Alduin, you’re going down!
THE WORLD-EATER’S EYRIE
Have you done everything you wanted? Geared up for the final quests? Good, let’s go! The Dragonborn climbs onto Odahviing and is carried away to the distant temple of Skuldafn, located so far off-map that players can’t get there except by riding a dragon. The place feels like a final dungeon; it’s meant to put all of your skills to the test, and by all the Gods of Tamriel, it does!
This isn't even a Death Overlord, just a Deathlord. |
To reach the roof of the dungeon, we need to walk inside and make our way up. There are more draugr in there, as well as several puzzles (some of which are actually quite tricky!). Again: A test of all your skills, as any well-developed final dungeon ought to be. Just before leaving the dungeon, what was waiting for Nikhaolaas? A draugr death overlord, in case deathlords weren’t overkill already. And what’s outside? Well, more of these undead, of course!
I did try to keep as few items with me as possible, but I had a hunch I would be fighting these. I had three weapons with me: A sword that can capture souls into gems (since those are necessary to power up a weapon whose enchantment has run out of power and I was afraid I’d run out of filled gems); my trusted ebony sword that sets everything it hits on fire; and Dawnbreaker, obtained in a side-quest (I’ll discuss those later), which has nifty bonus effects when used to kill undead monsters. For armor, my dragonplate set did the trick.
Your mask is the only one I've yet to collect! |
SOVNGARDE
Man, for the Nord afterlife, this place is really misty. According to the few souls we meet, it’s unusual for this place – Alduin seems to be causing this mist. Thankfully, we can clear it with the Clear Skies shout. Sovngarde is actually quite a nice place. I hope I won’t get to see it again anytime soon once this is over. What’s interesting is that while you walk around this area, you can actually meet some of the NPCs that died over the course of your playthrough. That’s clever!
Too bad I can't stick around, those look yummy. |
DRAGONSLAYER
It's time to end the World-Eater! |
Chances are that the Dragonborn is even mightier than he was during the fight on the Throat of the World. To top it off, the old Nord heroes are there to help as well. The result? A final boss fight that’s easier than the previous battle against the same opponent. I’ll admit I struggled, but not nearly as much. I also quickly realized that the cooldown for the Dragonnrend shout was short enough that I could simply do it again before the dragon could escape from it, leaving Alduin incapable of flying away, and chip away at his health until the World-Eater was defeated.
Alduin might return someday. This day isn't anytime soon. |
And thus ends the main quest, roll credits. Or not. You can watch the end credits from the main menu anyway.
However, Nikhaolaas can’t go and rest on his laurels just yet. There are so many other quests to do here!
QUESTING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
I felt bad helping the Forsworn in Markarth that one time, so I went to their lair where they thought they were safe and I murdered them all. |
Or a player could just go into every dungeon and clear every area that can be cleared. As I mentioned already, that’s what I started with – after becoming Thane of Whiterun, I travelled far and wide across Skyrim to find all of the areas one could find.
There’s just a couple details about this project that ought to be mentioned.
Some dungeons are bigger on the inside. Kagrenzel, as an example, is small, but leads to a gigantic underground cave (one of several around Skyrim). |
Back in Part 2, I mentioned owning a home in a hold and upgrading it. The reason is pretty simple; if you go questing around, you very quickly collect a lot of items, and will need some place to store all of it. Early on, you don’t make a ton of money selling back items, so you might often want to hold off on selling some of your better stuff. You eventually collect a lot of soul gems, precious stones, crafting materials, weapons and armor that you might never wear, and your carrying capacity soon feels incredibly limited. Even if you use your follower as a pack mule, they may have sworn to carry your burdens, there’s only so much they can take. (On the other hand, equip a battle-capable follower with the second best gear you find and the weapons you don’t use, and they become a better fighter than you.)
Even with a map, good luck keeping up with what you’ve gone through and what you haven’t. The map will show everything of interest: Standing Stones, towns, solitary cabins, ruins, caves, sepulchers, dragon peaks… Only some of those can be marked cleared, and even then not always. On top of not every dungeon being available until you reach the associated quest, some dungeons just… straight-up don’t have a marked boss! For the record, that’s how a dungeon gets marked cleared – you killed the monster marked as a boss within its walls once. You can come back many in-game months later, the dungeon’s boss will be back (or different), you can kill it again, but the dungeon has been cleared already. Yet some places cannot be cleared, no matter how often you go through them. I used a map on Microsoft Paint, crossing off every area I had cleared, and yet I was still confused at times!
Not even halfway through with those, Christ. |
If you can live with all this, have fun exploring to your heart’s content!
"GET A HORSE!"
♪♫"I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road..."♪♫ |
Now let's get into the problems around horses. The player can only climb on or get off a horse after sheathing their weapon, and the process is very long. Akatosh help you if you encounter any enemies while on a horse, as you can fight on horseback but it's extremely impractical and best avoided. Hell, your horse is an extra target for enemies, and while they can fight, they go down in a handful of hits. It's very easy to lose your steed. And of course, climbing up a mountain works well, but the horse is not very resistant to falls - you better hope you're not going down a cliff too steep.
Honestly, the only reason I keep a horse is because I need some way to fast-travel. Other than that, it's more impractical than useful.
THE CIVIL WAR
Okay, that didn't happen to me, but seriously - It sounds fucking awesome to fight against a flying skeleton dragon. |
That’s unfortunately the case with the Civil War, which is integrated to the main plot fairly late, but at least it doesn’t detract for too long from killing Alduin. One way or another, you will meet the two factions during your travels, hear their motivations and see what they’re all about. When the time comes to join the Imperials or the Stormcloaks, you’ll have a bit of an idea which group feels less scummy to you.
However, for all the buildup, fanfare and preparation that you can feel behind this questline, the end result feels lackluster. There’s so much to read about the History of Skyrim, and how these factions came to be. There’s decent and horrible people on both sides, and good arguments either way. I personally couldn’t be brought to care, because dragons were swarming and a World-Eater was on the loose. The petty political squabbles should wait.
Then again, it’s close to reality; we fucked up the planet so bad it’s trying to kill us all, and we keep on with our political squabbles anyway.
In the end, the quests you’ll be doing for the side you’ve joined won’t really differ all that much from the quests you’d be doing if you were on the opposite side. It’s also usually the same types of missions you might have done multiple times before. It may be that I’ve grown too attached to the place, but whatever faction you choose, shit’s gonna go sour for Whiterun, and I don't want that. I love that place too much, it’s literally home for my Dragonborn right now. Last but not least, there is no perfect ending to that conflict – one side wins, there are losses for the other side and for Whiterun. So yeah – I ain’t delving too deep within that questline, though from it you can get your hands on some cool gear, including a crown that doubles as armor headgear.
Dayum, I could get used to wearing a crown, if it looks that cool. (Note: No quest allows you to become High King of Skyrim.) |
See you in Part 5 for everything else.
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