In Which Elessir Explores Nchardak

Catchup post for my Elessir Skyrim run from last year. This post dates from mid-September.

Play by play

• Play date: 9/11/2024
• Session number in this run: 56
• Picked up where I left off at my camp near Tel Mithryn
• Headed over there and saw initial convo between Talvas and Varona, then went in to talk to Neloth
• Took the tack with him of hey, dude, I read the Oghma Infinium (he was actually kinda impressed by that)
• Proceeded to the part where we go to Nchardak
• However, started seeing buggy behavior, see below
• Neloth up and vanished! Didn’t show up at any point on the way to Nchardak, or during the fight with the exterior bandits
• My rieklings showed up though! Good job, rieklings!
• Called the dremora merchant and sold him some stuff, but Neloth still didn’t show up
• So since there was no neloth, boinged back to Raven Rock long enough to drop off a bunch of stuff at Severin Manor and lighten the load
• Then fast traveled back to Nchardak, and still no sign of Neloth
• Finally followed advice from the UESP to solve the problem and get him to show up again, see below
• Proceeded on through the ruin, and everything was mostly normal until I got to the last control cube
• Control pedestal for that wasn’t working, so again, had to call upon the UESP, see below
• From there everything else was more or less normal
• Did the treasure room and got the resonance gem
• Also got all the loot off the final centurion, though i had to jump into the water to find it, since it fell off the bridge
• Then met Neloth at the Black Book and ran it
• Had clipping issues with a lurker I killed falling through the filigreed floor I was standing on, but at least I was still able to loot it
• Got Hermaeus Mora’s ultimatum, and the second word of Bend Will–which I couldn’t activate because I was fresh out of dragon souls
• Took the Dragonborn Force power as per previous playthroughs
• Serana had another dialogue bit kick in when I emerged from the book, see below
• When we went back outside, cue Krosulhah to help me with that problem with lack of dragon souls
• And this time Miraak didn’t actually soul snipe me! So I was able to use the soul to wake up the second Bend Will word
• Serana raised a dead reaver outside, and she tried to punch the dragon, LOL
• Neloth buggered off back to Tel Mithryn, and I buggered off with Serana back to Raven Rock
• Returned to Severin Manor to drop off more stuff
• Saved there until next time

Commentary

In a session that otherwise was fairly standard Solstheim play for me, the buggy issues I saw at Nchardak stood out as unusual.

First issue I ran into was Neloth up and vanishing as soon as I came out of his house at Tel Mithryn. According to the UESP, I apparently got out of range of him and caused a known issue. What finally solved the problem for me was also courtesy of the UESP:

1. Parked right by the door into the ruin and waited for an hour
2. That respawned Neloth, but he was also clipping through the door, and wouldn’t go to the pedestal to activate it
3. Had to use the console to move him to me, and then he opened the door as expected

But that was only the beginning of buggy Nchardak behavior. Towards the end of running it, I found that the pedestal for the last control cube wasn’t working!

I tried console commands to spawn a new version of a pedestal, and then disable the old one. That got me a pedestal I could activate, but the door was still fucked up, and I couldn’t go through it.

So that led me to try the wiki’s suggestion to port myself back to where the various cubes all were. But that didn’t help either. I finally had to roll back to an earlier auto-save, and re-ran Nchardak from there, picking up from where I’d first come into the dungeon with Neloth.

When I reproed the final pedestal problem again, I finally just disabled the door. That let me get past that point and get the last cube.

I never got the chance to take Harrowhark to Solstheim, so prior to Elessir, the only character I would have sent to Solstheim on the Steam Deck would have been Shenner. So I can safely say I never saw this stuff with her. I’m kind of surprised by that. For the record, though, I saw this behavior in Kendeshel’s run, too. So I’ll be watching out for it once I finally get one of my Tuxborn runs to Solstheim.

The one new thing I can talk about here other than bugs, though, was Serana’s dialogue when I emerged from the Black Book.

My initial line to her was “We are playing into Mora’s hands.” And I approved of that! Elessir would be savvy enough to clue in on that, thank you, mod.

Serana acknowledged this–but was also more immediately concerned about whether I was all right. And that was also an interesting question. I took the route of honesty and admitted that no, I wasn’t. And I think Serana may have been the only person in the world that Elessir might be willing to admit that to!

Which seemed to fluster her, and made her point back to “Let’s just keep going.”

So, nice little exchange, that. And played into my mental narrative of Elessir and Serana totes being attracted to one another, but not really willing to actually act on it.

Next time

Elessir’s next post will feature more general Solstheim side questing, and that one will probably be short too. (I’d have combined that post with this one, but shorter posts right now seem to be where my head space is at!)

Screenshots