Skyrim 100% Maximized Legendary Playthrough - 295. Bilegulch Mine

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40/30 Gaming

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1,450

Published on July 24, 2023 1:15:04 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk8IL2LmIII

Game:

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 28:28

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The last couple of days we've been taking care of things that we ideally need to do before getting into the Dark Brotherhood questline. Now I will freely admit that today's particular item is not actually required, as the USLEEP mod takes care of the related issue, but I'm going to do it anyway, both as a PSA as well as out of a healthy sense of paranoia, since I've been burned so badly by this issue in the past.

The issue in question involves the Hearthfire DLC. As part of the Dark Brotherhood questline you have to kill Helvard, who is the housecarl of Siddgeir, Jarl of Falkreath. In the original game, killing Helvard lowers your reputation with Siddgeir (even if you're not caught) such that he will no longer allow you to buy Lakeview Manor as part of Hearthfire. This bug never got patched by Bethesda, and the only possible in-game workaround is to have Falkreath taken over by the Stormcloaks as part of the civil war, in which case you can then buy the land from Dengeir.

I bought Skyrim the day of its release for the XBox, and that's where I played it for many, many years. On my original character I completed both the Dark Brotherhood and Civil War questlines, the latter in favor of the Imperials. Then when the Hearthfire DLC came out I found myself in this predicament, unable to buy one of the three new houses. This was unbearably galling from my standpoint as a completionist. Not only was I missing one of the houses in-game, but it also meant I couldn't complete some of the Hearthfire achievements as well (at least on that original character). I thought this bug was so bad that surely Bethesda would issue a patch, but they never did.

So I carry a lot of bitterness over this issue to this day. Now the USLEEP mod fixes this issue by not causing Helvard's murder to lower your reputation with Siddgeir, but I'm still going to take the step of completing the purchase of Lakeview Manor before we get into Dark Brotherhood content.

So that's where we are today. When we last visited Siddgeir he had tasked us with wiping out some bandits whom he had had some dealings with, but who had outlived their usefulness. So we're off to Bilegulch Mine to do the deed. It's a small location and takes hardly any time - there are only three bandits outside and just the bandit chief inside. It does lie on the mountains that border the Reach, though, as well as the southern border of the map, so we take a little time to mountain-goat around, just to see what we can see.

Returning to Siddgeir, he bestows the title of Thane on us and we pick up Rayya as a new housecarl. We purchase the title to Lakeview Manor, and next time we'll visit there.

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