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In Which Delga and the Companions Avenge the Death of Kodlak Whitemane
Big dramatic session in which I not only ran a bandit bounty and sought a Word Wall, but also moved the Companions quest line along quite a bit! And wiped out both the Glenmoril Coven and the Silver Hands while I was at it.
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In Which Delga Acquires Lakeview Manor and Slays a Silver Hand Leader
Finally got Lakeview Manor started, setting up my third official home in this run and the first of the buildable ones! And also moved the Companions plotline a little further along, by assassinating a Silver Hand leader by the order of Aela the Huntress.
Plus, a side helping of bandit bounty, and as always, lots and lots and lots of smithing!
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In Which Merawen Has a Way Livelier Night Than Anticipated
I was in the mood for a low-key and frivolous session, now that I’m between doing Dragonborn and finishing up the main quest. So for this session, I mostly boinged around a lot between various places, moving resources around, buying more resources, and working on building Windstad Minor.
But I also did one of the most frivolous Daedric quests in the game: A Night to Remember, which features the Daedric prince of debauchery, Sanguine!
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In Which Merawen Gains Solitude for the Guild and Saves Esbern from the Thalmor
This session’s primary highlights were opening up Solitude for the Thieves Guild, after running the Dainty Sload plot—and then saving Esbern from the Thalmor, as I finally returned to the main plot and moved that along some more. I’m about to hit level 46, so it’s a good time to go get Dragonbane at Alduin’s Wall!
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In Which Merawen Learns Who Took the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller
This was another very eventful session, with a lot of bouncing around between various locations, and some moving along of the main plot as well. Main-plot-wise, I’m to the point of having the Thalmor Embassy as the next major thing to do. Side-plot-wise, I got Dawnbreaker! And spent enough time in Whiterun that it felt a lot like an Alarrah session, really.
Which just goes to show that I need to get back to the Thieves Guild. Muahaha.
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In Which Merawen Has a Very Eventful Session
This session saw a whole lot of action all over the place. Cleared dungeons all over the place, killed two different dragons, met several Guild NPCs, and most importantly, finally concluded that burglary job Vex sent me on!
Deets behind the fold!
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In Which the Dragonborn Catches a Murderer
Yesterday’s run was mostly all about doing the murder mystery plot in Windhelm, with a little extra bonus possible exorcism of Carl?
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In Which Alarrah Finally Drops Off the Horn
Twitter thread from 5/13/2021, in which Alarrah returns the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller to High Hrothgar, and her player discovers several varied ways for the game to kill her.
In Which Alarrah Finally Drops Off the Horn, But Other Than That, Mostly Finds Out Ways for the Game to Kill Her:
8:42 AM · May 13, 20211. As discussed in my last post, I’d decided to go give the Horn back to the Greybeards, finally. This was a fairly anti-climactic ending to the Horn quest…
8:43 AM · May 13, 2021…as it involved just showing up back at High Hrothgar, going “Hey Master Arngeir I brought that Horn you wanted”, and letting them teach me the final word of the Unrelenting Force Shout.
8:43 AM · May 13, 2021Then they actually Shouted at me for a little bit, and since I could take it, they essentially went “Yep you sure are officially the Dragonborn, High Hrothgar is open to you”, and then went about their business.
8:44 AM · May 13, 20212. Note however that it took me two tries to do this, because I apparently triggered some kind of weird game bug. First time I showed up, I found Master Arngeir out in the courtyard by the gates in back, where I’d done the practice of Whirlwind Sprint.
8:44 AM · May 13, 2021I approach him, which triggers the game acknowledging I’ve brought the Horn, and he tells me to go inside where the other masters will meet us. But he doesn’t actually _do_ anything and stays standing there in the courtyard.
8:45 AM · May 13, 2021I try to go inside, and I find Master Wulfgar, but can’t get him to interact with me either.
3. I apparently triggered some kind of weird bug where the Greybeards get in a hung state if you don’t quite finish the Whirlwind Sprint test correctly?
8:46 AM · May 13, 2021I rolled back to a previous save and tried again, and on the second time through I got it to work. Of interest on the second attempt: it was snowing this time, and it wasn’t before.
8:47 AM · May 13, 2021Also: I stepped around a bit more around the gate area, and triggered a “try again” line out of Master Arngeir before he actually then moved to get inside for the ritual to give me the final Shout word.
8:47 AM · May 13, 2021So it did seem like I triggered that bug with the end of the Whirlwind Sprint test. Interesting from a QA perspective (Dara and I weren’t sure whether it snowing on the second attempt was related to the bug or not), but from a play perspective, kind of weird.
8:48 AM · May 13, 20214. Anyway, after the Greybeards gave me the Dah syllable of Fus Ro Dah and open license to hang out at their place, decided Lyds and I would head back to Whiterun and sell some stuff.
8:50 AM · May 13, 20215. First stop: apothecary. Sold a bunch of potions, made some more as I experimented with ingredients I’d found in Ustengrav.
8:50 AM · May 13, 20216. Next stop: Warmaiden’s. Smelted a bit of corundum ore into an ingot, just to see if I could do that, and if I can do anything interesting with that ingot later.
8:51 AM · May 13, 2021Also made some leather bracers and now have the question here of whether it’d be worth my time to wear those rather than the steel gauntlets I’m using, even though the gauntlets are a better AC.
8:52 AM · May 13, 2021There are bonuses to be had if you’re wearing all Light armor, and right now I’m mostly Light but with a couple of Heavy items.
8:52 AM · May 13, 2021Aaron Humphrey · @alfvaen · May 13, 2021
On the other hand, if you mix your armour types then you might be able to train multiple armour skills at the same time depending on where you get hit… :p
8:53 AM · May 13, 2021Angela Korra’ti · @annathepiper · May 13, 2021
I’ve been seeing that exact thing happen in more hardcore battles, my Light AND Heavy armor skills have been periodically getting bumped.
9:24 AM · May 13, 20217. Third stop: General store. Sold a bunch more stuff (and amused myself quaffing a Potion of Haggling to get that chode Belethor to give me better prices).
8:53 AM · May 13, 2021Spotted my first Amulet of Mara, but didn’t buy it; still thinking about whether I’m going to get to a point of wanting to propose to my loyal Lyds for tromping around Skyrim with me and putting up with my bullshit. 😉
8:54 AM · May 13, 2021Aaron Humphrey · @alfvaen · May 13, 2021
At some point I like switching to other companions, just for variety, but Lydia is a great starter. (Wait until you meet Serana, too…assuming you have Dawnguard…)
9:32 AM · May 13, 2021Angela Korra’ti · @annathepiper · May 13, 2021
The Switch edition of the game has all three DLCs built right in, yeah. I have Dawnguard. I also have the opening hook for that in my quests! But I’m PRETTY sure I’m not ready to take that plotline on yet. 🙂
9:36 AM · May 13, 2021Aaron Humphrey · @alfvaen · May 13, 2021
A lot of these things do scale in power level, but I don’t know to what extent. (You gotta watch that. I recently ascended from Level 59 and Level 60 and felt like the enemies just got harder again…)
10:27 AM · May 13, 20218. After that I kind of wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next. I eventually decided to try to pick a random quest off my list of Miscellaneous quests, since I had several opening hooks listed there.
8:54 AM · May 13, 20219. Chose the Shrine of Azura, NOT to be confused with the Shrine of Azula, which is what I keep wanting to call it. That would be a VERY different game experience, but I’m tromping around Skyrim, not the Fire Nation. 😀
8:55 AM · May 13, 202110. (That said, I now totally want a Skyrim-style game where I’m tromping around the Four Nations, as the Avatar. 😀 )
8:55 AM · May 13, 202111. The Shrine of Azura is north of Windhelm, so I fast travelled up to Kynesgrove to go up there manually. Got to Windhelm, was reminded I’d already found the place as part of following Delphine around, and then wandered a bit west of there trying to find a way further north.
8:56 AM · May 13, 202112. Saw a dragon flying overhead, went “OH SHIT”, but it didn’t actually land and try to fight with me and Lyds. So I continued on my way.
13. Also got a neat screencap of two of Skyrim’s moons being visible at once and I need to pull that off the Switch to share!
8:56 AM · May 13, 202114. Found another fort, Fort Kastav, but since nothing came flying out of there to attack us, kept going.
8:57 AM · May 13, 202115. Next random encounter was a cluster of mages, and they were apparently packing a punch, because one of them took me down with a couple of cold blasts. Oops. :} Autosave reset back to Whiterun!
8:57 AM · May 13, 202116. And this time I found out exactly why it’s a bad idea to accidentally trigger a Shout in the Whiterun market square. BOY HOWDY did that piss off the guards. :}
8:58 AM · May 13, 2021Frantically scrambled to re-load from a prior save point, this time landing back just outside of Warmaiden’s, and I think at this point I’d reset some of the stuff I’d bought and sold so I’ll need to re-check that next time I play.
8:58 AM · May 13, 202117. Paul made a remark at me about random encounter opponents getting tougher the farther north you go, so I decided to try to finish off the quest involving the Redguard woman this time.
8:59 AM · May 13, 2021This involved needing to go talk to that prisoner she mentioned. So I derped around trying to find the dungeon, couldn’t find it and wound up outside Whiterun in the plains.
9:00 AM · May 13, 202118. Where I spotted a mammoth in the distance. And discovered why exactly hitting it with an arrow from afar, even if I was sneaking, was a very, VERY BAD IDEA. Ohhhh shit it’s pissed it’s running this way it’s STOMPING ME RIGHT INTO THE DIRT oh goody autosave reset again.
9:01 AM · May 13, 202119. Looked up mammoths on one of the Elder Scrolls wikis and saw that they’re a level 38 creature. For the record, I am level 11. Later on I will be able to win such fights. This is not yet that day.
9:01 AM · May 13, 202120. I kind of wanted to keep going but at this point it was getting late AND the Switch was complaining about running out of power, so I had to put it in its docking station and go to bed.
9:02 AM · May 13, 2021But this was nevertheless an amusing exercise of, in the immortal words of Gritty, “Fuck around and find out”. 😉
9:02 AM · May 13, 2021Notes
- This post was originally written on 3/17/2022, but backdated to the time of the tweet thread for organizational purposes.
- Post updated on 12/29/2022 to reconstruct the original Twitter thread here, and remove links to Twitter.
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In which Alarrah the Dragonborn’s Player is Seriously Not Amused
Twitter thread from 5/12/2021, in which Alarrah and Lydia make it to the end of Ustengrav, go to Riverwood to find out what happened to the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, and then journey with Delphine to kill the dragon Sahloknir at Kynesgrove.
In which Alarrah the Dragonborn’s Player is Seriously Not Amused, and in which Alarrah and Lydia weren’t exactly thrilled either:
9:33 AM · May 12, 20211. Last save point was down in the Ustengrav Depths, just before the waterfall. Which is where we rejoin our heroines! Made my way down there, heard what’s becoming a familiar musical hit, and found another Word of Power wall! First word of the Become Ethereal Shout: learned.
9:34 AM · May 12, 20212. Paul was watching me play at this point and dropped me a large hint that yes, I did want to check out that waterfall. So I jumped into the water and went through the fall, where I discovered a room behind it. And a chest, and one draugr to kill.
9:34 AM · May 12, 20213. Still wasn’t where I needed to be to get the horn, according to the dungeon map. And there wasn’t any other exit out of the room behind the waterfall. So I went back out from there, with Lydia slogging through the water behind me, and went back up the way I’d come.
9:35 AM · May 12, 20214. Took some more judicious slow exploration with the Candlelight spell on to finally discover where I needed to go. And through more up, down, back, and forth in various directions (see previous commentary re: twisty kind of dungeon), I spotted a few more already killed draugr.
9:37 AM · May 12, 2021Which was continuing to seem suspicious, given that Lydia and I hadn’t killed them.
5. Found the gates I needed to get through to get to the proper dungeon area, of which there were three. Also discovered the stones that triggered those gates, whenever you got near them.
9:38 AM · May 12, 2021Logicked my way through it and realized, well shit, this is going to require me to use that Whirlwind Sprint thing, isn’t it? Which Paul confirmed.
9:39 AM · May 12, 2021(Now, this is another thing I get from a narrative perspective. If the game’s going to have the Dragonborn learn various Shouts, it makes sense to have puzzles that actually exercise those Shouts. So I’m not going to say this is a bad game design decision.
9:39 AM · May 12, 2021I AM going to say that for me as a player, that puzzle was not enjoyable, because I still have issues with the necessary muscle memory and timing to make it safely through the puzzle. And that was with Paul’s guidance, too. But this part’s on me, not on the game.
9:40 AM · May 12, 2021This may or may not improve later if I can get down the necessary muscle memory to manipulate two controls at once. In the last couple days of gameplay I’m only just now getting to a point where I feel like I can just move around smoothly, navigate and turn along a road, etc.
9:41 AM · May 12, 2021And if I’m moving and turning my head, that’s also moving two controls, the left and right levers. This is improving with practice, so hopefully the Left + right trigger combo to make this Shout happen will improve for me as well if I can actually just practice the thing.)
9:42 AM · May 12, 20216. Getting through the gates also required that I tell Lydia to back off, so that she wouldn’t try to follow me through and get plammoed by them. I need to remember that I can in fact tell Lydia to stand out of the way. This makes her throw off a line about standing guard.
9:44 AM · May 12, 20217. Once I got past those stupid gates, I was finally on the home stretch. Got down into this ornate chamber with a walkway between two great pools, up from which rose some lavish carvings. Those things rising up actually looked pretty awesome and made me go “WHOA” out loud.
9:45 AM · May 12, 2021I inched my way past them, a little suspicious that they might actually try to explode at me or something, but made it to where the Horn was supposed to be, without incident.
9:45 AM · May 12, 20218. And oh look more already dead draugr. Which, in retrospect, should have been a big honking clue, because I’d seen too many already dead draugr for this to NOT be plot relevant. I.e., “somebody’s already been down here and killed them, probably recently”.
9:47 AM · May 12, 20219. Which is exactly what I discovered, as I did a circuit around the structure that was supposed to hold the Horn. I didn’t clue in though until the game threw me up a failure message about not finding the Horn, and that I needed to read a note instead. At which point:
9:48 AM · May 12, 2021Alarrah: WHAT?!
Lydia: WHAT?!
Me: MOTHERFUCKER! I slogged all the way down here for NOTHING?
9:48 AM · May 12, 202110. Dara and Paul both tried to assure me that this was not a question of me failing or doing something wrong, the game narrative structure is calling for this. It’s good narrative tension.
9:49 AM · May 12, 2021However, for me as a player, it was not enjoyable game design. If I have to slog through a long dungeon, the game damn well better make it worth my time. I’d have been less cranky about not getting the Horn if there’d been other suitably awesome loot to balance that out.
9:55 AM · May 12, 2021Or enough actual opponents to kill to let me level up. But with a lot of the dungeon’s opponents already dead, I couldn’t even do that.
9:55 AM · May 12, 202111. Also, the back door shortcut to get out of the dungeon didn’t even have the courtesy of letting me get all the way out. It cut the distance by only about half and I still had to go manually through the upper level of the barrow. Grumph.
9:55 AM · May 12, 202112. At this point, having read the note instructing her to go rent the attic room at the Sleeping Giant Inn, I figure Alarrah is going “_Seriously_?! I have to go all the way back to friggin’ Riverwood?!” This, however, is what Fast Travel is for. So back to Riverwood we went.
9:56 AM · May 12, 202113. There were new guards in Riverwood, and I do recall the Jarl of Whiterun ordering a detachment to be sent there. So presumably these were some of that detachment. And as I came in one of them made chitchat about being Dragonborn. So presumably my rep is, indeed, spreading.
9:58 AM · May 12, 202114. Got a little gold off Sven the bard, who was apparently pleased I’d kept Faendal from lying about him to Camilla.
9:58 AM · May 12, 202115. At this point I already knew as a player that there was more to Delphine than meets the eye—and Alarrah finally now also learned it, as it turned out that Delphine was the one who’d taken the horn.
9:58 AM · May 12, 2021Tried to rent the attic room from her, only to have her take me aside to talk in private, and learn from her that she’d taken the Horn because she was looking for me—or someone like me.
9:59 AM · May 12, 2021She spoke of dragons coming back to life, and that she knew where the next one was going to happen. At this point I imagine Alarrah was staring at her _very_ grumpily, but because Delphine did in fact turn over the Horn, she agreed to come with her to check out this new dragon.
10:00 AM · May 12, 202116. Which involved a speedy tromp out of Riverwood, and up to the fork in the road that led west off to Whiterun—only from there, we went east.
10:00 AM · May 12, 202117. Delphine kept killing wolves that attacked us, and made commentary about wanting to make sure I didn’t die before we got to our destination. But this was more of “the NPC kills something before I even see it”. I need to listen harder for the audio cues of imminent attack.
10:02 AM · May 12, 202118. Delphine also kept throwing random lines at me, at one point expressing appreciation that I’d decided to trust her and that she really did hope I was the Dragonborn.
10:02 AM · May 12, 2021Delphine also made complimentary commentary when Alarrah pointed out that she’d seen her in Whiterun, talking to the wizard—“Ah, you were paying attention!” This mollified my cranky state somewhat, and I figure it also mollified Alarrah a little.
10:03 AM · May 12, 2021Delphine seems like a complex and interesting character, and that she’s a woman pretending to be a simple innkeeper but is in reality something far more important is intriguing to me from a narrative perspective.
10:03 AM · May 12, 202119. Partway along the road though I got separated from her. Trying to figure out where she’d gone led me up a hillside where I discovered my first giant in the game. A very, very cranky giant.
10:12 AM · May 12, 2021Which pounded me right into the dirt and caused me to revert back to the last autosave, which meant I had to start the road jaunt with Delphine a second time. 😣
10:12 AM · May 12, 202120. This time though we made it all the way to Kynesgrove. And when we got there, we passed a villager coming the other way going “Don’t go up there there’s a DRAGON!” Delphine went “oh shit we may be too late”, and we charged up past the village to the burial ground.
10:13 AM · May 12, 202121. Where we discovered another dragon resurrecting the one we’d come to investigate. And by “another dragon”, I mean “the one that destroyed Helgen from the start of the game”. OH SHIT INDEED.
10:13 AM · May 12, 2021That other dragon flew off, leaving us to kill the one it had roused. I do actually kill it, and slurp up its soul, at which point Delphine goes “you really are the Dragonborn” and spills the rest of her story.
10:14 AM · May 12, 2021I.e., that she’s a member of the Blades, dragon hunters who have a long history of serving the Dragonborn, the greatest dragon hunter. Since there hasn’t been a Dragonborn in two centuries, they have had less purpose—but now there’s a Dragonborn again. Yay me?
10:15 AM · May 12, 202122. Delphine presented her theory that the Thalmor may be behind this campaign to resurrect dragons and proposed we go break into their embassy to look for clues, and to meet her back at Riverwood when I’m ready to do this. At which point this quest line was completed.
10:15 AM · May 12, 202123. At this point though Alarrah (not to mention her player) was thinking, “Okay FINE this sounds important and all but dammit I have this Horn and the Greybeards DID ask me to take it back to them, so I’m going to damn well do that first.”
10:16 AM · May 12, 2021Which is what Paul strongly recommended, to get that done and dealt with, and then stand back doing side things for a little bit to regain my footing before trying to take on main quest plot points again.
Which is exactly what I will do.
10:16 AM · May 12, 2021Notes
- This post was written on 3/17/2022, but backdated to the time of the tweet thread for organizational purposes.
- Post updated 12/28/2022, to reconstruct the original Twitter thread in the post body, and remove links to Twitter.