Something that hasn't happened before. My character was doing the Goldenglow quest for the Thieves Guild, and just about to torch the apiaries, when a frost dragon attacked out of nowhere. Good thing it wasn't breathing flames, or the quest might have been a failure!

It did keep the mercenaries out of the way, some permanently.

Ha ha ha neat!

New thing today!

Just noticed something new. The Argonian who runs Bee & Barb always says "If you've got the coin, you're welcome to stay, otherwise hit the road!" She's overly rude, and I've never not heard her say this.

Well today Claire walks in, and she says "If you've got the coin, you've come to the right place, pull up a seat". ... And that's it. Maybe it's because one of the mods I'm using boosts the amount of money it costs to rent a room here (90 gp versus 10), and the Argonian has some sort of hidden disposition factor which gets affected by sales?

In my game she always says "If you've got the coin, you've come to the right place, pull up a seat" when you enter the inn but when you directly talk to her, she says "If you've got the coin, you're welcome to stay, otherwise hit the road!"

Funny, I always get "I can't stand this city. It's impossible to make a decent living here." I'm on the console so maybe that has something to do with it. Her name is Keerava btw.

Destri: Wow. See, I have never heard that one. Maybe it's because you have a beast-folk PC, right? Maybe she says different things to beasts, especially Argonians.

Lopov: you and I have the same mod, that's probably why.

This post has been edited by Renee: Mar 6 2015, 03:33 PM

Went into Shalidor's Maze for the first time last night, and realised that it's actually a Labyrinth - i.e. it's unicursal, with no choices of path for the player. You just follow it, and deal with what you encounter.

Labyrinthian dungeon, in contrast, is a maze, because you have a limited ability to choose a dead-end path. Not much of a maze, but then its challenge is a different one.

Athla did Dagon's quest last night, but it turned out differently than other times. My normal choice is to let Silus take the pieces and run, as the Razor just isn't worth killing for. This time, when Mehrunes Dagon told me to kill him, he just attacked without offering the alternative option.

He'll do that if you take too long responding, but in this case he hadn't made his offer at all. Still, we got the gold and ebony and Daedra hearts we wanted, and Silus isn't relevant after that quest anyway.

I have only done the Dagon quest a handful of times, because most of my characters simply don't have a use for a dagger. But most times Silus has ended up attacking my characters. I think it was only with The Morrigan that I attacked him first.

I never do it for the dagger, but the guaranteed Daedra Hearts are the draw. There are a couple of quests that call for one, and the alternative of Vaermina's in Dawnstar isn't always appropriate to the character. This one also provides gold and ebony ingots, which also have their uses. There are a few other sources of Daedra Hearts, but usually you only get one at a time. We're stocking up for making Daedric armour for Mjoll, so multiples at once is beneficial.

That's awesome. Wow there's a time limit to that quest before he attacks?? Interesting.

Couple tiny things I just noticed yesterday in Whiterun -

- Under the bridge right before the door into Dragonsreach I noticed a skeleton floating in the water. I'm not positive if the skellie is placed there in the game or one of those 'fell from the sky' anomalies.

- While up near Dragonsrach, I used tfc-1 to free the camera for a possible screenshot and, as I was panning around, realized that I had never looked carefully at the Skyforge or at it from a distance. I've generally focused on talking to the smith there. Anyway, I just noticed that the backdrop for the forge is a giant bird of prey with its wings spread as if partly wrapping them around the forge. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone but me has noticed this before, but it reminded me of a recent screenshot Lopov shared from Saarthal - as many times as I've gone through that College initial quest, I never looked up to see the 'all those coffins' mentioned by Tolfdir that now make sense.

The skellie has always been there in my games, I'm not sure what it's supposed to represent but we think of it as one of Whiterun's trademark. I would like to see it included it in The Gentleman's Guide to Whiterun.

It also took me some time to spot that bird at Skyforge.

A new thing in my game is that the other day when Aard was walking down the road that passes Mixwater Mill, he heard a voice nearby, saying "Traveler! Over here!", supposedly said by the Vigilant of Stendarr. He approached two Vigilants but they turned out to be vampires. After dealing with them he found bodies of real Vigilants nearby, stripped of their robes.

That skeleton under the bridge has always been there. Probably one of Balgruuf's ex-wives. I think he has seven children from eight different women... I thought they had removed it in the last game patch though.

I think that is an eagle that is carved above the skyforge. The Nords use the eagle a lot in their carvings, or at least the ancient Nords did.

Ah, thanks for the clarification that the skellie is not just my game acting funny. One of Balgruuf's ex-wives. That Jarl does have some screwed up kids though. . . . And I do really like how the ancient Nords used animal totems quite a bit - even for their puzzles and such. Helps to make a wood elf feel more at home in this frozen land.

Neat that Aard encountered the 'Vampires of Stendarr'. I have experienced that encounter only once also. I really like the road encounters.

Seriously though, Balgruuf has the Ebony Blade locked up in his basement, and only he and the court wizard have the key. If you do the Mephala quest, one of his sons says that he does not have the same mother as his siblings. The Ebony Blade becomes more powerful when you betray and murder someone who trusts you. We have never seen any of the mothers of any of Balgruuf's children. So... my completely conjectural conclusion is that Balgruuf murdered them all with the Ebony Blade. He is the Black Widower, he mates and then he kills.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Mar 22 2015, 06:58 PM

OMG, you had me in hysterics with this! And both times he is sweeping innocently, like "SUUUUUURE you had nothing to do with it!"

Maybe he is sweeping up Anthrax or something, lol.







I was looking for Daedra hearts for the Midden forge, but didn't want to steal from the college and didn't know where else they could be found (at the time I was playing it, haven't played in a long time since then).







That is about as cool as it gets, I have to give Bethesda kudos for that little trick! I think this one is random radiants, because these two vampires caught me the same way, standing by the waters edge wearing robes and signaling me over closer to them. I was hopping from ice float to ice float, and came right over and got attacked, lol. That was Awesome !!! What a great touch to have the player be tricked - that AI is fantastic, I'd love to find it in the scripts!










SPEW !!! You are killing me today, this is the second time I've nearly choked to death on my cola reading something you've written!

OH! That sounds like your story in Oblivion that was written before Skyrim ever came out! Bethesda should pay you royalties if they used it! Seriously though, it does ring familiar to that sword in Castle Bravil that Teresa and Aela heisted!

Buffy quite likes the quaint village of Riverwood and gets on well with everyone there – especially little Dorthe, Frodnar and Stump. She’s talked with them quite a bit about such things as Dorthe’s blacksmithing aspirations and Frodnar’s fascination and creativity with practical jokes. She’s played tag with them and even turned Frodnar invisible briefly so he could ‘prank’ his friends.

Today she heard a new dialogue exchange between Frodnar and Dorthe about disguising Stump as a frostbite spider. Frodnar thought it would be a neat prank and Dorthe quickly pointed out how silly it was – not to mention potentially dangerous to Stump.

Sure enough, a quick check of UESP wiki lays it all out on Frodnar’s page:
Dorthe: "Wait, so... a costume? You're not serious..."
Frodnar: "Sure I am. We get some furs and tree branches, paint them white, and then tie them to Stump. Instant Frostbite Spider!"
Dorthe: "Frodnar... nobody is going to believe that your dog is a... Frostbite Spider. And if they do... they'll kill him. That's not much of a prank."
Frodnar: "Oh yeah, and what would you rather do?"
Dorthe: "How about... we play tag! You're it!"
Frodnar: "Hey, no fair! Get her, Stump!"

Just when you figure you've heard it all. . . .

Don't feel too bad about it, Acadian. Even though reading up on the lore is one of my favorite things to do in the game it has taken me nearly four years to realize that Jorrvaskr was (and is) the ship that Ysgramor and his peeps rode in on!


I actually just got three of them today with my nord, Hrungnir! We were on the road leading from Riverwood to Whiterun. He got really excited because Stendarr and Julianos are the two shrines he's missing in his Lakeview Manor cellar. Unfortunately none of the Vigilants was carrying an amulet… makes me think they either weren't really Vigilants after all, or all the Vigilants have sold off their amulets in an effort to remain incognito in light of the vampire threat (kind of like the Jedi going into hiding every time the Sith decide to flex).


That's awesome! I've heard Frodnar and Dorthe's conversation before, but I don't get the option to play tag with them on the console (though the option is available for Braithe and 'baby Battle-Born' in Whiterun). It would also be really cool to be able to turn one of the kids invisible… do the kids have dialogue options for that?

My new thing is that my Breton mage, Labelle Aurore (kudos to anyone who gets the reference), was wandering around the Hall of Countenance at 3am when she happened by Colette Marence's room to discover that the incredibly paranoid restoration trainer likes to sleep curled up with a troll's skull.

The Elder Scrolls never gets old!