In Which Delga Rescues a Vampire and Searches for a Moth Priest

Primary goal of this session was moving the Dawnguard plot further along, from the point where I rescue Serana to the point where she and I are looking for the Moth Priest.

With a side helping of killing a whole bunch of dragons, getting issues with the Standing Stones sorted, and selling and stashing stuff in Whiterun!

(This post is going up on Thursday 12/23, but this is actually for the play session done on Tuesday 12/21.)

Highlights

• Play date: 12/21/2021
• Session number in this run: 52
• Resumed Dimhollow Crypt; took out the Draugr Deathlord that’d been fighting the vampire and death hound
• Killed once by Nightmaster Vampire partway through the dungeon; got him second time through!
• Got through to Serana and got her freed
• Got word for the Drain Vitality Shout, and Necromantic Healing spell
• Got out of dungeon and fast traveled to Lover Stone, intending to queue it up as the Stone effect to have in the Aetherial Crown
• Two dragons hit me there–Frost and Ancient, and killed by Ancient 🙁
• Thrown back to coming out of Dimhollow; tried to come to Lover Stone again
• Got both dragons again but Ancient flew off; killed Frost, and also a bear
• Did not completely loot dragon because I knew it’d overload me if I did
• Triggered Lover Stone to get Steed into the crown (but didn’t do it right, discovered that later)
• Fast traveled to Rimerock Burrow to get to Castle Volkihar; dropped off Serana and said “no thank you” to Harkon, who blipped me back out to the beach
• Fucked up dealing with Standing Stones though; tried blipping between the stones a couple of times, and even tried going to the Guardian Stones; wound up marooned at Guardian Stones without Steed Stone active
• Whirlwind Sprinted into Riverwood; waited till morning, then sold stuff to Alvor and Lucan
• Not quite unburdened enough to fast travel yet, so did drawn bow + sneak trick to get back to Whiterun; killed two wolves en route
• Dropped off metric crapton of stuff in Breezehome
• Set Heavy Armor skill Legendary, and dropped all Heavy Armor perks recovered on Archery
• Switched off to dragonscale armor
• Boinged to Lover Stone to try it again; killed two bandits that had killed a peddler
• Boinged to Steed Stone; Blood Dragon attacked, but it also flew off and attacked something else and got killed by it, so I didn’t get the soul off of that one
• Did stones wrong again though, had to boing back to Lover Stone, finally realized I had to do Lover without the crown on, Steed with the crown on, so did one more round of boinging between them
• Finally did it right, then was able to get on with business and boing to mage college for training
• Then boinged to Fort Dawnguard and triggered initial fight with attacking vampires; killed by master vampire >_<
• Thrown back to mage college; take two of battle, this time I got through!
• Talked to Isran, updated him on situation, got mission to go find Sorine and Gunmar
• Boinged to Dragontooth Crater to try to find Sorine
• Forsworn vs. Peddler, but also two more fucking dragons; finally killed by Ancient Dragon
• Thrown back to coming out of conversation with Isran; boinged to find Sorine, take two
• Two dragons again, this time a Frost and a Blood Dragon, one of them was probably Dragontooth Crater dragon respawned? Successfully killed both \0/
• Successfully recruited Sorine and even gave her one of the gyros she was looking for
• Got Gunmar also successfully recruited
• Returned to Fort Dawnguard for next convos with Isran and Serana; got the mission to find a Moth Priest
• Got gear from Gunmar, and also the Sun Fire spellbook from Sorine and her first quest for crossbow work
• Boinged to mage college to talk to Urag about the Moth Priest; he pointed me to Dragon Bridge
• Decided to head to Dragon Bridge on foot to exercise Heavy Armor some and work on regaining lost points–and because I actually like the Dawnguard Heavy Armor on Delga better than the Light
• Fought a snow bear
• Passed noble on horse + Imperial escort
• Fought an ice wraith
• Fought a couple more necromancers pissy about Malyn Varen, but Serana got stuck in attack mode, and I couldn’t break her out of it; had to roll back to previous save at college
• Fought a snow bear, take two
• Spotted a Dawnguard NPC on a horse going past us, no idea who it might have been, but I recognized the armor
• Fought cultists; one yelled “Your false reign ends now!” Reign? What reign? Dude, I am literally just trying to kill vampires, fuck all the way off now
• Hi Fort Kastav!
• Frost troll vs. goat; I killed the troll, Serana raised the goat XD
• Hi Fort Dunstad!
• Vampire ran by looking for shelter maybe?
• Female Dunmer thief; yes hon, I am in fact going to walk away from you
• Found Frostmere Crypt and triggered the Pale Lady quest, but I think I’ll come back for that later
• Fought frost troll
• Talsgar spotted from the back? Not sure it was him but the clothes looked right
• Hi M’aiq the Liar!
• Fought two cave bears at Brood Cavern
• Also hi there respawned Eldersblood Peak dragon, I see you flying around back there
• Reached Orotheim finally, and saved there for the night before getting the crossbow schematic

Commentary

Apparently, I have a real hard time remembering that in order to take advantage of the Aetherial Crown’s ability to store an extra Standing Stone effect, I have to:

1. Go to the Stone I want to be in the crown, without the crown on, and trigger it
2. Go to the Stone I want to be the active effect, with the crown on, and trigger it

End result: Stone number 1 winds up in the crown, Stone number 2 winds up being the active one.

I apparently was well aware of this when I wrote about Merawen doing this, and it fell completely the fuck out of my brain this time through. I boinged around between Stones three or four times this session!

So official note here for Future Me: try to remember how this works next time through, mmkay?

Second thing I want to note here is holy crap, there were a high number of multi-dragon encounters in this session. I had this happen once or twice as Merawen, but it seems like it’s happening significantly more often as Delga. Which makes me wonder if there’s something in play here that scales up with the difficulty level? If I try to play with Legendary difficulty, am I going to be looking at encounters with three dragons?

(Which is a simultaneously scary and exciting thought. Because y’all know I will be working my way up to Legendary difficulty, right? Because I am that kind of completist.)

Other than the above things, mostly this session was all about getting the Dawnguard plot officially underway. So far this is playing through like the previous sessions did, including triggering one of Sorine’s “go fetch me a schematic” side quests.

I’m feeling a little ambivalent about the Dawnguard side quests this time through. As I’ve written before, I really don’t like the Hide and Seek quest, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to play through at least some iterations of the other quests if I want to get Sorine all of her schematics.

And I do. I really like the fancier crossbows and exploding bolts! So I guess we’ll have to see how this plays out.

This time through I’m not yet married, and I haven’t adopted any kids. So if I have to head into a town, at least there’s slightly less risk if the Traveler shows up!

Also, now that I’m officially in the Dawnguard I’ve also gotten some of their armor. As I did with Merawen, I actually bought two full sets of it, just because the pieces that Gunmar gave me were a mix of Light and Heavy. As of this writing Light Armor is now my dominant armor skill, but on the other hand, I think I actually like the Heavy Armor better on Delga. I like the shoulder guards, they give a breadth that I think suits her built well.

So for the time being I’m still wearing the Heavy Armor, and also trying to avoid fast traveling too much just to get additional opportunities for combat. And by extension, exercising the Heavy Armor skill to regain skill points on it as fast as possible. With the Aetherial Crown on, this works pretty well!

Next time

Left off about to run the Orotheim dungeon and get Sorine the first of her schematics. After that, it’ll be off to Dragon Bridge to find that missing Moth Priest!

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/20/2023: Restored missing gallery, and added play date and session number markers. Also, slight edit to the text talking about how to hit the Standing Stones with the Aetherial Crown, to keep the site from trying to hotlink things that shouldn’t have been hotlinked.