Playing lots of Skyrim

 Lately, I've been playing a lot of Skyrim. It started with me finally deciding to tackle one of the mods I had installed. It's called Blackland. You can teleport to it from Riverwood's Inn. And only from there. Or you risk crashing your game. So I did, I teleported there. And immediately, I was surprised by something. It put me in a legitimate cutscene. I had absolutely no control over my character. And I'm not talking about having to sit through an unskippable dialogue, like with the Daedra. No, the character de-quipped her weapons and even moved and sat down. And that was definitely something new. 

Yeah, you get scenes in the vanilla Skyrim where you stand and watch something happen, but even with that, your character doesn't move on its own. Or at least not to this extent. I mean, my PC sat down, on a fucking chair. And that was just one of several instances of this throughout the mod. 

The mod features several quests. There is a main quest and some... Well, not really side quests, but additional quests. You can choose to ignore them, but if you want to do them, you need to understand that some of them are linked. Completion of certain quests and obtaining the reward is a prerequisite to finishing some of the other quests. A hint for you - The Fire in the Deep, or whatever the quest is called. In a Faal Danik Dilon ruin (excuse the spelling), you need to leave this one for last. Or at least do about three other quests first. The Golem quests are necessary. Because the reward you get from them is needed to complete the Faal Danik Dilon. 

I think I finished almost all the quests. The only ones I think I missed (didn't do), are the sun gazing dude on the mountain and the final tier in the Arena. I just really wanted to go back to Skyrim and well... Decided that those two could wait. Or, maybe I'll just leave them forever. I don't know yet. Maybe I will go back to Blackland and maybe I won't.

The one thing I was a bit iffy about is the fact that it's hard to find some of the quests or even force them to start. Yes, I'm talking about the one where you have to lead the follower to a tree and sit down. But at the same time, I don't think it's the mod's fault. I think it's some follower conflict or something. I don't know. I try to not use followers. But at one point, it seems like my PC is no longer able to make followers actually follow. It made Boethiah's Calling rather impossible without the console. So I cheated. 

I cheated in Blackland as well. Mostly because some of the doors that were supposed to let me through closed on me before I was able to walk through. So I just no-clipped through. I had to do this multiple times. Still, even with this, the mod was interesting. Yes, it's not perfect, but it's a good mod. Close to par with Falskaar. But decidedly on a smaller scale. You don't have such a large map when it comes to Blackland. 

I do have to say that I hated that stealth mini-game. I don't do stealth. Not that kind of stealth. And even when I tried, the guy would just run in there and ruin everything. I should have done it on easy mode and just electrocute them all. They would have died so fast they wouldn't have even known. 

But Blackland is not the only reason I've been playing a lot of Skyrim. Honestly, I don't even know if I have a specific reason. I just like to loot and then have the things break so that I can equip something else. I love playing with Loot and Degradation installed. Which, now that I think about it, Blackland offers some kind of a bastardized version of that. I decided against doing that as Loot and Degradation works well for me. 

But I was looking for an enchanting overhaul. Sadly, I didn't find anything that would be at least close to what I wanted. Like, disenchant moded items. I have some enchanted things. I think with water walking or something, and I wanted to disenchant it and put it on a new item together with another enchantment. But sadly, no mod that would let you disenchant everything. Not the way I want. So I've given up and I'm gonna revisit the issue when I feel like it. I mean, it wasn't even my main character. So who cares. 

My main character is the best. Even has most of the quests finished. Which is why I'm always looking for new quest mods that are worth my time. Heh, which is why it was a bummer when I accidentally overwrote the save with another character. Good thing I had a backup. Even if it was older and I had to do some of the quests again. And that was a pain. So, glad it happened some time back and not too recently. 

Now for the real reason, I'm writing this. I'm waiting for the newest episode of Detective Conan to load sufficiently. So that I can watch it without having to wait while it buffers. I hate it when it does that. 
And then I have to go and check if two other episodes that I'm waiting for are finally out. 

~AnnElfwind

Written on the 19th of September, 2020