In Which Merawen Gains Final Training in Alteration and Conjuration

In this session, all this work I’ve been doing on general adventuring and crafting has started to pay off. I made it to level 80, and I did two of the five ritual quests for the mage college–the ones for the Alteration and Conjuration schools.

Also, I fought and killed my first Legendary Dragon!

Highlights

• Session number in this run: 83
• Started session in Solitude, and saw weird behavior in various points in and around the city, with Sneak seeming to trigger without me wanting it to? Had to save and restart the game to make it go away
• Invested in forge, Bits and Pieces, and Radiant Raiment in Solitude; shopped in all three places
• Also shopped at Angeline’s but couldn’t invest in her store due to the known bug with that
• Geared up in mage gear and headed west-ish of Solitude
• Soul trapped a wolf
• Actually found the Thalmor Embassy on foot; resisted urge to attack the place again 😉
• Re-found Wolfskull Cave; leveled up to 79 fighting two skeletons
• Took Soul Stealer perk which lets my bound weapons trap souls so I don’t have to queue that spell up separately
• Killed by bandits; thrown back to coming out of Solitude, oh wells
• Unmarked locale with ruined steps and columns, three burial urns on a ledge with an orcish greatsword
• Couldn’t find a way north or west from there, so backtracked to road (and avoided side path to embassy)
• Game crashed. 🙁 Thrown back to leaving Solitude one more time
• Fuck it going to Windstad instead; did a bit of smithing and enchanting
• Re-leveled up to 79; got Soul Stealer perk again
• Went to Morthal to get Conjuration training from Falion
• Legendary Dragon! Took it down with help of guards \0/
• Falion walked right through the flaming corpse, and then bitched at me about people giving him shit for his magic
• Me: “Uh, I’m just here to learn about conjuration?”
• I get training and Falion immediately goes “You took its very soul!”
• Lolololol so you only just noticed that part after you walked right through the flaming corpse and then ranted at me? Because hi yes I’m the Dragonborn, I do this a lot
• Also sounds like Falion has same voice actor as Belethor
• Killed by trolls at Labyrinthian booooooo and then crashed again wtf
• Thrown back to just after training, okay not so bad
• Killed by trolls again after sneaking past a giant who killed a third troll
• Next time through not thrown back far, just to entering Labyrinthian
• Started calling up dremora lord this time and that got me past the trolls
• Re-ran Silent Moons Camp and the Lunar Forge but didn’t find any additional spot to run? Didn’t bother to go over to the area of the structure that was right (east) of the forge up the steps
• Headed south instead; overloaded from bandit loot so summoned Arvak
• Found Vigilant vs. vampire fight, called up storm atronach and dremora lord to fight the vampire
• Vigilant: “The mercy of Stendarr does not extend to Daedra worshippers”; fuck you, lady, this Daedra worshipper’s dremora just saved your ass
• Went to Whiterun; did some smithing work
• Boinged to Windstad to get access to more of my materials
• Realized oh hey Heavy Armor is 100 now; set it Legendary
• Dropped a lot of perks back on Smithing, and a couple on Alchemy and Enchanting
• Fought necromage near Ustengrav
• Cut south through Labyrinthian again
• Headed more directly south to Shriekwind Bastion this time
• Discovered Lady Stone
• Fought some mudcrabs and skeletons near Shriekwind
• Cleared Shriekwind with a lot of Stendarr’s Aura for the skeletons, and Wall of Flames and conjuring the dremora lord for the vampires
• Boinged down to Falkreath from Shriekwind; invested in general store there
• Bought things there and at alchemist
• Went north, hunkered down at bandit tower, started throwing storm atronachs and dremora lord at bandits
• Threw storm call shout to hit bandits with lightning; that finally cleared out the bandits
• Proceeded north-ish, wound up riding into Riverwood and onward into Whiterun
• Stopped to do a little smithing at the forge and alchemy at Breezehome
• Slept the night (HI LYDIA!)
• Got up next day to finish selling stuff at Warmaiden’s, and sold more stuff at Arcadia’s
• Headed east from Whiterun
• Sicced my dremora lord on re-spawned Valtheim Towers, because no I am not paying your fucking toll, fuck off bandits
• Veered north across the river after that; spotted dragon flying not far off
• Found Gallows Rock, did not engage, saving that for Companions next run
• Also found Mara’s Eye Pond; this place I did engage, because these vampire fuckers tried to kill me
• Cleared the place by having my dremora lord wipe them all out
• Dremora vs. troll
• Stopped in Windhelm for smithing and enchanting; leveled up to 80, and reactivated Advanced Armors Smithing perk \0/
• Time for training! Boinged to college, and got Alteration training
• Triggered the Kahvozein’s Fang quest with Tolfdir to get dragon heartscales
• Boinged back to Windhelm to a) sell things and b) see if I could trigger a fast travel dragon
• No fast travel dragon, so I just went in and sold stuff
• Went back to look for dragon spotted near Gallows Rock, probably Bonestrewn Crest dragon?
• Killed Ancient Dragon, got soul, not same respawned dragon then?
• Did it in Eastmarch near Darkwater Crossing, using crossbow for highest damage
• Wielded fang in right hand, automatically got heartscales
• Fast traveled back to college to follow up with Tolfdir; got Dragonflesh and Mass Paralysis spells \0/
• Got Conjuration quest off of Phinis; time to go summon a dremora!
• Called unbound dremora up, fought him, got the Sigil Stone
• Y’know i cannot find any fucks to give about pissing off Mehrunes Dagon
• Got flame thrall from Phinis, but oh okay I actually already knew this spell because i’ve run Dragonborn; got his other thrall spells though
• Boinged to Western Watchtower to see if I could get the Ebony Warrior to show up; answer: nope
• Boinged to Heljarchen for smithing and enchanting; made a boatload of weapons and armor pieces, then enchanted a bunch of them until I ran out of soul gems
• Arvak’d back to Whiterun to sell them
• Saved for the night

Commentary

Turns out if you throw a bunch of Conjure Dremora Lord spells every time you enter combat, that’ll level up Conjuration pretty damn quickly. Likewise, throwing Alteration a lot to do the Ebonyflesh spell got my Alteration up. So that got both of those schools trained up enough to do the ritual quests for each one.

Both of them were pretty easy, simple quests. Since I’d gotten the Fang ages ago when I’d run Volskygge, all I had to do was go take out the Ancient Dragon flying around Eastmarch and get its heartscales. So now I have the Dragonflesh and Mass Paralysis spells.

The Conjuration quest was likewise pretty simple, as I just had to call up the unbound dremora a few times, defeat him in battle, and make him agree to go get me a Sigil Stone. Then Phinis gave me access to the various high-tier permanent thrall spells.

Kind of fun comparing the behavior of the unbound dremora I called up to the one I’ve been calling with Conjura Dremora Lord. They look like the same kind of creature, to be sure. According to the wiki, the dremora seem to have a highly ordered, hierarchal society in Oblivion, and apparently a lot of them take pride in serving a powerful master? But if they’re highly intelligent, it certainly makes sense that not all of them would be on board with serving a summoner.

Also amused that the dremora was surly about pissing off Mehrunes Dagon, who was apparently “less than pleased” at losing the Sigil Stone. Me? I have a distinct lack of fucks about pissing off Mehrunes Dagon. 😀

So two down, three to go. I need to throw around a lot more Illusion, Restoration, and Destruction spells. Illusion and Restoration I think can still get one more round of training each, but Illusion and Destruction both need to get to 100 so they’ll take me a bit of extra work.

I finally just realized a thing about the game UI I never noticed before, too–there are progress bars on the various skills that can show me exactly how far along they are. So that’s helpful! Little surprised I never figured that out before now.

Next time

My Illusion and Restoration are both at 84. Illusion has to get to 100, but Restoration only has to get to 90. So if I level up Restoration once more during a combat situation, I should then be able to use training to hit the 90 required to do the Restoration quest. Restoration therefore is likely to be the next thing I get my training in, either in Whiterun or at Fort Dawnguard.

Illusion can take one more round of training, but I will need at minimum another 11 ticks of actually exercising the skill. So I gotta throw around a lot more Pacify and Fear spells! And maybe try wiping out a bandit lair with Frenzy?

My Destruction is at 92 now, so I need eight more ticks of exercising that skill too.

Whether I will get to engage the Ebony Warrior is going to depend on if and when he shows up. So for the time being I need to keep doing what I’m doing, continue my crafting, and finding additional places where I can do some combat.

I’m kinda thinking I may actually try to clear Fort Greymoor or Fort Greenwall. These’ll be more interesting when I’m actually running the civil war plot with the next character–but for the time being they seem like the most immediate source of large numbers of bandits. I’ll do a practice run at the bandit camps near Whiterun too maybe!

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/17/2023: Fixed missing gallery, and added a session number.