In Which Kendeshel Fights Vampires and a Lich on Wyrmstooth

Trying to get caught up again on my Skyrim posts. Here’s another single-session post, this one for Kendeshel, mostly covering action on Wyrmstooth. As per several of her previous posts, be warned that this contains notable spoilers for a couple of side quests with the Wyrmstooth mod.

Play by play

• Play date: 12/11/2023
• Session number in this run: 32
• Picked up where I left off on Wyrmstooth, just outside Bloodfrost Burrow
• Initial bit was an icy cave leading into a very red-lit area, how very vampiric
• Took out an initial thrall
• The core pack of vamps and other hostiles were a huge cluster; first time through they killed me
• Second time through I set up a quicksave with my dremora active, and several potions quaffed and Ebonyflesh thrown as well
• Tried to throw several storm atronachs as well, because at least a couple of the vamps were mages
• But that time through they killed Rulnik and that was not acceptable
• Third time through I hung way back and kept the dremora coming, and that time through Rulnik safely made it through the fight as well
• Once all the hostiles were down, continued to search the place
• Past that area I found another large icy area that turned out to also have hostiles, a large number of wispmothers
• Those I mostly took out with storm atronachs, and Rulnik and I made it safely through the first time
• Nothing obvious in the way of interesting story or loot there though, though I did notice what looked like a pair of shrines of Talos facing each other
• Once I cleared that room I was finally able to thoroughly search the place
• Found several rooms with coffins and miscellaneous loot
• Most notable item found was a spellbook of Cure Disease, which will be helpful later for running Dawnguard, that’s for sure
• Grabbed a bunch of weapons for later smelting and selling
• Threw Stash Supplies several times to chuck stuff into my stash
• And finally got out again to proceed to my next objective, which was Haetar’s Cave
• This took a bit of effort to get to, because my path to reach it was rather roundabout
• Went through Chillbone Camp first, which proved to have some marauders, and at least one dead Vigilant
• Found the dead Vigilant first and was a little afraid I’d just killed a bunch of Vigilants, but whew no, the hostiles had been marauders, easily taken out with the dremora
• Found a bunny in a cage but could not release the bun
• The whole camp looked like a shipwreck since there was a piece of a hull there
• Did some more derping around to find the path to Haetar’s Cave, and saw a bunch of Dwemer ruin type structures
• Also found what looked like an unmarked location, another camp, and a dead body there tagged as ‘Windhelm Guard’; took his Stormcloak shield since I needed that for display purposes
• Then finally made it into Haetar’s Cave
• Found a bunch of dead hunters and dead Thalmor in there, one of whom had a note bitching about the mage I’d met in Wyrmstooth Barrow, Alberthor
• Got the final word of the Phantom Form Shout
• Then went further in and found another large icy cave, with a separate little barrow-type structure further down
• Had to use the Clairvoyance spell to find a safe way down to that
• Got in and found the remaining bones, as well as an engraving warning that woe be unto anyone who disturbs the bones
• As I am the player character and had a quest to fulfill, yep, I sure did take those bones
• Which triggered a fire trap, but Rulnik and I got out of the way
• Came back out again and fast traveled back to Vulom’s tomb
• Went in, returned to the creepy talking skull, and told it I had found the bones
• And yep, Vulom sure did reform and attack me! Because of course he did
• Called in the storm atronach squad for this, because Vulom was a magic-user, and that did help
• He teleported a few times, but the atronachs kept zapping him, as did Rulnik
• Finally caught up with him and whacked him a few times at close range with melee weapons, and took him out in one go
• Got his staff as a reward
• Came back out of the lair and fast traveled back to the Dev Aveza
• Confirmed that the ship can now travel straight to Fort Valus, cool
• Also saw that Faelor the wolf had traveled onto the deck with me, but when I took the ship back to Solitude, the wolf was gone
• Headed into the museum for a bunch of inventory managing and display work
• Did a bunch of smelting of the cheaper weapons and armor loot, and built up a stock of iron and steel ingots
• Got multiple sets of Crimson Archer armor off the vamps, so smelted those down into ingots I could use on my original Crimson Archer set
• So I was finally able to get those pieces back up to Legendary, and switch back to using that armor since I liked that better than the Hunter anyway 😀
• Leveled up to 55; took Dwarven Smithing perk and Magicka bump
• Put a bunch of Wyrmstooth items on display, including a couple of shields and the Vulom staff (because not likely to actually use that thing)
• Also got 20,000+ gold out of my sell chest sales, and dumped a bunch more things into it
• Put a lot of books in the library
• Finally made several new replicas to add to the displays: Potema’s skull since I had a correct circlet for it, the White Phial, Torygg’s horn, the Spear of Bitter Mercy, and such
• Got up to just under 1,000 displays, but needed a few more to cross that mark
• Saved there until next time, which will be more action on Wyrmstooth!

Commentary

Holy shitcakes, Bloodfrost Burrow was a tough lair to run. It took me three tries!

I wrote in earlier posts that I found Wyrmstooth’s main plot a bit underwhelming for my power level at the time. Bloodfrost Burrow, on the other hand, was a bit much. My takeaway here, I think, is that next time I run Wyrmstooth, I better consider hiring the mercenaries for extra backup. Because that big cluster of vampires and their supporting hostiles was hard for me to chug through on my own, even with Rulnik and three summoned dremora and/or storm atronachs.

Also, I’m not sure what the point of having a whole extra room with wispmothers in the place was? I’m pretty sure I must have missed some sort of item that might have given me a connection between the vampires and the wispmothers. It seems like having two disparate kinds of hostiles in the same place would have more story involved than what I actually found.

I was a trifle sad about the bunny in the cage at Chillbone Camp, since there was no way to actually free the bun! Sorry, bun! I would have released you if I could!

As of this session, I’d found a couple of different places that seemed to indicate Stormcloak forces trying to explore the island–and not having a good run of luck doing so. I have a few questions as to why one of Windhelm’s actual guard force would come over, though? I should think they’d be needed to protect Windhelm!

Finally reaching Haetar’s Cave let me stumble across more evidence of Thalmor presence on the island, too, and a note indicating bad blood between the Thalmor and the mage I met in Wyrmstooth Barrow, Alberthor. I’m given to understand from reading Wyrmstooth’s PDF guide that there is a side plot about that, but I’m not sure how many fucks I have to give about running it at this point. I kinda didn’t like Alberthor as a character, mostly because the whole mind-control experiment rubbed me the wrong way. So I’m currently disinclined to run any further plots involving him.

I was amused, though, by the warning I found in the depths of Haetar’s Cave about how woe be unto anybody that dares to disturb the bones. For the benefit of any players who hadn’t already figured out that gathering bones for a creepy talking skull was probably a very, very bad idea, I guess. ;D

Speaking of which, gathering all the bones and returning to the Tomb of Vulom did, of course, result in Vulom reforming and attacking me. Which was no surprise whatsoever. The main point of interest here for me was just how that reveal was going to play out. Answer: Vulom turned out to be a lich determined to dominate the world, and he promised to kill me first. Apparently this was his idea of how to reward me for bringing his bones back. Snerk.

The lines given to the player here were a bit too clueless for my tastes, though. Just because the player was given no chance to actually call Vulom out on his bullshit, or go “I only brought all the bones back here so I could destroy them all, seriously, what kind of idiot did you think I am?” Because seriously, any savvy player is going to figure out very fast that Vulom is super suspicious. And hell, any sufficiently leveled up character should be able to clue in on this. Especially a character who’s already fought Potema and won.

Actually fighting Vulom was challenging–but honestly not as bad as I was expecting, and certainly not as rough as the fight in the vampire lair. With all the buildup of Vulom supposedly being a big bad lich who was so evil that his bones had been scattered in separate places all over Wyrmstooth, I was expecting a harder fight. But he didn’t kill me once.

I have no fucks to give per se about the powerful staff that the Vulom quest gives you as a reward. It strikes me as definitely the kind of thing Kendeshel would want to return to the museum and keep under heavy wards, the same as the Daedric artifacts. Because you don’t want any random asshole getting their mitts on a staff that can summon the shade of a powerful lich.

Returning to Solitude from Wyrmstooth this time gave me a bit of confusion re: Faelor the wolf. I learned that Faelor can fast travel onto the Dev Aveza with me if I do that. But when I take the ship somewhere else, it seems she is not able to keep track of that. I’d initially thought that this meant she was a Wyrmstooth-only follower, but learned in a later session that she could show up on mainland Skyrim too, if I fast traveled somewhere.

So the thing I need to keep in mind with the wolf is, she doesn’t enter buildings. I suppose this also means she won’t enter the hold of the airship, either.

And this is more commentary about Legacy of the Dragonborn rather than Wyrmstooth: I gotta say, the sell chest that Legacy gives you in the Safehouse is hands down one of the things I like best about Legacy. It saves me a crapload of time I’d otherwise have to spend hauling loot around to various merchants to sell it. And it’s letting me make a crapload more gold than I’ve ever made in most of my prior Skyrim runs. As of this post’s session, it was still chugging through selling prior Wyrmstooth loot. So I’m pretty damn sure I’ll easily make back the amount I spent buying Fort Valus and all of its accoutrements. Neat!

Next time

Kendeshel’s next post will be more side quest action on Wyrmstooth, following up on the plot with the stolen pants, and also fighting a bunch of warlocks. Stay tuned!

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 10/21/2024: Converted gallery to native WordPress one. Added missing caption and description to the final screenshot. Added Reviews category to the post, since it contains review and spoiler commentary for Wyrmstooth.