Skyrim: The World-Eater's Eyrie / Skuldafn Temple / Sovngarde / Dragonslayer Walkthrough

This quest is relatively straight forward and probably does not require a lot of guidance, but there are a few stages that are more tricky and there are a couple of puzzles to solve.

This quest is first initiated when you use the Call Dragon shout on the Dragonsreach Porch to call Odahviing and trap him. Once you have him trapped and have a conversation with him, you end up getting him to reveal the location of Alduin's portal to Sovngarde and then flies you to Skuldafn.

Once you get to Skuldafn, there will be a number of high level Draugr (wraiths and deathlords) before you get to the door to head inside the Skuldafn Temple. I did not count exactly, but there are at least 8 Draugr (some deathlords, some wights, etc.) and there are two dragons. Be careful not to attract the attention of everyone all at once or it will be a very difficult fight.

Head up all the stairs and around the broken tower and up the stairs again to get up to the door that says Skuldafn Temple. This is where you want to go. You can check out the North and South Towers out here if you want as well, but there is not much to tell in them except some more Draugr. Once you get inside the Skuldafn Temple, you will enter a big room with a number of Draugr that come after you almost at once. Kill them and continue forward. You will end up heading up some stairs into a room where more Draugr will attack you. After you kill them, you'll probably notice there are three of the infamous pillars and two gates in front of you. The two side pillars need to be positioned so that the symbol that faces the nearest fire bowl matches the one carved there. The center pillar needs to match the symbol above the gate you want to open.

If you face the pillars from the gates, to open the right gate, you need to see bird - bird - bird and the left gate you should see bird - snake - bird. This is what is shown in the two pictures at the right. The right gate has a chest with not much in it and nothing else behind it. The left gate is the one you need to go through in order to continue with the quest.

After going through the left gate, you will go up some stairs to the left and end up on the walkway above a room with a single Draugr Wight below you. As you approach him, a Deathlord and another Wight will also begin to attack you. After you kill the three of them, head straight through where the Draugr Deathlord came out of. There will be frostbite spiders you need to kill in this area, but they shouldn't be much of a problem. Kill them and continue on along the corridor until you reach the double iron doors. Through these doors are another two Draugr - a Deathlord and a Wight. As soon as you open the doors you will notice another pillar. After killing all enemies you will probably notice that there is no exit from this room. The pillars are what provide the exit to you.

The picture on the left shows you the location we are talking about and will be the reference frame used for explaining the solution. While looking forward towards the wooden bridge that will drop, the pillar on your right needs to be set to the bird, the one to your left needs to be set to whale, and the one behind and below you needs to be set to snake. So that puzzle solution from left to right would be whale - snake - bird. These symbols come from the symbols shown in the mouths of the people corresponding to them. Going across the bridge will allow you to access a door that again is labeled Skuldafn Temple. You need to continue through this door to continue with the quest.

When you go through these doors you will enter a room that has another three Draugr in it. There is a Deathlord, a Wight, and a Scourge. Defeat them and continue up the stairs, across the bridge, and through the corridor to the spiral staircase. At the top of the spiral stairs is a room with three more Draugr and a gate that needs to be opened by lever. directly across the room from the gate is an iron door behind which is flammable oil on the floor which can help kill the Draugr. If you go through that door and turn left 180 degrees you'll see a lever that will lift the gate so you can continue forward.

As you continue forward through the passageway ahead, be careful of the flammable oil trap. When you turn left at the end of the corridor with this trap, straight ahead will be a puzzle door and a Draugr Death Overlord guarding it. Kill the guard and take the Diamond Claw from him to get through the puzzle door. The solution from top to bottom is wolf - moth - dragon (as shown at the right).

This door will allow you to enter a room with a word wall in it. This word wall gives you a word for the Storm Call shout. There are no more Draugr in this section of Skuldafn so you may go straight up to the word wall and then continue on without worries. If you continue toward the quest marker, you will get to a door that says Skuldafn. Be prepared before leaving through this door. After you leave the door, you will be in an area with three Draugr Deathlords, a Draugr Scourge, two Dragons, and a Dragon Preist. Be especially careful of the Dragon Priest as he has a staff that will do 50 shock damage per second. You can get to him before he grabs the staff, however, if you move quickly. He will start heading for it as soon as you go out the door - he is out the door and to the left and then up the stairs. Get to him as quickly as possible, but still try to avoid having all enemies attacking you at once.

Also, the wooden planks that go to a tower straight ahead of you as you exit the door, follow them before going through the portal. All the way at the bottom there is a chest with, among other things, a flawless diamond in it.

Once you have defeated all the enemies, you will be able to get to Alduin's portal to Sovngarde. To use the portal, you need to activate the Dragon Seal, then you can simply walk into the portal. If the Dragon Priest has not yet reached his staff, then all you need to do is to walk into the portal.

Once you have gone through the portal, you will need to make your way through the mist to get to the Hall of Valor. You will meet a soldier quite quickly who will tell you how to get there and will follow you. You need to simply keep walking through the fog and get to the bridge. When you get to the bridge to the Hall of Valor, you will meet Tsun with whom you need to talk and later fight in order to gain admittance to the Hall of Valor.

Once in the Hall of Valor, you will speak with Ysgramor who will tell you that they were all commanded by Shor not to attempt to fight Alduin, but that there are three who have been waiting for me to come which would be their cue to join you and drive Alduin out. As it turns out, these are the same three people who you saw fighting Alduin when you read the Elder Scroll to learn Dragonrend. Follow them back outside where you will finally get to kill Alduin. I found it easiest to use Dragonrend to keep him on the ground and attack him that way.

Once you have killed Alduin, there are some awesome animations as he dies and then you just need to go talk to Tsun again to be sent back to Nirn. When you talk to him and tell him you want to go back home, he teaches you a shout to bring a hero from Sovngarde to aide you - the Call of Valor shout. This is officially the end of the main quest. Congratulations on completing an Elder Scrolls game.

Skyrim Walkthrough: Good Intentions

This quest begins when Urag asks you to mention the book called "Night of Tears" to Tolfdir.

Objectives

• Speak with Tolfdir

Find Tolfdir, most likely in the Hall of Elements. Speak to him and tell him Urag suggested you come see him. Tell him about "Night of Tears". Tolfdir will be distracted by the orb from Saarthal, and has some additional thoughts about it. Listen to what he has to say.

Ancano will come and interrupt. He has some important information. He needs you to come with him immediately. He will tell you someone from the Psijic order is here in the college and is asking to see you specifically. Follow Ancano. Enter the Arch-Mage's quarters. Speak with Quaranir. Ask him what's going on. He will tell you about the Eye of Magnus. The longer it remains in the college, the more dangerous the situation becomes. He will tell you to seek out the Augur of Dunlain within the college.

If you look at your quest journal, it now says "I've been led to the Arch-Mage's quarters by Ancano, who was insistent that I speak to someone claiming to be from the Psijic Order. The monk, named Quaranir, has informed me that the "Eye of Magnus" is dangerous and that to learn how to deal with it, I need to speak with the Augur of Dunlain within the college. I should ask my fellow members where to find him"

Your objective is to find the Augur of Dunlain. You can talk to a number of different people around the college about the Augur and all of them tell you to go talk to Tolfdir. When you talk to Tolfdir he tells you that the Augur is in the Midden which is below the college. He also mentions that the Augur was once an incredibly talented student of the college, but that there was an accident and he has been in the Midden ever since. He tells you that if you are going to see the the Augur, to say hello from him.

Open your map and use it to find the entrance to the Midden (or just follow the marker on your compass). Find the grate on the floor and enter the Midden. Descend down the tunnels, fighting some draugr and spiders on the way. Go through a wooden door and enter the Midden Dark. Cross an icy bridge and enter through a door. Activate the Augur of Dunlain. He will tell you your efforts are in vain, it has already begun. He will tell you that you blindly follow the path to your own destruction. He will tell you that Ancano is also looking for information about the eye of Magnus (the orb thing) and that the only way to see through the eye is using the Staff of Magnus. So he tells you that you will need to find the Staff of Magnus and to go tell the Arch-Mage this information.

Now your objective changes to reporting to Savos Aren. Retrace your path back to where you came in. You will see a ladder here which will lead you back up to the courtyard in the college where the trap door was. Go back into the Hall of Elements to find Savos Aren near the Eye of Magnus. Talk to him and tell him you have important information for him. Tell him you need to find the Staff of the Magnus. No matter what conversation line you follow you will end up telling him that you talked to the Auger. He will be impressed with your initiative and wants you to follow up on this. He recalls Mirabelle mentioning something about the staff and recommends you check with her.

He rewards you with a Mage's Circlet which increases Magicka by 30 points. This completes the quest "Good Intentions" and unlocks the next College of Winterhold quest, "Revealing the Unseen."

Kinect Sensor for Xbox 360 - Product Review

The Xbox 360 is definitely one of the top two game consoles on the market with the PS3 being the obvious contender. Xbox 360 has awesome graphics and tons of great games available for play. The added Kinect hardware makes this gaming console even more desirable than it was to begin with.

Kinect for Xbox 360 is tons of fun with family, friends, kids, and really any group of people. There are already enough games available for Kinect that there is really something for everyone. It is also a surprisingly good workout. I am  not your stereotypical gamer who out of shape because of spending too much time with a bag of chips and a television. I don't work out all the time, but I stay relatively active and I was very surprised to find my muscles sore after the first weekend I had Kinect. It really works your whole body in the same way that playing most sports does.

The Kinect is also surprisingly easy to use. Both the body-controller function and the voice-controlled function are very intuitive. I have never found myself needing to contort my body in odd ways in order to get the console to do what I want it to. In the same way, I have never found myself shouting at the console or speaking in a monotone or anything else to make it understand what I am trying to say. It is very good at recognizing speech and movement the way they come naturally.

One thing to keep in mind about the Kinect is that the advertisements, like all advertisements, are misleading (my rants about advertising will wait for another day). In most of the video advertisements, you see groups of people sitting and standing at about the distance you would normally see people watching television from or maybe even a little closer. This is completely unrealistic. It takes a lot of space to play Kinect games. The living room space in my apartment is situated so that the television is in the corner of the room and my sectional sofa in the opposite corner. This makes a usable space in between the television and the sofa that is approximately 7ft deep by 10ft wide. This space is only barely passable for playing Kinect games with 2 people. With one person playing, the space works quite well, but with 2 people, the game often gets paused or just gets confused because someone stepped outside the range of the camera or couldn't step far enough back.

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The Bottom Line:

The Kinect sensor for Xbox 360 is incredibly easy to use, a good value for the price, and a ton of fun if you have the space for it, but make sure you have the space before you spend the money.

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Related Products I Recommend:

Kinect Sports - Xbox 360

Xbox 360 S - 250 GB Console