In Which Siobhan Recovers a Lost Elixir

Second post in my new playthrough of Enderal, using the Emissaries of Tux modpack. Main action in this post: a side quest in Riverville, in which I venture into Clearwater Cave to hunt for Tarhutie’s lost elixir.

Highlights

• Play date: 9/29/2025
• Session number in this run: 2
• Headed to Clearwater Cave, a short distance from Riverville
• Noted corundum ore vein as I got into the cave
• Found “Cold Glance of the Rat Catcher”, a helmet out of the Rat Catcher set
• Took a few tries to get down to the section of the cave where the elixir was, since undead kept killing me
• Killed the Aura Thief who’d stolen the elixir
• Got prompt to either drink the elixir or put it in my backpack, opted for the latter
• Got killed again shortly after and had to redo finding the elixir
• Found “Footprints of the Swashbuckler”, a pair of set boots
• Got out of the cave and headed back to Riverville
• Discovered Riverville’s Honey Farm en route
• Also discovered Ruined Homestead
• Found Alfrid, the NPC I needed to speak with about Yero the dead Magister, and got his take on the situation
• Found Tarhutie hanging out outside the inn, and gave her elixir back to her

Commentary

The first quest I covered in this session was a pretty straightforward fetch quest, “go to cave, kill hostiles, get thing”. And it had two possible outcomes based on whether you chose to drink the elixir and go back and lie to Tarhutie about it, or whether you chose to actually bring it back to her. I went with option two, just because I don’t like lying to NPCs in any game.

Plus, I was interested in what would happen if I followed up on Tarhutie’s (probably nonsensical, but maybe not?) claim that if I took the Master Skull from her and went and put it on my head at a particular spot at midnight, it might re-align my aura or something.

(I had my suspicions about this, mind you, based on what I’d already looked up about the game. But I wanted to see where this would go!)

Most of what I want to talk about in this post, though, is various other things observed about the game while I was running this session.

The concept of a person’s “Path” seems to be crucial to Enderal’s society, and apparently this is the country’s version of castes. Jumping Paths seems to be highly out of the ordinary, and to be “pathless” punts you out of standard Endralean society. NPCs frequently mention the idea of being “Path-abiding” in the same way people in RL might say “law-abiding”.

“Endralean” is apparently the descriptor for “someone from Enderal”. Bit of an odd contraction there, linguistically speaking. But no odder than, say, a person from Glasgow being called a Glaswegian!

In looking up stuff about how Enderal works, I’d already noted that it has the concept of armor sets. This is a thing long familiar to me from ESO, but it’s not a thing Skyrim has by default. (There are mods that add sets to Skyrim, ESO-style sets in fact, but Tuxborn does not do that in its load order.)

And running Clearwater Cave got me two different items from sets! I also noticed that the set items had rather poetic names, as opposed to just calling them what they were. “Cold Glance” instead of Helm, “Footprints” instead of “Boots”. Leaning a little purple-prose there for my personal tastes, but sure why not.

Between the two, Swashbuckler is definitely the set that interests me more, as it’s a Light Armor set and its buffs align better with the kinds of play I tend to do. Rat Catcher is a Heavy Armor set, by contrast. Plus, at least in the Emissaries load order which overhauls how a bunch of the Enderal armor sets look, Swashbuckler better matches my armor tastes visually as well!

The Aura Thief was underwhelming. I’m not even sure what sort of creature it was supposed to be? I barely got a look at it before I killed it. (But see also previous commentary re: low light levels, especially in dark caves.)

On my way back to Riverville, I went past two locations. The Ruined Homestead was one I had to visit in a later session. The Honey Farm, according to the Enderal wiki, has no associated quest. But it does have a vatyr in it and potentially useful loot? So I may pop in to clear the place if other quests take me back in that direction.

And it has another of those Magic Symbols, so if I want to get the associated achievement, I’ll need to pop in there regardless. (Note to self: maybe explore more of these locations as you pass them, hmm?)

Last but not least, found the NPC Alfrid and talked to him about the death of Yero the Magister. I’d done this in take 1 of my playthrough, so I knew what to expect. Namely, Alfrid being a former boyhood friend of Yero’s, and being somewhat hurt that Yero more or less turned his back on him once he started rising through society. He also didn’t seem terribly surprised by Yero’s death, and had insights about Yero’s grand plans being somewhat problematic.

Next time

Siobhan’s next session will feature doing more bounties in Riverville, and scoping out that locale for the midnight ritual!

Screenshots