Lost my Aetherium Shards

[JMO]

I am playing SSE (and Elder Scrolls) for the very first time.

I noticed recently (around save #480) that I only have one Aetherium Shard, the bottom one. I know I used to have 3 of them (also the left and right shards). So I decided to try to see when I lost them. I went back through my saves and noticed that between save #401 and #402, I somehow managed to lose the left and right ones.

I have no idea how this happened. Certainly the UI will not let me drop them. I've read all I can about them on the Wiki but all that it seems to tell me is where to find them and that I need all 4 of them to make the Aetherium disk.


I'm trying to figure out what I did to lose them. Unfortunately, my memory is really terrible. I can think of a few possibilities

1. Is there some place in the game (the forge or something) that would normally allow me insert them/leave them before I had all 4? Is that what might have happened? I'm talking about something that is not a bug.

2. If I managed to actually drop them somehow, is there a way to locate them?


So far I've encountered one known bug (at Volkihar castle ) that required a quick use of a console command (tcl) to get around it. But that was long after I had lost the shards.

As an experiment, I found the shard item codes, tried adding them (via console) to my inventory and sure enough they did appear. But they only did so as "glowing crystal item", not as "Aetherium Shard". So I then had a mixture - 1 "Aetherium Shard" and 2 "glowing crystal items". I figured that would screw things up even more so I backed out of that by restoring the previous save.

Not sure what to do. I can live with just having to give this up and play the other stuff but it would be fun to be able to fix it.

(As background, I should say that I am just an occasional gamer. I respect that there is a TON of background knowledge about this game on here but the 65-page pinned thread on the "unofficial patch" kinda scared me away. I don't think I can devote the time make a deep dive into it. If solving this problem requires a great deal of homework reading on mods, patches, proper install order, etc etc, I will likely have to let it go. I don't mean that to be disrespectful of all the work people have done, it's just that I'm already spending far too much time playing the thing...)

[craigsters]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1869050591

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1869052184

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1869053436

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1869054452


The only two places in game that you could insert the shardz in are at the Ruins of Bthalft Southeast of Ivarstead in the top part of the golden globe sphere at the Ruins of Bthalft and inside at the forge

Also if you use any mods that have sorting or auto sort your items, sometimes they'll get sorted to the containers at the place the auto sort containers are at, the leveler's tower mod has been known to remove quest items from your inventory

[JMO]

Thank you for your reply. Thanks to it, I did manage to spot one big difference between my two saves. In the save after I had "lost" the shards, I had also found Bthalft. Sure enough, when I went back and looked closely, my two pieces were in there.

I'd actually already gone back there at one point and tried to "activate it" with my one remaining shard but it wouldn't let me. But when it wouldn't let me put #3 in there, I figured I had to have all 4 in my possession before I could active it. If I had paid closer attention, I would have seen that the first two shards were already in there

It was a little confusing to me, that the thing would let me put just 2 of them in there but not a 3rd so I foolishly figured I had lost them elsewhere. If only I'd looked more closely.

Much appreciated

[Lightning]

Yeah i was to scared to lose them so i carried them everywhere they only weighed like .1 each i think it was, not sure why they made the shield and staff kind of useless compared to the crown though, 100% crown is the best option imo lol

[Perplex]

Originally posted by Lightning:

Yeah i was to scared to lose them so i carried them everywhere they only weighed like .1 each i think it was, not sure why they made the shield and staff kind of useless compared to the crown though, 100% crown is the best option imo lol

I always take the shield, but that is because i am a collector and most house mods that have dawnguard stuff usualy have a shield holder for it but nothing for the other two. ^^

[Lightning]

Originally posted by Perplex:

Originally posted by Lightning:

Yeah i was to scared to lose them so i carried them everywhere they only weighed like .1 each i think it was, not sure why they made the shield and staff kind of useless compared to the crown though, 100% crown is the best option imo lol

I always take the shield, but that is because i am a collector and most house mods that have dawnguard stuff usualy have a shield holder for it but nothing for the other two. ^^

Ah true but i like using the crown for double mundus reminds me of the ESO set bonus from Twice born star

[MysticMalevolence]

The crown is the only way I can achieve my ultimate necromantic power....

[NimrodX]

Necromancy could use a buff in this game. I bet there's a mod for that.

[Lightning]

Well even in Vanilla it lets you summon 2 zombies or atronachs so i think that's pretty op

[NimrodX]

Conjuration in general is not underpowered, it's just that I see no advantage to necromancy over just summoning atronachs. Necromancy not only requires dead bodies but sometimes the right dead bodies and (except for Dead Thrall) they disintegrate rather quickly so can't be re-animated.