In Which Faanshi Become Thane of Haafingar

Short session, therefore short post! Main highlights: defeating the Wolf Queen Potema in the catacombs, and then officially becoming thane of Haafingar.

Highlights

• Play date: 7/15/2022
• Session number in this run: 38
• Started off in Proudspire
• Went over to talk to Falk in Blue Palace
• Got directive to go talk to Styrr about Potema
• Ran the Potema catacombs as per previous playthroughs
• Only real problem was Lydia accidentally killing me with the spike trap partway through even after I’d evaded setting it off myself ;P
• Throwing dremora around sure was helpful though
• So was a necklace to reduce shock resistance by 60 percent!
• Cleared the place and got out
• Quaff-traveled back to Solitude
• It was late but hey Styrr was up, so gave him the remains on the grounds that figured this probably was urgent enough in character to let him have the skull now
• Same logic re: going back to the Blue Palace
• Found Falk and Sybille hanging out in the court area even though it was stupid o’clock
• Got Falk’s gratitude for the task and also the Shield of Solitude
• Did not go to wake up the Jarl
• Went downstairs, parked on a bench, and waited for five hours till daybreak
• Then came back upstairs and waited another hour till Elisif showed up
• Then asked her if she needed anything else and got the pointer to become thane <3
• Which I then proceeded to do since I’d already bought Proudspire and helped five of her people
• Yay! I’m thane!
• Greetings Jordis, future bride of Khajiit! 😉
• Dropped off Blade of Hjaalmarch and Blade of Haafingar both in Proudspire
• But for now went to go talk to Captain Aldis to clear out the buggy Help the People of Haafingar quest
• Got info to take back to Angeline
• Bought iron with Beirand on the way out
• Gave Angeline the news
• Then boinged between houses to do building, Windstad -> Heljarchen -> Lakeview
• Boinged to Whiterun and bought more iron and steel and corundum
• Then boinged back to Heljarchen
• Dismissed Lydia so I could get her to sell me logs, then let her head home to Lakeview while I worked on building main house structure of Heljarchen
• Built additional furnishings
• Saved for the night

Commentary

Not too much new to comment upon in this post, just because I’ve done Potema as well as getting the Haafingar thaneship several times now.

One thing I can say, since this is a thing I haven’t documented in previous posts: when running Potema’s catacombs, if you’ve got a follower, you have to be super careful about that spike trap partway through. The trigger for that thing is positioned such that it is super easy for your follower to hit it even if you avoid it yourself.

And if you’ve got multiple followers, like your primary follower as well as two summoned dremora, all the more risk of that happening.

So the way I found to get around this is, as soon as you make it past the trap trigger, veer immediately to the right. Because then even if your follower triggers the trap, you will be out of range of the spikes.

Meanwhile, let it be noted for the record that if you have a bunch of shock resistance, Potema is much less of a problem. This time through I had a necklace that gives 60 percent shock resistance. So wearing that thing, and quaffing one of the shock resistance potions you can find right before entering the boss chamber, pretty much insured that I had no issues surviving the room until it was time to confront Potema directly.

I noted with interest that even if it’s the middle of the night, you can actually do the final couple of steps to resolve the Potema quest. Because both Styrr and Falk will be awake! The wiki says Styrr’s schedule is weird; he’s apparently one of the few non-vampire characters who keeps a nocturnal schedule.

Falk Firebeard, on the other hand, apparently just never actually sleeps. His wiki page says that this has been fixed by the USSEP, but since this run was on the Switch, I was still able to find him right in the court where he usually stands during the day.

Also, now I have Jordis available as a housecarl! In the name of establishing strong Catradora action, I feel like I will need to get her on duty as my follower for a while, at least until I’m ready to go run Dawnguard. <3

Next time

Getting very close to it being Dawnguard time, but before I do that, I want to go after the Elder Scroll. And I’ll want Jordis at my back for that, so I also need to bring her some better armor and weaponry. Need to bring her some ebony gear! I’ll shop around first, but if I can’t find any other gear, I’ll bring her the enchanted set I have parked at Lakeview.

Screenshots

I actually caught a video during this session! Just because while running Potema’s catacombs, I got into a fight with a vampire nightwalker that resulted in me doing a critical hit to take her out with my sword. And it looked badass enough that I wanted to take the video for that!

So here’s that. Playing at Master difficulty on this run does mean that I have to be careful during combat if I get into direct melee, and be sure and quaff my healing potions. Which admittedly throws off the drama of the pacing.

But on the other hand, it keeps me alive long enough to actually stab a vampire, so I’ll take it. 😉

Noted with amusement that if I step through the frames of this video, I can actually see Faanshi baring her teeth as she does the critical strike.

And in addition to that, I did get a couple of screenshots!

Editing to add

• 11/23/2023: Restored missing gallery.
• 10/10/2024: Converted gallery to a native WordPress one.