Holy Hopping Divines There Are a Lot of Draugr In Here

Twitter thread from 5/16/2021, in which Alarrah and Lydia finish running Dead Men’s Respite, then return to Whiterun for assorted crafting and shopping.

In Which Holy Hopping Divines There Are a Lot of Draugr In Here:

12:00 PM · May 16, 2021

1. Picked up where we left off down in Dead Men’s Respite, and by now I’d discovered by poking around on the wikis that this locale is apparently ALSO invoked as part of the Bards’ college quests.

12:01 PM · May 16, 2021

So now it’ll be interesting to see whether I can actually go there and trigger the quest and then actually still succeed at it.

12:01 PM · May 16, 2021

2. Paul has made chiding noises about me regularly consulting the wikis for tips, but hi, I’m a Nethack player, I’m used to digging through spoilers to get through a complex game. 😉 That’s half the fun for me!

12:02 PM · May 16, 2021

But I do try to keep a healthy balance and not really go trawling into the wikis unless I actually get stuck. And mostly if I’m looking on the wikis, I’m looking for more general worldbuilding kinds of things.

12:02 PM · May 16, 2021

Like, say, “mammoths are level 38 beasts and no I really really really should leave them alone”.

3. Anyhow, with this particular dungeon, I did have to poke around the wikis for a bit to figure out which way I needed to go.

12:03 PM · May 16, 2021

4. This took some doing, because I had to doublecheck the wiki when I found a trapdoor that looked like it went down a very deep hole, and I was reluctant to try to jump down there until I found out that one, it was a well, and two, yes, I was supposed to go down there.

12:03 PM · May 16, 2021

Aaron Humphrey · @alfvaen · May 16, 2021

I am constantly having to check wikis to figure out how to like lift some gate to progress onward, and it’ll turn out there was a chain hanging five feet away from it that I just missed the first fifty times I looked for it…

12:08 PM · May 16, 2021

Angela Korra’ti · @annathepiper · May 16, 2021

Yeah. I’ve been missing those chains often enough that that, more than anything, is why I keep whipping out the Candlelight and Magelight spells!

12:17 PM · May 16, 2021

5. Poking around trying to find out where I needed to be eventually let me find a locked chest that was tagged as “Master”. Tried to unlock it, but burned through all my available lockpicks.

12:04 PM · May 16, 2021

Lesson learned, as relayed from both Dara and Paul: do NOT try to go after Master-level locks yet. Not without bumping up the lockpicking a lot more.

12:05 PM · May 16, 2021

6. Also, which way I needed to go was “following the ghost of the bard”. Which I really didn’t figure out well until I actually found the room that had his body, from which he disappeared once I took the King’s Olaf Verse book out of his dead hand.

12:05 PM · May 16, 2021

I had to backtrack back up to the magically sealed door before I found the ghost again, and at that point the ghost opened the door for me.

7. Followed him in to FINALLY find the puzzle door that takes the Ruby Dragon Claw, and got that unlocked forthwith.

12:06 PM · May 16, 2021

8. And THAT led us to the final room, which turned out to be a pretty spectacular looking burial chamber with about a dozen draugr all parked in various chairs. There was also a wide pool in the center of the room, where I spotted the ghost poised and waiting.

12:06 PM · May 16, 2021

9. And I was pretty damn sure that as soon as Lyds and I went out after him, those draugr would wake up and swarm us. What’s the word I want for that? OH YES sub-optimal. Time to break out the bow for some potshots!

12:07 PM · May 16, 2021

10. I had way more steel arrows than I did orcish, so I opted to blow some of the steel arrows. Noted that I was able to hit some of the nearer draugr but they didn’t actually fall out of their chairs, which suggests that they wouldn’t have woken up.

12:07 PM · May 16, 2021

About half a dozen of them did though, which argued that those draugr would have been problems.

11. Finally, though, had to gird our loins and head on out after the bard. Which triggered him hollering a challenge to Olaf and woke up a few more draugr.

12:07 PM · May 16, 2021

12. Figured out fast that I barely had to hit anything, what with Lydia and the bard ghost wailing on our assailants. I got in at least some strikes, though. “Critical strike on Draugr Wight” was a pretty cool phrase to see pop up.

12:08 PM · May 16, 2021

13. However, once King Olaf woke up, also quickly discovered that he was above my pay grade. He took me out. Oof. >_<

12:09 PM · May 16, 2021

14. Fortunately though I didn’t have to roll back too far. The last autosave had been just before I came into the same chamber, so I just had to re-do shooting the draugr in the chairs.

12:09 PM · May 16, 2021

15. This time I let the bard ghost go at it with Olaf, since the ghost was already dead and he could take the hits! This got Olaf dealt with a lot faster and I got to take his tasty, tasty ebony sword.

12:10 PM · May 16, 2021

16. Getting back out the way we’d come initially seemed problematic. There was a locked door behind Olaf’s resting place, but the lock on that was tagged “Adept” and I was fresh out of lockpicks after burning them all on the chest.

12:10 PM · May 16, 2021

17. However, eventually realized that wait, I took a key off Olaf’s undead corpse. And, sure enough, that actually let me get through that door. Which was a damn good thing given that I had no way of getting back out through the well we’d swum through to get down there!

12:10 PM · May 16, 2021

18. Made it safely back out of the barrow, and in weary triumph, our heroines returned to Whiterun!

19. It was then time to sell off a bunch of loot. Including, among other things, a couple of Dwarven helmets I’d found!

12:11 PM · May 16, 2021

I meant to give one to Lydia since it’s heavy armor, but wound up accidentally selling both of them to the Bosmer at the Drunken Huntstman before I finally bought one back from him. Then I was able to give it to Lydia.

12:11 PM · May 16, 2021

20. She immediately put the helmet on, because she likes her Heavy armor, but the helmet looks pretty silly on her. I will have to get her better heavy armor!

12:12 PM · May 16, 2021

21. After I came out of the Drunken Hunstman, a courier came up to hand me another letter. This one was from someone in Markarth who’d apparently gotten the word that I had a Dwarven helmet, and they really wanted it for their research and promised to pay handsomely!

12:13 PM · May 16, 2021

Which raises all sorts of amusing questions about whether this person has access to scrying and clairvoyant spells. 😉

22. Made a few more leather pieces at Warmaiden’s and got those sold.

23. Made a few more potions at Arcadia’s Cauldron, and got those sold.

12:13 PM · May 16, 2021

24. Sold a bunch of gems to Belethor.

25. And all of that let me get enough gold to go back and talk to the Steward, and get my house furnished out the rest of the way. \0/ Breezehome is now habitable and has no more cobwebs!

12:14 PM · May 16, 2021

26. While I was up at Dragonsreach, I also destroyed the Hide Shield of Blocking I’d had Lyds carrying around (and which she hadn’t been using, because of favoring Heavy armor, and because her current dear dear friend is that Steel Greatsword she’s got).

12:14 PM · May 16, 2021

This let me learn the Blocking enchantment.

27. This also let me practice enchanting. I wound up enchanting four different pieces of armor, all at various stupidly low levels, but it did bump my enchanting up a few points and let me level up to 15. \0/

12:14 PM · May 16, 2021

28. After that I closed out the night by bopping back over to Breezehome, and just experimenting with all the things in the place. Including trying on the clothes I found tucked into a drawer, just to see what Alarrah looks like when she’s not in armor.

12:15 PM · May 16, 2021

29. Noted with interest that I could not put the Ruby Dragon Claw into my chest in my bedroom. Was informed that quest items could not be removed from my inventory. Which suggests that yeah, now I’m going to have to head over to the Bards’ college!

12:15 PM · May 16, 2021

30. Next item on the agenda: consider whether to go deal with the mandate of Meridia’s Beacon, visit the bards, or go to Markarth. Maybe all three!

12:15 PM · May 16, 2021

31. But first, I’ll let Lydia sleep. Even if she apparently likes to sit in the chair in my bedroom, still in full armor, rather than sleep in her own damn bed. What the hell, woman? You’re home now, it’s okay to take off the damn armor and go sleep. 😉

12:16 PM · May 16, 2021

Editing to add

1. This post was written on 3/18/2022, but backdated to the time of the tweet thread for organizational purposes.
2. Post updated on 12/31/2022 to reconstruct the Twitter thread in the body of this post, and remove the link off to Twitter.
3. 9/30/2024: Reformatted the tweet thread to use CSS classes, and added slight changes to the color scheme.
4. 10/1/2024: Changed all the underscores that originally signified emphasis in the tweets to just be italics tags. Which was not what I tweeted, but screw it, it looks nicer.