Part 31: Solstheim got caves, man.
Solstheim got caves, man.Orv posted:
IIRC (probably not, Solstheim is rich as tits in caves) you should poke around Gloomy Cave some more. Hell, poke around all the caves more. Good shit to be had.
Sure thing, Orv!
Well, this is pretty much the only thing of interest in the cave. Convenient, though, as I somehow left my Steel Blade of Heaven god-knows-where on the mainland.
There was also a chest. I'm pretty sure there were a few health potions in there, but fuck this cave.
As soon as I get outside, I'm greeted by
The battle...goes on for a while. The Rickling Lance, while reliable, lacks a certain bite.
We can fix that! With a high enough enchanting skill, we can wizard up our own items for free! That having been said, DIY constant effect enchantments are pretty much forever out of our reach due to a shitty success formula. If we fail at any enchantment, the soul we used is wasted. Ordinarily this would mean the loss of the soul gem as well, but Azura's Star is immune to this.
The short version of that spiel is that I turned the sword into a fire sword.
Eh, Idunno. It goes boom, but it still kinda sucks.
But now's not the time to worry about weapons. We've got booze to deliver!
Hey, what's that?
Oh, okay, just a monster to kill.
Haha! Van...quished?
Meet Spriggans, everybody! They're unremarkable, but they're carrying Auto-Life materia or some shit, meaning you have to kill each one three times over. We'll be seeing a lot of Spriggans.
Thankfully, they drop these things. Nice alchemy ingredients, and probably decent for wortcraft in a pinch!
Ooh, a cave. Best investigate. After a good night's recovery, of course.
Jesus! No shit, game.
Let's see what this cave has to offer!
I'll say this much about Bloodmoon -- the environments are a bit more interesting than those in the base game, visually.
What the
Well, that enemy was pretty much as advertised.
Whoa, that ice thing looks pretty cool. I'm just gonna
This guy's ugly enough on his own, but, see, I've been playing a lot of Dark Souls. They drop Gravetar, which just sounds super gross and not at all okay to carry around. Also, note that I've just said 'fuck it' and have moved on to using my hammer at this point.
This was a good chest. There wasn't much of interest, but it had a piece of Heartwood! Heartwood also has a Restore Magicka effect, so this gave me a lot of hope. Solstheim can provide me with potions!
Game says come back later.
See? What'd I tell you guys? Solstheim is beautiful. Also, those rocks look like a mutant hand waving to the sky.
What's this? Is this another cave I spy?
Eeyup.
Stick and move, Little Lizard! Dodge his punch and
Hm.
These guys are going to be a thing, aren't they.
After gathering more berries, I realized I didn't have my alchemy tools, so I wound up having to go back to Vvardenfell, steal some new ones and come back to Solstheim. And yes, you can
Oh look, another cave.
It's infested with skeletons!
I'm sorry, skeleton pirates.
Droves of them.
One of them has a key and a note!
Huh. Pretty sure I'll never find that.
Trade-up!
God, what a beautiful
AGH
Meet Fryse Hags! They shoot spells at you, and then they get clubbed to death.
This cave is worth mentioning. It has a very special feature.
The feature is that I'll spare you the details.
This one, however, looks pretty cool.
It's got rats!
And little smuggler dens! Unfortunately, there's nothing good in them, so I move things right along.
Oh hey, there's the fort.
Oh, okay. They're grouchy because someone took away their booze.
Job well done! Have some obsolete trinkets!
We're allowed to pick one guard. One's smart, one's strong.
I go with the smart one, figuring he'll save me the trouble of figuring out this quest to an extent.
And indeed he does!
A bit northeast of the fort, eh?
Welp
The cave is now populated with corrupt guards. They all have paralytic weapons, because, y'know, that's fun. Diligent potion-chugging and damage-dealing gets me through it, though.
Nah. Paralyze, murder, mission accomplished.
Huh. That wasn't like that before.
It took me a bit to figure this out, but Artoria is the guard we didn't choose for the smugglers' cave mission.
She gives us a Nord skull that she's pretty sure these Skald dudes will dig so that we can get their help in figuring this shit out.
A bit of information gathering and we're off to Skald!
There was a cave on the way. It was icy and neat in that regard but eh.
TraveltraveltravelWE'REHERE
Gee, this seems familiar somehow.
We fork over the bones and he goes on and on about how the Imperials have upset the balance of nature by committing the terrible sins of logging and mining. But WE could be the ones to restore sacred naturepower to the Skald!
Fuck that, let's explore.
This guy's son went to the well and never came back. He fell in and presumably wandered into the ice caves connected to the well.
Let's see what we've got here.
Predictably, it starts with a short swim into the main cavern.
Skeletons in the well? That can't be right.
And before we know it, there's Tymvaul! I'm sorry, did you say ARTIFACT OF POWER?
Goddamn. For those of you playing along at home, this robe gives Lizard Wizard roughly 500 more magicka to play with. The Sun Damage effect basically makes us burn in sunlight as if we were a vampire, but thankfully there's nothing we can't do at night, and in the worst-case scenario we can just take it off. No downsides, baby!
Yeah sorry shame about your son gotta go.
A bit of travel later, there's Thirsk! Let's see if we can't find a missionary.
Hm.
Hmm.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
Oh hey there you are. Let's go.
Erich isn't too happy about me releasing his prisoner, but fuck that guy. Dead!
I just wanted to put this in the update somewhere. Bloodmoon has a lot of fun idle NPC speech.
Let's go, Mirisa! These monsters are nothing we can't handle!
Whoops
I see a unique name when I get to the fort, so I decide to talk to it. Someone's been poisoning people with crack. Uh...okay. Good thing we're off to Jeleen anyway!
Yeah sorry about that.
Well, that's blatantly unhelpful. This questline is a dead end for now.
Guess that just leaves us the one option!
In no time at all, the minimap informs us that we're heeeeeeeere!
But I lost one of my dudes. Where'd he get to?
Morrowind
Next time, Raven Rock!