I came back to Lakeview from Whiterun, but discovered that the only one I could actually give her was the bear. The two dolls and the dragon from Immersive College of Winterhold were not available as options!
I put them in the chest by the bed in the Bedroom wing, thinking that Elessir would give them to her anyway. And I wasn’t actually sure at the time if the child chest by her bed would be safe storage. As I worked on this post I looked it up; that chest is apparently safe storage, good to know!
Last but not least, I finally took Lucien and Serana to Solstheim. And in the case of the latter, actually had a conversation with her reacting to the place!
But it was based on lines I normally hear from her in the Soul Cairn (about the air and sky being wrong), and in the Reach (about being surprised her father didn’t want to live there). So I was a little ambivalent about that. It was good re-use of existing lines, though I do kind of wish her lines had been different. There’s only so much to work with on vanilla lines for a character, though, even one with as many lines in the game as Serana.
I did like my reply to her pointing out Red Mountain, though, and noting that any beauty in Solstheim had been robbed by it. As a Dunmer, Elessir was definitely in a position to be opinionated about that.
Notable Lucien lines
Lucien has life goals:
I’ve read the layout of Dwemer ruins in Vvardenfell is quite different from those in Skyrim. I’ll have to see for myself one day.
Next time
Elessir’s next post will feature my standard initial Raven Rock quests, Bloodskal Barrow and the whole assassination plot, and taking custody of Severin Manor.
Screenshots










