In Which Merawen Gets Final Restoration Training

Yet another “general adventuring and crafting” type session, but featuring doing the Restoration Ritual Quest, and doing quite a bit of treasure hunting.

Highlights

• Session number in this run: 84
• Sold a few more things at Warmaiden’s in Whiterun, and at Honningbrew
• Hoofed it towards Riverwood; spotted painted cow at the crossroads near Honningbrew, and a giant further along the road; got past the giant by casting Muffle on myself
• Stopped in Riverwood to invest in and shop at the trader’s and at the forge
• Proceeded to Lakeview for crafting action
• Pacified a wolf and a bear on the way to practice Illusion
• Did both smithing and enchanting at Lakeview
• Went to unmarked bandit camp south of Guardian Stones; practiced throwing Frenzy at them while invisible and muffled
• Got Treasure Map I, and got the treasure for that map near Riverwood
• Studied Treasure Map II, which is Valtheim Towers
• Went to Honningbrew to sell bandit loot, then headed towards Valtheim
• Encountered Deep-in-His-Cups who demanded to be paid for dare during a night to remember, yay?
• Persuaded him to just take 750 gold; he ran off to buy something for his headache
• Dude, that was several days ago, you’re still hung over? XD
• Found the chest at Valtheim and cleared it
• Treasure Map III was the Solitude Lighthouse, so decided to do Treasure Map IV next since it was closer
• Chest was south-ish and west-ish of Pelagia Farm, had to get help from the wikis to find it
• Fought two sabre cats while looking for that chest; hit them with Wall of Flames and one of them clipped into the ground after I killed it, oops
• Proceeded along the road after that fight; spotted farmer heading off to join the Stormcloaks
• Found a stray dog who followed me when I talked to it, what a good dog
• Thalmor with prisoner, did not challenge me
• Imperials with prisoner, told me to move along as my presence was interfering with Imperial business; my dude, this is an open road
• Farmer heading off to join the Legion
• Passed through Rorikstead; explored Lund’s Hut just off the road
• Stray dog killed the skeevers outside and inside the hut, what a good dog
• Ran into group of bandits about where I expected not far after that by another crossroad, but while I was fighting them a dragon also showed up, so I had to cycle between fighting the bandits and fighting the dragon
• Thankfully the dragon did not fry the doggie! Had to send doggie back to where I found him though, because i was closing in on Robber’s Gorge and there was another dragon flying around–and I wanted to sneak up on the bandits, so barky doggie was a liability
• (Also, I did not want doggie to die)
• Went invisible + muffled; snuck up on bandits, was killed once, killed once, but did better sneaking second time through
• Threw multiple Frenzy Runes as well as direct Frenzy; bandits also killed the Blood Dragon flying around so that was convenient
• Got the bandits to mostly wipe each other out, and got the last one with a dremora summons
• Looted the place; also got down into Robber’s Cove to find the journal down there that led to the loot south at the waterfall
• Slaughterfish tried to get me in the water; was super overloaded and fighting the current, but made it out of the water and got the loot
• Made it back to land and called up Arvak to ride to Solitude; evaded a bear and a cranky dark elf
• Made it to Solitude; sold a bunch of stuff to Gulum-Ei and Beirand at the forge
• Invested in Fihada’s, here, have some money, sorry I robbed you a few months ago whoops wait did I say that out loud?
• Gave 100 gold to Runa when she saw i was home
• Sold stuff at Bits and Pieces
• Stopped at home to drop off some stuff; did a little alchemy, and leveled up to 81 \0/
• Fast traveled to Rorikstead to see if I could re-find the dog; answer, no
• Went by Thalmor + prisoner again, didn’t I see you guys going the same damn way just yesterday?
• Imperials + prisoner again as well
• Vampire masquerade! Why thank you vampires, I needed a reason to work on my Restoration, have you met my favorite Restoration spell? It’s called Stendarr’s Aura and it’s really really sunny here, have some!
• Reactivated Arcane Smithing perk
• Giant, but too far away from the road to be a problem
• Farmer heading off to join the Stormcloaks
• Trio of “why’d you join the Legion?” Imperials
• Potion of Strength ran out near Fort Greymoor, so called up Arvak to ride the rest of the way to Whiterun
• Smithed a bit and sold a bit at the forge; sold a bit at Belethor’s and Arcadia’s
• Got final Restoration training from Danica
• Went to college for Restoration Ritual Quest
• Colette pointed me at the Augur; he was all “are you ready to be tested?”
• Just threw a couple ghosts at me and made me defend myself with Restoration magic; that was easy?
• Also, it kinda left me naked, so WTF, Augur, was this your excuse to see me without my clothes on? 😉 I mean, you don’t have eyes any more, but still
• Got Bane of the Undead spell which I do not have the magicka to cast?
• Dropped a few things off in Arch-Mage’s quarters
• Bought a crapton of soul gems off of Faralda
• Got new Aftershock quest off of Tolfdir as magic anomalies can get me grand souls to fill my soul gems; boinged to Whiterun to do that
• Flyby dragon near Swindler’s Den
• Cleared the rupture, fairly prolonged fight as I was trying to hit the anomalies with my Bound Sword so I could soul-capture them
• Trekked east across plains to Whiterun and hunted on the way to fill some of the smaller soul gems, and also get hides for leather and any other materials
• Shopped a bit at Warmaiden’s
• Boinged to Windstad; killed a giant who came up to the house
• Did smithing, enchanting, and dropping off stuff
• Boinged to Solitude Lighthouse to follow up on Treasure Map III; chest found and cleared
• Boinged around a bit to try to find map VI
• Killed a couple of dremora at the Shrine to Dagon
• Killed a trio of bandits at the Lord Stone
• Finally found the map on the dead Bosmer after readjusting what route I took from Volunruud as my starting point
• Went to Korvanjund to actually find the treasure; alerted a few bandits on site, sicced my dremora lord on them while i cleared the chest
• Boinged to Whiterun for more smithing, alchemy, and selling
• Boinged to Solitude; sold stuff to Gulum-Ei
• Dropped off a few things and slept the night at Proudspire
• Sold a few more things at the forge in the morning
• Headed south from the city
• Frost dragon by Meeko’s Shack! Took it out with lightning and fire
• (Also how the hell does mage fire not cause major forest fires? Particularly if I’m throwing Wall of Flames around? Answer: game mechanics, sure, but from a purely IC perspective, o.O?)
• Headed east from the fight with the dragon, intending to get to Windhelm
• Went past Fort Snowhawk; Apprentice Necromancer right in the road tried to be a problem
• Lady, I tried to go around you, but no you had to be all “BACK OFF”
• Hit her with some destruction magic action while I sicced the dremora on her skeletons
• Found an unowned horse not far east from there
• Also found a snowy sabre cat who attacked me and which also pissed off the horse
• Threw a Pacify on the cat, but didn’t want to leave it alone because I knew that when the Pacify wore off, it would attack the horse
• Pacify wore off! And I had to kill the cat; the horse helped!
• Decided to ride horse at least for a bit
• Evaded one troll; did not evade the second snowy sabre cat, which killed the horse after I dismounted to fight; RIP horse, you were a good horse
• Made it to Nightgate Inn; stayed the night, chatted with the innkeeper about his family inn and the well to do orc customer they have who’s paid up for several months
• Orc is apparently a writer? Oh okay wiki says he’s actually the Gourmet, ha!
• (But you don’t get to interact with him until you kill him for the Dark Brotherhood, so since I wiped out the Dark Brotherhood, fear not Balagog, your secret is safe with me)
• Went to Windhelm the next morning, leveled up to 82 via more smithing 😀
• Boinged to mage college; bought five rounds of training from Drevis
• Parked in the Arch-Mage quarters; stuffed a bunch of soul gems in one of the barrels, and saved for the night

Commentary

Slowly but surely getting there. Three mage college quests down, two more to go. As of this session my Illusion reached 90 and my Destruction reached 92. So I clearly have a lot more exercising of these skills that I need to do before I can do those quests.

I’m also now at level 82. Still no sign of the Ebony Warrior, though I’ve visited three different cities now. I may have to find reasons to set foot in Markarth or Riften this next session, just to vary things up a bit and see where he finally spawns.

However, I’ve decided that if he doesn’t spawn before I do those final two quests, I will proceed to finishing off the main quest. I left off with needing to go to the Jarl of Whiterun and getting him on board with the whole “trapping a dragon” plan!

And I feel like level 84 or 85 might be in range by the time Merawen finally stands down? Just because I know I’ll get in some combat just getting through Skuldafn, with the draugr and dragons that’ll be between me and the portal to Sovngarde. We’ll just have to see how far along I am when I get back to the main plot.

I think I feel clearing Fort Greymoor or maybe Fort Greenwall coming on next session. Possibly also Treva’s Watch, or some more treasure hunting? Going to play it by ear!

One more thing I’ll note– don’t know if this is a side effect of this game going longer than Alarrah’s or what, but it seems like I’ve triggered more glitchy behavior lately. Had two separate graphical glitches in this session, as I’ve shown in the screenshots. And there was that recent incident as well with me getting the dialogue prompt for a vampire masquerade encounter before I found the actual vampires. Hopefully this won’t continue to be a problem as I finish up Merawen’s run? We’ll see!

And, note to self: no matter how tempting it is to ride a random horse I find on the road, no honey, don’t ride it. It’ll just get killed by the next sabre cat or bear or troll I run into! SIGH.

And here Merawen was going to be all “somebody probably owns this horse, I’ll take him to the stable at Windhelm and hand him off to somebody who can take care of him”. But no. Got killed by a sabre cat. Sorry, horse! You were a good horse.

Screenshots

Editing to add

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