Skyrim 100% Maximized Legendary Playthrough - 301. Tolvald's Cave
3We take a break from the Dark Brotherhood today as last time we finally picked up the last Stone of Barenziah for the No Stone Unturned quest. We can now return to Vex, only to have her tell us that we're *still* not done - now we have to retrieve the crown the gems go in.
Putting another step at the end of this tedious collection quest is rather insult to injury, but further pouring salt in the wound is just how over the top the location we have to visit is. We're off to Tolvald's Cave, and while it's not necessarily the largest location physically, it is incredibly tedious. It's a Falmer hive, which is strike one against it, but more than that, if there's one word I could use to describe this place, it's "excessive". There is SO much to loot here. Just when you think you're done, oh here's another side room with three dozen chaurus eggs and two dozen glowing mushrooms with messed up interaction boxes so that it takes a full minute of contorting your character before you can loot them.
Now for most of you, you'd probably at this point just skip all that and speedrun the place to get this quest over with at long last, and oh how I envy you. My RPG OCD demands I have a No Loot Left Behind policy, so I must be meticulous in clearing the place out. After all, how else would it be a 100% playthrough if I didn't showcase all the loot? I'd forgotten how excessive it all is, or I would have split this into two parts. But I didn't, and the result is our longest video yet, almost hitting the two hour mark. I started to get nervous, because I think the XBox DVR recording software I'm using has a two hour automatic cutoff.
Now there are some good things about this location. It has some non-linearity to it, and there are a good number of secrets to find, which always make any dungeon a lot more enjoyable. It also has a great moment that I had forgotten about that really creeped me out. Check out the sequence starting at 12:15. It's been forever since I've done this location, so I had forgotten, but when you loot the chest Falmer start silently entering the room from the side passages. We were still in stealth mode so they couldn't detect us, so after I looted the chest I wondered why I was suddenly hearing heavy breathing, only to turn around and find a Falmer *right behind me*. No sooner do we kill him than two more shuffle right past us unsuspecting, and it made for an unnerving experience.
From that point on it's just a standard fumigate-and-loot situation, and I really don't know how to describe it other than it just...keeps...going. At long last we arrive at the third zone, Tolvald's Crossing, where we retrieve the crown. I like the setup here, that we're following the footsteps of a Dunmer caravan that was fleeing Morrowind with the crown in the wake of the eruption of Red Mountain and made an ill advised attempt to take an old Dwemer tunnel through the mountain. I especially love the setup of the chamber with the crown, where the developers took pains to make it look like a last-stand battle took place between the Dunmer and the Falmer, and then we have to fight the ghosts of the Dunmer (even though it's painfully obvious that they're actually Thalmor foot soldiers with the ghostly appearance effect applied).
But no sooner are we done with that than we get straight back to even *more* Falmer we have to clear through. At long, long, very long last we reach the shortcut back to the entrance, and we cut as soon as we can see the literal light at the end of the tunnel. Turning in the quest and sort n' selling the absurd amount of loot we collected will have to wait until next time.
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