Easy solution to Arvak's skull quest and how to like the soul cairn ;)

[miyel19]

In my previous walkthroughs I always wanted to get rid of the soul cairn as fast as I could, as you get easily lost in it, so I always run to locate Serana's mother Valerica to advance the main Dawnguard questline, then if I was in the mood, I tried to search the "distraught soul" who gives the side quest to find Arvak's skul.

By then, having completed the main questline, this questgiver was often not to find anymore.
This time I stopped half-way to Valerica, took his quest immediately and just headed straight north-east until I found the skull easily.

By doing so, you keep the questmarker to Valerica, and when you find the skull - a rather long way ahead northeast without questmarker for this first step - there is another questmarker to give the skull back to the questgiver nearby where you find the skull.
By doing so, you also encounter Jiub on your way, for the other side quest to find his 10 missing book pages. For this quest, you can always come back to the soul cairn later if you don't want to do the quest right away.

I don't care about horses, as I find it more fun to walk around and discover caves or whatever, at my rythm.
But I care to do most of the quests in the game, so now that I found the correct way to proceed in the soul cairn, I don't dislike it that much anymore like many of us apparently do - as there is no decent map and questmarkers for these side quests ;)

[ralphtobybob]

Just treat it the way you would any other large room in a dungeon by using a search pattern.
Walk in a straight line, like E to W or N to S then move over within your POV (point of view) and walk in the opposite direction. With multiple paths that are hard to keep track of, drop a torch as a marker.

[Rez Elwin]

I don't think anything could make me like the soul cairn, place kinda sucks, I usually get through it as fast as I can by using werewolf, they can sprint faster than any horse could hope to. Not a whole lot to eat down there but with Growl installed or Hircine's ring it isn't restricted to once a day.

[miyel19]

:)

[Perplex]

I always use google "Soul Cairn Map" and use that to see where i need to go and GTFO ASAP.

And tbh it is not as bad as it used to. When i first went there the entire palce was filled with a thick mist so you could not see very much in front of you. Nowdays the mist is gone (patched out?) so it is not as bad as it used to be.

[Jon_Smith]

I found the Soul Cairn kinda sucked the first time I went into it since I think I went exploring and just found the same repetitive emptiness. I got the quest to find Arvak but never found his skull as I crisscrossed around, didn't even see Jiub.

Second time in I just wanted it over and done with so I basically ignored the buildings and went straight for Seranas mother, then straight for a tower, to my surprise on the way was Arvak and to my further surprise it gave me a summon spell, Jiub was also nearby.

It seems almost like they put these things along the way if you go straight to the quest markers/towers so you can spot them, but if you diverge, explore, you can very easily miss them because its such a large empty area.

I don't like the Soul Cairn mostly just cause its a pain to travel in and the lack of interesting quests but I'm glad I know how to get the horse easily now and would prioritize it if I started another new character.

[miyel19]

Originally posted by Jon_Smith:

I found the Soul Cairn kinda sucked the first time I went into it since I think I went exploring and just found the same repetitive emptiness. I got the quest to find Arvak but never found his skull as I crisscrossed around, didn't even see Jiub.

Second time in I just wanted it over and done with so I basically ignored the buildings and went straight for Seranas mother, then straight for a tower, to my surprise on the way was Arvak and to my further surprise it gave me a summon spell, Jiub was also nearby.

It seems almost like they put these things along the way if you go straight to the quest markers/towers so you can spot them, but if you diverge, explore, you can very easily miss them because its such a large empty area.

I don't like the Soul Cairn mostly just cause its a pain to travel in and the lack of interesting quests but I'm glad I know how to get the horse easily now and would prioritize it if I started another new character.

Exactly!
It's still not my preferred area or quests either, even if now I know better how to do them.
But it's not the only time where I discovered that replaying this game makes you like it even more because you discover things you missed or didn't know how to handle before :)

[Jon_Smith]

I wouldn't say I like it more. I think it kind of sucks that I was punished for exploring and not going in a straight line to the next quest marker. The game should be abit more forgiving at those sort of things. I quite like having quests that don't give you a clear marker every now and again but some of them become obnoxious either because they are in such a wide empty space like the Soul Cairn or the Stones of Barenziah simply because there are so many of them spread out across the entire flipping game with zero clue as to where they might be, some are in Jarls quarters, some are just in a nook next to a random Draugr.

I hope in the next Elder Scrolls game they find a balance between the 'go to the exact quest marker point' and 'wander around the Soul Cairn and Skyrim and look everywhere and hope you get lucky'.

So quests can give you hints as to places but you still need to find them, lets save you know the name of the cave and its in the reach but its up to you to explore and find it and things like finding Arvaks skull can give you regions of the Soul Cairn to explore or something so you can at least narrow and focus your search. Perhaps you can get or buy clues for a quest like Stones Of Barenziah, pay the Thieves Guild to find one, after a few days they come back with a clue or location (this way you cannot just spam out the locations all at once so there is still some challenge).


The current choice of it either showing you exactly where to go or not giving you any hints whatsoever is a really sucky system.

[miyel19]

"Narrow the search" and give more clues, I definitively agree, even if I like to explore and search for myself.
But this system of questmarkers or no clue at all is too extreme, yes..

[jreese46]

I use Arthmoor's soul cairn quest markers mod. Much easier.

[Jon_Smith]

Originally posted by jreese46:

I use Arthmoor's soul cairn quest markers mod. Much easier.

Yeah and I use one for Stones of Barenziah, but thats the point, its either absurdly vague and difficult to find everything or you turn it into somehow the character knows exactly where the thing is from across the other side of the world and removes all the challenge of exploring.

Those extremes suck. Extremes in those sort of things often suck and its made way worse when you combine them in the same game because usually someone will gravitate to one style of another, including both means you'll alienate alot of people from doing stuff.

I found the issue when I tried playing Red Dead Redemption 2, I'd heard all these great things, open world, you name it, but I played and spent the first couple of hours in a walking simulator doing missions in an extremely narrowly defined way with (as far as I could tell) zero room for change. I was even pushing the control stick in the wrong direction at certain points to see how auto my character was during the missions.
Then once you finish that chapter apparently you can roam the world and do lots of RPG stuff, but by that point I was fed up and ruined the game by just running around shooting people out of frustration. That game needed to pick a lane and so did Skyrim, either stick to the very simple quest markers or allow the player to get by on hits and notes, not the awful mix of all or nothing.