In Which Faanshi Ventures Into the Forgotten Vale

With this session, I began my favorite part of Dawnguard! Yes folks, it’s back to the Forgotten Vale!

This was a work night session, so I didn’t actually get in through the Vale very far. And this will be a somewhat short post. But I’m going ahead and posting it just to clear the queue!

Highlights

• Play date: 8/9/22
• Session number in this run: 49
• Started at Lakeview, went out and boinged from there to Deepwood Redoubt
• Horse came with me! Oops! This was not intentional–and slightly alarming given that as soon as I came out of fast travel an Ancient Dragon showed up
• Started calling up storm atronachs to take it on, which also attracted the attention of nearby Forsworn
• With jewelry and potion assistance, finally took out the dragon and then one of the Forsworn; Serana killed and then raised the other one
• Amazingly, the horse actually survived the fight! Well done horse!
• Attempted to ride over to Darkfall Cave–and then ran into three Volkihar vampires
• Threw the dremora at them, and had to also invoke potions to keep them from killing me
• Horse survived this fight too :O
• Quaffed cure disease potion since one of those vamps gave me Sanguinare Vampiris; not today, vamps
• Rode over to orc stronghold since they were right there; sold their alchemist my dragon bits and assorted potions
• Then finally made it to Darkfall Cave and started running the place; charged through there rather faster than in previous playthroughs
• Got in at least some sneaking, and the 6x damage bonus from behind is helpful for that
• Discovered I can actually turn Night Eye off as well as on, cool
• Made it out to the vale and started running that part in earnest
• Hit the troll lair and the silver veins right near it; total silver veins, three
• Also found a gold vein by overshooting where I was in the walkthrough, I think
• Then found vale cat lair, and another silver vein there; did not engage with Falmer beyond
• Came back down and flailed past another silver vein in the middle of the glade
• Swung around towards the first Wayshrine and found the Falmer on the way
• “Greetings, Prelate Athring. Yes, yes, this one is ready to receive the enlightenment of Alkosh–er, uh, she means, Auri-El. Yes. Definitely Auri-El. Please show Khajiit where to fill her ewer.”
• Flailed around a little more till I found the gold vein was looking for
• Saved for the night

Highlights

I did not honestly mean to bring my horse with me on the jaunt to Darkfall Cave. This is, I think, a consequence of honestly not being used to having a horse on the Switch build! Every single time I’ve had a horse prior to this run, I’ve had the horse die very quickly on me.

But so far, bizarrely, this horse has managed to survive! I was legit surprised that it lived through two different large battles in this session–with the Ancient Dragon, and then shortly thereafter, the vampires.

This is now ten consecutive sessions this horse has lived. Pretty sure this is a record for me on the Switch. Shenner’s run doesn’t count for this–she’s got a frigging unkillable unicorn. 😉 But Faanshi’s just got a totally vanilla regular horse! But apparently one that so far is clever enough to actually run off out of the way if it finds it’s fighting something too scary.

It probably helps that as soon as we start fighting something formidable, I call up the dremora, and the formidable thing immediately goes after them as the bigger threat. Which helps protect the horse. Not to mention me.

Of course, now that I’ve recorded this observation for posterity, the damn beast’ll probably die on me next session? Or at least, the next time I’m reunited with it, since it wasn’t able to follow me into Darkfall Cave, and by extension, Forgotten Vale. I may not see it again for at least two more sessions, because it takes a while to get through the vale!

But honestly it’ll probably wind up back at Lakeview anyway? I usually get overloaded in the Vale, and will likely have to Arvak my way out. In which case the horse would return to Lakeview.

Meanwhile, this was the first time I’d hit Mor Khazgur this run. But I was already Blood-Kin to the Orcs, so nobody gave me any grief about coming in to trade with them. And hopefully Sharamph will like all those dragon bits I sold her!

One other thing worth noting: running Darkfall Cave as a Khajiit appears to be helpful up to a point. It worked splendidly up until the part where the bridge collapsed out from under me. Then, right around the area where you have to kill all the spiders, I had trouble getting it to activate. Once I was past that point far enough, it started working again.

Next time

More Forgotten Vale! I expect there to be lots of mining of veins, visiting of wayshrines, and fighting of twin dragons!

Screenshots

No screenshots this time.