DLC #85 - Skyrim - Dragonborn

Free Solstheim from it's dark shackles

The Dragonborn DLC adds 10 new trophies to Skyrim, all focused around the new region of Solstheim, including a host of new weapons and a fresh questline.

The new main story dominates the trophy list, with exactly half of the trophies awarded for natural progression throughout the relatively short quest-line. The DLC packs 7 new main quests, with the 5 trophies being awarded for hitting specific points in the main story, usually upon completion of certain quests.

The other trophies in the package will reward exploration, and also cater towards new game mechanics, including the "Dragonrider" trophy, awarded for taming and riding 5 dragons and the "Hidden Knowledge" trophy, awarded for learning the secrets of 5 Black Books, both of which take advantage of new gameplay additions relating to riding dragons and more in depth skill books. It's relatively straight forward stuff for the most part, and the quests are incredibly easy, however, there is a slightly more tasking trophy in this package;

Stalhrim Crafter - Craft an Item out of Stalhrim

This trophy is a bit more long winded than it will seem at face value. Stalhrim is a new element which you can only craft specifically in Solstheim, and you'll need to a fulfil a couple of things before you can actually meet the requirements of the trophy itself.

Firstly, there is an early main story quest called "The Fate of the Skaal", where you'll first interact with a group of NPC's who will be attacked by a Lurker. If any of these NPC's die, you won't be able to initiate a later quest which eventually leads onto the discovery of Stalhrim in Solstheim. Therefore, if you play on after this quest and at least 1 of the 3 relevant NPC's is killed during the fight, you won't be able to trigger the dialogue between them later on, and won't discover Stalhrim as a result. It isn't a difficult problem to overcome, you just need to save the game manually before the fight and reload if it turns out one of the NPC's is killed in action.

Secondly, you need a minimum Smithing level of 80 in order to craft Stalhrim. Smithing isn't one of those skills you will use often enough to level it significantly, and chances are, you'll have a fairly low Smithing skill coming into this DLC package. If this isn't the case, you won't need to worry about anything, but if your Smithing is low in level, you'll need to be prepared to lump a few extra hours into grinding methods in order to heighten your Smithing skill to 80, as I had to, given the fact my Smithing level was only at 25. There are good methods out there for this, but it's long and boring if your Smithing skill is anything under level 40, which for most people it will be, but it's the only effective way to get your skill level to where it needs to be.

Aside from that, this is a fairly easy piece of DLC. The main questline shouldn't take any longer than 3-4 hours, and almost every other trophy can be obtained through blasting through a few side activities which should only add on a few extra hours or so. If you need to heavily level up your Smithing skill, that will easily add another 3-4 hours on top, which turns things into a bit of a grind, but there's nothing terribly challenging about this package.