Episode 3: We're off on the road to Seyda Neen. We certainly do get mushrooms. (boomp ditty boomp ditty boomp)I'd head to Seyda Neen
To Seyda Neen!
This!
i say head to Seyda Neen
Ahh, Seyda Neen. You know that little hamlet like the back of your hand. Maybe even better. You've certainly spent more time looking at it than you have looking at your hand. Full of conviction, you immediately set off down the road in the direction of Seyda Neen.
But this is Morrowind. Obviously you can't just
walk anywhere.
use acrobatics
Acrobatics
plus one to Frumple's idea of trying to improve our acrobatics skill.
jumping, either in place or to wherever we're going would probably be a good idea
You pause for a moment to look at your feet. Acrobatics seems like a good place to start skill training.
"Well, here goes," you say to noone in particular.
*jump*
"Ok. That's not so bad."*jump* *jump* *jump*
This is a lot more work than spamming spacebar, but after a few more tries you get a rhythm down and are able to jump/walk at the same time. The end result is sort of like skipping really high. You make it about thirty feet before you collapse.
"Ok," you pant heavily from the ground,
"I can do this. But right now...rest."You lie on your back and close your eyes. Briefly. Memory of that mudcrab's pincers prompts you to quickly sit up and look around. Fortunately you don't see anything dangerous. Checking the sky, no cliff racers either. Anyway, you're not sure if you've "skilled up" acrobatics at all, but obviously you do have fatigue. Actually, in a way, Morrowind isn't so different from real life. You're sure if you were you to run around and jump a lot you'd tire quickly but you'd get better at it regardless of whether you were in Morrowind or not. That's basically what you just did.
Might just take some time.
seeing if there's anything along the way that can be harvested.
As you stand up to resume jumping, you happen to glance over at the nearby trees and see a familiar sight.
Tree mushrooms! Bungler's Bane and...what was it called? Hypha something? Hypha facia? Yeah, that's it. And, as expected, walking around the bush you see more mushrooms on the other side of the tree. But...which is which?
Comparing the three on the left with the two on the right you can see they're obviously different, but from actually looking at the mushroom themselves without the benefit of the in-game mouseover text, you really can't tell which is which.
"Well, that's ok," you think. You'll just take them all and figure it out later.
But that introduces another problem. The mushrooms are
big. Fully 14 to 16 inches across each. They don't weigh much, but sheer volume is likely to prevent you from carrying too many. You manage to pull all five mushrooms off the tree, keeping them mostly intact, but quick estimate from how much space they take up you doubt you could fit many more than a dozen of them in your backpack. Maybe 15 at most.
Well, that's a problem for later. You feel rested up now and you resume jumping along the road. It's exhausting trying to cover any significant distance by jumping, and you have to stop to rest every 15-20 seconds, but after a few minutes it pays off, as you feel a definite change throughout your body.
Skill gain: Acrobatics skill is now 1Pausing to rest and celebrate your victory, it occurs to you that you're definitely recovering faster than you feel like you would have in real life. After 15 seconds of jumping you're exhausted, but within 20 seconds you feel perfectly fine to resume. Not entirely conclusive, but it definitely seems that there are at least some game mechanics at work here.
Looking around while you rest, you once again spy some mushrooms on the side of the road.
Violet Coprinus, or...what's the other one? Luminous Russula? Yeah, you're not sure which but you're pretty sure it's one of those two. They're all needed for Ajira's quests at the mage guild, but they're not ingredients that you ever really used for anything. Plus, most of the time you never actually bothered gathering ingredients yourself past the first 20 minutes of a new game because it was always so much easier to simply buy whatever you needed from vendors. Well, this too can be sorted out later.
But looking at the mushrooms, again you have the same problem as before: they're
huge. Each mushroom is bigger than your head. You're not sure you can even fit one of them in your backpack without removing the tree mushrooms you already have. How is this supposed to work?
Suddenly the obvious occurs to you: in game, when picking alchemy materials, the mushrooms and plants and things didn't actually disappear from the world. You probably don't actually need the whole mushroom or the whole plant for alchemy. Just scrapings or something. Just leaves, or just stems or just...some particular part and the rest isn't useful. Just like how if you want to eat apples you don't need to uproot the entire tree.
Unfortunately, you don't actually know anything about alchemy yourself so you don't know which parts are useful. So, best you can do, you uproot one of the two mushrooms, break the stem and cap apart and squeeze them both into your backpack. Not much room left in their now. It smells really good. A lot like button mushrooms from a grocery store. You're tempted to try tasting the other one you can't fit, but you decide to pass for now. Best case it feeds you and you learn something, but worst case you end up paralyzed or something and passing wildlife tears you to bits. It's just not worth the risk right now.
just to the southeast should be Tarhiel
You resume jumping along the road, checking the sky for cliff racers and falling people. You see neither. You do see a couple more mushrooms and a draggle tail plant or two, but lacking room in your backpack you decide to pass for now and simply continue on to Seyda Need. If you want, you can always come back later.
You briefly wonder at the implications of not having seen Tarhiel on the way, but for now, you just don't have any answers. Maybe you just...missed him somehow? Yeah, that must be it. Obviously.
Known statsAcrobatics: 1
Status:Healthy and sated.
InventoryWorn:
* Denim pants, with pockets containing: cellphone and wallet with picture ID and $30 in cash
* "20% cooler" Rainbow Dash t-shirt,
* Tennis shoes
Backpack:
* Yellow notepad with 60 pages left
* 1 pen
* 3 mushrooms that are probably either Bungler's Bane or Hypher Facia
* 2 mushrooms that are also probably either Bungler's Bane or Hypher Facia
* 1 mushroom that's probably either Violet Coprinus or Luminous Russula
What do you do?