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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.
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Actual detailed travelogue list to follow
Twitter thread from 5/11/2021, in which I am not amused by the tail end of the hunt through Ustengrav for the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller.
Actual detailed travelogue list to follow, but for now I’ll say that tonight I hit the first thing so far in Skyrim that actively pissed me off.
10:53 PM · May 11, 2021Any player who, long before me, made it to the end of the hunt for the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller only to go MOTHERFUCKER will know exactly what I’m talking about here.
10:53 PM · May 11, 2021Narratively speaking I get why it was done, I get that it opens up the next chain of quest events, but from a enjoyability of gameplay experience, I _really_, _really_ didn’t like that I had to slog through a dungeon with no payoff to get to that point.
10:54 PM · May 11, 2021And there was loot to be had. But I also kind of feel like there wasn’t sufficiently awesome loot to make up for not getting the thing I slogged down through there for to begin with.
10:54 PM · May 11, 2021It also didn’t help that I really didn’t enjoy trying to get through the sequence of gates that required me to have to use the Whirlwind Sprint shout. Comma, the shout I had trouble with up on High Hrothgar.
10:54 PM · May 11, 2021More experienced players than me may have dealt with that just fine, but for me, so far, the combo of keys necessary to deal with that Shout is still awkward and annoying, particularly in conjunction with a puzzle that requires timing before it resets.
10:55 PM · May 11, 2021And then to have the quest not actually _deliver the payoff_, and have the quest marked as “Failed” in my quests list, didn’t help my enjoyment in the slightest.
10:55 PM · May 11, 2021I kept playing for a while after that, just to get to a point where I could in fact accomplish something–killing the next dragon. Because being actively pissed off is NOT what I started playing the game for, and I wanted to not end on that note.
10:56 PM · May 11, 2021So I did at least get to a point of closure for that part of the plot, and I ended on a point of success.
10:56 PM · May 11, 2021Notes
- This post was written on 3/17/2022, but backdated to the time of the tweet thread for organizational purposes.
- Post updated on 12/28/2022 to reconstruct the original Twitter thread in the body of the post, and to remove links to Twitter.
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Previously on Alarrah the Dragonborn
Twitter thread from 5/11/2021, in which Alarrah begins the quest through Ustengrav to search for the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller.
Previously on “Alarrah the Dragonborn”:
Lydia: You dragged me all the way to Riften for this?
Alarrah: Yeah, and now I’m going to drag you all the way back to Whiterun! I’m the BEST BOSS.
9:36 AM · May 11, 2021Alarrah: And if you’re _really_ good, I’ll let you kill a bunch of draugr! OH WAIT, we’re going to do that next!
And with that, our heroines began their descent into Ustengrav, in search of the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller!
9:37 AM · May 11, 20211. Only a few steps in, found yet more bandits. Bandits had clearly been camping out at this place using it as a lair.
2. Found a couple of necromancers as well.
9:38 AM · May 11, 2021Unclear whether they were in collusion with the bandits, or whether they just happened to have gotten there first and made it farther into the barrow! Either way, Lydia killed ‘em all _real good_.
9:38 AM · May 11, 2021Even though one of those necromancers managed to summon a fire atronach before we took them out. This was the same kind of fire golem that the cultists had fried me with earlier, but now I’m several levels higher and better armored.
9:39 AM · May 11, 20213. Which highlights a bit of a problem with Lydia. It’s _great_ that she charges in and obliterates anything attacking you, but on the other hand, it makes it a trifle difficult to actually practice killing things _myself_ and actually, y’know, _level up_. 😉
9:39 AM · May 11, 20214. A couple of the bandits we ran into in the lair were actually already dead. Possibly because of gotten jumped by draugr, possibly triggering traps? I heard at least one of them die from a distance, but didn’t really see what killed him.
9:40 AM · May 11, 20215. Got a couple of magical items off the necromancers, robes that Paul advised me to take just because they didn’t weigh anything, and they had enchantments on them that I could learn by destroying them.
9:41 AM · May 11, 2021Conveniently enough, further down the barrow I actually found an enchanter table and was able to nuke one of those items to get the enchantment learned.
6. Honestly, fewer draugr and skeletons than I expected for this lair, so far?
9:41 AM · May 11, 2021(She said, probably shooting herself in the foot, or perhaps the knee, as she descends deeper into the dungeon…) And they’ve been fairly easy kills. If Lydia doesn’t take them out, I’ve been able to down them in one blow or one shot.
9:42 AM · May 11, 20217. Side note: _damn_, it’s amazing how much better you can shoot things when you actually know how to aim. 😀
8. Despite Lydia being a fighting machine and mostly taking out things before I have a chance to take them out myself, I leveled up to 11!
9:42 AM · May 11, 2021Getting to the point now of having to make interesting decisions about where I want to put my skill emphasis. So far I’m feeling inclined towards Light Armor, Archery, and Sneak, with a side helping of One-Handed and Alchemy.
9:42 AM · May 11, 2021I don’t know how much magic I’m going to feel like doing yet, but some of the simpler spells certainly seem necessary, so some points will probably be spent there too soon.
9:43 AM · May 11, 20219. This is a dungeon that pretty well typifies a phrase old gamers like myself will remember: “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.” This is a _very_ twisty kind of dungeon.
9:43 AM · May 11, 2021I did a lot of backtracking through it trying to figure out where the hell I needed to be going, and even utilizing certain strategies I remembered from D&D, like “always follow the left-hand wall!”
9:44 AM · May 11, 2021Kept having to load the local map to see where I was, as well, and specifically where I was in relation to the symbol that indicated “go here to get the thing”.
9:45 AM · May 11, 2021But after backtracking multiple times, and making liberal use of the Candlelight spell, I finally got low enough in the dungeon to find how it bends around and finally heads towards where I need to be.
9:45 AM · May 11, 202110. Speaking of that Candlelight spell: super useful for “seeing where the hell I’m going” purposes. But not so much for “completely nuking my ability to sneak”. It’s a _dilemma_.
9:46 AM · May 11, 2021Discovered though that I am by far not the only Skyrim player to remark upon how dark the game renders on the Switch.
9:47 AM · May 11, 2021And Dara discovered that the current favored solution for this, since controls for brightness are not provided in-game, is to turn off auto-brightness at the Switch-level settings and then gun the brightness slider up to taste. Tried this and it did in fact help some.
9:47 AM · May 11, 202111. Which meant I got to exercise my Sneak more, and now my Sneak is up to 47. 😀 And _that_ means I think Lydia loses track of me occasionally! She periodically goes “Huh?” as I try to move past her.
9:47 AM · May 11, 202112. If I were writing this as an actual novel I’d expect Lydia would have some OPINIONS about the justice of raiding the tombs of the Nords to find loot, given that she’s a Nord and all.
9:48 AM · May 11, 2021But as this is not in fact a novel, Lydia can put up with me looting every single burial urn we pass and grabbing whatever gold in there I can find. That house in Whiterun ain’t gonna buy itself.
9:48 AM · May 11, 202113. As a Bosmer, though, I do have some serious questions about Nord burial practices. Seriously, you people, have you considered _not_ leaving your tombs filled with the shambling undead bodies of your ancestors?
9:48 AM · May 11, 202114. I also have serious questions for the Greybeards about why the hell this horn they want is stashed down in a tomb past the shambling undead bodies of Nord warriors, too. 😉
9:49 AM · May 11, 202115. Lydia, bless her heart, is not good at figuring out how to get past fire traps. We found one, the only real trap I’ve encountered in this barrow so far as of this writing, and I figured out how to skirt along the edge of it to NOT singe myself.
9:49 AM · May 11, 2021Lydia, not so much. I turned around to see her follow me over the trap and it was slightly alarming to see her ON FIRE. Good thing I gave her better armor.
9:49 AM · May 11, 202116. Another thing Dara discovered, as I was asking her questions about “hey if I have an arrow nocked in my bow, how can I un-nock it without actually firing the thing?”, was this:
9:49 AM · May 11, 2021If you’re playing on a Switch and you have the JoyCons disconnected, you can actually use them with motion gestures to hit with your weapons. _Cool_. I’m going to have to try that.
9:51 AM · May 11, 2021Also, the answer to my question was “hit Y to un-wield”. Excellent, now hopefully I’ll stop wasting arrows!
And that’s about it for this update! Next time, we’ll see if our heroines actually make it to the horn!
9:51 AM · May 11, 2021Notes
- This post was written on 3/17/2022, but backdated to the time of the tweet thread for organizational purposes.
- Post updated on 12/28/2022 to reconstruct the original Twitter thread here in the body of the post, and to remove links to Twitter.
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Next round of Skyrim catchup
Twitter thread from 5/9/2021, in which Alarrah does a lot of smithing and crafting and selling, and then sets out in search of the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller.
Next round of Skyrim catchup since I did play a bit more before I went to bed last night:
1:15 PM · May 9, 20211. Hung out at Warmaiden’s to make some stuff. I had enough leather on me to make three leather armors, which turned out to be better than the Imperial armor I was wearing. Gave one to Lydia, put one on myself, and sold the remaining one
1:15 PM · May 9, 20212. Also made a better helmet, and some boots
3. AND since I had silver and garnets on me, made my first ring
1:16 PM · May 9, 20214. Which I then enchanted. I had a couple of magical armor items on me, and Paul told me I could take those up to Dragonsreach to destroy them on the wizard’s enchanter table so I could learn their enchantments.
1:16 PM · May 9, 2021And since I ALSO had some Petty Soul Gems on me, with actual Petty Souls in them, I was able to enchant the ring I made. Which will now give me a 1% boost in Alchemy making potions. Yay? 😉
1:17 PM · May 9, 20215. While I was up at Dragonsreach, took the stewart the sword his daughter asked me to give him. Dude gave me 20 gold for the trouble. Gee thanks!
1:18 PM · May 9, 20216. Took a screencap of what the new armor looks like, and I do like that better than the last stuff I was wearing. Also took a screencap of Lydia from the back when I got a look at her greatsword and HOLY CRAP THAT THING IS AS TALL AS SHE IS
1:18 PM · May 9, 20217. Was surprised and pleased to learn from Paul that orcish weapons are actually better than what I was carrying on me. I’m used to the stereotype of orcish weaponry being shitty in Nethack, but not so here.
1:18 PM · May 9, 2021So I nabbed an orcish bow at the Drunken Huntsman, and since I had an ingot of orichalcum on me that I’d found as loot, I also got to improve it
1:19 PM · May 9, 20218. Since I was also lugging around dragon bones and dragon scales that I’d gotten off killing the two dragons I’ve killed so far, Paul heartily advised me to get those sold and out of my inventory, because ZOMG HEAVY.
1:20 PM · May 9, 2021Problem was, I kinda wiped out Belethor’s gold supply in the general store and nobody else in Whiterun would buy those from me. So at Paul’s suggestion I fast travelled to Riften and sold them there
1:20 PM · May 9, 20219. While in Riften, I triggered the opening hook for the Dawnguard DLC plotline, when some dude came up to me and was all “we’re recruiting for the Dawnguard to deal with the rising vampire menace!”
1:21 PM · May 9, 2021Given that I had literally just finished clearing out a vampire nest, I was kinda not in the mood to deal with additional vampire-related plotlines–and also I’m PRETTY sure I’m not quite powerful enough to take on that plot yet, so I told him I wasn’t interested
1:21 PM · May 9, 202110. Some other dude named Maul made snarky commentary at me about watching my back on Riften’s streets, and dropped hints about Maven Black-briar.
1:21 PM · May 9, 2021I played innocent because yeah not really ready to deal with Riften’s local thieves-related drama yet, even though Paul is a huge huge fan of the Thieves’ Guild and is urging me down that path, lol
1:22 PM · May 9, 202111. Really though I was mostly just in Riften to sell stuff, so I went to the shop Paul recommended and sold the dude my bits of dragon. Then fast travelled right back to Whiterun!
1:22 PM · May 9, 2021Me: Lydia’s all “You dragged me all the way to Riften just for this?” “Yeah, and now I’m dragging you all the way back to Whiterun!”
Paul: “I’m the BEST BOSS. And if you’re REALLY good, I’ll let you go kill another bunch of draugr!”
Me: “Oh wait we’re doing that next!”
1:23 PM · May 9, 202112. Got the inventory back down to a much more manageable weight, and then fast travelled back to Morthal to get situated to go after the horn
1:23 PM · May 9, 202113. The locale for the horn turns out to not be that much farther northeast of the vampire nest we cleared out. Found the place after just a little bit of tromping across the marsh.
1:24 PM · May 9, 2021Also found a bandit camp, and two bandits and a necromancer came charging at us yelling YOU’RE PATHETIC, for about five seconds before Lydia killed them
14. And at the entrance to the barrow, that seemed like a good place to stop and save
1:24 PM · May 9, 2021Tune in next time for the recounting of how many draugr and how much loot we nab in the search for the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller!
1:24 PM · May 9, 2021Notes
- This post was written on 3/16/2022, but backdated to the time of the tweet thread for organizational purposes.
- Post updated on 12/27/2022 to reconstruct the Twitter thread in full in this post, and remove all links to Twitter.