In Which Elessir Defeats Lord Harkon

And now, finally, it’s time to swing back around to Skyrim posts, to get caught up on the playthroughs I still have in progress on that game even if ESO’s mostly eaten my brain this year.

So here’s a post to get caught up with Elessir’s playthrough. Main action here is finishing up the Dawnguard questline with him, with extra side commentary this time just because I’m running the Serana Dialogue Edit mod in this run.

Play by play

Play date: 1/26/2024
Session number in this run: 44
Picked up where I left off at Lakeview
Did a quick supplies check, then boinged off to Fort Dawnguard with Serana and Lucien
Found Isran for the “hey I have Auriel’s Bow” checkin, and he fired up the “let’s go kill some vampires” pep speech for the Dawnguard
Off we went to Castle Volkihar! Which was a brutal fight for the Dawnguard, who lost pretty much everybody who wasn’t set Essential
Got a little extra dialogue with Serana in which we discussed letting her mother know what happened; I liked that bit
And Serana also loved it when I told her she deserved a chance at some happiness! <3
Had a bit of a problem getting into Valerica’s laboratory though because I was overloaded with loot from the battle
Fast traveled onto the balcony courtesy of unicorn Rigmor
But when I dismounted I fell off the damn balcony, because it was crowded with Rigmor and Lucien and Serana; died from the fall, ouch
Rolled back to being out on the beach in front of the castle
Take two of going to the balcony worked better because this time I rode straight to the door where I had room to safely dismount
Went in and hit the portal to the Soul Cairn to retrieve Valerica
Was successful in acquiring the Conjure Boneman spellbook this time (though I had to kill assorted hostiles to do it)
Informed Valerica her husband was dead
Sold 25 soul husks to Morven Stroud on the way out
Valerica came out with us and this time, with the mod, I had the option to recruit her as a follower
For now though did the standard exchange with her, and got her permission to take anything from her lab that I need
Headed back out onto the balcony to fetch Lucien and depart
Had to summon Arvak to do it though because I was carrying too much stuff for Rigmor to budge
Also, bizarrely, I found a puppy on the balcony; tried to talk to it but had no obvious response
After that, the puppy did seem to follow me to Lakeview
And I had a different puppy around me, a husky-type one, as I visited other locations
Not sure what brought this on, but hey! PUPPIES!
Stopped at Solitude to sell things (including Dawnguard gear), and stopped at Whiterun a couple of times to do so as well
Boinged around between houses, all the Hearthfire ones and Bloodchill Manor, to do supply checks and drop off things in appropriate places
Returned to the Forgotten Vale to run the paragon portal and get the various bits of loot
Last visit to Bloodchill Manor, got a dragon as soon as I fast traveled in, but I was overloaded and ducked inside first to drop stuff off
Dropping off the paragons, Auriel’s Bow and Shield, and Harkon’s stuff, as well as a bunch of other pieces of armor, took long enough that apparently the dragon de-spawned; the combat music went away, and Lucien and Serana came in and caught up with me
Planted a few gourds in one of the planters by the door
Then moved on to College of Winterhold
Sold some things to assorted mages, and sold the unknown books to Urag
Put the Blood and Sun scrolls in the secret arch-mage room
Dropped off a lot of soul gems in the enchanting supplies
Then went down to Winterhold, and sold a bunch of things to Birna to get under carry weight; also invested in her store
From there, boinged to Myrwatch
Ran the fishing contest plot in Morthal
Notable here was an extra bandit showing up that fought the bandits coming at me; that guy may have killed the dead Orc I saw at the edge of the water? But I didn’t find him after
Serana and Lucien and I took out the bandits, and I fished up the Warlock’s Ring
Then boinged back to Whiterun and robbed Lillith Maiden-Loom’s house to satisfy a Sweep Job
Horse called to get Rigmor the unicorn back
Then fast traveled to Markarth to run Forsworn Conspiracy; played that pretty much as per previous playthroughs
Swiped a bunch of stuff off of guards and sold it to Ghorza and Lisbet
Also invested in their stores while I was at it, to get two favors for later thaneship
Then boinged back to Riften and turned in the Bedlam and Sweep Jobs
Got new ones specifically targeting Windhelm
Boinged around for a while after that between the college, Lakeview, and Windstad
Took training at the college in Destruction and Restoration, but not quite enough to level up to 64 yet
Bought several higher level spells off of Faralda and Colette
Also did the Illusion ritual spell quest, though I had to look up where the books had been moved due to running Immersive College of Winterhold
Passed that and got the high level Illusion spells from Drevis
Experimented some with ICOW’s automation capabilities
Still, built a few things at Windstad
Also did a boatload of alchemy at Lakeview
Did a bit of smithing to polish up a couple of armor items
Then stowed all the materials I had left over, and saved at Lakeview until next time

Long hiatus, wut?

This session was from late January, nearly an entire month after the previous time I’d played Elessir. And while ESO has eaten a lot of my play cycles the last several months, this wasn’t entirely ESO’s fault. This was pretty much the result of Bethesda dropping another Skyrim update–so of course all the mods had to catch up with that.

Once the situation finally stabilized, though, I was able to return to playing Skyrim at the tail end of January. Now mind you, that much time away from Skyrim did, I feel, contribute to how heavily ESO has eaten my brain this year. ;D I didn’t exactly mind, though. Even though I missed my Skyrim runs, ESO was keeping me plenty occupied!

For the record, once I get caught up again on my Skyrim posts, I will be resuming play. So with that in mind, let’s review what I did with Elessir on the 26th!

We commend their souls to Aetherius

Mostly, this was all about finishing up Dawnguard. Which, this time around, resulted in a pretty brutal fight for the Dawnguard at Castle Volkihar. There were four casualties: Durak, Celann, Agmaer, and Ingjard. And also, Gunmar’s armored troll.

In other words, almost everybody on the Dawnguard side who wasn’t set Essential. Yowtch.

This is, I suppose, what I get for running Dawnguard with Elessir leveled up as far as he was! Because of course the monsters level with you, and while some NPCs do as well, so many of them also have level caps. Durak and Celann, as I’ve noted before, are among the few NPCs in the game who aren’t actually level capped. But apparently they just got really frigging unlucky in this fight!

I felt a bit guilty about harvesting blood off of Durak after the battle, not gonna lie. But Durak, I promise you I did it respectfully. Please don’t haunt Elessir from Aetherius, mmkay?

And apparently Beleval was also in on the attack, which I didn’t realize until later. I did not see if she survived, either. I’ll have to check back at Fort Dawnguard once I finally resume Elessir’s playthrough, and see if she’s still around.

Changes in Serana behavior

I did quite like the additional dialogue options I got with Serana in this session. The additional exchange re: going back to tell her mother what had happened was a nice touch, since it played it very smoothly with what I was going to do anyway. Clearly I’m not the only player who likes to go right back into the Soul Cairn to retrieve Valerica as soon as Harkon is defeated.

And I also had to go aww at Serana throwing off a “Serana loves this” reaction when I told her she deserved a chance at some happiness. I figure this is normally snarky Elessir dropping his veneer for once for some sincerity! And Serana probably lighting up just because she appreciated that gesture a lot more than she was ever going to actually tell him.

Swear to Divines, I totally ship these two. If the game would let me, Elessir would totally marry her. (And before anybody thinks to mention, yes, I’m aware that there are other mods out there that give you a chance to romance Serana. From what I’ve seen, though, those stray rather farther from vanilla behavior than I’m comfortable with. So not going to go down that route. And can’t, anyway, not in this playthrough! Not going to rearrange Elessir’s load order this late in the run.)

Getting the Conjure Boneman spellbook, finally

I’d written in In Which Elessir Explores the Soul Cairn that I’d had trouble getting the Conjure Boneman spellbook. During this session, what I’d hoped would be the case did in fact prove to be so: i.e., that as long as I was out of the Soul Cairn long enough for it to reset, whatever glitch had eaten the spellbook before would reverse itself.

This time through, I was able to get it. Of course, since the zone had reset, I had to kill a bunch more hostiles to get the book. But hey!

Valerica as potential follower

Retrieving Valerica from the Soul Cairn let me find another change made by the Serana Dialogue Edit mod: i.e., the opportunity to recruit Valerica as a follower.

Mind you, I can’t imagine a situation where I’d actually want Valerica as a follower, either with what remains of Elessir’s run, or with any future run where I might want to use this mod again. But that said, I also appreciate that the opportunity arose. It fits in well with other NPC behavior in Skyrim, where doing quests for people lets you recruit them.

Heh, I suppose that this would allow me to recruit Valerica as a steward for places you’re able to recruit stewards for. But even that seems questionable to me, since I have a hard time imagining Valerica would actually want to leave Castle Volkihar!

The obvious narrative solution here would be if you’re playing Dawnguard on the side of the vampires, which results in you taking over the castle. You could always make Valerica steward of it. 😀

Crafting automation in Immersive College of Winterhold

I think I knew this already from Harrow’s playthrough, but I wish I liked Immersive College of Winterhold’s crafting automation more than I do. It’s missing one use case which really blunts its usefulness for me: i.e., it doesn’t work at carpenter workbenches. And I spend a lot of my crafting time in Skyrim doing that, building out houses! Those benches do hit your smithing materials, so I really wish that ICOW would let the carpenter stations hit your stash the same way a blacksmithing station can.

At this point, after getting pretty far in Kendeshel’s run with Legacy of the Dragonborn, I definitely prefer how Legacy handles this. I love the Stash Supplies spell and all the auto-sorting Legacy does with your supplies that I really miss that functionality in both Elessir’s and Finds-The-Way’s runs.

So after playing a little bit with ICOW’s station automation stuff, I regretfully turned it back off again.

Also, fuck it, I’ll hit the wiki for this

When I did a boatload of alchemy at Lakeview, I spent a bunch of time looking up all the various ingredients I had in my stock so I could confirm what I could make with it all. Just because this far in on my Skyrim experience, I know for a fact that: