I use a mod that stops Serana from animating every corpse she meets. Everytime I would try to loot the body of someone I had just killed, she would animate it before I could get there.



The whole thing with the Old Orc felt very poignant from Persephone's point of view. Being that she has been dead for 4,000 years, and here he was wanting to throw his life away. Instead of looking for a good death, he should have been looking for a good life. But the snow is always whiter on the other side of the Hold.

Hillgrund's Tomb! I don't blame Lil for not wanting to spend the night there. Was the other cave the one with the injured hunter outside, who gives you his lucky dagger? Valdr?

Jensa was my only non-orc character who really understood the Old Orc’s perspective. She comes from a primitive hunting clan, and their version is to pick up a club and walk out into the snow hoping to find a wolf pack before the cold kills them. Sovngarde awaits, but not if you die in your sleep beside the fire. She also felt honored that Malacath had put the Old Orc in her path.

That is indeed the cave where Valdr gives you his lucky dagger. Now Jerric is carrying it around. Lil doesn’t think Valdr or his dead friend sound particularly lucky.

ghastley, followers seem to have three purpose: carrying all your cool loot, disappearing with all your call loot and getting in the way.

I did that quest with my breton battlemage and ended killing both Calixto and Arivanya with chain lightning... oops

Grits, you can never expect a full day of sun in Falkreath. It's always raining or cloudy. Ravos likes it though, the hunting's not as good as the Rift or Whiterun, but there's less bears and plenty of camping spots (consoles *sigh*) You'll find plenty of deer in the Rift, but the bear attacks always put Ravos off.

Be careful of those caves! Azura only knows what you might find. Piled corpses and blue light? Smart decision to avoid it, imo...

Grits, thanks for the snip and pix from Lil & Jerric's day. Wow, beautiful scenery (and characters, of course).

Grits: Yeah, I also can't stand the shop owner in Falkreath. His brother is even worse.


Wow. What a story, SR. Pretty epic stuff.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Jan 24 2014, 02:58 AM

Pala took Serana with her to go do Molag Bal's quest in Markarth. We really only wanted the Amulet of Stendarr to make a shrine for the Lakeview house, and the Vigilant is guaranteed to have one. Anyhow, after the quest is over, I find Serana's old habits coming out.

Once a Daughter of Coldharbour,...

I let her keep the Mace as a memento.

Sad news. The lovely Channah has fallen. She led her team into a nest of necromancers where they kicked a lot of corpse-jockey tail. Then in the last chamber (I know because I’ve seen it before), Channah got surprised by a lightning trap. Covered in frost from the bad mage she was engaged in killing, Channah tried to break away and heal. But she was too slow. Because of the frost. A second lightning bolt flung her into the wall.

I thought someone had resurrected a draugr who Shouted at her (they’re in a mod area with a delightful corpse menu for the enemy to choose from), so I was holding my breath until she got up.

She didn’t get up.


RIP Channah.

Aw

Poor Channah. Those frost spells have done in more than one of my character's as well.

Didn't you know you're not allowed to create a DiD character who isn't a Nord? That frost resist is VITAL!!

RIP

RIP Channah The best part of DiD is the thrill of staying alive, the worst part is losing a character...


No I am VITAL!

Nord or Breton do seem to do best in DiD. Resist fire for the dunmer is pretty good (no favorite race bias here...) but that frost magic is killer. Little overpowered imo...

I've been playing a sword-and-board imperial (female bear-riding kind, of course) and just done Meridia's quest to get a nice-looking blade. I'd never done it before, as none of the other characters wanted the reward. I liked the "follow the light" thing, but I found Malkoran to be a bit of a wimpy boss. She killed him with one swipe, having run up close to persuade him not try try his ranged spells. I guess he's nastier if you waste time on the minions before you reach him, but they're best left to last.

Then I took Dawnbreaker to go and whack Potema's entourage with it, figuring it would be good for a necro-dungeon. I'd done this quest with most of my other characters and knew it was a bit of a grind to get past the sheer numbers of draugr, and the exploding corpse effect promised a reduction of effort.

However, every time I killed the last of the draugr in the final room, and the objectives updated, the game would crash. Eventually I caught a quicksave with only one left, and was able to retry a few times without fighting them all again. It still crashed at the same point. So then I tried leading the last one back up the corridor before killing him, and was able to delay the crash until I re-entered the room. I tried walking back out of the cell and coming back in, but it still crashed when I got to the last room.

The incantation that finally got me past it was to leave the cell completely (via coc in the console), re-enter, leave again through the door, and re-re-enter. When I got back to the last room, Potema was already gone, and I just had to pick up her skull and leave. I suspect that she'd been caught in the blast from one of the last round of draugr deaths, and died out of sequence. I was not in the mood to try it again with a regular weapon at that stage!

Oh, forgot the WTF moment earlier - I'd swum across the water from the Solitude Sawmill, to take a shortcut to Morthal, and a Slaughterfish must have noticed me. But also a Solitude Guard had seen the Slaughterish attack, and decided to arrest it. I climbed out the other side, hoping to get a shot at the fish from the shallows, but it was now engaged with the guard in mid-stream and getting the whole range of the guard's arrest dialog lines. It appears that guards can't engage in combat while swimming either. (Why do I never have Fraps running when these things happen?)


This post has been edited by ghastley: Feb 11 2014, 08:54 PM

Days Passed: 243
Days as Vampire: 222
Necks Bitten: 42

Gold Found: 61,415
Quests Cmptd: 14
Misc Objtvs Cmptd: 13
Main Questrs Cmpleted: 1
Side Quests Completed: 2
DB Quests Comptd: 10

Level: 39
Class: Mage
Faction: Black-magic Witch


Fredas, 2:07 AM, 17th of Rain's Hand, 4E 202


Mycharonna the Ice Witch is headed towards Riften, where she hopes to have an amulet appraised for sale. This amulet is going to be taken to a man in the Riften Ratway who will hopefully buy it.

But before going to Riften, Mycharonna needed to stop at a small cabin near Windhelm. This cabin is owned by a lady, a simple farmwoman. This farmwoman is going to have quite a bad memory (or was it just a dream?) about lifeless terror who trespassed into her home, and then .. did something to her neck, though she cannot remember what.

Mycharonna has a couple places she likes to stay whenever she's in Windhelm, and this time she chose the Aretino Residence. In here, a boy named Aventus Aretino secretly prays to the Night Mother, and though Mycharonna is not actually the Night Mother, she occasionally 'answers' his prayers by showing up, and pretending to be appeased.

This time she gave him some guidance, and left him 300 gold in one of the home's dressers.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Feb 16 2014, 09:35 PM

Aravi just fought him last night, and he wasn't wimpy for her. She tried to simply get close like you did, and Malkoran killed her with three spells. Reloaded and ended up using a scroll of paralysis.

Like all things in the ES games, it depends on the level of your character at the time you take a baddie on. Take Frost Trolls. They will kill a 1st level character in seconds. I usually cannot take them on with a reasonable chance of success until a character is in their teens. But when I have a character past level 40, they are a one-hit kill.

Darnand got revenge for sweet Channah at the necromancer nest today. He had KC’s Aravi companion and Kharjo as well as a quest guy for company, so he did a lot of shooting firebolts from ledges and then jumping down to heal them before running for his life up the ramp again. It worked! He has learned to shoot through a Ward (now that he has more perks) rather than going all-in and dual-casting against that many mages. Also they may have gotten blown up in the fight, but the lightning death traps did not trigger.

On Malkoran: the bastard nailed Abiene with an ice spike that would have been the end of her if she was on the DiD chopping block. She was feeling like a boss after melting all of those shades with her sun spells. Then she “woke up” by the door. Jerric (Nord with the Atronach blessing) is one of my only characters who didn’t have serious trouble with him. He tends to sprint in while casting his own frost spells and then give them a kiss with his shield, and that distracts them. He loves to shield-bash mages.

Yikes, Renee! Mycharonna gives me the chills.

My latest character, Thulia, Imperial sword-and-board bear rider, had just made herself some Daedric Bear Rider armor, which has the big spiky pauldrons, but is otherwise substantially topless. So she goes into Whiterun to sell off some of her old outfit, and the first person she meets is Severio Pelagia, who remarks "There's a nip in the air" In her case, both of them! I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

Renee, Mycharonna is EVIL! I've yet to have a character that cold hearted in Skyirm, but I'm sure one will come.

Grits, I'm glad Darnand could avenge Channah's death. There aren't many better ways in Skyrim to honor a fallen friend than killing their killer.

Ghastley, that was priceless. I do wonder about the social skills of Skyrim's inhabitants...


Note: This post does contain some MQ spoilers that I consider relatively major and also reveals one of the coolest locations in the game and could ruin the experience for someone who has yet to explore this area.

I've been playing Ravos' game a lot recently as I've had some free time and been without my laptop. After finishing the aetherium shards quest I decided to advance the MQ further as I'm quite interested to see where it goes...

Ravos returned to Lakeview Manor and did some work around the house, before chilling around there for a whole with Jenassa and Lucia. He also went hunting and bounty hunting with Jenassa. I guess that counts as a date? He the set out alone, headed north to obtain an elder scroll. On the way to winterhold dragons were fought, a horse was lost and Ravos just survived an encounter with some vampires. The mages at winterhold were able to direct Ravos to Septimus Signus, a reclusive, slightly nutty mage with an obsession for elder scrolls and the dwemer. With his help Ravos was able to discover the location of an elder scroll, hidden by the dwemer deep within one of their greatest cities: Blackreach. Fighting his way through the city of Altfand, Ravos eventually reached Blackreach. It is possibly the coolest location I've visited in the game and the reference to Sinderion (For those who've been there)was great. After painstakingly collecting 30 samples of a plant that makes Nirnroot look common, Ravos finally found the scroll. He is now making his way back south on the back of a new horse, who he's yet to name...

THank you. My job is done, then!

Ghastley: I agree with Vital: Priceless.

Vital: I agree, that city is a cool location.


This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Feb 20 2014, 08:44 PM

Encel Firefist the Mage had an interesting week. I hadn't played him in months, and when I loaded up his game he was outside Pinewatch, in the dark, wearing Thalmor robes. It then immediately started raining. I changed him into his novice College gear, and Jennassa, Meeko and Encel went to find somewhere to wait out the night and rain.

The closest location was Helgen. After spending a few minutes trying to find somewhere dry, we were attacked by bandits. Not too much trouble. After we found a way into the keep, we discovered something: The "You cannot wait here" message is permanent, even after you escape the first time. Annoying to no end. We went out and finally found a bed in a ruined house, only to be attacked by another bandit. After we finally got some sleep, we set off again, me deciding to finally do Dragon Rising with him.

I stumbled upon Brittleshin Pass by accident, but it made things a lot faster. Encel picked up an iron sword, deciding he might need a close combat weapon. It came in handy fighting Necromancers. "Your magic is mighty, but ha! I have mastered the sword! Is that with a silent "w", Jenassa? Yes? Alright."

We made it to BFB, me deciding to avoid blatant metagaming by thinking he'd want to check it out for archaeological value. It was fairly uneventful. I decided to send Meeko home, because he kept getting in the way of Encel's zappinationfication.

So we kill the dragon, after having a sleep at the very same Watchtower on our way to Whiterun. We take the quest to get Amren's sword, and also get Raise Zombie. I always liked the Necromancy spells, they're cool.

So now, as far as I can remember, we're heading north to do Under Saarthal. I missed this guy, I tell ya!