Inside Windhelm the first order of business was to console kill Calixto. After that I ran around doing the usual trading and picked up another four or five followers.

Not impressed with the interior of the temple since I removed CleverCharff's textures.

 

 

I knocked on the door of Candlehearth Hall and asked "Is Luaffyn?"

I use more than 12 female NPC replacers yet Luaffyn is still somehow vanilla.

 

Didn't there used to be an admin  . . .

 

What is it about that piece of skirting board? Every damned game that is all she does.

 

And then there is Nils. No matter what I've tried he always looks like this.

 

All done in town so I step outside to pick up the team and ? . . . and ? . . .

 

 . . .and is it chuff.

 

I let Coda Cabbagehead go because I still couldn't pimp him so there wasn't any point in keeping him. I also let one the gels go. I'd noticed she wasn't healing after a fight and on looking at her in XEdit she was a custom race based on a Nord so I changed her to Nord which messed up her head. I couldn't be bothered sorting out that so I dismissed her and will worry about the head another day.

The plan is to head for the mystery tower I spotted previously and forgot to investigate. After that I plan to swing back and do the shipwreck, Yngol Barrow, Traitor's Post and the Refugee Tower. I've got 24 or 25 followers with another available in the barrow.

We don't make it to the end of the causeway before a lone nutter attacks us.

 

I swam across the bay and dealt with some horkers while the gels decided to join me. Always a bit lively around here and we can already see some action up ahead.

 

It was Man Eaters fighting something. FYI these Man Eaters from Enemy Plus are, I'd guess, based on the Thenns from GoT.

 

And more fighting ahead.

 

The fighting turned out to be a troop of Stormies taking on a Wispmother and some ice wraiths with Mona the Fire Witch joining in. The Wispmother and the wraiths were dead by the time we got there and the Stormies had Mona surrounded so she couldn't whizz about.

Not the best spot for a team photo IMO. One of the Stormies keeled over as we watched. There are 13 live Stormies in the shot with several more dead lying around.

The Stormies did a bit of last minute body stroking before heading out.

 

Meanwhile more trouble ahead.

 

That turned out to be ice wraiths versus vamps and moved off elsewhere. Meanwhile we finally reach the brow of the hill and can see our objective. Not quite as close as I thought it would be.

 

Just ahead is a bandit camp with two level 50 chiefs and a regular bandit. I'm about lower to mid 40s level-wise.

 

We get to the island the tower is on and deal with a couple of horkers and then get an inkling of what is in the tower. Oo ek.

There then followed a lot of swimming and scrambling around in the dark trying to find an entrance.

 

Finally - shit.

It turns out the tower is from Maids Deception II which I had a short go with in my last game but haven't started in this one.

 

I thought that was annoying but no, the day is only starting. ?

The shipwreck can be easy or tricky depending on how the followers decide to act. This is assuming they choose to act at all.

First try I arrive with no sign of any followers. There is horker making its way up the slope towards me. Cunning plan 1 - take out the horker while the gels arrive. Wrong - I take out the horker easy enough but the gels don't arrive and I have attracted the attention of the bandits who promptly slaughter me.

Cunning plan 2 - Fuck the horker, I will get off a couple of fireballs on the bandits then run around like a lunatic while the gels arrive. Wrong - One of the bandits is a mage who puts out shock magic which tanks my magicka so no fireballs after the first couple. Add to this the couple of seriously heavy-hitters in Team Bandit and I am dead. needless to say there was no sign of the gels.

Cunning plan 3 - Similar to #2 but I will concentrate on shock boy. Wrong - a combination of his whizzing about, the sheer number of bandits and the lack of space and I'm dead again. Where the fuck are the gels?

Around this time I notice that my succubus energy is low so my stats will be taking a hit which obviously isn't going to help. Okay, enough with the cunning plans, it's time to go back to basics. I issue a 'get your arses here here' command. After that it was plain sailing - if you can do plain sailing on a shipwreck. ?

 

Seeing as daylight is about here and I have a good view I decide to have another go at my LODs.

Shot 1. The current situation using TES5LODGen. To me, the problem is the middle distance.

At this point I'm thinking of biting the bullet and giving DynDOLOD a go. So exit game and do some searching and reading.

DynDOLOD says I need the Vanilla LOD Billboards from TES5LODGen, I should have them so I have check. I do have then but for some reason I didn't install them. ?‍♂️ Muppetry. So DynDOLOD on hold while I try TES5LODGen with the billboards.

Shot 2 (1 real time hour later)

Not an improvement by any stretch and the sky was worse and the middle distance rocks look slightly less detailed. At this point I don't know if changes will only happen after a cell refresh/change or if this is it.

In for a penny, in for a pound. I decide to go for DynDOLOD.

I read and reread the instructions on the dydolod.info site which are as confusing as hell. One problem is that the names of the required files are given as masked URLs linked to the Nexus files page and the file name in the link does not match any of the files on the Nexus page. After trying and failing to get my head around this I read the description page on Nexus where the installation instructions are different to those on dyndolod.info. FFS. Luckily I spot a link to a GamerPoets vid. It's 45 minutes long but at least I know I will get some good advice.

I follow the vid and don't make any changes to defaults other than those recommended by the GP vid. Eventually I'm done and without any errors or problems. Back to the game then.

Shot 3 (almost 2 hours 30 mins later)

The results are totally underwhelming. ? The sky is back to more or less what it was, there is the bandit camp now visible and a few trees scattered about. The biggest downer is the ice.

By now what little patience I have has long since evaporated and 3 and a half hours have gone. At this point I decide to knock it on the head and wait to see if things change after cell refreshes or whatnot. An act of God wouldn't go amiss.

 

Next stop is Yngol Barrow so we head down the shore. A brief moment of light relief ensues. We encounter some Orc Hunters who appear otherwise engaged.

As I step left off the rock combat music starts and the gels draw weapons. I run counter-clockwise around the rock and find a dead orc then another dead orc and then another dead orc then the gels just finishing off a Man Eater.

 

Inside Ygnol and we are attacked just inside the door by these riekling look-alikes with some mounted on oversized skeevers. Lots of them.

 

The barrow is easy enough with the only enemy being an HSO villain who spawns in a tricky spot. We hook up with our new follower Kenders.

 

I still aware that my succubus energy is still in need of a top up so . . . two with the hand is worth one in the tush as they say.

 

Outside we get attacked by a few animals who have been got at by spriggans and eventually we come across the spriggans.

 

From there on it was downhill all the way. Traitor's Post can be a pain depending on where the bandits are when things star. Refugee Tower is the site of a War Zones mage battle and is an absolute nightmare. I intended to do the tower first as my succubus energy is still down because I have it set to not get any from undead and draugr are of course undead.

As it happened the bandits in Traitor's Post spotted us so we had to deal with them first. Easy enough as they were mostly outside and got swarmed by the gels.

All done and dusted.

 

Refugee Tower took several attempts due to me dying. A shock mage targetted me and drained my magicka while an ice mage peppered me with ice bolts which ate my stamina and reduced my movement to snails pace while a fire mage pumped out the world's loudest fireballs. The situation wasn't helped by only about a third of the gels getting involved. I had to reconfibulate the EFF MCM to get a full team.

You can tell it went badly when I only have one screenshot of something which took forever.

 

I'd had enough by the time this had ended. My plan is to go from here to Kynesgrove and then head towards Riften.