The Important Pieces of Paper: Skyrim, Dragonborn, the Final Frontier

Well here it is, the final expansion to Skyrim and I’ve only finished it almost 3 years since it came out, I should feel a sense of completion but nothing ever seems complete with this game though I maintain that I’ve done most of it, pretty much all I can do now. I had previously decided to do Dragonborn with my Imperial-siding Nord Brogan that you’d know from a  previous post as I did Dawnguard with my more steathly-type character so it’s only fair. Firstly though I couldn’t get the game to recognise that I had the expansion so I had to download a new version of the game so I could finally see those cultist guys who then tried to kill me to no avail cause I’m level 45 and have full enchanted Dragonbone armor and weapons and are boosted with skills and are pretty damn prepared but with the scaling effect you can still be killed quite quickly if you’re silly. The main questline for this expansion involves an encounter with some Cultists and leads to you travelling to the Island of Solstheim with is north-west of Vvardenfell which itself is a part of Morrowind the home of the Dunmer or Dark Elves. Solstheim was given to the Dark Elves by the Nords when the Red Mountain erupted creating a mass exodus of refugees from Morrowind. Your involvement there comes from the Cultists' Orders you find that mention the name Miraak who is apparently the first Dragonborn and the main antagonist of the series but not the only one.

Map of Solstheim

So I had gotten the first quest and was ready to go to be off to Solstheim, but the problem was the latest save I had seemed to be before I’d actually finished the civil war so I still had some castles and outposts to clear before I could kill Ulfric himself. So I thought I may as well do that but firstly I had decided I wanted to get some more skill ups with single handed weapons and also blocking, so I got my Dragonbone Mace and Dragonplate Shield and went in for a bash with my trusty companion Lydia killing Stormcloaks left and right. The shield and mace fighting style has some pretty brutal cinema kills (beheading) etc and was a lot of fun. So we took over more and more territory until we stormed Winterfell oops I mean Windhelm and I cut the bastard and his lieutenant down for the second time. I was sure it was the second time too as I was sure I had done it before and listened to General Tullius’ magnificent speech but anyway It’s done now and I can get on with things. I did return once or twice to the Winterhold Throne room to find all of the ousted Stormcloak-backing Jarls now sitting at the table as usual but I noticed that the dead bodies of Ulfric Stormcloak and Galmar Stone-Fist were still there.

A pretty cool shot of a victorious General Tullius and I

This is because of a bug in Skyrim that dead bodies will sometimes not despawn so they are lying around where they are killed, which can often be annoying because they are in your house or on this spot of land which you want to keep looking nice and clear of dead fackin bodies of course. This issue was rampant on the island of Solstheim where much of the story takes place as there were I had to resort to the /disable console command to get rid of any annoying dead bodies (including dragon skeletons) that were around the two places I stayed, one island and a house I had been given. Funnily enough it took me awhile to remember I could do that, thank god for having Skyrim on PC eh? those console peasants must just have to deal with it. Though it actually suits in this situation in this case as both Ulfric and Galmor bodies are fallen slumped against the Throne at the feet of the replacement Jarl Brunwulf Free-Winter, I swear that would be one hell of a sight to behold for all of those exiled Jarls hah, so I just left it be.

The bodies of Ulfric and Galmor at the feet of Brunwulf Free-Winter

I then went down to the docks, got on the ship and set sail to Solstheim where after a brief loading sequence we arrived at Raven Rock, the main town of Solstheim. It’s a mixture of Nordic and Dark Elf architecture with those underground hovels that they have, I also noticed the pillars of black stone, the dead trees and ash everywhere, I also saw the odd looking shrine thingy that some random people were building a weird monument around an All-Maker Stones which are similar in nature to Skyrim's Standing Stones, as well as Cyrodiil's Rune Stones and Doomstones. Everybody sounded a little unfriendly except for the blacksmith who was actually Nordic and asked me to retrieve his Ancient Nordic Pickaxe from Crescius Caerellius in the nearby mine.

The Ancient Nordic Pickaxe, pretty coool lookin'

 But first I thought I should research what houses I could get in Solstheim and the only one was Severin Manor and to do that I had to do a series of quests, one of which, The Final Descent involved the nearby mine and the dude with the pickaxe himself so I went in and spoke to the old geezer and his Dunmer wife then went down the mine where I saw this mysterious new ore called Stalhrim which is apparently some kind of enchanted ice the ancient Nords used to seal their dead for protection and it can only be mined with you guessed it, an Ancient Nordic Pickaxe. I then found Bloodskal Barrow and the Bloodskal Blade which I hoped to be a new weapon and armor type that you could create but it was apparently unique, it emitted some sort of energy blast when power attacking and you need to use this to open the door which took me a few tries but I got in and took on a dragon priest Zahkriisos and got the first Dragon Aspect shout and I wish I actually got the rest and used it as the effect would be very impressive indeed.

The entrance to Bloodskal Barrow and the Bloodskal Blade

This first quest is also where I found the first Black Book and had my first trip to Apocrypha, the plane of Oblivion belonging to the Daedric Prince Hermaeus Mora who says hello when you first arrive, and man is it funky, fighting goddamn Seekers and Lurkers and those freakin annoying tentacles coming out of the water not to mention the darkness that apparently hurts you. So all in all it’s a pretty dangerous place but necessary in order to become powerful enough to defeat Miraak through getting more shouts etc, at the end of these Black Book “Trials” you come across this freakishly large book, the first being The Winds of Change which gives you three options of hidden knowledge and boy Companion's Insight was a no-brainer, my brother had told me about it before and man not having to look out for your companion when attacking man that was good. After doing this you get warped back to Solstheim being in some kind of trance before. So I emerged from the barrow about halfway up the coast and sprinted back to Raven Rock where I talked to Crescious and got my Ancient Nordic Pickaxe and ran back down to mine the Stahlrim in the hopes of using it for weapons and armor.

Hermaus Mora says hello when you first come to Apocrypha

I fight some seekers then get stuck on a puzzle

After that I had to find somewhere to stash my treasure as I couldn’t carry it around till I had gotten the house so after some research I chose this small island off the coast of Raven Rock which apparently had a chest that your stored items didn’t disappear from. So I drank a water walking potion (which were very useful) and cleared out the Ash Hoppers that were there who sort of fall apart when dead but I still had the corpses of two Reavers who are Dunmer bandits you find around Solstheim. When returning to Skyrim I had forgotten about the /disable command and tried to chuck them off of the side and into the water in the hope that they’d float away which they didn’t until I swam them out into the ocean. But anyway I offloaded my things into the chest and continued on with March of the Dead where I had to kill a bunch of Ash Spawn and defeat their undead leader at Fort Frostmoth. On the way I met some this weird guy and helped fund his excavation of a Nordic Tomb but never got it finished unfortunately. I was finally able to do Served Cold and investigate the murder plot, and after storming Ashfallow Citadel, with Lydia and I clumsily getting hit by a bunch of traps I finally got rid of the killers and was rewarded Severin manor which I quickly moved into. It’s a very roomy underground house which is certainly much better than a damn island, I found once I had cleared the mine everyone was much friendlier towards me and congratulated me on a job well done.

I seriously did not remember you could just /disable

After that it was time get on with the main quest and I started with The Temple of Miraak where I saw more enthralled people working on the Temple and met Frea who was trying unsuccessfully to free her Skaal brethren, we then headed down into the temple and kicked ass defeating whatever was in the way and we eventually find another black book Waking Dreams where you come face to face with Miraak himself who remarks about you killing Alduin and how he’s so powerful and he will return and Solstheim will be his blah blah blah. I then go with Frea to the Skaal Village. And meet her father Storn Crag-Strider who tells me to go to Saering's Watch and learn the Bend Will shout in order to purge the All-Maker Stones and free the people there from the influence, I did this with the wind stone then a goddamn Lurker appeared and did all those people who should be grateful that I saved them come to help noo they did not, Lydia and I had to take them on ourselves. I read that when you know all three words to this shout you can use to tame and ride dragons which I did for a short time in the story, (more on that later) while exploring the world and Cleansing the Stones I found a few interesting creatures such as the jellyfish-like Netchs and the goblin-like Reiklings who I was either massacring in large numbers or strangely doing quests for them. As you find a fairly intelligent English speaking Reikling who have taken over a mead hall, I didn’t end up finishing their quest to find their Bristleback but may go back there again and help the survivors retake Thirsk mead hall as the quest looks fairly interesting.

I meet Frea at the Temple of Miraak then get attacked as usual.

I traveled around the island for a while doing various quests and investigating caverns and barrows and sometimes finding more black books and also fighting dragons with Miraak appearing and stealing their souls so I couldn’t get them, what a prick. I also got a bit sick of using Mac and Shield at this point and fashioned myself a Dragonbone Warhammer which is basically a dragon femur fashioned into a weapon and looks pretty funny when you’re bashing people with it. I wanted this cause I hadn’t used a warhammer for a while as I previously used the Dragonbone Greatsword and had used a Daedric Warhammer on my first character. One interesting and annoying thing that happened while the stones were not yet cleansed is that when you went to sleep you often woke up to find yourself working on one of the moments and have to run back to where you need to go. Though this wasn’t too hard if my horse was around, I had chosen a mottled grey horse this time as I though it fitted well with the landscape.

My current horse, you can see Tel Mithryn and the mushroom forest in the background

Anyway back onto the story I then had to travel to Tel Mithryn which is a giant mushroom and has lots of other giant mushrooms around it where I also met some hunter and joined a hunt for Netchs. I met Neloth in his giant mushroom house and travelled to Nchardak to find another black book and more knowledge to help defeat Miraak, after the three of us took down the brigands living there we found the Dwemer ruin was quite technical with rising water and the use of dwemer cubes to control them and the doors, I ended up getting the black book and also the Kagrumez Resonance Gem which I used in another ruin Kagrumez which is interestingly some kind of Dwemer ‘Hall of Trials’ though you need more stones to unlock its full potential.

I sneak up on some unlucky souls in Kagrumez

 After getting the black book The Path of Knowledge I immediately read it and after a lengthy sequence in Apocrypha I came face to face (or face to whatever the hell he has eyes and tentacles?) with Hermaeus Mora himself who tells me if I give him the secrets of the Skaal then he will grant me the last ‘Bend Will’ shout to be able to defeat Miraak. 

I confide with Hermaeus Mora once again and also check out my Dragonbone Warhammer oh yeh

You then take the book to Storn Crag-Strider at the Skaal village and he reads the book and then ‘Herma-Mora’ as they call him comes out again and takes the secrets from Storn, killing him. So then Freya is sad obviously and you know what you gotta do, so you pick up the Waking Dreams book and read it for the final quest and showdown with Miraak. This leads to quite possibly the longest section in Apocrypha with 6 “chapters” to complete but eventually you get to tame a dragon and try out some dragon combat which to be honest isn’t that good, you can’t control where the dragon goes you can only order them to attack enemies or land and if you don’t do anything they just fly around.

"So many books!, ooh I bet that tower is where Miraak is"

But soon enough I was at the highest point and faced Miraak, and after some chit-chat we got to it, it seems you have to defeat him three times as when he gets low health he becomes ethereal and summons a dragon and steals it’s soul restoring his health completely, he wasn’t too hard to defeat though, I didn’t have Lydia to help so I used Scroll of Conjure Storm Atronach and the Sanguine Rose to distract him while I ran in and beat the crap out of him with my warhammer. Once he gets low on health for a 4^th time Hamaeus Mora appears and he’s pissed that Miraak has defied him and he raises him up and spears him with a tentacle and says that you are his new Dragonborn champion. Then you get some reward allowing you to respect skill trees but I didn’t bother as I didn’t need it.

I ride a dragon to the final showdown with Miraak, Beware Spoilers!

 After that I had basically finished the main story but there was unfinished business to attend to, most notably to find A New Source of Stalhrim so I picked up the quest and rescued the Skaal blacksmith who gave me the knowledge of how to make Stalhrim and a map of a  place where it can be found. I’d already found a few pieces of Stalhrim but this place had about 20 bodies all encased in Stalhrim it was like a smorgasbord but when I tried to go back to Raven Rock I ran into a big, big problem as the game would not load it just kept loading and loading.

Soo much Stalhrim, and it's all mine!

As I mentioned before in Skyrim bodies don’t often disappear quickly and although you can /disable to disable them it’d hard if there’s a heap of them around as some animals like fish and bugs tend to have a glitch where they keep spawning. I didn’t mention this before but one time when I was at Raven rock I experienced some slowdown in FPS and notice there was a heap of those Torchbugs and River Betty spawned around the one place, I tried shouting and various spells in order to kill them but eventually couldn’t be bothered catching them all as I had done before in my house in Falkreath. So had been away from Raven Rock for a long time and my guess was they had spawned to such a degree that the game locked up when trying to load the town, I confirmed this by spawning somewhere nearby and trying to walk there, I got within about 300 metres and then the game loses FPS and locks up and I have to close it with the task manager. I’ve tried a number of things to fix this including the /kill 100 console command but it didn’t make a difference cause their bodies would still be there, I need a way to remove them from the game entirely similar to /disable except I can’t get anywhere near them, I wonder actually if /disable disables all of them or that particular one. Either way I had finished the main story, but most of my things were now stuck in Raven Rock with no way of getting them back currently unless I can some way warp directly into my house which may be a plan.

This is about as close as I can get to Raven Rock now

So that was as far as I have gone, I may actually finish off some quests anyway that don’t require me to go to Raven Rock hopefully as I have taken up temporary residence at the Abandoned Lodge near Raven Rock which is thankfully out of range of the bug, I can get pretty close before it buggers up though. I may have enough Stahlrim to make some armor but may just add some more as I’m going to need a hell of a lot to replace all the weapons and armor for Lydia and I. But I actually don’t think I’ll bother as the weapons do less damage then my Dragonebone ones and the Stalhrim armor is the same armor rating and only slightly lighter then Dragonplate armor. In any case I’ve done the whole story and have finally finished all of the Skyrim expansions, was a pretty good way to finish it off as well. I have only heard rumours of the new elder scrolls so far which is exciting to hear but frankly I can wait, who knows I might even delve into Skyrim yet again….

JD

A full Stalhrim armor set with greatsword.

It’s a sad situation where I’d rather ride a horse then a dragon.

The Important Pieces of Paper: Skyrim, Dawnguard, ain't no blood in my cup

Release Date: August 2nd, 2012
Genre: Role Playing
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Bethesda Game Softworks
Platform: Windows, Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Players: 1
Classification: M (Mature)

Hidely Ho folks, well as you can see I’ve checked the list off from another Skyrim expansion that I’m yet to play with only one more to go, lol my brother even mentioned it sounds like an effort but really I did quite enjoy this one. I had decided to do the Dawnguard expansion with my stealthy thief/rogue/archer/assassin type Falunar who I detailed the journey of earlier, for a few reasons one being he uses a bow so presumably he’ll be fine with Crossbows, the other being I would use my 2H warrior Brogan to do the Dragonborn expansion.

I decided to go with Dawnguard because of the crossbows and I ain’t being no Vampire (maybe not this time) so I started the questline by finally accepting the Dawnguard in Whiterun’s proposal to join then headed way off to the most southeastern point of the map to Fort Dawnguard, except I wasn’t actually able to get there yet as it can only be accessed via Dayspring Canyon located in the snowy mists, east of Riften, near Stendarr's Beacon. So I first headed to the Black Briar Lodge which is the closest place and after about 20 minutes of faffing around I eventually found the tiny entrance to the canyon where you meet Agmaer as a fellow recruit and eventually Isran who leads the Dawnguard.

What a nice waterfall, pity it's so dark and gloomy

Fort Dawnguard is pretty cool there is a wealth of items for you to take without stealing obviously, it’s also a very well designed and intricate castle. I didn’t bother trying to find a bed for myself as I already had my own Riverside Lodge house near Whiterun, I just decided to jump straight into the quests. First of which I was commanded by Isran to Dimhollow Crypt to find out who destroyed the Hall of the Vigilant., I tried out the Crossbow I was given by Isran for a bit but soon after just used my Akaviri Dragonbone bow as it was more powerful, little did I know that crossbows were actually damn powerful but I’ll get into that later.

The always imposing Fort Dawnguard

So I did the quest and met Serana for the first time who is one hot looking Vampire if I ever saw one, she actually has an Elder scroll on her back and when asked about it says “that it’s hers” which is funny as because I had finished the main Dragonborn questline I had one too, except mine was the Dragon and hers was the Sun. I can almost hear the banter “Hey I have one too! What yours? Sun? Mine’s the Dragon one, we should totally collect them all!”

The lovely Serana, unfortunately she can't be romanced even if you decide to become vampire.

But anyway we escaped the Tomb and then as much as I wanted to take her back to Fort Dawnguard I had no choice but to agree to take her (and the Elder Scroll) to her Father’s Castle Volkihar which is conveniently located on the extreme northwestern point of the map. Well I spose that makes sense both of the factions are located at extreme opposite ends to each other though with the amount of travelling you do back and forth between the two places it would take a year for the whole questline to pan out if done in real time, I do often wonder how long it would take you just walking in game. So we head off to Castle Volkihar and meet her Dad who is also a Vampire and he asks you if you’d like to become one, I said no of course and he then boots me back out to the boat I came in on.

I ain't becomin no Vampire, well this time at least

 So I then limp back to Fort Dawnguard and report to Isran what I did and he’s not at all pleased at the fact that the Vampires now have the Elder scroll, tbh I did ask myself why the fack couldn’t I just have brought her back to Fort Dawnguard but anyway. He then asks you to go recruit a Nord named Gunmar and a Breton named Sorine Jurard to help the cause, Gunmar is a blacksmith who trains and sells armoured trolls which he gives a funny explanation of when asked by Sorine, Sorine is the weapons specialist and is where you get the quests for the crossbow plans. The next quest begins with you talking to Isran who says that Serana has snuck out of Castle Volkihar and come to Fort Dawnguard to tell you of her father’s plans. This seems normal enough it’s just that there are various facts which I either don’t understand or just find plain weird:

1. Isran hates vampires but he’s let her in anyway.
2. He hasn’t even put her in a cell.
3. She’s just standing in a bloody torture chamber which doesn’t have a door but obviously hasn’t been tortured.
4. She doesn’t have any shackles or muzzle or anything.
5. Isran just stands there plainly while talking and it’s just the three of us no other Dawnguard.
6. Once we’ve finished speaking and Isran has given the quest he goes straight to bed (as it’s late at night) but his bed is right next to the torture chamber and Serana and I was walk straight in and stand over him while he’s sleeping

But anyway once that’s finished Serana and I have to find a Moth Priest to read her elder scroll and go on a few other quests to get the (Blood) Elder scroll which requires infiltrating Castle Volkihar discreetly this time and gain access to the Soul Cairn which is a pretty sweet looking place and is apparently where souls go when trapped by Black Soul Gems and is ruled by the Ideal Masters. The quest here involves finding Serana’s mother Valerica and retrieving the Blood Elder Scroll. You can do quite a few things in the Soul Cairn, including other quests where you can acquire a Skeletal Horse, there’s also quite a few new features and objects in the Soul Cairn including fissures which allow you to fill Soul gems and teleporters which look like they spray up black ink.


The Soul Cairn!

So we find Valerica then kill the Keepers, then get into the Boneyard where she is keeping the Elder Scroll but we end up having to fight Durnehviir who we make friends with in the end, though he gives you a shout to use when back in Skyrim so he can fly around Nirn again as he was tricked into banishment to the Soul Cairn and now his soul has attuned to the place.  

Best buddies now eh?

You then go to the magnificent Ancestor Glade and cover yourself with moths to read the Elder Scroll, then go on quite an epic quest  to gain Auriel's Bow which is one epic weapon indeed. While doing this you meet one of the last Remaining Snow Elves: Knight-Paladin Gelebor who gives you a bit of history about how the Snow Elves are an endangered race of Mer that were once the main inhabitants of Skyrim long before Merethic Era and that centuries of underground living and Dwemer slavery twisted the race into the blind, merciless Falmer. So anyway as I ran around this area killing falmer and finding the shrines and pouring water into the scared bowls to get to Auriel’s Chapel and confront Arch-Curate Vyrthur I was lamenting how long this questline was going for until I actually looked up the wiki and found this was the second last quest. The second last quest! And I hadn’t even tried to get some of the better crossbows yet, so I thought screw it there’s still time and dropped everything to go back to Fort Dawnguard and pick up some other quests.

Nnanananananana Mothman!

Beautiful Landscape in The Forgotten Vale

I did some radiant quests including killing a few hidden vampires (most of them were like this) and recruiting another Dawnguard Member though the ones I were most interested in was the Ancient Technology six-part series in which you recovered the plants for various crossbow and bolt designs for Sorine which you acquire as well. It was around this time that I actually looked up crossbow stats and explanations on the wiki and realised that the base damage of the normal Crossbow was 19! The same as a Daedric Bow! And the Enhanced Dwarven Crossbow the best crossbow you could get had a base damage of 22 with is two higher than the Dragonbone Bow! What’s more is that they fire faster and together with the power shot perk can stagger opponents 75% of the time and the enhanced variety ignore 50% armor! 

My enhanced Dwarven Crossbow

Man I almost threw away my Dragonbone bow lol but of course bows are still much more quiet and the bolts themselves do less damage then arrows offsetting the damage of the crossbow which is probably what evens them out, but nevertheless I started out on the quests and went hunting. The quests didn’t take very long as I was only just doing that and some others, was kinda sad I couldn’t use the crossbow more really as I spent most of my time saving bolts and cutting people’s throats which with a maxed out Stealth tree is child’s play, you can seriously stand right in front of some people and they don’t even see you, of course wearing the Nightingale Armor does help too. 

Ready for a Night on the town

 So I did the quests, slit the throats of lots of bandits and shot the rest full of crossbow bolts (some exploding which is kind of funny to watch) and goy my Enhanced Dwarven Crossbow which I wasted no time upgrading and enchanting and made a couple of hundred bolts to use with it. I then continued on with the Touching the Sky, killing two Dragons in the process and getting to Auriel’s Chapel and defeating Vrythur and finally obtaining Auriel's Bow in which Knight-Paladin Gelebor returns and offers to turn any Elven Arrows into Sunhallowed Arrow. An offer which I accepted and I happily ran back to my “Lodge” and started my delicate work of upgrading the bow and making elven arrows of course, of course the delicate work is basically grinding the same sword on the grindstone and this somehow upgrades the item you have of course I drank plenty of Blacksmiths Draught and put on my Silver-Blood Family Ring of course and in the end it was finished! I do wonder what my wife though about me coming home with a woman, though she always stays upstairs.

 

Auriel's Chapel

I then shlecked off back to Gelebor and he turned a whole stack of my Elven arrows into sunhallowed ones. The reason I was going mad crazy about this bow and arrows and not the crossbow and bolts was in preparation the final quest where Isran rallied the Dawnguard and we made another epic trek to Castle Volkihar to end the Vampires once and for all. 

Isran rallies the Dawnguard

This raid was probably the best castle attack I’ve ever done, much better then any Imperial or Stormcloak castle raid, I basically just shot sunhallowed arrows like a madman which were pretty epic as they do triple damage to undead and make a sunlight explosion when they hit hurting other vampires and sending objects flying. The scene when we burst into the main hall was pretty chaotic with armoured trolls rampaging about and weapons, spells and crossbow bolts flying everywhere. 

 

It's time to fire my righteous spears of light

LoL Fat chance abomination.

HOLY COMBO!

But eventually we cleared em all out and confronted Harkon in the Cathedral. The fight with Harkon was pretty straightforward I used Call of Valor and the Sanguine Rose a couple of times in the fight so I had the 3 of us fighting Harkon as well as Serana. It was easy to finish him off as the sunhallowed arrows broke his healing shield and we brought him down fairly quickly, the only hard part was he moved around all over the place.

Oh you bet I do.

So that was that, I did regret the fact that I forgot to shoot a sunhallowed arrow at the sun while we were outside but meh it all worked. I guess I enjoyed this one petty well but was sad that I was not able to use things like the Crossbows and Auriel’s bow for long but I suppose I could have done this whole questline while playing the main game through. Well almost done with these bring on Dragonborn! Course I do have to go back and see what it's like as a vampire at some point.

JD

She ain't gonna turn for you buddy, you messed up, dang!

Because the Night....

The Important Pieces of Paper: Skyrim, Came back Swinging

Oh Skyrim, when will I ever stop replaying you and actually play some expansions, well the answer is fairly simple: the next time I play. You see after playing the game through again as a thief/assassin type character I couldn’t help going through the game again as a beefy warrior class again to get back to the old sword-swinging mayhem. I did briefly have a go at being a Magic-user as there was now cinematic kills with spells which looked pretty cool when searing or electrocuting someone alive, but the more I played the more pointless I found it really, the reason I played Skyrim was for the swinging of the swords, the ‘thunk’ sound of the arrows into a body and the grisly hacking pieces off someone’s body.

The new Kill Cams as per the 1.5 patch (I think we're up to 1.9)

The other thing was, there was no “tailoring” aspect to Skyrim so you couldn’t make your own armor, or “robes” I spose and taking away all the fun times of mining and collecting the different coloured ore to make you’re super cool armor, and speaking of armor wearing robes gave you crap all armor too. So needless to say after getting pounded by everything from axe-wielding maniacs to other magic users I decided I’d man back up and start smashing heads. I did have a go at the Mace-and-Shield (or sword) combination which had some awesomely painful looking kill animations but I just couldn’t resist the lure of slicing someone up or bashing their face in with the good old giant sword or warhammer, and no I’ve never used axes in case you’re wondering as I just don’t fancy them.

Can I axe you a question?

I had a few reasons for playing through the original Skyrim again, the most prominent being I wanted to run in and whack things again instead of being all stealthy but I also wanted to set another character up to play the Dragonborn expansion as I wasn’t quite happy with my first character being the one to do that expansion as I hadn’t done the console-commanding-skills-in-as-soon-as-I-can-get-them thing so he wasn’t quite as powerful as when I finish off my new character. When I was creating him I chose Nord as before as I intended to be on the Imperial side this time but be a Nord like Legate Rikke who gives some very convincing arguments when you talk to her as why Skyrim needs the Empire. I have always had the contested view with my brother that the Stormcloaks are the “good” guys fighting the oppression of the Empire similar to most games but even when finishing the Civil war questline on the Empire side I still didn’t really feel like I’d done the right thing but anyway I’ll get into that later. 

Legate Rikke and General Tullius in Castle Dour, and me, looking kinda of out of place.

 As he was going to be on the Empire side though not an Imperial I made him look like quite a nice Nord with a thin beard and slightly longer hair then I think I’ve ever given any character in a game but I reckon it looks quite good. Though technically the face of my Dragonborn didn’t really matter as I fully intended to make use of the Psychosteve's DragonPriest Masks mod again and get that faceless-killer look going. I named him “Brogan” after a customer at work was trying to remember my name in an email and said it was that, also because both of my former protagonists names started with a Z (Zairne and Zalunar)

Here he is, Brogan the Imperial siding Nord he looks kinda tired, that's probably be right as this was taken when I was almost finished everything.

Another reason was the fact that I wanted to try out playing with a companion as I didn’t the first time and it wouldn’t work with a stealthy character. I could think of no-one better then Lydia as the ‘trivia’ section of the Elderscrolls Wiki states she can be the deuteragonist of Skyrim as she has quite a bit of programmed personality and due to the fact that she is the first housecarl that the Dragonborn is offered she is probably the most used companion in the game. And also for the fact that she is female and is able to show off a female version of any amor you put on her. And the final reason I was playing again is the fact of humble abodes and you know how much I love them, I started with the quite humble Pinewood Cottage with its enclosed space and objects and amenities at arms reach was the ideal starting house. After that going on to the not-so-humble but magnificent Deus Mons, and finally finishing by building my own house with my own two hands getting hitched and adopting kids with the Hearthfire Mod so hey at least I’ve played one expansion.

A detailed walkthrough of the Pinewoods Cottage player-made home.

So I started out in Helgen yet again following Hadvar this time which really felt weird as you were briefly in the company of Ralof and Ulfric Stormcloak and you really felt like you were on their side as the Imperials were about to cut your head off but anyway you go down and you say hello to the torturer and his assistant and they follow you out and then once you get out you find that Hadvar’s uncle is Alvor the blacksmith in Riverwood who by way of conversation is ideally on the Imperial side and you get free access to almost all the blacksmithing supplies they have which is nice. I searched around and found a patch of corundum ore and together with the iron ore from the always-fun-to-raid Embershard Mine I managed to make enough steel for a full set of steel armor though I didn’t end up making a steel weapon as I found a Honed Ancient Nord Greatsword which had a frost enchant.

Full steel armor

Doing the quests not really much happened in the way of Stormcloaks vs Imperials apart from the fact that I was nicer to Imperials and Imperial sympathisers which again made me feel kinda bad. Joining the Companions again was fun though their questline is quite short, I do like receiving a Skyforge Steel weapon though (yes I picked the greatsword again), I made sure though that I did the quests to lose  my Lycanthropy soon after I received it. I must have quickly upgraded my smithing skill as I remember as soon as I arrived in Riften I picked up the Grimsever's Return quest to travel to the Dwemer ruin Mzinchaleft where after finishing the quest I returned to quite a few times to get more Dwemer metal to smelt to Dwarven metal ingots which I got quite a lot of seeing as in some Dwemer ruins you can obtain almost 300 ingots in one visit by collecting and smelting Dwemer metal. After making the armor for myself and Lydia I used a lot of the leftover ingots up to raise my blacksmithing skill but unfortunately the armor and weapons also need steel and iron ingots to make so I couldn’t get that far. At some point during this time I acquired the Dragon priest mask: Rahgot which gives an extra 70 stamina points and with the masks mod overhaul looks pretty good with the Dwarven Armor despite being green in colour.

Dwarven armor looks pretty gold and tanky.

Lydia has a thoughtful pose here, I don't think she likes my mask, well I don't care if it doesn't match my armor (or doesn't give a set bonus) I ain't takin' it off.

For the sake of looking good I stuck to one set of armor for Lydia and I instead of mixing and matching the only difference being me wearing a Dragon priest mask and although I did lose the set bonus I still kept the original set helm and usually put an archery enchant on it and used it for taking screenshots. I found when playing with Lydia as my companion it was almost too easy. Because she was decked out in the same upgraded and enchanted armor as me (albeit slightly different enchants) we made short work of any and all monsters we came across. Basically the way I did it was that I ran in swinging with my 2-handed weapon while Lydia shot arrows at enemies from afar, because of this I gave her the best bows and arrows, as I only really used mine for Dragons and I gave her the best shield and either a 1h Sword or Mace as that was what she originally used. Because I was a warrior again and just running in, and also because I had a powerful companion with me, I completed dungeons much, much faster than the sneaking around during my last playthrough.

Lydia my faithful follower (and steward) in her bitchin' Dragone Armor

Playing with Lydia caused only a few problems, when you gave her anything better than her default armor and weapons, she would use those that were better which was all good, sometimes though she would not seem to wear or use the shield she was given, although it was much better in stats. Thankfully your follows can’t be intentionally killed by enemies and/or environmental hazards like fire or traps as when they lose almost all of their health they go down on one knee and are then ignored by enemies, the only person who can really kill your follower is you and I had to load a previous save sometimes as I accidentally hit her with a weapon or used a magical scroll. Speaking of scrolls and shouts, I couldn’t use most of the destructive ones as with spells like Scroll of Fire Storm you companion would be engulfed in the flames too killing them. Apart from that Lydia made things quite a bit easier with her shooting arrows and attacking small enemies and almost “tanking” dungeon bosses made it much easier for me to move around and finish off enemies without being challenged, I hardly even needed to use the Sanguine Rose (I had to get it just to do that questline again) and when I did we were practically unstoppable.

There are many sell-swords in Skyrim that can be used as companions.

I was living in Pinewood Cottage at this point and while it was nice and cosy it got annoying with Lydia following me around and blocking the stairs, so I used the very useful Ultimate Follower Overhaul (UFO)mod to set to ambient where she will walk around the location using various objects that are available (chairs, beds, alchemy tables etc) until I tell her to follow again. Pinewood Cottage as you can see is quite quaint, nestled in to a small area by a creek which ended up being quite close to the Lakeview Manor homestead. Around this time I also tried out Horseriding as I put in the baseID and the console command code from the Elder scrolls wiki page to place a horse near me, which always seemed to be the Palomino with no saddle, but I just took it anyway as I didn’t want to buy or steal any horses for the fear of losing them. I don’t know whether it was the follower mod that I had or just the system but if you travelled to a stable and some inns your companion would have a horse waiting as well so you could both saddle up which was fun though once you quick travelled somewhere their horse disappeared and Lydia unfortunately had to run along after me, heavy armour didn’t seem to stop her though heh. Also as of Patch 1.6 mounted combat was now available so you could swing away with your weapons and also shoot arrows at those pesky wolves.

Giddy up!

After finishing most of the companions questline and getting on with the quests through the world I was hungering for change, and change happened. Having upgraded Lydia and mine’s weapons from Dwarven to Glass (I had used a greatsword both times) I decided when I made our Ebony armor I wanted to use a Daedric artifact and had originally intended to use the Ebony Blade but like most Daedric artifacts acquiring it meant killing someone else and looking at the harrowing way that the blade works I decided against it. Instead I chose Volendrung which was a massive hammer of Dwemer origin, currently in the hands of the Daedric Lord Malacath who is worshipped by most Orcs as their Idol. I chose this as it was a warhammer and has a very interesting enchant that absorbs 50 points of stamina per hit effectively making it a stamina battery as you use a lot of stamina when power attacking with warhammers. So I completed the quite entertaining Cursed Tribe questline which didn’t involve any evil at all really to get the hammer and went on my merry way.

The Daedric Artifact Volendrung gifted by malacath after you have finished the Cursed Tribe quest

 At this point I was pining for a new house as I had an absolutely huge amount of items inc. armour, weapons, dragon bones, personal items and a crapload of books which I love collecting so much so without further ado I returned to Ivarstead to climb partway up those seven thousand steps to where the magnificent Deus Mons was located. You may have heard me talk about it before it’s one of the most magnificent play-made homes I’ve ever seen, a huge castle on the southern side of the Throat of the World which doesn’t exactly give it quite the best outdoor garden and facilities perched up on a windy snow covered cliff but technically it’s more of a Dragonborn’s private castle then a place where you’d bring a wife and kids. The interior of this place is amazing it’s no wonder why it’s arguably the most endorsed player-made house on the Skyrim Mod Nexus, it’s got everything you need and more, it is a bit large though, the Alchemy and Enchanting table are through two loading doors , and Lydia got a bit stuck and I ended up losing her a few times. But goddamn did I manage to pimp that place out with armour, weapons and book towards the end it’s got more storage space than I could use up at that time and a heap of places to store individual items, I especially liked the stack of six safes. To get in there though you needed to defeat a fairly powerful dragon but no dragon’s a match for us (macho pose).

Deus Mons (post dragon) it's quite misty up ere.

A fairly details move of the Deus Mons interior

After I had moved my quite hefty amount of personal items from one house to another I had levelled my blacksmithing up to Ebony so now it was time to make some. I quickly found that due to the amount of resources that were required to create and upgrade full sets of armour and weapon for both Lydia and I, I did not have enough Ebony ore I was not really going to wait around an in-game week for the ore to respawn in the mine I had just mined out so unfortunately I had to console it in but anyway, I got the armour made. I also had to select which Dragonpriest mask I was going to use, the main two I was interested in were Ved and Ikendov because (the masks) were all black and looked pretty cool, unfortunately I had to go with the classic style as with the way the mod author had attached the new masks to the new hoods I still had some minor issues with my face protruding from the mask similar to last time with my wood elf character. So I chose the classic hooded version of Ikendov and despite the hood being a dark brown looked pretty badass with my ebony armor and Volendrung. It did not however, look very badass while riding a palomino horse. So after some searching I found by going to the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP) wiki page on Skyrim horses that they had the baseID codes of all the horses you could get at the stables so I decided to get the black horse from Whiterun to match my current armour set and was happy to find out it had a saddle, this looked much better with my new armor.

The Ikendov mask works quite well with Ebony armor

You may have noticed in the screenshots that I am carrying a Daedric Warhammer with my ebony armor, this is because Volendrung even though it is a Daedric artefact unfortunately does not benefit from the Daedric smithing perk and thus the Daedric Warhammer had a higher damage ratio so I decided to make Daedric weapons for Lydia and I, but not Daedric armor as I had used that for my previous warrior and I had previously decided that the Dragonbone set would be my final this time. I finally reached level 100 in Blacksmithing which was a hell of a bitch I can tell you, I really needed to use some Fortify Smithing enchants but got there in the end by paying for levels from trainers but man it’s expensive. So it was time to make the Dragonbone armor and weapons and boy did I sure have enough materials for that by killing all those pesky dragons. I most definitely knew what Dragon Priest Mask I would be using this time and that would be Konahrik as the mod version of the mask looks freaking awesome. To get this mask you have to acquire all of the other Dragon Priest masks two unfortunately involve things I wasn’t willing to do like complete the College of Winterhold Mage questline and complete the last quest of the main storyline and I wasn’t about to became a Mage or finish off the story at this point so console commands it was. So I did that and went to the Labyrinthian and put all the masks there and I got it, and it’s as awesome as it looks, albeit some odd enchants.

My Dragonebone armor set with Konahrik

The entire set of masks with the dragon mouth open and revealing Konahrik

I’m skimming here but a bunch of stuff happened after that, I progressed through my world questing and further into the main questline, I also started the Civil war questline but remembered to not go too far into it in order to do the Season Unending quest which happens if you do the main storyline up to the point where you need to trap a dragon inside Whiterun. But this cannot be done as the Jarl of Whiterun says that he cannot divert attention away from his defences while the civil war is going on and thus you and the Greybeards have to organise peace talks with the two sides which I found to be quite fun.

The High Hrothgar meeting as part of the Season Unending quest.

After that I finished off all of the main world quests that I could then headed off to Dragonsreach to defeat and trap Odahviing, hitch a ride on him to Skuldafn then enter Sovnguarde and you all know what happens after that and if you don’t well go play the damn game. So after that was finished it was time to continue the war so Lydia and I, decked out in our upgraded and enchanted Dragonbone armor and weapons, defended Whiterun from the stormcloaks then progressively took back every territory until the Battle for Windhelm where we kicked so much ass it was ridiculous, I suppose with this quest being the last battle I’d ever do I was pretty powered up. So anyway we stormed Windhelm and defeated Ulfric and the Stormcloaks and then I was finally free to start up a new life for myself with...

 The Battle for (or against really) Windhelm

Fall of Ulfric and Galmor, this made me feel kind of sad, what's worse is their bodies stay laying on the floor even after the quest which is pretty gruesome.

Hearthfire oh yes indeed I am playing an expansion (or add on) for Skyrim and it was quite fun too. I first had to go to Falkreath and  made sure I’d done all the quests to become the Thane in which the Jarl allowed me to purchase the Lakeview Manor homestead where I could start buildin’ that shit. I must admit it was fairly easy building the house, you build it up in stages  so you start off with a small cottage that you can expand into a pretty fine looking house by Skyrim standards, it’s still nothing compared to some of the player made houses though but that’s a given it’s supposed to be a normal house not some giant and crazily extravagant castle. The materials you need are right by your plot of land Quarried Stone, Clay and Sawn Logs can be “acquired” indefinitely which is nice and I had built my house in no time.

I ponder If I'm going to need a change of clothes while my horse butts in

Now that's cozy!

The completed house exterior

What did take forever though was furnishing the place, I had to run all over the world getting all the materials not to mention the huge amount of iron that was need for all the nails and struts and fittings etc and I ended up getting sick of it and just console commanded some things in, I said it before and I’ll say it again I swear I could not play this game on a console. Though annoyingly once I had made all that crap I found that some items weren’t in a  place you’d call aesthetically correct especially the display cases in the greenhouse (yes greenhouse) which were standing on the mushrooms and what made matters worse was every single one of the display cases did not work (i.e. you couldn’t place weapons) even things that did work like the weapon and shield racks still had glitches where the weapons would appear in the floor and ceiling etc and of course there’s always that problem with the mannequins moving around and removing their own armor as if they didn’t like it.

This is another thing I didn't understand, when you make the initial cottage the furniture stays there so you have a bedroom practically in your doorway.

The dining hall.

The greenhouse

Needless to say I was not amused, these issues happen in the player-made homes so the reason I wanted to try Hearthfire is that I thought with an official add-on that these issues wouldn’t happen unless it’s the mods I have running that are causing the problem, though I suppose it’s partly my fault for just building everything all at once and not taking enough looks inside but I mean STILL.

Basement with shrine stand.

Full smithy

Upstairs

But anyway at least the weapon and shield racks kind of worked and the house ended up looking pretty good. I nominated Lydia as my steward and got myself a very shaggy looking cow, a chicken a beehive and a horse of which I now have two, which is good because my current one thinks it has been stolen as it walks away whenever I dismount but re-appears when I quick travel somewhere so the only way of getting rid of it is killing it really but I don’t want to intentionally do that. 

Main bedroom with the non-working display case.

Exterior view of the house

The back of the house leads to this old Nordic grave, hope it wasn't an evil person.

After I’d made the house and everything I had to decide who to marry (like it’s a hard decision really) and picked Ysolda, as I’ve always kind of liked her and she doesn’t really have a stance on the war, so after finishing off the Book of Love questline and got married though I’m a bit concerned as although I told my newly wed wife I have a nice house in Falkreath though she still hasn’t shown up and I can’t seem to find her in Whiterun or Riften or anywhere. So instead of thinking about a certain Richard Gere film I decided to just go and adopt some children anyway in which I already had Lucia in mind cause she so sweet and pathetic you can’t help it and also Hroar for a few reasons, he’s a Nord, he has a cool name and I want to go through the adoption dialogue with Constance Michel and tell her I’m the motherfackin’ Dragonborn and see what she thinks of that.

My marriage, I don't really know those people, and don't know how they relate to Ysolda and I

My adopted daugher recently brought a friend into the house and asked if she could keep him, I was like "a fox?" which funnily enough was the dialogue said. It also made me think of this.

So that’s it really, been through Skyrim for a third time, been through a few new quests big and small, fought with a companion, lived in a cottage and a grand castle, wore Konahrik and the Dragonbone armor, had a high powered business meeting, won the war on the Imperial side and then settled in with my wife and kids in a home I built with my own two hands (and console commands) so I think it’s a job well done. After all that sword swinging and danger I’m itching to go back to my stealthy one-man-plan and shoot some vampires crossbow style in Dawnguard cause I ain’t no Vampire yo. And then back to my new warrior for Dragonborn which I’m quite looking forward to exploring my old friend Hermaeus Mora’s realm of Apocrypha  and hopefully I’ll be able to do all this before the next Elder scrolls game comes out.

JD

Off into the wild wilderness we go!

Occupation: Dragonborn