Skyrim:The World-Eater's Eyrie

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Battle through Skuldafn Temple to reach Alduin's portal to Sovngarde. Location(s): Skuldafn Temple Prerequisite Quest: The Fallen Next Quest: Sovngarde Reward: None ID: MQ303

Alduin's portal to Sovngarde

Quick Walkthrough

1. Set Odahviing free.
2. Talk to Odahviing.
3. Reach Alduin's portal to Sovngarde.
4. Enter Sovngarde.

Detailed Walkthrough

Preparation

You cannot take any followers with you on this quest, so you not only have no one to fight alongside you, but also no one to give your things to if you are overencumbered. To make matters worse, you cannot return to Tamriel until you've defeated Alduin, and once you've done so, you can never come back here, so you need to take all the loot you want, making the lack of an accessible pack-mule even more frustrating.

Because of the unique conditions surrounding this and the next two quests, proper preparation for them is paramount. Recommendations include...

• Take with you only the items you need. Armor should be the best quality you can get your hands on, enchanted with all the enchantments you'll need, and only one or two weapons-of-choice (such as a bow and a sword, or maybe a bow and two swords in case you prefer to dual-wield).

• If you have either the Steed Standing Stone, or an armor perk that makes your armor weightless, you can take a stack of such armor with you.
• If you're at a high enough level that you can obtain Potions of Ultimate Healing/Magicka/Stamina, you should only need about five or six of each of those three.
• Take a lot of Fortify Carry Weight potions. Drinking them when you're over-encumbered can give you a modest boost.
• Only about five filled Grand Soul Gems should be needed to keep your weapons enchanted. Best have the soul-gems filled before you start, so you can save on inventory space by not having a soul trap weapon.
• If you have Dragonborn installed, you can obtain either a Dremora Butler or Dremora merchant to help lighten your load, but even that is only of limited use due to their poor carrying capacity and lack of merchant gold, respectively.

• If you are not skilled in conjuration magic, you may consider obtaining a Staff of the Storm Atronach or the Sanguine Rose, so you can have someone to fight alongside you in your follower's absence.

Set Odahviing Free

In order to free Odahviing, talk to the Whiterun guard standing on the second floor. (There is a stone staircase near where the Jarl is standing.) After a short discussion, the guard will release Odahviing for you. You can also pull the chain to release the dragon yourself without talking to the guard, which is useful if the guard is incapacitated or there is a bounty on your head.

Tell Odahviing you're ready to travel and he will fly you directly to Skuldafn.

Overview of Skuldafn Temple

Upon arriving at the Skuldafn Temple courtyard, you'll encounter two dragons and multiple draugr. Battle or sneak your way past them to enter the temple complex. The two Towers (North and South) have only minor loot and don't get you any closer to the Temple itself. If you have a high enough sneak skill, it is possible to sneak past all enemies, including the dragons. It is also possible, though tedious, to scale the mountain beside you as high as you can go, and jump along the mountainside until you reach the temple. At this point you can drop down and sneak through the snowberries at the base of the mountain.

Skuldafn Temple

After entering the Temple area, you come to a large chamber with draugr. Be careful of the dart trap in the western pathway. Continuing leads you to the first puzzle in Skuldafn, which is used to open two doorways. The puzzle consists of three pillars, each separated by a wall, and a switch between the pillars and the doorways. Each pillar has three pictographs: Eagle, Snake, and Whale. On the walls beside the two outside pillars are matching pictographs for those pillars. The west pillar is a Whale and the east is a Snake. Set the outer pillars so that the pictographs face each other (e.g., Snake faces Snake). Above each doorway are more pictographs. Above the east doorway is an Eagle. This way just leads to a treasure chest and a collapsed wall. Above the west doorway is a snake, which leads to the destination. Face the pictograph on the central pillar that matches the desired door to face north, toward the doors. Pull the lever to open door. (With your back to the lever, you should see Eagle, Eagle, Eagle to open and close the dead-end door. With your back to the lever, you should see Eagle, Snake, Eagle to open and close the progressing door. You must close one door before you can open the other.)

The next small room is full of draugr, and the following one has multiple frostbite spiders who made good use of their webbing to block a door and cover a chest.

The second puzzle room is solved by Whale—Snake—Eagle (upper level left, middle lower level, upper level right), with the solutions for the first and third shown above them and the second behind the platform. A chest can also be found behind the platform. Whirlwind Sprint can be used from the platform to bypass the puzzle. Enter the door to go to another section of Skuldafn Temple.

Take out the draugr and keep moving (there isn't much loot around). Cross the bridge (from its eastern entry to the west, seen from entrance) but be careful of the pressure plate trap at the doorway to the next room. Activating it releases a lantern that lights up the oil slick ahead and also triggers a dart trap. Go up the staircase to meet three draugr, which can be dispatched easily with another oil slick and lantern. Pull the lever near the oil (in a small window) to open the gate on the other side of the room. Don't forget the chest (by the other window).

Follow the wide tunnel, grabbing the contents of the chest on the right side. Be careful when you reach the large oil slick, as there is another lantern poised over it that will drop if you step on the pressure plate in front. It is a useful way to dispose of upcoming high-level draugr, by running away and leading him into it.

You will then arrive at a puzzle door guarded by a leveled draugr or dragon priest carrying the diamond claw needed to open it. The combination to the door is, from top to bottom, Fox—Moth—Dragon; this can be seen by examining it in your inventory. The next two rooms (the first large, the next small) are basically empty except for a word wall, which teaches you a word for the Storm Call shout. Also, just before the door to exit, there are some hidden gems to the left of the exit. While facing the exit, on the left is a pot with a flawless emerald, a ruby, and a diamond, which are hidden by a linen wrap.

Dragon Priest

Nahkriin guards the portal at Skuldafn, flanked by two dragons

You will end up on a large rocky platform, above where you first entered Skuldafn. Defeat the draugr who are there to meet you, and take the wooden platform ahead of you (from where you exited the Temple) to go down a small tower that has some good loot on shelves and in a large chest at its bottom. Returning to the top, you may notice two dragons above you, perched on columns. This is where you need to be to get to the quest's finish. But before you can enter Alduin's portal to Sovngarde, you must kill a dragon priest named Nahkriin. This dragon priest can be tough if you don't take the fight to him, and if you engage the two nearby dragons at the same time, the fight can be much more difficult. However, the two dragons may not move from their perches or become hostile. When you reach the top of the stairs he will notice you and make his way toward his staff. It's best to start your assault immediately. He doesn't attack until he gets his staff, so get to him quickly. After Nahkriin grabs his staff, he'll turn around to face you. Be careful with this one as his staff does 50 shock damage per second. Any shock resistance potions or enchanted apparel you have would be useful now. He doesn't start off with full health, so if you jumped on attacking him before he grabbed his staff you should be able to dispatch him in short time. He can also be pushed off the ledge, and will fall to his death. After defeating Nahkriin, pick up his staff and mask and activate the Dragon Seal.

It is possible to quickly run inside the portal without engaging the priest and skip the battle entirely.

Notes

• Followers will not be able to board the flight from Odahviing out of Whiterun. Be sure to dismiss any before you begin. Fast traveling once you have returned to Skyrim after Dragonslayer will return your follower. An alternate solution to having no follower is summoning a spectral assassin from the Dark Brotherhood questline.
• Without console commands, once you've boarded the flight out of Whiterun, you cannot return to Skyrim until you've defeated Alduin. Be sure to stock up on all the gear and supplies you need, and tie up any loose ends regarding time-sensitive quests (such as The Bonds of Matrimony).
• You cannot activate the dragon seal without first removing Nahkriin's staff.
• It is not necessary to kill Nahkriin. With Slow Time, it is possible to run past him, although you won't be able to collect his mask.
• Those who are able to kill Nahkriin before he is able to retrieve his staff, such as stealth characters performing one-hit kills, need not retrieve and replace his staff. You can simply walk into the portal. Activating the dragon seal does nothing in this circumstance.
• The journal entry states that Skuldafn is in the Jerall Mountains, though it is actually in the Velothi Mountains.
• If this quest is active, every dragon that you encounter on the landscape while traveling will shout at you Skuldafn, fen kos dinok (Skuldafn will be [your] death).
• With a little mountain-climbing, you can bypass Skuldafn entirely. Head west from where Odahviing drops you off, then north underneath the waterfall, climbing higher at every opportunity. This is not an intended path, so you will often be climbing the seams between rocks and such. Eventually, you will hit a tower, due east of where you arrived, which will lead up to the broad, open area near the dragon seal.

Bugs

• Sometimes the Whiterun Guard who releases Odahviing dies in battle, meaning that you must pull the chain yourself to continue.
  • Pull the chain yourself.
• Near the exit to Skuldafn Temple, there is a draugr whose patrol path makes it try to walk into a wall. It will continue to do this until it dies or detects you, and will return to this position if it loses sight of you.
• If the dragon claw door or rotating pillars do not work, check here for possible fixes.
  • A solution for the first door puzzle, if it has glitched, is to set the left and right pillars to "Eagle". If you open the Eagle door first, it has to be closed for the Snake door to open.
  • A workaround for the second door puzzle if the rings will not move, is to use Whirlwind Sprint to get to the wooden platform and shimmy your way past the drawbridge.
• Using Dragonrend on Odahviing either before or while he is picking up the guard may cause the game to freeze. ^?
• Sometimes Odahviing may become hostile upon release, and will fight with you as well as any NPCs in the area. This may be caused by attacking Odahviing while he is restrained, though he does not react. ^?
  • Sometimes it is possible to fix this by releasing him, entering Dragonsreach, and then re-entering the area, whereupon Odahviing will be calmed and able to talk once more.
• The two dragons on top of the pillars can freeze and just fly circles. This makes them very hard to kill because they may simply take off after sustaining damage, circle a bit, and return to their perch, by which time their health has been mostly regenerated. Dragonrend only causes the same effect, and they won't actually come to 'ground'. If you kill them, their bodies stay frozen on top of the statues and they keep growling when you hit them with magic. ^?
• In the section of tunnels where the frostbite spiders are, it is possible to kill the small frostbite spider beyond the web door. If this happens, the web door can be opened by casting the Unrelenting Force shout at it and then tearing it down as you would with a given weapon. ^?
• When the guard opens Odahviing's trap, be careful not to accidentally attack Ohdaviing. Doing so will cause a glitch wherein you couldn't talk to Ohdaviing. Resulting for the guards to attack him, forcing him to attack you until you weaken him. When he's weakened, he'll sit and stop taking damage, there will be no "Speak" option. Don't mind trying to find the spot for the option because he'll just regenerate his hp and continue his attack endlessly. When this glitch happens, load an autosave and redo the lure again. ^?
• If you encounter a bug that prevents Odahviing from flying you to Skuldafn temple, setting the quest to stage 60 will place you where he was supposed to land. ^?

Quest Stages

The World-Eater's Eyrie ()
Stage	Finishes Quest	Journal Entry
10		The captured dragon Odahviing has revealed that Alduin has escaped to Sovngarde, the Nord underworld, where he feeds on the souls of the dead. His portal to Sovngarde is located in the ancient dragon temple of Skuldafn, high in the Jerall Mountains. The only way to reach it is to set Odahviing free so he can fly me there. (Objective is assigned): Set Odahviing free
40		(Objective is assigned): Talk to Odahviing
50		(Objective is assigned): Reach Alduin's portal to Sovngarde
100		The captured dragon Odahviing revealed that Alduin has escaped to Sovngarde, the Nord underworld, where he feeds on the souls of the dead. His portal to Sovngarde is located in the ancient dragon temple of Skuldafn, high in the Jerall Mountains. I set Odahviing free, and he flew me to Skuldafn as agreed. Now I just have to reach the portal.
180		(Objective is assigned): Enter Sovngarde
300		The captured dragon Odahviing revealed that Alduin has escaped to Sovngarde, the Nord underworld, where he feeds on the souls of the dead. His portal to Sovngarde is located in the ancient dragon temple of Skuldafn, high in the Jerall Mountains. I set Odahviing free, and he flew me to Skuldafn as agreed. I fought my way to the top of Skuldafn, and entered Alduin's portal to Sovngarde.

• The following empty quest stages were omitted from the table: 0, 1, 5, 15, 20, 30, 45, 55, 60, 120, 160, 200, 220, 240.

 

Notes

• Any text displayed in angle brackets (e.g., <Alias=LocationHold>) is dynamically set by the Radiant Quest system, and will be filled in with the appropriate word(s) when seen in game.
• Not all Journal Entries may appear in your journal; which entries appear and which entries do not depends on the manner in which the quest is done.
• Stages are not always in order of progress. This is usually the case with quests that have multiple possible outcomes or quests where certain tasks may be done in any order. Some stages may therefore repeat objectives seen in other stages.
• If an entry is marked as "Finishes Quest" it means the quest disappears from the Active Quest list, but you may still receive new entries for that quest.
• On the PC, it is possible to use the console to advance through the quest by entering setstage quest stage, where quest is the internal name of the quest, and stage is the number of the stage you wish to complete. It is not possible to un-complete (i.e. go back) quest stages, but it is possible to clear all stages of the quest using resetquest quest, where quest is the internal name of the quest.

Prev: The Fallen

Up: Main Quest

Next: Sovngarde