Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
-Join the Dark Brotherhood
But only if we start the quest and then kill Astrid.
Because seriously, fuck the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim. They ratcheted up the "creepy death cult" factor way too far.
I guess.
I'd like someone else to weigh in, because while that quest chain is kind of overly darkly weird and grisly and crap, infodumping about the Dark Brotherhood will be more awkward without it, and the resulting quest is boring as hell.
But before we can begin anything, a courier arrives with a mysterious message for us!
Now, if only we knew where Lost Tongue Overlook was.
Oh well. Time to move on!
I'm suspicious, but I'll go find her, if only to warn her about the warriors.
Along the way, we return to Amren, and return his family sword, which we found... somewhere? Oh well. He teaches us his father's favoured sword-and-shield technique, raising out One-Handed and Block by one each. This leaves our One-Handed at 28.
Along the way, someone called Uthgerd the Unbroken picks a fight with us. Bare hands only, no weapons, no magic!
Yeah, we're an Orc. We win easily.
And that's a second follower unlocked, if we ever need a melee companion and don't want to use a Housecarl!
Anyway, we talk to Saadia in here, who is a Redguard woman who was sweeping floors at the time.
Well okay then.
We follow Saadia upstairs, where she... pulls a knife on us?
We rightly laugh her off, and she apologizes. She reveals that she's not truly who the people of Whiterun think she is.
She tells us that they're mercenaries, led by a guy called Koteu or something, I didn't pay much attention.
Enquiring where we can find where they are, we're sent up to the dungeons to talk to one who was captured.
Speaking to him, the guy's name is Kotemu, for the record.
The prisoner tells me that we'll get the information if we release him from the prison. Apparently, he and his Alik'r Warriors are supposed to be the best of the best, and in getting captured, he showed that he wasn't.
Well, testing ourselves against the best of the best could be fun, right?
Excellent.
Incidentally:
The skeleton of Mirmulnir, the Dragon we killed earlier, is gone. Suspicious!
Anyway, we proceed on and pass Fort Greymoor, only to... get... caught up... in another... Warzone?
Fuck.
This Warzone has about fifteen bandits versus around ten Whiterun Guards. Okay, fair enough. We step in to help, and we manage to kill five of the bandits.
Then a fucking Guardsman steps in front of one of my attacks.
Every single Guardsman there turns hostile to us.
Ten bandits and seven Guardsman. All quite happy to turn around and focus on us instead.
So we turn and run, turning back to shoot when we can. We kill a bunch of the bandits and a bunch of the Guardsmen, accumulating a 5,000 bounty as we do so, only to end up running all the way back to the Western Watchtower.
The three Guardsmen there step in to help... their fellow Guardsman kill us. Fuck.
Between Lydia's archery and our own Healing and skills with swords, we eventually decimate the Bandits, but the Guardsman are out there.
I spent ten minutes hunting them all down. Ten Guardsmen. I had a 9,000 bounty by the end of it, before I killed the last dude and removed the bounty on my head.
With that over and done with, we return back to heading to Swindler's Den, only to find that... the bandits at... the Warzone... respawned...
... Fuck.
We spend another five minutes dealing with the bandits that attack us (leveling up twice in the process; we increase Light Armour again, leaving us with 2 perks in it that to increase our Armour Rating by 40%, and Enchanting once, to make better weapons later).
I did stumble across this, though. There's about ten corpses there.
After that, we continue on to Swindler's Den.
Swindler's Den is a pretty straightforward place.
There's an initial passageway, then a room:
Then another passageway, which leads into a room with a lower section, which I presume is a guard's room;
Then there's yet another passageway, which leads into a dining room with an upper guarding section;
Followed by more passageway, and a room which I presume is where the food is cooked:
The passageway following that leads to the upper section of the dining hall:
And from there, to a passageway of watery doom.
We proceed onwards, only to be interrupted by Kematu.
fuck you im a thief not a warrior
We demand that Kematu explain why he's after Saadia.
Well okay then. Basically, the opposite of what Saadia told us.
Who to trust, who to trust?
Well, to be honest, I'm not sure. However, our only options here are to either kill them on sight or go back to Saadia. So, let's go back to Saadia, and see if we can dig up more information!
Also, have a skeleton who appears to have died trying to reach out to drink some mead.
We head back to Whiterun, and speak to Saadia. We lie to her, telling her that we failed and that the Alik'r are coming for her. Saadia agrees to meet us out at the stables, where we tell her we have a horse ready.
Instead, Kematu meets us there, and proceeds to capture Saadia.
I'm glad to see we made the right call.
Anyway, with that wrapped up, Kematu gives us 500 gold and 20 reputation with Hammerfell no that's not a mechanic in skyrim dammit.
And, with that, we have 5000 gold! But, we're not done yet.
We head back up and melt all those armour and weapons we got earlier, and forge a bunch of Iron and Steel Armours (and improve them, can't forget that).
We make 5 Steel Armours and 8 Iron Armours. And... oh, what's this we picked up earlier?
Sweeet.
With this, we sell the armours, and bring ourselves up to nearly 6700 gold. And 27 Speech, to boot!
(I'm not quite sure how Speech affects prices, but I know that each level in Speech makes prices that much better.)
When we hit Level 15 sometime around this time, we decide to splurge and spend a perk on Dwarven Smithing, to make some great armour for Lydia later down the track.
We head up to Dragonsreach (disenchanting a couple of weapons along the way), and meet up with Proventus again!
From him, we buy Breezehome for 5,000 gold. We also buy an Alchemy Laboratory, bedroom furnishings, and loft furnishings, just for the storage space in the chests.
Now, with that all done, we have only a very minor carry weight- 37/575, to be specific.
Anyway, I'll dump pictures of Breezehome for those who haven't played it (minus kitchen and living room decorations), then end this update.
So! Now that we've hit Level 15, it's time to move on to our new task: Get a new companion!
Or, to be precise, we'll be getting two; Faendal, and Mjoll the Lioness.
We head to Riften, first off. Here, two guards shake you down for some money. You manage to convince them that you know it's a shakedown. This boosts our Speech to 28 (wooo!), and gives us access to Riften.
But then, the battle music kicks in. What is it?
Dear god, an Elder Dragon? At Level 15? These things aren't even supposed to spawn until Level 22, minimum! They're Level 40! They're Dragon Encounters for people at Level 35 or so!
I mean look at that thing
Luckily, even an Elder Dragon is no match for my mad Skyrim skillz. Even with an Armour Rating of less than 90, I need no more than 15 Minor Health potions (that's 375 health, with our current unboosted maximum health being 200) to take it down with Lydia's help (and about 20 Orcish Arrows).
With that out of the way, we enter Riften, and immediately spot someone called Sapphire harassing someone called Shadr.
Being the generous, greedy people we are, we agree to help him, and enter the tavern immediately.
Luckily, Sapphire isn't too hard to convince- it only requires a Speech of 25, in fact. She agrees to let Shadr off of his debt, as it's not really worth her time to follow up on.
And, while we're in here:
What's this? Why, it's a dude talking about Mara, and the Temple of Mara!
Mara is the mother-goddess in Skyrim. She has a bit of a cross in her role; she started as the Goddess of Fertility, but has since moved on to be the Goddess of Love.
In Skyrim, Mara is considered to be the handmaiden of Kyne, the Goddess of the Storm, the Mother of Men. She is the mother of Arkay, the God of the Cycle of Birth and Death.
The lore on her gets a bit confusing. She was either the wife of Akatosh, or the wife of Lorkhan, or she may have been the concubine of both. I'm not sure.
The Temple of Mara in Riften is notable as the area in Skyrim which allows you to be married.
We also find Marcurio!
Marcurio is notable as one of the few good companions for a Thief-class Skyrim PC, due to having Sneak as one of his minor skills. He's outclassed by Aela, Faendal, Cicero, Eola, and the Dark Brotherhood Initiates, but each of them has a prerequisite quest that we'll get around to. Plus, Marcurio is also an excellent Destruction Mage. For a mere 500 gold, Marcurio will be an excellent addition to our expedition!
After that, we head back out to tell Shadr that Sapphire is no longer after him.
D'aww.
As a reward, he gives us a Potion of Extended Visibility, which will probably be very useful later.
After that, we head back in to meet up with Mjoll!
This is Mjoll the Lioness. She is a very brave adventurer, and one of the most noble people in Skyrim.
She lives in Riften because she has lost her sword, Grimsever, in a Dwemer Ruin. Her companion, Aerin, saved her, and brought her back to Riften after she had lost it.
Now, she lives in Riften, trying to combat the Thieve's Guild and the corruption and hopelessness that pervades the town.
Mjoll probably won't like it if you join the Thieve's Guild.
That said, Mjoll apparently isn't ready to let us in about her sword. We'll have to help the people of Riften some more first.
Bolli is one of the few apparently decent people in Riften. He owns a huge fishery, and donates regularly to the Temple of Mara in an attempt to help the people of Riften.
That said, he also cheats on his wife, so even Bolli has his issues.
Bolli wants us to go to Markarth and deliver payment agreements about fish or something, I honestly don't care. It's an extremely minor sidequest with few rewards, it barely matters.
That said, the scene inside of Markarth does!
How mysterious~~~
Anyway, we deliver that note thingie and head back to Riften.
Mjoll still won't let us in, so we'll do a quest called Promises to Keep.
It's honestly not a very exciting quest, but it's decent enough. A guy called Louis Letrush bought a horse from Sibbi Black-Briar, but Sibbi was arrested, but Louis still wants his horse. We speak to Sibbi in jail (pressuring him to give us a key to his stash, because Sibbi is a dick and I hate him and don't mind stealing his stuff), and go to the Black-Briar Lodge to steal the papers of ownership of the horse.
On the way to the lodge, we are approached by a fugitive, who hands us a Sanctified Iron Sword, and tells us to hold on to it for a while. We accept it gratefully, then shoot him in the back and take his stuff when he turns around.
(We also go to Lost Prospect Mine on the way, unlocking it. It's a gold mine, for future reference.)
We go to the Lodge, kill the mercenaries there, take the papers (and the stash, which is 150 gold coins), then take Frost back to Louise and claim our reward. Simple enough.
Note: It's actually possible to take Frost for yourself with a [Persuade] check. I didn't do it because we don't actually need a horse, but the fact that the possibility's there is pretty fun.
We bugger off back to Whiterun to melt down all the stuff from the Black-Briar Mercenaries, and go up to level 16 by selling the stuff (advancing to Smithing 38 and Speech 30 in the meantime).
When we return to Riften, Mjoll tells us about Grimsever. Her sword, which is very important to her, was lost in the ruins of Mzinchaleft, an ancient Dwemer ruin.
So, of course, we have to head over and check it out!
We hitch a carriage up to Dawnstar, and immediately stumble upon a Warzone. But not to worry! It's only between Stormcloak and Imperial soldiers, and they're weak enough that Marcurio can one-shot most of the Stormcloaks around.
We gather up some quick loot and roll out.
We get into another Warzone along the way, between Stormcloaks and Bandits. We kill everyone, loot, zip back to Whiterun, etc, then go back to Mzinchaleft. I won't bore you with the details again.
So! Dwemer ruins.
There's not much to say about this ruin, honestly. I'll comment on things when I come across them, but otherwise, I'll just proceed to screenshot things for everyone's enjoyment.
Oh, right. Immediately, I find something to talk about.
Dwemer machines are powered by Soul Gems. Occasionally, when we loot them, we'll find filled Soul Gems!
Until we find a weapon with a Soul Trap enchantment, this will be our only method for Enchanting things.
Areas like these are often found in Dwemer ruins. They're home to the Falmer, who I'll explain about later.
These are Dwarven Sphere Guardians. They're the second-weakest enemies found in Dwemer Ruins (I couldn't get a snapshot of the weaker ones, Marcurio killed them too fast.)
And, lastly; a giant steampunk robot with a core related to the Daedra, AKA the final boss of the place!
And with that, we grab Grimsever from its resting place at the far end of the room and head back.
A sidenote: Scattered around Dwemer ruins are pieces of junk, known as Bent/Small/Large Dwemer Scrap metals, Decorative Struts/Large Decorative Struts, and Solid Dwemer Metals. These can be melted down at any Smelter to produce Dwemer Ingots.
In the end, we end up with:
- 83 Dwarven Metal Ingots
- 12 Iron Ingots
- 40 Leather Strips
- 19 Steel Ingots
- 4 Common Soul Gems (Common souls)
- 1 Petty Soul Gem (Petty Soul)
- 5 Greater Soul Gems (Greater Souls)
- 2 Grand Soul Gems (Grand Souls)
We'll buy a few more Iron Ingots, and then make and sell Dwarven Swords (Which we'll enchant with Turn Undead, which is the most profitable weapon enchantment at the moment) and Dwarven Armours. We'll keep the Grand Soul Gems for later, though, when we're at Level 100 Enchanting.
After that, we head up and ENCHANT shit.
The swords are enchanted with Turn Undead, and the Armours are enchanted with Fortify Smithing. We also increase to 39 Enchanting during this.
We level up during this, taking the first Speech perk to give us 10% better prices.
Let's see, how much can we improve Dwarven Armours?
50% better value? Not bad.
Enchantment values:
After buying the rest of the home decorations from Proventus, we are left with 1650 gold before selling our things. We then head down to sell our stuff!
We sell a lot of our Dwarven Swords to Ulfberth and Adrianne (reducing Adriane to 0 gold by selling her a weapon worth the exact amount she had left), then Wait two days, only to find that... they're... still out of gold?
Alright, we'll step outside of their shop and Wait a day.
Still no?
Alright, let's head to Breezehome and sleep for a day?
Still no?
Alright, we'll give it another shot and wait a day.
Still no?
Okay, Adriane and Ulfberth are refusing to buy our stuff. Time to head to the three other stores in Whiterun that will buy it; The Drunken Huntsman across the street, the General Store in the market, and Eorlund Grey-Mane at the Skyforge!
Afterwards, our Speech is up at 34, and we have 4931 Gold. Sweet!
Added spoilers to each post, to stop the posts being so ridiculously long and interfering with being taken to the next post due to loading images.
Current goals:
- Do the Dark Brotherhood missions.
- Get Farendal.
- Find Lost Tongue Overlook.
Possible suggestions for people who haven't played Skyrim before to suggest for us to do:
- Do a questline!
a) The main questline. Explain shit about Alduin and the Dragons!
b) The Civil War questline. Explain shit about the Empire, the Stormcloaks, and Skyrim's history!
c) The Mage's guild. Explain shit about the Gods and magic!
d) The Champions questline. Explain shit about werewolves, and get a bunch of Companions, including the second-best Sneaking companion in the game!
e) The Thieve's Guild questline. Explain shit about Riften!
f) Train some skills. (What skills?)
Players who have played Skyrim before, feel free to post some stuff for me to dick around with when it's not 4AM.
Current relevant skills:
Speech 34 (One perk invested; Haggling, gets 10% better prices)
Alchemy 15
Illusion 15 (need moar illusion spells)
Restoration 29 (One perk invested; Novice Restoration, allows us to cast Novice Restoration spells like Healing for half magicka)
Enchanting 39 (One perk invested; Enchanter, new enchantments are 20% stronger)
Smithing 46 (Three perks invested; Steel Smithing, Elven Smithing, and Dwarven Smithing, allows me to craft the respective armours and weapons, and improve them twice as much)
One-Handed 35 (Two perks invested; Armsman, increases One-Handed damage by 20% per perk invested)
Archery 32 (Two perks invested; Overdraw, increases Archery damage by 20% per perk invested)
Light Armour 54 (Two perks invested; Agile Defender, increases Armour Rating by 40%)
Sneak 41 (Five perks invested; Stealth (2 perks invested) makes us 20% harder to detect, Muffled Movement reduces noise of armour by 50%, Backstab increases sneak attacks by One-Handed weapons to 6x damage, Deadly Aim increases sneak attacks by Bows to 3x damage)
Lockpicking 24
Pickpocketing 18
Current Health: 220
Current Magicka: 150
Current Stamina: 100
Current Level: 18
Let's go with the Thieves' guild. It's what we're specializing in, after all.
I vote for Thieves' Guild first off as well, though the College of Winterhold should probably be high on the list too. Once you level up your Illusion high enough to unlock the Quiet Casting perk, Invisibility can easily help you get out of almost any fight.
I believe you mean 'Once you level up your Illusion at all". :P
The only spells Croa knows that she can actually use at the moment are Healing and Lesser Ward, and she's only ever used Healing.
She has no Illusion spells at all, but I'll probably get Muffle soon.
So, our first task today: Let's go and get Faendal!
Faendal is a Bosmer who lives in Riverwood. He's involved in a love triangle; both he and Sven are in love with the same woman.
If you accept Faendal's side in the love triangle and give a forged note from Sven to Camilla, Faendal will like you- and become a potential follower, to boot!
Faendal actually has an exploit attached to him. Faendal is both a follower and an Archery trainer. This means that you can pay him to increase your Archery by five levels, then ask to see his inventory and take your money back.
However, at the moment, we have Marcurio as a follower, who is infinitely more dangerous, and every time we ask Marcurio to follow us, we have to pay him 500 gold. So, we'll leave him for the moment; we can do the same with Aela later in the game anyway.
Okay! With that done, let's keep an eye out for Serpent's Tongue Overlook. By which I mean, cheat and look it up online!
We head outside and fast tragoddammit
Yep. It's a blood dragon.
Well, at least they're easy to kill, right?
... Fuck. Fuck.
It killed Alvor!
Not much we can do about it, though. We respectfully don't loot his body (although we do steal all the stuff from his forge), and head back off down to Riften.
In a nice, if illogical touch, once we arrive in Riften, a courier arrives to find us.
This actually kind of makes me sad.
Anyway, we talk to Wuteeja, an Argonian woman, outside of Riften. She is addicted to skooma (moon-sugar, a drug developed by the Khajiit), but she has been threatened to be fired if she turns up to work under the influence one more time. We give her a Potion of Minor Healing, and she gives us a Silver Garnet Ring and thanks us.
After that, we head inside and give Grimsever back to Mjoll!
Mjoll is probably going to be our default tanky character. She's very tough and strong, if not very sneaky at all.
With that said, we head off to the Overlook!
Along the way, we are attacked by an assassin!
WELL NOW.
And finally, we reach the Overlook!
These things are traps. So far, I've encountered Fire ones (in earlier ruins) and Ice ones (this one here).
They can deal a lot of damage- this one here was dealing a good 180 in one hit, nearly enough to one-shot us!
To disarm them, you need to take the soul gem from the pedestal. Unfortunately, this one has been knocked to the ground at some point (which apparently doesn't register as 'stopped', meaning that it continued to fire anyway), causing me to waste valuable seconds and health potions scrambling around to find it.
And... what's this? An Ancient Dragon? At Level 18? Oh dear
Ancient Dragons are the most powerful dragons you can encounter in the vanilla game. You can get more powerful dragons in the Dawnguard and Dragonborn DLC's, but in the vanilla game, this is it.
A single bite attack, or a single unhealed flame breath, is sufficient to kill us.
It takes me about twenty tries (not helped by our extreme lack of healing potions, with only 12 Minor Healing Potions and two Potions of Healing left), but I do eventually slay it.
And what was our reward for this?
Excellent! A new Word of Power! And with a dragon soul conveniently given to us, to boot!
We learn this new Shout, and loot the chest. And- oh? What's this?
We find Meridia's Beacon in the chest, which starts us on a new quest; The Break of Dawn. This is one of the few Daedric quests which does not involve killing, beating, or otherwise being a horrible person to people.
A goal for a later date, perhaps?
Well, anyway.
We have a new goal, because I'm sick of this; let's go make ourselves some new armour!
Dawnstar is a strange town, yup.
We head on over to the Quicksilver mine, and mine out everything there. While we're here, we also head over to Iron-Breaker mine and mine all their iron, just 'coz.
After that, we head on over to Markarth, and walk to Soljund's Sinkhole!
This is actually a quest; we need to go in and clear the mine of Draugr. We can get Moonstone while we're here, though.
In true Skyrim tradition, we Fast Travel to Markarth, and quickly get sidetracked. We encounter a Thalmor Patrol, and tell them that we worship Talos, at which point they attack us, allowing us to loot their bodies and steal their stuff (which includes a full set of both Elven Armour and Elven Light Armour! Yay!). We get caught up in a Warzone, fight sabre cats, head up to Karthwasten, and somehow end up all the way over at Rorikstead, before we finally make it to Soljund's Sinkhole.
We clear the Draugr out and mine the mine, giving us less than 10 bars of Refined Moonstone, but also a good 500 gold.
We also use the level-up we got in the caves, from killing Draugr, to take the next perk in the Light Armour tree (Custom Fit, increases the Armour Rating when wearing all Light Armour by 25%).
In the end, our Armour Rating rises quite a bit.
From 93 to 176, to be specific. Nearly doubled.
In fact, while we're at it, we make ourselves an Elven Sword. This increases our damage from 18 to 26 with One-Handed weapons!
And, last but most DEFINITELY not least, from the chest in the last room in the mine, we loot this:
Yes! Finally, a weapon with a Soul Trap enchantment!
This means that we can now actually get Enchanting done. This means an increase both in our overall power (from now having enough spare Souls to enchant our gear), and an increase in the money we make (from enchanting all these armours and weapons we've been selling)!
And with that, I'll give you a screenshot of Croa and end this update.
On the note of the will thing, that actually applies to any NPC you do a quest for. Well, nearly any.
Yeah, I know. It has to do with disposition- anyone who has a disposition of 1 or higher towards you will allow you to inherit stuff when they die. Doing quests for people raises their disposition, so as long as they were at least acquaintances before you do a quest for them (0 or higher disposition), it works.
Okay, time to head on down to the Thieves' Guild! :O
We're going to be using Muffle a lot for a while. It's a very fast way to level Illusion up to around Level 40, it really helps us be sneaky, and it doesn't use up all our Magicka.
So, as we run around doing nothing, we spam Muffle. Three casts of it has already raised our Illusion to 19!
Once we head to Riften, we dismiss Marcurio. The storyline quests in the game are usually balanced so that we can tackle them on our own, and it'll be good practice for our spells in preparation for tackling the Mage's Guild later.
Back in Riften, we speak to Brynjolf.
Brynjolf asks us to pickpocket... someone, and reverse-pickpocket the item we steal into someone else's pocket. Okay then!
First off, let's get some pickpocketing practice in.
We actually rise to Level 20 here, and take the first perk in the Illusion tree (Novice Illusion, allowing us to cast Novice Illusion spells for half magicka).
Hahaha.
Anyway, we get to 26 Pickpocketing and speak to Brynjolf again.
What we have to do is steal Madesi's Silver Ring from beneath Madesi's Stall, and plant it on Brand-Shei. It's a simple job; you Crouch down behind Madesi's stall until the Guards can't see you, unlock his stall, unlock his safe, steal the ring (and his other valuables while you're there), then head over to Brand-Shei, wait until you're hidden again, then reverse-pickpocket the ring onto him. We had a 90% chance of success, so it wasn't too difficult.
Afterwards, we speak to Brynjolf again, and he tells us to head to him in the Ratways, underneath Riften. So off we head!
While we're down here, we go to speak to Injun Black-Briar, who, if I recall correctly, is the only decent Black-Briar in the town.
This is not how I remember this going
Well, screw her, then.
We head to the Ratways.
Practically immediately, we are attacked by two people, Drahff, and Hewnon Black-Skeever.
Well. Sneaking it is then.
This also amuses me. Yes, let's unlock the tripwire.
Someone called Gian the Fist attacks us. He drops two things- a Ring of Recuperation (it increases stamina regen by 20%, useful if you're sprinting or facing an opponent who Blocks), and these.
This enchantment will be incredibly useful for all those fistfights we get into.
Eventually, we continue along to a Lowlife!
We sneak up behind him and pickpocket all his stuff.
He doesn't notice us.
We stand up and run around a little.
He doesn't notice us.
I figure he's a non-hostile NPC, and I talk to him!
"Is someone there?"
He turns and runs around for a second before he spots us and attacks us.
... I think we broke Stealth. Oops.
We eventually make our way to the Ragged Flagon and meet up with Brynjolf.
Yaaaay~
Suddenly, a Thief-y Orc makes complete sense.
Brynjolf gives us a new task after this.
Suddenly, we're the Mafia.
We head out to intimidate some people!
Bersi is a dude who owns a general store in Riften. He decided not to pay.
I feel kind of bad for doing this to him, as he's genuinely an okay guy, who wants to fix the corruption of the city and get everyone to worship at the Temple of Mara. But, oh well.
Haelga is a woman who runs a tavern in Riften, and worships Dibella. Like, really, really strongly. She takes it absolutely seriously.
Keerava is an Argonian woman who tends the Bee and Barb, the other tavern in Riften. She's annoying, so I don't feel bad about browbeating her, but her boyfriend/husband isn't that bad, and we have to intimidate him to get to her. Bleh.
We equip our Gloves of the Pugilist and head off!
We also meet a mostly-naked courier...? Huh.
Well, now I just feel like shit.
We speak to Keerava, and threaten her family if she doesn't pay up.
Yeah. We're the mafia now.
Now, we head over to talk to Bersi!
Oh, it's on now
And with our new Gloves of the Pugilist, it takes... four hits to down him.
Wow.
Now that we've beat up on one of the few decent people in this entire fucking town, let's go beat up some woman and go shower so I can wash this filth off me back to Brynjolf.
And so we head back down to Brynjolf.
Nrynjolf shows us the operation. (Amusingly enough, to get to the Thieve's Guild headquarters, you open a storage cabinet in the Ragged Flagon, which, in fact, is a secret passage and not a storage cabinet, even though it is marked as such.)
We talk to Mercer, who appears to be the head of the operation, and he gives us a new job.
Well okay then.
And with that, we're off to talk to Vex!
Vex tells us that he more than tripled the guard (there must have been more than eight of them!!!!) in the Estate. Oh dear, eight men, whatever will we do?
I'm going to leave this update here, because this is leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth.
I still feel bad for blackmailing Talan-Jei and Keerava after I helped them get married.
I feel really bad for blackmailing him right after he asked me to help them get married.
Hmm...
Nova, is it okay for there to be multiple Skyrim liveblogs in this thread at once? I'd really like to give this thing a try, plus I have the Dawnguard and Hearthfire DLCs and I plan to buy the Dragonborn DLC as soon as I can afford it, and no-one should be confused as long as we write our updates in third-person...
Sure. I'd ask you to confine them to spoilers, same as I, though. And to try to confine it to just us two, or at least not more than three, or else the thread will bloat.
Okay, but the update will have to wait until I can get new batteries for my desktop mouse, because playing first-person games with a touchpad is a nightmare and wait I have an Xbox 360 controller what am I thinking.
I'll get right to it! No, actually I'll wait until I've bought and installed Dragonborn before I start this new playthrough. Still, looks like I finally have a reason to install LibreOffice on this Mac.
Time to head back into our pit of iniquity and corruption.
We pay him 2070 gold to train our Speech to 39, then head off to Goldenglow Estate.
I hate swimming in Skyrim. I'm always afraid that piranhas slaughterfish will kill me, and you can't fight them underwater.
We head into the sewer and begin our infiltration.
We fight off a few Skeevers, stealing their souls as we go, and then come across... this.
Well now.
We keep casting Muffle as we go, and eventually increase to Level 21, taking the Hypnotic Eyes perk. Calm now works on people up to Level 17.
Once we get into the sewers, we kill all the Skeevers in there and head up. It's tough to infiltrate the place without killing anyone, so we end up killing four people in there. Not including Aringoth, who we pickpocketed two keys off of.
We achieve all of our objectives, though; we break into his safe, and we burn three bee hives (which makes me glad that I kept those Scrolls of Fireball, sheesh).
The bill of sale:
We head back to Brynjolf now.
Thanks~
He promises to follow up on this, but we don't know who he sold it to- all we have to go on is that odd mark...
Well, shit.
We head over to the tavern to speak to her.
Hey, fuck you, lady >
Over to Whiterun it is, I guess.
While we're there, we grab our leftover Dwarven Ingots, and smith up some armours. We head up to Dragonsreach to enchant them, then sell them, boosting our dwindling gold supply.
We boost ourselves back up to 6083 gold, then head on over to this dude in Whiterun. (Incidentally, we also level up to 24, taking the Kindred Mage perk- allowing our Illusion spells to work on higher-level enemies, and the prerequisite perk for Silent Casting, which we'll take next level.)
So! Without further ado, let's see what this dude wants!
... Really? Really? You're going to make me poison the Captain of the Guard? The leader of the only people in town to help me fight a dragon?
Fuck off, dude.
Oh god DX
We head over to the Honningbrew Meadery, and find out what he's on about; Skeevers have infested everything, and Sabjorn hires us to poison them. Because we can't just take our Soul Trap sword and annihilate the Skeevers, god no.
Anyway, we continue through (killing a whole bunch of Frostbite Spiders and Skeevers on the way anyway, so we have about fifty souls), we are confronted by Hamelyn, who tosses about a billion fireballs at us as we guzzle down health potions like nobody's business.
Seriously, fuck this dude.
Okay, let's read his journal.
suffer at the hands of my army of wolf-rats
Anyway, we poison the Skeevers and the vat of mead, and head back upstairs.
Well, fuck.
... Well, I didn't exactly poison him to death, but I think Maven will be pleased.
Yep.
Oh, you fucker. If I could I'd kill you right now.
We get Sabjorn's note, and head back to Maven!
Once there, we level up to 25 and take the Silent Casting perk. Wooo! That's pretty much it for the Illusion tree now.
A courier also meets us there. Curiously, he's still naked but for a loincloth.
Hey, fuck you, last time I followed your notes I had to deal with an Ancient Dragon >
We head upstairs to meet with Maven. She doesn't recognize the symbol either, but gives us an Iron Dagger of Torpor for our services and tells us to go back to the Thieve's Guild.
Screw you, lady, that ain't worth shit >
On the way to meet with Brynjolf, we bump into Sapphire. Remember her? That woman who extorted that stablehand way back when?
We ask her her real name, and she gives us her entire back story.
She was raised on a pig farm in abject poverty, apparently eating the same slop they fed their pigs. One day, bandits came to their farm and killed her family, who didn't even raise weapons in their defence. The bandits then took Sapphire and violated her for a fortnight, before she went around and slit all their throats in their sleep.
She still doesn't tell us her real name though.
... Really, Bethesda?
Anyway, we head on and talk to Brynjolf. We tell him about the symbol- and he notes that someone is trying to drive a wedge between the Guild and Maven.
He sends us out to meet with Mercer, who is pissed.
We tell him about the symbol too, and he reads the note.
The note mentioned a 'Gajel-Lai'. Apparently, that's one of the aliases of one of Mercer's old contacts. Time to go meet up with them then! His real name is Gulum-Ei.
We head up to Solitude and speak with him.
Our Speech still isn't high enough to Persuade or Intimidate him (eurgh), so we bribe him instead. He tells us he wants a case of Firebrand Wine, or something.
And I swear, if this gets back to Elisif, I'll murder this dude and I don't care if he's Essential or anything he will die.
Anyway, we head back to the Argonian dude, and he tells us that some lady gave him money to sell the estate- and that the lady seemed pissed at Mercer.
I don't think he's telling us everything, though, so I'll shadow him.
Along the way, we level up (we've gained like 55 levels in Illusion so), dropping the perk into Fire Damage on the Enchantment tree.
We shadow him all the way to the East Empire Company Warehouse, then into a cave behind there, which is infested with bandits. We kill all the bandits, and find a cave of Frostbite Spiders.
I park my ass down, pull out a book, and train Light Armour and Restoration!
Eventually, I level up to 26, and take the new Restoration perk, Recovery. This allows us to regenerate Magicka 25% faster. Combined with our Elven Armour, which I enchanted to enhance Magicka Regen 10% faster, we're regenerating Magicka 35% faster than normal!
Incidentally, my brother is now giving me a weird look for yelling "Kill me faster, damn spider!".
Anyway, we progress through the dungeon, killing bandits. (Incidentally, one of the most fun things to do as a stealthy character is to sneak attack someone, use Calm on them, then sneak attack them again.)
When we get to the end, we corner Gulum-Ei again, and he cracks.
Apparently, someone named Karliah was responsible for all this. He gives us the Goldenglow Bill of Sale (which we are totally keeping for ourselves I mean come ON), and begs us to let him go.
We do, and we head back to Riften woo yeah I hate that place so much
We speak to Mercer, who tells me a bit about who Karliah was. Apparently, she was one of the best Thieves the Guild had, bringing in more in a month than some thieves brought in in years. She was really close to the previous Guild Leader... until she killed him.
He asks us to help go hunt her down, so we head off to Rebel's Cairn!
Here, we encounter a dragon straight up. Ugh, dragon fights are a pain in the ass without Dragonrend.
When we kill him, though, we get a Glass Armour of Eminent Illusion! Light Armour with the same Armour Rating as our current, and 20% lower Illusion spell costs, god yeah!
And so we enter the cave. And... it turns out I actually had the wrong quest marker active. D'oh!
Well, whatever. We clear it out, then head to Windhelm, and follow it up to the right area.
Within, we get to see this, hehehe~
We continue on through the ruin, fighting through several bullshit fights (at one point, three Draugr Deathlords and a Draugr Scourge, and another time two Draugr Scourges and a Draugr Death Overlord STOP FUCKIN DISARMING ME DAMMIT), until we come across something interesting~
Huehuehue
We immediately spend a Dragon Soul to unlock it, and equip it.
In the next room, we find... this.
Yes.
Mercer does, indeed, open a puzzle door without even the key.
TELL ME HOW. TELL ME YOUR SECRETS.
Then everything turns green and we pass out. ?_?
Oh oh oh. What's this then? Intrigue!
(yes i did miss a bunch of screenshots shut up)
fcuk
fcuk
thankee, karliah~
Essentially, what we've found out here is, Mercer, Karliah, and the previous Guild Leader, Garrus, were what are called 'Nightingales', an anonymous sect of the Thieves.
The three of them went to this same place we just did, and Mercer betrayed Garrus and killed him. Karliah got away, and spent the next twenty-five years being hunted by the Guild.
Marcus attempted to kill us, but an arrow tipped with a very potent paralyzing poison slowed our heart enough to prevent us bleeding out before Karliah could save us.
Anyway, this post is kinda ridiculously long already, so I'll finish up in a new post.
Garrus?
Gallus, bleh.
So! An update!
This time, we're going to skip out on doing the rest of the Thieves Guild stuff entirely, in favour of running around doing shit as I explain about the Falmer and the Dwemer!
Once we do that, we level to 30 and take the Master of the Mind perk. Sweet! Now Calm works on undead, Daedra, and Dwemer constructs as well~
Now, we're off to Riften to grab Mjoll, and then we're off to Markarth.
For all of its problems, Markarth is frankly a beautiful town.
Originally, Markarth was the Dwemer city of Nchuand-Zel. This city was built into the mountains of the Reach directly. The situation of Nchuand-Zel in the midst of the mountains of the reach, the location of the city as mostly within the mountains, and the rugged terrain separating the Reach from the rest of Skyrim, all made it an excellent place, defensible from ground, the air, and underneath.
Of course, then the Dwemer disappeared, and over the course of a looong time, the city of Nchuand-Zel fell into disrepair.
The city lay abandoned for many centuries, until the rise of the Septim Empire, the third Empire of the Cyrodillic Empires, which was led by Tiber Septim, who later ascended to become the God Talos.
Tiber Septim established the Imperial College of the Voice in Nuchiand-Zel. You may recognize this as the same power the Dragonborn wields; the Voice, the language of the Dragons. The presence of the College invited many Nords to establish themselves there, whereupon they established the city of Markarth.
It's important to note that nobody is quite sure who actually built Markarth. It may have been the ancient Nords in the time of Tiber Septim, but the city might also have been standing since before the Nords arrived there, being the outside portion of Nchuand-Zel.
Markarth stood for quite some time, until just recently, when an event known as the Forsworn Uprising began.
When the Great War in Cyrodiil began, the Imperial forces left in Markarth were recalled to help in the fight against the Thalmor. The natives of the Reach took this opportunity to rebel, and seized control over Markarth.
At the time, Jarl Holfdir was in charge, but he was unable to quell the uprising. He was killed in the battle.
For a couple of years, from 4E 174 to 4E 176, the Reachmen held Markarth as their own territory, separate to the rest of Skyrim. They apparently ruled fairly, and were making overtures to the Empire to be recognized as a legitimate kingdom.
In 4E 176, the Great War ended, and the Empire signed the White-Gold Concordat. However, at this time, Jarl Ingrud- the son of Jarl Holfdir- took it on himself to ask Ulfric Stormcloak for help in retaking the Reach. He promised that if he did, then Ingrud would re-allow worship of Talos within Markarth.
Ulfric eventually did succeed, and Ingrud made good on his promise. (There are conflicting reports on this, but one book in particular, the Bear of Markarth, claims that Ulfric then committed many horrible crimes on the people of Markarth, slaughtering anyone who wasn't a child and didn't help him fight in the battle.)
Unfortunately, the Thalmor pressured the Empire into re-outlawing the worship of Talos in Markarth. This caused Ulfric to become bitter towards the Empire, eventually culminating in forming the Stormcloaks and starting Skyrim's Civil War.
Interestingly enough, Markarth is where it all started. Without Markarth, Ulfric Stormcloak doesn't turn bitter towards the Empire, and without that, he doesn't start the Civil War. Without the Civil War, the prophecy isn't fulfilled, and Alduin isn't awakened in this time. Thus, there is no Dragonborn, and no Voice. The various storylines of Skyrim aren't fulfilled, and everyone's fucked.
Anyway! That's Markarth.
So, we're going to head into the ruins of Nchuand-Zel in search of treasure (mostly in the form of Dwarven items, which we'll melt down into Dwemer Ingots).
We talk to some lady in Markarth, and she gives us a ring to take to Calcelmo! We take it to him, and he gives us 400 gold. We then ask him about getting into the excavation site.
Fuck. I hate spiders.
The Nchuand-Zel Excavation Site is a really easy dungeon to clear. There's four Frostbite Spiders, followed by Nimhe, who is a large poisonous Frostbite Spider.
Once Nimhe is dead, we head back out to Calcemo, and tell him. He gives us the key to the Dwemer Museum, and our disposition with him goes up- letting us take all his stuff!
We loot all his smeltable Dwarven stuff, then head back to Whiterun and melt it down (we get a solid 57 Dwarven Ingots), before we head back.
Beneath the Nchuand-Zel Excavation Site is the ruins of Nchuand-Zel itself. That's where we're headed now!
The city of Nchuand-Zel.
Yes. Yes, I am standing on the end path of the dungeon, which would allow me to walk backwards through the dungeon, assassinate the boss, and take all his loot without dealing with the rest of the dungeon.
No, Skyrim's physics aren't wonky, why would you think that?
We explore Nchuand-Zel. There's a lot of indications about the Dwemer's disappearance- cups and plates left lying around, things like that. All the doors are still closed though.
The first room we enter gives us enough materials alone to make 156 Dwarven Metal Ingots. Sweet!
Upon our return, we run through the dungeon again.
There's a strange glitch in Skyrim. Sometimes, when you're running and looking at the floor, and you hit a few objects at a time, you'll fall through the floor. You'll see the sky surrounding you for a few moments, then abruptly hit the ground, some distance further into the dungeon.
Suddenly, we bypass 90% of the Excavation Site on our way back in. Sweet.
Then, we move on to the Nchuand-Zel Armoury, where we meet our first victim!
We continue on through the Armoury, looting all the Dwemer stuff, then head back outside and stumble upon a camp, with a second victim there, oh no :c
After that, we continue up the path and enter the Nchuand-Zel Control. Deep in this place, we find the last victim.
Oh no :c
We head on further in and pull the switch, then head out.
Once we're out there, we find that the defences have, indeed, reactivated.
I also encounter a Falmer who thinks he is a frog. How quaint.
Anyway, after that, we head back to Whiterun and melt down all that stuff. We are now in the possession of a solid 360 Dwemer Ingots, which is 90 Dwarven Armours, or a fast track to Level 70 Smithing! Once we get the appropriate Iron and Steel Bars, of course.
Until bam, we are confronted by someone!
Oh no, where are you dude :c
Yes, indeed. Fuschlatz was kind enough to buy me the three major DLC's for Skyrim so far; Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn! As such, you can rest assured that we'll tackle those three DLC's once we have the major campaigns of Skyrim over and done with.
We go into our house and drop off our ingots, then...
Yay! Courier-dude is wearing clothes again c:
It appears we are now famous, despite having done... jack shit? People barely even know we're the Dragonborn, bleh.
Well, whatever.
The good thing about the Falmer is, they have a tendency to drop a lot of Alchemy reagents! So, now that we've accumulated 30 levels worth of alchemy reagents, it's time to cheat and go make Alchemy!
We make enough potions to increase us to 31 Alchemy, then we head off to get those ingots let's just wait until we have a forge reasonably close to an enchanting table and chest, shall we?
Okay! New post. Let's head off to Falkreath and build ourselves a house where we can do all this crap!
This fight isn't all that exciting, but it's notable primarily because of the sheer number of critters drawn into the fight. Two bears, three wolves, a troll, and a Frostbite Spider, to be precise. And the Dragon. All of which attacked me (although I killed the wolves with the dragon's Frost Breath shout).
We make it to Falkreath with no particular further encounters (a singular wolf which we kill in one shot), and head to speak to the Jarl.
Siddgeir is kind of a douche. He's a lazy little bastard who lets his steward do all his work.
He claims that he took over for his uncle because his uncle was old and unfit for rule, but others say that the Legion helped him to get to the throne because he was sympathetic to their cause.
If you take the Stormcloak's side in the war, his uncle takes back the throne and is apparently a perfectly fine leader. Take from that what you will.
So what does he want us to do?
Great. We're the Jarl's Hitmer.
Well, whatever.
We head over on to that place he tells us to go to, only to find out that it's an Orochicalcum mine.
....
Okay, whatever. We take the Orcish Smithing perk when we level up on the way, and enter~
It's not at all a difficult dungeon. There's three minor bandits outside (a Bandit, a Bandit Thug, and a Bandit Plunderer), and a Bandit Chief inside. All up, we walk out with over twenty more Orcish Ingots than we walked in with, plus about twenty Iron Ingots and ten Steel Ingots from melting down their gear.
We return to Jarl Siddgeir, and he gives us 800 gold and tells us we can buy a house now.
We talk to his steward, and she tells us that there's no house available- but there is a piece of property for sale! So we buy it, for 5,000 gold, and head on over.
And keep heading, and keep heading.
Yeah, it's pretty far away.
Anyway, let's check out what we need to build the house!
We first get the plans for the foundation of our house.
Uh. Shit.
Not to worry! There's a chest nearby with everything we could need in it.
Well, not "everything". But it had 30 Clay, 30 Quarried Stone, 6 Iron Ingots and a Corundum Ingot, and a bunch of sawn planks.
Or, in other words, everything we need to build the basic foundation of our house!
It's actually kind of boring building a house. I wish there was like, a minigame or something, I dunno.
The inside is... really, really bare at the moment.
But not to worry! We can add stuff!
However, I'll skip the actual gathering of building materials for now. I'll go over the process next update, but you don't want to be bored to death with it, trust me.
woman you had better build a freaking mansion
do you hear me
a mansion
THERE IS THAT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU KRAKEN
(please ignore the dead giant he was an asshole)
it needs more pools and hos.
I think you can get a few people in there, but no pools.
You can get... uh... a steward, a bard, a spouse, and an adopted child, in the one house, I think?
But I don't think any of them can really be described as a ho.
Clearly you need a mod for an underwater house.
I wonder if the horror stories of bandits robbing your house and kidnapping your spouses/children every 5 minutes are really true.