So a day in the life of a huntress. Started out camped in Rorikstead's Pridelands.
I got up bright and early, ate a quick meal of goat haunch and tea, and headed out.
Ran into a wolf pack, several of them actually. They pose little threat to me, and that is obvious. Unfortunately, they are obviously dumb. They get slaughtered, skinned, and quartered. Their pelts aren't worth anything, I turn it into leather, and their meat doesn't sell for much; I leave it behind. The real prize requires digging deeper, wolf eyes and wolf teeth both have damage health and lingering damage health, great for poisons. And wolf hearts and skeever tails can be combined (ravage+damage health) if I decide to hate someone especially hard that day.
Then Elk, I run into at least a dozen herds of these every time I leave. Skinned and quartered them. Pelts are more useful as leather, and the alchemy ingredients are pretty useless. The meat sells well and they give a lot of it, but if another morsel of venison passes through these lips it'll be too soon.
And of course, the cats of the pridelands, sabre cats, panthers, and lions. Nasty things. Saber cats and panthers are easy to deal with as they're always solitary, but lions always come in packs and have some sort of psychic power that alerts every other lion for miles it seems. Pelts fetch incredibly high prices, meat not so much. Alchemical ingrediants aren't really of note; one exception are the eyes, they're the only source of healing potions in the area; if combined with wheat that's been "appropriated" from nearby Rorikstead.
One special thing today was the mammoths, their hide isn't worth much, but it gives a lot of leather. And the same with their meat, I can easily carve 500 cuts (and that's at the lowest meat setting) from a single carcass. However, the real prize are the bones, which are very useful in scrimshaw.
Unfortunately, they always seem to be guarded by giants, and the mammoths are pretty hardy themselves. Fighting giants and mammoths on master difficulty with fists and a pigsticker bone bow is not fun.
As luck would have it though, the giant was distracted by a group of bandits, and had chased them far from his mammoths. Not looking a gift-horse in the mouth, I coated my arrows with ravage/damage health poison and aced the mammoths through sneak damage. I ran in, butchered/skinned them both, and was out, just as the giant sent the last necromancer into the stratosphere. While I was after the bones themselves, little did I know that the alchemy ingredients would play a for more important role in the near future.
Other small animals exist, nothing of real note; aside from mudcrabs, whose chitin can instantly cure disease.
Then of course, there's the two-legged prey, bandits give leather and iron/steel ingots, Vigilants of Stendarr give shiny trinkets, Necromancers and Thalmor agents give expensive clothing, and the war rages on with throngs of Stormcloaks and Imperial forces mixing it up; they have this habit of clustering up in large clusters that are quite inviting for an opportunistic explosion.
I ran into one such group; wiped them all out with two well placed grenades. Picked through their bodies for leather/iron/steel gear to break down. Fully loaded, I left for home.
Now, about the grenades. They're part of the flintlock rifle mod, and I allow myself them as crowd control due to not using any magic aside from alteration, not using any weapons, not using any armor, and not smithing stuff aside from iron equipment and tools. They do come at a steep cost, black powder, lead ingots, and fire salts.
Lead ingots can be refined from iron ingots and are not an issue. Black powder though, uses fire salts, and the grenades themselves need more fire salts. Fire salts only come from Flame Atronachs, which are not very plentiful. Alchemy shops don't sell very many, and when they do it's at very steep prices due to Trade and Barter's introduction of prejudice vs the so called "unsavory races".
That leaves exactly one good source of fire salts. On one hand, that source also has black powder. On the other hand, that source is a respawning level 50 NPC "The Outsider" that is armed with a flintlock rifle and the skill to turn it into a long range, perfectly accurate, hitscan dragonbone crossbow with stagger.
So I had three choices, I could try to pickpocket him with no training in pickpocket. Try to kill him and probably get shot in the face for my efforts. Or take a third option.
First I ran home and began crafting. The armor was broken down into leather and ingots and stashed, the mammoth meat was salted and preserved, and the bones were put to use. A masterwork bone bow, perfect bone arrows, and masterwork bone knife. Those items are created via Hunterborn's scrimshaw, which is a different building tree; and after butchering a ton of animals to get the required skill. The knife has decent stats but I only use for carving. The bow and arrows are about as strong as ebony, but can't be improved (though they do get an innate 25% bonus to enchantments like stalhrim stuff does). Finally, I broke down the camp so I could leave ASAP.
And then the most important step: Combining mammoth heart and canis root to make paralysis poison. The plan was simple and went mostly without a hitch. Run in, shoot him in the face, pickpocket the stuff, and run away screaming. I say "mostly", because as I was almost out of there; I get clipped by a rifle bullet and lose 3/4 of my health and am thrown forward several feet. I'm just lucky it wasn't a crit.
As I'm about to leave the area, I pass nearby "Pride Rock". A whole pride of lions are lounging at the edge of the clip. I calculate the trajectory, take aim, and launch, thus making sure the Lion King never has a sequel.
Swapping to werewolf form for faster travel (actual fast travel is disabled), I run, run, and run some more. And somehow I end up south of Dragonbridge. I swap back to regular form, and pick up something called "Strange Brew". Supposedly it unlocks more brewing recipes. The more immediate and noticeable effect is that it makes me dead drunk. After stumbling around a bit (it ragdolls you occasionally). I run into town and find a mountain goat. So I punch it to death; except it wasn't a mountain goat, it was a farm goat, and I just got a bounty. As guard came up and tells me to pay up; I give him the finger and run back across the bridge. Except, as luck would have it, I stumble and tumble off the side of the bridge towards the rocks below.
Thinking fast and lamenting that I haven't saved since before I robbed the Outsider. I suddenly remembered, the mammoth's heart! I ate the heart, which has paralysis as its first effect. The player can survive long falls if he/she is paralyzed. I bounce off the rocks and land in the river, floating away.
I end up somewhere near a farm that's near Solitude. I'm immediately accosted by a guard, this time I use my thieves' guild influence to pay off my bounty, a whole TWO gold!
It's almost dark out, and my lantern needs oil; so I'm about to settle down. Suddenly "Assault has started!" and two blood dragons wing in from the skies.
I run away. Luckily, one dragon flies off to burn down the farm, the other comes after me. A short and brutal battle commences, culminating between one final exchange. With both of us low on health, it hovers above and breathes fire. I blow the attack away with unrelenting force, and desperately lob a grenade at it.
Time slows as the game enters killcam, tracking the grenade's slow flight as it slams into the dragon's stomach and explodes; finishing it.
I walk towards its corpse and carve it. Dragon heart, dragon's blood, eye of dragon, dragon scales/bones, and 100 units of dragon meat.
I drop down my base trapdoor, head in, and fix up a quick dinner of wyrm and chips; throw everything I can't use or preserve into the trader's mailbox for sale. Then I unroll my bedroll and fall asleep.
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Topic: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Read 1621775 times)