In Which Kendis Recovers Stolen Books for the Mage College

This is Kendis’ run through Fellglow Keep! Also features getting the dragonscale armor at Yorgrim Overlook, and a whole helluva lot of freezing weather, because this is what happens when you ride from the College of Winterhold down to Windhelm in Survival Mode.

Play by play

• Play date: 1/13/2023
• Session number in this run: 20
• Picked up again in Breezehome
• Did a little shopping; picked up more iron with intent to go to Lakeview and build things
• Only I discovered my horse was not to be found ;P
• So hoofed it over to Lakeview on foot
• Got Lydia to buy enough logs that I was able to build the structures for the armory and bedroom wings; did a little furnishing before I ran out of iron
• Went out to the carriage driver and told him to take me to Whiterun, then Lightning showed up, good
• Mounted up and rode over to Fellglow Keep
• Ran the place without too much trouble; this time no bunny along and no large crowd of followers to cause weirdness with the vampires
• Told Orthorn to get out and get to safety
• Took out the Caller and took the books
• Rode back to Whiterun and sold things, then took the carriage to Winterhold
• Arived freezing, drained, and hungry, fun times
• Popped into the inn to rent a room and warm up
• Then headed up to the mage college to report in and give Urag the books
• Sent to Tolfdir, talked to him, interrupted by Ancano
• Went to Arch-Mage’s quarters for conversation with Quaranir
• Got pointed at the Augur
• Asked the Arch-Mage about the Augur, he firmly shot me down
• Went to find Mirabelle and persuaded her to fill me in
• Headed down into the Midden to find the Augur
• Had to go the long way, fought an ice wraith on the bridge and fell off when I was swinging at it
• Got the Augur to point me at the Staff of Magnus
• Went back up to report to the Arch-Mage
• Got him to point me at Mirabelle
• Got her to tell me to go to Mzulft
• But before I set out again, got five rounds of Illusion training with Drevis
• Went down to Winterhold and fetched Lightning
• Rode south to Windhelm
• This time made it to the stable without having to take the horse into the water
• Ignored wolves that tried to attack me on the road back to the stable; I think Lydia got them
• Freezing by the time I reached the stable though
• Got in through the gates, started warming up, saw the asshats harassing Suvaris Atheron
• Told her nope I don ’t hate the Dunmer, but I can be persuaded to hate those asshats, because I mean honestly
• Went over to sell things to Oengul and Niranye
• Then popped into the inn and grabbed the book to give me the pointer to Yorgrim Overlook
• Attacked by ice wraiths on the way up the hill
• Had to be very careful while fighting the skeleton warrior because I was freezing again and my health bar was down by half 😛
• But managed to take him out, and also the ice wraith or at least one of them, I think the horse may have gotten the other one?
• Warmed up when I got inside the structure
• Took out the other two skeletons
• Got the armor and other loot
• Retrieved horse and kept riding
• Stopped at Nightgate Inn; chatted with the innkeeper about his Orc tenant
• Also read the note on the counter about the mystery stuffed in the barrel in the back
• Rented a room and crashed for 14 hours
• Lydia had caught up with me when I got up
• Fortunately it had stopped frigging snowing when I got back outside
• Raided the barrel and got the journal which pointed to the camp up by Northwatch Keep
• Rode from there back towards Whiterun
• Stopped to fight a frost troll on the way
• Also stopped at Loreius farm finally and helped Cicero
• Returned to Whiterun to get more materials and sell more things
• Rode back to Lakeview
• Got Lydia to buy another round of sawn logs; built out most of the armory and bedroom furnishings
• Put the studded dragonscale on a mannequin for now, since the orcish scaled has carry weight enchantments on it and honestly isn’t that much worse stats-wise right now
• But I’ll get to the dragonscale soon enough
• Also racked Dawnbreaker and Jyrik’s staff
• Saved for the night

Commentary

I’m going to need to be careful about running the same things between Kendis’ playthrough and Harrow’s. Not only for purposes of minimizing duplicating myself, but also because, heh, the Immersive College of Winterhold mod is so awesome that I feel like the vanilla College of Winterhold suffers by comparison. 😉 Sorry, Kendis! I would let you have a modded version of the college if I could!

And I’m really feeling the lack of letting Lydia have her own horse, here. Being in Survival Mode, particularly if I’m riding through the icebox that is Winterhold and the route down to Windhelm, makes me inclined to move as fast as possible to minimize the exposure to the elements. But Lydia’s on foot and she has to run to catch up with me, and that’s not exactly fair to my poor housecarl.

I am at least continuing to enjoy that Survival Mode expects me to actually travel the land–which remains fun, at least when it’s not snowing! And I expect this to make me reevaluate visiting parts of the game I haven’t tended to do as often, just for protection from the elements.

I’m definitely going to have to work on bumping up the carry weight, though. Having to carry around enough camping supplies to last through traveling freezing territory is a big drag on how much I can carry! Which is why I’m still wearing the Orcish Scaled armor, even though I now have the dragonscale.

Next time

Harrow’s about to run Mzulft so I don’t necessarily want to send Kendis over there immediately. (It’d take a couple sessions, I think, for her to make the journey regardless.) But I’m not sure yet exactly what I want to do next with her. I need to evaluate the state of her quest journal and see what makes best sense, re: how many quests can I do if I go in any given direction.

Screenshots

No screenshots this time.